Chivalry

by Gavin G. Smith

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  “You put me on my back today, even now that is not so easy. I think you’ve earned the right to call me Philippe, at least in private, and if I may presume I will call you Thornto.”

  “Of course my... Philippe,” Thornto stuttered.

  “Sit down,” Lord Duranton said and slid the bottle across the table towards him. Thornto did as he was bid and took a swig from the bottle and almost choked. He had expected wine and found brandy. He couldn’t help but notice that the overly-familiar chirurgeon was smirking again. “I have named Imelda the Queen-of-Love-and-Beauty many times, even when it was politic not to do so. In the end she begged me not to do it any more, she said that at her age it was becoming embarrassing.” He laughed. “I suspect you saved her that embarrassment again today.”

  Again Thornto wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say here.

  “Your woman is beautiful?” the earl asked.

  “Why, yes,” Thornto managed.

  “Would it shock you if I told you that I named Imelda the Queen-of-Love-and-Beauty over many more attractive girls, some of whom were from better families.”

  “Not if you truly loved her,” Thornto told him and then turned to look at the chirurgeon who was sniggering. Then he heard giggling from the back of the tent. Thornto squinted and noticed a tall, wiry looking man in a fool’s motley, his face painted, though if anything he looked more sinister than foolish. An unstrung longbow lay against the canvas of the tent near to the fool. He wore a number of identical daggers around his waist.

  “My fool, Faecal,” Lord Duranton told him. The Earl sounded almost proud.

  Thornto nodded and tried to smile. He understood the license of fools but he did not like those of a lower station laughing at him.

  “An equal,” the earl told him.

  “My... I’m sorry?”

  “That’s why I crowned Imelda the tourney queen over other more beautiful and better connected women. The Arch Hierophant would not be pleased to hear me say this, but all men need a women who is their equal if they are to succeed, not just a pretty face with a large dowry.”

  Again Thornto was at a loss for words.

  “I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?”

  “N-no...” Thornto started.

  “Please, if we are to be friends there must be honesty.”

  Thornto just nodded.

  The earl leaned back in his chair.

  “Faecal,” he said.

  The fool came forwards into the light and threw a sizeable leather pouch down on the table. It landed with an audible chink.

  “I cannot give you my horse in forfeit for your victory, and I will not give you my good tourney armour, unless you insist...”

  “No my lord, of course not!” Thornto told him.

  The Earl pointed at the pouch.

  “That’s two hundred silver sovereigns.”

  As the earl said this Thornto heard Faecal giggle and caught the seedy looking chirurgeon shaking his head.

  “My lord that’s too much...!” Thornto protested.

  The earl held his hands up.

  “My horse, Thunder, the one I killed today. What kind of horse was he?”

  Thornto frowned. It was a strange question to ask him. If he didn’t know the answer then he had no business riding in a tourney.

  “A destrier, my l...” He managed to stop himself just in time.

  “He was a tourney horse. He was fast and strong but lacked endurance. He had the nerves for this mummer play,” the earl said, gesturing around, “but not a battle as it’s fought today.” He looked Thornto straight in the eyes. “What kind of horse are you?”

  His father may have been the head of the family but he was not a belted earl with the ear of a prince. It was only when Thornto came to think back on the moment that he saw the broken expression on his father’s face after the earl and Prince Sieber had spoken to him. At the time Thornto had been too elated at being given permission to join the Red Earl’s famous Crimson Companies.

  Two:

  The Breach

  When the alchemical black powder exploded, sending lumps of stone flying and filling the air with choking dust, Sir Thornto did not soil himself but it was a close run thing. He could just about make out the rubble-strewn hole in the wall around the Harlanian city of Maranges. There was no cheering from the men. Instead, looking around, the best expression he saw on their haggard faces was grim resolution. Most of them, despite being members of the feared Crimson Companies, looked terrified. Judging by the smell others hadn’t been so successful in controlling their urge to defecate.

