The Fell Sword

Chapter Thirteen

North of Liviapolis – Mag

When the army marched north from the parade ground, they marched in their new white wool cotes with their best weapons and gear, and they made a fine show. Most men had water in their canteens, and the provident had a length of sausage and some hardtack in their scrips.

They marched away west, up the road to Alba, and the further they went, the more men worried.

Mag had never held any kind of command before. She had the natural power of an older woman – the wisdom that comes with the end of youth’s ambition, plus a little more from her hermetical talents. She had led the altar guild of her small town, and she had helped manage supplies in a castle under siege.

She had sixty women and a dozen lances under John le Bailli, her lover, under her command. She had lost sleep over their preparations. The wagons were loaded to the tops of their steep, outward-jutting sides, and the carts were loaded, and there were water casks and spare sewing needles and tents and mess kettles and dried meat and thread and horseshoes-

None of that caused her a moment’s concern. She could read, and she could write well enough.

But when the train – fifty great wagons and twenty carts and sixty-six mules – passed under the arch of the palace gate and rolled noisily into the gathering dusk, she felt more alone than she had ever felt in her life. She clung to le Bailli’s hand when he mounted the lead wagon box with her in a very uncommanderly way, and he smiled at her in the dark and kissed her lips.

‘I’m terrified,’ she muttered.

Le Bailli laughed. ‘It does me good to see it, woman of wonders.’ He leaned back to stretch his legs and ease his back, caught his spurs on the wagon’s front boards and almost fell off.

She guffawed.

He laughed with her.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Command is easy when you are young, and harder and harder as you get older.’

‘Oh, shut up with your scary philosophy,’ she said, and hugged him a moment. ‘What have I forgotten?’

‘Spare earwax?’ he asked.

For a moment she fell for it . . .

. . . and then she swatted him.

He laughed. ‘Put it away. Whatever you have forgotten, we will now live without.’ He looked back along the line of wagons. ‘How many are new?’

‘All but six,’ she confessed. The wagons had been built at the Navy Yard to hide them from prying eyes – she’d used hermetical means to hide them still further.

‘Best military wagons I’ve ever seen. He’s spent a great deal of money on this,’ le Bailli said.

Mag nodded. ‘Yes.’

Le Bailli nodded. ‘You’re a company officer and I’m a lowly corporal. I don’t need to know, I’m sure.’ He grinned. ‘But by God, woman, it seems we’re marching into the mountains in winter. What’s he doing?’

Mag laughed. ‘He’s being himself. Mysterious, arrogant, and probably victorious.’ She kissed le Bailli. ‘We’re about to pass the gates, Corporal. Go defend my wagons from the enemy, before I use your handsome body for a distraction from the stress of command.’

‘Anytime,’ he said, and gave her a little interest on the investment of her kiss before stepping off the wagon into the saddle of his horse, who grunted as if to disapprove of all this showmanship.

Mag’s convoy rolled into a camp prepared by Gelfred’s men – stakes and lines laid out for tents, and a strong picket of cavalry covering their arrival. When the army arrived half an hour later, they found their tents up and most messes had cooked food waiting.

The Morean volunteers ate their hot food, slept in their prepared tents, and didn’t desert.

And the next morning, they rose before dawn in the foggy cold, and marched away over the mountains towards the Green Hills.

The weather was superb. The roads were frozen and hard, but the sun was bright, and every man was mounted.

On the third day, as they jogged along at a fast walk over rolling downs full of sheep and cattle, the army passed corpses – little knots of men.

Ser Michael turned to Ranald Lachlan. They were climbing a tall ridge dominating the main road into Thrake. Mountains rolled away to the north and west. Off to the north-west they could see the looming walls of Kilkis, which the Albans called Middleburg. It was a mighty fortress dominating the crossroads where the North Road and West Road met. At the foot of the fortress sat the last town east of the Inn of Dorling.

Lachlan was watching the hills the way a man watches his love pull her dress over her head. With both love and lust. ‘My hills ain’t far,’ he said. He looked down at the dead man – stripped naked, and already dead white – on the ground. There were patches of snow.

‘Gelfred caught their outposts asleep,’ Ser Michael said. ‘I heard it this morning in the command meeting.’

‘Blessed Virgin,’ Ranald said, and crossed himself. As a man who had been dead, he took the deaths of others very seriously.

‘Captain – that is, the Duke – says we’ve a clear run until we encounter his scouts,’ Ser Michael said.

‘Sweet Christ,’ Ranald said. ‘Poor Andronicus.’ He laughed aloud, and that particular laughter spread like wildfire as the army raced across the hills, headed north. ‘Tom and I thought the Castellan at Middleburg would hold against us.’

Ser Michael shrugged. ‘He didn’t. I don’t know the story, but the gates were open and the Duke expected it.’ He looked back. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s been planning it for months.’

Ranald nodded. ‘Aye. He’s a canny bastard.’ He caught Michael’s glance and put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Michael, lad, he’ll plan as carefully for your da.’

Michael spat carefully in a patch of snow. ‘Ran, I don’t know what I want for my pater. I’m not convinced I shouldn’t ride away and leave him to his dungheap.’ He touched the favour he wore at his shoulder. ‘I have other concerns than him.’

Ranald fingered his beard. ‘Aye. As do I.’

It was Michael’s turn. ‘Don’t fret – he’ll knight you. Just give him an excuse. Ranald, I know him. He chancy to cross, he’s the devil when he’s angry, he’s as vain as a popinjay and he loves to show us all how smart he is – but he stands by his friends.’

Ranald nodded, obviously unhappy. ‘Aye, that’s what Tom says.’

‘We’ll have a fight in the next ten days.’

‘Or we’ll all freeze waiting for it,’ Ranald said. ‘But aye.’

There was no break for midday food. The whole column rolled along and took the north fork in the Imperial road without pausing under the walls of Kilkis – and now they were marching along the old legion road. Instead of marching west over the last pass into the Green Hills, they continued north, passing well east of the Dragon’s Mountain and crossing the Meander River at a stone bridge so ancient that Ser Alcaeus dismounted, read the inscription, and laughed aloud. He cantered along the jingling column – men were eating in the saddle, and the Nordikans, who were probably the worst riders, were leaving a trail of uneaten food – dropped sausages and cheese – and they roared with laughter at each other’s riding. Men fell off. They all drank steadily.

Alcaeus reined in by the standard. ‘I know why you left Darkhair and half the Nordikans,’ he said. ‘By our avenging lord – how many wagons of wine do they have with them?’

The Red Knight grinned. ‘A better question would be – what will they be like when we run out of wine?’

Ranald leaned out over his cantle. ‘What did it say? I’ve crossed the Stone Bridge in the Hills a hundred times. I can read, but I can’t read that!’

Alcaeus nodded to the Red Knight. ‘A few of us can still read Old Archaic,’ he said. ‘For such a grand structure – out here in this waste of green grass and rock – you might expect an oration from the Empress Livia-’

All the educated men nodded.

Alcaeus straightened his back where the tug of harness and four days in the saddle grated on his hips. ‘It says “Iskander, Deckarch of Taxis X Nike, and his mess group built this bridge in fourteen days.”’

Tom Lachlan and his cousin turned their horses to look back, and for a moment, the whole command group – Ser Milus, and Nicholas Ganfroy, who was four fingers taller and a much better trumpeter, Bad Tom and Ranald, Toby with his master’s spare warhorse and Nell, who had suddenly started to look more like a woman and less like a skinny irk, Father Arnaud, Ser Alcaeus and Ser Gavin and the Megas Ducas himself by Ser Gerald Random nursing his ankle – all sat in their saddles, munching sausage and contemplating a three-arch stone bridge built by ten soldiers in fourteen days.

‘They conquered the world, or most of it,’ the Duke said.

Bad Tom spat some sausage rind. ‘I would ha’ loved to fight them.’ He nodded at his cousin. ‘They’d hae gi’en us a mickle fight. Kiss the book on that.’

The Duke gave his largest man-at-arms a crooked grin. ‘I don’t know if they were great warriors, Tom,’ he said. ‘They built great roads and bridges and made damn sure they weren’t outnumbered when it came to a fight.’

‘Oh,’ said Tom, losing interest. ‘How do you know that?’

‘They left books behind,’ the Duke said. ‘And I read them.’

Liviapolis – The Princess Irene

‘What!’ The princess lost control of her voice very briefly and shrieked like the girls selling fish on the docks.

Lady Maria stood her ground with the long practice of a wife, a mother, and a courtier. ‘The army has marched away, Majesty.’

Irene put her bare feet into sheepskin slippers – even in the grip of terrified rage, she could not help but notice how unseemly it was that a princess born in the purple birthing room of the Great Palace would wear peasant slippers to keep her feet warm. The ancient floors of the palace had hypocausts, and should have been warmed by furnaces in the lowest cellars. But none of that had worked for many years, and only rats lived in the tunnels that had once funnelled warm air.

‘Do you mean that my barbarian heretic has taken my army and marched away without informing me?’ she spat.

Lady Maria nodded and curtsied deeply. ‘So it would appear, Majesty.’

‘Leaving me naked to the traitor?’ Irene said. She was wearing only a thin linen shift in a very cold room, and the concept of being naked before her enemies was rather real and immediate.

‘Acting Spatharios Darkhair remains with more than half of the Nordikan Guard. There are two maniples of the Scholae in the palace and our walls are manned.’ Lady Maria curtsied again. ‘The new sailors in the Navy Yard have been paid, and are armed. We are not utterly wretched.’

Irene went to the great arched doors that gave on her balcony. There was snow in the air, but she looked north, towards the tall mountains of Thrake. ‘What is he doing?’ she asked.

Lonika, Northern Thrake

A black and white bird the size of a large dog alighted on the arm of a green-clad man. He was sitting on a fretting horse in a field of snow studded with snow-covered pines, and the weight of the bird on his arm threatened his seat, but he managed it. He slipped the message cylinder out of the bird’s harness of wool yarn, fed it most of a chicken, which act left him covered in bloody scraps, and then tossed the bird as high as he could manage into the air for the return journey to the city, more than a hundred leagues to the south.

Jules Kronmir read the message with what passed for panic on his face, which was registered by the very slightest downward twitch of his mouth.

He turned his horse and raced over the first snow of the season for the Palace of Lonika.

Aeskepiles sat across a big oak table from Jules Kronmir, drinking good cider and scowling.

‘We have to kill him,’ he said with a shrug. ‘You need to convince Duke Andronicus.’ He read the message again.

‘Andronicus is convinced that the only way to deal with the usurper is to meet him in the field.’ Kronmir raised his cup and drank. ‘Pray do not delay in taking this to the Duke, Magister. Time is everything.’

‘You are so reserved, Master Kronmir, I can’t decide what you are saying.’ Aeskepiles stretched his booted legs out towards the open hearth. ‘I hadn’t expected to spend a winter in Thrake,’ he admitted. He tossed the small confession on the still water of the spymaster’s face.

Nothing rose to the surface. ‘Would you do me the kindness to take this news to the palace?’ asked Kronmir, displaying a deliberate patience, like a parent with a child.

‘An hour won’t hurt the cause. I never get a chance to speak to you, and yet you are at the heart of our organisation in the city.’ The mage leaned forward. ‘Is there anything you need?’

Kronmir thought for a moment. If he was frustrated at the magister’s delay, he hid it well. ‘I wonder if you could make me some small devices,’ he asked.

Aeskepiles shrugged. ‘Most men exaggerate the capabilities of hermetical devices,’ he said. ‘And I don’t make fire-starters. What would you like?’

‘I’d like to have the ability to warn an agent. Something like a ring or a pendant that would buzz, or grow warm or cold. Preferably something that would be utterly inconspicuous.’

Aeskepiles drank more cider. ‘Warn them for what purpose?’

‘So that they could escape. You must know that one of my best messengers was taken. I lost only one agent, but in the process of warning the others I was very exposed.’

Kronmir said this with such flat disinterest that the mage had to say the words again in his head to understand their import. ‘We wouldn’t want you to be captured,’ Aeskepiles agreed.

‘That would be most – unpleasant. For me, and for your cause.’ Kronmir drank more wine. ‘The capture of either of my principal agents would be just as disastrous.’

‘How much do they know?’ the mage asked.

Kronmir made an odd face. ‘Excuse me?’ he asked.

