The Red Knight (68 page)

‘Have you finished whining?’ Thorn bellowed.

Jack squared his shoulders. ‘If it is your unshared plan that the mighty daemons face the king then my comrades and I will be honoured to share the danger with our scaled
allies.’

Thorn wanted to scream in frustration.
My plan is my plan is my plan. I will not share it with the likes of you.
But he narrowed his eyes, banished the bile from his great heart, and
nodded.

‘Then gather more boats, and prepare to cross the river. This time, protect them. For unless the king is a great fool, he will advance on the south side of the river, as my brother Thurkan
fears. Yes? And if you are hard pressed, I will send gwyllch, at least the lighter kind, who can pass the river.’

Exrech spat a clear fluid.
Waste of resources; conflict of interest.

Thorn took a deep breath, and pushed power into his word.

‘Obey,’
he said.

By the time the fireflies came out, the clearing in the woods was empty.

Lorica – Desiderata

Desiderata sat on her throne in the Great Hall of the castle of Lorica, still dressed for travelling. She had a dozen minor issues on which to pronounce justice, and all she
wanted was dinner and bed. Taking a train from Harndon to Lorica in a day was harder work than she’d expected.

She worked her way through the cases – the murder of a draper by a woman, the theft of a herd that trailed off into accusations and counter-accusations by the monks of two rival abbeys
– and then there was a messenger.

He wore the royal scarlet and midnight blue livery, and even covered in road dust it commanded instant attention.

He was young and not particularly handsome, and yet had an air about him. He knelt at her feet and presented a bag.

‘The king sends to you, my lady,’ he said formally.

She didn’t know him, but word of war had made the king increase every part of the household – an action that would affect the royal budget for ten years to come.

‘Royer Le Hardi, my lady,’ the messenger said.

‘The news?’ she asked.

‘All is well with the army,’ Royer replied.

The Queen took the pouch and opened it, cutting her husband’s seal carefully and opening the lead wafers that secured the buckles with the small knife she always wore in her girdle.

There were four scroll tubes holding about a dozen folded and sealed letters – she saw letters to the Emperor of Morea and the King of Galle – and a thick packet with her name on it
in his handwriting, which she snatched up.

She read a few lines and frowned. ‘My lords, ladies, and good men and women,’ she said formally, rising to her feet. ‘I will hold court in the morning, and all cases are held
over until then. The seneschal and sheriff shall attend me, as will my own lords.’ She smiled, and many in the multitude at her feet smiled back, so personable was her smile.

The hall’s chamberlain smacked the floor with his staff. ‘The Queen has dismissed the assembly,’ he said, in case there were those who didn’t understand.

Before the last draper had cleared the portico the Royal Steward and the King’s Treasurer – were at her side. ‘News?’ asked Bishop Godwin. Lord Lessing – a banker
promoted to the aristocracy by the old king – rubbed his beard.

She tapped the cover note against her teeth. ‘We will continue north to join the army,’ she said. ‘If we have a tournament at all, at this rate it will be in the face of the
enemy, at Albinkirk or even Lissen Carak.’ Her thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

Her king’s note sounded desperate, and he had ordered her not to come.

‘Strip this town of carts,’ she said. ‘I will leave everything that I don’t need – I’ll take four maids. No state gowns, no frippery, no clothes. You, my
lords, should stay here. You will form the government.’ She paused. ‘No. Go back down the river to Harndon.’

The bishop breathed a sigh of relief.

‘I might be gone a month,’ she said. ‘Or more. I may stay with the king until the emergency is past. Lord Lessing, I would take it as a kindness if you would organise the
supply convoys as I have been doing.’

Lessing pulled at his beard. He had gold wire in it, which somehow served only to make it look greyer. ‘I will do your will, Lady,’ he said gravely. ‘But some of those wagons
need to start coming back. We have stripped the southern kingdom bare and I doubt that there is even a wheeled cart to be had in Harndon. If they are lost, the harvest will rot in the
fields.’

‘Best they not be lost, then,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ll see to it that the wagons I’ve sent north are turned around – either empty, or full of the northern
harvest.’

‘Boats,’ Lessing said suddenly. ‘If he’s aiming for Lissen Carak, you should go by boat. The docks here are full of empty hulls – Master Random of Harndon’s
boats. He’s arrayed a mighty fleet of river boats to buy the grain harvest in the north. It’s supposed to be a secret, I admit. But I had it from his wife, and you can go faster by oars
and sail up the river. And it’s safe as houses – never yet heard of a boglin as could swim. Eh?’

She loved her lords because they weren’t going to try to stop her, and because both of them began immediately to plan for the practical details of her trip to join the army.

After they’d made a dozen lists and summoned half the prominent men of Lorica to witness deeds and to become commissioners of this and that, she collapsed at last into the best bed in the
royal keep of Lorica.

Mary stripped off her silken cote hardie, her kirtle, her shift, and the man’s hose she’d worn underneath so she could ride astride. ‘You will take me with you?’ Mary
asked.

‘You and Emmota, Helena and Apollonasia,’ the Queen said languorously. ‘And Becca.’

‘Bath?’ Mary asked.

‘Perhaps the last for many days,’ the Queen said. ‘Oh, par dieu, Mary, we are about to break free of it all and have an
adventure.
’

Lady Mary smiled at her mistress. But her eyes had no smile in them, as if she was looking far beyond their room.