  Thornto felt eyes on him. He turned to find Sergeant Thomas Black staring at him. The other men called Black ‘Rust Mouth’. He had capped his rotting teeth with iron, which had subsequently rusted. Nobody was quite sure why he hadn’t died of tetanus. Had Thornto been at home he would have had Rust Mouth beaten for his insolence, but he was still finding his way with the men. They were not quite the salt of the earth he had expected. He assumed their surliness, their casual profanity, and their lack of respect was merely the result of a very long campaign.

  “Sir?” Rust Mouth asked. There were a few grunts of humourless laughter from some of the older men. “Perhaps whilst there’s still dust in the air?”

  “What?” Thornto demanded, angry at being questioned. Then he remembered himself. “Oh yes. Give the order to advance.”

  “Right, you pox ridden scum, get ready to die! Tonight we eat with old Forky hisself! Forward!” Rust Mouth screamed. Thornto was not sure about the inspirational qualities of Rust Mouth’s speech but the men started to shuffle forward, and then, with more encouragement from the boots and cudgels of their sergeants, to march in loose formation towards the breach. Thornto felt reluctant himself, he wasn’t sure why. He had faced death before: on the Tourney field, in the melee, he knew war was different but it couldn’t be that different. He felt himself pushed from behind. He glanced behind him but he couldn’t see which man had done it. He would find out later and have the man punished. This wasn’t right. He should be on a horse. Marching in full harness was hard. He caught up with Rust Mouth.

  “Tighten up the formation, sergeant,” Thornto told him. Rust Mouth ignored him. “Sergeant!”

  “I fuckin’ heard you the first time!” Rust Mouth snapped at him. “Leave well enough alone.” Thornto stumbled whilst staring at the man.

  “I’ll have the skin stripped from your...”

  “You want to live?” Rust Mouth demanded just loud enough for Thornto to hear. “Looking at where we’re going rather than my pretty face would be a start.” Thornto found himself unable to speak at the veteran sergeant’s disregard for both his rank and breeding.

  The first line reached the pile of rubble that lay before the breach in the city wall. They had walked into the cloud of dust and cloying smoke. It caught at the back of his throat, made it difficult to breathe, made his eyes water. Thornto tried to climb up the rubble. It was difficult in full armour. He found himself on all fours, his shield gone, dragging his sword behind him as he crawled upwards.

  There were figures above them now, shadows in the dust. Fire illuminated the smoke like lightning in a storm cloud. Ball whistled past him. He heard screaming. Ahead of him a man was thrown into the air with fewer legs than when he had started the climb. Thornto cried out as rubble exploded in front of him. Sharp fragments of stone opened his face up. It took him a moment to realise that the screaming was coming from him. He saw eddies in the smoke and dust as crossbow bolts flew overhead. He heard grunts of pain and screams from behind him.

  “No!” This wasn’t how wars were fought. This couldn’t be right. He jumped as someone grabbed him. He looked up at the soot stained devil leering down at him.

  “Get up and fight you cowardly bastard!” Rust Mouth spat. The sergeant started to drag him towards the hole in the wall. Thornto managed to master himself enough to shake off the sergeant and continue climbing upwards.
There were people in front of him in the smoke. They got so far and then they fell down. There was more fire in the cloud. He was scrambling over bodies now; some of them still moved, others didn’t. He had lost Rust Mouth. Someone staggered toward him. Thornto’s scream was half rage, half terror as he plunged his broadsword, two handed, through the man’s chest. The man spat blood into Thornto’s face. It was one of his own men. The man collapsed to the ground, pulling Thornto down with him. The knight struggled to wrestle his sword free of the corpse he’d made. He heard screaming. A Harlanian soldier was bearing down on him. A mace caught him a glancing blow on his helm. Spots of light filled his vision. He wanted to be sick as darkness swam up to try and claim him but suddenly his sword was free. One gauntlet on the pommel the other on the blade he swung the weapon, overbalancing, but the blade bit into the soldier’s leg. There was a crack as the bone broke and the tone of the man’s screaming changed.

  “Shh!” Thornto begged, tears in his eyes. For some reason he couldn’t cope with the enemy soldier’s cries. He pushed himself up onto his knees and brought the blade down, silencing the man. At least the second person he had killed was an enemy soldier.

