The army had risen four hours before dawn, formed their battles lines in the dark, and moved carefully forward towards the smoking town. But after all that work, the mouse still escaped the cat.
Or perhaps the lion escaped the mouse. Gaston couldn’t be sure which they were.
The king had almost three thousand knights and men-at-arms, and half again as many infantry, even without the levies who had been left to guard the camp. On the one hand, the force was the largest and best armed that Gaston had ever seen – the Albans had armour for every peasant, and while their mounted knights might seem a trifle antiquated, with too much boiled leather in garish colours over double maille, and not enough plate – the Alban king’s force was now larger than any Gallish lord’s and well mounted and well-served. His cousin had ceased commenting on them. This close to the enemy, the Royal Host had become slimmer, fitter, and altogether more competent, with well-conducted sentries and pickets. Young men no longer rode abroad without armour.
But his father King Hawthor had, by all reports, had at least five times as many men when he rode forth against the Wild, perhaps even ten times as many. And the signs were all around them – the lack of plate armour was not just a penchant for the old-fashioned. All along the road, he had seen abandoned farms and shops – once a whole town with the roofs falling in.
It gave him pause.
But on this day, as the sun rose behind them and gilded their lance tips and pennons, the enemy melted away before them, abandoning the siege – as if Albinkirk had never truly been under siege after the assault.
The army halted at the edge of the great river and the Royal Huntsmen finished off any boglins too slow to get down the great earth cliff to the beach below. Heralds counted the dead and debated whether to count the destruction of the small enemy force as a battle or not.
Gaston answered his cousin’s summons, and saluted, his visor open and his sword loose in the sheath. It seemed possible that there would be an immediate pursuit across the river, even though it seemed odd that the enemy would retreat to the east.
But Jean de Vrailly handed his great bassinet to his squire and shook his head. ‘A royal council,’ he snapped. He was angry. It seemed his mad cousin was always angry these days.
Followed only by a handful of retinue knights and a herald, they rode across the field, covered in summer flowers, towards the king.
‘We are letting the enemy escape,’ de Vrailly said. ‘There was to be a great battle. Today.’ He spat. ‘My soul is in peril, because I begin to doubt my angel. When will we fight? By the five wounds of Christ, I hate this place. Too hot – too many trees, ugly people, bestial peasants-’ He suddenly reined in his horse, dismounted, and knelt to pray.
Gaston, for once, joined him. In truth, he agreed with all of his cousin’s pronouncements. He wanted to go home too.
A herald rode up – a king’s messenger, Gaston saw. He went back to his prayers. Only when his joints ached and his knees could no longer bear the pain did Gaston raise his eyes to the king’s messenger who had been patiently waiting for them.
‘The king requests your company,’ he said.
Gaston sighed, and he and his cousin rode the rest of the way to the royal council.
It was held on horseback, and all the great lords were present – every officer or lord with fifty knights or more. The Earl of Towbray, the Count of the Border, the Prior of Harndon, who commanded the military orders, and a dozen midlands lords whom Gaston didn’t know. Edward, Bishop of Lorica, armed cap a pied, and the king’s captain of the guard, Ser Richard Fitzroy, the old king’s bastard, or so men said.
The king was conferring with a small man with a grizzled beard, who rode a small palfrey and looked like a dwarf when every other man present was mounted on a charger. He was sixty years old and wore a plain harness of munition armour – the kind that armourers made for their poorer customers.
He had dark circles under his eyes, but his eyes still had fire in them.
‘They were over the outwalls and into the suburbs after three assaults,’ he said. ‘They could run up the walls.’ He looked at Ser Alcaeus. ‘But you must know the story from this good knight.’
‘You tell it,’ said the king.
‘The mayor wouldn’t send the women to the castle. So I sent out my best men to force them in.’ He shrugged. ‘And they did. And by the grace of the good Christ, I took twenty men-at-arms and held the gate to the castle.’ He shook his head. ‘We held it for an hour or so.’ He looked at Ser Alcaeus. ‘Didn’t we?’
