The Red Knight (59 page)

The captain then managed to combine a bow to the Abbess with a duck under the lintel of the West Tower door. The valets had Grendel saddled, and the captain took his place at the head of
Sauce’s column. Michael, still fuzzy headed and with his ribs burning in his chest, tried to keep up with him.

Jacques was standing by Michael’s horse. ‘You looked like you needed your sleep,’ the man said, with a smile. ‘Don’t get fancy, youngster. Those ribs will kill
you.’ He leaned close. ‘So will kissing girls, if it costs you sleep.’

Then Michael was up, Jacques’ hand shoving his rump to get him into the saddle, and he was out of the low stable gateway and into the courtyard. Toby was holding the captain’s helmet
while eating a half-loaf of bread, and the captain was pinning something – a white linen handkerchief – on his cote armour. It was very white against the scarlet velvet.

Michael grinned. ‘What is that?’ he began.

‘
Honi soit qui mal y pense
,’ said the captain. He winked, took his helmet from Toby, gave the boy a smile, and wheeled Grendel with his knees. ‘Listen up!’ he
called.

The sortie quieted.

‘Once we’re through that gate kill everything that comes under your sword,’ the captain said. ‘The trench edge will be marked in fire so remember your route. If you lose
me, follow the route. When you hear Carlus sound the recall, you turn and come back. Understand me?’

And with that as a speech, they rode from the gate as the trebuchet sprayed another rain of death out over their heads.

The hour was on the knife edge between day and night, and the trebuchet’s great baskets of stones had obliterated life over a swathe of ground that was roughly the shape of a great egg
– creatures had been turned to a bloody or ichorous pulp, and the ground itself was littered with the stones – softer ground had deep pock-marks. Bushes and grass were pulverized. In
the half-dark it was a vision of hell, and the sudden burst of balefire in the new-dug trenches added to the terrible aspect.

Especially when viewed through the slit of a closed visor.

There was no fight in the men or the monsters that struggled to win free of the beaten ground, or routed away from the hail of missiles still pelting them from the Bridge Castle. They were
streaming for the woods, over a mile distant.

The captain led his sortie well to the south, right along the river, along the smooth ground, and then formed them up in a single rank and brought up his trumpeter and his great black banner
with the lacs d’amour and the golden collars – his personal badge – and drew his sword.

‘All the way to the edge of the wood, and then
form up on me.
’ He had his visor up, and he looked around – Bad Tom was at his back, Sauce to one side, and Ser Jehannes
was close.

‘Kill everything that comes under your sword,’ he said again. Michael didn’t think they’d lost a single man getting here. The war machines had utterly shattered the enemy
attack. He took a deep breath, and the routed enemy flowed past them, running on exhausted feet – or talons or claws or paws – for the woods.

‘Charge!’ he roared, and the banner pointed at the enemy and the trumpets sounded.

Michael had never been in a charge before.

It was exhilarating, and nothing on the ground seemed to be able to touch them. They swept over the irks and the broken men and a single larger creature, something nightmarish that gleamed a
sickening green hue in the first light of the sun, but Bad Tom put his lance tip precisely in the thing’s ear-bole as it turned its talons on Grendel, and his lance tip – a spear point
as long as a man’s forearm and as wide as a big man’s palm – ripped its brain pan from its lower jaw.

‘Lachlan for Aa!’ the big man roared.

The monster died, and the line of knights swept over the pitiful resistance and then into the running men – and things.

By the time the sun was above the horizon, they had reached the wood’s edge, and the creatures and men of the Wild were a bloody mangle on the grass behind them – or rather, any
they’d chanced on were a bloody mangle, while hundreds more ran around them to the north or south, or lay flat and prayed as the horses thundered over them.

And then the captain led them back to the gate by much the same road, crashing though a line of desperate irks trying vainly to defend themselves with spears which splintered on steel armour.
Right through, and on to the edge of the fortress hill, where twenty valets waited with fresh horses.

Michael was mystified. His elation was ebbing quickly to be replaced by fatigue and the thumping pain of his ribs, jarred by the gallop and barely held together by his cote armour.

All of the men-at-arms and many of the archers were changing horses. The men on the walls were cheering them.

