The Red Knight (88 page)

Amicia was elfin and green.

Harmodius was young and strong, hale – a knight on errantry, with a halo of gold.

Miram was shining like a statue of polished bronze.

Mag looked just like herself.

He was at once in his place of power, and simultaneously in Amicia’s, standing on her beautiful bridge. He sat in a comfortable leather armchair in a great tiled room – that had
to be Harmodius – surrounded by chess boards and wheels with wheels. He stood in a chapel surrounded by statues of knights and their ladies – or, as he realised, ladies and their
knights, each with a golden chain attaching them. A chapel of courtly love – surely the lady’s place of power. He knelt before a plain stone altar with a cup of red blood on it.
Miram’s place of power.

He stood in the Abbess’s hall, and there was a needle in his hand. Mag’s place of power was external – in that moment, he understood how very powerful her making was,
because where the rest of them worked the aether, she worked the solid.

There was a glow or health, of vitality, of goodness, of power. And no time at all.

He knew many things, and many things of his were learned.

They made their plan.

And then, like the end of a kiss,
he was himself.

He sagged away from them, tired from the length of the link. Other perspectives were haunting, exhausting – he could see, as quickly as Harmodius had, how a sisterhood of dedicated nuns
was the ideal basis for a choir of Hermeticists, because they learned and practised discipline –
together.

Harmodius was stroking his beard. ‘You are taking all the risk, lad,’ he said aloud.

The captain gave them all a lop-sided grin. ‘A single, perfect sacrifice,’ he said.

The Abbess rolled her eyes. ‘Sometimes your blasphemy is just banal,’ she said. ‘Try not to die. We’re all quite fond of you.’

Amicia met his eye and smiled at him, and he returned her smile.

‘I have many things to prepare,’ he said. He bowed to the company, and went out into the night.

First he walked to the northern tower and climbed the steps to the second floor. He climbed softly, his black leather boots and smooth leather soles giving nothing away. The
card players were attuned to the sound of sabatons.

Bad Tom was playing piquet.

‘A word,’ he said.

Tom raised his head, pursed his lips, and put his cards face down with a start. ‘I can leave cards like this any time,’ he said, a little too carefully.

Bent was hiding something under his hand.

Given the circumstances, the captain didn’t think he needed to care.

Bent shrugged. ‘They’ll be the same when you come back,’ he said.

‘Better be,’ Tom said. He followed the captain out onto the garrison room’s balcony over the courtyard. ‘My lord?’ the big man asked, formally.

‘I’m going for a ride tonight, Tom,’ the captain said quietly. ‘Out into the enemy. I’d like you to come.’

‘I’m your man,’ Tom said cheerfully.

‘We’re going to try and take him,’ the captain said. He made a sign with his fingers, like antlers or branches growing from his head.

Tom eyes widened – just a hair. Then he laughed. ‘That’s a mad jest,’ he said. ‘Oh, the pleasure of it!’

‘Forget the watch bill. I want the best. Pick me twenty men-at-arms,’ the captain said.

‘’Bout all we have on their feet,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll get it done.’

‘Full dark. You will have to cover me when I— Tom, you know that I will have to use power?’ the captain said.

Tom grinned. ‘I guess.’ He turned his head away. ‘Everyone says you used power against the daemons.’

The captain nodded. ‘True. If I have to cast, I need you to cover me. I can’t fight and cast.’ Then he grinned. ‘Well. I can’t fight and cast well.’

Tom nodded. ‘I’m your man. But – in the dark? After yon horned loon? We need to bring a minstrel.’

The captain was lost by the change of subject. ‘A minstrel?’

‘Someone to record it all, Captain.’ Bad Tom looked off into the dark. ‘Because we’re going to make a song.’

The captain didn’t quite know what to make of that. So he slapped the big man on the shoulder.

Tom caught his arm. ‘You can’t be thinkin’ we can take him with steel.’

The captain lowered his voice. ‘No, Tom. I don’t think so, but I’m going to try, anyway.’

Tom nodded. ‘So we’re the bait, then?’

