by Gwynn White
Darrin started laughing, a terrible sound. “He’s forgotten the bloody milking stool. I’m more the farm boy than he is.”
He went to help Floyd milk the cows.
Pod mooched after them.
Leonie wouldn’t have known which end of the cow to pull on if she had an instruction manual. She put on a spare waterproof and went to hang around the constables who were searching the byre, and so she witnessed the discovery of the IRA’s arms dump, concealed in a hide under the floorboards, under what had been a solid mountain of hay bales taking up half the byre.
Initial elation gave way to scrunched-up faces and terse radio convos as the extent of the find became clear. Wooden crates and alloy boxes held German military issue bolt-action rifles, and Myxilites, the terrorist’s tool of choice for spray jobs. There were twenty state-of-the-art Z4 assault rifles manufactured by the Bismarck Corporation, also of Germany. The butts and barrels of the Z4s were packed separately in receptacles within the transit chests. Factory fresh. The smell of oily wood and grease filled the byre.
The ROCK rolled up and took over, rocketing the pointyheads for not checking carefully enough for booby traps. They opened boxes of ammo, hand grenades, and plastic explosive, complete with det fuses and 500-yard reels of det cord.
Leonie left them to it and started up the hill behind the farmyard. It was light now, more or less.
Two ROCK knights fell in on either side of her. One of them was the knight who’d tried and failed to save Prince Harry with her. She’d heard his mates calling him Yates-Briggs. He said to her, “Might be some of them up there still.”
They found Gav just inside the wood, lying in the hedge. He’d taken a round in the neck. His normal expression had been written over with the astonishment of death.
“Oh, fuck it, fuck it,” Leonie said. “Why’d I let him go? Why didn’t anyone save him? He was worth a thousand of your tourney champions.” She glared at the ROCK knights. They all looked the same to her, tanned and cruel, their hair scragged back with thick elastics in the crimson, black, and cobalt of the Crown. They were all the same inside, too, highborn living saints, their hearts no warmer than if they’d been plastinated alive.
“Great Britain’s loss this night is greater than yours,” Yates-Briggs said. He stooped and closed Gav’s eyes. “I’ll overlook your treasonous outburst.”
“What if that’s the way I really feel?”
They shrugged.
“I’m a Wessex bondswoman! I gave HM my fealty, and he’s given me nothing back but dead mates!”
“Same here, darling.”
5
Ran
Three Days Later. September 17th, 1979. Galway Castle
This had been the worst weekend of Randolph Sauvage’s life.
Clutching the swan-crested helm that his brothers Piers and Guy had each worn when they were his age, he queued up for the chapel after the melee event. The other boys were noisily comparing injuries. Their colorful hauberks and surcoats were an undifferentiated shade of mud.
“Better luck next time,” Adair Stuart said.
“This weather is so bogus,” Cyril Suffolk said, sympathetically.
As if Ran had fallen because it was raining.
And Guy had blamed Princess.
But Ran knew it wasn’t his pony’s fault that he’d been knocked off her back, and out of the melee, scoreless, two minutes after the trumpet.
Piers is going to be so disappointed.
Piers—Ran’s eldest brother—was away at court at the moment, attending Prince Harry’s funeral, and Ran had been praying like anything that he would have a trophy to show him when he got back. Piers had spent quite a lot of time this past summer giving Ran pre-season coaching. As a result, Ran’s record had improved from awful to merely spotty. His ranking in the Pages’ League had improved to No.65, a personal best.
And now it had all slipped away again.
And the Galway Tourney was the last tournament of the season. He wouldn’t have another chance to repair his standing until next spring, when he would be ten.
Why had he performed so badly? Because he had been scared. Scared of getting hurt.
He was a coward.
Tears stung his rain-chilled eyelids.
The queue of boys shuffled aside to let a stretcher crew splash past, carrying a little kid with his eyes closed in his pale, muddy face. The kid looked dead, but he couldn’t be, if they were taking him to the chapel.
Ran made the sign of the chain and looked around the bailey, wondering if he could slip away.
