The Red Knight (20 page)

Gaston smiled at the earl’s caution. ‘Here is a man who understands how the world works,’ he said.

‘He grew up among us,’ de Vrailly agreed. ‘Let us ride to meet him. He has six lances with him – we shall take the same.’

The earl raised his visor when they met. ‘Jean de Vrailly, Sieur de Ruth?’ he asked.

De Vrailly nodded. ‘You do not remember me,’ he said. ‘I was quite young when you toured the east. This is my cousin Gaston, Lord of Eu.’

Towbray clasped hands with each in turn, gauntleted hand to gauntleted hand. His knights watched them impassively, visors closed and weapons to hand.

‘Did you have trouble in Lorica?’ the earl asked, pointing at the column of smoke on the horizon.

De Vrailly shook his head. ‘No trouble,’ he said. ‘I taught some lessons that needed to be learned. These people have forgotten what a sword is, and forgotten the respect due
to the men of the sword. A poor knight challenged me – I defeated him, of course. I will take him to Harndon and ransom him, after I display him to the king.’

‘We burned the inn,’ Gaston interrupted. He thought it had been a foolish piece of bravado, and he was finding his cousin tiresome.

The earl glared at de Vrailly. ‘Which inn?’ he asked.

De Vrailly glared back. ‘I do not like to be questioned in that tone, my lord.’

‘The sign of two lions. You know it?’ Gaston leaned past his cousin.

‘You burned the Two Lions?’ The earl demanded. ‘It has stood there forever. Its foundations are Archaic.’

‘And I imagine they are still there for some other peasant to build his sty upon.’ De Vrailly frowned. ‘They scurried like rats to put out the fire, and I did nothing to stop
them. But I was offended. A lesson needed to be made.’

The earl shook his head. ‘You have brought so
many
men. I see three hundred knights – yes? In all of Alba there might be four thousand knights.’

‘You wanted a strong force. And you wanted me,’ de Vrailly said. ‘I am here. We have common cause – and I have your letter. You said to bring all the force I could
muster. Here it is.’

‘I forget how rich the East is, my friend. Three hundred lances?’ The earl shook his head. ‘I can pay them, for now, but after the spring campaign we may have to come to
another arrangement.’

De Vrailly looked at his cousin. ‘Indeed. Come spring we will have another arrangement.’

The earl was distracted by the cart in the middle of the column.

‘Good Christ,’ he said suddenly. ‘You don’t mean that Ser Gawin Murien is your prisoner? Are you
insane
?’

De Vrailly pulled his horse around so hard Gaston saw blood on the bit.

‘You will not speak to me that way, my lord!’ De Vrailly insisted.

The earl rode down the column, heedless of his men-at-arms’ struggle to stay with him. He rode up to the wagon.

Gaston watched his cousin carefully. ‘You will not kill this earl just because he annoys you,’ he said quietly.

‘He said I was insane,’ de Vrailly countered, mouth tight and eyes glittering. ‘We can destroy his fifty knights with a morning’s work.’

‘You will end with a kingdom of corpses,’ Gaston said. ‘If the old king really lost fifty
thousand
men in one battle a generation ago, this kingdom must be almost empty.
You cannot kill everyone you dislike.’

The earl had the Alban knight out of the cart and on horseback before he rode back, his visor closed and locked and his knights formed closely behind him.

‘Messire,’ he said, ‘I have lived in the East, and I know how this misunderstanding has sprung up. But in Alba, messire, we do not keep to
The Rule of War
at all times.
In fact, we have something we call the
The Rule of Law.
Ser Gawin is the son of one of the realm’s most powerful lords – a man who is my ally – and Ser Gawin acted as any
Alban would. He was not required to be in his armour at that hour – not here, and not when taking his ease at an inn. He is not in a state of war with you, messire. By our law, you attacked
him perfidiously and you can be called to law for it.’

De Vrailly made a face. ‘Then your law is something that excuses weakness and devalues strength. He chose to fight and was beaten. God spoke on the matter and no more need be
said.’