  He had done his duty. Finally, but he had done it. Sir Thornto had found his courage. His blood-stained armour and pitted blade were testament to that. He’d discarded his buckled helmet. His hair was matted with blood. He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting against the wall staring at the body of the Harlanian crossbow man. The corpse had a lump missing from his head. As if someone had taken a bite out of an apple. Thornto wanted to look away but found he couldn’t.

  The screaming had started again. That didn’t make sense. The fighting was over. They had taken the city. These were a woman’s screams. Somewhere in the back of his bruised mind he remembered the vows they had made him repeat during the nightlong vigil he had stood before becoming a knight. Thornto tore his eyes away from the corpse and stood up.

  There were two of them. Sir Thornto recognised them. Both wore the surcoats of the Crimson Companies, the red dog rampant on a black field. One of them was Frederick Cotter, who the other men called ‘Easy Fred’ for reasons he did not understand. Cotter was one of the arquebusiers attached to Thornto’s command. He was a plump man with lank hair and a vacant expression on his features. His firelock musket and fork stand were leaning against a nearby wall.

  The other one was Jonathan the Bastard, a handsome young man and one of the few soldiers under Thornto’s command who could read. Reputed to be the bastard son of a nobleman and a whore, Thornto had initially thought that Jonathan was the most congenial of the men until he had worked out that the bastard’s polite words were full of subtle mockery.

  They had the woman down on the cobbled stone. Jonathan was holding her arms, leering, whilst Frederick was frantically trying to undo his trews. She was clearly a peasant girl but the principal of his vows remained the same. Cotter looked up at Sir Thornto’s approach just in time to see the knight’s boot hurtling towards him.

  “Get away from her now!” Thornto snapped. The two men just looked up at him with blank expressions on their soot and dust encrusted faces. He made as to swing his sword at them and they scrambled away. Thornto offered the girl a hand and pulled her to her feet.

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but what are you doing?” Rust Mouth had staggered out from under the eaves of a nearby house. He held an earthenware jug in his hand. Thornto rounded on the sergeant, though some of his wrath left him when he saw that the sergeant had blood all around his mouth.

  “What do you mean what am I doing?” Thornto demanded. The girl had moved behind him. Thornto didn’t like the way that Cotter and Jonathan seemed to be circling around him now that their sergeant was present. “These men your responsibility? I want them flogged!”

  “Why?” Rust Mouth looked mystified. “They’ve had a rough morning. They deserve their rightful share of the spoils...” He nodded towards the girl. “Or is that just for the likes of you?”

  Thornto stared at the sergeant.

  “Knights do not rape!” he spat. Rust Mouth and the other two soldiers burst out laughing. “All of you will be punished!”

  “All right, sir, there’s no need for this, just a bit of a misunderstanding,” Rust Mouth said as he moved towards the knight, gesturing for Jonathan and Cotter to back away. “We can take this up with the Red Earl.”

  “You will address him as...” The earthenware jug crashed over his head. He was already falling to the ground as he saw Cotter’s lead weighted cudgel flying towards his head as well.

  Thornto awoke in a pool of his own vomit. They had stripped him of his armour. He had stumbled through the streets past the dead, the drunk and their victims. The men, Iron Island soldiers, and members of the Crimson Companies alike, smirking as he staggered by. A servant told him that Lord Philippe had made a tavern, on the edge of the merchant district his headquarters. Thornto had staggered into the main room. It had gone quiet. All eyes, many of them noble born, turned to look at him. Most of them looked to be in their cups.

  “The men...” he managed. A number of the knights turned away from him with a look of disgust on their face. “Where is the earl?” he shouted at a terrified, red-eyed squire. The boy just pointed upwards.

  As Thornto walked down the landing he could hear sobbing coming from behind doors. In one of the rooms he saw that the furniture had been turned over and pushed against the wall. Young men and women sat on the floor, tightly packed together, their legs drawn up under their chins, heads down. Armed guards, leering hard-faced men of the Crimson Companies, looked down at the prisoners. At the end of the corridor he saw a number of the men leaning against the wall outside the door to the master bedroom. One of them was Rust Mouth. Thornto glared at him as he pushed past and into the room.

