The king sent two messengers with the knights when the Prior took his men north-west from Albinkirk’s souther suburb, Southford. The Prior moved his men carefully over the ground, their black surcotes somehow blending into the undergrowth. His men rode easily through the densest stands of woods, through thickets of spring briars.
They halted frequently. Men would dismount and creep forward, usually over the brow of a steep hill, and wave them forward.
Despite the halts, they made good progress. Individual knights would ride away – sometimes at right angles to the line of march – and unerringly find them again.
The thing the two king’s messengers found hardest to understand was the silence. The Knights of St Thomas never spoke. They rode in silence, and their horses were equally silent. They had no pages, no valets, no servants and no squires. Forty spare horses – a fortune in war horses – followed the main body, packed with forage bags and spares, but otherwise without bridle or lead. Yet the spares followed briskly enough.
It was, as the older messenger said, uncanny.
Still, it was a bold thing, to be riding through the North Country with the Knights of St Thomas. Galahad Acon had been named for the saint’s church in London, and felt he was almost one of them. His partner, Diccon Alweather, had been a professional messenger in the old king’s day, a weathered man with more scars than a badly tanned hide, as he liked to say himself.
The messengers were used to a hard day riding and no company but their horses, but it was a hard day, even for them – fifteen leagues over broken country that challenged their horsemanship every hour. The knights didn’t seem to tire. Many of them were older than Alweather.
Towards evening, one of the youngest of the knights rode back to the main body, and led them off to the right, north, and then up to a steep hill.
Without a word, every knight dismounted. They drew their long swords from their saddle scabbards, split into four groups of fifteen, and walked off.
The Prior waited a moment, looking at the two messengers. ‘Wait here,’ he said, aloud. The first words Galahad had heard from any of them since they left the Royal Camp.
The black-clad knights vanished into the woods.
An hour passed. It was cold – the spring evenings were longer, but not much warmer, and Galahad couldn’t decide whether he was cold enough to take his great cloak out of the bundle behind his crupper or not. He didn’t want to be caught dismounted at the wrong moment. He cursed the Prior and his silence.
He kept looking at the older messenger, Alweather, who waited, apparently calm, without fidgeting, for the whole hour.
‘Here they come,’ Galahad said suddenly.
The Prior walked up to his horse and sheathed his sword on the saddle. ‘Come,’ he said. He was smiling.
He walked off up the steep hill, and all the horses followed him.
‘Uncanny,’ Alweather said. He spat, and made an avert sign.
They wound around the hill, widdershins, climbing as they went around. It seemed a tedious way of getting to the top, but in the very last light, Galahad could see that the crown of the hill was steep and girt in rock.
The horse ahead of him shied, and then was quiet. Galahad looked down and saw a corpse. And then another. And another and another.
They were not human. He wasn’t sure what they were – small and brown, with big heads, and cords of muscle, beautifully worked leather clothes and huge wounds made by two-handed swords.
‘Good Christ,’ Alweather said aloud.
There was the smell of fire, and then they came over a crest.
The top of the hill was hollow. It was like a giant cup, and the knights had three fires going, and food cooking. Galahad Acon’s stomach, outraged by the inhuman corpses and their red-green blood, now seized on the smell of food. Pea soup.
‘Unsaddle your horse, and curry him,’ the Prior said. ‘After that, he’ll see to himself.’
Alweather frowned, but Galahad refused to be moved by the older man’s caution. Galahad was suffused with joy. He was living one of his secret dreams.
Alweather, clearly wanted to go back to the king.
‘They fought a battle,’ Galahad said, his eyes sparkling in the firelight. ‘And we didn’t even hear them.’
The Prior smiled at Galahad. ‘Not really a battle,’ he said. ‘More of a massacre. The irks didn’t see us coming.’ He shrugged. ‘Have some soup. Tomorrow will be harder.’
Lissen Carak
It was a quiet night. The besieged collapsed into sleep. Sauce cried out in her dreams, and Tom lay and snored like a hog. Michael muttered into his outstretched arm, sleeping alone. The Abbess wept softly in the dark, and rose to kneel, praying at the triptych that sat on a low podium in the corner of her cell. Sister Miram lay on her stomach to sleep, exhausted from healing so many wounded men. Low Sym woke himself up repeatedly as he shouted, and then lay with his own arms wrapped around him staring at horrors in the dark until the pretty novice came and sat with him.
But however long and dark the night was, the enemy was quiet, and the besieged slept.
In the first light of morning, they struck.
The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Nine
Today, the enemy burned all the country around the fortress, as far as the woods. The men – the traitor Jacks – burned all the farms, all the steadings and barns – even the patches of woods.
The farmers stood on the walls and watched. Some wept. We were cursed for being poor soldiers, for allowing the fields to be burned.
The Abbess came out and watched, and then promised that it would all be rebuilt.
But many hearts turned. And before noon, the creatures of the enemy were in the air over the fortress, and we could feel them again.
Lissen Carak – Mag the Seamstress
It was a simple, unstoppable act that changed the nature of the siege, and that cut at the farmers and the simple people of the fortress more effectively than all the military victories that could be scored.
