The last light of day had shown him smoke rising over Albinkirk, and if the town was gone then he was bereft of a plan.
His original impulse was all but gone. The evidence of the road, and Ser Alcaeus, was that a marauding army of the Wild had come down on the north of Alba, and he was afraid – to the core of his chilled and weary bones – that all the work of the old King Hawthor was undone. Worse, whatever had cast the ensorcellment on him was out there. With that army.
And yet he hadn’t pointed his horse’s head back south. When he came to the road that turned west, into the woods, and saw fresh wagon ruts on it he turned his horse’s head that way and followed them.
Part of that was pragmatic. He’d fought three bands of the Wild to win through this much of the road to Albinkirk. He wasn’t ready to fight a fourth.
Two hours later, somewhere in the darkness, a horse gave a long snort and then a soft whicker, and his horse answered.
Harmodius sat up.
He let his horse stumble forward. The horses would find each other quicker than he could, and they rode on for long minutes. He stared with unaided eyes at the darkness that pressed in on the road like a living thing.
The other horse whinnied.
His horse gave a call, almost a mule’s bray, in return.
‘Halt! You on the road – halt and dismount, or you’ll have enough crossbow bolts in you to play a porcupine in a show.’ The voice was loud, shrill, and sounded very young, which made the speaker dangerous. Harmodius slid from his horse, knowing in his bones that he was unlikely to be able to remount. His knees hurt. His calves hurt. ‘I’m off,’ he said.
A bull’s-eye lantern opened its baleful eye in front of him, the powerful oil lamp all but blinding him.
‘Who are you, then?’ asked the annoying young voice.
‘I’m the fucking King of Alba,’ Harmodius snapped. ‘I’m an old man on a done horse and I’d love to share your fire, and if I was a horde of boglins you’d already be dead.’
There were chortles from the darkness.
‘There you are, Adrian. Put that weapon down, Henry. If he’s riding a horse, he ain’t a creature of the Wild. Eh? Did you think of that, boy? What’s your name, old man?’ The new voice was authoritative without being noble. The bland accent of court was completely absent.
‘I’m Harmodius Silva, the King’s Magus.’ He walked forward into the lantern light, and his horse followed him, as eager for rest and food as his rider. ‘And that’s not a tall tale,’ he added.
‘Sounds pretty tall,’ said the new voice. ‘Come to the fire and have a cup of wine. Adrian, back to your duty, boy. Young Henry, if you point that weapon at me again I’ll break your nose.’
The man was in armour and had a heavy axe across his arms, but he stripped off a chain mitten and clasped Harmodius’ hand. ‘They call me Old Bob,’ he said. ‘Man-at-arms to the great and near great,’ he laughed. ‘You really Lord Silva?’
‘I truly am,’ said Harmodius. ‘Do you really have a safe camp and wine? I’ll pay a silver leopard to have a boy see to my horse.’
The man-at-arms laughed. ‘Long night?’
‘Three long nights. By the blood of Christ and his resurrection – I’ve been fighting for three days.’
They emerged into the circle of light from a big fire, and over the fire towered a heavy trestle that held the chains of three heavy cauldrons – and a pair of lanterns hung from the cross bar. It was the strongest light he’d seen since sundown. By the candlelight he could see a dozen men crouched over something on the ground, and the tall wheel of a heavy wagon. And beyond that, another.
‘You’ve reached Master Random’s convoy,’ the man-at-arms said. ‘Fifty wagons, or near enough, all the guilds of Harndon represented.’
Harmodius nodded. He’d never heard of Master Random, but then, as had become increasingly clear over the last three days, he’d been lost to the world for ten years or more.
‘You’re safe enough here,’ Old Bob said. ‘Boglins ambushed us today,’ he said, and shrugged, clearly unhappy about it.
‘You took losses?’ Harmodius was anxious to ask about the numbers and strength of the opposition, but his desire for information was at war with his fatigue.
‘The young knight,’ Old Bob motioned with his great axe at the group of men gathered around something on the ground. ‘He was badly wounded fighting a daemon out of the Wild.’