The captain rode up to him and opened his visor. ‘You’re moving badly,’ the captain said bluntly. ‘In fact, you look like shit. Fall out.’

‘What? Where—’ Michael spluttered.

Jacques took his reins. Michael noted that the valet was in armour – good armour – as Jacques got him out of his saddle and Michael wanted to cry – but at the same time, he
couldn’t imagine fighting again.

Then Jacques swung up on a heavy horse of his own – an ugly roan with a roman nose. ‘I’ll keep him alive, lad,’ Jacques said.

So Michael stood there and watched as they changed horses and formed up, and then to his surprise they turned away from the beaten enemy and rode south, along the edge of the rising sun, moving
at a canter. They rode straight for the Bridge Castle’s gate, and it opened as if by magic letting them pass through, canter over the bridge, and vanish onto the southern road.

Even as he watched, Gelfred, the master of the hunt, left Bridge Castle with three men and a cart. The men each took a brace of dogs – beautiful dogs – and moved briskly off to the
west with a dozen archers covering them.

Just as the first starlings and ravens began to appear, gyrfalcons began to soar into the heavens over Bridge Castle, one after another. Up on the walls, a great eagle leaped into the air with a
scream that must have chilled every lesser bird for three leagues.

Gelfred had struck, and the Abbess with him.

Braces of hounds emerged from the cover of Bridge Castle, running flat out for the leverets and the coneys and any other animal that lurked at the edge of the woods, and the gyrfalcon, Parcival
the eagle and the lesser birds – well-trained birds brought from Theva to sell at the fair – struck the starlings, the ravens, and the oversized doves, ripping through their flocks like
a knight through a crowd of peasants, and feathers, wings, blood and whole dead birds fell like an avian rain.

It took Michael half an hour to climb back to the fortress gate. The valets ignored him, and he stumbled many times, until someone on the walls saw the trail of blood he was leaving and a pair
of archers appeared to hold him up.

Amicia cut the sabatons off his feet, and found the flint javelin which had cut deeply into the muscle at the back of his leg. Blood was flowing out like beer from an open tap.

She was speaking rapidly and cheerfully, and he just had time to think how beautiful she was.

Lissen Carak – the Abbess

The Abbess watched the captain’s sortie head east along the road, moving so fast that they were gone from sight before she recovered her eagle.

I have certainly given away my station to every gentleman here,
she thought. She wondered if the siege would leave her any secrets at all.

Parcival, her magnificent Ferlander eagle, was killing his way through the flocks of wild birds like a tiger let loose in a sheepfold. But she could see the big old bird was tiring, and she
began to cast her lure. Just to be sure.

She whirled it carefully over her head, and Parcival saw it, turned at the flash of Tyrian red, and abandoned his pursuit of his defeated enemies. He came to her like a unicorn to a maiden
– shyly at first, and finally eager to be caught.

His weight was far too much for her, but young Theodora helped her, and got a faceful of wings for her trouble as the creature bated and bated again, unused to his mistress having a helper. But
she got the jesses slipped over his talons, and Theodora put the hood on him, and he calmed, while the Abbess said, ‘There’s my brave knight. There’s my fine warrior – you
poor old thing.’ The eagle was tired, grumpy and very pleased with himself, all at the same time.

Theodora stroked his back and wings and he straightened up.

‘Give him a morsel of chicken, dear,’ the Abbess said. She smiled at the novice. ‘It’s just like having a man, child. Never give him what he wants – only give him
what
you
want. If he eats too much we’ll never get him into the air again.’

Theodora looked out from the height of the tower. The plain and the river were far below them, and the eagle’s sudden stoop from this height had shattered the lesser birds.

Amicia appeared from the hospital with a message from Sister Miram. The Abbess looked at it and nodded. ‘Tell Miram to use anything she needs. No sense in hoarding.’

Amicia’s eyes were elsewhere. ‘They’re gone,’ Amicia said. ‘The enemy’s spies. Even the wyverns. I can feel it.’

Theodora was startled that a novice would speak directly to the Abbess.