The Morean knight nodded. ‘We did, Ser John.’
‘How many died?’ the king asked gently.
‘Townspeople? Or my people?’ the old man asked. ‘The town itself died, my lord. We saved mostly women and children – a few hundred of them. The men died fighting, or were taken.’ He grimaced as he said it. ‘We kept two posterns open the next night – a dozen pole-axes by each – and we got another fifty refugees, but they burned the town to the ground, my lord.’ He bowed his head, slipped from his nag and knelt before his king. ‘I beg your pardon, my lord. I held my castle, but I lost your town. Do with me as you will.’
Gaston looked around. The Albans were in shock.
His cousin pushed forward. ‘All the more reason to pursue the enemy now,’ he said strongly.
The old captain shook his head. ‘No, my lord. It’s a trap. This morning, we saw a big force – Outwallers, with Sossags or Abenacki, going into the woods to the east. It’s an ambush. They want you to pursue them.’
De Vrailly coughed. ‘Am I to be afeared of a few broken men?’ he asked.
No one answered him.
‘Where is the main force of the enemy?’ the king asked.
The old man shrugged. ‘We’ve had messengers from convoys headed west, and from the Abbess,’ he said. ‘If I had to guess, I’d say that Lissen Carak is besieged.’ He took the king’s stirrup. ‘They say it’s the Fallen Magus,’ he said suddenly. ‘Men claim they saw him while the walls were being stormed, smashing breeches in the wall with lightning.’
Again, the Albans muttered, and their mounts started to grow restless.
The king made a clucking sound, as if thinking aloud.
The Prior of Harndon pushed his horse forward. He wasn’t a big man and he was as old as the Captain of Albinkirk, but something shone from him – power of a sort, based on piety, humility. His black mantle contrasted sharply with the blaze of gold and colour on the other warriors, even the bishop.
‘I would like to take my knights and outriders west, my lord, to see to Lissen Carack,’ he said. ‘It is our responsibility.’
The Count of the Borders was at Gaston’s elbow. Despite the frostiness of their last meeting, he leaned over. ‘The Sisters of Saint Thomas are his people – at least at a remove or two,’ he whispered.
The Captal de Ruth stood in his stirrups. ‘I would like to accompany them,’ he declared.
The Prior regarded him with a smile. It was a weary smile, and it probably wasn’t intended to convey insult. ‘This is a matter for the knights of my order,’ he said. ‘We are trained for it.’
The captal touched his sword hilt. ‘No man tells me my men are not trained,’ he said.
The Prior shrugged. ‘I will not take you, no matter how bad your manners.’
Gaston put a hand on his cousin’s steel clad forearm. In Alba, as in Galle, a man did not threaten or challenge a knight of God. It wasn’t done.
Or perhaps his mad cousin thought himself above that law, too.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
A commander is seldom alone.
For the captain there was paperwork, often done with Ser Adrian. Drills to supervise, general inspections, particular inspections, and an endless host of small social duties – the expectations of a band of people bonded by ties forged in fire. A band of people who, in many cases, are rejects from other communities because they lack even the most basic social skills.
The c
aptain needed to be alone, and his usual expedient was to ride out over the fields of whatever countryside his little army occupied, find himself a copse of trees, and sit amongst them. But the enemy occupied the countryside, and the fortress itself was full to bursting with people – people everywhere.
Harmodius had left him with a set of complex instructions – in effect, a new set of phantasms to learn, all in aid of defending himself against direct workings from their current enemy. And there was a plan, too – a careful plan – reckless in risk, but cunning in scope.
He needed time and privacy to practise. And he was never alone.
Michael came, served him chicken, and was dismissed.
Bent came to pass a request from some of the farmers that they be allowed to visit their sheep in the pens under the Lower Town walls. The captain rubbed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Sauce came in with an idea for a sortie.
‘No,’ he said.
