The Red Knight (102 page)

The arming cap immolated itself in a paroxysm of power – a brief flare, and all that power vanished into her.

A red mist crossed her back from her spine to the top of one tanned leg and around to her hip, right across the kidney. A flake of grey-white ash fell away from it.

The captain fell back away from her.

The Queen gave a squeak, and then sighed, as if stroked by her lover. And then gave a low moan.

Lady Almspend clasped her hands together. ‘Oh, by the power of God, ser! That was brilliant!’

The captain shook his head. ‘That wasn’t me,’ he admitted. ‘Or not just me.’ His voice was a croak.

The wound began to bleed again. They bandaged it tightly, being careful of the wound which still seemed to be open.

The captain shook his head. ‘But I
felt
the power flow,’ he said in frustration.

‘I feel the pain less,’ the Queen said bravely. ‘It was well done, Ser Knight.’

A red-haired giant threw his cloak over the Queen. ‘We need to get her ashore.’

The captain shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t. That castle is the lynch pin of the battle, and I’ve been holding it all night. I wouldn’t risk the Queen of Alba in
it.’

But other boats were pulling up against the pilings of the bridge, anchoring or tying up, their crossbowmen engaging the boglins on the north bank. The bolder boatmen were pulling under the
bridge, through the narrows, to further outflank the enemy in the meadows north of the river.

‘I have twenty brave men to add to your garrison,’ Red Beard said.

‘I’d rather have all those nice crossbowmen,’ the captain said. He smiled to take any apparent sting from his remark. ‘Very well. Land the Queen. Don’t mind the
boglin guts – we haven’t had time to tidy up.’

He rose from the deck, almost unable to walk. He clambered back over the side to the dock, and managed to give the required orders.

He collapsed onto a bollard. He was aware that Red Beard was standing with him, talking, but he hadn’t slept, hadn’t recovered any power, and he’d just cast – he was
phantasm sick, something about which Prudentia had warned him, over and over.

He reached out into the wan sunlight. Pulled the gauntlets off his hands and raised them to the sun.

What would mother think of this?
He wondered. Because as soon as the sun licked his hands, he felt a trickle of power through his arms. The headache receded. The depression—

Amicia?

Captain? she asked tartly.

The sun
.
Reach out and take power from the sun.

I cannot. It is not given to me.

Crap, my lady. To paraphrase Harmodius, power is just power. Take it.

Did I hear my name?

Show her what you showed me. Show her the way to the sun.

With pleasure, as soon as I have a moment in which I am not fighting for my life.
Harmodius’s image in the Aethereal was looking tattered.

Use the well, then,
countered the captain.

Without intending, he was on her bridge over her stream. The stream was a trickle, the rocks dry, the foliage wilted.

He took her hand and she sighed.

‘We’re going to win,’ he said. ‘It is close, but we are going to win.’ He wasn’t sure just how the well would manifest in her place of power. He conjured a
well cover, and a hand pump, just at the end of her wooden bridge. ‘Hold out your hands,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘The sun is not for me, but I can use the well.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s just there. Power is power. Take what you need.’ He pumped the handle and a surge of power shot from the nozzle like water under pressure and soaked
her through her green kirtle.

She laughed. Power sprayed around them – into the pool under the bridge, into the trees.

The light became richer, the stream began to sing.

‘Oh!’ she said, and reached out to the well—

The well-cover and the pump-handle vanished, and the stream beneath their feet roared to life.

‘Oh!’ she said. Her eyes were tightly closed. ‘Oh, my God!’

He sighed. It was not the denouement he had hoped for.

But outside the palaces of the Aethereal, men were calling his name.

He leaned over and kissed her, all the sweeter for being there.

‘I must go,’ he said.

‘Those are Royal Guardsmen,’ Red Beard shouted, pointing to the south across the river, and back east of the bridge. ‘I know them.’

‘Horses,’ the captain said to Michael. ‘War horse for you, another for me, a mount for the red giant. Ser Milus, you are in command until I return. Send to the fortress for a
healer. Tell them that the Queen of Alba is dying.’ He was hard put to leave her. It wasn’t his way to turn his back on a project. He had a new reserve of power – but she needed a
fine, trained hand. And he needed to have something left for the fight.

They carried her past him.

‘Fuck it,’ he muttered to himself. He reached out and put a hand on her naked shoulder. He gave her all the power he had – everything that he had taken through Amicia at the
well, and all he had taken from the sun.

