“I’ll come as fast as I may,” Lord Corcy said.
The sheriff was more openly angry. “Christ on the cross, gentles! I swore my oath! Let me be!”
The spearmen who’d accompanied him the day before muttered angrily.
Bad Tom came out of the yard. “We don’t have horses for this lot,” he said. “They’ll only slow us down.”
Blanche put a hand to her throat, convinced she was about to see these poor men butchered.
A tight ring of pages and archers surrounded them, and suddenly they had swords in their hands.
The captain put his hands on his hips. His golden belt glowed in the moonlight.
He winked. It seemed improbable, but she was sure he had winked.
“We’ll be long gone to Lorica,” he said. “Let them go.”
The archers and pages sheathed their swords.
The sheriff and his men were even handed their weapons. They took no more damage than some taunts.
Most of them fled.
Blanche was interested to see that two men—both big, capable-looking peasants—remained. They had a brief conversation with Cully and were put up on wagons.
The Queen smiled at her. “Oh, it is good to be alive! The sun is coming. It is just across the rim of the world. There’s a fox in yon hedgerow looking for a meal, and a family of mice in the foundation just here—by the blessed Virgin, it is the world.” She looked at the worthy sister. “I did not expect to see this morn at all,” she said.
Amicia nodded. “The fox will eat the mice,” she said.
Desiderata’s clear, delighted laugh rang out. “Only some, Amicia. That is the way of the world, too.”
The column began to move.
Chapter Nine
The Company
They moved very quickly—back over some of the same ground they’d followed the day before. Blanche saw a pair of men meet the captain—he rode by the Queen—and both men were new to her, clad in green. The day began to break after they’d been on the road an hour.
Another pair of men in green met them and led them around a village whose cocks were crowing and where early morning fires filled the air with the homey smells of cooking and smoke—Freeford, she thought.
“Quiet!” Nell hissed behind her, and the whole column passed the town like ghosts. A shepherd coming out of the town with a small flock of goats was grabbed at sword’s point and his goats were left bleating behind them.
They came to more open country at the foot of the great ridge and suddenly they were trotting—and then cantering. Blanche was not confident at this speed, and she couldn’t do anything but keep her seat.
“Relax,” the Queen said at her side. “Let your hips go with the animal. It’s lovely. Stop making the horse do quite so much work.”
“I’m sorry, your grace!” Blanche said.
“Ah, my dear, I never knew what a treasure you were until this adventure. He calls you ‘Lady Blanche’ and he has the right of it! You’re a treasure. But you must learn to ride better.” The Queen laughed.
Her laugh seemed to lift the spirits of the whole column.
A league on, and they passed a pair of farm gates and the column slowed to a walk again.
Bad Tom raised his voice. “Halt!” he roared. “Change horses!”
Nell put a fresh horse’s reins into Blanche’s hand. “That means you have five minutes to rest,” she said.
Blanche dismounted, and her legs almost folded under her. Instead of helping the Queen, the Queen helped her.
Amicia rubbed her hips like a much older woman.
The Red Knight reappeared and handed around his silver cup full of wine. “Ladies, your pardon,” he said. “We’re racing time.”
“We’re not going north,” the Queen snapped.
“No, your grace,” he admitted.
“I’m not likely to tell anyone,” she said. “Come, whose treason do you fear—Sister Amicia? Lady Blanche?”
He smiled. “If some of my men can reach a certain point—in time. If we can get there, too—” He shrugged. “Well there may be a fight.” He bowed. “Some of my household knights will take you north on the road, to Lorica and safety. I’m sending Sukey and all the baggage.”
“Nonsense,” the Queen said. She handed her baby to Amicia. “If there’s a battle, I want to see it.”
Again, Blanche thought this sounded far more like her Queen.
“Your grace—” Ser Gabriel began.
“Spare me the poor weak woman speech,” Desiderata snapped back.
The Red Knight’s face clouded. “If you are captured, your grace, you are a dead woman. And your cause is dead. And so is your son.”
