The Eighth Court

by Mike Shevdon

  He said something under his breath and then held up the bag he had taken from the horse’s pack. He shook the package, which chinked, and though the sound surely did not carry to the craft bobbing in the current, his meaning was clear.

  “You are lying. You will steal my boat and slit my throat, if you can,” she said.

  He shook his head and climbed carefully down the bank to the water’s edge where the brown water sucked at the bank.

  “Your voice betrays you,” she said.

  He searched the bank, then, looking for something but not finding it. After a moment, he called out, again.

  “There is no tether, Guillaume, nor any needed. This boat finds its way in any flood.”

  His expression was bemused. He called a question to her.

  “You already know that, son of Herleva. Why are you here, then?”

  He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder.

  “First we bargain, Guillaume, and then we will see,” she said.

  There was a drumming over the persistent pattering of the rain; hoof-beats splashing through the wet. His expression changed at the sound of hooves, and his entreaties became more persistent, though he lowered his voice so he would not be overheard.

  “What will you give me in exchange, Guillaume? What will you offer me in return for escape from your pursuers?” Her voice was quiet, but it carried across the water.

  You had to admire the man. It took nerve to stand on the bank with the horsemen riding up and down the river looking for him while the bargaining went back and forth. At one point there was a cheer as they found the loose horse, but he never looked back. His attention was focused on the woman. Everything else, even the rain, might as well not have existed.

  “We are agreed then,” she said. “I will take you to the far shore, and you will grant me a single boon when I come before you and petition in person, be it within your power?”

  A jingle of harness behind us sealed the deal and the boat dived to shore. Guillaume tried to step into the shallows and sank up to his thigh in the deep water where the shore was cut away by the current. He was nearly swept away, but the craft was alongside, and she held it firm while he scrambled over the gunnel and tumbled in. Immediately the bow turned out into the current and it bobbed into the flow, the light dancing at the prow. A shout went up and horses pounded over, spilling men with spears. Guillaume was briefly visible, lying in the bow while the hooded Kimlesh stood in the stern as they faded into the rain.

  The men peered into the dark, one casting a spear out across the water, which fell short and slipped into the flow and was not seen again. The men swore among themselves, but none tried to enter the stream after the young man. They gathered up their horses and rode away in a mass, downstream, heading for the bridge that Kimlesh had mentioned.

  “Is he dead?” said a voice.

  “You don’t see living people that colour,” said another.

  “What’s that on his face?” said the first voice.

  “It’s where the gate hit him. You see the pattern from the ironwork?”

  I tried to move. I felt numb, as if my whole body had pins and needles. My body was twitching with the effort.

  “He’s moving!” said the voice.

  My body continued to twitch and jerk. “Nnnnnnngggh,” I groaned, trying to get my tongue to obey me.

  “He’s alive,” said the second voice. “Call an ambulance! Get some help!”

  People were shuffling around me. Across my vision, blobs of luminous colour slid past. It was like being inside a lava lamp. The light intensified and my eyes jerked open. “T-t-t-t-t….” My teeth were chattering, though I had no sensation of cold.

  I could hear people moving, but I couldn’t focus. I could see vague shapes swimming in and out of my field of vision; the light burned into the back of my brain, but now my eyes were open I couldn’t close them. Someone was using a mobile phone, calling an ambulance.

  “He’s lying on the floor,” he said, and then after a pause, “No, not as far as I can see.”

  It felt like my arms and legs were quivering as sensation returned. I managed to twitch my arm over my eyes in a rag-doll spasm, shielding them from the intense light.

  “Are you all right?” said the second voice.

  I swallowed, and managed to roll over onto my side. As soon as I did, I puked noisily onto the pavement, my stomach cramping and my knees jerking upwards with the effort of chucking everything up. It was some minutes before I could hear anything other than the sound of my own retching.

  “Here, I have a tissue somewhere,” said the voice.

  A middle-aged lady squatted down beside me and fished into her handbag, pulling out a small pack of tissues. “Can you breathe now?”