‘I mean, if they are too well informed, ought we just to be rid of them?’ asked the hermeticist.

‘Is this how you see the world?’ Kronmir asked. ‘These are people who have served the Duke well.’

Aeskepiles shrugged. ‘Of course.’

Kronmir rose. ‘I find it odd that I – the spy, the hired killer – care more about the people we use than you or Demetrius do, the noble supporters of a noble cause.’ Kronmir’s delivery continued to be so flat that it was possible he was speaking ironically, and the mage chose to take him that way.

He laughed. ‘Be that as it may, I will make you these devices. That is well within my art. And I ask you again – do you hold the Red Knight’s life in your hand?’

Kronmir didn’t smile. His cold eyes, like the eyes of falcon or a lizard, bored into the hermeticist’s eyes, and for a moment Aeskepiles felt a shudder of revulsion.

‘Yes,’ said the spy.

‘No possibility of error – your agent is that sure he can get close to the usurper?’ Aeskepiles asked.

Kronmir looked at him. ‘There is always the possibility of error,’ he said. ‘We don’t call this the game of kings for nothing.’

‘Your agent is reliable?’ asked Aeskepiles.

Kronmir leaned back. ‘You are not as far advanced in the confidence of the Duke as I would have expected, Master Mage. I will not tell you any more.’ He looked away. ‘The Duke needs this information.’

Aeskepiles risked some of his stature with the rebels and shook his head. ‘Damn it, Kronmir, I’m not the enemy. I just want to know if there’s any chance of winning this thing. I had good reason to betray the Emperor. My agenda is not advanced at all by a failed rebellion.’

Kronmir’s face finally registered an emotion – surprise. He leaned forward again. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘That was honest, Master Mage. For my part, I can provide you no assurances. I am a mere mercenary, hired under contract. I have some history with the Duke, and was willing to work on this project under certain conditions.’ He shrugged. ‘It is of little moment to me who is Emperor.’

Aeskepiles spread his hands in frustration. ‘I thought that you were deep in the councils of the Duke!’ he said.

Kronmir rose, and threw his cloak around his shoulders. ‘If I were, I wouldn’t admit it to you. And if I were not, I wouldn’t admit it to you. So I must demur, and say nothing at all. Good day, Master Magister.’ He took a step away from the table and then, with a swirl of his cloak, reappeared by the sorcerer’s side.

‘How are your relations with the Academy?’ he asked suddenly.

Aeskepiles raised an eyebrow. ‘Much like yours with the Duke,’ he said. ‘And with the same codicil.’

Kronmir laughed. Aeskepiles thought it might have been the first time he heard the spy laugh.

‘I had that coming,’ the spy admitted. ‘The message?’

‘Immediately, spy.’

Kronmir bowed, and was gone.

Aeskepiles spent far too much time getting the snow off his hood while incompetent servants fussed over his boots.

‘Damn your eyes,’ he snarled at a maid. ‘I need to see Duke Andronicus.’

The major-domo of the Lonika Palace bowed deeply. ‘Magister, the grand Duke is with the Despot in the Room of Embassies.’

The Palace of Lonika mirrored the Great Palace of Liviapolis in any number of ways – it had magnificent mosaic ceilings, gilt pillars, rooms full of furniture inlaid in ivory and bone and precious gems. But it was all on a far more human scale – the palace itself was the size of a Harndon guild hall, and there were only a hundred servants. Moreover, the relative wealth of the Dukes of Thrake and the smaller scale of the palace meant that the hypocausts worked, the floors were heated, the flues of the Alban-style inside chimneys were clear and warmth trickled even into outside halls, while the main rooms on the three main floors were positively pleasant.

The palace major-domo led the magister up two grand staircases to the Great Hall, which was dark – but warmer than the world outside. They moved silently across the warm marble floors. In the silence, Aeskepiles could actually hear the sound of distant fires roaring in the cellar furnaces.

They crossed the marble floor, passed through a low, arched corridor, and the major-domo knocked at a small inlaid door. A beautiful young man opened it and bowed deeply.

Aeskepiles entered a wood-panelled room – every panel was itself an inlaid trompe l’oeil, a picture of the same panel open to reveal helmets and sextants and paint brushes and daggers and scrolls – a masculine fantasy of the ideal collection, rendered in fine woods and ivory and gilt. It was, indeed, a facsimile of the Imperial study in the Palace of Blacharnae.

Aeskepiles thought it a remarkable piece of vulgarity and, because he hated it, it drew his eye every time he entered the room.

Duke Andronicus and his golden son sat at a magnificent table in northern cherry, mammoth ivory and gold, on ivory stools. They were playing chess, a set of pieces carved by an artist from Umroth ivory and the rare black bone of the non-dead.

‘Aeskepiles!’ said Andronicus with an enthusiasm that came across as patently false. A life of palace political life had robbed the Duke of normal human reactions – it was very difficult to determine what he thought about anything.

Demetrius, who had been kept away from court, scowled contemptuously at the mage. He didn’t hide his feelings.

‘We’re playing chess,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you respect our privacy and return at a mutually convenient time?’ The words were polite, but the intent was anything but.

Hating Demetrius was a city-wide hobby, and one that Aeskepiles disdained. ‘My lord, I would not interrupt, but that I have two pieces of news. The first is that I fear for the loyalty of the spy, Kronmir.’

Andronicus shrugged. ‘He’s his own man, I agree. But that was part of our arrangement. He has brought some remarkable tools to the table.’

Aeskepiles settled at the table. ‘He claims he can kill the Red Knight at any time, but he will not discuss his methods or the source of this message.’

Duke Andronicus caught sight of the message tube in palace colours and he reached for it.

‘I feel sometimes that I am not in your confidence, my lord Duke, despite being one of the engines of our shared rebellion. And despite having placed the Emperor in your hands.’ Aeskepiles plucked the message cylinder out of the Duke’s hands and placed it high above them with a whisper and a thought. ‘I, too, am an ally of convenience, my lord Duke, and I do not feel that my convenience has been consulted very often. I have certain goals. I would like to know the state of play.’

Duke Andronicus crossed his arms like a man in a fight with his wife. ‘Are you done?’ He turned his head to where his son had just drawn his short sword. ‘Do not threaten our guest.’

‘He’s a useless old fuck. I could gut him and we’d be the better for it.’ Demetrius stood up.

His magnificent sword – blued and gilt with a scene of the crucifixion – rusted away to flakes in a single breath, leaving only the gilt – for a moment – before the whole fell like a dirty orange snow to the floor.

He dropped the hilt as if the rust were a contagion he might catch. ‘Fuck you, you bastard,’ he spat.

‘Your son is our single greatest liability,’ Aeskepiles said, effectively muffling the boy with another small working. ‘Even your own people hate him.’

Andronicus shrugged. ‘That’s as may be. He’s my flesh and blood, and a fine cavalry officer. And I can trust him with anything. Unlike a certain mage.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Andronicus. You can trust me – I have no other place to go. Kronmir admitted that two of his agents know how we planned the coup. And who was in it with us.’

Andronicus stroked his short ginger beard. ‘They need to die, then,’ he said.

‘I’ll see to that. In the meantime, be wary of the spy. He knows too much.’ The magister brought the cylinder down from the ceiling and gave it to the Duke, who read it greedily and cursed.

But when he was done, he met the mage’s eye and smiled. ‘I know you want him killed,’ he said. ‘But he’s ridden from the city with an army, and I’ll have him in a week. In my own country? The thing’s as good as done. Can you handle his hermetical?’

‘I was the Imperial mage,’ Aeskepiles said. ‘I can handle a mercenary company from Alba.’ He leaned forward. ‘Should we move the Emperor?’

‘Why?’ asked the Duke. ‘He’s leagues west of here, with people I trust. The usurper will never get that far. Our report says he’s headed east!’

Harndon – The Queen

Desiderata dismounted from her horse and rushed across the frozen ground, but it was too late.

The Sieur de Rohan stood with a bloody sword, and one of her favourites, Ser Augustus, lay bleeding. The blood pumped from his side and flowed out of his mouth, and it ran on and on, and he lay there. His eyes found hers, and of all things, he smiled.

He opened his mouth, and more blood came out – gouts of it.

She knelt, regardless of the blood and the ordure, and took his head in her lap. ‘What is this?’ she asked.

Rohan laughed. ‘One of your lovers? One fewer, then.’ He bowed his head. ‘My lady Queen,’ he said with a smile.

Ser Augustus looked at her as if she was his hope of heaven, and she reached inside to try-

He was slipping away, like a guest leaving a party without saying goodbye to the hostess, and she tripped after him – through the open woods where they’d been riding, across the open field where the wagon waited with all their hawks, and then into the woods and he flitted on ahead of her, and suddenly she was in dark and broken country. She stopped, and watched Ser Augustus go on – up the dark slope and away from her best effort to throw her golden light to him.

She rose, covered in blood – her white wool dress now scarlet and dark brown. She stalked regally after the Sieur de Rohan. ‘Explain yourself, sir, before I have you arrested.’

‘Arrested? On the word of a woman?’ He laughed in her face. ‘Unlike these others, I merely defend your husband’s honour – as my lord, the great Captal, does on a larger field.’

She was quite calm. ‘Are you accusing me of something, messire?’

‘That is for a greater baron than I,’ he said, and his eyes were lit as if from within. ‘I will merely content myself with cutting the evil weeds from his garden.’

Lady Mary stood at the Queen’s shoulder. She stepped between the murderer and the Queen. ‘I think you are a coward and a murderer,’ she said.

The Galle’s smile slipped into blank rage. His hand twitched.

‘Mary!’ cautioned the Queen.

‘I think you are a coward who seeks to torment the Queen when all of our best knights are away – fighting the Wild.’ Mary took a step towards him.

‘We are your best knights. There is no knight in this beggarly country that can stand against us. Coward? I? I challenged him and I beat him. You Albans pretend that black is white. It is not. He was a coward. His hand shook when he drew his sword.’

‘And you enjoyed that, did you not? I say you are a false knight, a poltroon-’ She leaned forward-

His hand, uncontrolled, shot out and struck her, and she fell backward.

‘Arrest the Galle,’ said the Queen.

‘You bitch,’ Rohan said softly.

Desiderata’s eyes met his for a moment, and she said, ‘You want open war between us? So be it.’

The King sat on his throne with all of his officers present and scratched the ears of his wolfhound. ‘Are you a pack of complete idiots?’ he growled. ‘I demand my officer be released immediately. He committed no crime-’

‘He struck my daughter in front of fifty witnesses!’ roared the Constable. ‘By God and all the saints-’

De Vrailly turned to him. ‘If you desire satisfaction, challenge me, and we will settle this.’

The Count faced the Captal with an icy bow. ‘Whatever odd customs you Galles keep at home, my lord, here in Alba we have laws which bind all men. Your man has broken a slew of them – lese majestie, and assault against an innocent woman-’

‘Who called him a coward, in public, before witnesses – for a woman to do that! That she should dare to even raise her eyes to such a man!’ said the Captal. ‘In Galle, women know their places.’

There was a particularly icy silence while Gaston d’Eu, the usual peacemaker, glared at his cousin with ill-concealed distaste. ‘Do they really, cousin? I think you fantasise.’

The Captal turned his glare on his cousin. ‘Withdraw that,’ he said.

The Count d’Eu settled himself. ‘No. I, the Comte d’Eu, declare that you lie. Women in Galle are every bit as free to speak their minds at court as men. You create a world that suits yourself, rather than observing reality. I will maintain my point of view with my reality.’

The King shot to his feet. ‘Damn the lot of you!’ he roared.

Even the Captal backed away a step.

The King walked past the Queen, who sat in silence, her hands crossed.

‘Your daughter behaved like a fishwife, yelling insults at a knight,’ said the King to his Count. He walked another few steps to the Captal. ‘Your man used a duel as a pretext for murder, and made broad allegations about my wife’s fidelity – did you know about this, Captal?’

The Captal had no trouble meeting the King’s eyes. ‘It is commonly reported,’ he said. And he shrugged. ‘But my man killed your gentleman over a private matter – nothing to do with the Queen or the law. They are both knights – only the Law of War covers them. Ser Augustus was found wanting.’ The Captal shrugged. ‘I have read your laws. If my man made an accusation against the Queen, let her bring her witnesses forth. Otherwise, he was arrested for a provoked attack on a woman.’

