The Red Knight

Chapter Five

Ser Gawin

Harndon Palace – Harmodius

Harmodius Magus sat in a tower room entirely surrounded by books, and watched the play of the sun on the dust motes, as it shone through the high, clear glass windows. It was April – the season of rain but also the season of the first serious, warm sun – when the sunlight finally has its own colour, its own richness. Today, the sky was blue and a cat might be warm in a patch of sunshine

Harmodius had three cats.

‘Miltiades!’ he hissed, and an old grey cat glanced at him with weary insolence.

The man’s gold-shod stick licked out and prodded the cat, whose latest sleeping spot threatened the meticulously drawn pale blue chalk lines covering the dark slate floor. The cat shifted by the width of its tail and shot the Magus a disdainful look.

‘I feed you, you wretch,’ Harmodius muttered.

The light continued to pour through the high windows, and to creep down the whitewashed wall, revealing calculations in chalk, silver or lead pencil, charcoal, even scratched out in dirt. The Magus used whatever came to hand when he felt the urge to write.

And still the light crept down the wall.

In the halls below, the Magus could sense men and women – a servant bringing a tray of cold venison to his tower’s door; a gentleman and lady engaged in a ferocious tryst that burned like a small fire almost directly under his feet – where was that? It must be awfully public – and the Queen, who burned like the very sun. He smiled when he brushed over her warmth. Oftimes, he watched others to pass the time. It was the only form of phantasm he still cast regularly.

Why is that? he wondered, idly.

But this morning, well. This morning his Queen had asked him – challenged him – to do something.

Do something wonderful, Magus! she had said, clapping her hands together.

Harmodius waited until the sun crossed a chalk line he had drawn, and then raised his eyes to a particular set of figures. Nodded. Sipped some cold tea that had a film of dust – what was that dust? Oh – he had been grinding bone for oil colour. He had bone dust in his tea. That wasn’t entirely disgusting.

All three cats raised their heads and pricked their ears.

The light intensified and struck a small mirror with the image of Ares and Taurus entwined on the ivory back – and then shot across the floor in a focused beam.

‘Fiat lux!’ roared the Magus.

The beam intensified, drawing in the light around it until the cats were cast in shadow while the beam sparkled like a line of lightning – passing above the chalk designs, through a lens, and into a bubble of gold atop his staff. Unnoticed by him, it struck a little off centre and a tiny fragment of the white beam slid past the staff to dance along the far wall, partially reflected by the golden globe, partly refracted by the mass of energy seething inside the staff itself. The intense light flicked up sharply, licked at gilding of a triptych that adorned the sideboard, struck a glass of wine abandoned hours before. And, still focused, it passed across the east wall, its rapid passage burning away a dozen or more characters of a spell written in an invisible, arcane ink, hidden under the paint.

The older cat started, and hissed.

The Magus felt suddenly light headed, as if at the onset of a fever or a strong head-cold. But his mind was abruptly clear and sharp, and the staff was giving off the unmistakable aura of an artefact filling with power. He saw the rogue light fragment and deftly moved the mirror and the focus to touch the staff perfectly.

He clapped his hands in triumph.

The cats looked around, startled, as if they had never seen his room before – and then went back to sleep.

Harmodius looked around the room. ‘What in the name of the triad just happened?’ he asked.

He didn’t need rest. Even after casting a powerful phantasm like the last, the feeling of the helios in his staff made him tingle with anticipation. He’d promised himself that he’d wait a day . . . perhaps two days . . . but the temptation was strong.

‘Bah,’ he said aloud, and the cats flicked their ears. He hadn’t felt so alive in many years.

He took a heavy flax mop and scrubbed the floor, eliminating every trace of the complex chalk pattern that had decorated it like an elaborate Southern rug. Then, despite his age and his heavy robes, he was down on his knees with a square of white linen, scrubbing even the cracks between the slate slabs until there was not a trace of pale blue chalk. However eager he was, he was also fastidious about this – that no trace of one phantasm should linger while he performed another. Experience had taught him that lesson well.

Then he went to a side table and opened the drawer, wherein was laid a box of ebony bound in silver. The Magus loved beautiful things – and when the consequences of bad conjuring were soul-destruction and death, the presence of beautiful things help reassure and steady him.

Inside the box lay a nested set of instruments made of bronze – a compass, a pair of calipers, a ruler with no markings; a pencil which held silver suspended in alum and clay and wax, blessed by a priest.

He wrapped a string around the pencil, measuring the length against the ruler, and began to pray. ‘O, Hermes Trismegistus,’ he began, and continued in High Archaic, purifying himself, clearing his thoughts, invoking God and his son and the prophet of the magi while another part of his mind calculated the precise length of string he would need.

‘I should not do this today,’ he told the fattest cat. The big feline didn’t seem to care.

He knelt on the floor, not to pray, but to draw. Putting a sliver of wood into a slot in the slate, he used the string, shaking with the tension in his hands, to guide his hand through a perfect circle, and into the circle, with the help of the ruler and a sword, he inscribed a pentagram. He wrote his invocation to God and to Hermes Trismegistus in High Archaic around the outside, and only the clamour of the cats for their noonday feast kept him from attempting his work right there and then.

‘All three of you are man’s best practice for dealing with demons,’ he said as he fed them fresh salmon, new caught in the River Albin and sold in the market.

They ignored him and ate, and then rubbed against him with loud protests of eternal love.

But his words gave him pause, and he unlocked the heavy oak door to the tower chamber and walked down one hundred and twenty-two steps to his sitting room where Mastiff, the Queen’s man, sat reading in an armchair. The man leapt to his feet when the Magus appeared.

The Magus raised an eyebrow and the man bowed. But Harmodius was in a hurry – a hurry of passion – and little incivilities would have to wait. ‘Be so kind as to hurry and beg the Queen’s indulgence: would she do me the kindness to pay me a visit?’ he asked, and handed the man a plain copper coin – a sign between them. ‘And ask my laundress to pay me a visit?.’ He handed over a handful of small silver change. Some of the coins were as small as sequins.

Mastiff took the coins and bowed. He was used to the Magus and his odd ways, so he hurried off as if his life depended on the journey.

The Magus poured himself a cup of wine and drank it off, stared out the window, and tried to convince himself to let it go for a day. Who would care?

But he felt ten years younger, and when he thought of what he was about to prove he shook his head, and his hand trembled on the cup.

He heard her light step in the hall, and he rose and bowed deeply when she entered.

‘La,’ she said, and her presence seemed to fill the room. ‘I was just saying to my Mary – I’m bored!’ She laughed, and her laugh rose to the high rafters.

‘I need you, your Grace,’ he said with a deep bow.

She smiled at him, and the warmth of it left him more light headed still. Afterwards, he could never decide whether lust played a part in what he felt for her; the feeling was strong, possessive, awesome, and dangerous.

‘I am determined to work a summoning, your Grace, and would have you by me to steady my hand. I hope it will be wonderful.’ He bowed over hers.

‘My dear old man, she looked at him tenderly. He felt in her regard a flaw – she pitied him. ‘I honour your efforts, but don’t tax yourself to impress me!’

He refused to be annoyed. ‘Your Grace, I have made such summonings many times. They are always fraught with peril, and like swimming, only a fool does such a thing alone.’ In his mind’s eye, he imagined swimming with her, and he swallowed heavily.

‘I doubt that I can do anything to support a mighty practitioner such as you – I, who only feel the sun’s rays on my skin, and you, who feel his power in your very soul.’ But she went to the base of the long staircase eagerly and led him to the top, her feet lighter on the treads than his by half a century. And yet he was not breathing hard when they reached the top.

She kicked off her red shoes on the landing and entered his chamber carefully, barefoot, avoiding the precise markings on the floor. She paused to look at them. ‘Master, I have never seen you work something so – daring!’ she said, and this time her admiration was unfeigned.

She went to stand in the sun which now covered the east wall instead of the west. She stood there studying the equations and lines of poetry, and then she began to scratch the ears of the old fat cat.

He purred a moment, sank his fangs into her palm, and mewed when she swatted him with her other hand.

Harmodius shook his head and poured honey on the punctures the cat had left. ‘I’ve never known him to bite before,’ he said.

She shrugged with an impish smile and licked the honey.

He, too, removed his shoes.

He went to his wall of writing and pushed his nose close, reading two lines written in silver pencil. Then, taking up a small ebony wand, he wrote the two lines in the air, and left letters of bright fire behind – thinner than the thinnest hair, and yet perfectly visible from where either of them stood.

‘Oh!’ said the Queen.

He smiled at her. He had the briefest temptation to kiss her and another desire, equal but virtually opposite, to back out of the whole thing.

She reminded him of-

‘Bah,’ he said. ‘Are you ready, your Grace?’

She smiled and nodded.

‘Kaleo se, CHARUN,’ the Magus said, and the light over the pentagram paled.

The Queen took a step to the right, and stood in the full beam of the sun from the high windows, and the old cat rubbed against her bare leg.

Shadow began to fill the pentagram. The Magus took up his staff, and held the hollow golden end like a spear point between himself and the inscribed sign on the floor.

‘Who calls me?’ came a whisper from the fissure in light that flickered like a butterfly above the pentagram.

