The Fell Sword (24 page)

The Comnenos men-at-arms drew together and took their lances from the leather sockets by their stirrups.

Mortirmir knocked on the gates again. His leather-clad knuckles made little noise against bronze-clad oak gates that were fifteen feet tall. Finally he drew his dagger and used the hilt to rap on the gate.

‘Who goes there?’ answered the sentry.

‘Food!’ Mortirmir replied.

The hoof beats were coming closer in the darkness, and sounded like thunder.

Above his head, Harald Derkensun leaned out. ‘Morgan!’ he called.

‘Here!’ Mortirmir called back.

‘I can’t open up. There’s armed men in the streets – hundreds of them. If they caught the gates open—’ Derkensun sounded unhappy.

‘Christ on the cross!’ Mortirmir shouted. ‘We have two carts and twenty men. Open the gates, for the love of God. We’ll be in before you can say “Ave Maria”.’

Derkensun sighed audibly. ‘I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry, Morgan. I take my oath to the Emperor very seriously.’

From the lead cart, a voice called, ‘Jesus and all the saints! Open the gate, Harald!’

The sound of horse’s hooves was filling the night.

‘Anna!’ Derkensun said. He sounded utterly wretched.

There was a low thump, and the Nordikan landed on his feet by Mortirmir. ‘I cannot open the gate,’ he said. ‘So I’ll die by you, here.’

The Great Square of the city was itself larger than many Alban towns. It stood between the ancient arena, where chariot races were still held, and the palace, and the entire square was lined in oak trees and paved in marble slabs cunningly worked with deep grooves to run rainwater off into gutters. Seen from above, the grooves spelled out whole chapters of the gospels. In the centre of the Great Square stood a mixed group of statuary, much of it impossibly ancient; there was the great Empress Livia, in brightly gilt bronze, driving her war-chariot against the western irks; there was Saint Aetius, standing like a young David, with his sword against his thigh, apparently contemplating his conquests – the Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora; and even more ancient men and women. Mortirmir knew them all. They had been part of one of the entrance exams.

The horsemen entered the darkened square from the south-east. They were at least three hundred strong, and as they came on the stradiotes prepared themselves like brave men. Derkensun kissed Anna.

She slapped him lightly. ‘You could have just opened the gate,’ she said. ‘You great oaf. And I came all this way for you.’

Derkensun grinned. It was visible because Mortirmir had just cast his second ever successful
phantasm
– the first working any student ever learned. He made light, and set it on the peak of his borrowed helmet, so that it illuminated the group by him with a reddish light.

He was grinning uncontrollably.

‘Perhaps you should not have made us quite so obvious?’ Derkensun murmured. The professional soldiers seemed to agree.

In a rustle of hooves and harness, the house guards rode away, and the guild crossbowman cursed them.

Across the square, the horsemen came on. Mortirmir’s light glinted redly off horses and harness studded in gold or brass, and their tunics were scarlet – surely that couldn’t just be the light—

‘Vardariotes!’ said Derkensun.

They didn’t form for battle. They were moving at a fast trot, and they crossed the square in a column of fours, with a small pennon at their head made of silk, with a horse’s tail attached to it. The leader held a mace of what appeared to be solid gold, and he used it to salute the palace gate. The men – and a few women – were barbarians, Easterners, with black hair and slanted eyes and scraggly beards or clean-shaven, and every one of them wore a heavy horn bow in a scabbard at their waists, and a long, curved sword.

They entered the main road to the Gate of Ares, and the long column vanished into the arched gate of the Great Square as if it were being devoured by a dragon. In two hundred heartbeats, only the sound of their passage remained, echoing around the square, and floating on the night air from their new route.

When they were gone, voices inside ordered the Outer Court’s gate opened, and the wagons went into the yard. Mortirmir was too fatigued to be afraid, but he could see relief on every face.

An older woman in court clothes came into the yard from the palace end – the courtyard was fully illuminated with cressets and torches – and called softly for Blackhair. The Nordikan turned the carts over to Ordinaries – he’d inspected them personally – and Mortirmir was standing to hand.

‘My lady,’ he said, with a bow.