The doors of the chapel yawned closer. House Argent’s saints waited within. Once inside, the boys would be asked about their injuries and shoved left and right by a busy hospitaller. Amid the smell of incense and the rustle of whispers, they would jostle on their knees at the feretory rails, praying to get healed before the next contingent of sprains and broken arms crowded them out of the way. The worst-injured boys would go all limp and woozy, and the hospitallers would guide them away to sleep it off. Those who had only bruises and scrapes would stagger to their feet, their grazes already scabbing over, their pain fading into what Ran had heard described as a nice tingly sort of feeling.
He was pretty good at faking it, apparently. But he just couldn’t muster the will to pretend to get healed right now.
It was hard enough pretending that he didn’t mind having lost.
On the far side of the bailey hunched the keep of Galway Castle, the seat of House Argent, a granite cube with a squinting medieval look. Black flags dripped atop the battlements. Black, like the pavilions at the tilt field. Black, like the armbands everyone was wearing. No banners flapped around the bailey, there were no gaudy arms of newly-knighted contenders to laugh at; even Ran’s own family had put their varlets, grooms, and squires into black. Black, black everywhere, because Crown Prince Harry had died.
Harry had been Ran’s cousin on his father’s side. He knew he ought to feel sad, but the truth was he’d only met Harry once or twice, because his mother did not get along with the king, Harry’s father. Guy and Piers, being closer to Harry’s age, had known him better. That was why Piers had gone to London as soon as they got the news.
Even the sky seemed to be in mourning. Puddles covered the cobblestones of the bailey, mingled with melting horse manure and petrol slicks.
Yet the windows of the keep shone cheerfully, combating the dullness of the afternoon.
A faint roar carried from beyond the walls, punctuated by a burst of pre-recorded drums and trumpets. The less-injured boys danced in anguish, desperate to get back to the field and see the melee of champions.
Gilbert Hampshire said to Ran, “I’ve put a fiver on your brother! I bet he comes up against Vile Miles in the heat of the battle and cleaves his thick head in twain, helm and all!”
Ran managed a smile. “Yes, Guy’s really on form, isn’t he?”
A horse plunged into the bailey, ridden by a squire, with a knight in armor slumped across the saddlebow. The casualty’s helm identified him as a Lion, a Wessex knight.
While everyone gawped, Ran edged away. At the same time, a flock of umbrellas issued from the keep, and a photographer darted out and started snapping the wounded knight. Ran dodged around them, into the great hall.
Despite the last-minute exodus, a lot of grown-ups still stood around the hearth, yakking and pouring drinks down their necks. Ran longed to creep close to the fire and dry off, but he would be noticed. He was limping. They would notice that, and wonder why he hadn’t visited the saints.
They might guess his secret.
The smell of cooking made Ran ravenously hungry. Long tables and benches occupied most of the hall but there was no food in sight yet. He sidled over to the wet bar and swiped some hors d’oeuvres. The varlet in charge of the bar glared, but was too busy mixing drinks to stop him.
With his loot stashed in his swan helm, Ran limped up the stairs. Lady Argent was his mother’s younger sister, so he’d been t
o Galway Castle often enough to know where there was likely to be a fire.
The lord’s solar was a mostly empty, comfortless room. But embers glowed in the hearth. The walls were hung with fuzzy polyester drapes in the Argent colors of pale blue and silver. In one corner near the fire, a stuffed basilisk reared on a pedestal, wearing someone’s straw hat left over from summer. Ran crept behind the pedestal and arranged the drapes into a nest. He was getting a lot of mud on them, but to judge by the dust billowing from their folds, no one would notice for a while.
Now that he was safely alone, he took stock of his injuries. The graze on his elbow had bled through his tunic. His knee seemed to have got hurt again: it was all bulgy and tender. And it felt as if someone had stuck a fork into his right shoulder—his sword shoulder. When he experimentally rotated his arm backwards, he gasped, tears of pain spilling out.
Alone with his shame, he let himself cry quietly. At this rate he’d be crippled before he was old enough to qualify for the Squires’ League. He wouldn’t mind, if he could just win one event now—but he always had to be careful not to get hurt too badly to fake a healing afterwards, and so he always ended up going on the defensive in his bouts and tilts. And so he always lost.
