Authors: Miles Cameron
The Duke turned to the Castellan. ‘I can pay two years’ salaries,’ he said.
Lord Phokus bowed. ‘My lord, I would say that would dissipate any – ahem – hard feeling.’
The Duke inclined his head. ‘Just so that we understand each other,’ he said, ‘I expect that once paid, your troops will remain loyal. Or put it another way – once bought, they should stay bought.’
The Castellan’s cheeks burned. ‘My lord,’ he said, his words clipped.
The Duke nodded. ‘I know it is crass to discuss such things. But Lord Phokus, I will execute – quite publicly – any of my soldiers who commits a crime in the streets of this town. So please have your men think on how I will treat a garrison who takes my wages and betrays me.’
‘You, or the Emperor?’ Phokus asked.
‘A fair question. The Emperor, naturally. But as I am now the Duke of Thrake, you may be saddled with me for some years.’ The Duke sipped his wine. ‘Is our mutual friend joining us?’
‘I don’t know – will you bully me, too?’ asked a plainly dressed man. He was smaller than the Duke and had dark hair and dark eyes and most men ignored him. Ser Ranald, on the other hand, plucked Mag’s sleeve and pointed, and her eyes widened.
The Duke bowed. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘I mean no bullying.’
The nondescript man smiled. ‘I trust you found all your food.’
The Duke nodded again. ‘It was beyond splendid, sir.’
‘Lord Phokus has his own issues with the former Duke of Thrake and does not need to be threatened into this alliance. Likewise, Lord Phokus, Ser Gabriel here threatens you only because he is tired, and not because he is one of nature’s bullies. He has, in fact, worked surprisingly hard for the restoration of the Emperor. Where is Thomas Lachlan?’
Bad Tom came forward with Ranald at his side.
‘Do you recognise me, Thomas?’ asked the man.
‘Aye. I’d know you whatever skin you wore.’ Tom towered over the smaller man, and nonetheless didn’t seem the bigger man.
‘I have a private solar for our ease,’ said Lord Phokus.
‘Then let us retire,’ the Duke said. He took Lord Phokus’s arm. ‘I apologise if I laid it on too thick.’
Phokus smiled a crooked smile. ‘I ask myself every hour if I have indeed sold this castle to you. It is painful to be reminded of it.’ He shrugged. ‘But my men need to be paid. The whole town depends on their wages.’
They went through a door to a low room with a ceiling worked in dark blue paint and bright gold stars, with tapestries of hunting along one wall and nine worthy women along the other wall. Father Arnaud joined them, and Mag, and Ser Gavin.
Toby slipped through the door and put a cup of something on the table in front of their guest, who took the head of the table. He lifted it and tasted.
‘Ah – cider. Well chosen, Toby.’
Toby flushed and all but ran from the room.
‘Call me Master Smythe,’ said the nondescript man. ‘Listen, friends. I am here only briefly. Tom, I have looked into your matter.’ Master Smythe spread his hands wide, and then folded them together – an inhuman gesture, as his steepled fingers met the way an artist might draw them, folded perfectly flat and pointing straight at heaven.
In fact, watching Master Smythe was a little liking watching a puppet show.
‘In brief, then. Hector – the Drover – was killed by Sossag Outwallers. They were, at the time, in the service of the entity who now calls himself Thorn and was formerly the magister Richard Plangere. But my investigations have shown that Thorn himself is merely the tool of one of my kind.’
Tom smiled, although the smile never reached his eyes. ‘Lovely, then. Show me to the bastard.’
Master Smythe shook his head. ‘It is a great deal more complicated than that, Tom.’ He sighed. ‘I think one of my kin has decided to break a certain compact that our kind has made. That is all I will say just now. Even saying this much – that my kind have a compact with some of yours, and that this compact is threatened – forces me to take sides in this matter.’
Smoke trickled out of Master Smythe’s nose.
The Duke nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Master Smythe, but please remember that we are not at fault,’
Smythe looked down the table. ‘I was going to say that no one is innocent. But that is the merest casuistry, and we’re better than that. So I will say that I have taken certain precautions. Gabriel, you have done well, but you will need to push your timetable forward. Tom, I know that you mislike me but I must ask you to follow me west and take up the duties of Drover. Lord Phokus, your help was, and will remain, instrumental – Ser Gabriel will need to be able to move east and west on this road for more than a year to come, and this fortress may become the focus of several armies. Which, despite their very different agendas, are being moved by a single will. Gabriel, I have brought you some interesting materiel. Use it wisely. My friends – when I must finally tip my hand I will come under attack, and then things will become very difficult. I apologise for all of the ambiguity and the cloak and dagger, but if I show my hand early the consequences would be most dire.’
