He turned to Jacques. ‘Find out who’s in charge of the convoy, get a head count. The knight in front of you-’
‘I know who he is-’ Jacques said.
‘He looks wounded,’ the captain replied.
The knight they were talking about rose and hobbled forward. His right leg was shiny and slick with blood.
‘You. Bastard!’ he said, and cocked back his sword to swing at the captain. He collapsed just as Jacques took his sword.
Tom laughed. ‘Someone who knows you?’ he said. Chortled, and got to work. ‘All right, you lot! Archers on me! Listen up!’
But the captain, sometimes known as the Red Knight, stood by the young knight’s body. For reasons none of them knew, except perhaps Jacques, it was a deeply satisfying moment. A great victory. And a little personal revenge.
Rescuing Gawin Murien.
Killing a behemoth. This one, in death, didn’t look any smaller. It was still fucking huge.
The captain threw back his head and laughed and the favour on his shoulder fluttered in the breeze.
Tom met his eye.
‘Sometimes, this is the best life I could ever have imagined,’ the captain said.
‘That’s why we love you,’ Tom said.
Harndon – Desiderata
Lady Mary stood by the empty bedstead, and watched a pair of southern maids roll the feather mattress.
‘We’re taking too much,’ Desiderata said.
Diota laughed. ‘My sweet, you won’t lie easy without a feather bed. All the knights have them.’
‘The Archaics slept on the ground, rolled in a cloak.’ Desiderata swirled, admiring the fall of her side-slit surcote and the way the slightest breeze caught the thing. Silk. She’d seen silk before – silk garters, silk floss for embroidery. This was more like something from the aether. It was magic.
‘You cannot wear that without a gown,’ Diota said. ‘I can see your tits right through it, sweeting.’
Lady Mary turned away and looked out the window. I think that’s what the Queen had in mind, she thought to herself. She exchanged a look with Becca Almspend, who glanced up from her reading to smile her thin-lipped smile.
‘Sleeping on the ground under a cloak doesn’t sound any worse that being a maid in the Royal Barracks,’ Becca said. ‘In fact,’ she glared at Lady Mary, ‘perhaps in a military camp, your friends don’t come and steal your blankets?’
The Queen smiled at Lady Mary. ‘Really, Mary?’
Mary shrugged. ‘I have seven sisters,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to take other people’s blankets. It just happens.’ Her eyes twinkled.
The Queen stretched, rose on her toes like a dancer, and then settled, arms slightly outstretched, as if she was posing for a portrait. ‘I imagine we’ll all sleep together,’ she said.
Almspend shook her head. ‘Pin your cloak to your bodice, that’s my advice, my lady.’
Diota snorted. ‘She won’t sleep under a cloak. She’ll have a feather bed in a tent the size of a palace.’
The Queen shrugged, and the maids packed.
Lady Almspend worked her way down the day’s list. The preparations of the king’s baggage train – and then of the Queen’s – had made Lady Almspend a much more important person.
‘War horses for my lady’s squires,’ she said.
The Queen nodded. ‘How goes that task?’
Almspend shrugged. ‘I asked young Roger Calverly to see to it. He has a head on his shoulders and he seems to be trustworthy with money. But he’s come back to report that there are simply no war horses to be had. Not for anything.’
The Queen stamped her foot. It didn’t make much noise, small as it was and clad in a dance slipper, but the maids stopped moving and stood still. ‘This is not acceptable,’ she said.
Rebecca raised an eyebrow. ‘My lady, this is a matter of military reality. I asked questions this morning at first breakfast in the men’s hall.’
Diota made a spluttering sound of outrage, perhaps she did it too often, but it still effective. ‘You was in the men’s hall for breakfast, you hussy? Wi’out an escort?’
Almspend sighed. ‘There aren’t any women likely to know much about the price of war horses, now, are there, Diota?’ She rolled her eyes with the effectiveness that only a woman of seventeen can muster. ‘Ranald has taken me to the men’s hall as a guest. And-’ She paused and cleared her throat a little awkwardly, ‘And I had an escort.’