“I think I know my plight well enough, ser knight.” Desiderata’s smile was cool.
Her son gave a great cry.
She clutched him to her again. “I know the risk. But if you lose—”
“Madame, this is not a set piece battle like a tournament. I hope to catch de Vrailly napping on the road or just breaking his camp. If I fail, he’ll be on us like a dog on a rabbit and we’ll be outnumbered twenty to one. Would you please ride north to Lorica, Madame?”
Desiderata smiled and put a hand on his steel arm. “Ser Knight—I would be with my army. If you lose—so be it. But if you triumph, I would have men say that my son was in battle the day he was birthed, and that his mother was no coward. Too few saw my trial by combat. My husband is dead. I would that men saw me, and knew me.”
Ser Gabriel sat a moment on his great war horse. The sky was lightening behind him. He looked like the war incarnate, the avatar of knighthood.
He took a deep breath, and then shrugged. “Very well, your grace. You are the Queen.” He nodded. “Amicia? Will you at least ride for Lorica?”
The nun shook her head. “No,” she said. “You will need me.”
The Red Knight smiled. “Blanche? I don’t suppose you’d like to take a nice ride with two handsome knights…?”
Blanche laughed. “I would not leave my lady.” Greatly daring, she said, “I’ve had offers of dawn rides from knights afore now. My mother told me never to go.”
The Queen tilted back her head and roared. She reached out and caught Blanche’s hand and squeezed it.
The Red Knight bowed in his saddle to the ladies and turned his war horse. But when he was out of earshot, he turned to Michael and said, quite savagely, “I may yet be King of Alba. Through no fault of my own.”
Michael stared.
“If she falls…” Ser Gabriel shook his head. He rode to where Ser Francis Atcourt and Chris Foliak sat on their destriers.
He put a hand on Atcourt’s shoulder. “If you two bring the Queen through this alive,” he said, “I will give you whatever I can that you desire. A nice fief in Thrake? And I’ll knight Chris on the spot, or see to it she does. If she goes down—” He shrugged. “Have the good manners to die with her.”
Ser Francis Atcourt was not a young man. “I’ve never asked for aught,” he said.
Ser Michael laughed. “It’s better than fighting, holding land,” he said.
Atcourt smiled his beatific smile. “I don’t see you at home on your farms, my lord,” he said.
He was always surprised at how seriously the professionals took knighthood.
Chris Foliak shook out the back cloak of his magnificent silk surcoat. “I rather fancy being a knight,” he said. “And I always fight my best for a lady.”
“Especially a rich, beautiful lady,” Atcourt said. “But aye, Captain. So—she’s staying with us?”
The captain nodded. “For our sins. Or perhaps because of them. Enough prattle, gentlemen.” He took a war hammer from his saddle bow and waved it at Bad Tom, who vaulted into his saddle and bellowed.
Before a nun could say an Ave Maria, they were all mounted, and the jingle of horse harness mixed with the rattle of plate armour. In the west, the sun was rising.
Gavin rode beside his brother. He knew most of the men who came out
of the dawn and guided them—members of Gelfred’s green banda, the woodsmen and the prickers and scouts. They seldom stayed in sight long enough for more than a recognition signal and a waving hand to show the new line of movement, and then the green-clad figure would ride into the dust or vanish into a wood-edge. He saw Amy’s Hob canter along a thicket with a crossbow out and cocked, and then ride around the edge—gone.
His brother waved to Bad Tom and as they trotted, called, “No shouts, no horns or trumpets now.”
Tom’s laugh was startlingly loud in the clear morning air.
They crested a shallow ridge, and found the whole valley of the great river at their feet. Distant bluffs marked the Harndon side of the Second Bridge.
Gelfred rode up a path as if the meeting had been planned for weeks. He wasn’t smiling.
“De Vrailly’s up and almost ready to march,” he said. “You’re late.” Then Gelfred saw the Queen. In a moment he was off his horse in the road, and kneeling.
