Court of Wolves

by Robyn Young

  Beyond, behind a metal grate, he was surprised to see not a bare prison cell, but a cosy, well-appointed room. There was a large bed with embroidered cushions and covers, a few paintings on the walls, chairs, hooks for clothes, a shelf of books, a brazier glowing dully, and a table. On the table was the tray Bertoldo had carried in, beside a chessboard with a game in progress. At it, sat a man.

  The man, whom he reckoned to be around his own age, was sucking thoughtfully at a segment of orange, while reading a book. He was evidently well-built beneath his silk robe, with long, muscled limbs. His shoulder-length dark hair was slicked back as if recently washed and a neat moustache and beard framed a strong jaw. Even in the dim light of the chamber, which seemed to have no window of its own, Jack saw his skin had a ruddy cast. The hue of his skin, the angles of his cheeks, the set of his eyes: all suggested a foreignness. The otherworldly call of the infidels’ prayer whispered in Jack’s mind.

  The man glanced up. ‘I am not yet done, Bertoldo.’

  As he lifted the orange segment in evidence, Jack saw a knotted scar snaking from his palm down his arm. The man had spoken Tuscan, but his accent was of another place entirely. His tone was weary, lifeless.

  When Jack didn’t respond, the man’s expression changed. He dropped the fruit and rose. There was a rattle of something as he did so. ‘I do not know you.’ He came forward as he spoke, the rattling louder.

  Jack realised there was a chain attached to his ankle. The man was almost at the door when it halted him, snapping taut from its base, somewhere on the other side of the room. He found his voice. ‘Who are you?’

  The man’s expression shifted, those dark eyes now flooding with hope. ‘Free me!’

  Hearing someone approaching, Jack whipped round. One last look at the chained man, then he let fall the steel flap, yanked the curtain across and sprinted from the room. This time he snatched his bag from the chair before throwing himself under the bed. He lay there, heart hammering, as Bertoldo returned, heading for the study.

  Amelot slipped across the roof, the rising sun blazing in her eyes. Already, she felt its warmth in the tiles beneath her hands. She had mapped the city by its rooftops: the best surfaces to traverse and those to avoid, the plunging drops to steer clear of and the jumps she could make – the run and the lift, for one thrilling moment suspended in flight over the heads of people far below. The buildings were more closely packed than those in Paris, giving her plenty of routes around the city’s four quarters.

  It had been another fruitless night of searching, out among the domes and towers. Another night without sign of the man she had seen at Carnival, or her master. She knew these hunts were shots in the dark; no target to aim for, no mark to set her sights on. But it was better than lying awake in the palazzo listening to Jack moan and thrash in his sleep, or else trapped in the hot eaves of the Fig, Ned’s snores rumbling through the room. If any of them had noticed her absence they hadn’t said anything.

  It seemed they had all but forgotten Amaury. A few weeks back she’d heard Valentine bluntly suggest to Jack that the priest was most likely dead by now. But she could not – would not – countenance that. Amaury had brought her in from the streets when everything had been stripped from her by the men – monsters – years ago. The men who had taken her family. Her body. Her voice. He had given her protection and purpose. She had to find him. To save him. As he had saved her.

  Not far from the market, the streets busy with life, Amelot shinned down from the heights and moved through the throng. She was approaching the Fig, past cloth traders setting out bolts of silks, satins and velvets, when she found her route blocked by a small crowd.

  Heading closer, Amelot saw a dozen armed men in tunics emblazoned with a viper. They were surrounding the open door of a house, out of which an object was being carried. A cart was nearby, harnessed to horses, more men beside it, some of them shouting for the knot of onlookers to move back. Weaving through, she got a brief look at what they were carrying. It was a body on a litter, partly covered with a sheet.

  The corpse was a man. His bare feet poked from the bottom of the sheet, which was rusty with blood, along with one muscular arm that dangled from the litter. The skin of his knuckles was black with bruising. He’d gone down fighting, she thought.

