The Fell Sword (28 page)

‘What am I to do with you, sir?’ the prior asked. He’d worn his harness for a day and a night as a penance, and every joint in his body ached. And last night sleep had eluded him – mostly because he was old, and had too much on his mind. Like many a sinful priest.

‘Send me somewhere, I suppose,’ the priest said bitterly. ‘Where I can rot.’

Prior Wishart had been a knight and a man of God for almost forty years. He knew the resilience of men – and their willingness to destroy themselves. What he knew of this man, he knew only under the seal of confession. He sat back and sipped more wine.

‘You cannot remain in Harndon,’ he said. ‘To do so would only increase the likelihood of further temptation and sin.’

‘Yes,’ said the younger man, miserably. He was forty years old, handsome in a rough-hewn way, with brown hair cut for convenience under a helmet. ‘I meant no harm by it.’

The prior smiled grimly. ‘But you did harm
.
And you are old enough to see the consequences. You are one of my finest knights – and a fine philosopher. But I can’t have you here. The other men look up to you – what will they do when this becomes public knowledge?’

The man straightened. ‘It will never become public knowledge.’

‘Does that make it less sinful?’ the prior asked.

‘I’m not a fool, thank you, Prior.’ The priest sat straight and glared.

‘Really?’ Prior Wishart asked. ‘Can you truly sit there and say you are not a fool?’

The man recoiled as if struck.

‘I could ask for release from my vows and you’d be shot of me,’ the priest said. For the first time he sounded more contrite than rebellious.

‘Do you wish to be released from your vows, Father Arnaud?’ The prior leaned forward.

Most knights of the order were brothers – some, as Donats, were lay brothers sworn only to obey; some were religious brothers, sworn to chastity, poverty and obedience; a life of arms and prayer and serving in the hospital. A very few became priests. The order asked very little of its fighting brethren besides obedience to orders, but it required a great deal from its priests.

Father Arnaud raised his head. Tears ran down his face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I cannot imagine it.’

The prior’s fingers played with his beard and he glanced down at the pile of scrolls and folded correspondence under his left hand – the cure of his life and his eternal penance – the paperwork. The truth was –
The truth was that Arnaud was one of the best, in the field and in council, and he’d made a terrible mistake. And Wishart didn’t want to punish him. Beyond punching him a few times for being such a love-struck fool.
His eye caught on a black seal with three lacs d’amour picked out in gold leaf – a very expensive, very eye-catching seal.

He popped the seal with his thumb and read through the letter with every sign of pleasure – once he laughed aloud. When he was done, he slapped the rolled scroll against his desk with the sound a crossbow makes when it is released.

‘I will send you to be chaplain to the Red Knight,’ the prior said.

‘That arrogant boy? The godless
mercenary
?’ Father Arnaud sat back, paused, and took a deep breath. ‘But – this is no punishment. Any knight would want to serve – if he could be converted!’

Prior Wishart poured himself more wine. ‘Think on your own shortcomings when you preach to the Red Knight, Arnaud. Arrogance and pride. Selfish assurance. And remember the company he leads – they are men and women like any others, and need a spiritual currency.’

Arnaud knelt and kissed the prior’s hand. ‘I will go with all my heart. I’ll fetch him in for the order, and lead him to good works.’

Wishart gave his priest a wry smile. ‘He does the good works already, Arn. He merely does them while cursing God.’ He leaned over. ‘While you sinned while praising God.’

Arnaud raised a hand as if to deflect a blow.

When the priest was gone, the prior went out on his balcony, a hundred feet above the fecund plains of Jarsay. Close under his walls, the second cutting of hay stood in new-minted ricks; a winter’s fodder for his warhorses at stud, a new generation of heavy chargers that could face the largest foes the Wild had to offer. Further away in the silver moonlight, wheat stood in dark squares, with hedgerows and fences marking field edges to the horizon. Jarsay was rich; the best farmland in the Nova Terra.

To the north, a star flared silver white and dived to earth.

He saw the star form – and saw it fall. He felt the accession of power.