The captain looked grim. ‘You are a little too quick, my friend.’

Tom nodded. ‘When there’s death in the air, I can see through a brick wall.’

Near Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn had everything he needed to proceed. He’d built his two most powerful phantasms in advance, storing them carefully in living things he’d designed just to store
such things – pale limpets that clung like naked slugs to his mossy stone carapace.

He didn’t bother to curse the wyverns who had failed him. It had been, at best, a long shot.

But now it was down to him, and he didn’t want to do it.

He didn’t want to weaken himself by taking on the fortress directly.

He didn’t want to expose himself to direct assaults from his apprentice and the dark sun. However puny, they were not unskilled or incapable.

He didn’t want to fight with
her.
Although his reason told him that when he killed her, he would be much stronger for it. His link to her was a link to his past life. A
weakness.

He didn’t want to do this at all. Because win or lose, he’d engaged forces that forced his hand. Made him grow in power. In
visibility.

Damn them all, the useless daemons most of all. It was
their
fortress, and they were all busy watching him to see if they could bring him down, instead of helping.

And Thurkan had failed to take the dark sun.

Thorn was not without doubt. In fact, he was full of doubt, and again, for the hundredth time since the siege began, he considered taking his great staff and walking off into the Wild.

But without him the Wild might fail. And that would be catastrophic. At best it would be fatal for his long term plans.

He extended his hands, and power flowed smoothly. A cloud of faeries began to gather, so great was the power concentrated in a few yards of air.

He tried to imagine what it would be like when she was dead. He would miss her. She had once been the standard by which he measured himself. But that self was largely gone, and it was time he
did without her.

And the apprentice.
It is a weakness, to miss the company of men.

The Wild had to win. Men were like lice, undermining the health of the Wild.

It was time to act, and he could imagine all of his actions, a fugue of them extending back to his earliest conscious thoughts, culminating here.

He surfaced from the tide of his thoughts and looked around, unhampered by the darkness. He looked at Exrech. ‘Your people must storm the trench,’ he said. ‘And hold it. By
holding it, we separate the fortress from the Bridge Castle.’

‘And then we dig,’ Exrech said.

Thorn bowed assent. To Thurkan he said, ‘The dark sun will come for me.’

‘We will lay in ambush for him,’ the daemon promised.

Thorn looked at the trolls – mighty creatures which he suspected had been created in the distant past by magi. As bodyguards. He had now acquired two dozen of them, as was the way when one
became a power. He was like a beacon, and so they came. He no longer saw them as horrible. Instead, he saw them as beautiful, the way a craftsman views his perfect chisel, the one that fits his
hand as if made for it.

Thorn tapped his great staff on the ground. ‘Go,’ he told his captains.

Lissen Carak – The Abbess

The Abbess felt the spells he cast. She had lain down to rest, but it was happening sooner that she expected and she sat up, her mind reaching for the threads of power that
bound her to her stone.

She felt him, in the darkness out there, planning the ruin of her home, and she narrowed her eyes and reached down the link they would always share.

Traitor!
she said. She flung the word with a woman’s contempt.

Sophia!
He cried into the Aether.

She hurled her defiance at him and she felt her venom strike home, and in the moment of his startlement she read him, and saw that he had a trap prepared – that she had a traitor in her
midst, as she had long suspected.

Then she was running, her bare feet slapping the stone floor, her unbound hair trailing behind her like the tail of a comet, running for the courtyard.

She felt him respond, and she had her defences up. She felt his come up – slowly, but when raised, as strong as a wall of iron. She couldn’t even sense him through them, merely that
he must be behind that veil. She prayed as she ran – prayed for his ruin.

The young captain was standing by his destrier in the courtyard, with twenty knights behind him.

‘You cannot go out there!’ she screamed. ‘He is waiting for you! It is a trap!’

The captain gave her an odd smile, and waved to Michael, who had his bascinet. ‘He’s coming already, is he?’ he said to her. He turned to his knights. ‘Mount!’ he
shouted.