  One of the onlookers, a woman, crossed herself as the dead man was conveyed to the cart. As the woman turned to her neighbour, Amelot caught a few words she recognised, among them plague. The young man she’d addressed shook his head. Amelot stared up at him as he replied, certain the young man had said something about a demon.

  There was a shout, followed by a shocked gasp that rippled through the onlookers. Looking back, Amelot saw the sheet had snagged as the men were hoisting the litter on to the cart. One of the guards hastily tugged it back in place, but not before Amelot caught a glimpse of the dead man’s face. The skin looked wrong – raw and glistening. No, not skin, she realised, but the bloody tissue beneath. The man’s face had been peeled.

  Amelot felt the breath catch in her throat. She pushed out through the knot of people, away from the litter and the corpse. A man bellowing his wares from a shop front made her jump in fright, into the path of a horse and rider, who yelled at her, the horse gnashing at its bit as its head was jerked back. She darted into an alley, shaded and quiet. Stopping halfway down, she leaned against a wall, flicking her hands to shake away the trembling. All across her back, she could feel them come alive: the old scars. It was as though someone was trailing a fingernail across her flesh, tracing each line of pain. Images and sensations flashed through her. Fire and screams. Blood and crying. Hands dragging her into darkness. Brutal laughter. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Amaury’s voice murmured in her mind, his gnarled hand on her shoulder, smell of pumice and ink, sunlight slanting through a window, fractured by old beams. It is now, my child. Not then.

  Now. Not then.

  After a moment, her breaths evened out. Beyond the alley’s mouth, the rising sun had spilled its gold across the street. Straightening, Amelot headed out, back into the light.

  19

  The man beside him was dying. Harry could feel him shivering against him, even through the heat of the days. A rot-sweet smell came off him in waves. He guessed the man had been wounded – perhaps by one of the enemy’s poisoned bolts – and the infection had seeped into his blood, although in the dimness of the cave it was hard to be sure of much.

  Harry, shifting awkwardly against the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles, had managed to slide his fingers across the ground far enough to steal the man’s unfinished scraps of food, doled out each morning, which he’d squirrelled behind him for consumption when neither his captors, patrolling the cave at intervals, nor his fellow captives who crowded the shadows could see. Even with the extra rations, he was half starved, his hose sagging at his waist and a band of hunger tightening in his stomach.

  The man moaned. One of the turbaned men walking the cave snarled at him to be quiet. Most of them knew Castilian well enough, but they conversed among themselves in their own language. Some were tall, muscular men with brown-black skin, who exuded an aura of fierce power. Others were less dark, although swarthier than the Spaniards, turbans wrapped around their heads. A few wore armour, mostly of stiff leather. Other than their weapons, there was barely a scrap of steel among them.

  Harry leaned against the stone, shifting his head to avoid the wound on the back of his skull, mostly healed now, but still sore. He wasn’t sure what had caused the injury; only remembered falling from his saddle and coming to in a thicket of crushed corn stalks with a searing pain in his head, his palm coming back red with blood. He had struggled up, his vision blurred, to find a wall of billowing flames before him and, behind, in the distance, the last of the Spanish fleeing into the narrow defile that had led them to the plain. Leaving him behind.

  Choking on the smoke, he had staggered after them, yelling hoarsely. He’d not gone far before his feet tripped o
n something buried in the corn. Going down, sprawled among the stalks, he found himself face to face with the body of one of the infantry, eyes wide to the sky, chest spattered with blood from the bolt that had punctured his throat. There were other bodies hidden in the gold. Horses too. A few more paces brought him to Nieve, struggling feebly in a flattened circle of corn the fire had yet to reach, blood seeping across her white flanks from the quarrel that had crippled her. One brown eye watched him, snorts of pain shuddering through her body as he searched the ground around her, hunting for his sword. That was when he heard them – their voices raised above the crackle of flames.