The earl’s eyes were just visible inside his visor and Gaston had his hand on his sword; while the earl was speaking reasonably, his hand was on the pommel of an axe at his saddle bow. His
knights all had the posture – the small leaning forward, the steadying hand on a horse’s neck – of men on the edge of violence. They were one step away from a disaster of blood.
He could sense it.

‘You will apologise to him for the barbaric deaths of his squires, or our agreement is at an end.’ The earl’s voice was firm, and his hand was steady on his axe. ‘Listen
to me, messire. You
cannot
take this man to court. The king has only to hear his story and you will be arrested.’

‘There are not enough men-at-arms in this country to take me,’ de Vrailly said.

The earl’s retainers drew their swords.

Gaston raised his empty, armoured hands and interposed his horse between the two men. ‘Gentlemen! There was a misunderstanding. Ever it has been so, when East meets West. My cousin was
within his rights as a knight and a seigneur. And you say this Ser Gawin was also within his rights. Must we, who have come so far to serve you, my lord Earl – must we all pay for this
misunderstanding? As it pleases God, we are all men of good understanding and good will. For my part, I will apologise to the young knight.’ Gaston glared at his cousin.

The beautiful face showed understanding. ‘Ah, very well,’ he said. ‘He is the son of your ally? Then I will apologise. Although, by the good God! He needs training in
arms.’

Gawin Murien had recovered enough of his wits to pack his armour onto one horse and mount another. Then he followed the earl through the column, the way a child follows his mother.

The earl raised his visor. ‘Gawin!’ he called out. ‘Lad, the foreign knights – they come from different customs. The Lord de Vrailly will apologise to you.’

The Alban was seen to nod.

De Vrailly halted his horse well out of arm’s reach, while Gaston rode closer. ‘Ser Knight,’ he said, ‘for my part, I greatly regret the deaths of your
squires.’

The Alban knight nodded again. ‘Very courteous of you,’ he said. His voice was flat.

‘And for mine,’ de Vrailly said, ‘I forgive your ransom, as the earl insists that by your law of arms, I may have encountered you unfairly.’ The last word was drawn from
him as if by a fish hook.

Murien looked a less-than-heroic figure in his stained cote-hardie and his hose ruined by a night of kneeling in the courtyard. He didn’t glitter. In fact, he hadn’t even put his
knight’s belt back on, and his sword still lay on the bed of the wagon.

He nodded again. ‘I hear you,’ he said.

He turned his horse, and rode away.

Gaston watched him go, and wondered if it would have been better for everyone if his cousin had killed him in the yard.

Ser Gawin

Harndon Palace – Harmodius

H
armodius Magus sat in a tower room entirely surrounded by books, and watched the play of the sun on the dust motes, as it shone through the
high, clear glass windows. It was April – the season of rain but also the season of the first serious, warm sun – when the sunlight finally has its own colour, its own richness. Today,
the sky was blue and a cat might be warm in a patch of sunshine

Harmodius had three cats.

‘Miltiades!’ he hissed, and an old grey cat glanced at him with weary insolence.

The man’s gold-shod stick licked out and prodded the cat, whose latest sleeping spot threatened the meticulously drawn pale blue chalk lines covering the dark slate floor. The cat shifted
by the width of its tail and shot the Magus a disdainful look.

‘I feed you, you wretch,’ Harmodius muttered.

The light continued to pour through the high windows, and to creep down the whitewashed wall, revealing calculations in chalk, silver or lead pencil, charcoal, even scratched out in dirt. The
Magus used whatever came to hand when he felt the urge to write.

And still the light crept down the wall.

In the halls below, the Magus could sense men and women –
a servant bringing a tray of cold venison to his tower’s door; a gentleman and lady engaged in a ferocious tryst that
burned like a small fire almost directly under his feet – where was that? It must be awfully public – and the Queen, who burned like the very sun.
He smiled when he brushed over her
warmth. Oftimes, he watched others to pass the time. It was the only form of phantasm he still cast regularly.

