The Red Knight (93 page)

‘Since you are so obviously a fool – yes. You’d do better trusting me, the man who fights to defend you, than trusting to the God-damned priest,
who killed your
Abbess.’

The crowd was backing away from him, and he had to assume his eyes were burning.

The farmer stood his ground, but his jaw was trembling. ‘You’re one of them too. And the priest says the other witch killed the Abbess. For her power.’

The crowd muttered again. ‘You’re one of them!’ shouted a man at the front.

‘I am whatever I choose to be,’ said the captain. ‘So are you. What do you choose?’

Tom and Jehannes stepped up behind him. And with them, a dozen other men-at-arms in plate armour, and most of the archers. There were archers on the walls, on the stumps of the towers.

‘Don’t make me do this,’ the captain said to the crowd.

Sister Miram walked out of the wreckage of the chapel with Mag, the seamstress. Miram raised her arms.

Mag spat. ‘Look at you, Bill Fuller.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Playing with fire. Going to stand here and get shot?’ She looked over the crowd. ‘Go to your
beds. Let go. We’ve lost the Abbess. Let’s not spill any more blood here.’

‘We can take ’em,’ Fuller said. But his tone suggested he knew he was lying.

Mag walked over and slapped his face. ‘You always were a weak fool, Bill Fuller,’ she said. ‘They’ll kill every one of us, if they have to. We wouldn’t even hurt
them to do it. And for what? The enemy is
out there.
’

Johne the Bailli came out of the chapel. ‘Well said, Maggie.’ He went and stood with Bad Tom. ‘I stand for the Abbess. We will not surrender.’

Maggie’s daughter Sukey came and stood with her. She was shaking.

The Carters started to burrow through the crowd.

Dan Favor went and stood with Ser Jehannes.

Amie Carter grabbed her sister’s wrist and towed her across the open space. She turned and faced the crowd. ‘Don’t be a pack of tom-fools,’ she said. ‘You been
sorcelled. Can’t you feel it? Don’t be so stupid and pig-ignorant you can’t face it.’

Liz the laundress came and stood by Tom. Kaitlin Lanthorn walked across the open space.

‘Sluts and harlots,’ said a voice.

The heads of the crowd turned, as one.

Father Henry looked as if he’d been on the cross. His face was streaked in old, dried blood. His robe was flayed and fell around his waist, showing his ascetic body, lacerated with further
cuts.

The people parted for him. He walked between them like a king.

‘Sluts and harlots. Are these your allies, Satan?’ He stopped at the edge of the crowd.

‘Not all of us are sluts, priest,’ said Master Random, and he burrowed into the crowd. ‘Adrian! Allan Pargeter! What are you doing with this man? Fomenting mischief? Master
Random walked into the crowd, looking for other apprentices he knew.

‘You killed the Abbess,’ the captain said.

Father Henry drew himself up, and the captain knew he had his man. He was too proud to deny the crime.

Fool.

‘She was a witch, a creature of Satan who chose to put her own appetites against—’

The stone hit the priest in the head. He snapped around, eyes blazing, and just for a moment, he didn’t look like a gentle and crucified Jesus. He looked like a madman. His eyes raged.

‘Take that man,’ the Red Knight said. He pointed his baton.

Bad Tom reached out with his pole-axe, caught the priest’s foot with the head, and pulled, and the priest fell. Tom kicked him viciously, his armoured foot making a distinctive meaty sound
as it connected with the priest’s gut.

The priest retched.

Two archers grabbed him and hoisted him. He tried to speak, and he got the butt of Tom’s pole-axe in the arch of his foot. He screeched.

And suddenly, there was no crowd. Just frightened people, looking for salvation.

And most of them asked –
Where is the king
?

Long Paw

Albinkirk (Southford) – Ranald Lachlan

W
hen Ranald Lachlan led his scouts down to the edge of the Albin River, he could scarcely believe his eyes.

Fifty great boats, like galleys, lay in the river opposite the landing. The river fleet covered the river in four long files of boats, and their oars went back and forth like the legs of
water-running insects.