The first fires were visible to the north-east. Hawkshead, the furthest east of the fortress’ communities was put to the torch before morning creased the sky, and the last watch saw the town burn, just two leagues from the walls.
Just as the sun began to cast forth a ruddy light, Kentmere went up to the west. By then, the walls of the fortress were lined in farm folk. Then Abbington.
Mag watched her town burn. From this high, she could count roofs and she knew when her own cottage burned. She watched it with a desperate anger until she could no longer see which house was hers. They were all afire – every cottage, every house, every stone barn, every chicken coop. The fields around the fortress ridge were suddenly full of the enemy – all the creatures who hadn’t shown themselves in the first days. There were boglins, and irks; daemons and trolls, great things like giants with smooth heads and tusks which the soldiers told her were behemoths. And, of course, men.
How she hated the men.
The enemy was now girdling every tree. Orchards of apple trees and pears, of peaches and persimmons, were being destroyed. Vines that had grown for generations were gone in an hour, their roots destroyed or seared by fire, and every structure was burning. As far as the eye could see, in every direction, there was a sea of fire and Lissen Carak a dark island in it.
Mag couldn’t take her eyes away from the death of her world.
‘Sausage without mustard, eh?’ said a heavy voice at her elbow.
She started, turned to find the giant black-headed hillman, the company’s savage, sitting on the other barrel beside her, watching over the wall.
‘War without fire is like sausage without mustard,’ he said.
She found herself angry at him. ‘That’s – my village. My house!’
The big man nodded. He seemed not to know she was crying. ‘Stands to reason. I’d hae’ done the same, in his place.’
She turned on him. ‘War! In his place? This isn’t a game! We live here! This is our land. We farm
here. We bury our dead here. My husband lies out there – my daughter-’ The tears became too much for her, but in that moment, she hated him more than she hated the boglins and their horrible faces and their willingness to burn her life away.
Tom looked hard at her. ‘Not yours unless you can hold it,’ he said. ‘Way I hear it, your people took it from them. Eh? Melike, their dead are buried there too. And right now, I’d say it was theirs. I’m sorry, goodwife, but war is my business. And war involves a lot of fire. He’s showing us that we only hold what we stand on – that he can win without taking the fortress. We hurt him last night and now he strikes back. That’s war. If you don’t want to have your farm burned, you had better be strong – stronger than you were.’
She struck him, then – a glancing blow, pure anger without force.
He let her do it.
‘Not many folk can say they’ve struck Bad Tom and lived to tell the tale,’ he said. He flashed a crooked smile in the early morning light, and she turned and fled.
Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn watched the farms burn with no great satisfaction. It was a cheap victory, but it would help break the will of the farmers to resist him.
He shrugged inwardly. Or it would harden their resolve to fight to the end. Now they had nothing to save but themselves, and even when he’d been a man, he’d had trouble understanding men. And, increasingly, he felt this contest was too complex for even his intellect. He had made himself the Captain of the Wild, and yet his own interests were scarcely engaged, here. He was far more interested in the puzzle that was the dark sun, and in her, then he was in the prosecution of the siege.
He wondered, not for the first time, what he was doing here, and how he’d ended up so committed to this action that he was willing to risk himself in combat. Last night he’d taken his invincible new form out onto the field, and the fortress had hurt him. None of the blows he had taken were deadly, but he felt the pain of his exertions and their blows. The pain had angered him, and in anger he had unleashed some of his carefully hoarded power – enough to damage the fabric of the fortress. It had impressed his allies, but the cost-
Again, he rustled his leaves in what would have been a shrug, in a man.
Last night, he had felt the breath of mortality for the first time in twenty years. He didn’t like the smell of it. Or the pain.
But as the siege continued it was becoming a rallying point for the Wild in the North Country, and despite minor set-backs, more and more creatures were coming in. His prestige was increasing, and that prestige would directly affect a rise in his power.
None of which would matter if he were dead.
He thought of her.
He could no longer shake his head – it was now a continuous armoured growth from his neck, and he had to pivot around the waist to look to the left and right. But he made an odd clucking sound as he considered her. She had attempted to hurt him directly, last night.
And finally, he considered the third presence in the fortress besides the dark sun. Power – cold, blue power – had struck him. Pure power, untrammelled by doubt or youth. Trained and honed, like fine steel.
It was his apprentice, of course. Had Thorn been able to smile, he would have.
Harmodius.
There was a solvable problem.
Lissen Carak – Amicia
Amicia stood on the wall watching the world burn. She didn’t notice him until he was at her shoulder.
‘It was a matter of time,’ he said, as if they had been in conversation all morning.
She wasn’t sure, in truth, if she wanted to say anything. She didn’t want to look at him – didn’t want him to see how committed she was, or how angry.
‘He has to show his allies that he is making progress.’ The captain leaned on the crenellation and pointed to the western edge of the woods. ‘His men are building a pair of trebuchets. Before the end of the day, we’ll be feeling their power. Not because it will actually help him win, but because it will make his allies see him as-’
If she kept listening to him she would . . .
She turned on her heel and walked away.