‘KALEO,’ Harmodius insisted.

Charun manifested beneath the shadow. The Magus felt his ears pop, and the sun seemed dimmed.

‘Ahhh,’ he hissed.

‘Power for knowledge,’ Harmodius said.

The shadows were drawn into a creature that was like a man, except he was taller than the highest bookcase, naked, a deep white veined in blue like old marble, with tough, leathery wings that swept majestically from well above his head to the floor in a perfect arc that any artist would have admired.

The smell he brought with him was alien – like the smell of lye soap being burned. Neither clean nor foul. And his eyes were a perfect, black blank. He carried a sword as tall as a man and wickedly barbed, and his head held both alien horror and angelic beauty in one – an ebony-black beak inlaid with gold; huge, almond shaped eyes, deep and endless blue like twin sapphires, and a bony crest filled with hair, like the decoration on an Archaic helmet.

‘Power for knowledge,’ Harmodius said again.

The demon’s blank eyes regarded him. Who knew what they thought? They seldom spoke, and they didn’t often understand what a magus asked.

And then, as swiftly as an eagle seizes a rabbit, the sword shot out and cut the circle.

Harmodius’s eyes narrowed, but he had not lived as long as he had by giving in to panic. ‘Sol et scutum Dominus Deus,’ he said.

The second strike of the sword licked out through the circle but rang off the shield that had formed over the demon. The creature looked at the shield, glowing a bubbly purple shot with white, and began to prod it with the sword. Sparks began to cascade down the sides of the shield, shaped like a bright bell of colour suspended over the daemon. Smoke began to rise from the floor.

Harmodius struck his staff against the edge of the circle where the sword had cut his pattern. ‘Sol et scutum Dominus Deus!’ he roared.

The rift in the circle closed, and the creature reared back and hissed.

The Queen leaned in towards it, and Harmodius felt a pang of pure terror that she would unwittingly cross the circle. But he could not say anything to her. To do so would be to betray the energy of his summoning – his entire will was bent on the creature that had manifested, and the circle, the pentagram, and the shield.

He was, he realised, juggling too many balls.

He considered letting the shield go – right up until the demon breathed fire.

It blossomed like a flower, flowing to cover the entire surface of the shield, and the room was suddenly hot. The fire could not pass the shield – but the heat from it could, and the deamon’s heat changed the contest of wills utterly. Even as he began to consider the possibility that he might be defeated, Harmodius’ mind viewed this fact with fascination. Despite the shield, he could smell the creature, and he could feel the heat.

As suddenly as they had appeared, the flames retreated from the edges of the circle and fled back into the creature’s mouth. The heat dropped perceptibly.

Desiderata leaned in until her nose touched the unsolid surface of the shield. And she laughed.

The demon turned to her, head cocked, for all the world like a puppy. And then he laughed back.

She curtsied, and then began to dance.

The demon watched her, rapt, and so did the Magus.

She expressed herself in her hips, and in the rise of her hands above her head as she danced a mere dozen steps – a dance of spring, naive and unflawed by practice.

The creature inside the bubble of power shook his head. ‘Eyah!’

He took a step towards her, and his head touched the edge of the pentagram, and he howled with rage and swept his sword across the sigil, cutting a gouge in the slate floor that broke the circle.

She extended a foot and crossed her toes over the break, and it was healed.

Harmodius breathed again. Quick as a terrier after a rat, he struck his staff through the shield and poured the power he had collected from his phantasm into the demon.

It whirled from the Queen to face the Magus, sword poised – but took no action. Its mighty chest rose and fell. Its aspect changed, suddenly – it rose into the air, glowing white, an angel with wings of a swan, and then it fell to the slate floor and its writhing changed to the hideous controlled motion of a millipede larger than a horse, cramped in the confines of the shield. Harmodius raised his wand, joy surging though his heart – the pure joy of having truly tested a theory and found it to contain more gold than dross.

Harmodius’ took his staff from the circle and spat ‘Ithi!’

The pentagram was empty.

Harmodius was too proud to slump. But he went to the Queen’s side and threw his arms around her with a familiarity he never knew he dared.

She kissed him tenderly.

‘You are an old fool,’ she said. ‘But a brilliant, brave old fool, Harmodius.’ Her smile was warm and congratulatory. ‘I had no idea – I’ve never seen you do anything like it.’

‘Oh,’ he said, into the smell of her neck – and a galaxy of new learning occurred to him in that moment. But he backed away and bowed. ‘I owe you my life,’ he said. ‘What are you?’

She laughed, and her laugh threatened to mock all evil straight out of fashion. ‘What am I?’ she asked. She shook her head. ‘You dearest old fool.’

‘Still wise enough to worship at your feet, your Grace.’ He bowed very low.

‘You are like a boy who attacks a hornet’s nest to see what will come out. And yet I smell the triumph of the small boy on you, Harmodius. What have we learned today?’ She subsided suddenly into a chair, ignoring the scrolls that covered it. ‘And where did this sudden burst of daring come from? You are a byword for caution in this court.’ She smiled, and for a moment, she was not a naive young girl, but an ancient and very knowing queen. ‘Some say you have no power, and are a sort of Royal Mountebank.’ Her eyes flicked to the pentagram. ‘Apparently, they are wrong.’

He followed the wave of her hand and hurried to pour her wine. ‘I cannot say for certain sure what we learned today,’ he said carefully. Already his careful manner was reasserting itself. But he knew he was right.

‘Talk to me as if I was a student – a stupid squire bent on acquiring the rudiments of hermeticism,’ she said. She sipped his wine and her look of contentment and the flinging back of her head told him that she, too had known a moment of terror. She was mortal. He was not always sure of that. ‘Because I can use power, I think you assume that I know how it functions. That we have the same knowledge. But nothing can be further from the truth. The sun touches me, and I feel God’s touch, and sometimes, with his help, I can work a miracle.’ She smiled.

He thought that her self-assurance could, if unchecked, make her more terrifying than any monster.

‘Very well, your Grace. You know there are two schools of power – two sources for the working of any phantasm.’ He laid his staff carefully in a corner and then knelt to wipe the pentagram from the floor.

‘White and black,’ she said.

He glared at her.

She shrugged with a smile. ‘You are so easy, my Magus. There is the power of the sun, pure as light, unfettered, un-beholden – the very sign of the pleasure of God in all creation. And there is the power of the Wild – for which, every iota must be exchanged with one of the creatures that possess it, and each bargain sealed in blood.’

Harmodius rolled his eyes. ‘Sealed. Bargained for. Blood does not really enter into it.’ He nodded. ‘But the power is there – it rises from the very ground – from grass, from the trees, from the creatures that live among the trees.’

She smiled. ‘Yes. I can feel it, although it is no friend to me.’

‘Really?’ he asked, cursing himself for a fool. Why had he not asked the Queen earlier? A safer experiment sprang to his mind. But what was done was done. ‘You can feel the power of the Wild?’

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Stronger and weaker – even in those poor dead things that decorate the hall.’

He shook his head at his own foolishness – his hubris.

‘Do you sense any power of the Wild in this room?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘The green lamp is an artefact of the Wild, is it not? A faery lamp?’

He nodded. ‘Can you take any of the power it pours forth and use it, your Grace?’

She shuddered. ‘Why would you even ask such a thing? Now I think you dull, Magus.’

Hah, he thought. Not so hubristic as all that.

‘And yet I conjured a powerful demon of the abyss – did I not?’ he asked her.

She smiled. ‘Not one of the greatest, perhaps. But yes.’

‘Allied to the Wild – would you say?’ he asked.

‘God is the sun and the power of the sun – and Satan dwells in the power of the Wild.’ She sang the lines like a schoolgirl. ‘Daemons must use the power of the Wild. When Satan broke with God and led his legions to hell, then was magic broken into two powers, the green and the gold. Gold for the servants of God. Green for the servants of Satan.’

He nodded. Sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But of course, it is more complicated than that.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, showing that glacial self-assurance again. ‘I think men often seek to overcomplicate things. The nuns taught me this. Are you saying that they lied?’

‘I just fed a demon with the power of the sun. I conjured him with the power of the sun.’ Harmodius laughed.

‘But – no, you banished him!’ Her silver laugh rang out. ‘You tease me, Magus!’

He shook his head. ‘I banished him after feeding him enough power to make him grow,’ the Magus said. ‘Pure Helios, which I drew myself using my instruments – lacking your Grace’s special abilities.’ Whatever they may be.

She gazed at him, eyes level, devoid of artifice or flirtation, mockery or subtle magnetism or even her usual humour.

‘And this means?’ she asked, her voice a whisper.

‘Ask me again, your Grace, after I conjure him back a week hence. Tell me you will stand at my side that day – I’m beholden to you, but with you-’

‘What do you seek, Magus? Is this within the circlet of what the church will countenance?’ She spoke slowly, carefully.

He drew a breath. Released it. Sod the church, he thought. And aloud he said, ‘Yes, your Grace.’ No, your Grace. Perhaps not. But they’re not scientists. They’re interested in preserving the status quo.

The Queen gave him a beautiful smile. ‘I am just a young girl,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we ask a bishop?’