  The Moors had come cautiously, but purposefully, picking their way through the field. He tried to run, but a warning bolt slamming down feet ahead halted him in his tracks. Armed with only his jewelled dagger, stolen from Henry’s gifts to the monarchs, he’d stood no chance. He had been disarmed roughly, one of his captors exclaiming in triumph as he found the valuable dagger, then marched from the smouldering fields, along with fifteen others taken alive from the corn.

  In the foothills, more of the enemy had been waiting with horses. It was here that Harry had first seen the tall, black-skinned men. One, who wore a studded brigandine and a belt decorated with gold fastenings that criss-crossed his broad chest, had inspected the captives. The man’s face and arms were patterned with scars and one of his ears was missing. Harry had privately dubbed him the Smiler, on account that this seemed to be the man’s only expression. He smiled when the captives and plunder were deposited before him, smiled as he walked their line, teeth startlingly white against his skin. That smile broadened when one of the men brought him the jewelled dagger, pointing at Harry as he did so. He said something, his voice rich and deep, before chuckling and stowing the dagger in his belt. The most discomforting thing about that permanent smile, Harry had learned then, was the contrast with his eyes – two black pools filled with humourless cruelty.

  Stripped of his armour and even his boots, down to his shirt and hose, Harry had been forced to mount one of the Moors’ horses, his hands bound to the pommel. The other captives were treated in similar fashion, those too wounded to sit straight in the saddle hauled over rumps, hands and feet lashed to the girth strap. There followed an excruciating two-day trek, south and east through rocky wilderness, Harry bounced painfully along, the wound in his scalp throbbing hotly, flies buzzing ceaselessly at his face until he was too exhausted to shake them off. Three men had died before they reached the cave, which opened like a dark maw in the side of a mountain.

  That had been – what? Three weeks ago? More? Harry had lost count in the chilly twilight of the cave, which they were only permitted to leave twice daily to relieve themselves, the Moors herding them out in groups of four, roped together and forced to squat side by side. It was impossible to know where he was; how far from Loja. The area outside the cave was a wide outcrop, slabbed with sand-coloured stone, which fell away into a ravine, before rising steeply up the other side, blocking any view of the landscape beyond. The outcrop was scattered with campfires, the amber glow bruising the outer walls of the cave at night. For the first few days, Harry hoped those lights might prove his salvation – that they would draw the Spanish to this place – but as the days crawled on, his hope of rescue had withered.

  One of the Moors patrolling the cave passed close by. Harry caught his gaze, but dropped his eyes quickly. The man gave a derisive chuckle and moved on. He had learned not to look at them, or speak to them or his fellow captives – learned it on his first day in the cave when he had addressed them, first in English, then Latin and broken Castilian, telling them he was England’s ambassador to Spain; a high-ranking official – a knight indeed – with a right to be treated with respect. When he refused to quiet, he’d been hauled up in the centre of the cave, into which had stridden the Smiler.

  Harry, faced with that unnerving white grin, his own dagger glinting tauntingly on the man’s belt, tried again to explain himself. But either the man did not understand or didn’t care. Still smiling, he gestured to two of his comrades who pinned Harry between them, holding him upright, while the Smiler proceeded to punch him repeatedly in the gut, stepping back for a grinning pause between each ball-fisted strike, until Harry was left curled on the cave floor like a baby, sucking desperately for air. He hadn’t spoken since.

  It was getting darker, the copper blush of the fires growing brighter in the cave mouth. The first few captives were kicked to their feet to relieve themselves before nightfall. Three of them were new, brought in two days ago, bruises still fresh. An unlucky scouting party perhaps. It was clear the Moors were gathering them up, collecting them for something, but the cave was almost full and he guessed whatever their intentions were he would find out soon. A sick feeling in the pit of his empty stomach told him he already knew the answer. Rodrigo had told him as much.

  Those they do not kill they take as slaves.

  Christian boys were taken for the Moors’ own ranks; boys still young enough to be indoctrinated, turned to their cause and their God. Trained in the palace at Granada, brought up loyal to the emir alone, they were known as Mamluks, slave warriors. The Spanish called them renegados and would slay them if they caught them, even though they’d once been their own sons, but Harry knew he was far too old to be taken for this purpose. The men, Rodrigo had said, usually disappeared across the Straits of Gibraltar. The rolling darkness of a slave galley? The suffocating depths of a silver mine? Who knew what fate awaited him.