‘Really?’ Lady Mary asked. ‘Sir Ricar, I suppose?’
Lady Rebecca looked at the ground. ‘He hadn’t left yet – he was eager enough to help me.’
Diota sighed.
The Queen looked at her. ‘And?’
Almspend shrugged. ‘Alba doesn’t breed enough horses for all its knights,’ she said. ‘We import them from Galle, Morea and the Empire.’ She looked at her friend defiantly. ‘Sir Ricar explained it to me.’
The Queen stared at her secretary. ‘Gentle Jesu and Mary his mother. Does the king know?’
Almspend shrugged. ‘My lady, the past week has revealed that men conduct war without women with all the efficency and careful planning that they do anything else without us.’
Diota let out a most unladylike snort.
Lady Mary laughed aloud. ‘Is there beer involved?’ she asked.
The Queen shook her head. ‘You mean to say we don’t have enough war horses to mount our own knights, and no one cares?’
Lady Almspend shrugged. ‘I won’t say no one cares. I could gurantee that no one has taken any thought for it.’
‘What of remounts?’ the Queen asked. ‘Horses die. Like flies. I’m sure I’ve heard that said.’
Almspend shrugged.
Lady Mary nodded. ‘But Becca – you must have a plan.’ Somewhat cattily, she added, ‘You always do.’
Lady Almspend smiled at her, immune to her sarcasm. ‘As it happens I do. If we can raise a thousand florins we can purchase a whole train of Morean horses. The owner is camped outside the ditch. I met with him this morning and offered for his whole string. Twenty-one destriers.’
The Queen hugged her impulsively.
Diota shook her head. ‘We have no money, sweeting.’
The Queen shrugged. ‘Sell our jewels.’
Diota stepped up to the smaller woman. ‘Don’t be an arse, sweet. Those jewels are all you have if he dies. You don’t have a baby. If he goes down, no one will want you.’
The Queen looked steadily at her nurse. ‘Diota – I allow you nearly unlimited liberties.’
The older woman flinched.
‘But you talk and talk, and sometimes your mouth runs away with you,’ the Queen continued, and Diota backed away.
The Queen spread her arms. ‘You have it precisely backwards, dear heart. If the king dies, everyone will want me.’
The silence was punctuated only by the barking of dogs outside. Diota quailed. Lady Mary pretended to be somewhere else, and Becca opened her book.
But finally, Diota straightened her spine. ‘All I’m saying is let the king look to his own war horses. Tell the squires where they can buy them and let them squeeze their rich parents for the money. When you sell your jewels, sweeting, you will have nothing.’
The Queen stood very still. Then she smiled her invulnerable smile at her nurse. ‘I am what I am,’ she said. ‘Sell the jewels.’
Chapter Ten
Ota Qwan
Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Peter
Peter lay on the ground behind a tree as big as a small house, unable to see anything, and waited for battle.
More than anything, he wanted to piss. From a tiny irritant at the base of his penis, the feeling gradually grew to envelope his every thought. After the first of several eternities, the need to void himself overtook his fear and terror.
From time to time, he drifted off on other thoughts – the possibility of moving to a better hiding space; finding a view of the oncoming enemy; finding some actual cover. He had no experie
nce of war in the west, and couldn’t imagine what it might be like to face a man in steel armour.
He had a knife, a bow, and nine arrows.
And he had to piss.
It began to seem possible that he should just let go, and lie in his own urine for however long they lay there.
He wondered if he was the only one. He wondered if Ota Qwan had meant to tell him to relieve himself before the ambush was set. Or if he had not told him deliberately. The black painted man had some cruelty in him – Peter was already sensing that Ota Qwan had few followers because he enjoyed twisting the knife too much. And he thought that the honeymoon between them was ending – in the beginning, Ota Qwan had been as desperate for his company as Peter had been desperate for an ally amidst the alien Outwallers, but now, with a war-group forming around him, Ota Qwan was undergoing a subtle metamorphosis. And not a pretty one.
And he really had to piss.
