The Fell Sword

Chapter Nine

Ticondaga Castle – Ghause Muriens

Ghause spent more time on research than she had done since she was very young, reading her mother’s books and her grandmother’s grimoire again and again. Even as the days grew colder and wetter, and her husband’s sword punished the Outwallers harder and tried to enforce his notions of peace among the Huran, she read and read, and then began one of the most complicated castings she’d ever designed.

The work began with an elaborate array of diagramata written in silver lead on the slate floor of her work chamber, high above the stone flags of the castle courtyard. The working was so dense that it required a kind of application that she normally forbore. She hated both research and diagramata, preferring to make up for each with simple power – power that she had had from birth.

But this was not a matter for power. This was a matter for subtlety.

Her intent was to discover how the King’s new bedmate had snapped the curse. The kind of work required – an investigative charm that would penetrate time – was so far from her usual style that she feared even to assay it, and twice she summoned daemons to question them about how they would manipulate the aether in such a way.

It was dull, detailed work and summoning daemons was far more exciting even if it was cold – working sky clad in an autumnal castle had its own risks.

One of those risks was that her focus on the task might blind her to other truths. She placed a sigil on Plangere, mostly meant to remind her to watch him more carefully if he moved too quickly.

She placed a sigil on her distant son Gavin – and did so three times in as many days – and saw her working dispelled each day.

‘Gabriel,’ she said aloud, but she didn’t press the matter.

On her fourth day, her husband summoned her by means of her son Aneas, who knocked and coughed repeatedly, being a polite young man who knew perfectly well what his sorceress mother might be doing on the far side of a closed oak door. She put on an ermine-lined gown and threw a light casting over the floor to protect – and cover – her scrawls, and opened the door.

‘Yes?’ she said, leaning on the door frame.

Aneas bowed. ‘Pater needs you,’ he said. ‘There’s an Imperial officer come.’

She nodded and slipped her feet into bright red leather slippers. Behind her, a dull grey moth flitted across a sunbeam and landed inside the hanging silver lamp of Morean make that dangled from a heavy iron chain in the middle of the room.

The moth caught her eye and she raised a hand and killed it with a thread of green light. Its death created a rainbow spectrum of swirling motes, like dust.

‘Oh, Richard!’ she said with delight. ‘I didn’t know you cared.’ She smiled.

The Castle of N’gara – Bill Redmede

Redmede woke to find Bess curled around him, her head in the crook of his shoulder, and he remembered their coupling of the night before.

She awoke as she felt him move. Her eyes popped open, and she sat up.

‘Damn me,’ she said. She was naked under the blankets, and she suddenly shivered, pulled her shirt out of the chaos and pulled it brusquely over her head. ‘Got to piss,’ she murmured, and walked away, pulling her hose up as she went.

Redmede began to roll the blankets, fighting a barrage of conflicting thoughts. The air was damp and promised rain. His people needed to get under cover before winter came, whatever else the Wild might have in store.

Why on earth had he bedded Bess?

He got the blankets rolled tightly, and found the ties so hastily discarded the night before and tied them tight. He passed the leather strap through the bundle.

Why had he never bedded her before?

He took a long pull from his water bottle and went to piss himself, and wondered where the irk had got to.

He turned and all but ran back into the middle of the camp – except that it wasn’t really a camp, but a huddle of survivors gathered around one big fire. A few men were up and armed, but most were merely gathered tight together.

Redmede started giving orders, and three more fires were started, wood was collected, blankets were rolled. Men saw to their weapons, such as they were. After the fight the day before, they were shockingly low on arrows.

Nat Tyler spat. ‘We’re about done, Bill,’ he said, conversationally.

Bill scratched at the beard he’d grown. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘We need food and a strong place.’

‘I can provide both, yesss. For an ally.’ The irk was suddenly right there. Mounted on a great stag with golden horns and golden hooves, it towered over them.

Redmede fell back a step. ‘You-’

‘My people came and fetched me, man. But I do not forget a ssservicsse. Never. Come feassst in my hallsss. It isss a true invitaissshun.’

Redmede tried to remember anything he’d heard about the fey folk and their ways, but it all fled his mind when he looked into the irk’s ancient eyes. So he turned to Tyler.

Tyler whistled soundlessly. ‘Free to come and go again, Fairy Knight?’

‘Yesss. My word upon it, mansss.’

Redmede looked at Tyler. ‘A lifetime of war has taught me never to trust anything more powerful than I am.’

Bess pushed forward and gave the irk a surprisingly good curtsey. ‘Tapio!’ she said. Her delight was evident.

Indeed, in the grey light of an autumn dawn, the irk looked like a hero of legend. He wore an elegant red surcoat, a belt of links of worked gold like wild roses, each petal enamelled, the centres of jewels. He had flowers – real ones – like a chaplet in his hair, and his enormous blue eyes filled his angelic face. Only the tips of his fangs and his ears and overlong fingers gave away his inhuman origin.

‘The fairy knight has offered us refuge,’ Tyler said to Bess as she rose from her curtsey.

‘We should take it then,’ she said. ‘My lord – will you succour our wounded men?’

‘It would be my dearessst pleasssure, lady.’ The irk bowed. It was riding a giant stag without a saddle or a bridle, and had a lance and a bow in extravagant sheaths hanging behind it across the animal’s withers.

Bess smiled.

‘Bill thinks it might be a trap,’ Tyler commented.

Redmede shrugged. ‘I don’t trust lords of any kind,’ he said.

‘You ssshould lisssten to your lady-love,’ sang the irk. ‘Often it isss the female who hass the greater wisssdom. My love isss often all that keepsss me from folly.’

Bess and Bill looked at each other and said ‘Lady-love?’ aloud in the same moment. Bess blushed. Redmede coughed. Tyler flushed and spat.

Bess grabbed at Bill’s arm. ‘You have no choice,’ she whispered fiercely.

Redmede pursed his lips, then bowed – as if doing so hurt him – to the irk lord. ‘My- My lord, if you will give us leave when we wish it, and succour our wounded, I would be-’ He took in a deep breath. ‘I would be in your debt.’

The irk’s mount took two silent steps towards them. ‘Fear isss the beginning of wisssdom, in the Wild,’ he said. ‘You would haf done better to sssave your dissstrussst for Thorn.’

Redmede nodded. ‘Aye,’ he admitted.

A day later, he felt as if he’d lived in the irk’s castle for half his life, and some of his brother’s stories – and other tales mothers told children – were well explained.

The irk’s hold was not like a castle of men.

A great finger of land curled out into the body of a huge lake, and all along the finger of stone and earth, huge trees stood like cathedral spires among pillars of rock that appeared at first to be natural. Along the forest floor, hundreds of wigwams stood like oversized bundles of brush gathered by a giant and dropped almost at random. The huts seemed crude from a distance – mere stacks of twigs – but they were cunningly woven with grass mats hanging inside the walls of brush that, on close examination, were grown a-purpose, so that each hut was a single plant, or bush, or tree. The innermost layer was made of heavy rugs of carefully felted wool from the great sheep that wandered free in the woods. Every cabin had a stone hearth – most of them sat on living rock. A few had chimneys like human buildings, and others had only a smoke hole. There were sheep and goats everywhere, and the forest floor of the whole peninsula alternated pine needles and cropped grass. Every building had a carefully wrought door matched to the shape of the structure – all were organic, and none perfectly straight. Indeed, in the whole of the hold, there was not a single line that was entirely straight.

All of them, save a very few, were full of irks, who lived in an indolent comfort that Bill envied. They seemed to tend the sheep and goats as a hobby rather than as work, and parties went out to gather rice or Wild honey to hunt or dance – he saw them come or go, and the products of their labour appeared – a bucket of honey, a dead doe, a basket of kale.

He was watching through a window. His spire of rock was like a keep – he assumed the wind-cut spire had occurred naturally, but the inside was as hollow as a log full of termites and just as packed – simply with irks. The tunnels ran in every direction, up and down and at odd angles, and the warren challenged his sense of direction just to find the jakes, which, thankfully, the Wild creatures seemed to need just as much as he did.

But he knew his way to the Great Hall, and it was there that his sense of time was most ruthlessly challenged, because there was always a feast laid – irks came and went, ate, played their faery harps with a magnificent ferocity that was utterly at variance to what he’d imagined irk music would be, and walked away. They came and went very quickly, and they spoke quickly, and his host sat in a chair of what appeared to be solid gold and laughed, applauded, spoke to this one and that one and never seemed to tire. Or leave his hall.

Nor did his consort, a female irk with a face shaped like a heraldic heart, eyes as big and bright as silver crowns and hair so red that Redmede thought it must have been dyed. She wore a green kirtle with hanging sleeves dagged like oak leaves, and she had by turns the air of a child and of an abbess.

It was his third visit to the hall – he couldn’t stop himself, and returned continually – when she turned and saw him, and her eyes widened, if that was possible. She sang an impossibly pure note, a high ‘c’, and her consort turned to her.

They sang together like a troubadour and his joglar for as long as it might take a man to say a pater noster, if he had been so inclined, and she smiled at Redmede, showing a mouth full of tiny, pointed teeth.

‘Welcome, beautiful stranger,’ she sang.

Liviapolis – Morgan Mortirmir

After the sabbath, Mortirmir returned to his classes at the Academy in a city that was rapidly returning to normal – so rapidly that the siege, the battle and the capture of the Emperor all began to seem like a dream.

Some things were not a dream.

One of the four religious sisters in his medical class on Monday curtsied, and let just a corner of her veil fall away. ‘My cousin tells me you helped save the princess,’ she breathed. ‘I had no idea – you are so young.’

He could only see her mouth, which was a fine, perfectly normal mouth. He instantly mocked himself for imagining that the four nuns were great beauties who had to hide their faces away.

‘Are you a Comnena?’ he asked.

She tittered. ‘Yes,’ she said.

It was hardly the stuff of romance, but she didn’t call him ‘the Plague’ even once during a half-day dissection of a pauper’s arm.

In the evening, he went back to his rooms over his inn. He had twice the space that Derkensun had, and a fine hearth with its own external chimney – which was the Morean fashion. He read Galeanius for an hour and found he’d learned very little. He decided to write a poem about the Comnena girl, and found that he had nothing to say. So, instead, he read a little poetry in Gallish – all the best courtly poetry was Gallish – and found that his mind was wandering.

Summer was far advanced, but hardly over. The light was still lingering, there was no need to light his fire, and he was bored and lonely and the last three days had opened a remarkable vista of new life.

