The Best Weapon

by David Pilling

  He pondered on this news, and then the following day one of the Archpriest's messenger ravens arrived with a fateful note tied to its leg.

  The birds have flown, it read, mother and child both. Follow their trail, and report where they land.

  After reading the note and burning it in the flame of a candle, The Rat settled into the single chair of his tiny bedroom and stared at the grimy wall. From the taproom below came the raucous sounds of people drinking and singing, but he shut them out.

  The Rat didn't move for a very long time, and blinked only when absolutely necessary. He was thinking.

  * * * *

  Holdfast was one of the biggest towns in the North, home to almost a thousand souls and surrounded by a deep ditch and timber walls. The north-western corner of the town was occupied by an artificial mound piled up centuries before by teams of sweating peasants. At the summit of the mound they had built Clifford's Mount.

  In a land dotted with ugly fortresses, the seat of House Clifford stood out for its sheer functionalism. The keep was an imposing pile of stone, four storeys high with square towers at the corners. A stairway was cut into the southern flank of the mound, leading down to the bailey and a jumble of outhouses, stables, guardrooms and a smithy. The bailey was surrounded by a wall of sharpened stakes, sealing it off from the rest of the town. And well it might, since the Cliffords were unpopular lords and Clifford's Mount was known locally as 'Evil Hold'.

  The Baron, Roger Clifford IV, was not always in residence, preferring to move about frequently between his various strongholds as a constant reminder of his authority, but for the past week the Mount had been playing host to its lord and his guests. The most illustrious were his daughter Eleanor, the Queen Mother, and his grand-daughter, the infant Queen Heloise. Also invited to the Mount, though 'summoned' was more accurate, were all of his neighbours and tenants who could bear arms.

  Not many had turned up or seemed likely to, which was one reason for the Baron's black mood as he stalked about his castle, inspecting the preparations for the evening banquet with a merciless eye and a savage tongue. The other reason was his daughter and grand-daughter's treatment at the hands of Archpriest Flambard, who had, according to the most recent reports, caused Eleanor to be publicly denounced as a traitor.

  From his cradle the Baron had been raised to believe that he belonged to one of the noblest families in the Winter Realm, automatically entitled to the deference of everyone save the king. To wound his family pride was to wound him to the quick, and by publicly insulting his daughter and declaring her a criminal Flambard had done just that. Even the thought of that gross fat man, no doubt chuckling over his family's discomfiture, reduced Clifford to speechless white-knuckled rage.

  The insult would not stand. He was set upon raising an army of Northerners and marching south, to pluck the Regent from his throne (the arrogance of the man, to place his swollen backside on the seat of kings!) and toss him onto a forest of spear-points.

  So far the forest had failed to materialise. The North was in chaos and too many men were concerned with staying at home to guard their own estates against thieves and marauders, while others the Baron had summoned were too busy thieving and marauding. Only those with a personal grudge against Archpriest Flambard, such as the Deyvilles, had showed any eagerness to come and pledge their service.

  He ceased stalking to and fro and leaned moodily against the battlements, watching a smith in the forge far below hammering out new horseshoes for the coming campaign. Assuming there would be one. The Baron rubbed his balding pate and brooded on numbers.

  Five hundred men. That was all he had mustered so far. Enough for a raiding expedition, but not nearly enough to march south, defeat Flambard's armies and storm Hope. The Baron had thought of hiring mercenaries, but these were thin on the ground since so many had rushed off to join the Reconquest.

  "Need more men," he grumbled to himself, "but where to get them?"

  A gong sounded deep inside the bowels of the keep. Dinner was about to be served, but could not go ahead without the Baron's presence. Muttering and scratching his noble backside, he made his way to the narrow spiral stairs that led down to the great hall.

  The hall offered rough comfort, being a draughty cave with greasy rushes on the floor and half a tree burning in the enormous hearth. Crude tapestries depicting hunt and battle scenes hung from the walls. A dozen long trestle tables were crammed with men impatiently awaiting their dinner.

