The Red Knight (77 page)

‘No,’ Ranald said.

‘You mean to just ride home?’ the Keeper asked, incredulous.

‘I’m a drover,’ Ranald said. ‘I have no home.’

The Keeper drank some small beer and wiped his moustache. ‘Where, then?’ he asked.

Ranald sat back. ‘I’m going to find the Wyrm of Erch,’ he said. ‘I mean to ask why he allowed us to be attacked by the Wild.’ The drover shrugged. ‘We pay a
tithe to the Wyrm in exchange for protection from the Wild. It’s the Law of Erch. Eh? Ancient as the oaks and all.’

The Keeper put his beer down slowly. ‘You mean to
speak
to the Wyrm?’

‘Someone has to,’ Ranald said. ‘I might as well; I’m already dead.’

The Keeper shook his head. ‘I have just a dozen horses left. Your cousin took my herd.’

Ranald nodded. ‘I mean to remedy that first, before I go to the Wyrm. Give me twenty men and I’ll bring in the herd. There’s a lot of it left. A thousand head at
least.’

‘You are like your cousin,’ the Keeper said. ‘Always a sting in the tail.’

Ranald shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t bother, but Sarah’s boy will need those beasts, if he means to be a drover.’ He didn’t say the other thing that was on his mind. That
he was a King’s Man, and he owed the king a warning of the Wild.

That afternoon, with twenty wary men, he rode south.

They rode quickly, spread in pairs over a mile of ground, scouting every hummock and every stand of trees.

They made a cold camp and Ranald ate the oatcakes that Sarah had given him, and when the sun was a red disc on the edge of the world they rode on.

By noon they found the first beasts. The Dalemen were spooked, terrified of the Sossag, and afraid, too, to find corpses grinning at death in the woods, but they were still, by Ranald’s
reckoning, miles north of the battleground. The herd had turned and headed home, as animals will do.

Ranald swept south along the road, and before darkness he found the boy that Hector had sent back as a messenger. He was dead, and he’d either been lost or he’d ridden a long way
west to get around something. He lay on his face, a cloud of flies around his bloated corpse, and his horse was still standing nearby. The boy had four arrows in him, and it was clear he’d
died trying to fulfil his mission. The Dalemen buried him with love and honour and his cousins, two tall, grey-eyed boys, wept for him.

But the next day held the greatest shock.

They were well west of the fight, collecting animals hard against the great Swamp, and Ranald scented a fire and went to scout it himself. It was a foolish risk to take, but he couldn’t
bear to be the cause of any more Dalemen’s deaths.

What he found was the drag – twenty of Hector’s men, alive, with a third of the herd. Donald Redmane had led them west, and they had fought three times against scattered Outwaller
bands, but they had lived and kept a great deal of the herd together.

Ranald had to tell the story all over again, and Donald Redmane wept. But the rest of the men in the drag swore a great oath to avenge Hector Lachlan.

Donald took Ranald aside. ‘You fought in the south,’ he said. ‘You think Tom is still alive?’

‘Hector’s brother Tom?’ Ranald said. ‘Aye. Unless the red hand of war has taken him, he’ll be alive. On the Continent or in the East, I reckon. Why?’

Donald Redmane’s eyes were red. ‘Because he’s the Drover, now,’ the older man said.

‘He won’t want it,’ Ranald said.

‘He will if it means he can make war,’ Donald pointed out.

The next morning, scouts killed a strange creature – shaped like a man, short like a tall child, with heavily muscled arms and legs like thick ropes and a misshapen head like a man’s
but heavier. Ranald had to assume the beast was an irk, a creature somewhere between myth and reality to the men of the hills. Legend said irks, like boglins, came from the deep woods far to the
west.

Ranald made camp with the whole band – forty-four men. They had more than twelve hundred head of cattle, and all of the goats. Seventy-five head of horses. Sarah Lachlan would not be a
pauper, and the clan was not dead.

Hector Lachlan was gone.

But Lachlan was for Aa.

The Albin River, South of Albinkirk – The Queen

The Queen watched the banks go by and she smiled at a young guildsman with a crossbow who crouched behind the boat’s high sides, watching the banks. In truth, he
wasn’t really watching them. He was of an age where he was conscious of nothing but Desiderata a few feet away. His eyes flicked to her over and over.