The only thing that could relieve his aches and pains was a special sort of remedy his mother got for him through her corporate connections. He’d looked for his nurse earlier, hoping to get a dose from her, but he hadn’t been able to find her. And although the Argents probably kept some special remedies in stock for emergencies, Ran couldn’t ask them. His incurability was a deadly secret. House Sauvage could never let it be known that the second-in-line to the earldom of Dublin and the protectorate of Ireland was sick.
He heard his sobs getting louder. Sick. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, blew his nose on the drapes. Incurable.
He stuffed a croustade into his mouth. Spraying crumbs, he remembered that he had a book in the inside pocket of his tunic. He’d brought it to read during the long waits in the armory. It was Volume I of The Chronicles of the Worldcracker, his favorite book ever. The Chronicles told the history of the magical sword Worldcracker and the exploits of all the true kings who had wielded it in Britain’s defense, from the ninth century through the Second World War. Ran wished he lived in olden times. It must have been so exciting when magicians were heroes, and kings were true, and there were vampires and fey to smite, and dragons flew in battle! Now dragons only flew in tourney, and the Worldcracker itself was lost.
Ran wished someone would find Worldcracker and make those days live again. But his mother said no one ever would find it, because Ran’s paternal grandfather had dropped it down a drain in Moscow, and that was that.
Eating hors d’oeuvres as he read, Ran strained to see by the fire’s glow. Presently he grew sleepy.
“We’re neglecting our duty as hosts.”
“God, Mother. Don’t flap.”
“Ghouls.”
Squeak, squeak of wheels.
Woken by the voices, Ran peeked around the basilisk.
A woman was pushing a wheelchair up to the hearth. In it reposed the shapeless, fur-swaddled lump that was Lord Argent. The shadow of his nose and lips gibbered on the wall. “Not too close, you stupid cow. That’s it. Ghouls. Is it all that yakking that makes them so thirsty? I’ve got a thirst from listening to them. Give me a drink.”
Although Lord Argent was Ran’s uncle by marriage, Ran was scared of him. Lord Argent’s arms and legs had been blown off when he was young, in Spain, when the British went to help the Spanish fight their civil war. Even the very best saints could not make limbs grow back. At meals, a varlet had to feed Lord Argent as if he were a baby.
A man dumped some wood on the fire. Sparks flared, illuminating the lean, bushy-moustached face of Sir Cyril, the Argent heir. A floor lamp went on, and Ran cringed further back into his hiding place. He wasn’t supposed to be up here! What if they caught him?
The whole Argent family had escaped up here from their guests. They freshened their drinks and settled into the mismatched chairs and couches around the hearth. The youngest Argent brother, Colin, perched on the holder of split logs in the grate. Colin was a great friend of Guy’s. He worked in television and had spent the whole tourney rushing around in a waterproof hat, sorting generators and trying to get people ‘into the frame.’
“Bloody croaking ghouls,” Lord Argent said. “You’d think the end was nigh, and they had only one night left to get royally pissed. On my booze.”
“You must have saved a few pence on the banquet, anyway, Father,” said Sir Clive, the middle Argent brother. “The venison tasted like socks.”
“Never attribute to stupidity what can be explained by stinginess, Clive,” said Lady Dierdre, the wife of Sir Cyril. Dierdre was widely said to be beautiful. She had fair hair, and big blue eyes, and a lovely lilting Irish voice, but the things she said with it were often not very nice.
“Don’t do this by choice,” Lord Argent told the fire. “Duty. Expectations. Time-honored tradition dating from the days when we had a lot more dosh. But no help for it. My drink!” Lady Irene, Clive’s wife, held a tumbler close to his face. He sucked on a straw. “At the very least I expect a return on my bloody investment. Jollity. Gaiety. Good cheer and chivalrous fellowship. Is that too much to ask? Never seen so many knights and ladies moping like children!”
Ran flushed. Had Lord Argent seen him moping after his losses? He’d tried so hard not to mope, but to put a brave face on it, as a Sauvage must.