He buckled on his sword and walked out into the evening. He saw the farm carts rolling in for the Tuesday market, and he waited while a herd of sheep was driven into the butcher’s market, and he sat at the edge of the Great Square near the palace and played chess with a stranger – a Moor from Ifriqu’ya who beat him after a long game. They shared a cup of tea in companionable silence and the Moor went off to his bed and Mortirmir went back to his. Nothing exciting had happened. He fell asleep wondering if the peak of his existence had been reached at age fifteen and a half.

The next morning he arose feeling adventurous, and he walked to the palace – where he had the password – and attended matins in the first light with the soldiers in the Outer Court. Giorgos Comnenos grinned at him and slapped his back. ‘Good of you to join us, barbarian, but if you hang around here, I’ll put you in uniform.’

Mortirmir smiled and spread his hands. ‘But that would be wonderful,’ he admitted.

‘Aren’t you a student at the University?’ Comnenos asked.

‘Yes,’ Mortirmir said.

‘You’re exempt from military duty then,’ Comnenos said. ‘Far too important. Aren’t you supposed to be in class?’

‘Not for an hour,’ Mortirmir admitted. ‘I was bored.’

Comnenos nodded. Mortirmir had seldom had a friend so worldly and handsome – and older – and the other man’s willingness to listen to him was like a tonic. ‘Well, take a note to my fiancée for me, then,’ he said, and beckoned to his servant for papyrus.

‘Suddenly I’m an officer,’ he said. ‘Here, take this for her. No poaching, barbarian.’

He found Anna by the gate.

‘I heard you were here,’ she said. ‘The palace looks enormous, but really it’s just a little town full of gossip. Will you bring my clothes and things from Harald’s? He will be in barracks for weeks to come.’ She smiled up at him. ‘I’m sure he wants to thank you for fetching the doctor.’

In two days replete with adventures, finding a Yahudat scholar at midnight had hardly made his list of events. The man was so famous in the Yahudat quarter that the guards had fetched him before the bells had rung a single change.

‘And you will stay here?’ Mortirmir asked.

She smiled. ‘Nordikans are very direct.’ She laughed. ‘But I’m coming to like them. And I’m welcome here.’

He agreed to bring her things and trotted to his history lecture. He was late, but much happier. Only to find that the class devolved into a tour of the Academy Library, a collection of four thousand scrolls and books dating from the foundation of the Empire in distant Ruma. He was good at research so he scarcely attended to the lesson until they were deep in the archives below the old rostra where the Senate still met on occasion.

But the librarian had elected to take them to the map room, and when he produced a chart of the ground near Chaluns in Arles, Mortirmir snapped to attention.

‘Saint Aetius himself handled this map!’ said the librarian reverently. He placed a glowing globe of blue-white light over the middle of the map. When the nuns leaned in to look more closely, he courteously moved the light source to them, leaving Mortirmir to stare at it in shadowy frustration.

So he provided his own light. There was an illumination of an irk in beautiful, naturalistic strokes in his corner. He smiled at it, committing the picture to memory, and some time passed before he noticed the silence.

All of his classmates were looking at him. And the librarian pursed his lips and vouchsafed him a small nod and the barest hair’s breadth of a smile.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. I – umm . . . Yes.’ He grinned in sudden triumph. He hadn’t even thought about making the light. He hadn’t even entered his memory palace to do it.

Antonio Baldesce, the Venike boy in his class, invited him to share a cup of wine. It wasn’t epochal, and he knew he was too young to be good company, but Baldesce was friendly instead of condescending.

‘You know Abraham Ben Rabbi?’ Baldesce asked.

Morgan shrugged. ‘I met him through a friend.’

‘And you met the new mercenary?’ Baldesce continued.

‘Not so much met,’ Morgan said. ‘He was not awake when I was there. I wasn’t introduced. Not to anyone.’ He remembered the older woman who burned like a torch with raw potentia. That sight he would take to his grave.

‘Don’t trust the old man, that’s all I’m saying. The Yahudat are venal beyond belief. Most of them serve the Wild in secret.’ Baldesce nodded. ‘If you go to the palace again, will you tell me? I might want to send a message to a friend.’

As Morgan emerged from his first social evening with a ‘friend’ from the Academy, he thought about Baldesce, who had never been particularly nice to him before now, and so obviously seemed to want something from him. A servant fetched his cloak, and Baldesce paused to answer a hermetical summons.

It occurred to Mortirmir that he might hang on to all the slights his colleagues had paid him. There were twenty-seven other students – serious, full-time hermetical students – in his study, and none of them had previously paid him the slightest heed, except to mock his failures or his efforts. He’d seen himself – too young, too arrogant, an utterly inept barbarian – so clearly through their eyes that only two weeks before, he’d contemplated ending his life.

Now he finished his cup of wine and told Baldesce that he needed to study, and the older boy nodded and went with him all the way to the door. ‘They say that the later you come to your powers, the more powerful you will be,’ said the scion of the Venike bankers.

Mortirmir searched his face for signs of mockery and found none, so he laughed. ‘In that case, I expect be very powerful indeed,’ he said. ‘I’m still in shock,’ he admitted.

Baldesce smiled too. ‘Come for a drink again,’ he said.

Mortirmir buckled on his sword and went out into the falling darkness. He walked across three squares to fetch Anna’s things from Derkensun’s inn and made sure that Stella and her husband had been paid for their food. In that neighbourhood, at least, he had a hero’s welcome, and he had no choice but to drink three cups of wine. Back at his own inn, and a little drunk, he fell into bed without undressing.

The next morning he had rhetoric and memory, two of the most difficult classes. If he had needed a lesson in how much had changed in his studies, rhetoric was that lesson – his inability to manipulate the ops had forced him to work very hard indeed in classes that did not involve direct hermeticism, and rhetoric had been one of them. Yet – now that he had even the slightest command of the aether, he understood as never before why the study of logic and grammar were so essential.

‘If you listen any harder, your tongue will loll out like a dog’s,’ said one of the nuns. He couldn’t tell them apart, but from her familiarity he had to assume she was Comnenos’s cousin. She had a magnificent set of lapis and ivory prayer beads on the girdle of her gown and he decided to use their fancy beads to name them – he christened the taller one ‘Lapis’ and the shorter one ‘Coral’.

He listened to the master grammarian say exactly the same things he’d said in every other class, and yet-

He considered the logik of the grammarian’s argument, and he applied it to the creation of light, and instead of the usual globe he made a perfect cube of blue-white light appear over his right shoulder.

The master grammarian didn’t pause in his lecture, which was largely based on the letters of a number of early Imperial senators. He wrote his usual scurrilous, slightly naughty Archaic verse on the blackboard at the end of class, but instead of twirling his long robe and stalking away down the long halls towards his lunch, he reached out an ascetic hand and grasped Mortirmir’s shoulder.

‘Now make a pyramid,’ he said.

Mortirmir did. His own confusion over whether it should have a square base or a triangular base made him to create an amorphous blob. It vanished in a blop of consternation, and he tried again, structuring his argument more clearly. It was difficult, because the threads of argument needed to be rooted in his memory palace, which was not all it should have been. In fact-

But he made a pyramid of light.

‘Now make it red,’ said the grammarian.

Mortirmir managed a shocking salmon pink.

‘Is the creation of light a true working, or an illusion?’ asked the grammarian.

Mortirmir saw that several of his fellow students had stayed behind. The question was not directed to him alone.

Two of the nuns raised black-robed hands.

‘Yes?’ said the grammarian.

‘Obviously it is a true working, since illusionary light would cast no light?’ said the nun that Mortirmir thought was the Comnena.

‘Oh, it is obvious, is it?’ asked the grammarian. He opened his hand, and a perfect pearl shone in the palm of his hand. ‘True making, or illusion?’ he asked.

‘Illusion,’ said Baldesce.

‘Correct, young Antonio. If I could create a pearl this perfect with so little effort, I would be the richest man in the city.’ The grammarian held his pearl up.

‘But to make the illusion work, you must make it both bend and emit light – as if it is actually there.’ Mortirmir put his hand over the teacher’s hand, and indeed, the pearl emitted the faintest glow.

‘By God’s mercy there is one of you paying attention,’ said the grammarian. ‘You’re – Mortirmir, aren’t you? Roger?’

‘Morgan, maestro.’

‘Of course. Barbarism piled on barbarism. There is no Saint Morgan.’ The grammarian smiled – only from one side of his mouth. ‘You have finally come into your powers, I take it?’

‘I think so,’ Mortirmir said.

‘There is no such thing as illusion. Or, contrarily, everything is an illusion.’ The maestro raised his wand and suddenly there was a great, horned daemon standing in the middle of the room.

Mortirmir hadn’t seen so much hermeticism displayed since he arrived. ‘But – I can’t see any ops.’

‘Well said. Anyone else care to admit the same?’ asked the master.

There was some shuffling.

‘Of course you cannot. Because I have placed the entire suggestion directly into your eyes.’ The daemon vanished. ‘It’s an incredibly difficult manipulation, but one that is undetectable. What does it prove?’

There was a long and heavy silence.

‘Well, well. Figure it out for yourselves. Mortirmir, you need to work much harder in memory.’

‘Yes, maestro.’ Mortirmir shook his head, still able to see the image of the daemon – on the back of his eyeballs, as his father used to say.

‘I think I hate him,’ said the smallest nun.

‘You just don’t like to think so hard,’ said the tallest nun. ‘Why did you make your light in the form of a cube, Ser Morgan?’

Mortirmir bowed. ‘For fun, demoiselle.’ He tried to imagine what she looked like. ‘I suddenly understood what all the grammar was for.’

Baldesce laughed. ‘Tell me!’ he said.

‘It’s the code we use. I’m sure Wild workers use a different code, but we use grammar to structure the power. Right?’

The other students nodded. ‘Of course,’ Baldesce snorted with some of his accustomed derision.

‘But in High Archaic, we can shape a sentence many ways and never change the meaning-’ Mortirmir was struggling with the words to fuel his concept.

‘Yes,’ said Baldesce.

‘But at the same time we can speak of things with such precision that-’

Baldesce all but slapped his own forehead. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I had only thought to manipulate the ops in the mould of creation. You are speaking of making minute changes to the mould itself – and to how the power fills that mould.’

The taller nun reached out a hand and produced a glowing, scarlet pyramid that threw a strong red light.

Baldesce, stung, made his bigger.

The smaller nun made hers very small indeed, and the three of them laughed. They were – by far – the three best students.

Mortirmir rolled the logic of his argument around for a moment and produced two.

They all applauded.

In the corridor, the taller nun – Lapis – bent her head slightly. ‘I’m Eugenia,’ she said.

‘I’m Katerina,’ Pearl murmured.

‘Tancreda,’ said the third, whom he had called ‘Coral’ in the privacy of his thoughts. Now that he really looked at them, he could see other distinguishing marks.