She watched the banks and smiled inwardly. The rowers chanted, on and on, and the mosquitoes descended on them in swarms unless a breeze rose upriver.

Lady Almspend lay next to her in the bow, a wax tablet open across her lap and a stylus ready to hand. ‘Another letter?’ she asked somewhat languorously.

The Queen shook her head. ‘It’s too hot.’

‘Pity the poor rowers,’ Lady Almspend answered. She turned her head. Most of them rowed naked to the waist – a few more naked even then that. Their work left them, to a man,
with magnificent physiques, and Lady Almspend considered them carefully. ‘They are like the Archaics,’ she said. ‘I withdraw my former statement. I don’t think they are to
be pitied, but rather admired.’ She smiled at one in particular, and he smiled back even as he brought his sixteen-foot oar through the end of its sweep and brought it back to the top of its
arc.

The Queen smiled. ‘Do have a care, my dear,’ she said.

‘I will only admire from afar,’ Lady Almspend said. ‘Do you think the sentries really saw a boglin in the night?’

The Queen nodded. ‘Indeed, I’m quite sure of it.’ She was not going to enlighten her secretary any further, but the banks were already dangerous, and the boats were now using
islands in the river for camps.

‘Could we not arm the rowers?’ Lady Almspend asked.

‘They have weapons; javelins and swords,’ the Queen answered. ‘But against a sudden onslaught in the dark, we’re safest behind a wall of water.’

Lady Almspend shook her head. ‘I cannot imagine what has happened, for the North to be so utterly over run. The king must have his work cut out for him. When will we be at
Albinkirk?’

‘Tomorrow mid-day, at this pace,’ said Almspend. ‘If the Queen could wear even less, the rowers might row even harder.’

Desiderata grinned at her friend. ‘I aim to row through the night,’ she said. ‘The river remains broad, and we are late.’

Lady Mary looked at her oddly. ‘Have you had a message?’ she asked.

The Queen shook her head. ‘I have a feeling,’ she admitted,’ nothing more. If the king has made any pace at all, he’ll already be gone west, towards Lissen Carak.’
The Queen lay back, feeling the summer sun on her shoulders. The bugs never troubled her. ‘Send a message to the king, Becca. Tell him how close we are,’ She batted her eyelashes at the
rowers closest to her. ‘Tell him we can be with him in three days.’

Royer Le Hardi volunteered, and they put him ashore with his horse and a spare. He received a kiss from the Queen, and he was still red as a beet when he rode west.

Albinkirk – Gaston

Gaston watched the Royal Army break camp and turn west with something very like trepidation. None of the military orders knights had returned, despite Lissen Carak being only
two days’ march west of Albinkirk. Each night, light rippled in the western sky.

Whatever they were fighting was utterly alien. The boglins had startled him at Albinkirk – even a few of them, they were so ugly and so very
wrong.
He wanted to call them
unnatural
, except that they were spawned by the Wild.

His cousin was ecstatic – the flashes of light in the west guaranteed that the castle there still held, and that meant that battle was at last imminent. For Jean de Vrailly, that battle
had become the guiding force – the lodestone on which his life turned.

Gaston inspected his company and reminded them, for the tenth day in a row, of the lessons they’d learned from the Count of the Borders. To always have scouts – front, flanks, and
rear. To ride with the knights inside a strong box of spearmen and bowmen, so that, in case of an ambush, the knights could react instantly, from safety. To put the wagons at the very centre of
that box.

All good sense. But it required a reliance on the low-born men by the knights.

His scouts rode off into the pre-dawn and he mounted his charger. His squire handed him his weapons and then he sat quietly watching the column form, and waiting for the sound – the
shouts, the trumpets – that would signal a fight.

Once again, he felt homesick. He wanted no part of this strange warfare against fabulous beasts and monsters. At home, he fought men. He understood men.

When his company was formed with his cousin’s he rode west along the column to the king, who sat mounted amidst a circle of his lords. He had a scroll in his hand, as he did most mornings
– the Kings of Alba had a fine express service, and its riders continued to reach him despite the increasingly dangerous roads.

‘She’s ignored me,’ The king said happily. He looked up, and greeted the captal with a nod. ‘My wife has ignored my advice and is on her way here,’ he said.

The captal, as usual, mistook his meaning. ‘Then I suppose your Majesty must punish her,’ he said.

