The Red Knight (101 page)

‘It’s in her kidneys,’ Lachlan said, and sat back on his haunches, suddenly defeated. ‘Sweet Jesu!’

The captain had slept in his harness like everyone else, his helmeted head in the corner of the curtain wall where the west wall met the north tower. Four assaults had failed
to re-take the wall, but he was so tired—

‘Boats on the river, Captain.’ Jack Kaves, senior archer, stood over him. ‘I brought you a cup of beer. Young Michael tried to wake you and went off to find more
wine.’

The captain took the beer, rinsed his mouth and spat onto the mound of dead boglins outside the wall, and then took a long pull. Half of the mound of boglin bodies was still moving, so that the
whole pile seemed to writhe – and they made mewling sounds like a pile of kittens, somehow more horrible than the screams of men.

No more men were screaming. The wounded had been sent up the hill to the fortress during a lull between attacks – the Knights of Saint Thomas, like their sisters, were doctors as well as
fighters, and they gave basic care and rigged stretchers between horses. And the enemy killed every wounded man they could.

He got slowly to his feet. The weight of his armour and his own fatigue combined to make the process of rising painful – his neck hurt like he had been kicked by a horse.
‘Michael?’ he asked, confused and looking around.

‘In the store rooms,’ Kaves said.

‘Jack, help me get my helmet off,’ the captain said. He unbuckled his chinstrap, and Jack lifted the helmet clear of his head. The aventail was clotted with gore, which dragged
across his face. The visor was gone.

He unlaced his arming cap. It was one of Mag’s, and with the intense interest of total exhaustion, he noted that she had embroidered his lacs d’amour across the crown – lovely
work.

The cap was full of power. He hadn’t seen it before – perhaps hadn’t been
able
to see it. He held it closer and saw that every stitch held a tiny rainbow of light
– the whole, with the lines of embroidery, was not unlike a set of tiny fish scales.

Jack Kaves whistled.

The captain turned and looked at his helmet, which had a great gouge in it where some weapon had punched right through it. Indeed, with all too little effort, the captain could remember the
boglin chief’s scythes, slicing at his unvisored face and never quite reaching it.

‘Well, well,’ he said. He leaned forward, and Jack upended a pot of river-water over his head.

The old archer handed him a rag and he dried his hair, face and beard. While he used the rag, he walked along the wall, feeling the damp spread down inside his breastplate. He could all but hear
it rusting. Michael was going to be—

There were, indeed, boats on the river. Fifty row galleys – obviously crewed by men.

He stood and watched them for several long minutes.

Jack Kaves stood beside him, holding out a sausage. ‘What’s it mean, Cap’n?’ he asked.

The captain gave a wry smile. ‘It means we win,’ he said. ‘Unless we screw it up really badly, we win.’

Albinkirk – Desiderata

Lady Almspend shook her head. She was tying the points of her sleeves back. ‘Don’t be a ninny. That’s fat. You there – get my kit-bag up from the hold.
The barbs – I have a tool for them.’

‘You do?’ Lachlan asked.

Almspend took the Queen’s hand. ‘I know you can hear me, my lady. Stay with us. Take power from the sun – take strength. I can get this out, with a little luck.’

Lachlan grunted.

An oarsman came up the foredeck ladder with her leather bag.

‘Dump it on the deck,’ she ordered. He did, breaking an ink bottle and putting black ink on every shift she owned.

She snatched the item she sought – a pair of matching halves, like a mould for an arrow.

‘Hold on, my lady,’ she said. ‘This will hurt.’

She pushed the mould over the arrow – in and in, along the path of the original wound, and the Queen moaned, and a long line of saliva mixed with blood came out of her mouth.

Lachlan spat. ‘She’ll—’

‘Shut up,’ said Lady Almspend. She gave her moulds a twist and they snapped over the arrowhead – covering the wicked barbs.

‘Pull it out,’ she said to Lachlan.

He tugged and looked at her.

‘Pull it out, or she dies,’ Lady Almspend insisted.

Lachlan set his shoulders, hesitated, and then pulled. The arrow – moulds and all – popped free with a horrible sucking noise.

Blood spurted after it.

Lissen Carak – Peter

Nita Qwan knew that the great battle had started. But he was cooking. He had built a small oven of river clay, fired it himself, and now he was making a pie.

