The Red Knight (8 page)

The captain walked along the wall with no little trepidation. He went into the sheepfold through the gate, and Michael brought him a tilt helmet with solid mesh over the face and a heavy
aventail.

Michael handed him his own war sword. It was five inches shorter than Bad Tom’s, plain iron hilted with a half-wired grip and a heavy wheel of iron for a pommel.

As Michael buckled his visor, John of Reigate, Bad Tom’s squire, put his helmet over his head.

Tom grinned while his faceplate was fastened. ‘Most loons mislike a little to-do wi’ me,’ he said. When Tom was excited, his hillman accent overwhelmed his Gothic.

The captain rolled his head to test his helmet, rotated his right arm to test his range of motion.

Men-at-arms were pausing, all over the sheepfold.

‘The more fool they,’ the captain said.

He’d watched Tom fight. Tom liked to hit hard – to use his godlike strength to smash through men’s guards.

His father’s master-at-arms, Hywel Writhe, used to say
For good swordsmen, it’s not enough to win. They need to win their own way. Learn a man’s way, and he becomes
predictable.

Tom rose from the milking stool he’d sat on to be armed and flicked his sword back and forth. Unlike many big men, Tom was as fast as the tomcat that gave him his name.

The captain didn’t strike a guard at all. He held his sword in one hand, the point actually trailing on the grass.

Tom whirled his blade up to the high Woman’s Guard, ready to cleave his captain in two.

‘Garde!’ he roared. The call echoed off the walls of the sheep fold and then from the high walls of the fortress above them.

The captain stepped, moved one foot off line, and suddenly he had his sword in two hands. Still trailing out behind him.

Tom stepped off-line, circling to the captain’s left.

The captain stepped in, his sword rising to make a flat cut at Tom’s head.

Tom slapped the sword down – a
rabatter
cut with both wrists, meant to pound an opponent’s blade into the ground.

The captain powered in, his back foot following the front foot forward. He let the force of Tom’s blow to his blade rotate it, his wrist the pivot – sideways and then
under
Tom’s blade.

He caught the point of his own blade in his left hand, and tapped it against Tom’s visor. His two handed grip and his stance put Tom’s life utterly in his hands.

‘One,’ he said.

Tom laughed. ‘Brawly feckit!’ he called.

He stepped back and saluted. The captain returned the salute and sidestepped, because Tom came for him immediately.

Tom stepped, then swept forward with a heavy downward cut.

The captain stopped it, rolling the blade well off to the side, but as fast as he could bring his point back on line, Tom was inside his reach—

And he was face down in sheep dip. His hips hurt, and now his neck hurt.

But to complain was not the spirit of the thing.

‘Well struck,’ he said, doing his best to bounce to his feet.

Tom laughed his wild laugh again. ‘Mine, I think,’ he said.

The captain had to laugh.

‘I was planning to chew on your toes,’ he said, and drew a laugh from the onlookers.

He saluted, Tom saluted, and they were on their guards again.

But they’d both shown their mettle, and now they circled – Tom looking for a way to force the action close, and the captain trying to keep him off with short jabs. Once, by thrusting
with his whole sword held at the pommel, he scored on Tom’s right hand, and the other man flicked a short salute, as if to say ‘that wasn’t much’. And indeed, Ser Hugo
stepped between them.

‘I don’t’ allow such trick blows, my lord,’ Hugh said. ‘It’d be a foolish thing to do in a melee.’

The captain had to acknowledge the truth of that assertion. He had been taught the Long Point with the advice
never use this unless you are desperate. Even then—

The captain’s breath was coming in great gasps, while Tom seemed to be moving fluidly around the impromptu ring. Breathing well and easily. Of course, given his advantages in reach and
size, he could control most aspects of the fight, and the captain was mostly running away to keep his distance.

The last five days of worry and stress sat as heavily on his shoulders as the weight of his tournament helm. And Tom was very good. There was really little shame in losing to him. So the captain
decided he’d rather go down as a lion than a very tired lamb. And besides, it would be funny.

So – between one retreat and the next blow – he swayed his hips, rotated his feet so that his weight was back, and let go the sword’s hilt with his left hand. Eastern swordsmen
called it ‘The Guard of One Hand’.