He sipped a little more wine.

Thorn’s latest apotheosis wasn’t even his most pressing problem. The King’s Champion had taken an army into Jarsay to collect taxes, and all he was collecting instead was corpses. And Prior Wishart was trying to decide what he would do if his order’s home farms were threatened.

Even that paled next to the possibility that the King might allow the Captal to appoint his cousin to be the Bishop of Lorica.

‘Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof,’ the prior said quietly, to the night.

Chapter Seven

North of Liviapolis – The Red Knight

C
rossing a river is one of the most complicated and difficult tasks faced by an army and its commander.

Crossing at night isn’t even in the books – the books by Archaics on the art of war that the Red Knight had read and reread as a boy. He thought about them, and reading the strategem while lying full length in front of his mother’s fire – and while she thought he was studying a grimoire.

He smiled.

The company came down to the banks of the Meander out of the mountains, moving quickly. There were guides at every fork in the road, guides at every corner, every gap in the stone walls. The guides were all Gelfred’s men; Amy’s Hob and Rob the Beard and Diccon Browford and young Dan Favour, who was big enough to wear harness and clever enough to be a scout, too. They each had their own pages and archers, now – Amy’s Hob laughed to be considered a leader, but he was patient and cautious and his pages learned scouting quickly enough.

They’d point the column towards its next goal, and then canter away into the darkness, looking for Gelfred, who ran the chain from the back of his horse, a league in front of the Captain, with a small sphere of red mage light perched on the point of his peaked bassinet. Only the men on whom he’d cast his
phantasm
of sight could see the light. It made him relatively easy to find – by his own scouts, anyway – and allowed him to direct them at speed. Once they rejoined him, he sent each scout to his next guide post. He consulted the chart spread over his high pommel, and he used his not inconsiderable
ars magicka
to manage all the information brought to him by forty men, pinning their reports into non-dimensional pigeon holes in his memory palace image of the terrain.

Hermeticism and good scouting and a long summer spent in harness kept the company moving through the dark at the speed of a walking horse, across strange roads and through alien country. Because these factors made it look easy, the young sprigs of nobility who made up the new men-at-arms in the company thought that it was easy.

And so the company came down out of the mountains, through the olive groves, and to the banks of the Meander at the speed of a walking horse. Which is to say that they arrived like a thunderbolt.

The company rode up to the top of the ford in a column of fours, with the men-at-arms on their warhorses mounted in the outer files, and the carts, women, archers and pages in two files in the middle. This formation had been practised for two weeks without much explanation.

The Red Knight rode past Ranald Lachlan and a pair of his drovers, who were busy belaying a heavy rope. Lachlan waved. The Red Knight saluted with a smile that was just visible in the strong moonlight. The rain clouds were blowing off.

‘Gelfred?’ he asked. ‘This is a ford?’

Gelfred shrugged. ‘If we were all twice the height of Tom, here, this would be a ford,’ he said. ‘In dry years, they use this. Otherwise, it’s unguarded.’ He met his Captain’s eye in the moonlit dark. ‘Best I could do,’ he said.

We can do it
, Harmodius said inside the Red Knight’s head.
Almost five feet deep at the deepest point, just past mid-stream.

The Red Knight nodded to his invisible companion. ‘Very well. It’s going to be deep in the middle. My source says five feet.’

‘Sweet Jesus!’ Michael cursed. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, mostly to Gelfred, the only non-swearing man in the company.

‘The wagons will be wet through,’ Gelfred pointed out.

The Red Knight had an apple, and was eating it while watching the river.

‘And it will take time. If we get beat, we won’t get back across in daylight with our baggage,’ he added.

Bad Tom spat. ‘We won’t get beat.’

A dozen men made the horned sign of aversion. Wilful Murder spat and touched the wood of his buckler. Even Ser Jehan looked unhappy.

‘It would certainly be useful to know if the Vardariotes have accepted our offer and left their barracks,’ the Captain said aloud.

Ser Alcaeus winced, but he had no report to offer.