‘Do Galles hit women so very often?’ asked the Count of the Borders. ‘None of my training in chivalry covered such a point. Is it a particular part of the Law of War?’

The Captal turned but found the King was standing by the Count d’Eu. ‘And I have been to Galle, and I agree with the Count. So – Captal. Will you face the two of us in the lists?’

The Captal took a deep breath. ‘Of course.’

‘Your cousin and your King – you’ll fight us both?’ asked the King. ‘If you win, you’ll be banned from this court. If you lose, you’ll have been proven false.’ The King was often bluff and easygoing. Some of the men in the room had never heard him take this tone. ‘Captal, you are a fine knight, but sometimes you are a fool. You seem to believe that we are all peers, merely gentlemen with swords, in a sort of endless tournament. Eh?’

The King stood nose to nose with the Captal.

Their eyes locked.

‘Back down, Captal,’ he said. ‘I am not some other knight. I am your King.’

You could hear men in the room breathe. The two men were of a size – the King was older, his golden hair a darker bronze, and his features were less fine, but you could see that they were cousins, however distant, and you could see that they were men who were not used to being said nay.

A political eternity passed. The Count of the Borders, despite his rage, had to consider what war with the Galles would mean and how much of Harndon they held; Gaston d’Eu tried to imagine being dead, or losing his cousin’s faith and going home in disgrace.

‘Very well,’ said the Captal. ‘I do God’s work here. My own angers are of no moment. I submit, Your Grace, and I confess that the women of Galle are as likely to be pert and forward and rude as the women of Alba.’

The silence was more stirred than broken by the Captal’s apparent submission.

‘The Sieur de Rohan is banned from court for Christmas,’ the King continued. ‘As is the Lady Mary.’

The Queen’s sharp intake of breath was as audible as the flat crack of a crossbow bolt releasing from the string.

An hour later, she turned on her husband. ‘Two of my knights are dead, my lord, and you banish my best friend from court? At Christmas?’

The King sat quietly, hands folded in his lap. ‘I’m sorry, my love. Sometimes the appearance is more important than the reality – that’s being King. The Galles must feel I’m even-handed-’

‘Must they?’ she spat. ‘Why not just order them from court, embrace Towbray, and tell the Captal to sail home and trouble us no more?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Can I tell you a hard truth, love?’ he asked. ‘Only the Captal’s knights kept us in the war in the spring. Three hundred steel-clad lances were the margin. Without them, I’d probably be dead on the field at Lissen, and this kingdom would be split in two or worse. I fear to send him home. And he says he was sent by God . . .’

She stood up. ‘He’s deluded – some false demon whispers in his ear. He is a fine knight, but his ways are not ours, and his knights – especially the new men – they all but hunt me with poisonous words. I have never had a lover but you, my husband. You know this. You know that they slander me every day.’ She was breathing deeply. She had never felt so alone, and she was tempted to play on her pregnancy, but she had Diota’s word that most women who miscarried did so in the first three months. She wanted to present the King with a swollen belly and a fact, not a supposition and a disaster. And yet the rumours of her infidelity were like a poison against her baby.

He looked away. ‘He brought Towbray to heel fast enough.’

The Queen leaned over. ‘He will end by bringing you to heel and making himself King,’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘My ruling stands. At this point, I cannot appear weak.’

Desiderata paused. She was as angry as she had ever been, and the words that formed on her lips were: If you cannot appear weak, then you are weak.

An hour later, still flushed with rage, she walked down the long corridor under the Old Hall with Becca Almspend. Lady Mary was with her father, and unavailable.

‘Are you sure this is wise, Your Grace?’ Almspend asked.

‘I am done with wise,’ the Queen answered.

They passed the Green Man on the stones, and the stone dedicated to the Lady Tar. Further along the corridor they came to the place where the stones were cold, and this time it was Becca who lingered, running her hand over a stone with carving worn almost smooth, and another where lettering had been effaced.

‘This is where the cold is born,’ Almspend said.

The Queen crossed her arms over her bosom. ‘Let’s be quick.’

‘A moment, Your Grace. I’ve wondered since we were last here.’ Almspend knelt, took a silver pencil from her belt. ‘Do you ever consider that these other worships must have been based on something? Natural magic must have worked.’

‘I think you are very close to heresy, my dear. What are you doing?’ asked the Queen. ‘I do not like this place.’

‘Testing a small suspicion, my Queen.’ Almspend frowned and drew a short invocation in letters of fire – but they paled immediately and flickered, and she had trouble speaking the words.

Trouble saying them – but speak them she did.

The stone flared, and for a moment the words, carved more than two thousand years before, were visible even where the chisel had destroyed them.

‘This is not for the Green Man,’ Almspend said, her voice suddenly hoarse. ‘This is for a darker entity entirely.’

The two women read the name, and the Queen put her hand to her throat – then raised it, and poured raw sunlight on the stone. It seemed to grow blacker. The Queen grew taller – her skin took on a remarkable bronze hue, and her hair suddenly seemed to be made of raw metal.

Becca Almspend took a step back. ‘Desiderata! Stop!’

The Queen was almost as tall as the corridor. The stone was as black as night and the very ground rumbled.

The stone made a pop like overheated stone.

Almspend turned her head, and the Queen was her normal self.

‘What was that?’ Rebecca asked.

‘Something that the Archbishop should have seen to long ago. A tunnel that needed to be closed.’ The Queen put her hand to her head. ‘I have been reckless.’ She was trembling, and Almspend put her shoulder under the taller woman’s armpit and supported her.

‘Come – there’s a bench in the store room,’ she said.

The Queen went, but she shook her head. ‘I no longer want to know. I think I know the answer, and I can’t – face it.’

Almspend, to whom history was like a law, shook her head. ‘What’s past is past. Whatever the King did, it was done before he met you.’

The Queen nodded. She was obviously unconvinced. But she sank onto the bench after Almspend opened her own hermetical wards and the great iron-bound door.

Almspend set a mage light, and then a second. The first trip, they’d only made a hasty catalogue of the papers. The librarian in Rebecca Almspend made her take time to neaten each pile, and riffle through them, sorting paper and parchment scrolls by date and author – Harmodius, Harmodius, Plangere – her fingers skimmed over them. The Queen’s colour improved and her head came up.

‘Ah! I have found Plangere’s papers for sixty-four forty-two.’ Almspend smiled. ‘That wasn’t so hard – I think he was better organised than old Harmodius.’

‘I never knew how much I would miss Harmodius,’ said the Queen. ‘I miss him now.’ The Queen stood. ‘Becca, I was reckless just now, and I am nearly drained. Let us get above ground, to the light, before something evil comes.’

‘The Wild?’ Almspend said, her guards coming up.

‘Older and far more wicked.’ The Queen raised her own wards. ‘Come!’

Almspend swept all of Plangere’s private notes for the year into an ancient willow basket and nodded. ‘After you, my lady.’

The shadows in the corridor were deep. Too deep. It was as if light itself had begun to leach away from the edges of the tunnel, despite the cressets they’d lit as they advanced.

‘There’s something nasty here,’ the Queen said. ‘Mother Mary, stand by me.’

She raised her hand and it again glowed a soft gold. The shadows retreated.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Almspend.

The Queen shook her head. ‘I have no idea,’ she said, and the two of them passed rapidly down the corridor, pursued only by fear. Yet something whispered in the darkness and, behind them, the cressets guttered out without their quenching them. The darkness behind them became absolute – and began to close on them.

The Queen turned and stood her ground. ‘Fiat lux!’ she called.

The light she called blazed around her like a rallied army.

Almspend put her left hand on the Queen’s right and gave her every scrap of potentia she could muster. With her own right, she raised her strongest shield and held it in opposition to the onrushing darkness.

It came like the fall of night – and whatever it was slammed into the workings of the two women and folded them, compacted them, collapsed some, evaded others-

But it did not overwhelm them. It was slowed, and the very slowing of its apparently implacable rush fuelled their resistance. They spoke no words and thought no thoughts, their wills locked together as only two friends of the heart could be locked, and the warm gold light of the Queen’s power rolled, earthy and fresh as sunlight on a summer’s day, into the darkness, where it was swallowed, but not without result.

The darkness pushed past Almspend’s strongest shield, and her right hand vanished in icy cold – and her will was not shattered. She stood her ground, and continued to work, deep in the labyrinths of her white marble palace.

The Queen sighed, and offered her embrace to the darkness.

And it fled.

The two women stood trembling with spirit and suppressed fear for a long set of heartbeats, fast or slow.

‘Oh, Blessed Virgin! Becca – your poor hand.’ said the Queen.

Almspend’s hand was dead white, and the place where the darkness had been turned – the borderline of their victory – was marked as if by sunburn.

Becca Almspend looked at her hand – and knew the name of the malevolence from the stone.

Ash.

Edmund had delivered three shipments of cast bronze tubes, and the odd bells. Apparently they were satisfactory, as he had been abundantly paid. He’d begun to do mint work with his master, and then, on a Thursday evening while he was at mass, thugs attacked the shop, killed two apprentices, and burned his shed. A gang of apprentices had driven them off, killing two.

One of the two was a Galle.

It was odd that out of all the sheds in the yard they might have burned, destroying his had the least effect – he’d made the little bronze gonnes and his apprentices were now working directly for the master in Shed One, setting up the dies to make the new coinage.

He found Master Pye in the yard, crouched over a dead apprentice, a boy only ten years old.

‘Damn Random for running off to the city when we need him here,’ he said. Edmund understood his words, but little of his sense.

And the next day, when a Hoek merchant – one of the richest men in the west, or so men said – came to their forge, all the apprentices rushed about like servants to bring wine and candied fruit. The man wore black head to toe, with gold buttons, gold eyelets, and a gold order of knighthood. He sat, still wearing his black hat, and leaned on the golden hilt of his sword in the master’s office. Edmund entered carrying wine, and Master Pye nodded and extended a hand to him. ‘Stay,’ he said.

The Hoek merchant bowed in his seat. ‘I am Ser Anton Van Der Coent. I have come to see if perhaps my alliance and yours might arrive at an accommodation.’ He smiled with assurance.

Master Pye looked frowsy and ill-tended next to the groomed perfection of the Hoek merchant prince. ‘I have no truck with politics, messire, and I have a shop to run and a great many commissions under way. And you may know that we had troubles yesterday – two apprentices killed.’ Master Pye leaned back, his watery eyes apparently unfocused.

‘Ah, I am very sorry to hear of such a thing. The law in Harndon is not what it once was,’ said Ser Anton. ‘Such incidents are an insult to the majesty of the realm, and a terrible pity.’

Master Pye’s watery eyes seemed to transform. Edmund had seen it in the near darkness of the forge, but never over a tray of sweetmeats. ‘Do you know something of them?’ he asked sharply.

‘I?’ asked Ser Anton. ‘Honestly, messire – I could be offended by such a suggestion. What would I have to do with such things?’

Edmund thought he sounded smug.

‘At any rate, Ser Anton, I have nothing to do with any combine.’ Master Pye nodded. ‘So I must wish you a good day.’

Ser Anton smiled. ‘Are you not the new master of the King’s mint?’ he asked.

Master Pye cocked his head to one side. ‘Ahhh,’ he said. ‘So that’s what this is about.’

‘I’m prepared to offer you an order for seventy full suits of your plate and four hundred helmets,’ Ser Anton said. He took a wax tablet – a beautiful thing, all figured in black enamel and gold – from his belt pouch and flipped it open. ‘I estimate that you would take a little over a year to fill the order even with an expanded shop. I have customers waiting for the order – so I’d pay a premium for immediate work.’ He nodded.

Master Pye scratched behind his ear. ‘You’re talking a hundred thousand florins,’ he said. ‘A fortune.’

Ser Anton smiled. ‘So I am,’ he said. He leaned forward. ‘I would even undertake to guarantee that there would be no further interruptions of your shop’s work.’

Master Pye was nodding along. ‘Of course, I’d have to give up the mint,’ he said.

Ser Anton nodded. ‘So we understand each other.’

Master Pye nodded again. ‘I understand you perfectly. Get out of my shop, before I kill you with my own hands.’

Despite being armed with a beautiful sword and facing a small, hunched-over man with watery eyes, the Hoek flinched. ‘You wouldn’t dare. I can buy you-’

Pye barked his curious laugh. ‘You just found ye can’t buy me. Now get out of my shop.’