  They uttered a famished cheer and drummed their fists on the tables as the Baron appeared. He waved nonchalantly and stumped over to the high table, which stood on a raised platform in front of the fire. Waiting for him there was his third wife—quiet, plump and thirty years his junior - his three hard-faced sons and his daughter.

  Space had been made at the high table for one other distinguished guest. This was Sir William Burn, formerly captain of The Queen's Own. He had escaped with Eleanor and her child while all his men were slaughtered at King's Crossing. Guilt at being the only one of his company left alive was written all over Sir William's face, and he seldom spoke.

  There is one who hates Flambard, thought the Baron as he climbed the steps of the platform and bowed to his wife before taking his seat. He raised his goblet to signal the start of the meal, and immediately the hall was full of the sound of knives plunging into meat, ale splashing into cups and men talking boisterously with their mouths full.

  The Baron glanced down the hall and nodded at the Deyville clan, a score of burly red-faced men sitting together at one of the lower tables. They raised their cups in salute.

  Useful men to have in a fight, but not enough of them...where in the name of the gods can I get more men?

  He turned to study his daughter. She was as thin as ever, the legacy of her long-dead mother, but the cold Northern air had done wonders for her complexion. The disfiguring spots had cleared up and her general air of hopeless self-pity had evaporated. Something about the narrow escape and the threat to her daughter had forced Eleanor to stop blaming others and grow up.

  Clifford smiled. Put her in a suit of chain mail and she would look just like her brothers. That was the sort of daughter he approved of.

  "You're eating well," he said, noting how she shovelled down beef stew,, "that's good. You will need all your strength when we move south."

  "If we move, father," she corrected him, her voice muffled as she chewed, "we don't have anywhere near enough men, and you know it."

  The Baron sniffed and took a sip of ale. He was glad Eleanor had found some confidence, but resented it being practised on him. "There's not much I can do. I can't force men to fight if they want to stay in the North and guard their own houses."

  "What if I rode out to encourage them, in full armour? Do you think that might embarrass them into joining us, to see a woman prepared to fight when they are not?"

  "Frankly, I think they're more likely to burst out laughing. You've been reading too many romances, my dear. It takes a great deal to embarrass Northerners, and even more to unite them."

  Eleanor looked discouraged and went back to polishing off her meal. She raised her goblet and drained the dregs in one swig. Wiping the back of her mouth, she held the goblet out and called for a servant to refill it.

  A slender man with thinning buttery yellow hair and an attitude of cringing servility crept out of the shadows. He carefully tipped a stream of fresh brown ale from the jug he carried into Eleanor's goblet.

  "Careful you don't have too much," said her father reprovingly. "It's not seemly for a woman to be drunk."

  "Balls," snorted Eleanor, taking a great gulp. The servant bowed and smiled and cringed away.

  * * * *

  It was the morning after, and The Rat was feeling immensely pleased with himself. His plan, like all the best plans, had been a simple one, and worked to perfection. The icing on his poisonous cake was that nobody suspected him of a thing.

  After all, why would they? As far as the people o
f Clifford's Mount were concerned he was just another servant. Three days ago he had successfully begged for a job in the castle kitchens, having claimed to be a farm labourer desperate to get away from the bands of armed men ravaging the surrounding countryside. That was the yarn The Rat had spun, and he could be very convincing when he needed to be.

  "What a loss to the stage I am," he murmured, studying his reflection in the polished reflection of one of his knives. He was sitting on an upturned barrel in a quiet cellar under the kitchens, where he had gone for a smoke and a think while the rest of the castle was in uproar.

  Eleanor Clifford had been found dead in her bedchamber, with her baby, Queen Heloise, lying dead on her lap. Two of the most important lives in the Winter Realm, snuffed out thanks to a pinch of red powder flicked into Eleanor's ale when The Rat served her at table the previous night.

  The poison was his creation, tasteless and slow-acting. In his own modest opinion it had been a stroke of genius to think of using it to poison Eleanor. The Rat had taken into account Queen Heloise's tender age and calculated that she was still young enough to be breast-fed by her mother. Thus the poison running through Eleanor's veins would enter her daughter's body via the nipple.