Harmodius narrowed his eyes. ‘Of course, your Majesty,’ he said.

The North Road – Gerald Random

Random’s convoy moved fast, by the standards of convoys – six to ten leagues a day, stopping each night at the edge of a town and camping in pre-arranged fields, with fodder delivered to their camp along with hot bread and new-butchered meat. Men were happy to work for him because he was a meticulous planner and the food was good.

But they had a hundred leagues to go, just to make Albinkirk, and another forty leagues east after that, to the fair, and he was later than he wanted to be. Albinfleurs – little yellow balls of sweet-scented, fuzzy petals that grew only on the cliff edges of the great river – were blooming in the hayfields that lined the roads; and when they were on his favourite sections of road – the cliff-edge road along the very edge of the Albin which ran sixty feet or more below them in the vale – the Albinfleurs were like stripes of yellow below him and layers of yellow on the cliffs nearly a mile distant on the other side. It was years since he’d left late enough to see the Albinfleurs. They didn’t grow in the north.

But after three glorious days of solid travel, they came to Lorica, and the Two Lions. His usual stop and supplier of bread and forage was a smoking hulk. It took him a day to establish a new supplier and get the material he needed, and the story of how the inn had been burned and the sheriff beaten by foreigners angered him. But the innkeeper had sent to the king, and stood in his yard with a bandaged head watching workmen with a crane lift the charred rooftrees off the main building.

He used one of his precious mercenaries to send a message about the killings back to the Guild Master in Harndon. Harndoners didn’t usually concern themselves with the doings of the lesser towns. But this was business, friendship, and basic patriotism all in one package.

The following day not one but two of his wagons broke spokes on their wheels – one so badly that the wooden wheel split and the iron tyre popped off the wheel. That meant finding a smith and wheelwright and forced him to go back to Lorica, where he had to stay in an inferior inn while his convoy crept north without him. He had to do it himself – the men in Lorica knew him but none of his hirelings, not Judson the draper, nor any of the other investors.

In the morning, the two wagons were ready to move, and he grudgingly paid the agreed fee for making two apprentice wheelwrights and a journeyman work by rush light through the night. Plus an extra silver leopard to the blacksmith for getting the tyre on before matins.

He finished his small beer and mounted his horse, and the smaller train was on the road as soon as he’d taken the Eucharist from a friar who said Mass at a roadside shrine. That roadside Mass was full of broken men and women – wastrels, a pair of vagabonds, and a troop of travelling players. Random had never been troubled by the poor. He gave them alms.

But the broken men worried him, for both his convoy and his purse. There were four of them, although they didn’t seem to be together. Random had never been robbed by men he’d just attended Mass with, but he didn’t take any chances, either. He mounted, exchanged meaningful glances with his drovers, and the carts moved on.

One of the broken men followed them on the road. He had a good horse and armour in a wicker basket, and he seemed listless. Random looked back at him from time to time.

Eventually, the man caught them up. But he hadn’t put on his armour and he didn’t even seem to know they were there. He rode up, slowly catching and then overtaking them.

Harndoners traditionally called the men they’d attended Mass with that day Brother or Sister, and so Random nodded to the stranger.

‘The Peace of God to you, Brother,’ he said, a little pointedly.

The man looked startled to be addressed.

In that moment, Random realised he wasn’t a broken man at all but a dirty gentleman. The differences were clear in his quality – the man had a superb leather-covered jupon worth a good twenty leopards, even covered in dirt. Hip boots with gold spurs. Even if they were silver gilt, they were worth a hundred leopards by weight.

The man sighed. ‘And to you, messire.’

He rode on.

Random hadn’t come to relative riches in the cut-throat world of Harndon’s shippers and guilds without having some willingness to grab at Fortuna’s hairs. ‘You’re a knight,’ he said.

The man didn’t rein in, but he turned his head and, feeling the weight shift, his horse stopped.

The man turned to look at him, and the silence was painful.

What have we here? Random wondered.

Finally, the young man – under his despair, the man was younger than Random by a generation – nodded.

‘I am a knight,’ the young man said, as if confessing a sin.

‘I need men,’ Random said. ‘I have a convoy on the road and if you wear spurs of gold, I’d be honoured to have you. My convoy is fifty good wagons headed north to the fair, and there’s no dishonour in it. I fear only bandits and the Wild.’

The man shook his head minutely and turned away, and his horse ambled on, a good war horse which was over-burdened with man and armour, the weight ill-distributed and ruining the horse’s posture.

‘Are you sure?’ Random asked. It never hurt to try.

The knight kept riding.

Random let his drovers stop for lunch, and then they pushed on – into the evening and even a little after dark.

In the morning, they rose and were moving on before the sun was a finger above the river which curved, snake-like, to the east. Later in the morning they descended into the vale and crossed the Great Bridge, the edge of the Inner Counties. He had a fine meal at the Crouching Cat with his drovers, who were honoured by his willingness to join them and pleased to eat so good a meal.

After lunch they crossed Great Bridge, twenty-six spans built by the Archaics and painstakingly maintained. And then climbed the far bank for an hour, with the drovers leading the horses. They crested the far bank, and Random saw the knight again, kneeling at a roadside chapel, tears cutting deep channels in the road-dust on his face.

He nodded to him, and rode on.

By evening he caught up the rest of the convoy, already in camp, and he was welcomed back by the men he’d left. His drovers regaled their peers with the minutiae of their days, and Guilbert saluted and told him how the column had proceeded, and Judson was resentful that he was back so soon.

Business as usual.

A little after dark, one of the goldsmith boys came to his wagon and saluted like a soldier. ‘Messire?’ he asked. ‘There’s a knight asking for ye.’ The boy had a crossbow on his shoulder, and was obviously puffed with pride at being on watch, on convoy, and in such an important role. Henry Lastifer, the name floated up from the merchant’s storehouse of ready knowledge.

Random followed the boy to the fire. Guilbert was there, and Old Bob, another of the men-at-arms.

And the young knight from the road, of course. He was sitting, drinking wine. He rose hurriedly.

‘May I change my mind?’ he, blurted.

Random smiled. ‘Of course. Welcome aboard, Ser Knight.’

Guilbert smiled broadly. ‘M’lord, is more like. But he’s the king’s mark. And that’s a sword.’ He turned to the knight. ‘Your name, m’lord?’

The young man waited so long it was obvious he was going to lie. ‘Ser Tristan?’ he said, wistfully.

‘Fair enough,’ Guilbert said. ‘Come wi’ me, and we’ll see to it you have a place to sleep.’

‘Mind you,’ said Random. ‘You work for Guilbert and then for me. Understand?’

‘Of course,’ said the young man.

What am I getting myself into? Random thought. But he felt satisfied with the man, broken or not. King’s knights were trained to a high level – especially trained to fight the Wild. Even if the young man was a little addled . . . well, no doubt he was in love. The gentry were addicted to love.

He slept well.

North of Lorica – Bill Redmede

Bill Redmede led his untrained young men up the trail. Their irk stayed well ahead, moving like smoke through the thick trees. He tended to return to the column from the most unexpected directions, even for a veteran woodsman like Bill.

The lads were all afraid of him.

Bill rather liked the quiet creature, which spoke only when it had something to say. Irks had something about them. It was hard to pin down, but they had some kind of nobility

‘Right files watch the right side of the trail,’ Bill said, automatically. ‘Left files watch the left side.’ Three days on the trail and all he did was mother them.

‘I need a break,’ whined the biggest and strongest of them. ‘Christ on the Cross, Bill! We’re not boglins!’

‘If you was, we’d move faster,’ Redmede said. ‘Didn’t you boys do any work on the farm?’

It was worse when they made camp. He had to explain how to raise a shelter. He had to stop them from cutting their twine, and teach them how to make a fire. A small fire. How to be warm, how to be dry. Where to take a piss.

Two of them sang while they worked, until he walked up and knocked one to the ground with a blow of his fist.

‘If the king catches you because you are singing, you will hang on a gibbet until the crows pick your bones clean and then the king’s fucking sorcerer will grind your bones to make the colours for his paints,’ Bill said.

The angry silence of wronged young men struck him from all sides.

‘If you fail, you will die,’ he said. ‘This is not a summer lark.’

‘I want to go home,’ said the biggest man. ‘You’re worse than an aristo.’ He looked around. ‘And you can’t stop all of us.’

The irk materialised out of the dusk. He looked curiously at the big man. Then he turned to Bill. ‘Come,’ he said in his odd voice.

Bill nodded to them, the debate now unimportant. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said, and followed the irk.

They crossed a marsh, over a low ridge, and then down to a dense copse of spruce.

The irk turned and made a motion with its head. ‘Bear,’ it said. ‘A friend. Be kind, Man.’

Near the centre of the spruce was a great golden bear. It lay with its head in its paws, as if it was resting. A beautiful cub stood licking its face.

As Bill come up, the bear stirred. It raised its head and hissed.

Bill stepped back, but the irk steadied him, and spoke in a sibilant whisper.

The bear rolled a little, and Bill could see it had a deep wound in its side, full of pus – pus was dryed on either side of the wound, and it stank.