The man shrugged. He rose elegantly, and walked to the door like a great black and gold cat. ‘In the end, you know, you’d have been better this way,’ he said. But something about his smoothness was broken, for Edmund. Now he appeared vulgar.

When he was gone, Pye turned to Edmund. ‘Stop all work,’ he said. ‘All the boys, girls, everyone in the yard. But listen, Edmund-’

Edmund stopped at the door.

‘If I die suddenly, you keep the mint going. Understand?’ Master Pye looked more than a little mad.

But Edmund nodded.

There were almost forty of them in the yard, with shop servants, house servants, apprentices and journeymen together.

Master Pye stood before them on a small crate. ‘Listen up,’ he said.

Then he was silent, and looked at them.

‘We’re in a war,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to explain our war, because it’s like a fight in the dark, and without a flash of lightning we don’t even know who we’re fighting. We’re fighting for our King – that much for certain – but we’re not defending land, or keeping our churches free of the infidel. It’s hard to explain exactly what we’re doing.’

He looked at them, his mild eyes more curious than inflamed.

‘This kingdom endured a mighty blow this spring, from the Wild,’ he said. ‘And now – unless we have a few successes – it looks as if we’ll lose the fur trade, and that’s a blow. And men are trying to forge the King’s currency – which is like robbing the King – and that’s a blow, too.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re going to make new coins for the King. It may not seem to you lads and lasses like some gallant last stand on a stricken field under a silken flag – but by Christ’s blood, my young ones, it is. If we fail here, and God send we do not, if we fail at this, the King takes another blow. And eventually it will all fall apart, and we’ll have nothing.’ He stood very straight. ‘When the world goes to shit the great do well enough in their fancy armour and their strong castles. It’s we who suffer. The men in the middle. In cities and towns, making things and trading things. What do we eat? How do we defend ourselves?’ He pursed his lips. ‘When I was your age, I was sometimes known to say, “Fuck the King.”’

That got a guilty titter from the apprentices.

‘Aye – for a bit I was even a Jack.’

Hush.

‘But the Jacks haven’t given us anything, and the King gives us law. So we’re in a fight. For law. The law that keeps us and the commons in the game. Not slaves. Not serfs. Now – in the next month, we’re going to be attacked. I’m guessing, but it’s going to be rough. Maids attacked when they go to buy milk. Boys beaten on their way to the Abbey for letters. Fire in the yard.’ He looked around. ‘We’ll have to work all day and stand guard, too.’ He paused. ‘I pay the highest wages in Harndon, and I’ll add some hard-lying money. Who’s in?’

Everyone was in.

‘They’re brave today,’ Pye said to his journeyman. ‘Wait a week or two, when a few of them are dead, and then we’ll see.’

Two days later, thugs attacked a party of girls going to the well behind the Abbey at the end of their square. Lizz Person had her face slashed, and only the chance interruption of a knight of Saint Thomas bringing winter clothes to the poor at the church saved the girls from rape or slavery.

The young knight took wine with Edmund and Master Pye in the shop’s office.

‘Ser Ricar Irksbane,’ he said. His eyes twinkled.

Out in the yard, a dozen apprentices jostled each other to sharpen his sword.

‘We all owe you our thanks,’ Edmund said, as well as he could. The worst of being on the knife edge between adulthood and childhood was in dealing with mature adults, he’d found. So he stammered more than he wanted to, and his bow was clumsy.

Ser Ricar was young, bluff-faced, and had the largest nose that Edmund could remember seeing on a man. He looked like a caricature of Saint Nicolas – an armed Saint Nicolas with broad shoulders and thighs the size of most people’s waists.

The heavy young man drank two cups of wine while his sword was being sharpened, and beyond his name and some beaming smiles said nothing.

Master Pye laughed eventually. ‘Ser knight, are you perchance under a vow of silence?’

The twinkling eyes blinked, and Ser Ricar rose and bowed.

Master Pye nodded. ‘Ser Ricar, have you by any chance been set to watch over us?’

Ser Ricar smiled into his wine, and just for a moment he looked a good deal sharper than he had a moment before. Then he looked the master in the eye and shrugged. And grinned like a village idiot.

Edmund walked him to the gate, and the knight nodded cordially to him and produced a slip of parchment from his belt purse. He pressed it into Edmund’s hands and smiled. Edmund noted that the young knight’s eyes were everywhere. They never stopped moving, now that the two of them were outside.

He saw the knight out into the street with his newly sharpened sword, and then he opened the parchment.

It said Be on your guard.

Edmund gave it to Master Pye, who nodded. ‘Bad times,’ he said. ‘The Queen’s handmaid is to be banished from court.’

Through the local girls employed in the Tower, all the neighbourhood knew how things went with the royals. Edmund sighed. ‘What can we do?’ he asked.

Master Pye all but snarled, ‘Nothing.’ Then he sat heavily. ‘I hate all this. I like metal. People are fools.’ He poured himself a cup of hippocras and splashed some into another cup for Edmund. ‘What men call politics is, to me, foolery. All this – why doesn’t the King banish the Galles? Why doesn’t he stand by his wife?’ He shrugged. ‘He’s my friend, but in this he’s a damn fool.’ He sighed again. ‘I’m writing out a note for Master Ailwin, and another for Ser Gerald Random. Talk to Random’s wife – she’s got all the sense in that house anyway. He’s hared off on some wild scheme, and she’ll know when he’s back. If the knights of Saint Thomas are standing with us, things are not as bad as they might be. But we need to pull together, or the Galles will take us all separately.

Blanche Gold curtsied to her Queen and held out a basket of clean and perfectly pressed linen. The Queen had a book of hours open on her lap and was sitting in the full, if thin, light of the winter sun as it blazed through the mullioned window of her private solar. Her hair was down, and it blazed like a bronze-brown sun around her.

‘Speak to Diota,’ the Queen said in a friendly voice. She knew Blanche – which was to say, she knew of the girl’s existence, knew she was pretty and trustworthy and knew, too, that she had had some trouble at the hands of the Gallish squires. But the Queen didn’t speak directly to servants – she let Diota handle that.

So she sat, reading, for a whole minute while the pretty blond girl knelt in front of her.

‘Sweeting?’ the Queen murmured.

Blanche reached into her basket and handed the Queen a beautifully scented handkerchief. Folded within it was a note.

The Queen found that her hands were shaking. But she unfolded the stiff parchment and her heart rose in her breast. ‘Ahh. Thank you, child,’ the Queen breathed.

Blanche rose, her duty done, and slipped away. And an hour later, when a Gallish squire tried to pin her to a wall and get his hand down the front of her kirtle, she thought, we will bury you. She tried to put a knee in his groin but his wrestling master had covered that. So she settled for letting him put his hand into the top of her dress, and then rammed the index finger of her left hand into his nostril and ripped with her nail as her mother had taught her.

Then she slipped through his arms before the fountain of his blood could foul her nice gown.

She skipped a little as she went down the long palace corridors to the kitchens. A good day.

Lady Emota was afraid when two of the Gallish squires cornered her. And less than relieved when they parted and the Sieur de Rohan stepped between them.

‘Ah,’ he said with a bow. ‘The most beautiful of the Queen’s ladies.’

She blushed. ‘My lord is too gracious.’

‘I could not be too gracious to a flower such as you.’ He leaned over her, raised her hand and kissed it. ‘Is there by any chance some man at this court you detest, so that I can kill him and win your love?’

She fought off a smile. He was so insistent – she felt her heart beating twenty to the dozen. She knew the Queen hated him, but then, the Queen treated her as if she was none too bright and her own mother said the Queen was merely jealous of her looks.

‘My lord, I am too young to have such enemies. And I fear no one,’ she said. ‘But the respect of a knight such as yourself is – a worthy-’ She was trying to think of a pretty speech.

He took her hand and kissed it – on the palm.

Her whole body reacted. She snatched the hand away, but she was suddenly warm. Her wrists tingled.

‘Oh!’ she said, and then backed away.

‘Give me but the smallest token, and I will guard the shrine of love wearing it as a gage,’ he said.

Emota had watched the older girls play this game. Holding his eyes, she untied the lace point on her left sleeve, and unlaced it, grommet by grommet. It was blue silk, made by her own hand, with a pretty silver point. She laid it across his palm. ‘Warm from my body,’ she said – shocked at her own daring, but she’d heard another of the Queen’s ladies use the phrase.

The Gallish knight flushed. ‘Ah – ma petite!’ he said. ‘I had no idea you were so practised in the game of love.’

Her heart was ripping along like a ship under full sail – she was overwhelmed, and at the same time that she felt like bursting with his attentions, she also wanted free of him. It was clingy, or sticky or merely-

His mouth descended towards hers, and she got a hand up, brushed his face lightly and ducked through his arms.

She ran.

Behind, she could hear him laugh. And no sooner was she free of him and a corridor away than she wanted him back. When she attended the Queen later, and they began the table arrangements for the Christmas feast, she glowed a little in her heart. And when the Queen cursed the perfidy of the Galles, Emota began to wonder.

Lonika – Duke Andronicus

Duke Andronicus looked at a table tiled to look like a chart of Thrake. ‘You say he’s east of Mons Draconis, at the edge of the Green Hills,’ he snarled. ‘Not on the coast to the east?’

Master Kronmir and Captain Dariusz, his master of scouts, stood before him. Dariusz kept glancing at the green-clad Thrakian with the traditional distrust of the scout for the spy. Seeing nothing on the other man’s face, he turned back to the Duke.

‘He’s got half the regiment of Vardariotes with him, my lord, and I’ve lost men.’ He stood stiffly, as soldiers do when forced to admit failure. ‘He passed over the mountains like a spring flood in full spate, and I can’t put men over the passes after him – they’ll be snapped up.’

Demetrius nodded. ‘So? Now the city is open to us by the coast road,’ he said.

The Duke scratched his beard. ‘Where is he going, do you think?’ He whirled and faced Kronmir. ‘And how could our special source be wrong?’

Kronmir shook his head. ‘He’s taken most of the guard troops – and some militia and stradiotes we lost in the fall.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s surprised us. Not much use in assigning blame over it.’

The Duke looked at his son. ‘How soon can we have a western army together?’ he asked. ‘As Master Kronmir says – let’s not trouble ourselves as to how we came to believe he wouldn’t leave the city, or that he’d turn east to the coast.’

Demetrius shook his head. ‘It’ll be ten days before we have enough force to take him.’

The Duke shook his head. ‘Make it five. And where does he get all this money? Christ Pantokrator, if the Emperor had this much ready silver, we’d never-’ He paused.

Demetrius looked at the maps, ‘He must be going for the fur caravans. That must be it. He’d have access to the Riding Officer’s reports. Someone’s talked. He may even know about the Galles.’

The men around the table looked at each other for as long as it took a winded man to draw a breath.

‘Demetrius – go. Take all your guards, Kronmir, Aeskepiles. Do whatever you have to keep them from getting to Osawa.’ The Duke made a face. ‘Mother of God. I took for granted that he wouldn’t march through Thrake. Kronmir, your palace report-’

‘What if he goes for the Emperor?’ Kronmir asked.

‘Should we kill the Emperor?’ Demetrius asked.

The Duke turned to Kronmir, and the two exchanged a long look.

‘No,’ Kronmir said. ‘That would, at this point, only make her stronger. But move him to the coast, so that he’s far from the scene of action.’

Albinkirk and the North Woods – Ser John Crayford

Ser Richard dismounted heavily and all but fell. When he walked from the mounting block in Albinkirk’s citadel’s main yard, he walked like an old man, with his left hand pressing against his backplate.

Ser John Crayford sat – fully armed – in his ‘hall’ with the Bishop of Albinkirk, two Hoek merchants, an Etruscan named Benevento Amato, and representatives of most of the fur trade companies in Alba. They all fell silent when Ser Richard entered.

Ser John stood. ‘More giants?’ he said, reaching for the mace that lay on the oak table.

Ser Richard shook his head. ‘Boggles this time,’ he spat. He collapsed into a chair brought by Ser John’s squire. ‘By the Lord’s grace, gentles. I offer my apologies for the smell.’

Ser John met Ser Richard’s eyes. ‘Any losses?’

Ser Richard shook his head. ‘We caught them well outside of the settlement area.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not the only knight who is tired. Ignore me, gentles. It was a small passage of arms, and we were victorious.’