The Abbess seemed untroubled. ‘You are very perceptive,’ the Abbess said. ‘But there’s something I don’t like about this.’ She walked to the edge of the tower
and looked down. Just below her, a pack of nuns stood on the broad platform of the gatehouse and watched the end of the rout below and the disappearing column of dust that marked the
captain’s sortie.

One nun left the wall, her skirts held in her hands as she ran. The Abbess wondered idly why Sister Bryanne was in such a hurry until she saw the priest. He was on the wall, alone, and praying
loudly for the destruction of the enemy.

That was well enough, she supposed. Father Henry was a festering boil – his hatred for the captain and his attempts to
discipline
her nuns were heading them for a confrontation.

But the siege was pushing the routine away, and she worried that it would never return. And what if the captain went out and died?

‘What do you say, my lady?’ Amicia asked, and the Abbess smiled at her.

‘Oh, my dear, we old people sometimes say aloud what we ought to keep inside.’

Amicia, too, was looking out to the east where a touch of dust still hung over the road that ran south of the river. And she wondered, like every nun, every novice, every farmer and every child
in the fortress, why they were riding away, and if they would return.

North of Albinkirk – Peter

Peter was learning to move through the woods. Home for him was grass savannah, dry brush and deep-cut rocky riverbeds, dry most of the year and impassable with fast brown water
the rest. But here, with the soft ground, the sharp rock, the massive trees that stretched to the heavens, the odd marshes on hilltops and the endless streams and lakes, a different kind of stealth
was required, a different speed, different muscles, different tools.

The Sossag flowed over the ground, following trails that appeared out of nowhere and seemed to vanish again as fast.

At mid-day, Ota Qwan stopped him and they stood, both of them breathing hard.

‘Do you know where we are?’ the older man asked.

Peter looked around. And laughed. ‘Headed for Albinkirk.’

‘Yes and no,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘But for a sailor on the sea of trees, you are fair enough.’ He reached into a bag of bark twine made into a net that he wore at his hip all
the time, and drew forth an ear of cooked corn. He took a bite and passed it to Peter. Peter took a bite and passed it to the man behind him – Pal Kut, he thought the man called himself, a
cheerful fellow with a red and green face and no hair.

Peter reached into his own bag and took out a small bark container of dried berries he’d found in Grundag’s effects.

Ota Qwan ate a handful and grunted. ‘You give with both hands, Peter.’

The man behind him took half a handful and held them to his forehead, a sign Peter had never seen before.

‘He’s telling you that he respects the labour of your work and the sacrifice you make in sharing. When we share pillaged food – well, it never really belonged to any of us to
begin with, did it?’ Ota Qwan laughed, and it was a cruel sound.

‘What about the dinner I cooked?’ Peter asked, ready to be indignant.

‘You were a slave then!’ Ota Qwan thumped his chest. ‘My slave.’

‘Where are we going?’ Peter asked. He didn’t like the way Ota Qwan claimed him.

Skadai appeared out of thin air to take the last handful of the dried berries, he, too, made the gesture of respect. ‘Good berries,’ he said. ‘We go to look at Albinkirk. Then
we hunt on our own.’

Peter shook his head as the war captain moved on. ‘Hunt on our own?’

‘Yesterday, while you rutted like a stag – wait, do you know even who Thorn is?’ Ota Qwan asked him, as if he were a child.

Peter wanted to rub his face in it, but in truth, he’d heard the name mentioned but didn’t know who he was. And he was increasingly eager to know how his new world worked.
‘No,’ he said, pouting.

Ota Qwan ignored his tone. ‘Thorn wishes to be the lord of these woods.’ He made a face. ‘He is reputed a great sorcerer who was once a man. Now he seeks revenge on men. But
yesterday he was defeated – not beaten, but bloodied. We did not follow him to battle because Skadai didn’t like the plan he heard, so now we go east to fight our own
battles.’

‘Defeated? By whom?’ Peter looked around. ‘Where was this battle?’

‘Six leagues from where you rutted with Senegral, two hundred men died and twice that number of creatures of the Wild.’ He shrugged. ‘Thorn has ten times that many creatures
and men at his beck and call and he summons more. But the Sossag are not slaves, servants, bound men – only allies, and only then when it suits our need.’

‘Surely this Thorn is angry at us?’ Peter asked.