  A number of the men, and two knights that Thornto vaguely recognised, were lounging around the room. Lord Philippe, the Red Earl, was bending a women over the bed. Thornto stared. His hand reached for a sword that wasn’t there.

  “W... what are you doing?” he demanded.

  “I know you’re provincial but you can’t be that sheltered, perhaps you witnessed horses doing this?”

  “M...m...my lord!”

  “For the sake of the Light!” the Red Earl snapped, his aristocratic features now looked like a mask of cruelty to the knight. The Earl kicked the sobbing woman off the bed. “What?” Lord Philippe demanded turning to face Thornto. “Did you see what they brought me? My tribute? What have you brought me? Rust Mouth has already told me of your conduct during the battle. You are clearly another tourney field hero!”

  Faecal giggled. The fool was leaning against the wall close to the window. Thornto was suddenly very aware of the Chirurgeon sitting on a chair in the corner behind him. The earl’s squire, who Thornto now knew as ‘Bloody Stephen’ was by the door, also behind him.

  “This is wrong,” Thornto managed pointing up at the girl curled up in a ball in the corner.

  “Did you see the men broken and bleeding? Was that right?”

  Once he would have said yes. Once he had known that there was as much honour as there was glory in service to the Iron Island in the Never Ending War. His father had served, and his father’s father had died fighting for the Iron Island. He could not believe that they would have been party to such things as this. But sometimes, when his father had thought he was unobserved, Thornto had seen a look in his eyes.

  “It’s different!” Thornto protested.

  “You do not understand, that is not a person,” he pointed at the woman on the floor, “it is a spoil of war, emphasis on the spoil. This is what we fight for: so we can do as we wish, take what we want, because these people are weak! Chivalry is a lie we tell those back home so they do not shit themselves in our presence. And this... this kingdom of pleasure, all works as long as nobody drags us out of it.”

  “I’m taking the girl,” the knight said and moved towards her. The Earl nodded and Thornto
felt Bloody Stephen grab him; a moment later the Chirurgeon did the same. The earl walked languidly across the room.

  “Do you really want to save her?” he asked, leaning forward to whisper into Thornto’s ear.

  “Yes!” Thornto said struggling.

  “One of you will suffer my attentions. Who, I wonder, is it to be?” Lord Philippe looked into Thornto’s eyes as he asked the question. The knight looked away from the Red Earl. “That’s what I thought. Get out of my sight.”

  Thornto mumbled something.

  “What?” the Earl demanded.

  “They will know of this at court,” Thornto repeated.

  Lord Philippe straightened up and smiled. Then he turned and nodded to Faecal. The painted fool in his blood-stained motley sauntered towards Thornto, drawing one of his daggers with the tenderness due a lover. The blade that rasped across Thornto's throat felt blunt and jagged, it was a burning pain.

  “Now you go quietly my young lordling,” The Chirurgeon whispered in his ear. The knight was aware of the man’s fetid breath.

  Thornto felt wet. He looked down his shirt was red. The bare boards of the wooden floor were coming up to meet him as the room tipped. He could see the Red Earl’s feet.

  “Dump him in the bodypits,” Lord Philippe ordered. “With the rest of the Harlanian scum.”

  Three:

  The Bodypits

  Flashes of blue sky between the city’s rooftops as he was dragged through Maranges’ narrow cobbled streets. He passed in and out of consciousness, head lolling around. Looking up at the western gate, the city’s largest, as he was carried through it, the dripping portcullis reminded him of Rust Mouth’s teeth.

  Cotter and Jonathan had been given the job of dragging him to the bodypits. They cursed him, spat on him, booted him when his feet caught against anything, it was all redundant. Thornto could feel himself dying, his life leaking away. It was drawn out, like the moment before a lance struck, only never ending. Now, at this moment, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his death, his life, all of it, had been utterly pointless.