The Bishop came over, placed a hand on him, and blessed him, and Ser Richard felt – something. Since being healed by Sister Amicia, he’d felt closer to God than he’d ever felt in his life, but . . .

‘The Bishop was just saying we must take a convoy into the mountains to take the year’s furs,’ Ser John said.

Messier Amato rose and bowed. ‘With all due respect to the church, my lords, I am not a rich man but I know this trade. My cousins are even now reaping the richest part of the trade at Mont Reale. But Ticondaga is an old centre for furs and other goods – Wild honey in particular.’

Ser John looked out the window. ‘Albinkirk and Lissen Carak receive most of that trade,’ he said.

‘Ah, but this year that will not be the case. War will push the furs back north. And all of us here will go broke.’ The Etruscan smiled. ‘But if you will help us with soldiers – this has been done in the past, my pater assured me – if you would be so very kind as to assist us-’

Ser John nodded slowly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Next item of business?’

The Bishop came and sat by Ser John. ‘I’d like you to reconsider, John.’

Ser John smiled a thin, don’t-fuck-with-me smile. ‘My lord Bishop, I’m quite positive that you know a fair shot of theology and perhaps some new learning, too. But right now, in case you aren’t paying attention, we’re fighting something close to a war. If the King hadn’t sent half the court up here to wet their lances, we’d be in a sore straight. As it is, look at Ser Richard. Look at me. We’re a-horse every day.’

The Bishop nodded. ‘And you are uniformly victorious.’ He nodded. ‘I’d go so far as to say that this is more like a drill for your knights than a war.’

Ser Richard made himself sit up. ‘By God, Bishop – fighting boggles is like child’s play, but only until one gets its mandibles in behind your knee.’

The Bishop spread his thin hands. ‘I mean no offence. But hear me. This town needs trade to live. Without that trade, the small farmers have no reason to farm and no town to sell their produce. You’ve taxed the foreign merchants to pay for new walls and new defences and they’ve paid. Now they need guards to go into the Adnacrags.’

‘It’s a month too late,’ Ser John said flatly.

Amato spread his hands. ‘Must I beg, ser knight? The ground is frozen, there’s a little snow, and with good equipment and brave men we can be at Ticondaga in two weeks.’

‘No,’ said Ser John. But he had less conviction in his voice.

Men now prayed in the ferry chapel, reroofed. The ferry itself had a small fort on either side, with walls higher than a Ruk could scale, and signal towers. The work was all done in wood from the destruction wrought by the Ruk on the nearby forests, and the posts were built by the Captain of Albinkirk’s archers.

As soon as they had the two forts finished there was a queue of men to man the ferry, and Ser John made it a military position and raised the toll. That money now went to the town.

He garrisoned the ferry forts, and left detachments of archers at six manor houses along the valley of the Cohocton, each with a knight or a senior squire, including Middlehill.

Helewise stood in the yard looking at Lord Wimarc. ‘He’s awfully young. Wouldn’t you rather stay and help me hold my house yourself, old man?’

Ser John leaned down and took one of her hands, and she blushed. ‘For shame – my daughter is watching. And what she sees from me is what she’ll do.’

‘I’d love to stay and help you hold this house,’ he said. ‘But I’m off north to Ticondaga. The Bishop convinced me it was my duty.’

‘A pox on him, then.’ She was going to cry.

He smiled. ‘I wonder if you’d marry me. When I come back.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re just saying that.’

‘Well, try it on your daughter. Listen, sweet – I must away. Wimarc’s a good lad. If he says run for the town, you do that.’ He bowed.

‘I did last time, didn’t I?’ she answered, pertly enough. She stuck her chin in the air and kept being brave until he was out the gate.

Phillippa came and stood by her mother. ‘He fancies you, Mama,’ she said, with an air of troubled wonder.

Helewise laughed aloud. ‘That he does, ma petite. He just offered to marry me.’

Phillippa watched the broad steel back riding away. ‘But he’s so old!’ she said.

Ser John met Sister Amicia on the road, and they both dismounted. She had two other sisters with her and a pair of large men with axes. She grinned. ‘I had what you might call a “passage of arms” and decided that a couple of large lads with axes were going to be easy on my conscience,’ she admitted. ‘Boggles. More than I was really ready to handle.’

He nodded, shook hands with the young men, who stammered and shifted their weight and looked nervous, and bowed to the two nuns.

‘Thanks for the garrison at the ford,’ she added. ‘I’ve put far too much on Helewise, and I’m eating Middlehill Manor out of house and home.’

‘I have offered to marry her,’ Ser John said.

Amicia grinned. ‘Good! It will make her happy, and help Phillippa. I love it when people are happy.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I hear dark things from the court,’ she said. ‘I’m worried for the King and Queen.’

Ser John shrugged. ‘I can’t lift my eyes off the problem at hand,’ he said. ‘It is all I can do to protect this place. And now I’m off to the Adnacrags.’

‘The court’s troubles are coming here,’ Sister Amicia said. ‘The Queen’s best friend – Lady Mary – is coming to Lissen Carak. She’s been sent from the court, and she doesn’t want to go home to her father’s lands out west. She’s coming to stay with us.’ She shrugged. ‘The price of my celebrity, I think,’ she said.

‘Lady Mary? Hard Heart herself?’ Ser John whistled. ‘Here? Sweet Christ, my knights will all kill themselves and each other in a flood of glory. Best I get them on the trail.’ He smiled. But the lines around his eyes and his mouth suggested that she’d added to his burdens.

‘You are worried,’ she said, somewhat uselessly.

He shrugged. ‘In the spring, we fought the Wild, and bested them.’ He gave her a wry smile and started walking back to his horse. ‘I thought we’d won. I assumed we’d have time to recover. Now I think it was merely the first skirmish.’ He looked at her, and said, his voice very low, ‘Can you feel him?’ he paused. ‘Thorn?’

She paled, and then laughed unsteadily. ‘Just for a moment, I thought you meant someone else. Yes, I can feel him – every moment. He thinks of us often.’ She looked at the older knight, trying to decide how much to tell him. ‘He has sent most of the things your knights are so busy killing. Is that what you wanted to know?’

Ser John shook his head. ‘No – I mean, I assumed as much, sister. But I would like to know why? If he was, say, the lord of a nearby town – or the King of Galle – I could send him a herald, protest his war, and ask what might allow us to make peace. What does he want?’

Amicia was playing with the crisp linen of her wimple. ‘As with most things, Ser John, it is complicated. And I see only through a glass darkly, and anything I say is only my own inference and deduction. But . . .’

She actually bit her lip.

‘Try me,’ said Ser John.

She leaned against her donkey’s withers and the animal shifted and grunted. ‘I don’t think he knows himself,’ she said. ‘And worse yet, I think he’s under the control of something else.’

Ser John kissed her ring and nodded. ‘Thank God,’ he said, ‘I don’t even know what that means. So I’ll just go back to killing boggles. Pissing on fires. That sort of thing.’

‘You are taking a convoy to Ticondaga?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Ser John.

She looked around. ‘May I come?’ she asked. ‘I have a small matter to look into. And if you go so far north, you will need me.’

He didn’t have to think that over. ‘Come and welcome, sister.’

She laughed and he laughed with her, and they went their way.

The fur convoy left for the north after the sabbath. Ser John took ten lances and left Ser Richard to command Albinkirk. There were twenty heavy wagons in his convoy, all full of trade goods – some for Outwallers, to which he turned a blind eye, and some for the Earl and his people.

For fifteen leagues, they travelled on roads – good, for the first day. The second day, the roads began to narrow, and when they made camp thirty leagues north of Albinkirk in the foothills of the Adnacrags, on the south side of the West Kinatha ford, they were far enough into the Wild to listen to the wild wolves howl, to see eyes around their fires when the early darkness fell, to fear every noise on sentry duty, and to wear full harness on watch.

The West Kinatha roared down out of the High Peaks, full of new snow, and in the morning the younger men, already hesitant to leave warm blankets and big fires, stared with loathing at the rapid flow of icy water and the distant, snow-capped mountains.

Sister Amicia laughed at them, and her very graceful derision moved them faster than Ser John’s curses.

Ser John got them all together, and their breath rose like the steam from their cauldrons of porridge. ‘Listen up! Crossing a river in winter is ten times as dangerous as facing a charging boggle. If you fall in you could die. If you get your feet wet and you don’t change your stockings and hose then you’ll be uncomfortable for an hour, and then a little cold, and then very cold indeed – and then it can be bad. Take precautions. Keep your spares dry, and we’ll keep fires on this bank until the last man is across. Be wary – and take as good care of your horse as of yourself.’ He looked around. They seemed suitably awed.

His two advance lances crossed first – cleared a space by riding about in the dead grass of an old deer lie, and waved their success. Ser John put a line of experienced horsemen upstream to break the current for the greener men, and the nuns, and he and four veteran knights from Harndon rode into the rapids just south of the ford to catch the unlucky sod who went down in the rapid flow.

The wagons began to roll at full light, and an hour later the last supply horse was across, and the men in the river allowed their patient horses to pick their way over – then dismounted and rubbed their mounts down, drying them carefully before changing their own hose.

By the time nonnes would have been sounding in a monastery, they were across, and his squire, Jamie, rode up by him. The boy was grinning. ‘That went well, didn’t it, my lord?’ he said. ‘We’re through the ford!’

‘Aye,’ said Ser John. ‘Now we’re in the Wild. With a winter river between us and safety.’

Northern Morea – The Red Knight

The Red Knight waved goodbye to most of his army at sunset and headed east into the low, wooded hills, snow-dusted and cold. He took Gelfred and the scouts and a handful of his household, Count Zakje and two dozen Vadariotes.

He handed over command to Bad Tom and Ser Jehan with a casual wave of the hand. ‘We know Demetrius and his cavalry are somewhere east of us.’ He grinned. Gelfred smiled, too, and glanced at the hawk on his wrist. ‘I intend to make contact with the Thrakians and brush them back.’

‘Meaning you get a fight and we don’t,’ Tom said. ‘Take me with you.’

The Duke shrugged. He wore only his breast- and backplate and his beautiful gauntlets and a steel cap with an aventail and a white wool hood. ‘You keep everyone warm, Tom. I’ll be back in a day.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to ride by daylight?’ Ser Jehan asked.

The Duke nodded. ‘Yes. But also no. A demain, mes braves!’ he said, and sixty mounted men leading sixty spare horses trotted off into the snow-covered hills.

The next morning, Mount Draconis rose to the west, a near-perfect cone, covered in snow, almost bare of trees. At their feet, the icy rocks of the Meander represented a barrier to advancing further. The arrival of an Imperial messenger bird at first light occasioned the impromptu officer’s call.

‘How many times do we have to cross this fucking river?’ muttered Bad Tom. He was cold and tired and deeply frustrated by the lack of fighting. The night had been long, the wolves had howled, and already the growing feeling was that they should turn back. Six men had frostbite.

Ser Thomas sat with Ser Jehan and Ser Alison. Their horses were head to head, and their breath rose like smoke. Ser Gerald Random and Ser Bescanon sat off to one side, with the Imperial messenger.

Jehan looked at the Imperial messenger, an attractive young woman in black and white furs holding the newly arrived bird on her wrist. ‘Where do they find them?’ he asked wistfully.

Ser Milus laughed. ‘Most attractive people, Moreans. But Christ, who would send a girl that young with an army?’

Bad Tom was rereading the message, sounding out the words. Reading was not his strongest suit.

Ser Alison leaned over and read aloud.

Gallish Army within one day’s march. Cannot protect the Fur convoy. Request immediate assistance. Gallish Army five hundred men, with Outwaller allies. Assume siege train. Two hundred canoes, four large war galleys. Turkos – Osawa.

They had marched impossible distances in eight days – and found camp sites pre-scouted, and supply dumps of food in stone cairns. The company had lost two wagons, and crossed almost three hundred leagues of ground.

And now they had to cross the Meander for the third time, and there was no bridge.

‘Anyone seen the Duke?’ Sauce asked.

Ser Jehan shook his head. ‘Gone with Gelfred at last light yesterday.’

Tom looked at the icy ford, the ruins of the old bridge, and the good road just a few hundred yards away on the other side.

‘He ordered us to wait for him,’ Ser Jehan said.