There was no way to measure the time. An ant crawled the length of his body, from moccasined left foot to right shoulder. Something larger crossed one of his knees. A pair of hummingbirds came and visited a flower by his head, and he was so still in the agony of his need to relieve himself that the male, bright red in spring plumage, all but landed on his painted face.
There were three hundred men – more, perhaps five hundred – lying on either side of the road as it led downhill to a ford over a deep running stream. They were somewhere east of Albinkirk. No one made a noise.
He had to piss.
He heard the metallic scrape of an iron-shod hoof on stone, and a shriek – a cry, and then a scream that seemed to come from the other side of his tree.
No one was moving.
The scream was repeated and suddenly cut off, and its sudden removal left another sound – the sound of shod hooves galloping away.
Suddenly Skadai was on the trail, just a few arm’s lengths away, calling softly. ‘Dodak-geer-lonh!’ he said. ‘Gots onah!’
All around Peter, warriors rose from their ambush spots, rubbing themselves, or scraping bark off their skin. Half of them immediately began to relieve themselves. Peter followed suit, previously unaware that urination could be such a great pleasure.
But Skadai was moving. Ota Qwan swatted Peter on the shoulder. ‘Move!’ he said, as if Peter was a child.
Peter gathered his bow and followed.
They ran east on the trail for twenty horse lengths, and there was a horse, dead, across the trail, and a man pinned beneath it with his face and hair cut away and his throat slit. His blood pooled between the rocks and ran in a sticky rivulet headed downhill to the stream.
After running for what seemed a long time, they began to spread out amid big trees. The stream was well behind them, and Peter was terrified – they were running at the enemy, or so it seemed.
Skahas Gaho must have felt the same, because when they stopped running he got in front of Ota Qwan and said something that was clearly remonstration.
Ota Qwan struck him – not a hard blow, but a fast one, and the younger warrior bent over with the pain.
Ota Qwan spoke quickly, spittle flying from his mouth.
Skadai ran up silently, listened to Ota Qwan, and nodded, running off down the loose line of warriors that extended as far as the eye could see into the great trees on either flank. The trees here – mostly Adnacrag maples and beeches, tall old trees with magnificent tops – were big enough that two men couldn’t get their arms around them. But there was little undergrowth because of the high canopy, and despite the sun-dappled forest floor, little grew amidst the carpet of old leaves except the most magnificent irises that Peter had ever seen.
Skahas Gaho got to his feet, glared resentfully at Skadai and spat at Ota Qwan. He said something to the other warriors, and ran off down the line. Brant turned to follow him, and Ota Qwan raised his bow.
Peter acted without thought. He pushed Ota Qwan’s bow arm, hard.
The warrior tried to hit him in the ear with the tip of the bow but Peter caught it and, in a single turn of his arm, he had Ota Qwan’s right arm in an elbow lock that threatened to dislocate the man’s shoulder.
‘I wasn’t born a slave,’ Peter said. ‘Don’t fuck with me.’
‘They are deserting me!’ Ota Qwan watched the two men running off.
‘You hit Skahas Gaho when you needed to reason with him.’ Peter wanted to laugh to hear himself explaining basic leadership to Ota Qwan. But he had the arm lock, and he wasn’t letting go.
The other man stiffened, and then went limp. ‘He was about to disobey. To disobey Skadai!’
Peter let the black painted man go. ‘I’ve only been Sossag for three days, but it seems to me that’s Skadai’s problem, not yours. I think you thought like an Alban, not a Sossag.’ Peter shrugged.
The other three – Pal Kut, Barbface, and Mullet, watched them warily.
‘You will be loyal to me!’ Ota Qwan hissed at Peter. ‘Will you?’
Peter nodded. ‘I will,’ he said, finding that the words made him feel queasy.
Pal Kut called something. The line, well-spread, was moving rapidly forward, almost at a run. Most men had an arrow on their bows.
Peter sprinted to make his place in the line, fumbled an arrow and dropped it, and turned back to get it – he had too few to lose one. He bent, and in that moment, the world exploded.
To the front of the line, off amidst the drover’s herd, a bull gave a long, low growl. And suddenly the air was full of arrows flying both ways. And the Sossag gave a great cry, almost like a scream . . .