  I nodded, accepting the tissue and wiping my mouth. It was coming back to me now. I’d been next to the gates. The van had driven straight through them, flinging the gates into me and knocking me flying. Raffmir had been the passenger in the van.

  “Give me a hand,” I asked hoarsely.

  “I think you should wait,” said the lady. “There’s an ambulance on its way. They won’t be long.”

  “I have to get after them,” I said.

  “Who? The van? They’re long gone – nothing you can do about it. Just you rest there.”

  I pushed myself up onto my elbow. Now that sensation was returning I could feel the bruising down my face, chest, arms, thighs… I was going to be a patchwork of black and blue.

  “Get me up,” I said to the lady.

  “I don’t think you’re in any position to–” said the lady.

  “I said, get me up,” I growled. Something in my tone must have overridden her concern because she offered her hand and I half-crawled and half-staggered to my feet.

  “Have to think…” I said, mostly to myself.

  “You’re in shock,” she said. “It takes some people like this. You need to sit down and have a nice cup of tea.”

  “A cup of tea… not what I need right now,” I said. “Which way did the van go?” I looked up and down the street. She was right. They were in a vehicle, with the safe. I was on foot, and I had no idea where they were going.

  In my head I could hear a voice echoing hers. You are in shock. You don’t know what you’re doing.

  I knew one thing, though. I couldn’t afford to be around when the ambulance arrived. I staggered away from her, into the street. A taxi swept by, horn blaring. I had a brief impression of the face in the cab, a fist raised.

  “Where are you going?” the woman called after me.

  I lurched into an unsteady jog, weaving towards the big stone church across the paving. Veering around, I could see I was leaving a line of red spots on the pale paving. I was bleeding from somewhere – I held out my arms to see where it was coming from, whirling around wildly, leaving a trail of bloodspots. It was like they were following me around. I wrapped my glamour around me in a vague attempt to disguise my path, knowing that the trail of blood-spots would give me away regardless. I wanted to turn people away, to get them to ignore me, but I was incapable of such subtlety. Instead I slammed together a ward of Leave me alone! and hoped for the best. Crashing open the doors into the church, I collided with an old man in the entrance porch. I barged him aside, taking the steps down to the crypt in ones and twos. I could hear the commotion behind me.

  The crypt of the church of St Clement’s Dane is not a great place to hide, but there is a Way-node there. That much I remembered. I stumbled onto it, feeling it rise up under me, and it swept me away from the sounds of pursuit and unwelcome attention. The Ways welcomed me, lifting me and carrying me across the void, my direction unknown, without focus or purpose. I found myself drifting, hanging in the blackness with the sounds of lost souls echoing around me. I wavered in and out of consciousness, without sense of direction

  “Something I have to do…” I heard a voice say, then recognised it as my own. I watched my out-flung hand; blue fox-fire was dancing from my fing
ertips. “…have to focus.”

  Groaning with effort, I pulled myself through the emptiness, searching for a way out. Shadows drifted near me, edging away into the blackness as soon as I faced them. Suddenly space and gravity returned and I found myself falling forwards in complete darkness onto a hard stone floor. I remember the cool of the hard paving, the rough texture under my cheek, just before I passed out.

  The square was large and open, dominated by the huge church at one end. It looked like a medieval pageant, except that the horses, the coaches and the people standing around watching were beyond what anyone would wear outside of a film set. The buildings gave the lie to that, though. These were half-timbered, but clean, with bleached wood beams and whitewashed plaster. The bells in the campanile were tolling and calling the faithful to prayer, but those answering the call weren’t just any faithful. It was a procession, the wealthy of the city gathering to make their peace with God. People were held back by ranks of men, while those in open-topped coaches and on horseback progressed slowly past. I looked around, finding the architecture uncharacteristically grand and flamboyant, at odds with my impression of the time.