Tom looked at Gerald Random. ‘Ser Gerald – I’m no big thinker, but mayhap this is your call to make and not mine.’

‘Everything depends on those furs,’ Random said. ‘The Duke would say the same.’

Tom raised both eyebrows. ‘Everything?’ he asked.

‘Your Captain’s been spending all the profits of the spring on the Moreans, and betting that against having a monopoly on the fall furs to sell me,’ he said. ‘I backed his play. We need those furs, Tom. It’s not just a fight.’

Bad Tom grinned in the way that made men uncomfortable – when all his teeth showed. ‘All the better,’ he said. ‘Get me Mag.’

Mag looked at the wide river. ‘A bridge?’ she said.

Bad Tom grinned at her.

‘I can’t,’ she said.

He looked away. ‘Is this about me and Sukey?’ he asked quietly.

‘No, sir, it ain’t, although if you want to have a quiet word about how I feel about the way you treat my daughter, I am, as John says, at your service.’ She met his mad glare with her own.

Sauce shifted uneasily. ‘Time’s wasting, gentles. Tom, if we push half the horses into the stream-’

He shook his head. ‘We’ll lose too many lads, Sauce.’

Ser Milus laughed bitterly. ‘Sauce, just think what it means when Tom hesitates to do something.’

Random scrunched up his face. It was cold, there was snow coming, and this was not a place to camp. ‘Who here has built a bridge before?’ he asked.

None of them had.

Random nodded. ‘I have. Mag, all we need is three piers. I could mark them for you with flags. If you can put – I don’t know, a pile of rock, a pillar? – fifteen feet wide, flat on top – on each spot then the lads can cut wood on the slopes over there and we have a bridge by nightfall.’

Mag measured it by eye. ‘I’ll try one, and we’ll see.’

They made a miserable camp half a league back from the river, and built enormous fires, and ate dried food and drank hot water. Men heated rocks in the fire and put them at their feet to sleep. Men slept three under each blanket, in long rows like salt mackerel packed in crates. The army’s women found themselves in high demand – for warmth.

Mag had two piers in place, but they required so much more effort than any casting she’d ever worked that she needed a night’s rest to work on a third.

The sun rose, somewhere beyond the snow clouds. Her first pier had half-collapsed into the water. She hadn’t built the web of the working clearly enough in her mind, and there were voids and soft spots in her rock.

Random sat by the riverbank with Bad Tom when she came out, rubbing her eyes and cursing the tight lacing of her second and third kirtles and the new pains in her hips which kept her from a good night’s sleep. And the collapse of her pier. She was looking at it when she put her foot on an icy rock and down she went.

She was undamaged by the fall, but she rubbed her hip ruefully as the two knights helped her up. ‘I’ve gone about this all wrong,’ she said. ‘The answer is ice.’

‘Ice?’ Random asked.

‘The water wants to be ice already,’ Mag said. ‘All I have to do is stitch it together. I tried using one of Harmodius’s workings – and I’m far from mastering it. But this is my old milk bucket in winter. In reverse.’

She raised her hands. In her right hand was the silver bodkin from her sewing kit, and she waved it, and the river flowed upwards, stilled and then froze into the form of three uneven piers supported a roadbed of solid ice. It was more organic than regular. But it was there. The two nearer piers were even supported by her earlier work with stone.

‘I’ll hold it until we’re across. I’m sorry, Gerald. I should have thought of it yesterday.’

Random grinned.

Bad Tom grinned. ‘Now we fight!’ he said happily.

An hour later, the army was rolling across the bridge. Mag paled a little as the last three heavy wagons crossed, but the ice didn’t crack.

‘There they are,’ Gelfred said. It was entirely unnecessary, as Demetrius’s men did not have white wool cotes or horse blankets to hide them. They did have multiple horses, and they were moving fast along the valley floor below, raising a haze of fine snow as they went.

They had a baggage train with them – sixteen wagons and pack animals.

The Duke watched for as long as it took the sun to climb another finger, and then he belly-crawled back over the ridge and ran to his horse. A dozen Vardariotes were there, and Count Zac, and Ser Michael.

‘He’s a hot-head, yes?’ the Duke asked.

White-clad horsemen swept over the low ridge that the road was climbing and loosed arrows from carefully warmed bows into the front of the Despot’s fast-moving column. Three men went down, and their blood was like red smoke on the white snow.

An hour later, it happened again. This time six arrows went home. The enemy were all in white, with horse blankets and wool gowns that covered their weapons and armour. They were almost silent, and very hard to spot in the sunlight.

Demetrius took a nip of fortified wine and shook his head. The bright sun made it hard to see anything among the bare trees on the ridges. If he slowed down, he had no chance of winning the race to the crossings of the Meander. If he ignored these pin-pricks, he was going to lose men.

‘Sabres,’ he said aloud. ‘Listen, Hetaeroi. When they come again let them come in close, and then charge. Everyone at them. Take me a prisoner.’

His own Thrakians nodded soberly. The Eastern mercenaries grinned.

An hour passed, as if the enemy had heard his plan, and he grew angry. When he halted to let his men eat, a single bolt from a crossbow – launched from high above – killed a pack horse. All the men took cover at once, but there were no more bolts.

As they mounted after their hasty meal, silent arrows fell like sleet from the increasingly cloudy sky, and there was no enemy on which he could vent his rage.

He gritted his teeth and led his men forward, putting a vanguard party almost five hundred paces ahead and another as far behind the wagons.

Count Zac shook his head. ‘This is taking too long,’ he said. ‘Let’s just fall on him.’

The Duke grinned. ‘I’m enjoying myself, Zac. This is art. There’s no hurry – the wagon trains will roll today, and the army is at the Meander. All we have to do is keep Demetrius off the ford.’

‘Is waste,’ Zac said. ‘Waste of arrows. We have good ground and better horses.’

The Duke frowned. ‘But why lose anyone? You know as well as I that almost every wound in this weather is a kill.’

Zac shrugged. ‘But it’s boring?’

The sun was starting its long slide to a bitterly cold darkness when the valley narrowed. Demetrius could feel the ambush coming, and he loosened the long, curved blade under his left thigh. His Easterners had kept their bows under their saddle blankets for a league.

His vanguard vanished into a hollow, and then turned, with two empty saddles, and galloped in a spray of snow back towards him. Just as they’d been told.

The apparently victorious enemy took the bait and followed, whooping, losing shafts at the rapidly retreating vanguard.

Demetrius’s Easterners waited as the vanguard pounded back along the frozen road. The white-clad enemy came closer and closer to the column-

Demetrius winded his horn and the whole column exploded into motion – the Easterners swinging wide to the right and left, the Thrakian stradiotes galloping down the road. Captain Dariusz rode with his lord, watching the ridge to the south with obvious suspicion.

They pounded along the snow-covered road, but in fifty horse lengths it became obvious that the enemy were better mounted, and even in the cold, they fled over the snow faster than the Thrakian horses could catch them. And their arrows, loosed over the backs of their saddles, were deadly.

They pursued the enemy – Vardariotes, Demetrius was forced to conclude – over the next ridge. Then their horses were winded. So were the horses of the men they were pursuing, but Demetrius had played this game before. He had to ignore the insults shouted in three languages from the men he’d just chased. His three hundred men had failed to catch them.

A single man detached from the distant enemy raiders and trotted his horse across the open field towards the Despot and his men. The wind whipped at them and raised a fringe of blown snow, which burned men where it struck, and then the white-clad man was much closer. He had a red lance pennon and red horse furniture.

‘Demetrius!’ he called. ‘Come and break a lance with me!’

Ser Tyranos put a hand on his sleeve. ‘Do not!’ he said.

Demetrius looked for his scout Prokrustatore. The man nodded. ‘That’s their Captain,’ he shouted.

‘What a fool,’ Demetrius said. ‘Tyranos, go kill him. Vardek, Vugar – either side. Take any shot you are offered.’

Ser Tyranos saluted. He took a lance from a stradiote and rode slowly towards the distant white figure. The two Easterners began to trot their horses out to the front, right and left, fitting arrows to their bows.

The enemy knight did not wait for Tyranos’s arrival, but waved his lance – and charged.

His horse’s hooves threw up spurts of snow, and the sound of the horse’s hooves came, somewhat delayed, across the almost perfectly flat field. The wind had blown all but the frozen snow away, and the frozen ground was hard as rock, and the horse’s hooves seemed to ring like distant bells.

Ser Tyranos realised the immediacy of the threat, lowered his lance, and put his own spurs to his tired horse.

They came together so fast that Demetrius couldn’t see what happened. Except that the foreigner put Ser Tyranos and his horse down in the snow. And suddenly his figure seemed to blur – there was snow all around him, and a gust of wind struck the two Easterners and their first shafts were literally blown away.

The gust of wind raised a wall of blown snow that seemed as if it was full of ghostly figures.

‘Ware sorcery!’ Demetrius shouted. He had two decent practitioners, and the two men raised their shields, which glowed a ruddy hue in the setting sun. They were bright against the snow, and they sparkled.

Many of Demetrius’s troopers made the sign of the cross, although other men made a different sign, like a pair of horns.

The front of blown snow opened to reveal a dozen Vardariotes led by Count Zac – ten horse lengths away, at full gallop. A ripple of scarlet shafts ripped into the front of Demetrius’s force – and then they turned back into the arms of the convenient snow squall and vanished.

The sound of men’s laughter licked at Demetrius like fire at a dry log. They were mocking him. But his force was intact, and the dozen men and horses he’d just lost were a small price to pay for the fifteen leagues he’d made. He turned his horse, and the hermetically driven blowing snow fell again to earth to reveal Ser Tyranos being led away in the distance, a prisoner.

Demetrius ripped his golden bassinet off his head and threw it in the snow in disgust. ‘God damn it!’ he said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ! Change horses! Change horses! You – mage – what the fuck was that? Do I have to order you to do something about that?’

The two hermeticists stood silently by their horses. They both looked grey.

‘Well!’ he said, raising his sword.

‘We daren’t even try,’ whispered the nearest.

Demetrius snarled. He was enough in possession of himself to know that killing half of his military sorcery might was not going to win him any battles. He snorted, whirled his horse, and trotted back to the remounts where Dariusz and three of his scouts were watching their back trail.

‘What now?’ he shouted.

Dariusz merely pointed.

In the valley behind them, fifty mounted men were leading their pack animals away. In the road, the wagons were afire, and the draught animals were all dead.

Count Zac shook his head. ‘I agree – it is the very model of steppe fighting. But – it’s dull. Now we wait until his horses starve?’

The Duke shook his head. He had a certain smug satisfaction about him that won him no friends – on the other hand, the little victory had been fun and most of the men had a warm place to sleep and free wine, courtesy of the Despot. ‘No – now we get two hours’ sleep and ride back to the army. Demetrius is done. Without baggage, he must retreat. We bring in the furs, and he goes home with his tail between his legs. And our prisoner – well the things we just learned!’

Zac laughed. ‘You should let some of my girls have him, and you’ll see a man tell a story!’ he said.

The Duke shook his head. ‘No – that would be unsporting. He had the balls to face me, and I won’t see him tortured.’ The Duke smiled and leaned back. ‘Not exactly tortured,’ he said. ‘The fact that he clearly believes that’s what he has coming will, of course, be used against him.’

‘You like this too much,’ Zac said. ‘You think you are so smart.’

‘Have some more hot wine,’ said the Duke.

They rode back to the Meander, changing horses three times – all the horses were tired, and cold, and the temperature dropped off a precipice a little after moonrise. An enormous pack of coyotes shadowed them in the open ground just to the north, so that every man and woman in the little force could see what awaited a straggler – the coyotes were a byword for starving desperation, this time of year.

Men put on garment after garment – Count Zac displayed a marvellous kaftan of Vardariotes red, lined entirely in fox fur, with a hood.

The Duke hadn’t had his drugs in two days. It was a fact of his military life – he couldn’t be half-drunk and function as a commander, so he had to conserve his power and be prepared to contend with Harmodius. But the old magister had been polite, and fairly silent.

Around midnight, he spoke up.

Order a break, and we can warm the air. Air is easy. You are all but overflowing with ops. You used your powers very sparingly against Demetrius – that was well done. You are truly growing strong.

Is this a peace offering, Harmodius?

I have found another solution, Gabriel.

You have? How – you wouldn’t lie to me?