He kissed her offered hand. Then he reached into his plain green cote and pulled out a small, red banner. It had the pennon of a captain, and on it was a magnificent golden dragon.
“I brought it for the King,” Gelfred said. “Ranald sent it. He said he couldn’t bear the bastards to have the Royal Guard’s pennon.”
The captain rolled his eyes.
“It’s his by right,” Gelfred said. He reached out as if afraid of being bitten, and touched the baby. The baby made a fist, grabbing Gelfred’s hand.
“What a fine crop of royalists I’ve grown,” the captain said. “Chris, put it on your lance.” He gazed out over the valley. “We’re going to be visible on the crestline unless we move,” the captain snapped. He smiled at Long Paw—now Ser Robert Caffel. Long Paw was not dressed as a knight, and he had a heavy bow over his shoulder, a mail shirt almost black with oil and a green hood that went almost to his waist.
Long Paw took his horse from Short Tooth, another green banda man. “All right where you said, Captain,” he noted.
The captain waved his war hammer. “If only de Vrailly may follow our plan.”
They rode down into the valley’s long morning shadows.
An hour later, and the waiting was killing them all.
Mosquitoes—the first crop of the year—settled on the casa like a biblical plague. Cully looked reproachfully at Long Paw, six trees away. Long Paw merely shrugged.
Gavin felt the scales on his shoulders writhe and prickle.
He watched his brother, who was watching the road with a fixed intensity. It was the hour of the day when peasants went to their fields, when men yoked oxen or horses to ploughs if they had them, when the cocks ceased to crow and work began. As the weather was fine after days of rain, there should have been peasants on the road and in the fields to their front.
They were a mile or more from Second Bridge, where the road bent sharply to the east, following the contours of a hill. On the east side of the road—the inside of the curve—a round hill rose, covered in farm fields. At the top of the hill, almost hidden behind a high hedge that could be defended, stood the small village of Picton with chimneys smoking.
No one was moving in Picton’s fields, either.
On the west side of the road the ground was flat for a few furlongs until it dropped sharply towards the river. It was heavily forested in big, old oak trees with some maples and, in the centre, a stand of ancient fir trees like the masts of heavy ships.
If the road circumventing Picton Hill was a bow, Cully, Gavin, Long Paw and the captain stood where the archer would grip it, in the dark patch of firs at the centre of the bow. Gavin could see the road for a bowshot in each direction—almost to Second Bridge. And he could see up the Picton village road, a narrow lane between two hedges that ran up the hill like the arrow on the bow.
He hated waiting in ambush. He could see on his brother’s face that he didn’t like waiting either—he snorted quietly in frustration a little too often.
The mosquitoes were devastating. Ganfroy, the trumpeter, was fighting a losing battle with his self-control, trying to stay calm. He’d been bitten often enough that one side of his face was beginning to swell.
The captain snorted again. “I give up,” he said. “Nicholas, when I raise my arm, sound the—”
Up in the Picton hedge at the top of the long hill, a mirror flashed—one, two, three times.
“Son of a bitch,” the captain said.
The first riders were visible a few hundred heartbeats later. They were light horse—Alban prickers, young men in light armour on fast horses. They were in the Towbray livery, and they were moving fast.
They passed the captain’s position in the open fir wood so close that their conversation was clearly audible.
“… fooling playing soldier,” one young voice said with all the self-importance he could muster. “There’s not a soldier in fifty leagues.”
“Certes there’s none near me,” barked an older voice. “Now shut up and ride.”
The prickers passed.
The mirror flashed again. This time, it flashed just once.
The captain shook his head. “Ready,” he called softly.
Gavin didn’t know any of the banners that rounded the bend a bowshot to their right, coming from the south. But the enemy vanguard was well closed up, and very professional—three hundred lances in crisp array, all in full armour. Behind them marched a dense column of infantry.
The mirror flashed again. This was a longer signal.
“Better than I deserve,” the captain said, but his demeanour had changed. The anxiety was gone. He was smiling.