At his back, the Royal Standard of Alba fluttered in the breeze over the gate-towers of Albinkirk, and the fields by the great bridge were empty of foes. It was like a dream, because the
familiar ground was so empty.

Ranald sat his horse, watching the big river craft row, and even as he watched, they turned, all together, at a flash of a great bronze shield, and suddenly the whole fleet went from four
columns advancing west to four lines heading toward the north shore. His shore.

He walked his horse out onto the landing stage where the ferry had run, in better times, and waved.

A woman in the bow of the largest galley waved back. An awe-inspiringly beautiful woman in a flowing white overkirtle. It took an effort of will to tear his eyes away from her, and he knew her
well, from his years in the south.

Queen Desiderata.

Unbidden, a smile came to his face, and he laughed.

Albinkirk – Desiderata

Who is that?’ Desiderata said to her maidens teasingly. She was standing in the bow, waving. ‘I feel I know him.’

Lady Almspend stood and waved. ‘Ranald the barbarous hillman, my lady,’ she said brightly.

Desiderata smiled at her secretary. ‘You seem happy enough to see him,’ the Queen said.

Lady Almspend sat a little too suddenly. ‘He – gave me the most wonderful book,’ she said haltingly.

The other ladies laughed, but not unkindly.

‘Was it a big book?’ one asked.

‘Very old?’ asked another.

‘Perhaps more like a nice, thick scroll?’ suggested Lady Mary.

‘Ladies,’ the Queen said. The oarsmen were losing the stroke, laughing so hard. But the bank was rushing at them, despite the current.

As they rowed into the landing, the Queen stepped lightly up on the gunwale and leaped onto the pier.

Ranald Lachlan, who she remembered perfectly well, bowed deeply and then knelt.

She gave him her hand. ‘It is a long way, since you were in my bridal guard.’

He smiled at her. ‘A pleasure, my lady.’

She looked past him, up the tall bank, where Donald Redmane had the lads dismounted. ‘You have a small army of your people here. Come to aid the king?’

He shrugged. ‘My cousin lost a small army, my lady. We’ve already fought the Outwallers. But I have a thousand head of beeves and some sheep, and I’m looking to sell them to
the Royal Army.’

She nodded. ‘I will buy them all. What’s your asking price?’

If he was surprised by her tone or manner, he hid it well. ‘Three silver marks a head,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’ She said. ‘Is it chivalrous for a knight to bargain with his Queen?’

Ranald shrugged, but he couldn’t stop looking into her eyes. ‘Lady, I could say I’m no knight, but a drover. And I could say I’m a hillman, and not in any way your
subject.’ He grinned, and knelt. ‘But he’d be a rude bastard and no kind of a man, who ever failed to acknowledge you as his Queen.’

She clapped her hands delightedly. ‘You are the very spirit of the north, Ser Ranald. One mark per beeve.’

‘You, my lady, are the living embodiment of beauty, but for a mark a head, I could have sold them to the Keeper of Dorling. Two silver marks a head.’ His eyes flicked to something
behind her, and his smile intensified.

‘You remember my secretary, the very learned Lady Almspend?’ she asked. ‘One and a half.’

‘One and a half, right here, on this side of the river?’ he asked. He made another deep bow, this time to her secretary, who was standing on the gunwale, beaming. ‘Two if I
have to drive them over the river.’

‘What’s a kiss worth,’ sang Lady Almspend. She blushed, shocked at her own boldness.

‘Everything!’ he shouted back. ‘But these aren’t my beeves, so I can’t trade them for a kiss, my sweet,’ He relented. ‘Your Grace, my price is two, but
I’ll drive them where you like, and pledge my lads to serve your Grace.’

The Queen nodded. ‘Sold. Fetch me my navarch. I have a thousand head of cattle to ferry over the river.’ She turned back to the hillman. ‘So despite your sordid money,
you’ll do a deed of arms with me?’