I’d rather not. For that reason, I will not tell you my solution, but I guarantee that it will do you no harm, and that it will help your cause.

How could I object to that?

There was a pause so long that the Duke began to fear that the old man was gone. Fear?

Listen to me, Gabriel. I’m a selfish bastard, and I don’t want to die – but there’s more at stake than that. When I leave you, try and remember that we’re allies. And as bona fides of my good intentions, you might take a look at your memory palace. I have – hmmm – ordered it.

Once, it would have been at the very limit of the Duke’s abilities to ride through the snow and watch the ground around him while holding a conversation in the immaterial and focusing his will in the aether but his powers were magnitudes greater, and he plunged into his palace.

It had grown dark and shadowy the last few months, as he used more and more of the drugs to keep the old man at bay. Now it was clean and clear. And on the marble plinth in the centre of a rotunda the size of Hagia Sophia’s in Liviapolis stood a statue of a woman – almost certainly Prudentia. She smiled.

Only a simualcrum, said Harmodius. But when I am gone, I thought you might miss having something there. I had time on my hands. But I had access to many of your memories, and I made her as life-like as I dared.

Gabriel looked at the sigils on the walls. I see more than five hundred potential workings, he said.

I arranged everything we know for you.

You terrify me, old man. Even now, I think I should drink the potion and shut you out.

Listen, boy. I have learned so much from living inside your head that I shouldn’t- Bah. Suffice it to say, I could have taken possession of your perception of the universe any time I wished. But why? I wouldn’t. I thought about it. But – I wouldn’t do it. There are things to which even I will not stoop.

You don’t want to become Thorn.

Not even Thorn wanted to become Thorn. That poor bastard is becoming nothing but a shell – a tool.

For whom?

There was another pause.

Call your halt, Harmodius said.

The Duke gathered all his force around him, and they packed the snow down with their horses’ hooves, and then gathered all the horses in a dense pack at the edge of spruce woods that blocked the wind. It was so cold that breath caught in men’s throats, and the coyotes gathered under the eaves of the ancient trees and howled. The horses shifted restlessly.

‘Let’s keep moving,’ Count Zac said. ‘It is too cold to rest.’

‘Wait,’ the Duke said.

The temperature rose in little jumps.

The air became warm enough to breathe comfortably, and then soldiers were pulling off their mittens and pulling feed bags over the horses’ heads.

I didn’t even know I could use the working this way, the Duke admitted.

Harmodius laughed. So you believe me? he asked.

The Duke bowed in the clean magnificence of his private rotunda. Not completely, Harmodius. But enough to enjoy this moment and accept your teaching with some humility. I want to cast it again.

Again?

For the coyotes.

What a strange man you are.

He put them to sleep, lest they run. Then he raised the temperature around them too.

I feel a certain kinship with them, the Duke said.

In the morning, the Duke’s raiding party arrived at the edge of the Meander to find the remnants of a camp – felled trees, an abattis of beach and spruce, a palisaded citadel. There was a stone bridge abutment a third of the way across the Meander, and enough remnants of a collapsed ice bridge to suggest the means of crossing.

The Duke rubbed his two days’ growth of beard. He glanced at Zac and shrugged. ‘Mag built them a bridge. I can feel it. She froze the river and the whole army crossed.’

‘We’re out of food,’ Zac said.

The Duke nodded. ‘Best catch them today, then,’ he said, and waved his sword hand.

The Meander froze, the ripples of his power moving at the speed of a swimming otter, the ice visible against the black of the water.

‘Let’s move,’ the Duke shouted, and spurred his black charger down the bank.

Sixty men; one hundred and twenty-five horses. They crossed in minutes, and the Duke released his working.

‘You are one scary fuck,’ Count Zac said. He grinned. ‘I’m glad you are on our side.’

The Duke looked pale. ‘I’m not feeling very scary right now, Zac. Let’s go.’

They caught the army at sunset, when they were already too cold, when men who’d hoarded a little dry sausage could have sold it for its weight in gold. The horses needed water, and two had already fallen and been left for the coyotes and the wolves – now they had the coyotes’ larger cousins following them on the road.

But the army was encamped in an ancient legionary fort, four good earthen walls that the army had dug free of snow in the last hour, and there were tents lit orange by chimneys of stacked turf hacked from the ground with axes. An old fort like this one often had big piles of loose stone ready to be laid up into shelters or hearths.

The hillsides rang with the sound of axes as half the army gathered wood.

The Duke dismounted in the central parade and was embraced by Bad Tom.

It took less than a minute for him to understand the situation.

He winked at Random across the huge fire that lit the command area. He felt better immediately, for no other reason than that he was surrounded by friends. He found time with Harmodius very wearing.

Because the old magister scared him. He could have me any time.

I wouldn’t even know.

But surrounded by friends and warmth it didn’t seem so bad. He reviewed Tom’s decisions and found them good.

‘If we push through, we can be at Osawa tomorrow by sunset,’ Random said.

The Duke looked around. ‘Well then – let’s get what sleep we can.’

‘Did you get a fight?’ Tom asked. Heads turned – men looked at their Captain, or their Megas Ducas.

Father Arnaud frowned.

‘Not really,’ the Duke said.

Count Zac laughed. ‘He rode off alone, right in among them, and challenged Demetrius to single combat. Oh, you should have seen him!’

Bad Tom glared at his Captain. ‘But you didn’t get to fight?’

Ser Michael laughed. ‘Didn’t he? He unhorsed Demetrius’s uncle and took him prisoner in front of Demetrius’s whole army!’

Bad Tom grinned. ‘You’re a loon. But you steal all the good fights, and that’s not the place for a chieftain.’

The Duke shrugged. ‘Tom, I wanted to take a highly ranked prisoner. That’s all.’

Count Zac laughed aloud. ‘Bullshit, Cap-tan! You want a fight – you ride out and fight!’

Tom crossed his arms. ‘The Galles will gi’ us a fight, anyhap.’

The Duke raised a hand. ‘Not if I can help it. I plan to leave them a golden bridge to their boats.’

‘What?’ Tom roared.

‘Is good taktika,’ Zac said.

Tom’s face twisted up in frustration. ‘He’s taking all the fun out of war,’ he complained.

The Duke nodded. ‘In the lists I’m happy to oblige another gentleman. But this is war. And while the Galles may want a fight, we want them to go home so we can save our furs for the Emperor.’

Ser Giorgios scratched at his beard. They were all dirty – no one changed clothes in that cold. ‘I mean no insult,’ he said. ‘But men say that mercenaries avoid combat.’

The Duke shrugged. ‘Sauce – can we have a little demonstration for these Morean gentry?’

She smiled. ‘Anything. What do you want?’

The Duke drew his sword, and Sauce drew hers.

‘You watching, Giorgios?’ He lifted his sharp blade in a gliding thrust, two-handed, and Sauce’s blade moved to slap the Duke’s blade aside – but he slipped under her parry and the point of his sword just touched her chest. ‘Did my blade avoid her blade?’ he asked.

Ser Giorgios nodded. ‘The better to win the fight,’ he said.

The Duke nodded. ‘Most warriors are amateurs,’ he said. ‘It should come as no surprise that they are threatened by those who make war a profession. We don’t need to be manly or brave. All we have to do is win. There is no second place, and we get paid just as well whether we lose half our men or lose no men. Thanks, Sauce.’ He nodded to the men and women in the fire-circle. ‘Go to bed. Despite my best efforts, Tom may get his wish in the afternoon.’

Gelfred’s scouts located the Gallish force by noon. Zac took both squadrons of the Vardariotes, less only a single file who guarded their remounts, and they vanished into a snow squall to the north while the army, all mounted, advanced up the coast of the unfrozen lake at a trot. The road was broad and paved in heavy stones, and even covered in snow was an easy surface for rapid travel.

They could see smoke rising in a dozen places.

By mid-afternoon, a pair of Zac’s warriors had reported that the Galles were headed for their boats. There were no Outwallers with them, and the Southern Huran who lived in the towns near the northernmost Morean post were harrying the Galles every step of the way.

The Duke endured several hours of Tom’s growing anger and then laughed aloud. ‘Very well, Tom – take your pick of the men-at-arms and go bloody the protuberant Gallish nose.’ He leaned forward. ‘If it’s not too much to ask, get some prisoners.’

Tom lit up like a lantern with fresh oil. He took a quarter of Ser Jehan’s company and a quarter of Sauce’s company – and another dozen chosen knights, including Ser Gavin, Ser Alison, Ser Michael, and Ser Alcaeus. And all the drovers.

They galloped away, headed north, behind Count Zac’s screen of light horse.

The army continued, alternating their pace between the trot and the walk. It was cold, and speed meant less caution – most of the troopers had wet feet and some were wet through from exertion and a series of creeks and streams that they’d crossed without their usual precautions.

Jehan trotted at his Captain’s side. ‘What are we after?’ he asked.

The Duke raised his eyebrows. ‘Glory? Better pay?’

‘You have that smug look of triumph,’ Jehan muttered.

‘Does it ever occur to you that in five hundred years they’ll sing songs about us?’ the Duke asked.

‘Silence for the “Chanson of the Red Knight and the Adventure of the Avoided Battle”!’ said Ser Jehan. He laughed. ‘I think that this is your best work – taking Demetrius’s baggage? Brilliant. And now – why even let Tom loose?’

The Duke nodded. The tower of Osawa was just visible on the horizon. ‘Because he could be an unmanageable brute all winter if I’m not careful. And he has taken most of the men and women of his own stripe with him, and they’ll tangle with the Gallish rearguard – Jehan, what the fuck are the Galles doing in Nova Terra?’

Jehan trotted along a few more paces. ‘Here I was thinking that you knew,’ he said. ‘Silly me. You seem so well informed.’

‘There have been reports. I wish the Emperor’s spies extended to Galle.’ The Duke nodded. ‘I wish I had my own spies, and damn it, Jehan, I mean to have them! Anyway, you asked what I want. I want to find out what’s happening – to get Gerald his furs and save our wages. And get the fuck out of the Morea, before it eats us alive.’

Bad Tom had taken a third of the best men-at-arms and their archers, and he was determined to press the Outwallers and their reputed allies as hard as he could – hard enough to provoke them to make a stand.

The Vardariotes made the first contact, north and west of him, fighting a stiff skirmish with crossbow-armed Huran and losing a man. Stefan Druse, a tall, thin man who looked like a monk and had a beard to match, saluted with his long steel mace and made a face.

‘Not for us, lord,’ he said to Bad Tom. ‘Formed infantry, big crossbows.’

Tom grinned. ‘That’s right, laddie. Just stay on our flank!’

He led the men-at-arms forward, angling to right across snow-covered Outwaller fields. The Drover and his clansmen had regular contact with this part of the world – the Green Hills were behind, them, the Wall just to their left. He’d traded cattle here, and raided for them, too. The Outwallers lived inside the Wall – but they were Southern Huran and no man’s vassals.

By his side, Ranald shook his helmeted head. ‘The Duke says there’s Galles with them – that’ll be heavy horse and drilled infantry in good armour-’

‘Stop that noise, cousin. Let’s have us a fight.’ Bad Tom was watching the distant woodline intently, aware that he’d already made a mistake in letting his mounted scouts outrun his heavy column, eager for a fight.

He saw the crossbowmen before they loosed bolts.

‘At them before they span!’ he shouted, and his horse leaped forward.

The Hurans in the treeline broke the moment his cavalry charged them. The woodline was too open to stop the horses, and it was winter. They ran into the woods, and the knights and men-at-arms pursued them.

Ranald had the archers – led by Twinter and Long Paw and with a dozen veterans in enough armour to be called men-at-arms. He shook his head.

‘Keep your visors open and watch the flanks,’ he said. ‘I mislike this.’

As they crossed the great snow-covered field, Tom and his men-at-arms vanished in the trees. The the north and south, he could see the red-clad Vardariotes trotting across the snow, watching their flanks.

All told, they had sixty men. Ranald waved his men forward faster, afraid he’d lose touch with his cousin and afraid, at the same time, of an ambush.

‘Steady!’ de Marche said.

The enemy cavalry – knights, they looked to be – were spread as thin as butter on bread, every man picking his won way through the deep woods. De Marche’s sailors were two deep behind a low barricade of fallen trees. They watched the Huran run past them.

As arranged.

