The Red Knight (22 page)

‘I just fed a demon with the power of the sun. I conjured him with the power of the sun.’ Harmodius laughed.

‘But – no, you banished him!’ Her silver laugh rang out. ‘You tease me, Magus!’

He shook his head. ‘I banished him after feeding him enough power to make him
grow
,’ the Magus said. ‘Pure Helios, which I drew myself using my instruments –
lacking your Grace’s special abilities.’
Whatever they may be.

She gazed at him, eyes level, devoid of artifice or flirtation, mockery or subtle magnetism or even her usual humour.

‘And this means?’ she asked, her voice a whisper.

‘Ask me again, your Grace, after I conjure him back a week hence. Tell me you will stand at my side that day – I’m beholden to you, but with you—’

‘What do you seek, Magus? Is this within the circlet of what the church will countenance?’ She spoke slowly, carefully.

He drew a breath. Released it.
Sod the church
, he thought. And aloud he said, ‘Yes, your Grace.’
No, your Grace. Perhaps not. But they’re not scientists.
They’re interested in preserving the status quo.

The Queen gave him a beautiful smile. ‘I am just a young girl,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we ask a bishop?’

Harmodius narrowed his eyes. ‘Of course, your Majesty,’ he said.

The North Road – Gerald Random

Random’s convoy moved fast, by the standards of convoys – six to ten leagues a day, stopping each night at the edge of a town and camping in pre-arranged fields,
with fodder delivered to their camp along with hot bread and new-butchered meat. Men were happy to work for him because he was a meticulous planner and the food was good.

But they had a hundred leagues to go, just to make Albinkirk, and another forty leagues east after that, to the fair, and he was later than he wanted to be. Albinfleurs – little yellow
balls of sweet-scented, fuzzy petals that grew only on the cliff edges of the great river – were blooming in the hayfields that lined the roads; and when they were on his favourite sections
of road – the cliff-edge road along the very edge of the Albin which ran sixty feet or more below them in the vale – the Albinfleurs were like stripes of yellow below him and layers of
yellow on the cliffs nearly a mile distant on the other side. It was years since he’d left late enough to see the Albinfleurs. They didn’t grow in the north.

But after three glorious days of solid travel, they came to Lorica, and the Two Lions. His usual stop and supplier of bread and forage was a smoking hulk. It took him a day to establish a new
supplier and get the material he needed, and the story of how the inn had been burned and the sheriff beaten by foreigners angered him. But the innkeeper had sent to the king, and stood in his yard
with a bandaged head watching workmen with a crane lift the charred rooftrees off the main building.

He used one of his precious mercenaries to send a message about the killings back to the Guild Master in Harndon. Harndoners didn’t usually concern themselves with the doings of the lesser
towns. But this was business, friendship, and basic patriotism all in one package.

The following day not one but two of his wagons broke spokes on their wheels – one so badly that the wooden wheel split and the iron tyre popped off the wheel. That meant finding a smith
and wheelwright and forced him to go
back
to Lorica, where he had to stay in an inferior inn while his convoy crept north without him. He had to do it himself – the men in Lorica knew
him but none of his hirelings, not Judson the draper, nor any of the other investors.

In the morning, the two wagons were ready to move, and he grudgingly paid the agreed fee for making two apprentice wheelwrights and a journeyman work by rush light through the night. Plus an
extra silver leopard to the blacksmith for getting the tyre on before matins.

He finished his small beer and mounted his horse, and the smaller train was on the road as soon as he’d taken the Eucharist from a friar who said Mass at a roadside shrine. That roadside
Mass was full of broken men and women – wastrels, a pair of vagabonds, and a troop of travelling players. Random had never been troubled by the poor. He gave them alms.

But the broken men worried him, for both his convoy and his purse. There were four of them, although they didn’t seem to be together. Random had never been robbed by men he’d just
attended Mass with, but he didn’t take any chances, either. He mounted, exchanged meaningful glances with his drovers, and the carts moved on.

One of the broken men followed them on the road. He had a good horse and armour in a wicker basket, and he seemed listless. Random looked back at him from time to time.