The Duke laughed. ‘And they accuse me of having a flair for the dramatic. Master Smythe, what kind of consequences are you thinking of?’
Master Smythe raised his eyebrows. ‘The extermination of humankind in this sphere,’ he said. He smiled, and his eyes locked with the Duke’s. ‘Are those stakes high enough to interest you, Gabriel?’
The Duke nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Good. Because, while we are, in every possible way, the underdog, the enemy has no idea who you are. Or what I can do.’ Master Smythe nodded, and his smile was as natural as his hand gestures were false. ‘It is exciting to have a true adversary after aeons of neutrality. It will require one of your God’s miracles for us to triumph.’ He nodded. ‘But I have always found that it is far more entertaining to be the underdog. There is more honour if you triumph, and no censure if you fail.’
‘Not my God,’ the Duke said, somewhat automatically.
Father Arnaud snorted. And Mag nodded.
And Harmodius said,
Ahh. How I feared this.
The Sacred Island – Kevin Orley and Thorn
Orley had ordered a castle built, and instead he had a series of sheds, each fouler than the last. The young men who followed him – a growing number – lacked the inclination to build in hardwood, or to rig latrines or shingle a roof properly. He could terrify them, but he had a hard time motivating them unless there was a town to plunder. They had dead eyes and preferred raw violence to any semblance of discipline.
The sheds angered him every day.
He had more than three hundred warriors, now, who ranged in age from eleven to seventeen. A few of the older boys were fully trained warriors, and whenever he had the spirit to rouse himself from the fire, he made the older men take the boys out in the snow where he drilled them as Southern soldiers were drilled. From Nepan’ha he had crossbows, and he begged Thorn for bolts until the sorcerer made him so many that he could have used them as tent stakes – a massive outpouring of the sorcerer’s power, but one that allowed Orley to turn his least useful boys into silent killers.
He made them build a long shed for target practice, and another in which to sleep, and every time he had fifty more boys, he forced them to build another shed.
He wanted to dig a well, but in the end he had to settle for water brought from the sacred lake. That made all the boys afraid, for a while. But familiarity bred contempt so they drank the sacred water every day, fought among themselves, and the results were brutal.
There were girls as well as boys among his recruits, and they were used regularly and none kindled – some dark magery, no doubt, but nothing that Orley needed to concern himself with, although their blank eyes and lank hair felt like accusations every day. They didn’t scream, and they didn’t complain any more than the rest of his child soldiers, and he went among them like a war god, ordered them to train, to wash, to strip, to dress . . . and eventually they obeyed. The older boys seldom obeyed unless he killed one of them.
Orley grew taller. It shocked him – he’d have said he was past his last growth. He was, in fact, standing looking at the bottom of his beaded leggings, and his bare anklebones, and wondering why he’d suddenly grown four fingers, and what this portended, when suddenly the human skin of Thorn was with him.
‘Choose me your two most useless mouths,’ Thorn said.
‘Too easy,’ Orley said. He led the mage out into the main shed, and found a big boy with slabs of muscle like hams on his legs and arms. The boy was pissing on another boy while three others held him down.
‘Tail!’ Orley called.
The big boy raised his breach clout. ‘Hah! What?’ he whined.
‘You are wanted.’ Orley cuffed the boy and then grabbed the other – the runt being held by the others. ‘And the Squirrel. The master wants you both.’
The two boys were immediately silent, and their fear stank.
‘Things will begin to move, now,’ Thorn said. ‘Your warriors do not impress me, Orley.’ His voice was hoarse and low. The warriors cringed away from him.
Perhaps the long shard of wood that transfixed his abdomen and the curl of intestine protruding from his lower back was the reason. Or perhaps it was the smell.
‘You are injured?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Thorn.