And went somewhere else to find himself some privacy to practise thaumaturgy.
The hospital seemed like the best bet.
He climbed the stairs without meeting anyone – evening was falling outside, and he felt as if he’d fought a battle. He had to force his legs to push him up the winding stairs.
He passed the sister at the head of the stairs with a muttered word – let her assume that he was on his way to visit the wounded.
In fact, he did visit his wounded first. John Daleman, archer, lay on the bed nearest the far wall with a line of sutures from his collarbone to his waist, but by a miracle, or perhaps by the arts of the sisters, he was not infected and was now expected to live. He was also in a deeply drugged sleep, and the captain merely sat by him for a moment.
Seth Pennyman, Valet, had just come from the surgery, where they had set his broken arm and broken leg. He’d been brushed from the wall by a wyvern’s tail. Nothing had set properly, and the sisters had just reset the breaks. He was full of some drug, and muttered curses in his sleep.
Walter La Tour, gentleman man-at-arms, sat reading slowly from a beautifully illustrated psalter. Fifty-seven years old, he wore new glass spectacles on his nose. He’d received a crushing blow from the behemoth in the fight by the brook.
The captain sat down and clasped his right hand. ‘I thought I’d lost you when that thing put you down.’
Walter grinned. ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me laugh, my lord. Hurts too much.’
The captain looked more closely. ‘Are those things new?’ he asked, reaching for the glass spectacles.
‘Ground by the apothocary right here,’ Walter said. ‘Hurt the nose like anything, but damn me, I haven’t been able to read this well in years.
The captain put them on his own nose. They wouldn’t really stay, the heavy horn frames merely pinching. There was a fine steel rivet holding the two lenses together so that they pivoted – the captain knew the principle, but had never seen them in action.
‘I . . . that is, we-’ La Tour looked wistful. ‘I might stay here, Captain.’
The captain nodded. ‘You’d be well suited,’ he said. ‘Although I doubt me that you are too old to chase nuns.’
‘As to that,’ Walter said, and turned crimson. ‘I am considering taking orders.’
The things you don’t know. The captain smiled and clasped the man’s free hand again. ‘Glad to see you better,’ he said.
‘I owe God,’ Walter said, by way of explanation. ‘They saved me, here. I was dead. That behemoth crushed me like an insect, and these holy women brought me back. For a reason.’
The smile was wiped from the captain’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I, too, owe something to God.’
He moved on down the line of cots. Low Sym lay with his face to the wall, his back carefully bandaged. Justice tended to be instant, in the company. He moaned.
‘You are an idiot,’ the captain said with professional affection.
Sym didn’t roll over. He moaned.
The captain was merciless, because next to La Tour and the others, Sym’s pain was like the sting of a fly. ‘You picked the fight because you wanted the girl. The girl didn’t want you, and beating up her brothers and her fellow farm-hands wasn’t going to ever make her like you. Eh?’
Moan.
‘Not that you care, because you are not above a spot of forced love, eh, Sym? This is not Galle. I didn’t approve of your way in Galle, my lad, but this is our country and we are all holed up in the fortress together, and if you so much as breathe garlic on a farm girl, with or without her permission, I’ll hang you with my own hands. In fact, Sym, let’s be straight about this. You are the single most useless fuck in my whole command, and I’d prefer to hang you, because the message that I mean business would cost me nothing. You get me?’ He leaned forward.
Sym moaned again. He was crying.
The captain hadn’t been aware that Low Sym was capable of crying. It opened up a whole new vista.
‘You want to be the hero and not the villain, Sym?’ he asked very quietly. Sym turned his head away.
‘Listen up, then. Evil is a choice. It is a choice. Doing the wicked thing is the easy way out, and it is habit forming. I’ve done it. Any criminal can use force. Any wicked person can steal. Some people don’t steal because they are afraid of being caught. Others don’t steal because it is wrong. Because stealing is the destruction of another person’s work. Rape is a violence against another person. Using violence to solve every quarrel-’ The captain paused in his moralizing lecture, because, of course, as a company of mercenaries, they tended to use violence to solve every quarrel – he laughed aloud. ‘It’s our work, but it doesn’t have to define us.’