Eventually, the man caught them up. But he hadn’t put on his armour and he didn’t even seem to know they were there. He rode up, slowly catching and then overtaking them.

Harndoners traditionally called the men they’d attended Mass with that day Brother or Sister, and so Random nodded to the stranger.

‘The Peace of God to you, Brother,’ he said, a little pointedly.

The man looked startled to be addressed.

In that moment, Random realised he wasn’t a broken man at all but a dirty gentleman. The differences were clear in his quality – the man had a superb leather-covered jupon worth a
good twenty leopards, even covered in dirt. Hip boots with gold spurs. Even if they were silver gilt, they were worth a hundred leopards by weight.

The man sighed. ‘And to you, messire.’

He rode on.

Random hadn’t come to relative riches in the cut-throat world of Harndon’s shippers and guilds without having some willingness to grab at Fortuna’s hairs. ‘You’re a
knight,’ he said.

The man didn’t rein in, but he turned his head and, feeling the weight shift, his horse stopped.

The man turned to look at him, and the silence was painful.

What have we here?
Random wondered.

Finally, the young man – under his despair, the man was younger than Random by a generation – nodded.

‘I am a knight,’ the young man said, as if confessing a sin.

‘I need men,’ Random said. ‘I have a convoy on the road and if you wear spurs of gold, I’d be honoured to have you. My convoy is fifty good wagons headed north to the
fair, and there’s no dishonour in it. I fear only bandits and the Wild.’

The man shook his head minutely and turned away, and his horse ambled on, a good war horse which was over-burdened with man and armour, the weight ill-distributed and ruining the horse’s
posture.

‘Are you sure?’ Random asked. It never hurt to try.

The knight kept riding.

Random let his drovers stop for lunch, and then they pushed on – into the evening and even a little after dark.

In the morning, they rose and were moving on before the sun was a finger above the river which curved, snake-like, to the east. Later in the morning they descended into the vale and crossed the
Great Bridge, the edge of the Inner Counties. He had a fine meal at the Crouching Cat with his drovers, who were honoured by his willingness to join them and pleased to eat so good a meal.

After lunch they crossed Great Bridge, twenty-six spans built by the Archaics and painstakingly maintained. And then climbed the far bank for an hour, with the drovers leading the horses. They
crested the far bank, and Random saw the knight again, kneeling at a roadside chapel, tears cutting deep channels in the road-dust on his face.

He nodded to him, and rode on.

By evening he caught up the rest of the convoy, already in camp, and he was welcomed back by the men he’d left. His drovers regaled their peers with the minutiae of their days, and
Guilbert saluted and told him how the column had proceeded, and Judson was resentful that he was back so soon.

Business as usual.

A little after dark, one of the goldsmith boys came to his wagon and saluted like a soldier. ‘Messire?’ he asked. ‘There’s a knight asking for ye.’ The boy had a
crossbow on his shoulder, and was obviously puffed with pride at being on watch, on convoy, and in such an important role.
Henry Lastifer
, the name floated up from the merchant’s
storehouse of ready knowledge.

Random followed the boy to the fire. Guilbert was there, and Old Bob, another of the men-at-arms.

And the young knight from the road, of course. He was sitting, drinking wine. He rose hurriedly.

‘May I change my mind?’ he, blurted.

Random smiled. ‘Of course. Welcome aboard, Ser Knight.’

Guilbert smiled broadly. ‘M’lord, is more like. But he’s the king’s mark. And that’s a sword.’ He turned to the knight. ‘Your name,
m’lord?’

The young man waited so long it was obvious he was going to lie. ‘Ser Tristan?’ he said, wistfully.

‘Fair enough,’ Guilbert said. ‘Come wi’ me, and we’ll see to it you have a place to sleep.’

‘Mind you,’ said Random. ‘You work for Guilbert and then for me. Understand?’

‘Of course,’ said the young man.

What am I getting myself into?
Random thought. But he felt satisfied with the man, broken or not. King’s knights were trained to a high level – especially trained to fight the
Wild. Even if the young man was a little addled . . . well, no doubt he was in love. The gentry were addicted to love.

He slept well.