White moonlight fell on glittering armour and well-disciplined horses, who stood calmly; red leather saddles were brown-grey against the dusty grey of the ground and the dark green of the olive trees on either hand. A farmhouse, shuttered tight and dark, lay silent to the right of the road – really no more than a gravel gully between the walls – that led to the abandoned ford. And the moonlight shone down on the river, reflected in ten thousand shards that made a bright white road all the way to the far shore. The effect was so powerful that a simple man might think that the water was shallow.

No one on earth has that much power, boy. Not to walk across the water.

The Captain smiled. He stripped off his gauntlets and rooted in the draw-string pouch sewn to the front of his belt-purse – the one he wore even in armour. He came up with two bone dice.

‘Dice?’ asked Michael.

‘He’s a loon,’ Tom said.

Sauce shook her head.

The Captain stood in his stirrups, rattled the dice in his hand for a moment, and threw them as hard as he could out into the current of the river. If they made a splash, no one heard it.

‘Go,’ said the Captain.

Gelfred nodded and took the scouts across in a mass. Every man – and woman – watched them trot into the ford, up to their fetlocks and then their hocks, and then the horses were swimming – the men soaked – and then the horses were walking again. Rob’s page, Tom Hall, came adrift from his horse in mid-stream, but he kept his head and his horse’s mane, and despite being the smallest he got over and mounted again.

Gelfred flashed the red on his helmet three times, and the Red Knight nodded to his staff.

‘They’re across,’ he said. Among the men-at-arms, only he, Tom, Jehan and Milus could see the red light on Gelfred’s helm. It occurred to the Captain, then and there, that they should all have mage lights – in different colours – for night operations.

I’ll bet the ancients used mage lights.

Harmodius grunted, in an
aethereal
way.
I never bothered with those books – but there are many on war. From the Archaic Empire, and even earlier.

You interest me, old man.
The Red Knight looked around.
But I need peace for a few hours.

It’s awfully dull in here. But very well. I’m sure you’ll call me when you need me to destroy something
, the old man said with some bitterness.

In the strong moonlight he could see all his scouts fanning out across the river.

‘You asleep?’ asked Bad Tom. ‘You look half wode. And yer lips are moving.’

The Red Knight straightened, feeling the weight of command like a belt of lead on his hips. ‘I must be wode. I ride with Mad Tom.’ He looked around at his staff – larger since the spring, with more knights under his direct command. They were his reserve – itself an Archaic concept. Everyone was ready.

‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

Bad Tom laughed, and put spurs to his stallion, who put his steel-horned head down and plodded into the water on the upstream side. As he walked forward into the sluggish, sparkling water, he angled to the left, out and away from the main column.

Fifty men-at-arms mounted on their warhorses walked into the current behind him, in a long single file.

Sauce led fifty more men-at-arms off to the right, downstream.

‘What was that about?’ Cully asked Bent.

Bent shrugged. ‘Cap’n does strange things. You know that.’

Ser Michael leaned in between the two archers. ‘You gentlemen are missing the benefits of a classical education. When he threw the dice, he meant, “the die is cast”. As in, there won’t be any going back.’ He looked at the two senior archers, who stared back at him. Finally, he snorted, turned his horse, and joined Bad Tom’s file in crossing upstream.

‘Could have just said,’ muttered Cully.

‘Arrogant pup,’ agreed Bent.

The crossing took the company less than half an hour, and then they were moving at a cart’s pace along the track on the far side.

There was no crisis, but small emergencies slowed their march. Lis’s cart lost a wheel and had to be repaired. That meant sending up the column for the two wheelwrights that the company retained, and they had to go back down the column with their cart and enlist twenty archers to raise the cart bed. The actual repair was the work of two minutes and a portable anvil, but all together it took longer than crossing the river had.