‘I’m the Plague,’ he returned. But he grinned as he said it.

They all giggled.

I may yet come to be good at this, he realised.

They had two hours between rhetoric and memory, and they were walking across the square to an open-air taverna that only existed to serve the students when the Imperial gates opened and two men rode out – both wearing red.

Sister Anna watched the man ride by. ‘Handsome – just as Giorgos said. That’s the new mercenary. He calls himself the Duke of Thrake, but of course he’s not really.’

Baldesce raised an eyebrow. ‘I think he really is. He beat the former Duke pretty thoroughly last week. And my father hates him with a perfect, pure hate.’

Sister Katerina leaned out over their table in a very undignified way. ‘He’s going to the University!’ she proclaimed.

‘Why does your father hate him?’ asked Mortirmir.

‘My father is Podesta of the Etruscan merchants here,’ he said. ‘He was summoned to the palace and threatened. Or that’s how he tells it.’ Baldesce spoke with the amused tolerance of sons for fathers.

‘I’m sure that the Patriarch will put him in his place,’ Baldesce said. ‘But he cuts a fine figure. He’s Alban, like you, Mortirmir.’

Mortirmir resolved to like him.

Memory was a torture. In the first five minutes he learned that the master had ignored him because he had no access to Power. Now that that had changed, he was expected to catch up. Preferably by the end of the class.

That didn’t happen.

He was called on more in two hours than he had been since his studies began, given odd geometric shapes and other memory objects to store in his palace, and then asked to reproduce them. He failed – sometimes he barely failed and then, as he got increasingly flustered and frustrated, he failed more and more spectacularly.

The memory master was remorseless and, at the end of class, he took Mortirmir aside. ‘Your failure to memorise even the simplest form is shocking,’ he said.

Mortirmir wondered, in the safety of his head, if he could turn the man to ash. He certainly had enough rage and frustration to fuel a really powerful working.

‘I’ll – work – on – my – memory palace,’ he said through clenched teeth.

The memory master shrugged. ‘Oh, do as you please,’ he said. He swept out of the hall.

‘He likes to do that,’ Baldesce said.

‘He’s never picked on me before,’ said Mortirmir, who was very close to crying and didn’t want to give way in public. Sweet Jesu, I can kill a man with fire, but I can’t face a mocking maestro.

‘You weren’t worth his time, before.’ Baldesce shook his head. ‘I’d invite you for wine, but I really think you’d best go work on your memory. I’ve been the target of his attentions myself and I really owe you – that’s the easiest I’ve had it in that class this year. Now that he has his teeth in you, he won’t let go.’ The Etruscan smiled. ‘It’s your own fault. When you had no Power, none of them cared.’

Mortirmir decided after a moment that the Etruscan didn’t mean his raillery to be offensive. The social acceptance from his classmates came at a price – now he had to pay attention to what they said. He’d been distancing himself from them for so long . . .

‘After a little consideration, I’ll keep my access to Power and go work on my memory,’ he said, as if he’d really considered ridding himself of Power.

Baldesce slapped him on the back and laughed.

I really can do this, Mortirmir thought.

‘Going to the palace today?’ Baldesce asked. It was clumsily asked, and his face told them both he knew it.

But Mortirmir was starting to like the other boy, so he shrugged. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

Mortirmir stopped and picked up Anna’s things, and carried them to the palace, where he wasted an hour waiting because the watchword had been changed. An enormous Galle stood by the gate, watching with his hands on his hips, and Mortirmir, feeling hurt and angry, locked eyes with the man.

‘Who is this little lordling?’ growled the giant to the gate guards. But he spoke in Alban, and the guards spoke only Archaic. Mortirmir thought it might be too foolish to translate.

So he bowed. ‘I’m Alban,’ he said to the giant.

‘Hah!’ said the giant. He had black hair and a nose as big as a horse. ‘I’m not, little man.’ He looked down. ‘What’s your business here? Pimp?’ He eyed the armful of woman’s clothing.

Mortirmir considered a range of responses. ‘No,’ he said sullenly. ‘I brought these for a friend.’

‘Why are you standing here, then?’ asked the giant.

‘I had the password but it has been changed, and now I’m waiting for my friend to come to the gate.’ Mortirmir looked around.

‘Who gave you the password, then?’ asked the giant with a wicked smile.

‘I did,’ said Harald Derkensun. He was obviously off-duty, and wore plain clothing, a long tunic with a fancy soldier’s belt, and a short sword. ‘He brought us food – before you came and defeated the Duke.’ Harald grinned. ‘Before the new Duke defeated the traitors,’ he corrected himself.

The black-haired giant shook his head. ‘You’re the loon who killed all the assassins and cleared the throne,’ he said. ‘And found the doctor who helped the Captain. Which is to say the Duke.’

Harald spread his hands. ‘I had help.’ He smiled. ‘And this young man fetched the doctor.’

The other man bowed. ‘I’m Ser Thomas. You are in my “above suspicion” pile, and so is your friend. Now.’ He took a playing card out of his purse. ‘Name?’

‘Morgan Mortirmir, of Harndon.’

‘Well, Master Harndon, the password is Parthenos and the countersign is Athena. Your name will be on the guardroom list.’ He nodded to both men and walked rapidly away to look into a wagon led by a pair of palace Ordinaries, fresh from the butcher’s market.

‘What an arsehole,’ Mortirmir said.

Harald shook his head. ‘I disagree. He was as courteous as he needed to be. He made no threats. And these mercenaries have made the gate much safer. Twice now they have taken spies. I think you were close to being taken yourself.’

Behind Mortirmir a vicious-looking Alban with red hair said, ‘Let’s just see your bill of lading, then, laddy,’ and a young Imperial messenger translated for him. Four men began to take the wagon apart.

‘I brought Anna’s clothes,’ Mortirmir said. In fact, he realised, anyone who looked at his bundle of faded silk would know his errand.

Harald led him into the warm darkness of the Nordikan barracks, where he was jostled repeatedly by much larger men who seemed to converse by shouting at the top of their lungs. He looked into the mess hall, where two men were rolling on the floor, locked in what appeared to be mortal combat, and he looked in wonder at the magnificent carvings – knights, dragons, wolves, irks – that festooned every beam and every wooden surface.

Anna was sitting on a bed reading by the light of a pair of glassed windows set high on the wall. As soon as she saw Mortirmir, she bounced to her feet. ‘Clothes!’ she said. She came and kissed the young man, who felt himself blushing to the tips of his fingers. Anna didn’t give a chaste kiss. Even her kiss on the cheek carried a world of meaning.

When he had told them all the news he knew – the new Duke of Thrake had moved a permanent garrison into the old naval yard and the word on the street was that he intended to build ships there – he’d gone in person to visit the University . . .

‘He’s just a barbarian,’ said Anna. ‘He won’t change anything.’

He had no classes on Friday, so he went out to the ruins of the Temple of Athena and worked on his memory palace. He walked the ruins and then he began to sketch, drawing each pillar from different angles. He worked all day, filling sixty sheets of heavy papyrus with charcoal sketches that weren’t very good – but would serve as aide-memoires, and the very act of drawing them seemed to improve his mental image of the place.

His drawing didn’t seem to disturb the middle-aged man who was sitting with his back to the easternmost column, watching the old harbour. The Temple of Athena was ideally situated to watch the old harbour – high on its own acropolis, which the history master said predated the Archaic occupation.

‘Would you care for some cider?’ Mortirmir asked the man.

‘I’m partial to cider,’ the watcher admitted. He rose, dusting off his green gown. ‘Stephan,’ he said. He drank off a cup of cider and gave Mortirmir a very good piece of bread in return, and went back to his watching.

Mortirmir was sketching the capital of his nineteenth column when he saw the man stiffen like a pointer seeing its prey.

Mortirmir followed the man’s attention to see the approach of two lines of galleys with three tall round ships between them.

He didn’t believe what he was seeing. Or rather, he was surprised to have such a very good view. His fellow students – Baldesce especially – had predicted an attack by the Etruscans, but this was somehow balder and more real than he’d expected.

The Etruscan squadron bore down on the old naval arsenal at the speed of oarsmen rowing at a regular cruising pace. The attack was unhurried, despite the lateness of the hour.

At the distance of several hundred yards, it was difficult to see exactly what had gone wrong. But suddenly the lead galley’s bow fell off course, and the next ship in line collided with it – not heavily, but hard enough to make the other man wince.

A third ship carried on, straight for the gap between the two moles that guarded the entrance to the ancient naval yard.

Even across the distance, the massive volley of arrows was visible – rising like pinpoints of red light in the sunset. The third galley in line seemed to strike a barrier.

The other ships turned away – all of them, including the first two galleys and the round ships, which had to carry on into the current of the strait and then turn almost glacially to port. But the former third ship was struck – appeared to be struck – by another massive flight of arrows. The man who had shared his cider groaned aloud at the sight.

The injured ship behaved a like a hunted whale, wallowing broadside to its tormentors on the wall, oars thrashing the water like the flukes of a wounded sea-beast, unable to muster enough speed to get clear of the merciless raking of the arrows from the sea wall.

The current pressed it closer to the land.

Something grabbed it, like the hand of God, and began to pull it inexorably into the naval yard. Mortirmir found that he was standing, fists clenched, like a man watching the end of a foot race. He didn’t even know which side he supported – although now that he had time to breathe, he decided that he sided with the city and the new Duke.

They had grappling irons set in the Etruscan galley. That’s how it was being dragged into the yard. But potentia played like fire and lightning in the aether, and even at this desitance Mortirmir was aware of the point at which the hermeticist on the galley was overcome and died.

Dark trickles had become visible where the scuppers opened. Men were dying on the oar benches, and their blood ran down the sides of the ship. Yet not a scrap of the sound carried to the ancient acropolis, and instead he heard a girl singing an Archaic song.

His companion spat angrily. ‘Idiots!’ he said aloud, and he gathered his pilgrim’s scrip and walked away, his booted feet crunching on the ancient gravel. He was still shaking his head when he walked down the ancient acropolis.

It occurred to Mortirmir, at about the moment when the middle-aged man in green vanished through a city gate, that his presence was possibly suspicious.

Tyrin, County of Arelat, South-Eastern Galle – Clarissa de Sartre

Few things are as difficult for a young adult as a retreat to the nest.

Clarissa de Sartre was a descendant of the now lost kings of Arelat. Her father was one of the greatest lords of the mountains, with four hundred knights at his back and nine great castles.

So it did not please her particularly to walk through the gates of the family’s great winter hold at Tyrin, in the relative warmth of the great highland valley of the Duria. The gates were as high as six men, and bound in iron; the road entered the castle through a massive double barbican that was viewed by the count’s neighbours as impregnable.