A third of the Sossag warriors were watching him. Sometimes they clapped. It made him laugh.

The pair of boglins were back, too. If you didn’t look too closely at their bodies they looked like a pair of rough-hewn, slightly misshapen back-country men.

They lay full length in the grass, beyond the circle of men, so that their wing-cases were atop them like upturned boats. When they approved of his cooking, they rubbed their back legs
together.

His pie was the size of a mill wheel.

His fire was even larger – a carefully dug pit that he had filled with coals from patient burning of hardwoods.

There was no reason that the project should work, but it kept him busy, and it entertained the other warriors.

Nita Qwan wondered what Ota Qwan intended. The man had touched up his paint, polished his bronze gorget, sharpened his sword and his spear and all his arrows, and now he lay watching Peter cook
with the other warriors.

Waiting.

The problem with a pie was that you never really knew if it was done.

Battle seemed to have some of the same qualities.

Nita Qwan went and sat with the pie for a while, and then he went over and squatted on his heels by Ota Qwan.

The war chief raised his head off his arms. ‘Is it done yet?’ he asked.

Nita Qwan shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Or yes.’

Ota Qwan nodded seriously.

Skahas Gaho laughed.

‘Why are we not on the field?’ Nita Qwan asked.

‘Pie isn’t done yet,’ Ota Qwan said, and all the senior warriors laughed. There was a unanimity to their laughter that told Peter that Ota Qwan had passed some important test
of leadership. He was the war leader, and they did not contest it. A subtle change but a real one.

Ota Qwan rolled over, carefully brushing bits of fern from the grease that carried his paint. ‘Thorn is going to fight the knights in the fields,’ he said. ‘Fields from which
every scrap of cover has been burned.’

The older warriors nodded, like a chorus.

Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘We almost lost a lot of warriors last night,’ he said. ‘I won’t risk the people on such foolishness again. This time, we will go when it is right for
us to go. Or not. And the pie is as good a sign as any.’

Off by the edge of the clearing, a woman – Ojig – sat up quickly, and her sister, Small Hands, stiffened like a dog at the scent of a wolf, and took up her bow, and suddenly all the
people were moving – weaponed, alert—

‘Qwethnethog!’ shouted Small Hands.

Nita Qwan never heard an order given but in heartbeats, the clearing was empty, save only his fire, his pie, and the six eldest warriors standing around Ota Qwan.

The Qwethnethog emerged from the underbrush moving as fast as a racehorse, and she took several long strides to slow. She looked back and forth at the line of men, and at the fire.

‘Skadai,’ she said in her shrill voice.

‘Dead,’ said one of the aged warriors.

‘Ahh,’ she keened. Made an alien gesture with her taloned paws, and turned. ‘Who leads the Sossag people?’

Ota Qwan stood forth. ‘I lead them in war,’ he said.

The Qwethnethog looked at him, turning her head from side to side. Nita Qwan noted that her helmet crest was a deep scarlet, and the colour came well down her forehead. But the crest was smaller
than on a male. It amused him – even through the terror she broadcast – that he’d become so well-versed in the ways of the Wild as to know male from female, clan from clan. She
was of their own clan – the western Qwethnethog, who lived in the steep hills above the Sossag lakes.

‘My brother speaks for all the Qwethnethog of the Mountains,’ she said in her shrill voice. ‘We are leaving the field, and will fight no more for Thorn.’

Ota Qwan looked at the men to the right and left. ‘We thank you,’ he said. ‘Go in peace.’

The great monster turned and sniffed. ‘Smells delicious,’ she said, to no one in particular.

‘Stay and have a piece,’ Nita Qwan found himself saying.

She coughed – he assumed that was her simulation of laughter. ‘You are bold, little man,’ she said. ‘Come and cook for me another time.’ And with a flick of her
talons, faster than a deer, she was gone into the woods again.

No sooner was she gone then a dozen women came out of the woods – matrons, every one. They spoke so rapidly in Sossag that Nita Qwan couldn’t understand even single words.

So instead, he went and opened his temporary oven.

It was burned all down one side, but the rest had steamed well and the crust was a nice colour – a rich golden brown, shot with darker brown. Perhaps the oven had cracked – he had no
idea why part of the outer rim was so singed.