Twice, the whole column had to halt because Gelfred was unsure of their way in the maze of unmarked roads that criss-crossed the fields of the Morean heartland. The field walls were all at least six feet tall and in many cases twelve feet tall – or rather, aeons of use had sunk the roads six feet into the stony soil, meaning that even a mounted man on a big horse couldn’t see over the walls on either side. The roads themselves were just big enough for a full-sized wagon or three horsemen abreast – sometimes narrower if an old tree grew out into the road bringing the attendant wall with it. Sometimes the old walls had tumbled down into the road and needed to be cleared, and the Captain moved the company’s pioneers – in effect, his peasant labourers – to the head of the column to clear the road as he went.

The Red Knight let Gelfred have his head. The huntsman was better at understanding terrain than anyone else; if he lost his way, it was best to give him time to find it again. So he sat, reining in his frustration as hard as he reined his warhorse, a big gelding with whom he was just beginning to have a warm relationship.

Gelfred rode ahead in person, vanishing into the slate grey. He came back two very long minutes later.

‘I have it,’ he said. ‘My apologies, my lord. Things look different in this light.’ He shrugged. His stress showed clearly on his face.

The Red Knight clapped him on an armoured shoulder. ‘Lead on.’

Gelfred had Amy’s Hob to hand, and his page. ‘Go fetch everyone in – we’re too far west,’ he said. To the Captain, he said, ‘We need to wait until the skirmisher screen is out again.’

The Captain looked at the wolf’s tail of dawn – it was a false dawn, but their time was running out. ‘I misdoubt that we have the time to wait for your men to collect themselves,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to be our own pickets.’

Gelfred nodded. ‘I’ll lead, my lord. You know the risk.’

The Red Knight laughed aloud. ‘We could be ambushed!’ he said. ‘Let’s go. I hear the early bird gets the worm.’

Gelfred winced.

Ranald Lachlan came up level with the huntsman. ‘Why is he so fucking cheerful in the morning? But it could be worse – he could be blaspheming.’

Gelfred sighed. ‘I take your point,’ he muttered, and turned his horse’s head.

Unfortunately their troubles weren’t over.

With no scouts, there was no one to move early farmers off the road. And so it was, as they came to a major crossroads somewhere within a mile of their goal, they found the entire intersection filled from wall to wall with sheep. Hundreds of sheep.

The two shepherds were mounted on ponies, directing a dozen dogs with whistles and shaken staffs. Gelfred’s Archaic wasn’t up to the altercation. And the intersection was blocked as completely as it would have been if a company of armoured spearmen were standing on the same ground. Worse, the warhorses hated having the sheep close in among their vulnerable legs.

‘Just kill them and have done with it,’ shouted Bad Tom.

The Captain reached into his belt pouch and rode forward. ‘Toby!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Money!’

In a matter of moonlit moments the shepherds went from from terrified belligerence to eager cooperation. Whips cracked, dogs barked, and the vast, amorphous herd of sheep began to move back along the road and up one of the side roads. The shepherds bowed and called benedictions, and the company was finally free to move. The sky was definitely grey.

Gelfred’s scouts had caught up during the delay and finally they spread out again in front, covering all three branching roads. ‘Almost there,’ Gelfred said. He had gone as grey as the dawn.

‘Can you imagine what this would be like if we had to move and fight?’ asked Michael.

No one answered.

They moved at a trot now that their flanks were secure, and as the sun crested the city in front of them, gilding a hundred church towers each topped with a dome of copper gilt that burned like a new fire in the rising sun – as three thousand monks in fifty monasteries began to chant the hymns that marked the break of a new day – as seventy thousand cocks crowed their relief that the darkness was over – as a quarter of a million people rose to face another day of uncertainty – they reached the main road. It was a circuit road a thousand years old, build from hewn and matched stone, wide enough for six carts to travel abreast, and it ran all the way around the walls from the Gate of the Vardariotes on the eastern shore of the Morean Sea, around nine miles of walls to reach the Royal Gate at the north-west end of the circuit.

The company arrived at its chosen point – where the road dipped into a low vale. There wasn’t a scrap of cover for a long bowshot in any direction, except a single huge oak tree and a small villa well off the road.