Clarissa had walked almost a hundred leagues through late autumn into early winter. She had huddled twice under ledges with no fire, and had spent one night in a camp of men she distrusted deeply, but they had offered her neither leers nor violence. She was filthy; she had not had her mouse-brown wool kirtle or her linens off since she escaped the nunnery. Her breath stank inside her stolen wool scarf.

She was more than a little proud of having made it home, alive and unraped. She had stolen food, and noted the places from which she had stolen.

None of the gate guards knew her. Pierro, one of her father’s hard men, patted her bottom absently as he reached into her scrip for a donation.

He looked at her, his watery blue eyes devoid of malice. ‘A girl has some options,’ he said with a smile that reeked of garlic.

Clarissa decided that she’d reached the end of impostature. She put up a hand. There were merchants behind her – the scene was public enough. ‘I don’t think the count would approve,’ she said in her mother’s tones.

Pierro stiffened. ‘Oh, if you plan to be difficult-’ He leaned forward, the vacant eyes suddenly focused. ‘Saint Maurice! By the Virgin’s cunt, Giacopo!’ he shouted, and rang the alarm bell.

Clarissa sat amidst her mother’s ladies. Her father was wearing hunting clothes – a quilted green pourpoint in deerskin, boots that went all the way to his hip and buckled on the sides – and her mother wore the woman’s equivalent: a neat mannish cote that she rendered feminine, a pert green hat and long skirts. She wore a sword; the count wore a long knife and held a whip in his hands.

‘They told me you were dead.’ The count was not a dull man, but he said the words for the sixth time.

His wife, Anne, watched him carefully. ‘We are not about to declare war upon the King of Galle. However much he may be a fool.’ She was Etruscan – a cousin of the Queen of Galle. She had the long straight nose and imperious eyebrows of her line.

‘They told me you were dead,’ the count said.

‘Please stop saying that, Papa,’ Clarissa said.

He came forward suddenly and threw his arms around her. ‘Jesus and Mary, my little buttercup! We thought you were dead! And you are not! This is the best news to come to me in my life!’

Anne’s brow cleared. She joined the embrace, and the three of them sat for a while as the ladies shifted around them. Off in the yard, dogs barked. A trio of local noblemen, all dressed for the hunt, were nervously fidgeting in the doorway to the main hall.

Anne smiled at her husband, usually so reserved and now weeping.

‘My sweet, go and see to your dogs,’ she said.

He stood up from where he’d knelt by Clarissa and relinquished her hand. ‘Of course, love,’ he said. He took a handkerchief from one of Anne’s ladies and wiped his face and beamed at them all.

‘Come, gentlemen. Forgive me – it is not every day that a lost child returns.’ He bowed, his gentlemen bowed, and they were off to the yard.

‘Out,’ Anne ordered her ladies.

They fled, after pouring hippocras and providing a tray of delicacies.

Anne sat in a cushioned chair and folded her booted legs on a stool. ‘So,’ she said.

Clarissa met her eye. Her mother had always been her favourite. But they fought like cats, which was one reason her doting father had sent her to court in the first place.

Anne took her hand. ‘I have guesses, my dear. I grew up at court. But you do not seem . . . broken.’

‘The King tried to rape me,’ Clarissa said. Her voice caught on the word, but she managed to go on. ‘Uncle saved me, but then arranged that I be dismissed from court.’

Anne nodded decisively. ‘This much I have in a dozen letters from supposedly helpful friends.’ She sneered. ‘Your father will not let me send them poison.’

It was difficult for Clarissa to know how much to believe her mother, who spoke as if she was as bloodthirsty as some Wild creature.

Anne leaned forward. ‘We are told you attempted to seduce the King.’ Anne put a hand on her daughter’s hand and clasped it. ‘Sweeting, I am a woman. I know that these things can happen-’

‘Mama!’ Clarissa didn’t quite shriek. ‘I was playing music and he tried to throw me to the floor and put his knees between mine!’

Anne sat back and smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘He smashed my best-’

‘He is, for good or evil, the King,’ Anne said. ‘Why Galle, which should be the greatest land in all the world, has to have a line of fools as kings . . . Well, it has been discussed by greater heads than mine or yours.’ She leaned forward again and kissed her daughter. ‘I didn’t see you as much of a seducer, my love.’

Clarissa could writhe even at that. But the incident itself was still so sharp – so clear – that she ignored her mother’s words. Her mother seemed to believe that only she, Anne of Soave, had ever possessed the ability to charm men, but Clarissa steadied herself. My mother is trying to be on my side.

I’ll take that.

She reached out and hugged her mother, and hung on her neck for a moment.

‘Now we must marry you to someone, quickly,’ Anne said.

That night, Clarissa was summoned to her father. He sat in the Great Hall with a dozen of his knights, playing cards. There were women present; mostly wives, but not all. Her father called these ‘camp evenings’ and insisted, when he held them, that his hall became a military camp, with its relaxed etiquette and air of masculinity.

Even as she entered the hall, she felt the tension. And smelled an odd smell – a feral, musky smell.

Clarissa curtsied. Her father was sitting with Ser Raimondo, his first lance, and Ser Jean de Chablais, one of the best knights in all Galle and her father’s closest friend and adviser. Raimondo’s wife Catherine smiled at her.

‘Come share my cup, poppet,’ she said.

They were all very clingy. Catherine put a hand on her shoulder. Jean de Chablais kissed her hand.

She felt the warmth of their affecton and she needed it.

‘We are considering sending a challenge to the King,’ her father said.

De Chablais nodded. ‘My lord, you must. My lady Clarissa I beg your forgiveness, but as your father’s champion I must ask-’

Clarissa sat straight. ‘Ask,’ she said.

‘The King-’

‘Tried to force his sex on me,’ Clarissa said. ‘And was only prevented by monsieur my uncle.’

De Chablais coloured – he was not a soft man, and not given to blushes. He bowed his head.

‘I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, even for asking.’ Turning to his lord, he said, ‘By God, if you will not challenge him in your own name, I will challenge him myself.’

The count sat back and made a steeple of his hands. ‘Jean, you know it is not that simple.’

‘It is simple. Sometimes, it is simple. This is what knighthood is for: to protect the weak. To war on the strong when they abuse their power.’

Ser Raimondo nodded, his red hair glinting in the firelight. There was more grey there than Clarissa remembered. ‘My lord, we must. Or others will think the slanders true.’

The count frowned. ‘And the other matter?’ he asked.

Catherine stiffened.

Clarissa leaned forward. ‘What other matter?’ she asked.

Ser Raimondo made a wry face. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you of our family’s other new affliction?’ he asked.

His wife put out her arm. ‘Don’t!’ she said, but the knight reached for a crumpled cloth on the floor and flipped it back.

Underneath it lay a thing out of nightmare – all teeth and green and yellow mottled skin and blood and entrails. The smell, the musky animal smell, filled the hall.

Clarissa shrieked. Then she stiffened and cursed inwardly, disdaining to be the kind of woman who shrieked.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Her father pointed to the illustrated manuscript under his hand. ‘We think it is an irk,’ he said.

Liviapolis – Julas Kronmir

Kronmir lived on the edge of his own fear. He’d almost killed the boy in the ruins because he couldn’t get over the notion that the boy had been sent to watch him, even when it became obvious that he was bent on sketching the antiquities in the temple.

Kronmir was a scholar, and he was not unmoved by the wonders of the temple, but his employer’s entire plan depended on the pressure that the Etruscans could exert on the palace. He cursed their arrogant foolishness silently as he watched their fleet come up the channel with no attempt at diversion or surprise – and ploughed straight into the chain that the mercenary had placed across the mouth of the naval yard.

The chain’s presence had been reported to him by a whore and a suborned workman, and he’d reported it three days earlier. Along with a complete rundown of the foreign mercenary’s intentions towards the Academy, and towards the Etruscan merchants, gleaned from his two sources inside the palace. And his report on the unreliability of several of the company’s archers and of a faction in the Nordikans troop who were willing to change sides. And his losses – four men in two days, and his only hermetical assassin.

Kronmir was a professional, and he predicted the result of the Etruscan attack even as he watched it. He shook his head.

‘Is this how God feels, watching men commit sin?’ he asked the gathering darkness.

He had one consolation – he hadn’t killed the harmless boy sketching the ruins.

He slipped back into the city to write another report. His dockyard worker would probably never report in again – that would be the least consequence of the Etruscan defeat.

Perhaps the whore would.

North of the Great River – The Black Knight

Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus stood on Oliver de Marche’s quarter deck watching the land roll past them on both sides – forests so deep and still as to seem holy. The Black Knight was in full harness, as always, and now every sailor, every marine, and even the ship’s boys wore whatever scraps of leather and mail they could muster.

‘It is magnificent,’ Ser Harmut said. ‘I had no idea. As vast as Ifriqu’ya?’ he said, turning to the captain.

De Marche shook his head. ‘I don’t know. The Etruscans have sent a dozen expeditions around the northern capes, and more to the south. That much I’ve heard from our fisherfolk, my lord. But either none of them have returned, or they keep what they have learned close to their greasy Etruscan chests.’

Early autumn had gilded the forests, so that birches and maples were just turning gold or red, and the effect in the distance was to touch the green vista with a warmth that the chill air belied. The enormous river ran between heights – vast heights – that rose from wide plains on either shore, as if they sailed in a long and narrow bowl. A west wind filled their sails, and they had white foam at their bows from the rapidity of their passage.

‘Are we close to our port?’ asked the Black Knight.

De Marche shook his head. ‘My lord, I don’t know. This expedition was based on information provided by a traitor – an Etruscan seeking refuge from a family quarrel. I had expected him to travel with us. Unfortunately, he seems to have been killed – murdered, I believe.’

Ser Harmut nodded. ‘The Etruscan guilds have very long arms,’ he admitted.

‘There will be no port, per se,’ de Marche added. ‘A clearing in the woods, and a beach, is the best we can expect. But the Genuan ships we found – their destruction means we will be first to the market.’

‘Market be damned. We are here for a far nobler cause,’ Ser Harmut said.

De Marche took a careful breath. ‘Are we, my lord?’ he asked. Talking to Ser Harmut was a delicate exercise. The death of his favourite squire and the results of the combat against the Eeeague had thrown Ser Harmut into de Marche’s company, but the knight was a dark and difficult man, and never a companion.

‘We will take one of Alba’s wall castles,’ Ser Harmut said. ‘And lead an Outwaller invasion.’

De Marche blinked his eyes. ‘Which castle, my lord?’

‘Ticondaga,’ Ser Hartmut said. ‘Do you know it?’