The irk squatted down in a way a man could not have done. Its ear drooped – this was sadness, which Bill had never seen in an irk.

‘The bear dies,’ the irk said.

Bill knew the irk was right.

‘The bear asks – can we save her cub?’ The irk turned and Bill realised how seldom the elfin creature had met his eyes, because in that moment, the irk’s gaze locked with his, and he all but fell into the forest man’s regard. His eyes were huge, and deep like pools-

‘I don’t know a thing about bears,’ Bill said. He squatted by the big mother bear. ‘But I’m a friend of any creature of the Wild, and I give you my word that if I can get your cub to other golden bears, I will.’

The bear spat something, in obvious pain.

The irk spoke – or rather, sang. The line became a stanza, full of liquid rhymes.

The bear coughed.

The irk turned. ‘The cub – her mother named her for the yellow flower.’

‘Daisy?’

The irk made a face.

‘Daffodil? Crocus? I don’t know my flowers.’

‘In water.’ The irk was frustrated.

‘Lily?’

The irk nodded.

So he reached out a hand to the cub, and the cub bit him.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain was so tired and so drained by the fear that it was all he could do to push one boot in front of the other as the trail became a track and the track became a road.

Nothing troubled them but the coming darkness, their exhaustion, and the cold. It was late in the day and increasingly clear that they would have to camp in the woods. The same woods which had produced a daemon and a wyvern.

‘Why didn’t it kill us?’ the captain asked. Two daemons.

Gelfred shook his head. ‘You killed that first one. Pretty. Damn. Fast.’ His eyes were always moving. They had reached the main road, and Gelfred pulled up on his horse’s reins. ‘We could ride double,’ he said.

‘You’ll lame that horse,’ the captain snapped.

‘You cast a spell.’ Gelfred wasn’t accusatory. He sounded more as if he was in pain.

‘Yes,’ the captain admitted. ‘I do, from time to time.’

Gelfred shook his head. He prayed aloud, and they rode on until a drizzle began and the light began to fade.

‘We’ll have to stand watches,’ the captain said. ‘We are very vulnerable.’ He could barely think. While Gelfred curried the poor beast, he gathered firewood and started a fire. He did everything wrong. He gathered bigger wood and had no axe to cut it; then he gathered kindling and broke it into ever smaller and better sorted piles. He knelt in his shallow fire-pit and used his flint and steel, shaving sparks onto charred cloth until he had an ember.

Then he realised that he hadn’t built a nest of tow and bark to catch the ember.

He had to start again.

We’re a pair of fools.

He could feel that the woods were full of enemies. Or allies. It was the curse of his youth.

What exactly have I stumbled into? he asked himself.

He made a little bird’s nest of dry tow and birchbark shreds, and made sparks again, his right hand holding the steel and moving precisely to strike the flint in his left hand. He got a spark, lit the char-

Dropped it into the tow and bark-

And blew.

The fire caught.

He dropped twigs on the blaze until it was steady, and then built a cabin of dry wood, carefully split with his hunting knife. He was very proud of his fire when he’d finished, and he thought that if the Wild took him here, at least he’d started the damned fire first.

Gelfred came and warmed his hands. Then he wound his crossbow. ‘Sleep, Captain,’ he said. ‘You first.’

The captain wanted to talk – he wanted to think, but his body was making its own demands.

But before he could go to sleep he heard Gelfred move, and he was out of his blankets with his sword in his fist.

Gelfred’s eyes were big in the firelight. ‘I just wanted to move the head,’ he said. ‘It – it’s hard to have it there. And the horse hates it.’

The captain helped to move the head. He stood there, in the dark, freezing cold.

There was something very close. Something powerful.

Perhaps building the fire had been a mistake, like coming out into the woods with just one other man.

Prudentia? Pru?

Dear boy.

Pru, can I pull the Cloak over this little camp? Or will I just make a disturbance in casting?

Cast quietly, as I have taught you.

He touched her marble hand, chose his wards and gardes, and opened the great iron door to his palace. Outside was a green darkness – thicker and greener than he liked.

But he took carefully from the green, and closed the door.

He staggered with the effort.

Suddenly he couldn’t stay upright. He fell to his knees by the daemon’s head.

The darkness was thick.

The head still had something of its aura of fear about it. He knelt by it – knees wet in the damp, cold leaves, and the cold helped to steady him.

‘M’lord?’ Gelfred asked, and he was obviously terrified. ‘M’lord!’

The captain worked on breathing for a moment.

‘What?’ he whispered.

‘The stars went out,’ Gelfred said.

‘I cast a little – concealment over us,’ the captain said. He shook his head. ‘Perhaps I mis-cast.’

Gelfred made a noise.

‘Let’s get away from this thing,’ the captain said, and he got to his feet, and together the two men stumbled over tree roots to their tiny fire.

The horse was showing the whites of its eyes.

‘I have to sleep,’ he said.

Gelfred made a motion in the dark. The captain took it for acceptance.

He slept from the moment his head went down, despite the fear, to the moment Gelfred woke him with a hand on his shoulder.

He heard the hooves.

Or talons.

Whatever it was, he couldn’t see the thing making the noise. Or anything else.

The fire was out and the night was too dark to see anything. But something very large was moving – just an arm’s length away. Maybe two.

Gelfred was right there, and the captain put a hand on his shoulder to steady them both.

Skerunch.

Snap.

Tick.

And then it was past them, moving down the hill to the road.

After an aeon, Gelfred said ‘It didn’t see us or smell us.’

The captain said Thanks, Pru.

‘My turn to watch,’ he said.

Gelfred was snoring in ten minutes, secure in his lord in a way the captain could not be in himself.

The captain stared into the darkness, and it became his friend more than his foe. He watched, and as he watched, he felt his heartbeat settle, felt his pains fade. He made an excursion into his palace of memory – reviewing sword cuts, castings, wards, lines of poetry.

Beyond the bubble of his will the night passed slowly. But it did pass.

Eventually, the faintest light coloured the eastern sky, and he woke Gelfred as gently as he could. He lowered his ward when they were both awake and armed, but there was nothing waiting for them, and they found the horse, and the head.

Just around the clearing where they’d slept, a pair of deep tracks – cloven, with talons and a dew claw – pierced the forest leaf mold.

Gelfred started. The captain watched as he followed the tracks-

‘Are we borrowing trouble, Gelfred?’ he asked, following a few paces behind.

Gelfred looked back and pointed at the ground in front of him. When the captain joined him, he saw multiple tracks – perhaps three sets, or even four.

‘What you fought yesterday. Four sets of prints. Here’s one moving more slowly. Here’s two moving fast – here they pause. Sniffing.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s what I see.’

Curiosity – the kind that gets cats killed – pulled the two of them forward. In ten more steps, there were eight or ten sets of tracks, and then, in another ten steps-

‘Sweet Son of Man and all the angels!’ Gelfred said.

The captain shook his head. ‘Amen,’ he added. ‘Amen.’

They stood on a bank over a gully wide enough for a pair of wagons and a little deeper than the height of a man on a horse. It ran from west to east. The base was clear of undergrowth, like a – a road.

The whole gully was a mass of churned earth and tracks.

‘It’s an army!’ Gelfred said.

‘Let’s move,’ said the captain. He turned and ran back to their clearing and settled his gear on the poor horse.

Then they were moving.

For a while, every shadow held a daemon – until they passed it. The captain didn’t feel recovered; he was cold, hungry, and afraid even to make tea. The horse was lame from the cold and from being insufficiently cared for on a cold, damp spring night, and they rode her anyway.

It turned out they didn’t have to go very far, which probably saved her life. The camp’s sentries must have been alert, because a mile from the bridge, they were met by Jehannes leading six lances in full armour.

Jehannes’ eyes were still bloodshot, but his voice was steady.

‘What in the name of Satan were you doing?’ Jehannes demanded.

‘Scouting,’ the captain admitted. He managed to shrug, as if it was a matter of little moment. He was very proud of that shrug.

Jehannes looked at him with the look that fathers save for children they intend to punish later – and then he caught sight of the head being dragged in the mud. He rode back to look at it. Bent over it.

His wide and troubled eyes told the captain that he had been right.

Jehannes turned his horse with a brutal jerk of the reins.

‘I’ll alert the camp. Tom, give the captain your horse. M’lord, we need to inform the Abbess.’ Jehannes’ tone had changed. It wasn’t respectful, merely professional. This was now a professional matter.

The captain shook his head. ‘Give me Wilful’s horse. Tom, stay at my back.’

Wilful Murder dismounted with his usual ill grace and muttered something about how he was always the one who got screwed.

The captain ignored him, got a leg over the archer’s roncey with a minimum of effort, and set off at a fast trot, Wilful holding onto another man’s stirrup leather and running full out, and then they stretched to a racing gallop across the last furlongs, with Wilful seeming to run alongside in ten league boots.

The guard had already turned out at the camp gate – a dozen archers and three men-at-arms, all in their kit and ready to fight. For the first time since he’d set his spear under his arm the day before, the captain’s heart rose a fraction.

The head dragged in the dirt behind Gelfred’s horse left a wake of rumour and staring.

The captain pulled up before his pavilion and dropped from the saddle. He considered bathing, considered washing the clots of ordure from his hair. But he wasn’t positive he had the time.