  Death by mother's teat—surely a first in the annals of murder!

  More than anything, the assassin congratulated himself on his perseverance. It had been immensely frustrating, not to mention humiliating, running about doing menial tasks in the kitchens while the cooks swore at him and kicked his backside. He hadn't been able to get close to the food and drink being prepared for the guests at high table, but if The Rat had learned anything in his varied career, it was patience.

  He sheathed the knife and took a long drag on his pipe, savouring the harsh kick of the tobacco even as the sound of hysterical screaming filtered through the thick walls. The death of Eleanor and Heloise had sent the women of the castle into a frenzy of grief, while the men had reacted with a mixture of dumb horror and explosive rage. Baron Clifford was said to be inconsolable, and was having to be kept away from sharp objects. Everyone blamed Archpriest Flambard for the murders, and everyone was right, even if The Rat had exceeded his orders.

  Follow their trail, his master had told him, and report where they land.

  A tiny pin-prick of doubt pierced The Rat's satisfaction. Flambard was a man who usually preferred his orders to be followed to the letter, and took a dim view of his servants applying creative interpretation. Furthermore, Baron Clifford had been struggling to scrape together enough men to march south against the Archpriest, but the murder of his daughter and grand-daughter might just shock many of the stay-at-homes into joining him.

  It could be that The Rat had allowed his enthusiasm to override his common sense.

  He dug out his tinder-box, struck another match and considered his immediate future. All things considered, it might be for the best if he went away for a while. A long boat journey, perhaps, to somewhere distant and foreign where the Archpriest's agents wouldn't think of looking for him.

  Yes. Definitely for the best. The sea, after all, left no tracks.

  6.

  Fulk dreamed, and in his dream the Army of the Twelfth Reconquest continued to trundle south through the Old Kingdom. From the air the long straggling column of knights, men-at-arms and camp followers looked like a massive black snake creeping across the land, wary of its surroundings and more than slightly lost.

  His dream-gaze swept through the tents of the various commanders, witnessing their bafflement and despair as they pored over centuries-old maps from previous Reconquests, none of which seemed to describe the land the army was passing through with any great accuracy.

  His spirit left the army and soared over the darkened lands to the south, miles of hills, valleys and glorious wide plains lying quiet and peaceful under the stars. The lights of isolated farms and villages passed beneath him, their occupants stubbornly refusing to abandon their homes despite the threat of an invading host of foreign devils. Many more were abandoned, and Fulk drifted over long lines of refugees moving south, their belongings packed aboard wagons and carts or simply carried on their backs.

  He realised that these people, whom he knew by the contemptuous title of 'Godless Ones', were no mean people but hardy, brave and self-sufficient. There was little sign of panic in the orderly groups of refugees as they withdrew, methodically burning their crops before they left and driving their cattle and goats before them. Come the morning, Fulk knew, he and his comrades would wake up to the sight of dozens of columns of smoke drifting over the horizon. The invaders were being left with no means to live off the land.

  Fulk's gaze swept in all directions, but he saw no sign of enemy soldiers. The warriors who had opposed them on the beach had simply vanished. Perhaps that was the extent of their resistance, and the army of the Winter Realm was now free to march unopposed all the way to the shores of the Girdle Sea, and the old fortress of Temple Rock.

  Even in his dream-state, Fulk didn't believe it. He had a vague awareness of something impeding his vision, a shadow lying on the edges of his sight and impossible to focus on. The chill that had assailed him at Mont le Daron crept back, pouring slowly over his flesh.

  Fulk gasped at the sudden touch of the cold and woke up, his eyes flickering open, hands raised in front of him as if to ward off a blow.

  The cold was gone, along with his vision. Once again he had been yanked back to reality. Back to his body, with its aches and pains from being in the saddle all day, and back to sharing a campaign tent with three other knights. While his dream-self had soared over the Old Kingdom, Fulk had felt like a god, weightless and free.