Why is that?
he wondered, idly.

But this morning, well. This morning his Queen had asked him – challenged him – to do something.

Do something wonderful, Magus!
she had said, clapping her hands together.

Harmodius waited until the sun crossed a chalk line he had drawn, and then raised his eyes to a particular set of figures. Nodded. Sipped some cold tea that had a film of dust – what was
that dust? Oh – he had been grinding bone for oil colour. He had bone dust in his tea. That wasn’t entirely disgusting.

All three cats raised their heads and pricked their ears.

The light intensified and struck a small mirror with the image of Ares and Taurus entwined on the ivory back – and then shot across the floor in a focused beam.

‘Fiat lux!’ roared the Magus.

The beam intensified, drawing in the light around it until the cats were cast in shadow while the beam sparkled like a line of lightning – passing above the chalk designs, through a lens,
and into a bubble of gold atop his staff. Unnoticed by him, it struck a little off centre and a tiny fragment of the white beam slid past the staff to dance along the far wall, partially reflected
by the golden globe, partly refracted by the mass of energy seething inside the staff itself. The intense light flicked up sharply, licked at gilding of a triptych that adorned the sideboard,
struck a glass of wine abandoned hours before. And, still focused, it passed across the east wall, its rapid passage burning away a dozen or more characters of a spell written in an invisible,
arcane ink, hidden under the paint.

The older cat started, and hissed.

The Magus felt suddenly light headed, as if at the onset of a fever or a strong head-cold. But his mind was abruptly clear and sharp, and the staff was giving off the unmistakable aura of an
artefact filling with power. He saw the rogue light fragment and deftly moved the mirror and the focus to touch the staff perfectly.

He clapped his hands in triumph.

The cats looked around, startled, as if they had never seen his room before – and then went back to sleep.

Harmodius looked around the room. ‘What in the name of the triad just happened?’ he asked.

He didn’t need rest. Even after casting a powerful
phantasm
like the last, the feeling of the
helios
in his staff made him tingle with anticipation. He’d promised
himself that he’d wait a day . . . perhaps two days . . . but the temptation was strong.

‘Bah,’ he said aloud, and the cats flicked their ears. He hadn’t felt so alive in many years.

He took a heavy flax mop and scrubbed the floor, eliminating every trace of the complex chalk pattern that had decorated it like an elaborate Southern rug. Then, despite his age and his heavy
robes, he was down on his knees with a square of white linen, scrubbing even the cracks between the slate slabs until there was not a trace of pale blue chalk. However eager he was, he was also
fastidious about this – that no trace of one phantasm should linger while he performed another. Experience had taught him that lesson well.

Then he went to a side table and opened the drawer, wherein was laid a box of ebony bound in silver. The Magus loved beautiful things – and when the consequences of bad conjuring were
soul-destruction and death, the presence of beautiful things help reassure and steady him.

Inside the box lay a nested set of instruments made of bronze – a compass, a pair of calipers, a ruler with no markings; a pencil which held silver suspended in alum and clay and wax,
blessed by a priest.

He wrapped a string around the pencil, measuring the length against the ruler, and began to pray. ‘O, Hermes Trismegistus,’ he began, and continued in High Archaic, purifying
himself, clearing his thoughts, invoking God and his son and the prophet of the magi while another part of his mind calculated the precise length of string he would need.

‘I should not do this today,’ he told the fattest cat. The big feline didn’t seem to care.

He knelt on the floor, not to pray, but to draw. Putting a sliver of wood into a slot in the slate, he used the string, shaking with the tension in his hands, to guide his hand through a perfect
circle, and into the circle, with the help of the ruler and a sword, he inscribed a pentagram. He wrote his invocation to God and to Hermes Trismegistus in High Archaic around the outside, and only
the clamour of the cats for their noonday feast kept him from attempting his work right there and then.