Harmodius sighed. ‘Make way,’ he said.
They had a candle, and the horse leech was cleaning the man’s wounds with vinegar. The young knight had lost a great deal of blood and, stripped naked, he looked pale and vulnerable. The new spring flies were feasting on him.
Harmodius cast almost without thinking, putting a small banishment on the flies.
Fatigue, which had seemed like a coat of mail, suddenly clamped like a vice around his heart. But he knelt by the wounded man, and Old Bob held the lantern high.
Just for a moment the wounded knight looked like the king.
Harmodius bent closer, examining the wounds. Three punctures, some slashes – nothing so deadly as to kill a healthy man, until he saw the burns. In the ruddy candle light, the man’s eye looked like a pit of red.
‘Sweet Jesu,’ the Magus said.
The odd pieces of dirt he’d seen on the man’s shoulder was no dirt at all – his chain links had burned right into his shoulder. The burns weren’t even red, they were black.
‘He faced down an adversarius,’ a man said. ‘A daemon of hell. Even when it threw fire at him.’
Harmodius felt his eyes closing. He didn’t have the power to save this brave soul which was frustrating, especially as he only needed a little organic power to stabilise the burns. It took much skill, much shaping of the phantasm, but little power.
The concept that the power needed was organic gave him a thought, though.
He touched his own reserves – the items he’d carefully enchanted over the years – drenched in sun power, imbued, impregnated, imprinted with the rich golden light of the Sacred Sun. All were cold and empty. And so was his greatest reservoir – his own skin. Empty, cold, tired.
And yet, by the logic of the experiment in his tower-
‘Everyone stand away,’ he ordered. He lacked the energy to explain; either this was going to work, or it was not. ‘I’m exhausted,’ he said to the old soldier. ‘You know what that means?’
‘Means ye can’t heal. Eh?’ said Old Bob.
‘Just so. I’m going to try tapping a local source. If I fail, nothing will happen. If I succeed-’ Harmodius rubbed his eyes. ‘By Hermes and all the saints, if I succeed, I think something will happen.’
Old Bob snorted. ‘Are you always that clear?’ He held out a beaker. ‘Drink first. Good red wine.’
Harmodius waved it away. The other men backed away, or fled to the fire – no one fancied watching a wizard work except Old Bob, who looked on with a cat’s wary curiosity.
Harmodius reached out into the darkness until he found a pool of the green power that he knew had to be there. It wasn’t far away. He didn’t enquire what it was. He simply seized its power-
– and the night exploded with shrieking.
One does not work with the ultimate powers of the universe for many years without developing a concentration bordering on utter ruthlessness. Harmodius focused on the power, which was difficult to lay hold of, difficult to seize, and it tasted wrong, somehow. That wrongness would instantly have repelled him, had he not the scientific assurance of his earlier experiment that a creature of the Wild could interact with the Hermetic. The reverse had to be true.
The shrieking went on, and the men around him moved in a disciplined kind of panic – seizing weapons, calming horses. Harmodius was aware of them, but not enough to break the iron chain of his connection to the distant green source of power, which he took like an infant sucking greedily at a breast.
Ruthlessly.
And then it was in him, filling him with i
ts odd, bitter, wintergreen tang, and there was far, far more than he needed for his small enchantment. But he worked with it, first a complex binding, then two simultaneous phantasms run by dividing himself into two working halves, as his master had taught him so long ago. And there was so much power that he could divide himself once again, to leave an awareness to watch the darkness. Taking the green energy, as he had, seemed to have kicked a beehive.
A village witch could funnel power independently through each hand. Harmodius could use each finger as a channel, and could use other foci on his body – rings and the like – as reserves, or clamps.
He used many of them now.
His first use of it was to look into the burns. They were worse than he’d thought by the firelight – the blackened skin was charred, and in some cases the damage ran all the way through the skin layer to the fat and muscle.
These were lethal burns.
Indeed, the man was slipping away even as Harmodius worked to block the pain and heal the greatest wounds.