Tom swept in with another of his endless, heavy, sweeping blows. Any normal man would have exhausted himself with them. Not Tom. This one came from his right shoulder.

This time, the captain tried for a
rebatter
defence – his sword sweeping up, one handed, coming slightly behind Tom’s but cutting as fast as a falcon strikes its prey. He
caught Tom’s sword and drove it faster along its intended path as he stepped slightly off-line and
forward
, surprising his companion. His free left hand shot out, and he punched
Tom’s right wrist, and then his left hand was between the big man’s hands, and Tom’s aggressive pursuit of his elusive opponent carried him forward – the captain’s
left hand went deeper, and he achieved the arm lock, and twisted, in complete possession of the man’s sword and shoulder—

And nothing happened. Tom was
not
rotated. In fact, Tom’s rush turned into a swing, and the captain found himself swinging off Tom’s elbow and the giant turned to the left,
and again, and the captain couldn’t let go without tumbling to the ground.

His master-at-arms had never covered this situation.

Tom whirled him again, trying to shake him off. They were at a nasty impasse. The captain had Tom’s sword bound tight, and his elbow and shoulder in a lock too. But Tom had the
captain’s feet off the ground.

The captain had his blade free – mostly free. He hooked his pommel into Tom’s locked arms, hoping it would give him the leverage to, well, to do what should have happened in the
first place. The captain’s sense of how combat and the universe worked had received a serious jar.

But even with both hands—

Tom whirled him again, like a terrier breaking a rat’s neck.

Using every sinew of his not inconsiderable muscles, the captain pried his pommel between Tom’s arms and levered the blade over Tom’s head and grabbed the other side, letting his
whole weight go onto the blade.

In effect, he fell, blade first, on Tom’s neck.

They both went down.

The captain lay in the sheep muck, with his eyes full of stars. And his breath coming like a blacksmith’s bellows.

Something under him was moving.

He rolled over, and found that he was lying entangled with the giant hillman, and the man was laughing.

‘You’re mad as a gengrit!’ Tom said. He rose out of the muck and smothered the captain in an embrace.

Some of the other men-at-arms were applauding.

Some were laughing.

Michael looked like he was going to cry. But that was only because he had to clean the captain’s armour, and the captain was awash in sheep dip.

When his helmet was off, he began to feel the new strain in his left side and the pain in his shoulder. Tom was right next to him.

‘You’re a loon,’ Tom said. He grinned. ‘A loon.’

With his helmet off, he could still only just breathe.

Chrys Foliack, another of the men-at-arms who had hitherto kept his distance from the captain, came and offered his hand. He grinned at Tom. ‘It’s like fighting a mountain,
ain’t it?’ he asked.

The captain shook his head. ‘I’ve never—’

Foliack was a big man, handsome and red-headed and obviously well-born. ‘I liked the arm lock,’ he said. ‘Will you teach it?’

The captain looked around. ‘Not just this minute,’ he said.

That got a laugh.

Harndon Palace – The King

The king was in armour, having just trounced a number of his gentlemen on the tilt field, when his constable, Alexander, Lord Glendower – an older man with a scar that ran
from his right eyebrow, all the way across his face, cleaving his nose from right to left so deeply as to make most men he met wince – and then down across his face to his mouth, so that his
beard had a ripple in it where the scar had healed badly, and he always looked as if he was sneering – approached with a red-haired giant at his back.

Glendower’s scar couldn’t have suited a man worse as he was, as far as the king was concerned, the best of companions, a man little given to sneering and much to straight talk
unlaced by flattery or temper. His patience with his soldiers was legendary.

‘My lord, I think you know Ranald Lachlan, who has served you two years as a man-at arms.’ He bowed, and extended an arm to the red-bearded man, who was obviously a hillman –
red hair, facial scarring, piercing blue eyes like steel daggers, and two ells of height unhidden by the hardened steel plate armour and red livery of the Royal Guard.

Ranald bowed deeply.

The king reached out and clasped his hand. ‘I’m losing you,’ he said warmly. ‘The sight of your great axe always made me feel safe,’ he laughed.

Ranald bowed again. ‘I promised Lord Glendower and Sir Ricard two years when I signed my mark,’ the hillman said. ‘I’m needed at home, for the spring drive.’