Nor did he care, for the people came forward like an avenging army and seized the pie as fast as he could cut slices off it. He had made enough, and it wasn’t the way of the people to
complain.

Ota Qwan took a piece – a burned piece. ‘Well done. Now we are fed, and well-fed. We will run all night.’

He ate his piece in four bites and drank a cup of water. Nita Qwan emulated him, and noted that his wife had packed his baskets. He took one on his back. She smiled shyly at him.

He smiled back.

He shouldered his quiver and his sword, and then – with no further discussion – they were off into the trees.

Albinkirk – Desiderata

The row galley landed against the Bridge Fort’s dock; the garrison was alert and manned the walls. The captain was waiting on the dock.

The row galley was full of women, each one more beautiful than the last. It wasn’t what he’d expected.

One woman – short, blonde, and harried – stood on the foredeck. ‘I need a healer,’ she said. ‘A good one.’

The captain turned to Michael. ‘Get me a Knight of the Order,’ he said. Then he turned back. ‘They are superb healers.’ he said. Unfortunately, they had gone on a sortie
to clear the trench at dawn, and they hadn’t returned.

‘I know,’ she spat. ‘How long?’

‘A few minutes,’ he said, hopefully.

‘She doesn’t have a few minutes,’ the woman said, her face cracking. She seemed to clamp down on a sob. ‘She’s lost a great deal of blood.’

‘Who has?’ he asked as he tried to get a leg over the gunwale. A dozen oarsmen reached to pull him into the boat.

‘The Queen,’ she said. ‘I’m Lady Almspend. Her secretary. This is Lady Mary, chief among her ladies.

The Queen.

The Red Knight ignored the people gathered around the figure on the deck. The woman lying on the deck was losing blood at a tremendous rate. He could feel it.

And he had very little strength, at least in terms of power. What he had he’d squandered, fighting boglins. And to heal her here, now, would give himself away – at least as a
Hermeticist.

So much blood.

She was young – imbued with power, herself.

In that moment, he realised that if she died, he could
take
her. As he had taken the boglin chief. She was defenceless – wide open, trying to use her power to strengthen herself.
She drank in the sun’s rays – the pure power of Helios. She was very potent.

He put a hand on her back.

‘Well?’ Lady Almspend asked, impatient. ‘Can you help?’

Vade Retro, Satanus
, the captain thought. He took his arming cap off his head, and pushed it into the wound. Put one finger on the cap as it turned from dirty white to brilliant
scarlet.

He almost grinned. He was linked to a legion of healers. It was easy to forget that.

The palace seemed empty without Prudentia. He knew the basic phantasms of healing now – he wondered if he could release the power of Mag’s bindings to power them. And keep the
power – and funnel it through workings he knew mostly from long ago lessons.

‘Amicia?’ he asked.

She was there. ‘Hello!’ she said. She took his hand, smiled – and let his hand drop.

‘I need to heal someone.’ He wished—

‘Show me,’ Amicia said briskly.

He took a moment to kneel by the fallen statue, and brush a hand across Prudentia’s marble back. ‘I miss you, ‘he said. ‘Help me, if you can.’

Then he took Amicia’s hand and laid it
on the Queen.

She pointed to workings he now knew – through her – in a mind-wrenching moment, he was on her bridge using her memory palace even as he stood on Prudentia’s pedestal and
collected what was left of his power.

It wasn’t enough.

Amicia shook her head. ‘I have nothing to give,’ she said. He looked up at her, and even in the aethereal her exhaustion was obvious. ‘So many wounded,’ she
said.

Sighing for the loss, he tested the binding of power on Mag’s cap. He cast, as Harmodius had taught him, guided by Amicia’s sure hand on his – three workings, each
contingent on the other, like nested equations on the chalkboard. The loosing, the binding for power, the healing. He used what was left of the life force he had taken from the boglin
chief.

‘Saint Barbara, Taurus, Thales. Demetrios, Pisces, Herakleitus. Ionnes the Baptist, Leo, Socrates!’ he invoked, pointed, pivoted, and the room moved – the gears of his
imagined rooms turning at the speed of a man’s muscles, so that the room spun like a top.

It was the most complex conjuring he had ever attempted – and the power that flared from it astounded him, a backlash of released power that rose in the room around him.