Healing burns was the most difficult of all forms of healing and Harmodius, for all his power, was no healer. He juggled tendrils of power for a dozen heartbeats, attempting to rebuild charred tissue and in the process only charring more. The control required was incredible and in his frustration and fatigue, he let slip a greater packet of the green power than he intended. It was rolling through him in waves and he passed it straight into the young man’s shoulder.
Harmodius had heard of healing miracles, but he had never witnessed one before. Under his hand, a patch of skin the size of a bronze sequin healed. The angry marks that pulsed in Harmodius’ enhanced vision simply faded and were gone.
It was incredible.
Harmodius had no idea what he had done, but he was an empirical magus and so he reached for more power, drew it from its source like a man trying to haul in a great ocean fish with a light rod, and then pumped it through his hands into the swaths of burned flesh . . .
. . . and they healed.
A section of the knight’s neck the size of the palm of a hand closed over and healed.
He reached for more power, seized it, struggled with the source and overcame it by main force of will, and then hauled with all his trained might, ripping the green power into his soul and then passing it down his hands into the knight, whose eyes suddenly opened with a great cry.
Harmodius stumbled back.
The screams from the woodlands stopped.
‘Why did you kill me?’ the young knight asked plaintively. ‘I was so beautiful!’
He slumped and his eyes closed.
Harmodius reached out and touched him. He was asleep, and the skin on his neck, chest, back, and shoulders was flaking away, the blackness and scabs simply falling away from the new flesh underneath.
New, pale flesh.
With scales.
Harmodius flinched, trying to understand what he had done.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The captain woke still tired. He got up, called for Toby, and stumbled to his wash basin.
Toby came in, chewing on a biscuit, and began to lay out his clothes. He moved warily, and the captain assumed from his averted head that something was wrong. Whatever it was, the captain would have to work it out for himself.
‘What news, Toby?’ the captain asked.
‘Boglins in the fields,’ the boy said, and went back to chewing.
‘Where’s Michael?’ the captain asked, when no one came to help him point his hose.
Toby looked away. ‘At chapel, I reckon.’
‘Only if Jesu came and visited Michael in person in the night,’ the captain said. Mornings made him nasty. Toby wasn’t to blame, but the boy idolized the squire and he wasn’t going to rat him out.
The captain pointed his own hose, and took an old arming doublet and began to lace it up. He didn’t call for Michael until he was ready to lace the cuffs. When the young man still wasn’t there, he nodded to Toby. ‘I’m going to go find him,’ he said.
Toby looked terrified. ‘I’ll go, master!’
The captain felt annoyed. ‘We can go together,’ he said, and his long legs took him out of the solar and down the hall to the Commandery where Michael slept.
Toby tried to beat him to the door, but a combination of shorter legs and deference kept him a stride behind.
The captain flung the heavy oak door open.
Michael leaped from his bedroll, a long dagger in his right fist. He was naked. So was the beautiful young girl he put behind him.
‘Michael?’ the captain said to the dagger.
Michael blushed. The blush started just above his groin, ran in splotches over his chest and up his neck to his face. ‘Oh my God – my lord, I’m so sorry-’
The captain looked at the girl. Her blush was even brighter.
‘That’s my laundry maid, I believe,’ he said. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps maid is the wrong word, given the circumstances.’
She hid her head.
‘Get dressed. Michael. It’s full light, and when that poor young woman walks down the steps to the courtyard, every person in the fortress will know where she’s been; either with you, with me, or with Toby. Perhaps with all three. Toby at least has the virtue of being her own age.’
Michael was trying to put his dagger away.
‘I love her!’ he said hotly.
‘Wonderful. That love is about to bring down a mountain of consequences that may end in your no longer being in my employ.’ The captain was angry.
‘At least she’s not a nun!’ Michael said.
That stopped the captain. And filled him with black rage; in a moment, he went from a distant, weary amusement to the flat desire to kill. He was struggling not to draw a weapon. Or use his fists. Or his power.
Michael took a step back and Toby placed himself between the captain and the squire.