He hurried to catch up to her.
‘People are watching,’ she hissed. ‘I am a novice in this convent. I am not your lover. Let me go, please.’
‘Why?’ he asked. He seized her arm in a steel grip. He was hurting her.
‘Let me go,’ she said. ‘Or you are no knight.’
‘Then I am no knight. Why? Why change your mind so suddenly?’ He leaned towards her. ‘I have not changed mine.’
She hadn’t meant to have a conversation. She bit her lip, and looked around for a miracle. Sister Miram. The Abbess. ‘Don’t you have to do something? Save somebody? Give orders?’ she asked. ‘Why not go and save the farms?’
‘That’s unfair!’ he said. and let go of her arm. ‘No one is watching us. I would know.’ He shrugged. ‘I cannot save the farms. And I’d rather be here, with you.’
‘You want me to have that on my soul, as well? That in addition to breaking my vows, I am endangering the fortress?’
He smiled his wicked smile. ‘It’s worked on other girls,’ he said.
‘I imagine it works all the time.’ She put her chin as high as she could manage. ‘I do not choose to be your whore, Captain. I don’t even know your name. Girls like me don’t get to know the names of the great lords who try to put their knees between our legs, do we? But I am choosing to say no. You are not afraid of Jesus, and you are not afraid of the Abbess. So I cannot appeal to you along those lines. But By God, messire, I can protect myself. If you lay a hand on me again, I will hit you hard.’
He looked at her.
He had tears in his eyes, and she hesitated. But she’d made her decision, and she carried it through. She walked away, and didn’t look back.
It was difficult for her to decide why she was so angry. It was difficult for her to say – even to herself – why she was choosing to walk away. But he was not for her, despite the feeling that her very soul was screaming as she walked down the steps.
Despite the look, like agony, on his face.
Lissen Carak – Harmodius
Harmodius
He couldn’t shut it out. Once two entities of power are linked, the link is forever. He couldn’t shut Thorn out, but he could wall him off.
Harmodius
That is, he could mostly wall him off.
Harmodius was sitting cross-legged under an ancient apple tree that stood alone on the battlements, in a stone circle. It was a beautiful thing, in full flower, and it was redolent with power. The seat under it was placed to absorb the power that flowed, as if from a well or a spring, around the place. Somewhere just under his feet, was the well spring. It appeared neither green nor golden. It merely was.
Harmodius drank as deeply as he dared.
Harmodius
Would it really hurt to talk to his former master?
It was dangerous. If he opened the link, Thorn might try to overwhelm him with raw power.
But sitting here, on the bench by the apple tree, he didn’t think Thorn could take him before he could close the link. He wasn’t like the boy. The boy-
To hell with it.
Hello Richard.
I knew you would respond.
It must be satisfying to be right all the time.
Don’t be snide, Harmodius. You hurt me, last night. You have grown very powerful.
I killed your mortal body at Chevin, old man.
Yes. But I knew how to deal with that. And I out-subtled myself, of course. There was a suggestion of smugness. How was my world of mirrors, boy?
Harmodius thought for a moment. Very subtle, you bastard. How did you bind the spirits to the cats?
So nice to discourse with someone intelligent. You learned to leave your body then? Ahh! I see you have not. Interesting.
Harmodius didn’t think he could damage his cause by honesty. No more than by having any contact with Thorn
. Why are you fighting here? he asked. Must it be war?
Harmodius! How unlike you! You wish to negotiate with the power of evil? I thought that you had chosen a different path.
I have come to realise that there is nothing intrinsically evil about the Wild. Or good about the Sun.
Ahh. Thorn gave a suggestion of great pleasure. You have learned much, then.
I am still struggling with the concept Harmodius admitted.
The Wild is far more powerful. Men are doomed. They have no role to play in the future. Too fragmented. Too weak.
That’s not how I see it Harmodius shot back. From where I sit, it is the Wild who is losing.
You delude yourself.
Not as effectively as you deluded me.
Let me make it up to you with knowledge. Look. This is how you can possess anybody you choose. And here – this is how to build your own body. See? I give you this knowledge freely. Come. Be a god. You are worthy. And I’m bored-
Harmodius laughed aloud. Bored of monsters and pining for decent company? You betrayed your king and all of humanity, you piece of shit. As swiftly as he could, with all the borrowed power of the well, he slammed the link closed.
He sat back against the bole of the tree and examined the conversation.
‘I think that went well,’ he said aloud.
But Thorn had planted something in him, a seed in damp soil. It was like finding a beautifully wrapped package on your doorstep.
He put the packages in a room in his memory palace, and he carefully walled that room off from his consciousness. He twinned off a second self to remain in the room.
The second self opened the first package. A third self stood ready with an axe.
The phantasm was heartbreakingly beautiful. Thorn had been a great magus, of course.
Harmodius allowed his second self to subsume himself in the complexities of the working.
He shut down the room, withdrew his second self, and sat in another created room in his memory palace, a comfortable room with a circle of armchairs. His second self sat in another, wrote the phantasms out in longhand, and they discussed them in detail. His third self stood behind the second with an axe.
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