Authors: Miles Cameron
‘Dismiss!’ he roared.
The whole body of Nordikans dissolved like salt into warm water and vanished into the torchlit darkness, pouring in through their barracks’ gate, which was six men wide. The Red Knight caught a glimpse of darkly carved wood, knot work, great gaping-mouthed dragons and running dogs and whitewash, and then he was past, and the six men in long chain cotes were swinging along, three on each side, every one of them the size of Tom or Ranald or the Gallish nobles.
‘I’m no captain,’ said Darkhair. He smiled again. ‘I’m acting Spatharios. That means—’
‘Sword bearer,’ chorused Ser Michael and the Red Knight together. They grinned at each other. Ser Jehan rolled his eyes.
‘There is no captain in the palace except the Captain of the Ordinaries,’ Darkhair went on. ‘The commander of the Nordikans is called – Jarl.’ He shrugged. ‘The Jarl was killed by the traitor.’
‘But of course, your men call
you
Captain,’ said the palace functionary. ‘I’m sure we can arrive at some mutually beneficial—’
The Red Knight smiled. ‘I’ll settle for Duke,’ he said.
Bad Tom grinned. ‘Duke it is, then.’
The throne was occupied by one very small, and very magnificent, young woman. She was dressed in purple and gold, and her hair was so wound about with pearls that it was almost impossible to determine what colour her hair might be. A veil of gold tissue hung over her face, and the vestments she wore must have rivalled the Red Knight’s armour for weight.
He walked down the purple carpet, painfully aware that his leather-soled shoes had grass stuck in them from the Field of Ares. The Imperial throne room was intended to strike barbarians dumb with wonder, and the Red Knight found it difficult to keep his gaze fixed on the princess. Over his head, the dome soared a hundred feet, with a round crystal window set exactly in the centre, through which distant stars glittered; the rest of the vault displayed a mosaic of the creation of the world, an hermetical artefact that moved as it retold the story.
Under the wonder of the dome was the Imperial throne, twice the height of a man in gleaming ivory and solid gold, with a single yellow-red cabochon ruby the size of a man’s fist set high over the canopy. It was hermetical, and it glowed from within, casting a rich golden light over the princess.
Sitting on a footstool by the throne – also of ivory – sat an older woman in midnight-blue robes embroidered with stars and moons and crosses. She had a pair of shears in her hand and appeared to be cutting a thread – an act that seemed bizarre amidst the incredible opulence.
The acting chamberlain raised his staff. ‘The Duke of Thrake!’ he called. ‘Megas Ducas of all the Imperial Armies, Admiral of the Fleets, Lord of the Mountains, the Red Knight.’
The Duke had been well briefed in his long walk through the palace – and, today, he was not interested in flouting etiquette. He made himself put one foot boldly in front of the other until he reached the edge of the throne, and then he went to one knee, sweeping his fur cap from his head, and then lay, full length, at the princess’s feet.
She might have been seen to smile, and extended one red-slippered foot.
He kissed her toe and then put his forehead back against the scarlet carpet. Even at this angle, with his head almost flat against the floor, he could see that the marble under the ivory throne was perfectly clean. Further back, among the hangings that partially covered a pagan mosaic by a small door, he could see the four paws of a cat.
He smiled to himself.
He lay on the thick carpet and felt the pain in his hip, the numbness creeping into the small of his back, the fatigue in his shoulders. It was, in fact, very comfortable at the foot of the throne.
Don’t say a word
, he said to his annoying guest.
A mass of rattles, rustles, and clanks told him that his knights were throwing themselves to the floor as well. The cat started at the motion and put its head almost to the marble, looking under the throne to see if there was some threat to which it needed to attend.
‘We gather you have driven the traitor from the walls of my city and won a great victory,’ said the figure on the throne. ‘Accept the plaudits of the throne. We are most grateful. We would wish to meet you and your officers in private audience for further consultations.’
The Duke and his knights lay like effigies on the carpet. One did not speak to the throne during a full audience.
He smelled her perfume – a wonderful mixture of cedar and musk and lavender – as she rose to her feet. Slim, arched feet. He wondered if all the fuss about what kind of shoes the Emperor wore stemmed from the fact that his subjects spent so much of their time seeing him from ground level.
The cat was hunting a rat. The Red Knight could now see both of them.