He settled for a drink of water.

Jehannes, who had paused to speak to the Officer of the Watch, rode up, tall and deadly on his war horse.

Two archers – Long Sam and No Head, were ramming the head down on a stake.

The captain nodded at them. ‘Outside the main gate,’ he said. ‘Where every cottager can see it.’

Jehannes looked at it for too long.

‘Double the guard, put a quarter of the men-at-arms into harness round the clock as a quarter-guard, and draft a plan to clear the villages around the fortress,’ the captain said. He was having trouble with words – he couldn’t remember being so tired. ‘The woods are full – full of the Wild. They have amassed an army out there. We could be attacked any moment.’ He seized an open inkwell on his camp table and scrawled a long note. He signed it in big capitals – good, educated writing.

The Red Knight, Captain

‘Get two archers provisioned and mounted as fast as you can – a pair of good horses apiece, and on the road. Send them to the king, at Harndon.’

‘Good Chryste,’ said Jehannes.

‘We’ll talk when I’ve seen the Abbess,’ the captain called, and Toby brought up his second riding horse, Mercy. He mounted, collected Bad Tom with a glance, and rode up the steep slope to the fortress.

The gate was open.

That was about to change.

He threw himself from Mercy and tossed the reins to Tom, who dismounted with a great deal less haste. The captain ran up the steps to the hall and pounded on the door. The priest was watching from his chapel door, as he always watched.

An elderly sister opened it and bowed.

‘I need to see the lady Abbess as soon as may be,’ the captain said.

The nun flinched, hid her eyes and closed the door.

He was tempted to pound on it with his fists again, but chose not to.

‘You and Gelfred killed that thing?’ Bad Tom asked. He sounded jealous.

The captain shook his head. ‘Later,’ he said.

Bad Tom shrugged. ‘Must have been something to see,’ he said wistfully.

‘You’re – listen, not now, eh? Tom?’ The captain caught himself watching the windows in the dormitory.

‘I’d ha’ gone wi’ you, Captain,’ Tom said. ‘All I’m saying. Think of me next time.’

‘Christ on the cross, Tom,’ the captain swore. It was his first blasphemous oath in a long time, so naturally, he uttered it just as the frightened, elderly nun opened the heavy door.

Her look suggested she had heard a few oaths in her day. She inclined her head slightly to indicate that he should follow her so he climbed the steps and crossed the hall in her wake, to the doorway he’d never passed through but from whence wine had been served, and stools brought.

She led him down a corridor lined with doors and up a tightly winding stair with a central pillar of richly carved stone, to an elegant blue door. She knocked, opened the door and bowed.

The captain passed her, returning her bow. He wasn’t too tired for courtesy, it appeared. His mind seemed to be coming back to him and he found that he was sorry to have blasphemed in the hearing of the nun.

It was like the feeling returning to an arm he’d slept on – the gradual retreat of numbness, the pins and needles of returning awareness, except that it was emotion returning, not his senses.

The Abbess was sitting on a low chair with an embroidery frame. Her west window caught the mid-day rays of the spring sun. Her scene showed a hart surrounded by dogs, a spear already in his breast. Bright silk-floss blood flowed down his flank.

‘I saw you come in. You lost your horse,’ she said. ‘You stink of phantasm.’

‘You are in great peril,’ he replied. ‘I know how that sounds. But I mean it, just the same. This is not a matter of a few isolated creatures. I believe that some force of the Wild seeks to take this fortress and the river crossing. If they cannot take it by stealth and subterfuge, they will come by direct assault. And the attack could come at any hour. They have massed, in large numbers, in your woodlands.’

She considered him carefully. ‘I assume this isn’t a dramatic way of increasing your fee?’ she asked. Her smile was subtle, betraying fear and humour in the same look. ‘No?’ she asked, with a catch in her voice.

‘My huntsman and I followed the spore – the Hermetical spore – of the daemon that murdered Hawisia,’ he said.

She waved him to a stool, and he found a cup of wine sitting on the side table. He drank it – the moment the cup touched his lips, he found that he was tilting it back, feeling the acid fire rush down his gullet. He put the cup back down, a little too hard, and the horn made a click on the wood that caused the Abbess to turn.

‘It is bad?’ she asked.

‘We found a man’s corpse first. He was dressed as a soldier – as a Jack.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Do you remember the Jacks, Abbess?’

Her eyes wandered far from him, off into another time. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘My lover died fighting them,’ she said. ‘Ah, there’s a reason for penance. My lover. Lovers.’ She smiled. ‘My old secrets have no value here. I know the Jacks. The secret servants of the Enemy. The old king exterminated them.’ She raised her eyes to his. ‘You found one. Or at least you showed me a leaf.’

‘Dead. Looked as if he had been killed, quite recently, by one of his own.’ The captain found a flagon of wine and poured a second cup. ‘I’m going to wager that he died a few hours after Sister Hawisia. Killed by another of his kind, as if that makes sense.’ He shook his head. ‘Then we went west, still following the spore.’ He sat down again, a little too hard.

She watched him.

‘Then we found the creature.’ He stared at her. ‘An adversarius. You know what they are?’ he asked.

‘Every person of my generation knows what they are.’ She covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. ‘Daemons. The Wardens of the Wild.’

He let another long breath go. ‘I thought they had been exaggerated.’ He looked out the window. ‘At any rate, there were two of them. I can only assume that the Jacks and the daemons are working together. If they are, this cannot be a random incident – I believe they’re the harbingers of an attack, testing your strength, and I assume that your fortress is the target. It certainly has immense strategic value. I need to ask you to let my troops in, close the gates, place yourself in a posture of defence, and victual the fortress – call in your people, of course. And send word to the king.’

She looked at him for a long time. ‘If you planned to take my fortress yourself . . .’ she said. And left it there.

‘My lady, I agree that it would be a brilliant stratagem. I even agree that I might try something like. I have fought in the East – we did such things there.’ He shrugged. ‘This is my country, my lady. And if you doubt me – and you have every reason to doubt me – you have only to look at what my archers are putting up outside the gates of our camp.’

She looked out the window.

‘You could tell me that there’s an angel of the Lord outside the gates of your camp, telling your archers that I’m the most beautiful woman since Helen, and I couldn’t see it well enough to believe you,’ she said. ‘But – I have seen you. I can smell the power on you. And – now I understand other things I have seen.’

‘You are an astrologer,’ he said. I am slow, he thought.

‘Yes. And you are very difficult to read, as if – as if you have some protection from my art.’ She smiled. ‘But I am no novice, and God has given me the power to look at souls. Yours is rather curious – as I expect you know.’

‘Oh, God has been very good to me,’ he said.

‘You mock and are bitter, but we face a crisis, and I am not your spiritual mother.’ Her voice changed, becoming sharper, and yet deeper. ‘Although I would be, if you would let me in. You need His spirit.’ She turned away. ‘You are armoured in darkness. But it is a false armour, and will betray you.’

‘So people tell me,’ he said. ‘Yet it’s served me well so far. Answer me this, Abbess. Who else was at that manor?’

The Abbess shrugged. ‘Later . . .’

The captain looked at her for a long time. ‘Who else was there?’

She shook her head. ‘Later. It is not the issue now, when I have a crisis of my tenure. I will not fail. I will hold this place.’

He nodded. ‘So you will put this fortress in a posture of defence?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘This minute.’ She raised a hand bell and rang it.

The elderly nun came immediately.

‘Fetch the gate warder and the sergeant at arms. And ring the alarm,’ the Abbess ordered in a firm voice. She went to the mantel on her fireplace, and opened a small box of ivory carved in the Cross of the Order of Saint Thomas. In it was a slip of milk-white birch bark.

‘You’re sure about this?’ she whispered.

‘I am,’ he said.

‘I need to share your assurance,’ she said.

He sat back. ‘I could not make this up. You say you smell the power of the phantasm on me-’

‘I believe that you have met and defeated another monster. It is possible that you found a dead Jack.’ She shrugged. ‘It is possible I have a traitor inside my walls. But once I cast this summoning, the Master of My Order will come with all his knights. He will probably demand that the king raise an army.’

‘That’s is just about what is required here,’ said the Red Knight.

‘I cannot have them come to my aid for nothing,’ she said.

The Red Knight sat back. His back hurt, and his neck hurt, and he felt the dull anger of complete fatigue. He bit back a retort, and then another.

‘What will satisfy you?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘I believe you. But I must be sure.’

He nodded. Irrationally angry.

‘Fine,’ he said. He rose, and bowed.

She reached for his hand.

He stepped back. ‘No time like the present,’ he spat.

‘Captain!’ she said. ‘You are not a small child.’

He nodded, held onto his anger, and stalked out.

‘What did she say?’ Tom asked.

‘She wants us to find their army, not just the signs of it,’ the captain said.

Tom grinned. ‘That will be a mighty feat of arms,’ he said.

Ser Milus had the banner, and the rest of his entourage was ready to mount. But the sergeant at arms stood in the gate with only the postern open. They would have to walk their horses out the gate. Even while cursing this delay, the captain commended the old witch. She took his warning seriously.