. . . and charged.
Peter had his arrow on his bow. He ran forward, saw Pal Kut take an arrow in the gut, an arrow so big and so powerful that it emerged from his back in a gout of blood, and the head was shaped like a swallow and gleamed with a horrible red-blue malevolence.
Peter ran forward, following Ota Qwan.
He saw his first enemy – a tall blond boy in ring mail who coolly rose from behind a bush and loosed an arrow into a warrior he didn’t know – shot him from so close that the man was knocked off balance by the arrow and stumbled like a beheaded chicken before collapsing in death.
But Ota Qwan leaped at the man with a dire scream and loosed his own arrow at arm’s length, and the barbed head drove through his ring mail at the shoulder. A dozen warriors converged on the wounded boy and he was dead and scalped in a few heartbeats.
Ota Qwan took the boy’s sword – four feet of shining steel – and brandished it, and all of the warriors who had seen him attack gave a great cry, and then they were pelting forward again.
Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Hector Lachlan
As soon as the scouts reported, Lachlan knew he was in serious trouble. North of the Inn, in the Hills, the Wyrm of Erch kept the Outwallers at bay. It cost him animals to keep the Wyrm happy, but that was the way of the Hills. For a thousand years or more, the Wyrm had kept the Wild out of the Hills, to the benefit of generations of clansmen and drovers.
Here in the south, the king was supposed to keep the Outwallers away. Otter Creek was taken by some to be the border between the Green Hills and the Kingdom of Alba. But for Lachlan, whoever’s territory it was, Otter Creek was safe ground. Not battle ground. Otter Creek ran down into the Albin. Albinkirk itself would be visible from the height of the next ridge but one – even if there was still a long day to drive the beeves to get them to the ford at Southford.
But the point was that they were almost there.
But now – he had scouts, and they knew their business. The clansmen and drovers knew the Outwallers. Outwallers were fierce, savage, and expert in arms. And they’d set an ambush for his drove, which meant they had scouted his herds, knew his strength and felt that they could take him. That meant three to four hundred warriors.
Hector didn’t hesitate. It was a situation he’d imagined many times, although he’d never had to face it.
He turned to his tanist, Donald Redmane ‘Go back to the drag guard. Take ever
y animal you can, turn them, and run for the Inn.’
Donald was a good man – loyal, dogged. Not the smartest, but a wonderful man in a fight, with a beautiful voice and clever hands that made things. ‘You go, Lachlan. I can hold them here.’
Lachlan shook his head. ‘With your bruised ribs and all? Go. Now.’
Redmane shook out his hair. ‘By the Wyrm, Hector. We’re just a day’s march from Albinkirk. Let’s stampede the cows at the bastards, and put the survivors to the sword.’
Hector looked at the woods under his hand. ‘No. My word on it, Donald. They’re two to one or more against us, and scattering the herd in these woods-’ He held his peace, lest he lower spirits more than he had to.
He turned and looked at the scout. ‘Ride clear all the way to the Inn. Take two horses so that you can change. Ride like the wind, yunker – they may already be in the High Country. Don’t come back unless you can bring a hundred swords with you.’
The other men with him in the vanguard loosened their swords in their scabbards. A few checked bows, and one took off his arming cap, replaced it, and went to his mule for his helmet.
‘Bad luck you boys are with me, this day, and not in the rear with the drag,’ Hector said. ‘None of us will be dining this evening, I fear.’
Ian Cowpat, a big man with a muddy brown face, gave him a grin. ‘Bah. Never met a loon I couldn’t kill.’
‘Outwallers,’ Hector said. ‘We’ll meet them in the woods where they can’t shoot us down. Make a fight of it as long as we can. When I sound the horn, every man to me, and we form a shield wall and make a song of it.’ He looked around. The duty changed every day, because working the back of the herds was so much worse than walking in front, and so he didn’t have the oldest or the youngest, or all the best fighters, or even all men he knew. He had a scattering of his own and the Keeper’s men; but they were well armed, fifty strong, and not a face betrayed the terror that every one of them must feel. Good men for making a song.
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