The princess stepped down from the throne and swept out of the Great Hall with her retinue at her heels, leaving a trace of cedar and musk and lavender in her wake.
The acting chamberlain’s staff tapped the floor rapidly, and all the courtiers began to rise. The Duke gritted his teeth and got slowly to his feet, although his hip shot pulses of low, slow pain into his upper leg and torso like the thump, thump of the bass drum.
The Captain of the Ordinaries appeared at his elbow. ‘Follow me. Very elegant – well done,’ he said with well-practised effusiveness that the new Duke found suspect.
But he didn’t have long to be suspicious. His hip gave a click of protest, and he fell – his whole leg failed to support him. He hit his head, hard.
Ser Milus shouted something about blood.
They carried the new Duke to his new suite of apartments and laid him on a bed magnificent enough to use in a pageant, and he bled on sheets of purest white linen. Palace Ordinaries buzzed around him like wasps, and Ser Thomas grabbed the Spatharios by the shoulder.
‘He needs a doctor!’ Ser Thomas said, his slightly mad eyes bulging.
‘A doctor has been summoned,’ the Captain of the Ordinaries said with a bow.
Tom didn’t like the Captain of the Ordinaries. Something about the man was false – rotten to the core. Blackhair, on the other hand, might have been Tom’s twin brother – black hair, a forehead like the prow of a ship, and blue eyes that looked like they could cut you. Blackhair was tattooed from knuckles to eyelids – Tom thought he liked the look. And Tom was not a man to hesitate.
‘I would’na take water from him if I was dyin’ of thirst,’ Bad Tom said to Blackhair. ‘Do ye ha’ yer own doctor?’
The acting Spatharios shook his head. He turned and growled something in Nordikan at another giant, who pushed forward. ‘Harald Derkensun. I speak Alban – and Archaic.’
Tom watched the Ordinaries for a moment and shook his head. ‘I want these fucking slaves out of the room an’ I want a doctor
you
trust,’ Tom said.
Derkensun nodded. He clapped his hands and rattled orders, and surprised Ordinaries fled the room.
The Captain of Ordinaries bowed. ‘I have sent for our doctor,’ he began, but Tom cut him off.
‘We’ll get our own,’ he said. ‘Ye can go, now.’
The Captain of Ordinaries sighed. ‘I’ll have water and bandages sent.’
Ser Jehan caught Bad Tom’s arm. ‘Mag. I sent for her. And for Toby and Nell and fresh men to stand guard.’
Bad Tom nodded. ‘Aye – thanks.’
Jehan pursed his lips. ‘I didn’t like the look of the pompous bastard either,’ he said.
Mag had the
potentia
to heal, but it was not her strongest hermetical skill, and she settled for easing the pain and manipulating the hip until she had the cracked bone aligned and then placing a light binding on it. ‘Don’t let him move,’ she told Toby.
Toby gave her the look that boys usually save for their mothers. ‘How’m I ta do that, ma’am?’ he asked, more than a little whine in his voice. He looked at Nell. Nell stared at the ground.
Mag stretched and looked at le Bailli, who was rubbing his chin. ‘Christ, I need some sleep,’ he muttered.
Mag turned to Bad Tom. ‘We still need a doctor. A good one.’
‘One of the Nordikans says he knows one – an old Yahadut with powers.’ Bad Tom jutted his chin at the door, where two axe-bearing giants stood. ‘In the Hills, we have great respect for the Yahadut.’
Mag shrugged. ‘Never met one,’ she said. ‘If he’s a doctor and we can trust him, then send for him. Captain’s not too bad for now – but he’ll want to be up, and I’m not sure I set that hip right.’ She yawned.
Derkensun bowed to Mag, and grinned at Bad Tom. ‘I can send a runner to my friend. He’ll find the old man. But it will be morning before we see him. And the princess will be wanting to meet as soon as possible.’ He looked back and forth from Tom to Mag. ‘You are doing the right thing – be wary.’
Tom nodded and pulled his leather bottle over his head. ‘Only water from our canteens until we’re sure we’re safe. Got me, boys?’
The other men in the room nodded.
Later in the night, Nell brought two of the company mutts up from the stables. It took her almost an hour to find the horses, and more time to find the stall where the dogs had been penned. Then she lost her way coming back through the endless corridors and the mutts tried to bite an Ordinary.