De Marche scratched his beard. ‘It’s much further west than I had anticipated our travelling,’ he said. ‘We are almost as far as I sailed on my last expedition. According to our Imperial chart, Ticondaga is another three hundred leagues up the Great River. The river will grow narrower each day, and the risk of running aground grows accordingly. Even losing a single ship-’

Ser Hartmut nodded. ‘Take care, then,’ he said. ‘We cannot hope to succeed with any less than all three ships and all of our soldiers.’

De Marche took two full breaths. ‘My lord, my men are sailors, not soldiers, and we expected to rest and-’ he dropped his voice and spoke as if he was using a dirty word to a child ‘-trade.’

Ser Hartmut smiled. ‘I know. But your men have more than proven themselves worthy of better lives. We will lay siege to Ticonaga.’

De Marche took another deep breath. ‘My lord, the fortress there is reputed to be one of the strongest in the world – it was built by the ancients.’

Ser Hartmut nodded. ‘All the more honour when we take it. Fear not, master mariner! God will provide.’

De Marche looked at Ser Hartmut, and his thoughts must have shown in his face, because the Black Knight smiled.

‘You are surprised to hear me speak of God? Listen, master mariner, I am a knight. I kill the enemies of my king and my religion. Men hate me because, in the end, I always succeed. Men decry my methods because they are themselves jealous, weak, or foolish. War is butchery. What matter if I use alchemy? Hermetical magic? If Satan himself were to offer me his aid-’ He smiled.

De Marche thought I don’t really want to get into this. But his curiosity got the better of him, as it always did. ‘Satan’s aid to help God?’ he asked.

‘Every cause has a traitor,’ the Black Knight said. ‘Even Satan’s.’ He nodded.

Ten days sail up the Great River and they passed two Outwaller ‘castles’, both built on high promontories, and both walled with palisades and densely woven thorn fences. The sailors called out to pretty Outwaller girls on the banks and had arrows shot at them for their pains.

De Marche watched the Outwaller communities go by with something akin to his sailor’s unrequited lust. But Ser Hartmut had a letter from the King, and despite de Marche’s knowledge that he’d been used, he did as he was ordered.

But the eleventh day gave him new hope for his trade. He’d cut the rations to all his men, officers and knights included, and the resulting meals had brought Ser Hartmut on deck in an ingratiating mood, if such a thing were possible to the Black Knight.

‘If I gave you leave to trade at one of these huddles of barbarian huts, would we have better food?’ he asked.

‘I expect we might have venison and corn, my lord. Perhaps even bread. But I would have to explore. Trade is never quick.’ De Marche wanted to be off the ship with all his heart, exploring the interior, meeting the people, finding new routes. But offending Ser Hartmut was nothing but a death sentence.

The Black Knight looked over the bow for some time. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Our task will only be eased by winning the trust of the peasants.’

De Marche didn’t expect Ser Hartmut would win their trust, but he was willing to see him try, and so, when mid-morning of the twelfth day on the Great River revealed a third Outwaller town on a great island in the river, he anchored in the lee of the island and summoned Lucius.

‘Shouldn’t you be in harness?’ Ser Hartmut asked. ‘With a retinue? I would be delighted to accompany you.’

De Marche shook his head. ‘My lord, I beg you to accept my guidance in this. If we afright or affront these folk, they will do no trade with us, nor be our allies in any way. We need to approach them with gifts, kind words and open hands.’

Ser Hartmut looked over the side at the island town. ‘We have the resources to storm the town,’ he said. ‘Failing Ticondaga, this would make a fair base for the King.’

De Marche cleared his throat. ‘I’m sure we could storm it, my lord,’ he said. ‘However, I’m not sure we could hold it. Perhaps I have not fully explained that just as each holding in Galle is itself part of a larger holding of a greater lord, so most of the Outwallers are vassals of Lords of the Wild.’

‘Daemons of hell, you mean?’ asked the Black Knight. A light kindled in his eye and his hand went to his sword.

De Marche caught Lucius’s eye. ‘Not exactly,’ he said.

He and Lucius rowed themselves in a small open boat. As soon as they were well clear of the ship, Lucius said, ‘When you told him that your Etruscan source was dead-’

De Marche grunted and pulled his oar. The river was choppy and they were rowing into a brisk headwind. There were a dozen Outwallers on the beach, and two of them wore the long squirrel robes that were the mark of noblemen, along with elaborate caps like crowns. But it was dangerous to draw parallels. Any free Huran could wear the gustaweh. They were not quite crowns.

‘Lucius, would I shock you if I said that Ser Hartmut and I do not have the same goals for this expedition?’ he asked.

Lucius looked away. ‘He’s terrifying.’

‘If he knew how much you know,’ de Marche said, ‘I fear that he’d-’ He paused. There were now more than fifty men on the beach. Some had spears – steel-tipped spears.

Lucius nodded. ‘The Northern Huran are among the most powerful tribes. If our fleet failed this summer then there are bales of furs in every longhouse waiting for the trade. By the gentle Christ, look at them!’

They were three hundred yards from shore, and now there were a thousand Outwallers waiting for them on the shingle.

They landed, and eager hands took their boat and pulled it high up the beach so that the little coracle seemed to skim the ground the way it had skimmed the waves. When de Marche stepped over the side he was embraced, pinched, and prodded by a hundred men and as many women – mostly older women in furs, with beads and quillwork on every robe.

Lucius, who spoke a fair version of Huran, was immediately surrounded by leaders – a dozen men and four women – and de Marche made his way to the Etruscan’s side.

‘The thieving barbarians have taken my dagger,’ de Marche said.

Lucius smiled. ‘I told you not to bring a knife,’ he said. ‘Relax. Your dagger is a small price to pay for their love. As I thought, there has been no Etruscan fleet this year. The silkies who killed the Genuans have left these folk bereft. They are in a war with their southern cousins, and they have no bolts for their crossbows, no armour – Desontarius here was just telling me that they are on the point of making peace, and our arrival will allow them to make war.’

De Marche blew air out through his cheeks. ‘It seems all the world makes war,’ he muttered.

Lucius seemed taller and more commanding. ‘By God, I will crush my cousins,’ he said. ‘We have the whole of the trade – it is God’s will. We will be rich!’

Chapter Ten

The Squash Country – Ota Qwan

Their march back through the Wild was rapid, and made the trip out look easy.

They sighted Crannog People each day. The giants didn’t move cautiously – indeed, they tended to leave a path of destruction wherever they went, whether in the woods, across a marsh, or along the edge of a trail, as if they visited destruction on plants and rocks as easily as on animals or creatures of the Wild. Ota Qwan sent his best trackers out on wide sweeps, and moved them from one cover to the next with the canny precision of a soldier.

Ta-se-ho shook his head after the third day. ‘I’ve never seen so many Ruk,’ he admitted. ‘Something has kicked their nest.’

The going was slow because of the heavy, sticky, ungainly buckets of honey, which the warriors carried on long yokes. A strong man could carry four buckets all day on a clear trail, but as soon as they left the main paths, the difficulty of negotiating the narrower capillaries of the Wild with yokes on their shoulders began to remind Nita Qwan of his days as a slave in the mountains east of Albinkirk.

By the time they reached their village they’d seen twenty giants, and they hadn’t lost a man, and Ota Qwan’s reputation as a leader had reached new heights. They had harvested almost fifty bark buckets of Wild honey, and they hadn’t lost one on the dangerous journey back.

Any sense of triumph was immediately overturned by the obvious sense of crisis that pervaded the village. Ruk had devastated a pair of villages at the eastern corner of the Sossag holdings. Only a few of the People had been killed – the Ruk enjoyed general devastation too much to focus on small prey – but the survivors became refugees at the edge of winter, and the trickle of new faces threatened to consume any surplus the Sossag had gathered after a spring spent at war.

The matrons met and talked, and summoned the Horned One, the old shaman who knew the lore of the land, and his apprentice, Gas-a-ho, passed the rumour that he had been asked about the Sacred Island.

‘What about it?’ Nita Qwan asked his wife.

She looked around as if others might be listening in on their conversation. ‘I shouldn’t know – I’m not a matron yet,’ she said, and patted her belly. ‘Although I expect you’ll see that status changed soon enough.’

‘Shouldn’t know isn’t the same as don’t know,’ he said.

She wriggled her toes. ‘To the east, just at the border of our hunting lands and those of the Huran, there is an island in the sea. On the island is a lake at the top of a mountain. In the centre of the lake is an island. It is sacred to all the peoples and creatures of the Wild.’

‘Sacred?’ he asked.

‘No one Power is allowed to hold it,’ she said, and would say no more.

The next day he asked Gas-a-ho while he and Ota Qwan mended nets, and the youth, puffed up with self-importance, said, ‘That is a matter for the shaman.’

They were repairing nets because the matrons had decided to send a fishing expedition out onto the lake to gather as many fish as they could. Their plan was to salt them against winter need. Another party of men would sweep the woods to the north and west for deer – and for early warning of Crannog People.

When the boy was gone, Ota Qwan finished a repair carefully, wrapping the bark thread again and again with practised ease. When he was done, he raised his eyes. ‘It’s Thorn,’ he said.

‘You can’t know that,’ Nita Qwan said with some annoyance. Ota Qwan’s endless sense of his own superiority was more than a little grating, despite his successes.

‘My wife’s mother told her, and she told me,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Thorn has taken this place of power which I didn’t even know we had.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t expect the wilderness to be so small.’

‘What do we do?’ Nita Qwan asked. Thorn was more a name than a threat, but he understood that the sorcerer had been the Power behind their spring campaign. ‘He can’t force us to war in the winter – or can he?’

‘I’ve learned one thing in my years with the People,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Let the matrons decide. You can shape the decision by influencing the information on which the matrons act, but after that you have to accept their word.’

‘And have you?’ Peter asked.

‘Have I what?’ Ota Qwan asked, biting off a length of bark twine.

‘Have you influenced the matron’s information?’ Peter asked. He wasn’t sure exactly why his brother annoyed him, but he was growing angry.

Ota Qwan spread his hands. ‘Don’t make me the bad guy. All hell is about to break loose on us, brother. There are giants out there, smashing villages. If they hit us we’ll spend the winter in the woods, and most of the children and old people will die. That’s not my opinion. That’s the way it is.’

‘So what do we do – talk to Thorn? Is this his doing?’ asked Peter.

Ota Qwan frowned. ‘The matrons think so. I don’t know what I think. ’

Nita Qwan smiled. ‘That’s a first.’

Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘I don’t want to quarrel, brother. The matrons think we should send for allies. Allies can lead to tangles.’

‘And the Huran?’ asked Nita Qwan.