He sagged away from her. Spat the taste of bile into the water, and fell to his knees.

She made a sound and her eyes rolled up.

Michael caught his shoulder, and put a canteen in his fist. He drank. There was wine in the canteen, mixed with the water, and he spat it out, then drank more.

‘Get me up,’ he said.

Red Beard got under his other shoulder. ‘You’re a warlock?’ he asked brusquely.

The captain had to laugh. ‘I’ll forgive you your imprecise terminology.’

The wine was good.

Michael handed him a chunk of honey cake. ‘Eat.’

He ate.

He let the sun fall on his face and hands, and he ate.

Fifteen feet away, Ser Milus was trying to find the bottom of a leather jack of water. He nodded, sputtered. ‘Is the fight over?’

The captain shrugged. ‘It ought to be,’ he muttered. He could hear them fetching horses – could hear the heavy clop-clop of the hooves on the cobblestones of the Bridge
Castle’s yard, and the rattle-slap of the tack going on.

‘Jacques has him,’ Michael said.

‘I hate that horse,’ the captain said. He finished his honey cake, swallowed more wine and water, and made himself run up the ladders to the top of the Bridge Castle’s north
tower.

Sixty feet above the flood plain many mysteries were explained.

He couldn’t see beyond the ridges south of the river, but the brilliant sparkle of armour told him that the men-at-arms pouring over the last ridge had to be the Royal Army.

To the west the trees were full of boglins, and north, almost a mile away, a trio of creatures – each larger than war horses – emerged from the woods with a long line of infantry on
either hand.

The new trebuchet mounted in the ruins of the north tower of the fortress loosed –
thump-crack –
and the hail of stones fell short of the Wild creatures, but they shied away
anyway.

But as far as he could see, along the woods’ edge, the undergrowth boiled with motion.

‘Why are you still here? Even if you win you won’t take the fortress. You’ve lost, you fool,’ the captain muttered. ‘Let it go. Live to fight another day.’ He
shook his head.

For a mad moment, he thought of reaching out to Thorn. Because if Thorn stayed to fight, some of his men were going to die, and he’d come to love them. Even Sym.

I’m tired and maudlin.

He scrambled down the ladder and found Jacques holding his new charger. Michael was at the postern gate. Jack Kaves waved.

The captain got a leg over his saddle and groaned. The big stallion shied and tossed his head.

‘I hate this horse.’ He looked down at Jacques. ‘Go straight for Jehannes, now.’

‘Ser Jehannes is wounded,’ he said.

‘Tom, then.’

‘Tom’s the man, aye,’ Jacques said.

‘Get every man-at-arms of the company mounted, and by the foot of the ridge,’ he said. ‘All the farmers and all the guildsmen along the trench and to the fort, here.’

Jacques nodded. ‘Just for the sake of conversation,’ he said, ‘we could keep the fortress.’ His smile was transparently empty of guile, like a boy who has just thrown a
rock at a hornets nest and remains unrepentant.

The captain nodded. ‘We could. Hold it for ransom. Sell it to the highest bidder.’ He sounded wistful. ‘We could be the baddest. The Knights of Ill-Repute. Rich. Feared.’
He shrugged. ‘Sometime in the last month we became paladins, Jacques.’

Jacques nodded. ‘’Bout time, my prince.’

‘Stow that, Jacques,’ the captain said. He turned his horse’s head, backed his charger a few steps, and saluted Smoke, the archer commanding the gate. ‘Open it,’ he
called. ‘And the Bridge Gate.’ He turned back to Jacques. ‘Don’t forget to bring healers,’ he said.

Red Beard joined them, mounted on an old roncey that had seen better days.

‘Sorry about the horse,’ the captain said. ‘I’m the captain.’

‘That’s your name?’ asked the red giant. ‘I’m Ranald. Ranald Lachlan.’

‘You know the Royal Guard?’ the captain asked. The he paused. ‘Lachlan? Tom Lachlan’s brother?’

‘Cousin,’ the other man said. ‘You know Bad Tom?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ the captain said. ‘Let’s go find the king.’ His voice was a little shaky.

‘Amen,’ the hillman answered. ‘Do you know him? The king?’

‘What a very interesting question,’ the captain answered. ‘No. Not exactly.’