She put extra effort into her voice. She saw a coldness in him – something absent, some terror recently passed – and her voice caressed it like liquid gold.

The hillman looked cautious. ‘What kind of deed?’

‘What knight asks what deed is required of him? Really, Ser Ranald,’ she said, and put her arm through his.

‘I’m no knight,’ he said. ‘Except perhaps in my heart,’ he added.

She smiled at Lady Almspend. ‘We must do something to rectify that.’

On the bank above them Donald Redmane watched his cousin with the Queen.

‘What’s happening?’ asked one of the boys.

‘We just sold the herd to the Queen,’ Donald said. ‘What’s an Alban mark worth?’ he asked, and then shrugged. ‘And now we have to live to spend it.’

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius listened to the angry crowd and kept his head down. He was almost drained of power – needed more recovery time, and the last thing he needed was a confrontation
with ignorant witch-hunters.

Let the boy handle all that.

He dressed carefully. The old Abbess had never been a friend of his – but now, in death, he had to admire her. She had disclosed power of a level she had never had in youth – and had
deployed her power brilliantly. She’d held the Enemy for long moments, while he prepared his masterstroke.

Sadly, his masterstroke hadn’t quite come off. But she hadn’t died in vain. The fortress still stood. And the Enemy’s beard had been badly singed.

Again.

Harmodius imagined himself standing at the Podium at Harnford, staff in hand, lecturing on Hermeticism.
I learned the underpinnings of the nature of reality in the middle of one war,
he
would say,
and I learned to manipulate them myself in the middle of another.
Or perhaps he would say,
I saved the world for mankind, yes, but I only stood on the shoulders of giants.
That was better. Quite good, in fact.

And now all of her secrets would go to her grave with her, and her soul would fly to her maker.

Harmodius ran his fingers through his beard.

What if—

What if all the power in the world came from a single source?

That’s what it was, wasn’t it? It was, in a way, a commonplace.

Green or gold, white or red? Power. It’s just
power

And that meant—

No good. No evil. No Satan. No – no God?

Did it mean that, in fact? Were there really any fewer angels on the head of a pin, if all power came from a single source?

His head spun.

What if Aristotle was wrong?

He could hardly breathe. One thing to think it. Another to know it to be true.

He stumbled down the tight staircase to the common room of the dormitory, and then he forced one foot in front of the other as he walked toward the chapel.

Bad Tom appeared at the captain’s side. The captain was doing his damnedest to appear to be a member of the congregation. He had just sung a hymn. He had himself well in
order.

She had wanted him to understand.

He knelt when the other attendees knelt. Sister Miram led the service in the absence of the priest, a matter that seemed to excite no comment.

I swear on my name and my sword that I will avenge you, my lady.

‘My lord?’ asked Tom, at his elbow.

‘Not now.’

‘Now, my lord,’ Tom said.

Glaring at his corporal, the captain stood, walked to the aisle and genuflected to the crucified figure that towered over him, and then backed down the aisle to the doors. Every head turned.

Too bad.

‘What?’ he barked, when he was outside. The nuns were singing her to rest – every voice it the woven fabric of music a thread of power. It was incredibly beautiful.

Tom looked at the door to the cellars. ‘I hae’ the priest, God rot his false soul to hell. I put him I’ the darkest room wi’ a lock.’ Anger made his voice
thick.

The captain nodded. ‘You valued her too.’

Tom shrugged. ‘She blessed me.’ He looked away. ‘That priest, he’s going to die hard.’

The captain nodded. ‘We’ll try him for treason, first,’ he said.

Tom had his back to the door. ‘Why try him? You’re the captain of a fortress under siege. Law of War.’

Lissen Carak – Gerald Random

Gerald Random picked his way fastidiously along the captain’s trench, following Ser Milus – clambering over the cooked bodies of a hundred boglins, their charred
remnants a testimony to the power of fire. They smelled like cooked meat, and when he lost his balance and stepped on one, it crunched as if he’d stepped on charcoal. He paused.