  The captives shuffled back in from outside and now it was Harry’s turn. He clambered to his feet with the others he was bound to, but was halted by the prone man beside him, who moaned but didn’t move. The Moor shouted, then kicked at his bare foot. The man lolled against the stone. After a pause, the Moor took a dagger from his belt. Crouching, he slashed at the ropes that tethered Harry to the dying man. Calling to one of his comrades, he gestured impatiently for Harry and the other two to head out.

  The Moors were settling down for the evening. Smells of spiced meat drifted from cooking pots suspended over the fires, making Harry’s stomach groan. He and the other two made their way awkwardly across the uneven outcrop under the watchful eye of two guards, to where they did their business – a trough cut through the stone that served as a natural latrine. The place reeked. Tugging clumsily at his hose with his bound hands, Harry realised that where the Moor had severed the rope, the strands were fraying, twirling loose. As he pushed against the bonds, he felt less resistance, his wrists moving slightly apart. Hope flared inside him, bright and fierce.

  A commotion drew his attention. The man he’d been sitting next to was being dragged out of the cave, bare feet scuffing the stone. He was taken to the Smiler, who’d just sat down to his meal. The tall man rose to inspect the wounded man, flipping up an eyelid and peering at him. He shook his head and motioned to the ravine. The man struggled feebly as he was hauled to the edge, the last of the life stirring inside him. The two Spaniards beside Harry had stopped unlacing their hose and were staring, transfixed by the horror of what was about to happen. The Smiler watched, teeth gleaming, as the man was flung over the edge. His scream was followed a few seconds later by a faint, sickening thud. One of the two men who threw him was laughing at something the other said, when the arrow struck him.

  The Moor collapsed to his knees with a surprised grunt, hands clutching at the shaft that had entered his stomach. While the other was staring, bewildered, at his companion, more arrows pitched out of the shadows. Harry felt the whistling rush of one pass close to his head, before it punched into the shoulder of one of the two guards by the latrine, pitching him off his feet. Harry threw himself to the ground as more barbs followed, the two Spaniards falling down with him, one cracking his head on the rock. Harry realised the arrows were coming from across the ravine, in the shadows of the opposite hillside.

  The camp was alive with shouts, the Smiler’s voice booming above all others. The Moors scrabbled to snatch u
p crossbows, but the light of their fires made them easy targets as well as blinding them to sight of the enemy. A few, seeing this, were struggling to kick the fires out, cooking pots overturning, contents spewing into the flames, but the arrows were lancing in thick and fast, more and more men succumbing to them.

  Harry, tangled up with the two Spaniards, one of whom hadn’t moved since they fell, was struggling against his bonds. The severed end of the rope was unravelling as he worked his hands back and forth, the rough hemp chafing his skin. Hearing a gurgling close by, he twisted to see the second guard had gone down, an arrow protruding from his throat. The arrow was distinctly fletched with three brown duck feathers. Harry recognised it at once. It was one of the arrows used by Edward Woodville’s Welsh bowmen.

  Hope lent new strength to his muscles. Straining with all his might, he was able to wrench one hand free. Reaching towards the dying guard, shouting at the remaining Spaniard now struggling with his own tethers to help him – Ayuda! Rápido! – he got hold of the dying guard’s dagger.

  Those who hadn’t been picked off in the first few moments were hunkered behind rocks or had fled into the cave, where shouts of alarm and confusion echoed. Some of the Moors were shooting at the opposite hillside, the harsh click of their crossbows followed, here and there, by screams. Plumes of dust tracked the paths of men tumbling down the slope into the ravine. The Smiler, crouched against a rock, a spiked mace in his fist, was still roaring orders. Keeping low, some of his men were heading towards the path that wound away from the cave. One, caught in the thigh by an arrow, went wheeling over the edge with a shriek.