The older woman nodded. ‘Who were they?’ she asked. Her voice betrayed nothing.

‘My lady, they were the Vardariotes. They passed away to the Gate of Ares.’ He spat. ‘The traitors.’

‘Judge them not until they are proved,’ said Lady Maria.

The Court of Galle – The King, his Horse and Lady Clarissa

‘My lord,’ breathed Lady Clarissa de Sartres. She was leaning forward, her lute clutched against her. The King had risen from his stool in his private receiving room – and put his hand on her shoulder.

He leaned down and ran his lips across the exposed nape of her neck and she stiffened. She scrambled away, her hand straying to the amulet that her great-uncle Abblemont had given her, and her thumb touched the disc at the base of the crucifix.

The King was small but he was strong and very quick, and he had both of her hands, and then he pushed her against the fruitwood side table and pulled her veil off her head and put his mouth on hers. She stumbled, and used the stumble to cover a kick to his knee – and he threw her roughly to floor.

She screamed.

Abblemont came into the private solar without undue haste a few of her terrified heartbeats later. Clarissa was under the King, and he had her skirts above her knees and she was weeping. Abblemont left the door open.

‘People are coming, Your Grace,’ the Horse said. ‘Let Clarissa up, please.’

The girl had enough spirit to slap the King as soon as he released her hands, and he slammed the heel of his hand into her chin.

Abblemont dragged him off her. He was a head taller, much heavier, and he trained constantly. He managed to lift the King clear of the ground and set him on his stool without doing him much harm.

‘Get up and go – before the Queen comes,’ Abblemont said over his shoulder to his niece.

The King sucked in a deep breath, as if he had just awakened. ‘She made me!’ he said.

Abblemont turned on his niece. ‘I told you never to be alone with him,’ he said.

She clutched her ruined dress to herself and sobbed – and reached for her instrument. But when she attempted to lift it, it became clear that it had been shattered in the struggle, and a litter of discordant strings cut her sobs.

She ran from the room.

‘She seduced me,’ said the King, his eyes steady. ‘That strumpet.’

Abblemont contemplated regicide, and let the moment pass. ‘Your Grace, there is a letter from the Captal, and the Queen is on her way to this room. Are you prepared to receive her? She has some notion that Clarissa was present.’ His words were clipped and careful. He was, at some remove, quite fond of his niece – but he was altogether fonder of the peace and prosperity of Galle.

The King sat up.

His wife came in, as if summoned. ‘Ah,’ she said. She was ten years older than the King, and the daughter of the man reputed to be the richest in Christendom. Her clothes and her jewels were the finest in the world, and her grace and deportment were the toast of poets in three countries. When she was fifteen, the Lady of Flowers, as she had been called then, had danced alone, accompanied only by her own voice, in front of a crowd composed of her father’s friends, a thousand knights and their ladies, to open a great tournament, and the fame of that great feat remained her cloak and her armour.

Her expression was such that the exclamation ‘ah’ was enough to throw the King into a rage.

‘You have no right to be here, you witch!’ he shouted, like a boy at his mother.

The Queen of Galle came all the way into the room, her cloth of gold gown and the collar of emeralds she wore making the King
look
like a small boy. ‘Abblemont,’ said the Queen, with a slight inclination of her head.

Abblemont sank into a deep bow, his right knee on the floor, his eyes down.

The Queen sniffed slightly. ‘I would think,’ she said, ‘that you would have more care for your niece.’

Abblemont kept his eyes down.

‘She came after me like a bitch in heat!’ said the King.

‘Of course,’ said the Queen quietly. In two words, she somehow expressed disbelief, and an utter disinterest. ‘Abblemont, see to it that I never hear her name mentioned again.’

The Horse didn’t raise his eyes. ‘Of course, madame.’

Clarissa de Sartres stood on the bridge below the nunnery and watched the dark water move implacably – deep, and very cold.

An hour ago, she had considered suicide. Her immortal soul was as ruined as the rest of her – she had little interest in God, or a life of contemplation. Or anything else. And as if God had granted his permission, she found her room unlocked for the first time – and the postern gate of the nunnery unlocked as well. No one had seen her cross the courtyard. Perhaps no one cared.