Orley had never found the sorcerer so alien as in that moment. But he made himself shrug. He made himself stand up, like Orley. ‘Pulse and Dragonfly tell me that the Galles have sacked Mont Reale.’ He paused to watch his master, but the effort was wasted. In the skin of Speaker of Tongues, Thorn gave nothing away. ‘We will have many more recruits if we make war on them,’ Orley asserted.
Thorn didn’t even shrug. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We will use them as allies. They have broken the Northern Huran. There is nothing to be had from broken people.’
Orley’s eyes encompassed the boys and girls who made his ‘army’. ‘I see,’ he said.
Not for the first time, Orley wondered how fickle his new master was, and how easily discarded his little force might be.
‘When I am done with a project here, I will go to the Galles and help them determine their next course of action.’ Thorn nodded. His face was perfectly blank. It was like communicating with a stone.
Orley stood his ground. ‘I need armour, swords, more crossbows – helmets. Perhaps horses. Space to train.’
Thorn nodded. ‘Good. I can find these things.’
‘When will we fight?’ Orley asked. ‘You were going to deliver Muriens to me.’
‘His wife did well to warn him against me.’ Thorn sounded distant. ‘It will all happen in the spring. Train well, Orley. Be worthy. Because with the Galles, I may not need you, as you do not need this pair, even though this one is of the strongest.’
Both boys began to weep.
They were still weeping when Thorn fed them to the eggs, which ate their souls.
N’gara – Redmede, Mogon, and the Faery Knight
Insistent knocking at his door, and Redmede threw on a robe and went to open it. The whole house shook – the straw mats let in gusts of cold air. He drew his falchion, opened the door—
Mogon stood there, as tall as a warhorse, her plumes erect on her head. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I need you. Dress warmly.’
Redmede looked back at Bess, who was sitting up on their snug pallet, throwing a heavy wolf fur around her shoulders.
‘I’ll come,’ Redmede said. It was a complex decision. She might eat him. Even now, he could feel the wave front of her rage. But she had more control than any of the other Wardens and her urgency communicated itself even through the medium of her alien body.
He pulled on two pairs of hose, one over another, and then deerskin leggings over all, and took Outwaller shoes – heavy moose hide, lined in fur – off the wall and laced them high on his legs. He had a good wool gown in Jack white, and he wore his falchion and took his bow, which he strung in the warmth of his little hut. He buttoned his old hood onto his head and put a fur cap atop it, and then pulled light gloves over his hands. Bess pulled heavy mittens like a knight’s gauntlets made in wool and leather over his gloves.
Bess was more than just his partner, now. He saw the Hold through her eyes, sometimes – she loved to see the faeries, the irks, and the Wardens. To her, they were childhood tales made real, and she was living in some sort of paradise. He only saw the Wardens as monsters, and her vision of them steadied him.
‘Help her,’ Bess whispered. ‘If Mogon seeks your aid, it can only help all of us.’
He kissed her, and went out into the brutal cold and snow.
The tall daemon was wrapped in furs, so that she was twice as big in girth as usual. ‘My kind broadcast all our heat,’ she admitted. ‘Winter is very dangerous for us.’
‘What’s this about, lady?’ he asked.
‘Can you ride?’ she asked.
He made a face. ‘There’s not a horse in this town,’ he said.
She trotted off, her mighty three-toed feet crushing the snow flat for him, and he could walk easily except where she went through a drift. But she led him only as far as the cavernous main gate of the Hold. ‘Tapio keeps war elk. Tamsin has one saddled for you.’
‘What is this about?’ Redmede asked.
‘Tapio is missing in the snow,’ she said. ‘I can find him, but I need help. And this is not something he, or I, will wish to have known.’
‘Shit,’ Redmede said. He felt hopelessly over his head but he clung to how much Bess liked these . . . monsters. And Tamsin had ever been like a creature out of a faery tale to him. He plunged into the cavern, through the curtain of warmth, some mighty working that protected the dooryard, and just inside, a pair of small irks held a sharp-faced animal like a moose but with back-swept antlers. The animal had the complete tack of a horse, although oddly shaped, decorated with tiny bells over mottled green leather.
The two irks bowed.
Tamsin, who Bess called the Faery Queen, was standing on the other side of the animal. He felt her presence – and smelled her, too. She smelled like sunlight and cinnamon and balsam of Gilead all together. He bowed. It was reflexive – he, Bill Redmede, every man’s equal, had no hesitation in bowing to the Faery Queen.