‘Captain!’

He turned to see Amicia running barefoot across the courtyard.

‘Let’s go,’ Tom grunted. ‘I’ll get a convoy together.’

‘Twenty lances,’ the captain said.

‘Aye,’ said Tom. He winked as he left.

Amicia reached him. He felt her through the aether as she came up. He could smell her, an earthy, female smell, clean and bright, like a new sword. Like a taste of the Wild.

‘The Abbess sends this,’ she said levelly. She held out a small scroll. ‘She says she will take immediate steps, so you are not to think yourself ignored.’

He took the scroll from her hand.

‘Thank you,’ he said. He managed a smile. ‘I am tired and difficult.’

‘You have fought for your life,’ she said. Her eyes held his. ‘There is no fatigue like that of fear and war.’

He might have denied it. Knights don’t admit to fear. But her gentle voice held an absolute certainty. It was healing. It was forgiving.

It was admiring.

He realised that he had been holding her hand the whole time. She flushed, but did not snatch it away.

‘Lady, your words are a tonic to a tired man.’ He bowed and kissed her hand. It was a tonic. That or she had cast a spell on him unnoticed.

She laughed. ‘I am no lady, but a simple novice of this house,’ she said.

He tore himself away from her, or they might have stood far too long in the courtyard, with the first sun of the spring resting on them.

He read the scroll as he rode down the gravel path from the main gate to the Lower Town. Much of the path was walled, and some of it paved, making a fortified road, itself a defence.

Someone had put a great deal of money into this fortress.

He cantered through the town. His shoulder didn’t hurt at all. But his right hand tingled for another reason entirely, and he laughed aloud.

Harndon Palace – Desiderata

Desiderata led her knights and ladies out into the spring.

It was early days yet, and even the heartiest of her bold young friends would not slip into the river naked today. But it was warm enough to ride fast, and to lay a picnic out on blankets.

Lady Mary directed the laying out of the food. Spontaneity, with Desiderata, often involved careful preparation and a great deal of work. Usually by Lady Mary.

Lady Rebecca Almspend, the Queen’s bookish secretary, sat behind her, ticking items off as they were unpacked. They were old allies and childhood friends.

Rebecca kicked off her shoes. ‘It is spring,’ she said.

Mary smiled at her. ‘When a young man’s fancy turns to war,’ she said.

‘Too true. They’ve left us for the first foe in the field, and that is enough to turn any girl’s head.’ Rebecca frowned. ‘I think he’ll offer for me. I thought he might before he left.’

Mary pursed her lips, looking at the two stone jars of marmalade – the Queen’s favourite. She could eat a great deal of marmalade. ‘Did we really bring just two jars?’

‘Honestly, Mary, the stuff costs the earth – oranges from the south? White sugar from the Islands?’ Rebecca tossed her head. ‘She’ll have no teeth when she’s thirty.’

‘No one would notice,’ Mary said.

‘Mary!’ Rebecca was appalled to find her friend weeping. She slipped off her stump, and threw her arms around Mary. She was widely known as sensible, which seemed to mean that all of them could cry on her shoulders. In this case, she stood with her stylus in one hand and her wax tablet in the other, clutched to her friend’s back, feeling a little foolish.

‘He left without so much as a good-bye!’ Mary said, fiercely. ‘Your hillman loves you, Becca! He’ll come back for you, or die in the attempt. Murien only loves himself, and I was a fool-’

‘There, there,’ Rebecca muttered. Over by the willows that lined the river, there was laughter – the flash of the queen’s hair.

‘Look, she has her hair down,’ Mary said.

They both laughed. The Queen tended to let her hair down out of its coif at the least excuse.

Rebecca smiled. ‘If I had her hair, I’d let it down too.’

Mary nodded. She stepped back from their embrace and wiped her eyes. ‘I think we’re ready. Tell the servants to start laying plates.’ She looked around at the trees, the angle of the sun. It was beautiful – as spring-like as could be imagined, like a scene in an illustrated manuscript.

At her word, Mastiff, the Queen’s man, stepped out from behind a tree and bowed. He snapped his fingers, and a dozen men and women moved with the precision of dancers to lay out the meal. They were done in the time it would take a man to run to the river.

Mary touched Mastiff’s elbow. ‘You work miracles, as always, ser,’ she said.

He bowed, obviously pleased. ‘You are too kind, my lady,’ he said. He and his team melted back into the trees, and Mary summoned the Queen and her friends to lunch.

The Queen was barefoot, lightly clad in green with her hair free down her back and her arms bare in the new sun. Some of the young men were fully clad, but two of them, both knights, wore simple homespun tunics and no leggings, like peasants or working men. The Queen seemed to be favouring them – and the short tunics and bare legs did show off their muscles to good advantage.

When they sat on the new grass to eat, though, they had to fold their legs very carefully. This made Mary smile, and meet Rebecca’s eye who grinned and looked away.

Lady Emmota, the youngest of the Queen’s lady’s, had her hair down as well, and when the Queen sat, Emmota sat next to her and the Queen pulled the girl to lie down with her head in the Queen’s lap. The Queen stroked her hair. The young girl gazed at her with adoration.

Most of the young knights were unable to eat.

‘Where is my lord?’ asked the Queen.

Lady Mary curtsied. ‘And it please you, he is hunting, and said he might join us for lunch if the hart allowed him.’

The Queen smiled. ‘I am second mistress to Artemis,’ she said.

Emmota smiled up at her. ‘Let him have his blood,’ she said.

Their eyes met.

Later, while the young men fenced with their swords and bucklers, the women danced. They wove wreathes of flowers, and danced in rings, and sang old songs that were not favoured by the church. As the sun began to sink, they were flushed, and warm, down to their kirtles, and now all of them were barefoot in the grass, and the knights were calling for wine.

The Queen laughed. ‘Messires,’ she said, ‘none of my ladies will get a green back for the quality of your fencing, however much we ladies may be affected by the rising sap of spring.’

The women all laughed. Some of the men looked crestfallen. A few – the best of them – laughed at themselves and their fellows alike, but none of them answered her.

Rebecca put a hand on Mary’s bare arm. ‘I miss him too,’ she said. ‘Gawin would have given her a witty answer.’

Mary laughed. ‘I love her – and she’s right to speak. Emota will fall into the first strong arms that will have her. It’s all the light and the warmth and the bare legs.’ At a motion from the Queen, she walked over and offered a hand to draw the Queen to her feet. The Queen kissed her lady.

‘You arrange everything so well, Mary.’ She took her hands. ‘I hope you had a pleasant day as well.’

‘I am easily pleased,’ Mary said, and the two women smiled at each other, as if enjoying a private joke.

Riding back, they rode three abreast, with the Queen flanked by Lady Mary and Lady Rebecca. Behind them, Emota rode between two young knights, her head back, laughing.

‘Emmota is vulnerable,’ Mary said carefully.

The Queen smiled. ‘Yes. Let us break up these laughs and long glances. It is far too early in the season.’

She straightened her back and gave her horse a check, turned in her saddle like a commander in a tapestry.

‘Gentles! Let us race to the Gates of Harndon!’

Ser Augustus, one of the young men in a peasant’s smock, laughed aloud. ‘What is the forfeit?’ he called.

‘A kiss!’ called the Queen, and she gathered her horse under her.

One of the squires blew a horn, and they were away into the fading spring light in a riot of colour and noise, the last of the sun on brilliant greens and blues and brght scarlet, gold and silver.

But the Queen’s kiss was never in danger. Her southern mare seemed to scarcely touch the road as she skimmed along, and the Queen was the first horsewoman in her court – back straight, shoulders square, hips relaxed, and the two of them seemed like a single creature as they led the excited pack of young courtiers along the road, over the bridge, and up the long hill, recently lined with fine houses, to the gates of the city.

The Queen touched her crop to them, first of all the pack by two lengths, and Lady Rebecca was second, flushed and delighted at her own prowess.

‘Becca!’ cried the Queen in delight. As the others rode up, she kissed her secretary. ‘You are riding more for your hillman?’

‘Yes,’ she said modestly.

The Queen beamed at her.

‘Are you the Queen, or has some wild hussy stolen the Queen’s horse?’ said a voice from inside the gate, and Diota emerged. ‘Put your hair up, my lady.’ And put some decent clothes on.’

The Queen rolled her eyes.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The Red Knight drank off a cup of wine from the saddle. He handed the cup down to Toby.

‘Listen up, messires,’ he said. ‘Gelfred – we have to assume their camp is between us and Albinkirk.’

Gelfred looked around. ‘Because we didn’t come across it last night, you mean?’

The captain nodded. ‘Exactly. Let’s look at this for a moment. The farm that was hit was east of the fortress.’

Ser Jehannes shrugged. ‘You found the dead Jack west of here, though. And it stands to reason he was returning to camp.’

The captain looked at him for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

Bad Tom leaned in. ‘Can’t be south. They can’t be across the river.’

‘West and north, I’m thinking,’ said Gelfred. ‘I’m sensing there’s a high ridge that way, that runs parallel to the ridge that the fortress is on.’

‘This could take days,’ Ser Jehannes said.

The captain seemed to glow with vitality, an impossible feat for a man who had fought two monsters in three days.