Heavy, strong arms suddenly encircled the captain from behind. He thrashed, angry beyond sense, but he couldn’t break the grip. He tried to plant his feet and headbutt his adversary, but the man lifted him straight off the floor.
‘Whoa!’ said Bad Tom. ‘Whoa there!’
‘His eyes are glowing!’ Michael said, and his voice was trembling, Kaitlin Lanthorn cowering in the corner.
Tom spun the captain and slapped him clear across the face.
There was a pause. The captain’s power hung in the air – palpable even to non-talents. Kaitlin Lanthorn saw it as a cloud of golden green around his head.
‘Let go of me, Tom,’ said the captain.
Tom put his feet on the ground. ‘What was that about?’
‘My idiot squire deflowered a local virgin, for sport.’ The captain took a deep breath.
‘I love her!’ Michael shouted. Fear made his voice high and whiney.
‘Like enough,’ Tom said. ‘I love all the women I fuck, too.’ He grinned. ‘She’s just one of the Lanthorn sluts. No damage done.’
Kaitlin burst into tears.
The captain shook his head. ‘The Abbess-’ he began.
Tom nodded. ‘Aye. She won’t take it well.’ He looked at Michael. ‘I won’t ask you what you were thinkin’, ’cause I can guess it well enough.’
‘Get him out of my sight,’ the captain said. ‘Toby, get the girl dressed and get her . . . I don’t know. Can you get her out of here without everyone seeing?’
Toby nodded soberly. ‘Aye,’ he said, eager to help. Toby didn’t like it when his heroes were angry, especially not with each other.
The captain had a splitting headache, and he wasn’t even into the day yet.
‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ he asked Tom.
‘Sauce has a patrol out and there’s the remnants of a convoy in the Bridge Castle,’ Tom said. ‘Bad news.’
Sauce reported an hour later, handing a child down off the saddlebow of her war horse and saluting her captain crisply.
‘Twenty-three wagons. All burned. Sixty corpses found, not yet r
ipe, and not much of a fight.’ She shrugged. ‘Slightly chewed.’ She lowered her voice, as there were dozens of people in earshot, all looking for news. ‘Many eaten down to sinew and bone, Captain.’
The captain fingered his beard, looked at the desperate people surrounding his horse, and knew that any morale won by his raids on the enemy camp was now dissipated in a fresh wave of terror.
‘Back to your work,’ the captain called.
‘We ain’t got no work!’ a man shouted, and the crowd in the courtyard rumbled angrily.
The captain had mounted in anticipation of taking out a patrol. He was restless and depressed himself, and craved action – anything to distract him.
But he was the captain. He nodded to Gelfred. ‘Go north, and move fast. You know what we want.’
He swung one spurred foot over Grendel’s back and slid from the saddle. ‘Wilful Murder, Sauce, on me. The rest of you – well done. Get some rest.’
He led them inside. Michael dismounted too, looking as furious as the captain felt having lost an opportunity to substitute honest fear for nagging terror. He clearly knew that he now had no opportunity to expiate his sin. But he took his own destrier and the captain’s and headed for the stable without untoward comment.
Sister Miram – the heaviest and thus most easily identified of the sisters – was passing through the courtyard with a basket of sweet bread for the children. The captain caught her eye, and waved.
‘The Abbess will want to hear this,’ he said to her. She put a biscuit in his hand with a look that might have curdled milk – a look of blanket disapproval.
There was a slip of vellum underneath it.
Meet me tonight
A bolt of lightning shot through him.
The Abbess arrived while he was still standing in his solar. He’d just stripped off his gauntlets and placed them on the sideboard, his helmet was still on his head. Sauce took it from him, and he turned to find the Abbess, hands clasped loosely in front of her, wimple starched and perfect, eyes bright.
The captain had to smile, but she did not return it.
He sighed. ‘We’ve lost another convoy coming to the fair – six leagues to the west, on the Albinkirk road. More than sixty dead. The survivors are panicking your people, and they aren’t helping mine much.’ He sighed. ‘In among them are refugees from Albinkirk, which, I am sorry to report, has fallen to the Wild.’
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