Sir Ricard Fitzroy, so indicated, was the captain of the guard.

‘Your brother is the Drover, I know,’ the king said. ‘It’s a troubled spring, Ranald. Alba will be safer if your axe is guarding beeves in the hills, rather than guarding
the king, safe in Harndon. Eh?’

Ranald shrugged, embarrassed. ‘There’ll be fighting, I ha’e na’ doot,’ he admitted. Then he grinned. ‘I have no doubt, my lord.’

The king nodded. ‘When the drive is over?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I have reason to come back,’ he said with a grin. ‘My lord. With your leave. But my brother needs me, and there are things—’

Every man present knew that the things Ranald Lachlan wanted involved the Queen’s secretary, Lady Almspend – not an heiress, precisely. But a pretty maid with a fair inheritance. A
high mark for a King’s Guardsman, commonly born.

The king leaned close. ‘Come back, Ranald. She’ll wait.’

‘I pray she does,’ he whispered.

The king turned to his constable. ‘See that this man’s surcoat and kit are well stored; I grant him leave, but I do not grant him quittance from my service.’

‘My lord!’ the man replied.

The king grinned. ‘Now get going. And come back with some tales to tell.’

Ranald bowed again, as ceremony demanded, and walked from the king’s presence to the guardroom, where he embraced a dozen close friends, drank a farewell cup of wine, and handed the
Steward his kit – his maille hauberk and his good cote of plates beautifully covered in the royal scarlet; his two scarlet cotes with matching hoods, for wear at court, and his hose of
scarlet cloth. His tall boots of scarlet leather, and his sword belt of scarlet trimmed in bronze.

He had on a doublet of fustian, dark hose of a muddy brown, and over his arm was his three-quarter’s tweed cloak.

The Steward, Radolf, listed his kit on his inventory and nodded. ‘Nicely kept, messire. And your badge . . .’ the king’s badge was a white heart with a golden collar, and the
badges were cunningly fashioned of silver and bronze and enamel. ‘The king expressly stated you was to keep yours, as on leave and not quit the guard.’ He handed the badge back.

Ranald was touched. He took the brooch and pinned his cloak with it. The badge made his tweed look shabby and old.

Then he walked out of the fortress and down into the city of Harndon, without a backwards glance. Two years, war and peril, missions secret and diplomatic, and the love of his life.

A hillman had other loyalties.

Down into the town that grew along the river’s curves. From the height of the fortress, the town was dominated by the bridge over the Albin, the last bridge before the broad and winding
river reached the sea thirty leagues farther south. On the far side of the bridge, to the north, lay Bridgetown – part and not part of the great city of Harndon. But on this side, along the
river, the city ran from the king’s fortress around the curve, with wharves and peers at the riverside, merchants’ houses, streets of craftsmen in houses built tall and thin to save
land.

He walked down the ramp, leading his two horses past the sentries – men he knew. More hand clasps.

He walked along Flood Street, past the great convent of St Thomas and the streets of the Mercers and Goldsmiths, and down the steep lanes past the Founders and the Blacksmiths, to the place
where Blade Lane crossed with Armour Street, at the sign of the broken circle.

The counter was only as wide as two broad-built men standing side by side, but Ranald looked around, because the Broken Circle made the finest weapons and armour in the Demesne, and there were
always things there to be seen. Beautiful things – even to a hillman. Today was better than many days – a dozen simple helmets stood on the counter, all crisp and fine, with high points
and umbers to shade the eye, the white work fine and neat, the finish almost mirror bright, the metal blue-white, like fine silver.

And these were simple archer’s helmets.

There was an apprentice behind the counter, a likely young man with arms like the statues of the ancient men and legs to match. He grinned and bobbed his head and went silently through the
curtain behind him to fetch his master.

Tad Pyel was the master weapon smith of the land. The first Alban to make the hardened steel. He was a tall man with a pleasant round face and twenty loyal apprentices to show that the mild
disposition was not just in his face. He emerged, wiping his hands on his apron.

‘Master Ranald,’ he said. ‘Here for your axe, I have no doubt.’

‘There was some talk of a cote, of maille as well,’ Ranald added.