The enemy van was moving at the speed of a swiftly marching man. A babble of Gallish came floating on the morning air.
Gavin had time to think that just the vanguard outnumbered them enormously. And he cursed inwardly, as nowhere did he see de Vrailly’s banner.
Ganfroy quivered with excitement. The captain put a hand on the younger man’s arm.
“Nothing for us to do,” he said. “Gelfred will open the dance.”
The enemy vanguard began to pass them. They were so close that Gavin could see individual faces—some dark and heavy, some boorish, but many men were laughing and some—too many—looked like good men, good companions for an evening’s drinking or a joust.
He’d never fought this way before. He didn’t like seeing his enemies as cheerful, open-faced fellows.
Off to the south, there were screams. A cheer. More screams.
“Stand up!” the captain called.
All through the woods, men stood. They weren’t in neat lines, and here and there, despite the bugs, a man had fallen asleep.
The captain stood with his back to the enemy, as if oblivious of them, watching the woods on either side of him. Then he raised a horn to his lips.
The men on the road were just reacting.
They still weren’t sure what they were seeing.
Gavin loosened his sword in its sheath and gripped his spear. What he really wanted to do was scratch the new bites on his groin.
And perhaps hide.
The horn went to his brother’s lips.
“Now and in the hour of our deaths,” said a voice.
The horn sounded. As soon as it rang out, a hundred other horns were raised and blown, so that the woods rang with them, over and over, as if every hunting pack in Alba was coursing in the woods.
Archers with a clear lane of trees began to loose shafts.
Those without moved forward.
The horns went on and on.
Gavin still had his visor open. He saw Cully loose a shaft almost flat, and then take a few steps forward. Gavin moved with him. Gabriel had his spear in hand by then, and moved with them, and Long Paw had begun to loose—the range was suddenly very close, the road was right there.
A bolt or an arrow slammed into Gavin’s bascinet, half-turning it on his head. He got his right hand up and pulled his visor down and his thumb moved of its own voliti
on, latching the visor.
On the road in front of them were the Gallish infantry—the routiers. They were well-armoured and most of them had heavy pole weapons or long spears, and big, heavy shields.
But their shields had been on their backs when the first arrows struck, and there were a lot of dead and screaming men on the road.
Cully took three more steps forward. In a moment, he and Long Paw both drew, their hands coming all the way back to the edges of their mouths like they were matched automatons. They—and the Gallish routiers—were framed by two vast old trees against the brilliant sunlight of the fields beyond.
There were screams, and grunts. The company archers were loosing from so close that the shafts sometimes penetrated a shield. When they struck armoured flesh, the needle points went home with a horrible meaty sound, like a butcher making tough meat tender.
The routiers broke. They turned and ran into the field on the far side of the road. Most of them fell into the deep ditch at the road side and some few never rose again.
Ahead of them, Du Corse’s three hundred lances—six hundred armoured horsemen—took a few arrows, lost some horses, and charged the woods like the professionals they were.
By that time, most of the rest of the company was at the road edge or on it.
“Whose is the banner?” the captain asked. “Is that Du Corse?”
Away to the south, brazen trumpets were roaring.
Gavin stood in his stirrups to look.
“Gelfred’s killed all the baggage animals, and now their wagons are blocking the road,” Gabriel said. “The problem is: we don’t have the lances to finish off Du Corse.”
The Gallish routiers had discovered that there were archers in the hedgerows of the town. They were caught in the open fields, in spring, with no cover. The archers began to flay them. There were fewer than a hundred archers all told, but their arrows were fearfully accurate.
“Sound recall,” Gabriel said crisply.
“Du Corse is in the woods,” Gavin said.
His brother shook his head. “Let’s go. It’ll take de Vrailly a day to unfuck this.”
Ganfroy sounded the call. Immediately archers to the west of the road came out of their cover. Many of them had horses to hand. Others simply ran—across the road, over the ditch, and up the hill.
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