“Our one chance to show hospitality on the noble scale.” The voice of Lady Argent, Ran’s aunt Sophia, came from the other end of the room, where they seemed to have forgotten to put any furniture. “Only one weekend a year. And this has to happen!”
She made it sound as if Crown Prince Harry had died on purpose to spoil the Galway Tourney.
“What’s the point, with the royal family not here? What is the point?”
“Don’t be a bloody mope,” Lord Argent roared.
“Honestly, Mother!” They all turned on her. Aunt Sophia clutched her blonde head and moaned. Ran felt sorry for her, but not very sorry. He couldn’t imagine why she’d married into House Argent, since Lord Argent was so horrid, as well as Irish, and poor … but then again, Aunt Sophia wasn’t very nice herself.
Sir Cyril mumbled into his moustache. He always mumbled. “Something um argh sabotage.”
“Oh, bollocks, darling,” said his wife, Dierdre. “Is that what they’re saying? Sabotage by whom?”
“Argh umbledy Day.”
“Lord Day? Lord Day? To put poor little Michael closer to the throne, I suppose?” Dierdre laughed. “Darling, Oswald Day may be lowborn, but he’s incapable of doing anything that obvious.”
“Wasn’t um er shot down.”
“Of course the helicopter wasn’t shot down,” exclaimed Colin Argent. The firelight flashed on his glasses. “The IRA doesn’t have that kind of firepower. Surface-to-air missiles are on the wish list, of course, but our friends in Germany are a little too prudent to comply!”
“Well, you could take down a chopper with a machine-gun,” came a familiar voice from the chair next to Colin, whose occupant was concealed from Ran by its wings. Ran’s heart leapt. Guy! It was Guy! Had he splatted? He sounded grumpy. “Even with a rifle. Theoretically.”
“Theoretically,” Colin agreed. “And what about the other hundred and one ways a helicopter could crash? Theoretically? Of course the know-it-alls in London are blaming the IRA. They always do.”
Lord Argent said to Colin, “Whisht, you four-eyed poofter. Don’t know why you bothered to show up for the tourney. Not as if you’ve ever biffed a man in your life.”
“Yes,” Clive said. “Bugger off back to Belfast. You’re the star reporter, aren’t you? Surprised they could spare you.”
“Oh, the hell with the lot of you,” Colin said. “Guy, I believe my crew came prepared with a case of bubbly for the last night. Shall we descend on them?”
Before Guy could answer, Dierdre said, “Well, what about it, Cousin Guy? You must have the inside scoop.”
The room hushed, so that Ran could hear the fire crackling, and music from downstairs.
Guy got up and crossed to the sideboard. “I’m afraid Piers is still in London. We may know more when he gets back.”
“And I know when I’m being snubbed.” Dierdre’s laughter had sharp edges, like her cheekbones.
Guy splashed whiskey into his glass. He did not look like a Sauvage. He was stocky, broad-shouldered and dark, his black hair slicked back into a fancy champion’s knot that he had earned the right to wear by winning The Arches last year. Ran glimpsed the right sleeve of his dinner jacket. In addition to the black armband for Harry, Guy now wore a silver triumph band with a pale blue emblem of a horseman rearing. So the Overwhelm had won the melee! Even in his fright, Ran felt a surge of joy.
“I love House Wessex no more than anyone in this room,” Guy said, scowling from under his heavy eyebrows. “But we owe them something at this time, if only the presumption that they’re telling the truth. Maybe the helicopter really did crash.”
A knock came at the door. A servant put her black-ribanded head in. “Telephone for Sir Guy,” she yelled down the room. “Oh, and m’lord? Steward wants to know, should he open another cask of Kilbeggan?”
Lord Argent roared in the negative. With an apologetic nod to Colin, Guy went out. Ran wanted to run after him, but dared not move.
Colin turned to face his family. “He hasn’t said a word to me, either, so don’t bother asking.”
“Wasn’t going to,” said Cyril, unusually distinctly.
Colin pulled a face. “Actually, I think—”
“No one cares what you think,” said Clive. “So why not just sod off and get sloshed with your friends from television? That’s what you were planning to do, wasn’t it? Oh, sorry: of course, the scheme loses its appeal without Cousin Guy’s scintillating company.”