  At that moment I heard horsemen coming into the square – not the gentle walk of horses but an urgent clatter of hard-shod hooves on the cobbles. There was a change of mood in the crowd, a murmur that grew into alarm as the crowd scattered before mounted men. They pushed into the square – between fifty and a hundred hard men with lined faces and grizzled beards, their mouths set hard and eyes narrowed. Their weapons were undrawn, shields slung from saddles and swords sheathed, but the impression that this could suddenly change and turn into a massacre was in the forefront of my mind. Is that what I was here to witness? A slaughter?

  The arrogance of the wealthy came to the fore as they turned to see these interlopers, watching them as one might watch a spectacle or a sporting event. Footmen moved in to seal the gap between the horsemen and their patrons. They had spears raised in defiance and their ranks were well-disciplined, but they might as well have stood before a tidal wave. The horsemen rode easily through them, the screams of the fallen echoing in the square, as spears were swept aside by swords that were suddenly bared, and axes hefted in battle-scarred hands. The footmen were not prepared for a mounted assault and either stood aside or were run down by the horses. Anguished cries came from the men, as unease spread through the wealthy. Suddenly their assurance was undermined, but they had nowhere to go.

  The mounted men pushed into the open square in loose formation, their horses disciplined, their movements ordered. They halted twenty feet from the procession, their horses champing, shaking their heads, excited at the prospect of action. They edged into a long row facing the nobles, and halted. Questions were called from the coaches, but the line of horsemen remained tight; the silence of grim-faced men only broken by the whinny of the horses or the cries of the trampled footmen as they were carried away behind them. The crowd was silent, expectant and waiting. No one knew what would happen. They only knew they would be witnesses.

  Behind the line of horsemen, a man dismounted. He was big, broad-shouldered, his face hard and his muscles lean. He carried no sword or axe, but without a word the silent horsemen parted before him, edging sideways as if his mere presence were enough to move them. He walked through the line of men and across the space between the procession and the line of horsemen.

  As he approached, a footman leapt down from a carriage to protect his charges, and then stopped. The big man looked at the servant and then looked back at the line of horsemen. Along the line were several mounted archers. Bows ready, arrows nocked, they stood ready to draw, eyes focused on the footman. The big man met his stare and he looked back to his coach for guidance. I could see it cross the servant’s face: this wasn’t bravery, this was stupidity.

  The big man walked past him, nodding an acknowledgement of the bravery of a lone man prepared to stand against the line of mounted men. He swept his long hair back from his face in an unconscious gesture, plaiting it into a loose braid, and it was then that I recognised him. He’d grown since the incident at the river, putting on weight that wasn’t all muscle. He had stature that had been absent when he was being pursued, that came from more than the line of men behind him. This man was used to command, used to being at the centre of events. Townsmen and visitors, noblemen and women, servants and soldiers – they all watched him.

  He walked along the row until he reached a young woman in a line of wealthy men. She was no more than a girl, and sat side-saddle on a beautiful grey horse, immaculately groomed and dressed with ribbons in its mane. She faced forward, and looked at the church across the square, not down at the man now standing beside her. The wealthy men around her moved restlessly, trying to decide what to do, but she ignored the man looking up at her completely.

  He spoke to her. His voice was heard clearly across the square, but the words were alien to me. Her eyes didn’t waver. He spoke again, and this time he caught hold of the reins of her horse. She wrapped her hands in the reins and tried pull them from him, but he tugged them hard and she was wrenched from her saddle and pitched at his feet, skirts and petticoats trailing over the saddle as she slid to the ground. The fall was hard and she landed awkwardly, but she neither cried out, nor begged for assistance. She stood slowly, gathering her dress, brushing at smeared marks on her elbows and arms, and pulling her dignity together. She turned and faced the man, who watched her with apparent amusement. She drew back her arm and slapped him hard across the face.

  There was utter silence. Neither the mounted men, nor the merchants moved.

  He said something quietly to her that I did not hear. She replied in cold tones. The big man regarded her for a long moment. Then he drew a knife from his belt. One of the men behind her went to draw his sword and found himself the focus of the mounted archers. He took his hand away from the pommel very slowly.