Everything is an adventure when you’re a page.
When she presented them to Toby, the squire offered both dogs water in bowls. The younger pup drank enthusiastically. The older bitch smelled the water and whined.
In an hour, the pup was dead.
The company went on alert, and began to mount a separate guard. Exhausted men and women laid plans to defend the Athanatos barracks in case of need, and Ser Milus cleared every man, woman and child out into the night and went from room to room with ten knights in full harness and torches – sweating archers opened every trunk and every wardrobe. Beds were upended.
Two men were caught. Both struggled, and both were killed.
Bad Tom looked like a devil incarnate in the torchlight of the courtyard, his sword red with the second man’s blood – a uniformed Ordinary.
The Captain of the Ordinaries refused to be summoned.
Ser Milus looked at Ser Michael’s plan for the defence of the barracks and approved it. ‘Where’s the guardroom?’ he asked.
Ser Michael indicated the room they were in – a long, open hall with access to the interior and the main hall of the building. It was floored in black and white marble, and had battle scenes on the walls.
‘Well done, Youngling. You ha’ the first watch.’ The older knight grinned. ‘Thanks for volunteering.’ He nodded at Ser Michael’s stylus. ‘You can pass the watch making out a watchbill.’
Mag sat by the Red Knight’s bedside. He was pale and and his skin had the odd clarity of the very sick, and she wondered somewhat hopelessly if she’d set the hip badly, or somehow drained his
ops
with her own working. It was one of the great risks of healing.
She knew that her hopes to find a doctor were largely to do with her own desire to see the Captain in someone else’s charge. Healing was not her field.
She sat, and sewed. Worried and slept.
But when the hermetical working attacked, she felt it coming. She had time to take a breath, raise a shield over the bed, and stand up.
One of the Nordikans died – his blood boiled. The other put a hand on his sword hilt, and whatever malevolence had targeted him washed over him like a thin ink and was gone.
Mag spread her hands as she had learned from the Abbess, and the foul working cleared and the power that washed over Nell’s sleeping form only made her cry out and wake.
‘It eats the stars!’ Nell said, and her eyes closed.
The surviving Nordikan knelt, put a hand on his partner’s forehead, and rose, shaking his own head. ‘Fucking cowardly witches,’ he said.
Mag reached down. Workings have causes. Every stitch leaves a hole in the fabric, however small. Even when the stitches are pulled, a seamstress can see where the old work ran.
She raised her arms and spoke aloud, and the thread that tied her opponent to his working appeared, running out into the corridor.
She summoned the dog – the dead puppy – and set it on the scent. Filled it with her own
ops
to animate it for a few minutes, and sent it, mindless, to hunt for her.
Harald Derkensun watched the dead dog rise and sniff the ground with dismay; he even backed away and drew his sword against the nice old woman.
She nodded at him. ‘You have nothing to fear. Not all witches are cowards.’
Her voice rang with power.
The dog leaped up like a hound and bounded down the corridor outside.
Derkensun was shaken. ‘It was dead.’
‘Still is, more’s the pity, as it was my daughter’s,’ Mag said. ‘Needs must as the devil drives,’ she added.
The dog had only one purpose, and that was to follow the scent. It followed the working, and after running some way the scent of it grew stronger. And stronger still.
The source! It towered over him, and kicked at him.
He became –
light
.
She felt her sending subsume. She narrowed her eyes and just for a moment, the Nordikan thought he saw one of the vicious old witches of the myths of his people – feral crones who guarded an icy hell.
‘Got him,’ she said. And sagged into her chair.
Dawn brought the doctor.
He was old – so old that his moustache and beard had the wispy quality of bad wool. He wore a small cap on his head and carried a tall staff. He arrived with Derkensun, Ser Michael and a young man who was not introduced. Four more Nordikans came, placed the dead guard on a shield and carried him away.
The Yahadut leaned over the bed and put a hand on the Captain’s head – then snatched it back.
‘God of my fathers,’ he said. ‘What blasphemy is this?’
He started to turn, stumbled, and froze.
Ser Michael ignored the old man’s antics. ‘A man was killed in the kitchens, Mag. Killed hermetically – he had burns inside his skin.’
‘He killed the guard – he tried to kill us all,’ Mag said wearily.
‘Bad Tom caught a pair of them too,’ Michael said. ‘This place is riddled with treason.’