Sym moaned.
He captain leaned close. ‘Not a bad time to decide to be a hero and not a villain, Sym. Your current line will end on a gallows. Better to end in a story than a noose.’ He thought of Tom. The man was a hillman – easy to forget, but his notions of word fame lingered. ‘Finish in a song.’
The small man wouldn’t look at him. The captain shook his head, tired and not very happy with his job.
He got up from the nursing stool by the archer and stretched.
Amicia was right behind him. Of course. There he was, the prince of hypocrites.
She looked down at Sym, and then back at the captain.
He shrugged at her.
She furrowed her brow, and shook her head, and waved him on his way.
He stumbled away, cast down.
He made an exasperated sound, and stepped out into the corridor that ran from the recovery beds to the serious patients’ ward. He walked a few paces and turned the corner only to find himself standing by Gawin Murien’s bed. The younger man had one leg bandaged from the crotch to the knee.
He sat by Ser Gawin’s bed. ‘No one will look for me here,’ he said in bitter self-mockery.
Gawin’s eyes opened.
This is not my day, the captain thought.
There was a pause long enough for vast conversations. For debate, argument, rage. Instead, they stared into each other’s eyes like lovers.
‘Well, brother,’ Gawin said. ‘So it seems you are alive, after all.’
The captain made himself breathe in and out. ‘Yes,’ he said, very quietly.
Gawin nodded. ‘And no one knows who you are,’ he said.
‘You do,’ the captain said. ‘And the old wizard, Harmodius.’
Gawin nodded. ‘I gave him a wide birth,’ he said. ‘Would you help me sit up?’
The captain found himself obligingly raising his brother on his pillows – even fluffing one of them. His brother, who had killed Prudentia at his mother’s orders.
‘Mother said she was corrupting you,’ Gawin said, suddenly, as if reading his mind. But even as he got those words out, his voice broke. ‘She wasn’t, was she? We murdered her.’
The captain sat back down before his knees could give way. He wanted to flee. To have this conversation another day. Another year.
The truth was that the truth was too horrible to share. Shameful, horrible, and deeply wounding to everyone it could possibly touch. The captain sat and looked at Gawin, who still believed that they were brothers. That lie, at least, was intact.
‘Prudentia knew something she shouldn’t have,’ the captain found himself saying. He sounded remarkably calm. He was quite proud of himself, just for a moment.
Gawin made a choked noise. ‘So Mater got us to kill her,’ he said, after another mammoth pause.
‘Just as she egged you on every day to torment me,’ the captain said bitterly.
Gawin shrugged. ‘I realised that, even before you left. Richard never saw it, but I did.’ He looked out the arrow slit by his head. ‘I did something terrible, down in Lorica. I got some good men killed and I did something despicable.’
Suddenly the captain found Gawin’s eyes locked on his again. ‘When I was kneeling in the mud, acting the craven, I realised that I had to avenge myself or go mad. And – and let me fucking say this, brother - I realised in one flash that I had been the instrument of your destruction, as surely as if I’d killed you myself. You think it didn’t touch me? When we found your body, and how did you pull that off? – when we found your body, I rode away into the Wild. I was gone – off my head. I knew who killed Lord Gabriel. I did. Dickon and I did, together. We hated you into death, didn’t we?’ He shook his head. ‘Except now you are not dead, and I’m not sure where that leaves us. You are a magus?’ he asked.
The captain sighed. ‘Mater had me trained as a magus,’ he said. ‘By Prudentia. Even while telling you two how effeminate I was, and what a poor knight I made. I had sworn never to reveal my studies – to her, to God, to all the saints.’ He laughed bitterly.
‘Oh, my God,’ Gawin groaned. ‘Prudentia was a magus. So . . . oh, my God. Mater provided the arrow.’
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