Michael followed them, and their horses’ hooves rang as they crossed the bridge. At the middle the captain reached into the purse on his sword belt and produced a key – intricate,
beautiful and apparently solid gold. He leaned out – groaning at the pressure on the muscles of his back and neck –
how long ago did I fight the God-damned wyvern in the woods?
He fitted the key into the great gate, turned it, and the gate vanished.

‘Nice trick,’ muttered Ranald.

Near Lissen Carak – The King

The king was collecting his guardsmen and the knights of his vanguard – the vanguard had lost fifty men-at-arms and as many squires, the men were exhausted already, and
the morning was young. Two of his leading noblemen were dead – both the Bishop of Lorica and the constable had both gone down in the first fighting. The Captal de Ruth had taken a mortal
wound defending the king, and was dying.

But the valets were coming up with the horses and the machines of war were grinding along – surgeons were searching among the wounded for those who could be saved, and his huntsmen, who
had swept east to guard the flank of the onslaught of the vanguard, were trickling in. They, too, had lost men fighting monsters in the woods by the river – nor had they been victorious, by
all accounts. The Wild creatures had burst through them and run off east. They had lost sixty men. Good men. Trained men.

It was hardly the great victory he sought. He had been ambushed and his column had survived. That was all.

‘Messengers, Sire. From across the river,’ called a herald.

The king looked north-west, and saw them – three men crossing the bridge at a fast canter.

‘Sound the rally,’ the king said.

More and more of his Royal Huntsmen were merging from the west, moving warily.

The Count of the Borders rode up and saluted. ‘The flower of our chivalry is half an hour behind me with the main battle,’ he reported. The man slumped. ‘By Saint George, my
lord, that was the hardest fighting I ever need to see.’

‘The guardsmen say there are boglins across the river,’ the king noted.

‘Boglins?’ The count shook his head. ‘I struck a blow at a wyvern this morning, sire. This is the Wild, my lord, fighting for its life.’

‘I thought the Wild was beaten,’ said the king.

The Count of the Borders shook his head. ‘Where is Murien? What has happened to the Wall Castles?’

The king’s master huntsman, Febus de Lorn, bowed respectfully. ‘This isn’t from north, my lords. This is from west. I see Gwyllch – boglins – across the river, and
Bothere has huntsmen who claim to have faced trolls in the low ground west of the road. Dhag’s come from the west, my lords.’

The king looked back at the approaching messengers. They weren’t messengers – all three in were armour, two cap à pied on war horses, and the third—

‘Par Dieu, gentlemen – that’s Ranald Lachlan, or I’m a minstrel’s son.’ The king turned his horse and rode towards the approaching trio.

Lachlan waved. The king had eyes only for him, and they rode together and embraced.

‘By all the saints, Ranald – I never expected to greet you on a stricken field!’ The king laughed. ‘How fares your fortune?’

Ranald looked away. ‘Aweel,’ he said, and a shadow touched his face. ‘I’ll tell ye, when we’ve time, my lord. These gentlemen, now, they seek to parley with you.
This is the captain of the company yonder, that holds Lissen Carack for the nuns. And his squire, Michael.’

The king extended a hand to the knight – a man of middling height with a black beard and blacker circles under his eyes – absurdly young to be any kind of commander, but wearing
superb armour.

‘Messire?’ he said.

The man was staring at him. Then, as if remembering his manners, the man touched his hand and bowed in the saddle. ‘My lord,’ he said.

‘You hold the fortress?’ the king asked eagerly.

‘The fortress and the Bridge Castle,’ the captain replied.

The king thought there was something familiar about the young man’s face, but he couldn’t quite place it. Something—

‘My lord, if you would bring your forces across I believe we can relieve the fortress and evacuate the villagers – and leave the Enemy facing a newly victualled and garrisoned
fortress they cannot hope to take, without the loss of another man.’ The captain was speaking quickly, and his eyes were on the far wood line. ‘The Enemy – your father’s
magus, or so they say – has made a number of errors. Not the least of which has been his consistent underestimation of our side’s intelligence. I believe he intends one more all-out
attack, to attempt to restore his fortunes through the heroic exertions of his allies.’ The young man smiled crookedly. ‘I built a trench line twenty days ago for just this moment, my
lord. If you would place your archers in that trench, and gather your chivalry behind the Bridge Castle, I believe we can hand this arrogant Magus a heavy defeat.’