But the water looked cold, and her imagination – always her bane – spun her a hell of eternal cold; dragged down to the bottom of the river and resting there for ever. With the
Bain Sidhe
of her nurse’s tales.

The utter humiliation of being banished from court – for ever – for the sin of being attacked by the King. Her throat closed, and her hands shook, and she gagged and the darkness closed on her again.

Not quite raped.
Her imagination supplied whatever hadn’t happened, and the speed with which she’d been jettisoned by her uncle – and the sheer ferocity of the joy of the other women at court at her degradation – had been telling.

God doesn’t give a fuck
, she thought. And in that moment she thought of a very young man in her father’s courtyard, saying those words. More than a year ago, in Arles. And how she had despised him for it.

She looked up at the nunnery on the mountain, and at the Rhun River flowing at her feet. She realised in that moment that she hadn’t escaped – she had been allowed to come here, so her inconvenient version of events would perish. For a few heartbeats, she was utterly consumed in hatred – an emotion she had seldom felt before.

If I kill myself, they win
, she thought.

Open Ocean west of Galle – Ser Hartmut.

The crossing itself was not without incident. Ser Hartmut had never sailed in the north, and he exclaimed with joy to see great hills of ice sailing by like so many white ships of war. But the wind was fair, and ten days sweet sailing brought them off Keos, the northernmost of the islands of Morea, and they bore north and west into the setting sun. It was late in the year, and de Marche had plotted a conservative course, making each crossing of the empty blue between islands as brief as he could allow, but no storm troubled them.

West of Keos, they saw a ship’s sail – apparently a great lateen, according to the sailors – nicking the far western horizon, but when the next day dawned they were alone in the great bowl of the ocean.

Seventeen days into the voyage, and they had had no weather worse than a rain squall. The three ships were still together, well in sight;
La Grace de Dieu
was well in advance, with her two consorts trailing in an uneven line, each ship at least a mile from the last.

Ser Hartmut was on the deck, fully armed, as he appeared every day at daybreak and remained all day until the sun set. He had wrapped the mainmast in a thick linen canvas quilted hard, and he practised at this informal pell all day, cutting, thrusting, hammering away with a pole-axe. He would take long breaks in which he merely sat in the bows and watched the sea. Sometimes, Etienne or Louis de Harcourt, his other squire, would come and read to him. At other times they would spar with him, matching blunted swords or spears up and down the deck.

Ser Hartmut never spoke to the sailors but they had developed a healthy respect for him as a fighting man. Despite his size, he was as fast as a cat; despite his girth, he had excellent wind, and could usually fight long after his squires began to grow pale and raise their hands in token of submission.

His men-at-arms were no different, and they trained hard enough that every day had its tale of broken bones, sprains, and bruises.

Some of the sailors began to practise with their spears too – but never in the open glare of the Black Knight.

But this day saw nothing of the sort. It was hot, and the sailors were bored – many were in the rigging, simply hanging there, waiting for a slight breeze to cool them. After nonnes such a breeze arose, and from the east, so that the ship began to move, and the water whispered along the ship’s bluff cheeks.

The sun began to set.

And then everything happened at once. Whales appeared under the round ship’s counter; great leviathans rising from the deep and sounding around them.

De Marche was on deck in a moment. ‘Rig the nets! To arms!’

Etienne was pale with fatigue and had a black eye. But he ran up the ladder to the aft castle in full armour and managed a good bow. ‘Ser Hartmut asks – what is the purpose of this alarm?’

De Marche leaned over the side. His servant had his breast and back open on the hinges and his shirt of mail held high, and de Marche didn’t wait on courtesy, but put his head into the mail and then his arms. From deep in the steel mesh, he said ‘The Eeeague. They follow the whales.’

‘Eeeague?’ asked de Vrieux.

‘Silkies, sir.’ De Marche’s head popped through the neck of his hauberk and he leaned out over the wall of the castle as the boarding nets went up. Crossbows were coming out to the hold at a fair speed, and men on the deck were arming.

‘Land-ho!’ shouted the lookout. ‘Land, and three ships. Ships are hull up.’ The last report was sullen – the sound of a man who knew he’d failed in his duty.