  "I'm no god," he muttered, sitting up and rubbing his head. He was using his shield as a pillow, and it left him with a dull ache in the back of his skull.

  "No, you're an annoying bastard with a voice like a trumpet," whined his neighbour, Comrade Verdun, a lean misery of a knight who suffered from insomnia, "keep your musings to yourself, some of us are trying to sleep."

  "I'm sorry, I was dreaming," Fulk tried to explain, but Verdun wasn't interested. Mumbling curses, he turned over and dragged his cloak over his head. "We're in the bloody vanguard tomorrow," he hissed, "so take my advice and get your head down. Quietly."

  Suppressing a desire to box Verdun's ears, Fulk reached inside the satchel lying next to his shield and pulled out the book that the Grand Master had given him. The small leather-bound volume was much battered and dog-eared, and even more so since it came into Fulk's possession.

  Carefully, so as not to damage the creased spine or disturb Verdun, he eased the book open. It was pitch dark in the tent, but Fulk had discovered a trick. He blinked, concentrated his thoughts for a moment, and when he opened his eyes again found that the fragile yellowing pages were lit up as if a torch shined upon them.

  They were covered in tiny crabbed handwriting that Fulk had to squint to make out. He had read over half the book so far, persevering despite its archaic language and irritating mixture of history and fable. It was an account of the Temple in its early years and the wars that had raged up and down the Winter Realm as the land disintegrated under the rule of a succession of weak kings. The Templars had fought on the side of the kings, and it was largely thanks to them that the rebel Houses had been defeated and the Founder dynasty preserved.

  They did this, if the book was to be believed, by a mixture of cunning tactics, superior armour and weaponry and the use of witches. The anonymous author of the book was much excited by witches, and frequently deviated from the dull account of history to indulge in lurid descriptions of their strange powers and obscene habits.

  'And itt was said that witches oft times appeared in the shaype of a wolf or a cockerel (Fulk read), and that they could inhabit the mindes of wild beastes, forcing them to act contrary to their nature...and during the many battles and sieges that scarred our fair lande, witches were seen to be riding the air above the clash and tumult of war, either on the backs of gr
yphons or dragons, or else perched on yarrow stalks...'

  There was much more in this vein, and Fulk couldn't resist a smile as he turned the pages. It seemed that witches could do pretty much as they pleased, conjuring deadly fireballs from nothing to burn their enemies, whipping up storms to impede them, blizzards to blind them, illusions to terrify them...all in all, the real miracle was that the war had lasted so long.

  After the fighting was over, so the book claimed, the surviving witches had been considered too dangerous, and so exterminated. Apparently the only way to be sure a witch was dead was to burn his or her body, and the Templars had taken to this task with gleeful relish. Fire was one of the War God's favourite weapons.

  The Grand Master's reason for giving Fulk the book was clear enough. Sibrand was a practical man, willing to make use of any weapon, and suspected that Fulk possessed strange powers that he could deploy against his enemies. It was a measure of the old man's desperation that he even considered the idea.

  Witchcraft died out centuries ago...and yet here I am reading a book in pitch darkness. I can conjure lights from nowhere and sense things that other men cannot. If this is not witchcraft, what is it?

  Fulk gently closed the book, placed it back in the satchel and lay back against his shield. Closing his eyes, a rare smile flickered across his lips as he tried to imagine himself riding a gryphon, or even a yarrow stalk.

  Sleep did not come easily and Fulk felt groggy and bad-tempered when his squire Tomas shook him awake. Comrade Verdun lay peacefully slumbering, so Fulk took the opportunity to boot him in the ribs. Then he hurried outside so Tomas could arm him, followed by a storm of whining curses.

  The knights of the vanguard were supposed to ride out before the rest of the army had finished breakfast. Fulk ducked through the flap of his tent to find the meadow outside busy with yawning men being chivvied and buckled into their armour by their squires, then heaved aboard reluctant war-horses. Many of the huge beasts were as tired and irritable as their masters, and had to be gently persuaded to once again endure the tiresome weight of man and steel on their broad backs.