The king chose not to take exception, and instead, smiled. ‘I think we would be most ungrateful,’ he said, ‘to be rude to a lady who brings us a great supply of
food.’

The Count of the Borders smiled. ‘When do you expect her?’

The king looked out over the woods that stretched like a sea of green to the west. ‘She’s three days’ march to the south of Albinkirk,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘But
she’s commandeered a flotilla of boats – she’s moving much faster than we are.’

‘But she has to follow the snake of the river,’ said the Count of the Borders.

Sir Ricar Fitzroy fingered his beard. ‘You Grace, she’s got a head on her shoulders. She’ll still be faster, and she’ll carry a great deal more food and fodder than a
wagon convoy.’

The constable sat back on his charger and put a fist in the small of his back. ‘Am I the only man who thinks he’s too old for all this?’ he said. ‘Your Grace, I propose
that we fall back along the line of the river until we link with the Queen. We only have five days’ rations – we’re short on meat already, and the woods are scoured of animals.
The Royal Huntsmen – begging your Grace’s pardon – aren’t bringing in enough game to feed the Royal Household.’

The Count of the Borders agreed. ‘No need to rush to a fight,’ he said. ‘Not with the Wild.’

The Earl of Towbray shook his head. ‘The fortress could fall,’ he said.

‘Lissen Carak will stand or fall,’ the constable said. He looked around, and lowered his voice. ‘My lords, we carry the weight of the kingdom on our shoulders. If we lose this
army there is no new army to replace it.’

‘Albinkirk is all but in cinders,’ the king answered. ‘I will not lose the Fortress of the North, as well.’

‘We need food,’ the constable argued. ‘We planned to resupply from the magazine at Albinkirk. Or to find the drove coming south from the Hills and buy their beef.’

‘Can we last five days?’ the king said. ‘And how long can the fortress last?’

Jean de Vrailly rose in his stirrups. ‘Bah,’ he said. ‘The men can last without food. Let us find the enemy,’ he said.

The Albins looked at him wearily.

‘Let us finally face these creatures!’ the captal insisted.

The Lord of Bain didn’t comment. He merely raised an eyebrow.

The king’s friend, Ser Driant, scowled. ‘I’m not the hardiest warrior, and I’m well known to these gentlemen as a lover of my dram.’ He leaned forward towards the
captal. ‘But we are not going to risk the king’s host on a battle where we have unfed horses.’

Jean de Vrailly sneered. ‘Of course, you must be
cautious
,’ he said.

The constable narrowed his eyes. ‘Yes, my lord. That is exactly what we must be. We must be cautious. We must fight on ground of our choosing, with a well-ordered host in tight array, with
secure flanks and a defensible camp to which we can retreat if it all goes awry. We must take every possible advantage over our foes. This is not a game, nor a tournament, my lord. This is
war.’

‘You lecture me?’ Jean de Vrailly allowed his charger to take two heavy-footed steps toward the constable.

The constable raised an eyebrow. ‘I do, my lord. You seem to need it.’

The king nodded. ‘The captal’s willingness to go forward is noted, but I sense my constable would rather dig in here and wait for the Queen. Is that your thought?’

The constable nodded. ‘It is. I expect to hear from the Prior in the next day. It would be foolish to move forward without word from our most trusted knights.’

Jean de Vrailly’s anger was palpable.

Gaston put a hand on his arm and his head snapped around like a falcon’s.

Gaston met his wild gaze.

‘And let us at least travel south of the river. Our best information places the enemy on the north bank.’ The constable was openly begging the king to take these measures, and Gaston
felt for him.

The captal made a grunt of contempt for such precautions. ‘If the enemy is on the north bank,’ he said with patronising and deliberate offence, ‘surely it is our duty as
knights to be on the north bank to contend with them?’

But there were quite a few nods of agreement in favour of the south bank, so the king smiled gracefully at the Galle and turned to his knights. ‘We cross back to the south bank,’ he
said. ‘It is my will. We will encamp and dig a fortification on the south bank of the Cohocton, and throw out a heavy screen of prickers and pedites.’

‘So cautious,’ de Vrailly spat.

‘It is my will,’ the king said. He didn’t lose his smile.

Gaston had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Lissen Carak – Michael

Michael sat and wrote by strong afternoon light.