‘Messires,’ he said, ‘This is what we do. All the men-at-arms in the centre, in one group. Pages will ride ahead, ten horse lengths between men. We will stop whenever I whistle, and dismount. And listen. The archers will follow well to the rear, also in a long skirmish line. In the event of a fight, the archers will close on the battle and the men-at-arms will remain under my command. Because we are not going out to fight. We are going out to find evidence of a force of the Wild mustering. The only occasion to fight will be to rescue one of our scouting parties.’ His voice was clipped, professional, and had the self-assurance of a prince. Even Jehannes had to admit his plan was correct.

‘Gelfred, when we locate their camp, we will make a brief demonstration.’ He grinned. ‘To occupy their attention.’ He winked at Cuddy, who nodded.

‘I’m thinking you mean an archery demonstration,’ he said.

The captain nodded and continued. ‘You and your men will conceal yourselves nearby and report what happens when we leave. We will withdraw due east, and come down into the Vale of the Cohocton. If there is pursuit, they will have the sun in their eyes. ‘ The captain looked at Cuddy. ‘If we are pursued-’

‘I dismount the lads and ambush your pursuers. If I ain’t been hit myself.’ He nodded. ‘I know the game.’

The captain clapped his armoured shoulder. ‘Everyone see it?’

His squire, Michael, was pale. ‘We’re going out into the woods, looking for an army of creatures of the Wild?’ he asked.

The Red Knight smiled. ‘That’s right,’ he said.

As their leader turned his war horse and raised his baton to give an order, Jehannes turned to Tom. ‘He’s drunk.’

‘Nah. He’s a loon, like I am. He wants a fight. Give him his head.’ Tom grinned.

‘He’s drunk!’ Jehannes repeated.

Ser Milus shook his head. ‘Only on love,’ he said.

Jehannes spat. ‘Worse and worse.’

They rode west first, and the road was very familiar. As soon as they reached the edge of the woods, the pages split off, riding ahead, their skirmish line widening and widening to the north. The men-at-arms turned into the woods behind them in a compact mass, and then came the archers. Gelfred rode with the captain, and his scouts were nowhere to be seen.

After enough time to terrify most of the pages, who rode in fear of imminent ambush by unimaginable monsters, the captain’s whistle rang out.

Every man reined in his horse and slipped to the ground.

They were still for a long time.

The captain’s whistle sounded again, two long blasts.

They mounted and rode forward. It was late afternoon. The sky had patches of blue, and a man could be warm from the sun, the weight of his harness, and his nerves.

Or cold, from the same causes.

Men tire quickly when they are scared. A patrol in hostile terrain is the most tiring thing a soldier can do short of violence. The captain blew his whistle each time he had completed a silent count to fifteen hundred. Stopping gave his men a rest.

The sun began to slant more, and the light grew redder. The sky to the west was clear.

They began to climb Gelfred’s ridge, and the tension began to grow.

About halfway up the ridge, the captain’s whistle sounded, and the company dismounted.

The captain motioned to Michael, who stood at his shoulder.

‘Whistle: horseholders.’

Michael nodded. He took off his right gauntlet, picked up the silver whistle on the cord around his neck, and blew three long and three short notes. After a pause, he blew the same call again.

All around them, men-at-arms handed their horses to squires. Behind them, at the base of the hill, every sixth archer took the horses of his mates and led them to the rear.

The captain watched it all, wondering if the pages, who he couldn’t see, were also obeying.

He could feel the enemy. He could smell the green of the Wild. He listened, and he could almost hear them. Idly, he wondered why Amicia smelled like the Wild.

There was a distant trumpeting noise, like the belling of a hart.

‘Jehannes, you have the men-at-arms. I’m going to take command of the pages. Michael, on me.’ He handed his reins to Toby and started up the hill. His harness was almost silent, and he moved fast enough to leave Jehannes’s protests behind.

Bad Tom stepped out and followed him.

The hill was steep, and the pages were two hundred paces further up the ridge. He breathed in relief when he saw them – too clumped up, but all dismounted, and he passed a boy of fifteen with six horses headed down the hill.

Climbing a steep ridge in armour reminded him of just how little sleep he’d had since the first fight, against the wyvern, but through his fatigue he could still feel the place on his fingers where Amicia had touched him.

Michael and Tom had trouble keeping up with him.

He reached the pages. Jacques had them spreading out already. He smiled at the captain.

‘Nice job,’ he whispered.

‘We’re going to the top, I take it?’ asked Jacques.

The captain looked right and left. ‘Yes,’ he said. He motioned to Michael, who gave one whistle blast.

The pages were lightly armed. They weren’t woodsmen, but they slipped up the hill like ghosts, at a pace that left the captain breathless. The hill steepened and steepened as they climbed, until the very top was almost sheer, and the pages hauled themselves up from tree to tree.

There was a scream, a wicked hiss of arrows, a boy of no more than sixteen roared, ‘For God and Saint George!’ and there was the unmistakable sound of steel on steel.

An arrow, nearly spent, rang off the captain’s helmet.

Suddenly, he had the spirit to run to the crest of the hill. The trees were dense, and branches reached for him, but a man in armour can run through a thicket of thorns and not take a scratch. He grabbed a slim oak, pulled with all his strength, and found himself at the top.

There was a small hollow, with a fire hidden by the bulk of the hill, and a dozen men.

Not men.

Irks.

Like men, but thinner and faster, with brown-green skin like bark, almond eyes and pointed teeth like wolves. Even as the captain stopped in surprise, an arrow rang off his breastplate and a dozen pages burst from the trees to the right of the irks around the fire and charged.

The captain lowered his head and ran at the irks, too.

They loosed arrows and fled away north, and the pages gave chase.

The captain stopped and opened his visor. Michael appeared at his side, sword out, buckler on his left hand. He could smell woodsmoke, lots of woodsmoke.

‘We’ve found them!’ Michael said.

‘No. A dozen irks is not an army of darkness,’ said the captain. He looked at the sky.

Tom came up behind him.

‘Tom? We have an hour of good light. The pages are running down their sentries.’ He looked at the veteran man-at-arms. He shrugged. ‘I don’t really know all that much about fighting the Wild,’ he admitted. ‘My instinct is to keep going forward.’

Tom nodded. ‘It’s the Wild,’ he said. ‘They never have a reserve. Yon won’t have anything like a quarter guard.’ He shrugged.

The captain knew the decision they made now was pivotal. Any losses out here didn’t bear thinking about. Caution would dictate-

He thought of her touch on his hand. Her admiration.

He turned to Michael. ‘Tell the archers to prepare an ambush half a league back. men-at-arms to guard the horses at the base of the ridge. This is the pages only. Understand?’

Michael nodded. ‘I want to come with you.’

‘No. Give me your whistle. Now move! Tom, with me.’

They ran down the northern side of the ridge, toward the sound of screams and fighting.

Later, the captain admitted that he’d let the pages get too far ahead of him. The deep woods and fading light made it almost impossible to maintain communications.

He ran down the ridge with Tom beside him, crashing recklessly through thickets. He all but fell into a steep-sided vale; a small stream that cut deeply into the side of the ridge. It was easier to go east, so he followed it, passing three corpses – all irks.

At the base of the ridge, with his breath coming in great shuddering gasps, there was a shallow stream and, on the far side, a path. And along the path-

Tents. But no pages.

There were fifty men, most of them stringing bows.

The captain stopped. He’d made enough noise coming down the ridge to catch their attention but with the sun at his back, despite his armour, they were easier for him to see than he was for them.

Tom and Jacques and a dozen pages who had followed them down the hill slipped in behind old trees. There were screams off to the west – screams and something else.

‘Fucking Jacks,’ Jacques said.

The men across the stream turned, almost as one. A small horde of boglins and irks bolted down the path from the west. It was odd to see the monsters of myth running.

The Jacks began to shuffle.

Several of them drew their great bows and shot west.

The captain looked around. ‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘Make a lot of noise.’

They all looked at him.

‘One. Two. Three.’ He broke cover, and bellowed ‘THE RED KNIGHT!’ The effect was electric. The captain was south of and slightly behind the line of Jacks, and they had to look over their shoulders to see him. Immediately, men began to flee with the boglins and the irks.

The pages behind him roared his battlecry, and Bad Tom roared his – ‘Lachlan for Aa!’

There are different types of soldier. Some men are trained to stand under fire, waiting for their turn to inflict death. Others are like hunters, slipping from cover to cover.

The Jacks were not of a mind to stand and fight. It wasn’t their way. One arrow, launched from a mighty bow, slammed into the captain’s scarlet surcote, punched through it, and left a dent a finger deep and bruised him like a kick from a mule. And then the Jacks were gone.

The captain grabbed Bad Tom by the shoulder. ‘Stop!’ he roared.

Tom’s eyes were wild. ‘I have nae’ wet my sword!’ he shouted.

The captain kept a hand on him, like a man calming a favourite dog. He blew the recall on the whistle – three long blasts, and then three more, and then three more.

The pages stopped. Many wiped their swords on dead things, and all of them drank from their water bottles.

From the east came a long scream. It was an alien sound, and it sobered them.