North of Lorica – Bill Redmede

Bill Redmede led his untrained young men up the trail. Their irk stayed well ahead, moving like smoke through the thick trees. He tended to return to the column from the most
unexpected directions, even for a veteran woodsman like Bill.

The lads were all afraid of him.

Bill rather liked the quiet creature, which spoke only when it had something to say. Irks had something about them. It was hard to pin down, but they had some kind of nobility

‘Right files watch the right side of the trail,’ Bill said, automatically. ‘Left files watch the
left
side.’ Three days on the trail and all he did was mother
them.

‘I need a break,’ whined the biggest and strongest of them. ‘Christ on the Cross, Bill! We’re not boglins!’

‘If you was, we’d move faster,’ Redmede said. ‘Didn’t you boys do any
work
on the farm?’

It was worse when they made camp. He had to explain how to raise a shelter. He had to stop them from cutting their twine, and teach them how to make a fire. A
small
fire. How to be warm,
how to be dry. Where to take a piss.

Two of them sang while they worked, until he walked up and knocked one to the ground with a blow of his fist.

‘If the king catches you because you are
singing
, you will hang on a gibbet until the crows pick your bones clean and then the king’s fucking sorcerer will grind your bones to
make the colours for his paints,’ Bill said.

The angry silence of wronged young men struck him from all sides.

‘If you fail, you will die,’ he said. ‘This is not a summer lark.’

‘I want to go home,’ said the biggest man. ‘You’re worse than an aristo.’ He looked around. ‘And you can’t stop all of us.’

The irk materialised out of the dusk. He looked curiously at the big man. Then he turned to Bill. ‘Come,’ he said in his odd voice.

Bill nodded to them, the debate now unimportant. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said, and followed the irk.

They crossed a marsh, over a low ridge, and then down to a dense copse of spruce.

The irk turned and made a motion with its head. ‘Bear,’ it said. ‘A friend. Be kind, Man.’

Near the centre of the spruce was a great golden bear. It lay with its head in its paws, as if it was resting. A beautiful cub stood licking its face.

As Bill come up, the bear stirred. It raised its head and hissed.

Bill stepped back, but the irk steadied him, and spoke in a sibilant whisper.

The bear rolled a little, and Bill could see it had a deep wound in its side, full of pus – pus was dryed on either side of the wound, and it stank.

The irk squatted down in a way a man could not have done. Its ear drooped – this was sadness, which Bill had never seen in an irk.

‘The bear dies,’ the irk said.

Bill knew the irk was right.

‘The bear asks – can we save her cub?’ The irk turned and Bill realised how seldom the elfin creature had met his eyes, because in that moment, the irk’s gaze locked with
his, and he all but fell into the forest man’s regard. His eyes were huge, and deep like pools—

‘I don’t know a thing about bears,’ Bill said. He squatted by the big mother bear. ‘But I’m a friend of any creature of the Wild, and I give you my word that if I
can get your cub to other golden bears, I will.’

The bear spat something, in obvious pain.

The irk spoke – or rather, sang. The line became a stanza, full of liquid rhymes.

The bear coughed.

The irk turned. ‘The cub – her mother named her for the yellow flower.’

‘Daisy?’

The irk made a face.

‘Daffodil? Crocus? I don’t know my flowers.’

‘In water.’ The irk was frustrated.

‘Lily?’

The irk nodded.

So he reached out a hand to the cub, and the cub bit him.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain was so tired and so drained by the fear that it was all he could do to push one boot in front of the other as the trail became a track and the track became a
road.

Nothing troubled them but the coming darkness, their exhaustion, and the cold. It was late in the day and increasingly clear that they would have to camp in the woods. The same woods which had
produced a daemon and a wyvern.

‘Why didn’t it kill us?’ the captain asked.
Two daemons.

Gelfred shook his head. ‘You killed that first one. Pretty. Damn. Fast.’ His eyes were always moving. They had reached the main road, and Gelfred pulled up on his horse’s
reins. ‘We could ride double,’ he said.

‘You’ll lame that horse,’ the captain snapped.

‘You
cast a spell.
’ Gelfred wasn’t accusatory. He sounded more as if he was in pain.