‘The Southern Huran make war on the Northern. Nothing new there. Who knows who started it? The Southerners get trade goods from the Empire, and now the Northerners get trade goods from the Etruscans. They make war over beaver pelts and honey. The matrons say that this year the Etruscans haven’t come.’ He shrugged and sat back. ‘These are the sorts of things my family used to watch and understand. When I was another man – with another life. Why did I think life among the Sossag would be simple? It is life!’

The matrons debated for three days. It was the longest debate that any of them could remember, and the work of the village all but came to a stop. Rumours flew – that they would pick up their belongings and move until the giants were gone, that they would launch a great raid on the Huran for food and slaves, that they would send an embassy to Thorn . . .

In the end the senior matron, Blue Knife, the tallest woman in the village, called them to council.

‘Thorn has moved to the Sacred Island.’ She looked around with the calm dignity that characterised the matrons in all their dealings. Rumour said they fought like dogs when alone, but if there were any cracks in their unity they never showed to the rest of the People.

‘The Horned One, our shaman, has made his castings. He has confirmed it is Thorn on the Sacred Island, and that it is his workings that send the Crannog People into our lands.’ She looked around, and Peter felt as if her eyes came to rest on him. ‘We lack the strength to fight Thorn without allies,’ she said. ‘We have discussed sending to Tapio Haltija at N’gara, and we have discussed sending to Mogon and her people. It was Thorkhan, Mogon’s brother, who claimed these lands. But he died facing Thorn, and Thorn may well feel that he is now lord here.’

Again her eyes passed over the crowd. Again, Peter felt singled out.

‘We want this conflict to end. The warriors have been consulted. They say that every Ruk we kill does no hurt to Thorn, but will cost us ten men. They say Thorn can bring fire and death in the depths of winter when even men on snowshoes can do little to strike back. So had Tadaio made a decision for all the People: to ignore Thorn’s demands and go our own way. He thought we were strong enough. Perhaps we were – if Thorn had not chosen to become our neighbour. Now we must find another path. Tadaio is dead. We have lost two villages. So the matrons have decided to send an embassy to Thorn.’ She bowed to Ota Qwan. ‘We have chosen our brother Ota Qwan to lead that embassy.’

Ota Qwan rose and bowed. ‘I accept the task and the pipe of peace. I will attempt to bring Thorn to a happier disposition.’

Blue Knife frowned slightly. ‘Promise him anything he requires. Surrender anything but our bodies. Offer warriors in his wars.’

Ota Qwan was clearly displeased. ‘This is craven surrender!’

‘The matrons have seen the rise and fall of many Thorns. We lack the strength to face him. So we will lend him the least aid we can manage without incurring his wrath. We will offer songs to his pride. We will aid him.’

‘And then, when he is weak, we will strike!’ said Ota Qwan.

Blue Knife shook her head. ‘No. When he is weak, someone else like him will strike, and we will rejoice quietly, and grow our corn.’

The People sang three songs – all songs of the harvest season, and then they filed out. Peter was near the door, but a small hand on his arm blocked him as effectively as a giant, and he stepped aside to let others pass. Blue Knife stood there, with Small Hands and the other matrons.

‘You will not accompany Ota Qwan,’ Blue Knife said.

Peter had very little experience of dealing with the matrons. They did not issue orders – no one among the Free People issued orders. So he was taken aback by her tone, and he looked around. His wife was standing behind him and she nodded sharply in agreement.

‘He will not like that,’ Peter said.

Small Hands nodded gravely. ‘He will have other followers and friends. You must not go. Please – we ask this of you.’

Peter bowed. ‘I will not go.’

The next week was one of the most difficult Peter had experienced since becoming a Sossag. Ota Qwan lost no time in asking him to come, and then, once the invitation had been declined, became increasingly angry about it.

‘Don’t let your woman turn you into a coward,’ he said in his third attempt.

Peter shrugged. ‘She won’t.’

‘I need you. Men follow me for my skills – but they also follow me because you follow me. Ta-se-ho has declined to come. You know what he said? He said, Nita Qwan isn’t going.’ Ota Qwan was growing red, and his voice rose, and heads were turning all along the village street. It was a cold, windy day – a presage of autumn. There was rain in the air, and two Ruk had been spotted in the beaver meadow south-east of the village, which had everyone on edge.

‘I’m not coming this time,’ Peter said, as calmly as he could manage.

‘Why? Give me one reason. I led the honey gathering well. I have done nothing to offend you. I am polite to your bitch of a wife-’

The two men looked at each other. Peter was quite calm. ‘Please walk away,’ he said.

Ota Qwan put his hands on his hips. ‘I’m doing this all wrong. I’m sorry – I don’t think your wife is a bitch. Or rather, I do, but I assume you see something in her that I don’t. Listen, brother. I appeal to you. I admit that we have only known each other this summer. But I need you.’

Peter knew in his heart that the admission – that he needed Nita Qwan – had a cost.

He tried to smile. ‘I’m flattered-’ he began.

‘Fuck your patronising shit,’ Ota Qwan said with sudden rage. ‘Stay here and rot.’ He turned on his heel and walked away.

Peter suspected he’d just lost his friend. And his brother.

Why are the matrons putting me in this position?

Ota Qwan left the next day, with six men, all seasoned warriors from the summer campaign. The six of them – three chosen from the neighbouring village at Can-da-ga – were considered the finest warriors the People had to offer – all hot-blooded, all highly skilled.

Ota Qwan left the village carrying his best spear, wearing a sword, with a magnificent wolf cloak over his shoulders and a tunic of deerskin carefully decorated along every seam with a stiff border of porcupine quillwork and moose-hair embroidery. He looked like the Alban notion of an Outwaller king, and he walked with pride. He didn’t glance to the right or left, he refused Peter’s embrace, and then he was gone.

As soon as he was gone the matrons gathered in the street. There was a flare of temper from Amij’ha, and her mother spoke sharply to her.

‘You have sent my husband to his death!’ she shouted, and ran into her cabin.

Blue Knife set her face like stone and beckoned to Peter. ‘Nita Qwan,’ she called. He walked to her. Ta-se-ho followed.

He came to a stop. All the matrons were gathered in front of Amij’ha’s house – among the Sossag, the woman owned the house.

‘Nita Qwan, the last week must have been hard for you. But we have chosen your brother for a lesser errand. He will fail. He will go to Thorn, and Thorn will seduce him with the offer of war. This is the way of men.’

The sound of Amij’ha’s sobs echoed in the cabin.

‘We will send you to Mogon. She liked you – she spoke to you. You must leave immediately and travel very fast. Her people are strong, and have strong powers and many allies. Tell her the truth – that Thorn comes for us, and that we are too weak to do anything but blow in the wind.’

Nita Qwan sighed with understanding. ‘It is unfair. My brother-’ He paused. The women’s eyes were deep with understanding, with unspoken knowledge. He lowered his voice, and found that he was angry; in the way that Ota Qwan had never made him angry. ‘If you had sent my brother to Mogon, he would have stood tall for the people. If you had sent me to Thorn, I would have crawled for the people. By sending Ota Qwan to Thorn, you condemn him.’

Blue Knife looked down her nose at him. ‘This is as it must be. War will be his own choice – and that will blind Thorn to our intentions. All the men we sent were warlike, like Ota Qwan.’

‘My brother could have been better than that,’ Nita Qwan spat. ‘Indeed, he had been trying-’

‘We have sent your brother as a sacrifice to Thorn,’ Blue Knife said. ‘He is the husband of my daughter and the father of my granddaughter. Do not imagine that this was not much debated and discussed.’

Nita Qwan breathed in his rage, and breathed out, as his father had taught him five thousand leagues ago. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will go. But you are no different than kings and chiefs and tyrants the world over if you send men to die like this, without giving them a chance.’

Small Hands shook her head. ‘You are angry and your head is big with tears, Nita Qwan. When you are on the trail, smoking your pipe in the darkness with the flames of your campfire before you, think on this: is the life of one man worth the life of all? Or this: we will not be there to choose for Ota Qwan. If he plays the part we told him to play he will return unharmed, and we will apologise and tell him how we used him.’

Blue Knife looked away. ‘But he will not. He will choose Thorn. Of his own free will.’ She turned back and her eyes locked with Nita Qwan’s. ‘Go to Mogon and beg for us. Yesterday, Thorn sent many creatures – some sort of bird or bat or moth – to kill people south of Can-da-ga. He will not end with that.’

Nita Qwan left the next morning, after some passionate lovemaking from his wife and a tearful farewell.

‘Am I being sacrificed like Ota Qwan?’ he asked her. ‘Would you know? Would you tell me?’

She leaned over, breasts brushing his chest, and licked his nose. ‘I might not know, but I’d always tell you. The matrons are all bitches. They don’t like me.’ She licked his nose again. ‘What they did to Ota Qwan, lover, he . . . I’m sorry. He had it coming. He is too much about himself. He wanted to be warlord and he said so. He was not like you. You have become one of us while he was a Southerner pretending to be a Sossag.’

Nita Qwan took the comfort offered and decided not to have a fight with his wife before leaving.

He took only Ta-se-ho who knew the way, and the shaman’s boy, Gas-a-ho. They took bows and pemmican and little else. Nita Qwan declined to carry the elaborate fur robe of an ambassador, and he rolled the quillwork belt that the shaman prepared for the matrons in his Alban snapsack with a blanket, and the three of them, having bowed to the matrons and kissed their women, left the village at a run, like hunters or warriors, and not at a walk like ambassadors.

For the first three days on the trail, it rained. The wind blew harder and harder, the temperature dropped, and the three men built big fires and huddled close under their brush shelters and were cold and wet most of the time. They ran almost all day – faster on the third day, as Gas-a-ho’s muscles hardened. He was young and not as strong as other boys, mostly because he’d chosen the way of the shaman and didn’t spend as much time hunting and fighting.

They passed south of the beaver country, right to the shore of the Inner Sea, and they spent a fruitless morning – their fourth on the trail – looking for a canoe.

‘We always sink them in this pool,’ Ta-se-ho said. He prodded the bottom of a deep pool in a feeder stream for an hour while the other two sat in the water sun and enjoyed being only a little damp. He didn’t find a canoe.

He didn’t find a canoe sunk in the deep bay of the Inner Sea, either. He shook his head. ‘Now we have to make a boat,’ he said.

Nita Qwan had not truly absorbed that this was alternative, and he shook his head. ‘I don’t even know how to make a boat.’

The other two men looked at him and laughed.

The boy gathered spruce root. Nita Qwan watched him for a little while, and all the boy did was wander from spruce to spruce, dig down to the wispy surface roots, and pull. When he had a good length, he’d cut the roots with his neck knife, and go to the next. He didn’t strip a single tree – not even a scrubby little tree at the edge of a meadow. He simply took one length of root from each tree.