‘Prepare to loose!’ de Marche called.

The leader of the enemy, a huge man on a big black gelding, made his horse rear.

‘Shoot!’ he called, and forty crossbows crouched together.

The effect on the knights was not as shattering as it should have been, but the big man went down, his horse thrashing and turning the snow red.

‘Span!’ he called.

‘Deus Veult!’ called the Black Knight, and he charged at the head of a dozen of his own men-at arms.

Bad Tom was already fully aware of his folly before he saw the felled trees. Tom’s creed didn’t include pretence – he’d been had.

He reared his horse as he saw the Galles. They looked like professionals-

Damn, I loved this horse, he thought as six quarrels struck the gelding. The horse crashed to earth, already mortally wounded.

Tom rolled clear, armour causing him more injury than the fall. He got to his feet and found his sword was still by his side.

They had cavalry.

Tom shook his head at his own foolishness even as the enemy knights shouted their war cries.

Then he grinned. It was, after all, a fight.

Francis Atcourt – easily identifiable with his red panache – rode to his rescue. The enemy men-at-arms – all appallingly well mounted for a fight in the wilderness – were coming from the left, and Atcourt joined three more company men-at-arms at a canter.

Tom watched them with solid satisfaction, as, badly outnumbered, they couched their lances and picked their men, closing from a spread pursuit formation to a compact melee formation in fifty strides of their horses.

The Galles – he assumed they were Galles – struck. They had about a dozen knights, and at the moment of impact, Ser Francis Arcourt and one of the company’s few Gallish men-at arms, Phillipe le Beause, each cleanly unhorsed a man. Chris Foliak killed his opponent’s horse and then swept his lance unsportingly sideways like a toll gate, taking another Gallish knight down. But Ser John Gage was unhorsed by a man as big as Tom himself.

Foliak, a canny fighter, didn’t slow his horse, but burst through, dropped his lance, and rode back south, away from the fight.

Atcourt hesitated, and was surrounded in a moment and unhorsed by three different men catching his bridle and wrestling him from his saddle.

Phillipe de Beause managed to put his dagger into another man and his horse – bigger, or perhaps better exercised – pulled him clear of the stour by main force. He saw Tom and rode to him-

Twenty crossbows spat together, and Beause died in an instant.

Tom’s other men-at-arms were rallying to the north. He could hear Ser Michael’s voice.

One of the enemy knights raised his visor and pointed his lance at Tom. ‘Yield,’ he said.

Tom laughed. ‘Usually we fight first,’ he said. He wished he had an axe.

The Galle charged him immediately, his great horse sending gouts of snow into the still air. His lance tip came down like a swooping falcon, and Tom uncurled and cut the last three feet right off the lance. His backhand carved a hand’s breadth of meat off the horse, and it turned, panicking at the pain.

Tom cut again, ignoring the rider and cutting deeply into his horse’s near side back leg.

The horse toppled.

Another Galle charged Tom.

Bad Tom set himself in a new guard to wait the lance, but this man had seen his trick, and he didn’t couch his lance at all. He rode forward, and he only lowered his lance at the last second.

Tom batted it aside and cut into the horse’s neck and was knocked flat as the rider moved the horse to his own right. But the cut landed – the horse slouched and fell.

Tom got up.

A thrown lance hit him like a thunderbolt in the side, the head piercing his mail. He staggered.

‘Deus vault! ’ roared the big knight as he thundred by. He turned his horse and came again, this time with a long-handed steel mace.

He cut – the expected cut, a heavy fendente from his right hand, and Bad Tom caught it on his sword and was staggered by the sheer strength of the man – but not so staggered as to not let the blow slide off his parry like rain off a steep rood, and counter-cut as the horse went by. Again, he struck the horse, who screamed.

The other knight reined in. Crossbowmen were coming up.

‘This is a mere butchery of horses,’ he said.

‘Get off yours and we’ll make it a butchery of men,’ Bad Tom said.

‘You are a fine man of arms. May I ask your style?’ asked the enemy knight.

‘I’m Ser Tom Lachlan of the Hills,’ Bad Tom said.

‘I am Ser Hartmut di Orguelleus,’ the other man said. He waited. ‘The Black Knight.’

Tom shook his head. ‘I think you’re waiting for your crossbowmen to come and kill me,’ he said.

Ser Hartmut laughed. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Why would I not? There is no such thing as a fair fight.’

Tom charged him. He roared, ‘Lachlan for Aaa!’ and ran as fast as his injured hips would allow.

But Ser Hartmut only let him come two paces and then pricked his horse into motion. The Black Knight’s mace cut – Tom’s blade rose.

Both were deceived, and thus, both struck.

Tom took the mace in his left pauldron, and was knocked to the ground.

Ser Hartmut took Tom’s thrust on his breastplate, and was unhorsed. The difference was that Ser Hartmut rose uninjured beyond the blow to his dignity.

Bad Tom had taken the worst wound of his life.

Ranald entered the woods at a walk, his archers in a compact mass behind him. He could hear the fighting now – hear it in three places. But even winter woods blocked enough of his sight to keep him from understanding.

He heard Tom’s battle cry and went at it. But even then he didn’t surrender his caution. He trotted, visor open, looking left and right.

He saw the crossbowmen first, and then he saw Tom, alone, on one knee.

He turned to Long Paw. ‘Cover me!’ he yelled, but most of the archers were already sliding off their mounts, valets taking the horses in their fists even as the archers pulled their stung bows over their heads.

Ranald took his lance out of the bucket in his right stirrup and put his spurs to his charger.

Just off to the right, he saw the flash of winter sun on metal.

There were three knights – in a glance, he knew that none of them were company. And they were between him and his cousin.

He rode at them – reached up and slammed down his visor, and all four of them went to a gallop – no mean trick in snowy woods.

Six strides from contact, Ranald changed targets – his horse took a beautiful cross-step to take both of them a yard off line – and Ranald leaned forward as if he was in a Harndon tiltyard and his man went flying. A spearpoint struck his breastplate, but it didn’t bite – and the tip rode up the V-shaped reinforcement and shot past over his right shoulder, ripping the round pauldron from his body as it passed but doing no other damage.

Ranald didn’t turn.

Ten yards behind him, Chris Foliak’s lance unhorsed a second man before Foliak’s horse lost its footing in the now and went down in a spectacular spray of snow and dead leaves.

Ranald raced for his cousin.

Tom was on one knee, apparently unable to rise, defending himself with two-handed parries. A huge knight – at least as big as Tom himself – cut again and again with a mace – paused and hurled it like a lightning bolt.

Tom missed his parry and the thrown weapon struck his visor, deforming it.

The big knight drew his sword, and it burst into flame, and the crossbowmen yelled a cry, revealing themselves.

Ranald had time to think, Christ, there’s a lot of them.

The first ranging arrow from Long Paw’s bow struck a crossbowman.

Behind him, Ranald could hear Foliak fighting, sword to sword.

There were fights scattered all over the woods, now – the Vardariotes were rolling in from the flanks, and suddenly it was his to win. But he needed to get the giant off his cousin, first.

Ranald put his lance at the big knight’s back, but, a heartbeat from impact, the man writhed like a snake. He was still struck, but it was uncanny how he avoided most of the blow.

But his great burning sword never touched Tom, who managed to get back to his feet as Ranald swept past, reining in all the way.

Tom cut, a rising cut from a low guard, and the Black Knight snapped his own sword contemptuously at the blow – and severed Tom’s sword at the midpoint.

Tom stepped off line and hurled his ruined weapon like an axe at the Black Knight, who had to step back and parry – and still took a ringing blow to the head from the hilt.

Tom drew his dagger.

A full flight of arrows from the company bowmen fell like a snow squall. The enemy soldiers stood their ground, took hits, and replied with a volley of bolts.

The Black Knight raised his burning sword-

‘Get out of the way, you loon!’ Ranald roared, and hip-checked his cousin.

He had a great axe – a long-hafted axe with a beard so long that it had its own poll on the shaft, the great vicious thing like a half-moon of steel on a five-foot haft. It was the axe Master Pye had made him.

Tom collapsed to one knee.

Ranald stepped past his cousin as the Black Knight threw a heavy blow – a simple fendente from his right shoulder, but with the power of a warhorse.

Ranald parried, the axe close to his body.

The two weapons met with a clang that rang through the woods.

‘So!’ the Black Knight said from inside his helm.

Ranald stepped forward, the axe out behind him like a long tail. As the Black Knight didn’t flinch, Ranald cut.

Fast as a leaping salmon, the Black Knight’s blade leaped to meet the axe-

Ranald rolled the great axe head – his blow a feint – and thrust with the butt spike, striking the Black Knight’s hand, and locking his own haft across the Black Knight’s left wrist.

He stepped forward and used the lever of the axe haft to throw the bigger man to the ground.

Quick as a cat, the Black Knight cut – flat on his back – and his burning sword cut deep into Ranald’s left greave.

The Black Knight rolled backwards over his own head like an acrobat and came up on his feet.

Ranald could scarcely think from the pain.

The Black Knight flicked a salute. ‘I think my archers have been bested by yours,’ he said. He was backing away. ‘And my useless dogs of allies have all run home. I’ll see you another day, sir knight.’ He took another step back, and another.

Ranald wanted to follow him, but there was blood all over the ground, and it wasn’t Tom’s.

The crossbowmen broke.

Their leader, a man in good armour, tried to rally them until he saw Ser Michael coming with a dozen men-at-arms and as many Vardariotes, and then he threw a leg over his own horse and rode for it.

Ranald tried to wrap his own wound, and, eventually, Francis Atcourt joined him.

‘What happened to you?’ Ranald said.

Atcourt smiled. ‘Someone hit me on the head,’ he said. ‘Luckily, he didn’t stay around to take me prisoner.’ He watched the Galles. ‘Who were they? They were – very good.’

‘Better than me,’ murmured Tom. ‘Christ risen, who was that loon?’

Five leagues to the west and two days later, Bad Tom stood atop the main tower of Osawa’s fortifications, peering through the light snow down the lake as if to summon the Galles back to their duty. In the yard below them, the largest fur convoy Morea had mustered in twenty years shook itself out and started into the hills, carefully watched by most of the Imperial Army.

Bad Tom stomped his feet and frowned.

‘Cheer up, Tom,’ the Duke said. ‘We’ll find someone else to fight.’

Tom swore and strode down the many steps to his horse. The Duke followed him down.

‘War of manoeuvre? I’m no fool – you out-manoeuvred the Galles and only the ambush gave them a fight. But-’ He shrugged. ‘A war without fighting?’ Tom spat the words. ‘And Ranald got everything yesterday, and I got beat.’ He looked down. ‘And lost Phillipe.’

Ranald had been magicked and bandaged and he was still pale. Bad Tom had bounced back. But Ranald was the hero of the hour, and Tom was public in his thanks.

‘You saved me, cousin, and there’s not many men as can say that.’

Ranald looked sheepish.

‘I want another go at that Black Knight. Nor will you beat the Thrakians with fancy manoeuvres.’

The Red Knight laughed and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Tom, there will be plenty of fighting in the spring. For which, I need you to go home to the hills and raise your kern. Bring every thane and kern you can muster and the whole of the drove to the Inn of Dorling when the ice clears the roads. Spend the rest of the winter healing. You’re hurt.’

Lachlan nodded. ‘That I am.’ He could walk, but both hips hurt; he could move his right arm, but his left arm – even after powerful magery – felt like ice.

‘You giving me an order?’ Bad Tom scowled.

The Duke shook his head. ‘No. No, I’m not. I’m asking – as Megas Ducas to the Drover.’

Bad Tom nodded. ‘There’s many a slip. But I’ll go. There has to be a Drover. And if I can, I’ll be there.’

‘The Wyrm will help,’ the Duke said.

‘My cousin’ll help, I hope.’ Tom turned to Ranald.

The Duke sighed. ‘Tom, Ranald may feel he needs to go west to Lissen Carak. Lady Mary has been sent from court, and is even now riding up the Albin to spend Christmas at the nunnery.’ He handed Ranald a dispatch and smiled. ‘It’s good to have a spy service. I’m going to miss it. Kneel, Ranald.’

Ranald looked at him. ‘Why?’ he asked. He looked at the snow, which looked muddy, and cold. His leg hurt.

‘Because it’s customary when being knighted,’ the Duke said.