  The big man reached in and slipped the knife under the girth of the saddle, severing it in one smooth cut. He stepped in and pitched the saddle from the horse, dumping it behind her mount and making the horses behind hers dance back restlessly. Her horse stepped sideways and then recovered, standing shivering beside her. He regarded the girl, but she neither flinched nor gave way. He looked up at the merchants behind her, but not one would meet his gaze.

  He stepped back, and gave a courtly bow quite at odds with his demeanour. With that he strode back through the lines and found his own mount, swinging easily up into the saddle. He surveyed the procession and the square for a moment as if he were committing it to memory, and then turned his mount and rode out of the square. The line of men followed, until the clatter of their passing faded from the square. Everyone waited until the last of them had gone and then let out the breath they’d been holding.

  The girl, who had been left standing beside her unsaddled horse, was suddenly assailed by offers of carriages and assistance. She ignored all of them and, leaving the saddle where it had fallen, took the reins of her horse and walked with it along the line of the procession to the very front, passed the reins to a waiting footman, and with the all the grace she could muster, entered the church.

  THREE

  I came to on a cold stone floor. My cheek felt like it had been sandpapered. I tracked back through my memories, setting aside the dreams of stranger encounters, and tried to figure out what floor I was lying on. It was dark and cold, but not damp. Swallowing as I licked my dry lips, I winced in pain as I lifted my hand to my face, feeling the crusty trails of dried blood. I probed it with my fingers. Dry was a good sign: at least I’d stopped bleeding.

  I pushed myself up from the hard stone, listening in the darkness for any signs of habitation around me. It was mercifully quiet. Tentatively I reached inside myself and let my power spill out, illuminating what turned out to be a small cellar with a shifting milky light. Rolling into a position where I could prop myself up on an elbow I swallowed several times before trying to sit. I sat like that, hands on knees
, while I gathered my thoughts and figured out what to do next.

  Exiting via St Clement’s Dane with a posse of do-gooders in pursuit hadn’t been too clever. In my confused state I’d just staggered in there and thrown myself down the Ways. I was lucky I hadn’t become lost there. I might never have found a way out.

  My fingers traced a pattern of wheals and blisters on my face where the iron gates had hit me. No wonder I’d been disorientated. Being hit by half a ton of swinging iron, I was probably lucky to be alive. It’d happened so quickly. I explored the rest of my body gingerly, finding no breaks, but numerous bruises. The worst of it was the oblique cut across my forehead which still felt sticky when I probed it. At least the feeling of dislocation and nausea had passed. Standing slowly, using a broken and seatless chair-frame for support, I had a moment of dizziness, but nothing like the swimming vertigo from before. I took that as a positive sign.

  I was going to be in deep trouble. Part of being a Warder was maintaining a low profile, which I had singularly failed to do. The other part was getting the job done. I didn’t even want to think about that. I couldn’t go back empty-handed. The safe in Claire’s office was long gone. It wasn’t my fault, but it would look like it. Perhaps that was the intention. It was not beyond Raffmir to achieve the twin aims of stealing the means to maintain the barrier and discredit me in the process.

  Get the job done. That was in the job description.

  At least I should find out what happened to Claire.

  I let the milky light fade and then stepped gently onto the Way-node, letting it carry me and ignoring its usually exuberant ride, sliding over nodes to loop back on myself and turn back into London without passing back through St Clement’s Dane. I’d caused enough excitement there for one day.

  The journey left me aching, but brought me out in one of the smaller parks, into the gathering dark – the day had slipped past without me. I shifted my glamour to conceal my blood-stained clothes and the cut on my forehead and hailed a taxi, keeping to myself, sitting huddled in the back while we navigated the streets of West London. We cruised to a halt in front of a row of townhouses converted into flats on a side street and I paid the cab-driver, watching him rumble away as I stood beside the road, suddenly chilled by the freezing wind.