‘Do you still think of him?’ the Queen asked her First Maid.

‘Only when I’m awake,’ Hard Heart admitted. ‘And sometimes when I’m asleep.’

‘He is not with the army.’ Desiderata had received two missives from her husband that included the name of Gawin Murien, but in both his whereabouts was unknown.

‘I will be closer to him,’ Mary said. She sighed. ‘I didn’t know that I loved him until the king sent him away.’

Desiderata held her Mary for a few tears, and thought of her husband’s letters.

He was worried.
That came through, either despite his foolish banter or because of it.

He needed her there. To remind him who he was.

She fell asleep thinking of Mary and Gawin, and awoke to find that she was the admiral of a fleet of forty river boats, twenty oared boats with sturdy masts and slab sides, capable of a turn of
speed and a heavy cargo. By the time the sun was above the river banks, her flotilla was pulling north, and the townsmen were glad to see the backs of the rowers, who had made more trouble than a
dozen companies of soldiers. Despite her plans she’d ended up with all of her ladies, a set of pavilions, and a cargo of armour and dried meat for the army. And a company of Lorican guildsmen
in horrible purple and gold livery; crossbowmen who had, to the man, never been out of the town before. They were the only soldiers that the bishop could find.

‘Give way, all!’ called the timoneer.

She lay back under the bright sun, dressed in white, and let the sun turn her hair to gold.

Hector Lachlan

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The Abbess had a table brought in, and the captain thought it might be the longest he’d ever seen – it filled the Great Hall from hearth to dais, space for thirty
men to sit at table together.

But there were not thirty men at the table.

There were just six. And the Abbess.

The six were the captain himself, sitting in one chair with his feet on another, and Ser Jehannes, sitting upright in a third; Master Gerald Random, who by virtue of saving almost half his
convoy had suddenly become the representative of all the merchants, taking another pair of chairs, and Ser Milus, as the commander of the Bridge Castle, sat with his head propped on his hands.
Master Gelfred sat separately from the other men, a self-imposed social distance. And the priest, Father Henry, sat with a stylus and wax tablets, prepared to copy their decisions.

The Abbess sat to the captain’s right, flanked by two sisters, who stood. The captain understood that the two silent figures were her Chancellor and Mistress of Novices, the two most
powerful offices in the convent. Sister Miram and Sister Ann.

When all the men had settled the Abbess cleared her throat. ‘Captain?’ she asked.

He took his booted feet off a chair and sat up. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We are now, at long last, under siege. Our Enemy has finally realised how few we are, and has sealed the
roads.’ He shrugged. ‘Frankly, this is a harsher defeat than any we have suffered in the field. He should have thought, after yesterday’s incredible stroke of
luck—’

‘The work of God!’ Master Random said.

‘The Enemy should have assumed,’ the captain went on, ‘we had a big garrison and a lot of potent phantasm to pull off such a coup. Instead, he’s used the night to push in
all my outposts. I lost three good men last night, gentlemen and ladies.’ He looked around. The cunningly hidden heavy arbalest in the dead ground hadn’t been cunning enough, and now
Guillaume Longsword, one of his officers, as well as his page and archer were dead, and Young Will, as his squire was known, was weeping his guts out in the infirmary. ‘More men than we lost
in yesterday’s fight,’ he went on.

The other mercenaries nodded.

‘On a more positive note, Master Random brought us a dozen men-at-arms and sixty archers.’
Of very variable quality, and every one of them ran yesterday, at one point or another.
Every one but one,
he remembered sourly. Ser Gawin had not yet condescended to open an eye.

‘My guildsmen are not mere archers,’ Master Random said.

The captain sat back, assessing the man. ‘I know they are not,’ he said. ‘But for the duration of the siege, Master, we must treat them as soldiers.’

Random nodded. ‘I, too, can swing a sword.’

The captain had noticed that he was wearing one, and reports had it that the merchant had acquitted himself well.

‘So,’ he went on, ‘we have forty men-at-arms well enough to wear harness, and our squires; call it sixty knights. We have almost triple that in archers, thanks to the better
farmers and the guildsmen.’ He looked around. ‘Our Enemy has at least five thousand, boglins, irks, allies and men taken together.’

‘Good Christ!’ Ser Milus sat up.

Ser Jehannes looked as if he’d eaten something foul.

Master Gelfred nodded when the captain looked at him. ‘Can’t be less, given what I saw this morning,’ he said. ‘The Enemy can cover every road and every path at the same
time, and they rotate their forces every few hours.’ He shrugged. ‘You can watch the boglins digging trenches out beyond the range of our trebuchets. It’s like watching termites.
There are—’ he shrugged, ‘a great many termites.’

The captain looked around. ‘In addition, we have another hundred merchants and merchants’ folk, and four hundred women and children.’ He smiled. ‘In the East, I’d
be sending them out right now, to fill the besieger’s lines with useless mouths.’ He looked around. ‘Here, they’d literally fill the enemy’s bellies, instead.’
No one appreciated his humour.

‘You can’t be serious!’ said the Abbess.

‘I am not. I won’t drive them out to die. But the merchants and their people must be put to work, and I’d like to assign a dozen archers and two men-at-arms to training them.
If we cannot be rid of these useless mouths, we must make them useful. We have about forty days’ food for a thousand mouths. Double that at half rations’