Ta-se-ho watched him for a while, too. ‘He’s good. The Horned One is a fine teacher. Let’s go find a tree.’

Finding a tree led to hours of walking in the deep woods. It was hard to make sense of this – they were in a hurry, rushing to take a message to the powerful wardens, and yet they were wandering from tree to tree in the woods. Peter was overwhelmed with frustration for several hours, until Nita Qwan decided that this was a matter for careful deliberation.

Ta-se-ho confirmed this view. ‘If the bark opens like a flower while we are on the sea, we die,’ he said. ‘It is worth the time to choose a good tree.’

They hadn’t found it yet, but they found other things – a pair of twisted spruces that years of wind had bent almost over. Ta-se-ho cut both of them down with a light axe – a fine tool, dark steel with a white edge, from Alba.

He tapped many trees with the butt of the same axe – yellow birch, white birch, paper birch – and pulled at the bark on elm and pine and birch alike. As he walked among them, he sang.

‘White birch is best,’ he said.

Nita Qwan felt entirely useless, but somehow, as the day progressed, he learned – almost wordlessly, because Ta-se-ho was a silent teacher – what it was they wanted. They searched for a dead tree – recently dead – with the bark ready to peel away. They found several, all together in the afternoon. They were all a little too small, but the way that his silent companion handled them, and peeled the elm bark back from the trunks, told Nita Qwan most of what he needed to know.

The sun had come out quite strong, and the day was more like late summer than autumn. The two men were stripped to their breechclouts by afternoon, and walking through the magnificent trees was more beautiful than anything Nita Qwan had done – except perhaps make love – for many days. He savoured the smell of the leaves, and the magnificent royal dazzle of red and gold.

As the sun began to sink, he saw a pond, and along the pond a dozen enormous birch trees like white maidens standing over a forest pool. He walked that way, confident that he could find Ta-se-ho, or that the older man could find him, and he reached the first tree – already excited to see that the crown was dead. The bark had the loose feel he thought might be correct, and he turned to raise his voice and saw the doe standing, head turned to watch him, within easy bowshot.

He thought that she was small enough to carry, and he took his bow from its sheath and strung it while she drank warily and watched him.

Then she turned her head, ignoring him. Her ears swivelled like a horse’s ears.

He loosed an arrow, and missed entirely in his hurry. The fall of his spent shaft startled her, and she whirled, white tail shooting up, and he realised that there was another animal, a small buck, even closer to him that he hadn’t seen. He got a second shaft onto his string – the buck turned, and then looked back, and then leaped along the edge of the pond.

He loosed at point-blank range and his shaft went home to the feathers. The deer fell in a tangle of its own hooves, life extinguished almost instantly, and the doe swerved and ran on, ignoring him as she bounded away.

He stood there, flush with deer fever, and realised that the fading hoof beats of the doe were not the only large animal sounds he was hearing.

The hastenoch came down to the edge of the pool along the same path the doe had taken, its long obscene head and enormous antler rack sending a sharp jolt through his body as he realised what had actually panicked the deer.

He found that his fingers had put an arrow on his string.

A horn blew – raucous and long. The four-hoofed monster raised its snout and looked east, towards the other end of the pond – and charged. There was no warning; it went from standing still to full gallop and it screamed its uncanny cry.

Nita Qwan loosed and missed – it was too fast. He had time to loose three more shafts as the great thing raced along the far shore, and his third shaft hit it squarely just behind the armoured plates of its head and upper neck, and the shaft went deep.

Ta-se-ho shot it twice, but both shafts glanced off the bony plates of its head.

Then he seemed to disappear. It was like magic. He was there – and then he was gone.

The horned thing slammed, head first, into the tree next to which Ta-se-ho had been standing. The crash echoed off the trees standing by the pond, and again off the rock face that rose in granite splendour into the afternoon sunlight.

The great beast reared, backed, and slammed into the tree again. Now the monster had an arrow standing upright between his shoulders, like a crest, and then another.

Nita Qwan loosed again. He was shooting the length of the pond, now.

It was too far to see cause and effect, but the monster suddenly sat. It trumpeted its rage, and got its back feet under it.

It sprouted three more arrows – tick, tick, tick.

Nita Qwan’s hands were shaking so hard he had to pause and breathe. But the thing seemed to be down, and he got another arrow – the one he thought of as his best, with a heavy steel head and a heavy shaft and a deep nock he’d carved himself – on the string and then ran at the monster. It was struggling to rise again.

Tick. It now had seven shafts in it.

Ta-se-ho dropped from the tree that the monster had rushed. He landed lightly, bounced to his feet and drew his long knife – and the hastenoch rolled to its feet, antlers lowered.

It rushed him – an explosion of sinew and antler – its rack caught him and he was tossed as Nita Qwan stepped in close, drew his bow to the ear, and put his heaviest shaft through its withers from so close that its carrion smell was like death incarnate in his nostrils.

It whirled on him and he fed it his bow, right into the tentacled mouth. The horn tip of the bow bit deep and then the bow bent and snapped and it was on him and he was on the ground amidst the cold leaves – a great weight on his chest – a sense of slipping – away, away-

It was dark, and he was cold.

He opened his eyes, and the stars were cold and very far, and he was small and very cold himself.

He opened his mouth and a grunt escaped – and suddenly there was movement.

Gas-a-ho had a canteen to his lips. ‘Drink!’ he said. ‘Are you hurt?’

It seemed a foolish question. Until you spoke, I thought I was dead, Nita Qwan thought. He took a deep breath, and smelled only wet fur and carrion. His hand touched something cold and very slimy – a tentacle – and he flinched. And his feet moved.

‘I can’t get it off you,’ Gas-a-ho said. The boy was fighting panic.

‘Where’s Ta-se-ho?’ Nita Qwan asked.

‘I thought he was with you,’ said the boy. ‘When dark was coming, I gave up that you two were coming back. I stashed my roots and followed your tracks. This thing was still twitching when I came.’

Nita Qwan could feel the marks of the tentacles on his face and arms. ‘Trying to eat me,’ he said aloud. ‘Even while it was dying.’ His memory of the last moments of the fight was skewed, and he tried as best he could to piece it together. ‘Ta-se-ho was here – he got tossed by the beast.’

The boy had a fire. He could see it, and the promise of its warmth trickled through his injured spirit. He dug into the ground with his elbows – there was a shallow puddle under the small of his back – and he pushed, wriggling his feet.

The dead monster was soft and hard, and the armour plates of its head were resting just below his groin. He couldn’t feel his legs, but he seemed to be able to make them move.

He fought down panic. ‘Get my spear, Gas-a-ho. Is it here?’ he asked.

‘I have it!’ the boy said proudly. He went out of Nita Qwan’s field of vision and then came back.

Wolves howled. They were right across the pond devouring the buck he’d shot.

The boy came back. ‘I’ve cast a working on my arms to make them stronger,’ he said. And then, ‘I hope.’

‘Put the spear under the head. Put a log under the spear, and use it as a lever – no, under the head – good. Careful – don’t break the spear . . . there, it moved!’

In a moment, he dragged his right leg free. He had to use his hands, but his legs were bare, and that made them slippery and, although he lost his moccasin, he got the leg out.

The wolves howled. They sounded closer.

‘Hurry,’ he said. There was no pain in his right leg, but neither was there any feeling in it. He wriggled, getting his back out of the pool of water, and set his hands. The boy dug the spearhead into the earth, and pulled.

The wolves bayed, shockingly close, and provided them both with an additional incentive. He got his left foot to move – an inch, another, and then a third. They were sticky, slimy inches, but once it started to move, he wouldn’t stop – not to wait for the wave of pain, the crippling sick ache of a broken bone or ripped muscle. Instead, he felt nothing but a vague slipping, as if the limb was not his but the dead beast’s.

And then he was free.

He crawled fifty feet to the fire, and lay full length in its warmth, heedless of the slavering wolves.

Before the warmth could lull him, the return of life to his lower limbs struck like ice and fire and the pangs of love and being eaten alive all together. He grunted, rolled, thrashed, and grunted again.

The boy looked terrified, and Nita Qwan tried to force a smile. ‘I’m fine,’ he muttered, sounding foolish. ‘No – really – very lucky – ah!’ he said.

But shortly after, when he had some control of his feet, he listened to the wolves and turned to the boy. Gas-a-ho had gathered all their kit and made a small shelter, built a fire – even butchered part of the deer he’d shot, and cooked a haunch of the meat. Nita Qwan got his short sword from his pack and hobbled to the fire.

Gas-a-ho was by him like a swift arrow. ‘I made torches,’ he said proudly. ‘I was going to try and get you out if the wolves came – or at least fight them off.’

‘I think the whole pack fed on deer meat, and now they will sleep,’ Nita Qwan said. ‘But we must find Ta-se-ho if we can. He may be dead. But if he is not, a night this cool could kill him.’ He took a torch and went back to the corpse of the monster, which in flickering torchlight looked almost as terrifying as it had alive.

There was something to the glistening pile of its tentacles that made his stomach turn.

He forced himself to breathe, in and out, and walked past the massive rack of antlers that had miraculously not fallen on his face and killed him.

As usual, everything was bigger at night. He couldn’t find the tree that Ta-se-ho had been in – he had no moccasins and his feet were being crucified by the sharp gravel and sticks.

He stepped on the older hunter in the dark – a soft resistance, a yielding-

Something grabbed his leg and threw him to the ground – he rolled on his shoulder and turned, torch lost. He must have shouted out as he fell.

Ta-se-ho sat up. ‘You almost killed me,’ he said, and managed a weak laugh.

They took turns keeping the hunter warm. He had a badly broken collarbone, and he couldn’t use his left arm at all. He was also in shock, and despite his attempts to fend off their help, he needed every hot cup of tea, and every blanket they had. As the feeling returned to Nita Qwan’s feet, he became more mobile, and he and the boy scrounged for firewood in the damp dark.

But in the morning, the sun rose. Nita Qwan had feared rain, but it was a beautiful day. Until the effort of downing a standing dead tree in the dawn light showed that he had cracked ribs.

He returned to camp to find Ta-se-ho coaching the boy on extracting all the best parts of the deadly hastenoch. By daylight the monster was smaller and less terrifying than Nita Qwan could have imagined, and as the boy meticulously removed its head plates and its tendons for sinew, it became first pitiful and then merely meat.

Ta-se-ho took tobacco from his pouch, cast it over the dead thing and sang a song for its spirit. When he was done, he sipped tea. ‘You up to making a boat?’ he asked, and coughed.

Nita Qwan thought of protesting about his ribs, or his inexperience. But the other two seemed untroubled by the debacle. So he tried to shrug it off, too. ‘Sure,’ he said.