She grabbed his bridle, and his great war horse – quick as lightning – bit at her hand, and only his instant reaction saved her. The Red Knight slapped his hand at Grendel’s
neck, and the war horse took one step, and tossed his head, as if to say ‘could have, if I really wanted.’

‘He is coming
now
—’

His squire placed his helmet on his head, and pulled the chain of his aventail down over his cote armour. The captain flexed his shoulders and arms – left, right. All through the
courtyard, squires held up gauntlets – slid them onto their master’s hands, and then reached for the great lances, as tall as small trees and as thick, tipped in long heads of
steel.

His face appeared from under the brow of the helmet. He was smiling. ‘Yes,’ the captain said. ‘I feel him. Through you.’ He laughed. ‘What did you do?’

‘I told him what I think of him,’ she said. ‘A woman scorned – for power?’ She threw back her head and laughed. It sounded mad.

‘I imagine,’ the captain said, even as Michael moved the helmet back and forth, seating it securely on his brow, ‘that must have been a shrewd blow.’

She shook her head. ‘His amour propre will shed it soon enough. But I saw into him. He has a traitor in the fortress.’

‘I know,’ said the captain. ‘I told you,’ he gave a nasty smile, ‘and that traitor has been giving our foe a somewhat incorrect version of events for some time now.
It is now or never. He can lay all the traps he likes. Sometimes, it all comes down to speed, and audacity. He is cautious. He is sure.’ The captain seemed to glow with the power he’d
prepared. ‘He wants this fight,’ the captain said. ‘So do I. One of us is wrong. We can only try our best, so guard yourself, my lady.’

The main gate slid open.

‘Follow me!’ ordered the captain.

She stood out of the way, and watched him ride out. The hooves rattled with finality, and the knights began to move. Knights reached out to her – Francis Atcourt accepted her blessing and
she reached up to pray for Robert Lyliard, who accepted her benison with a salute. Tomas Durrem bowed to her from the saddle and swept by.

The Red Knight paused in the gateway.

Above her, on the balcony of the hospital, she saw Amicia. She saw him touch the favour on his shoulder, saw her bow her head.

Grendel reared a little, and plunged through the gate, and he was gone.

She turned to Bent, who was standing by her. ‘Everyone is to go to the basements and lie down,’ she said. ‘Everyone!’

She ran into the courtyard, shouting orders.

The alarm bell was ringing, and the archers were pouring out of their barracks, to their battle positions. All of them were in armour. They knew the score.

The Abbess stopped in the courtyard, and looked around once – the last doors were slamming closed. She nodded in satisfaction, wished she had time to hunt for Father Henry, and ran for the
chapel.

Lissen Carak – Father Henry

Father Henry saw the Abbess talk to her boy – his revulsion showed raw on his face. They were all creatures of Satan – the Abbess, the mercenary, the sisters. He was
surrounded with witches and man-witches. It was like hell.

He was done with inaction. He had the power to destroy them. He had all the tools a normal man had to use against evil.

He knew he would not survive it – but all his life, he had endured pain and mistreatment for what he knew was right. His only regret was that he could not act directly against the
mercenary. That man was like Satan incarnate.

Father Henry went into the chapel, where a dozen sisters were already gathered – not real sisters, he knew it now, but a coven of witches. All gathered to sing their damnable mockery of
praise to God.

He made himself smile at Miram. She was too busy to pay him any heed. Just for a moment, he considered striking with his knife – right here. Taking Miram and a dozen witches—

He hid his eyes lest they read his mind, and slipped past them to the altar. He reached behind it. Seized the long staff of heavy wood, and his hand unerringly found the one arrow he needed.

Black as her heart.

It was a most remarkable arrow. Behind the head and the first three fingers of the shaft, all white bone, the rest of the arrow was of Witch Bane.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

In a plan dependent on preparation and planning and Hermetic mastery, it was ironic that the first part required twenty brave men and one middle-aged woman to risk their lives
to sweep the road clean. And he didn’t even know if they’d succeeded.

But Thorn couldn’t possibly expect him to come on horseback, through the Lower Town. In fact, the captain had seen to it that Thorn would expect him on the covered footpath instead.