‘We will have many strong things from papa here,’ said Ta-se-ho. ‘They eat us. We use them.’ He laughed. ‘Is it different, down south?’

Nita Qwan piled up his cut firewood and then sat by the wounded man, who was laboriously lighting a pipe. Nita Qwan knelt and lit his char cloth and passed a lit taper of paper birch to the other man, who sat back in what appeared to be complete contentment.

‘I was never really in the south,’ he said. ‘I’m from beyond the sea.’

‘Etrusca?’ asked the old hunter. He took a deep draught of smoke and handed the pipe to Nita Qwan.

‘No, Ifriqu’ya.’ He took smoke himself.

‘Is everyone there as dark as you?’ the other man asked. ‘I have always wanted to ask how you came to be so dark, but it seemed rude.’

Nita Qwan remembered Peter’s youth, and smiled. ‘Everyone is,’ he said.

‘Very handsome. Good in the woods, too.’ Ta-se-ho nodded, as if this defined what was good. ‘You saved my life.’

‘Perhaps you drew the creature to yourself.’ Nita Qwan passed the pipe back.

‘Hah! I was a fool. I thought I had it – a trap, a trick, and my bow.’ He shook his head. ‘It should be a saying: never try to fight a monster by yourself.’ He grunted, took smoke, and handed the pipe back. ‘Of course there is another saying: there’s no fool like an old fool.’

Greatly daring, the boy reached out for the pipe. Nita Qwan handed it to him. ‘Truthfully, we both owe our lives to this boy,’ he said.

The older man smiled at the boy and ruffled his hair. ‘Ah – it will only make him insufferable,’ he said. He pointed with the pipe’s reed stem at the white birch standing at the water’s edge. ‘Were those what brought you here?’ he asked.

‘Yes – the nearest one. I thought it might make a good boat.’ Nita Qwan shrugged.

Ta-se-ho nodded. ‘I may make a hunter of you yet. Listen – this is what we should do. Today, you two cut firewood. Lots of it. Yes? Then, tomorrow, we cut the tree and take the bark. Next day I’ll be better – we move camp to the sea. Then we build the boat.’

‘How many days before we are on our way?’ Peter asked.

The hunter gave him an impatient look. ‘However many it takes,’ he said.

Liviapolis – Ser Thomas Lachlan

The defeat of the Etruscans was a three-day wonder. Within the company, they knew that the victory was not as good as it seemed, and Bad Tom was rapidly coming to regret accepting the task of hunting spies.

The company – with a hundred Morean shipwrights and labourers – had built three heavy galleys in a week – or rather, the new ships were framed on the quays, waiting for the long work of nailing planks. The planks had to be adzed to shape, and the trees had to be felled before that, and it seemed that Andronicus, the former Duke of Thrake, controlled most of the long, straight spruce and oak in Morea. Ser Jehan took twenty men-at-arms and as many archers into the hills with orders to fetch in enough lumber to complete ten row-galleys. He went with good grace. The second day after he left, he sent a report of an attempted ambush.

In the city, Tom chased phantoms.

Every archer received a handbill written out carefully by a scribe who’d never read Alban, announcing that every man who deserted from the company would receive fifty gold nobles and a free pass to Alba – or higher wages in the armies of the true Duke of Thrake, fighting for the true Emperor.

Whoever had written the handbills had mistaken the archers for men who cared which side was in the right. A great deal of ink had been spent on describing the Princess Irene as a scheming usurper and Duke Andronicus as a loyal supporter of the Emperor.

Bad Tom sat in his ‘office’, a table in the guardroom where the senior officers stood watches, and read it carefully. Across the table, Cully sat with his hands folded.

‘Cap’n – which I mean the Duke – won’t think I want to run, would he?’ Cully asked. The Captain’s temper had been sour since they left Lissen Carrak and now verged on poisonous.

Bad Tom shrugged. ‘If he does, he’s fucked in the head. Where would you go? Who’d take you?’

Cully struggled to decide whether he should defend his status as a master archer or his loyalty.

Tom threw the bill back at him. ‘Anyone tempted?’ he asked. Long Paw had brought him the same bill, and now sat with his feet up.

Long Paw made a face. ‘There’s the usual awkward sods. We don’t have enough choir boys, that much I can tell ye. And skipping a pay parade – well that started some mutters.’ Long Paw had a low, gravelly voice that utterly belied his gentle nature and correctly warned the listener of his danger, too. He cleared his throat – half of them had colds. ‘No one will run now. Miss two or three more pay days; someone will run then.’

Bad Tom nodded his agreement.

Bent came in to the guardroom, spoke briefly to the officer of the day, Ser George Brewes, who sat with his armoured feet on a table and drank wine. Brewes was, in many ways, the worst soldier imaginable – he was a terrible example and he was bad for discipline.

The men loved him, so he got away with it.

Bent tossed a casual salute to Ser George and came up to Bad Tom’s table. He reached into the breast of his doublet and withdrew a crumpled handbill.

Bad Tom passed his eyes over it and nodded. ‘Sit,’ he muttered. ‘How would you three like to desert?’

Bent narrowed his eyes. ‘They’d never buy it. We’re master archers. Well, some of us are.’ Bent shot a glance at Cully, who rolled his eyes.

Bad Tom sighed. ‘I need to get a more private place to meet. For the nonce, I am assuming that everyone in the company is reliable. But listen. Whoever’s up to this ain’t ten feet tall. They think we care whose side we’re on. They don’t know us. Stands to reason we can feed them a few archers.’

Bent flexed his hands.

Long Paw studied his nails the way a woman might. ‘What’s in it for us?’ he asked.

‘A good fight?’ asked Bad Tom. ‘Money?’ he tried.

All three men brightened up.

‘Shares? Man-at-arm’s shares?’ Long Paw leaned forward.

Tom rolled his eyes. ‘As long as you three realise I’ve never made one thin clipped silver leopard from my share.’

They all four shook hands on it.

Long Paw went to the taverna that was listed on his handbill. He was the only archer who spoke the Morean version of Archaic, and he dressed in a heavy linen overshirt and a broad straw hat and walked all the way around the city – outside the walls – to enter at the Vardariot gate driving a small pig.

Either his disguise was excellent or no one was watching him. He scouted the taverna, behind the Academy and in a seedy slum of small tenements and three-storey stuccoed houses with flat roofs, and returned without incident.

When he came back, the whole company was turned out in armour, standing at attention in the Outer Court. Bad Tom had already taken twenty lances to the Navy Yard.

Someone had torched their new ships on the stocks, and someone else had poisoned a great many of the company’s horses.

The Captain – whose beautiful new horse was dead – walked up and down in front of his company, obviously deep in rage.

Long Paw slipped into the guardroom. Wilful Murder was the duty archer – he was leaning in the doorway of the guardroom watching the fun.

‘Christ on the cross – you’ll catch it,’ Wilful said. He was delighted to see someone so senior as Long Paw so deeply in the shit.

‘Heh,’ Long Paw grunted. ‘What’s the Cap’n on about?’

‘We turned out for the alarm, and there ain’t forty horses fit to ride. Turns out he ordered the stables guarded, but they weren’t. Ser Jehan ain’t here to say one way or another, see?’ Wilful shook his head. ‘Ser Milus said – right on parade, in front of everybody – that the Cap’n clean forgot to order the stables guarded.’

Long Paw grunted, slipped into the barracks and had a nap.

The next day, a maid, one of the Princess Irene’s servants and a pretty thing already chased by half a dozen Scholae, two Nordikans, and Francis Atcourt, died of poison in the palace kitchen. Bad Tom ran through the palace to get to her corpse as soon as he heard, but by the time he reached the kitchens she had been taken for burial and all of the people who might have had something to say were gone to their duties.

He did find Harald Derkensun and his pretty whore Anna. The two men clasped arms. They spoke briefly, and Anna nodded several times.

That night Bad Tom reported to his Captain, who had lines on his face and dark circles under his eyes and was sitting drinking wine with Ser Milus, who looked as bad or worse.

‘Sorry, Captain – er, my lord Duke.’ Bad Tom paused in the doorway of the Captain’s outer office.

Ser Milus rose stiffly. ‘I should go,’ he said.

‘You can hear anything Tom has to say. Milus – I’m sorry. My temper got the best of me.’ The Duke put a hand on his standard bearer’s shoulder, but the older knight simply bowed and withdrew – gracefully enough that it was hard to see if he was angry or not.

‘You must hae’ cocked up proper. Ne’er heard you speak so small to any man.’ Tom grinned.

‘I was an arse of the first water, and the worst of it, Tom, is that I feel as if I’m losing my mind. Nay – forget I said that. Anything saved on the docks?’ The Duke mixed something into his wine with the tip of his fighting knife.

‘Master Aeneas thinks we can save one hull out of the three,’ Tom said. ‘I doubled the guard and put him to it. For what it’s worth, I accept that it’s my fault and ye can do as ye like.’

There was a silence.

‘Well, I accept that it was my fault too, so we can both sulk together. You won’t be rid of this job so easily.’ The Duke tossed off a cup of wine.

‘Ye’r drinking hard these days.’ Tom poured some for himself. Toby was making himself scarce – he looked like he was going to have a prime black eye, too.

‘Yes, well, some days it is like I have a fucking voice inside my head and I’m never alone! ’ He spat.

Tom laughed. ‘Nah, that’s just Sauce.’

The Captain spat out some of his wine. ‘You make me laugh, Tom,’ he said. ‘I wonder if that means I’ve lost my mind.’

‘Like eno,’ said Tom. ‘Listen, Cap’n – I’d like to send Bent and Cully to pretend to be deserters. Long Paw will cover them.’

The Captain sighed. ‘We can ill afford to lose three of our best men. But – yes. It’s your command. Any word from Jehan?’

‘His guides mislead him and he thinks it was done a-purpose. He killed one.’ Tom shrugged.

‘We could be so unpopular here, Tom.’ The Duke shrugged. ‘But Jehan knows what he’s doing. We need that wood.’ He looked up. ‘Any word from Sauce?’

‘She’s chatting with people; people she knew here.’ Tom shrugged. ‘She’s a strange one. She was a whore, here?’

‘Right here in this city,’ the Red Knight said.

‘Aweel. She’s off tonight to talk to an armourer. Says that this man witch was one of his father’s apprentices, fifty years back.’ Tom didn’t sound very interested. ‘She’s also found me some useful people.’

‘Paid informants?’ the Red Knight asked. ‘Spies? Whores? Tavern ruffians?’

Bad Tom nodded. ‘Aye.’

The Red Knight grimaced. ‘We are living in the very annals of chivalry, ain’t we?’