‘Up and over the ridge. Straight back the way we came, tight and orderly. Now.’ The captain pointed his sword up the ridge. ‘Stay by the stream!’ he called.

Now there was a baying and roaring in the woods to the east. Roaring, infernal screams, and something else, something that was huge and terrible and fell, and as tall as the trees.

He turned to run up the ridge.

Tom was still at his shoulder. ‘I have nae killed a one!’ he said. ‘Just let me kill one!’

Suiting action to word, Tom turned as a gout of green fire smashed into the ground, not two horselengths from Tom’s outstretched sword. It exploded with a roar and suddenly the very stones seemed to be on fire.

Tom smiled and raised his sword.

‘Tom!’ the captain screamed. ‘This is not the time!’

Boglins and irks were crossing the stream at the foot of the ridge, led by a golden bear, as tall as a war horse and shining gold like the sun. When it roared, its voice filled the woods like a storm wind.

‘What the fuck is that?’ asked Tom. ‘By god, I want a cut at that!’

The captain pulled hard at the hillman’s arm. ‘With me!’ he ordered, and ran.

Grudgingly, Tom turned and followed him.

They made the top of the ridge. The bear was not charging them, it seemed content to lead the boglins and the irks. But behind them came something far worse. And much larger.

The pages had waited for the captain a little way down the ridge, in itself an act of fine discipline and bravery. But as soon as he caught them up, they turned and ran for the base and their horses.

The captain could barely move his steel clad feet, and never had leg armour seemed so pointless, so heavy, as it did when the first of the enemy began to crest the hill behind him. They were close.

West of Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn’s initial reaction to the assault on his camp was panic. It took him long minutes to recover from the shock and when he did, the sheer effrontery of it filled him with an irrational rage. As he reached out through his creatures, he was shocked to find how pitiful and few were his human attackers. A few dozen of them, and they had sent his Jacks running down the path, broken fifty irks, and killed an outpost of boglins who were caught napping after a feed.

He stopped the rout by killing the first irk to pass him, in spectacular style. The creature exploded in green fire, raining burning flesh on the others, and the Magus raised his hoary arms and the rout stopped.

‘You fools!’ he roared at them. ‘There are fewer than fifty of them!’ He wished he had his daemons but they were already scouting Albinkirk. His wyverns were close, but not close enough. He poured his will into two of the golden bears and sent his forces up the ridge after the raiders. His Wild creatures would be far more nimble in the woods then mere men. The bears were faster than horses on their home ground.

One of the boglin chiefs stood at his side, his milk-white chiton all but glowing in the setting sun.

‘Tell your people that they will feast. Anything they catch is for their own.’

Exrech saluted with a sword. He released a cloud of vapour – part power and part scent. And then he was away, racing loose-limbed up the ridge with boglins following like a brown tide at his heels.

West of Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain tried to be the last man, shoving his flagging pages along before him by force of will, but the weaker among them were used up. One, a little plumper than he ought to have been, stopped to breathe hard.

The enemy were fifty paces away. Closer with every heartbeat.

‘Run!’ roared Tom.

The boy threw up, looked behind him and froze.

A boglin paused and shot him with an arrow.

He screamed and fell, kicking, into his own vomit.

Tom heaved the writhing boy over his shoulders and ran. His sword licked out – caught an irk in the top of the knee, and the thing screamed and fell, clutching at the wound.

The captain paused – they were trying to surround him. He punched at the nearest and impaled him, took two cuts on his leg armour, and suddenly it had been worth it to wear the stuff all afternoon.

There were, in moments, hundreds of boglins. They seemed to boil up out of the ground in terrifying numbers. They moved like ants and covered the forest floor as fast as he could back away. Their armoured heads rose above his knight’s belt.

Behind him, he heard a trumpet call and Cuddy’s voice, as clear as on parade, called ‘Nock! And Loose!’

The captain was still on his feet, but there was a sharp pain in his left thigh where a boglin was trying to sink its jaws into his flesh, and his legs were all but immobilized by the press of creatures when something reached for his soul through the aether.

He panicked.

He couldn’t see. The brown boglins were everywhere, clamping onto him, and he wasn’t fighting anymore, he was just trying to keep his feet, and the pressure of the phantasm was bearing down harder and harder on his soul.

Then, even through his helmet and his fear, he could hear the hiss of the warbow arrows, like the fall of vicious sleet.

The arrows hit.

Three of them hit him.

West of Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn paused at the top of the ridge to watch the last moments of the raiding party. The boglins weren’t as fast as the irks, but the irks were running the enemy down. The tide of boglins would finish the fight.

Any fight.

He prepared a casting, gathering the raw force of nature to him through a web of half-rational portals and paths.

At the base of the ridge, one of the fleeing raiders paused.

Thorn reached out for him, grasped him and felt his will slip off the man like claws around a stone.

And then fifty enemy archers stood up from concealment, and began to fill the air with wood and iron.

West of Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain was hit more than a dozen times more. Every strike was like being kicked by a mule. Most fell on his helmet, but one ripped across his inner thigh, cutting through his hose and his braes. He was blind with pain, dazed by the repeated impacts.

But he was armed cap a pied in hardened steel armour, and the boglins trying to kill him were not.

When every one of Cuddy’s archers had loosed six shafts, the v-shaped space between the arms of the ambush was silent. Nothing was left alive.

Cuddy ordered his men forward to collect their shafts as the captain raised his visor, aware that there was still something-

At the top of the hill, the figure of horror stepped out where they could all see him, and raised his arms-

He still functioned through the panic because he’d been afraid so damned often he was used to it now.

The captain touched Prudentia’s hand. Above his head, the three great levels of his palace spun like gaming wheels.

Don’t open the door! Prudentia said. He’s right there!

Faced with imminent immolation, the captain opened the door.

There was an entity of the Wild. Right outside the door to his mind.

He made a long, sharp dagger of his will and punched it into the entity, leaning out through the door to do so.

Prudentia caught him.

The door slammed shut.

‘You’re insane,’ she said

In the world the great figure stumbled. It didn’t fall, but the intensity of its gathered power stumbled with it. And dissipated.

‘To horse!’ he captain roared. Behind the monstrous figure on the ridge he could see thrashing tentacles approaching and fresh hordes of monsters.

The massive thing, like two twin trees, reared up and a flash of green fire covered the hillside. It fell shorter than it might have, or more men might have died, but archers were reduced to bones – a page burned green like a hideous barn-lamp for three heartbeats before vanishing – and dozens of wounded creastures on the ground were immolated as well.

Behind him, men were mounting – pages and archers hurried horses to their riders. This was their most practised movement; escape.

But the captain’s sense of the enemy was that he’d get one more gout of fire in.

He got a leg over Grendel’s saddle and

Passed back into the palace.

‘Shield, Pru!’ he called. He pulled raw power from the sack hanging on her arm as the sigils turned above them – Xenophon, St George, Ares.

The first spell any magister learned. The measure of an adept’s power.

He made a buckler, small and nimble, and threw it far forward, into his adversary’s face.

Behind him, the corporals ordered men into motion, but they needed no urging, and the company moved away, down the hill.

The captain turned Grendel and rode, running as fast as the heavy horse would allow-

The two-horned thing in the woods reached out with his staff-

The captain’s shield – his very strongest, smallest, neatest casting – vanished like a moth in a forge fire.

The captain felt his shield go – felt it vanish – had a taste of the sheer power of his adversary – but training told.

Quick as a cat pouncing, the captain spun his horse to face the foe and

reached in and cast again – a wider arc to cover horse and rider

The green fire ran across the ground like a rising tide, immolating everything that lay in its path – scarring trees, reaping grass and flowers, boiling squirrels in their own skin. It struck the air in front of Grendel’s chamfron-

It was like watching a sand-castle give way under the power of the waves.

His second shield was weaker, but the green fire had crossed hundreds of paces of ground and its puissance was ebbing – and still it eroded the shield – slowly, and then more quickly as Grendel half-reared in panic, alone in a sea of incandescent green.

He put everything he had – every shred of stored power

He could smell burning leather, and he could see – trees. Upright and black.

Grendel screamed and bolted.

All he wanted to do was sleep, but Cuddy needed reassurance. ‘You was in full harness-’ said the Master Archer.

‘It was the right decision,’ the captain agreed.

‘I can’t believe we hit you so many times,’ Cuddy said, shaking his head. Even as he spoke, Carlus, the armourer and company trumpeter, was working with heat and main strength to get the dents out of the captain’s beautiful helmet.

‘I’ll be more careful to whom I give extra work details in future,’ the captain agreed.

Cuddy left the tent, still muttering.

Michael got his captain out of the rest of his armour. The breast plate was badly dented in two places. The arm harnesses were untouched.

‘Wipe my blade first,’ muttered the captain. ‘Boglins; I’ve heard their blood is caustic.’

‘Boglins,’ Michael said. He shook his head. ‘Irks. Magic.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Did we win?’

‘Ask me that in a month, young Michael. How many did we lose?’

‘Six pages. And three archers, in the retreat when yon thing began to rain fire on us.’ Michael shrugged.

Their retreat had become a rout. Most of the men had ridden back to camp almost blind with terror, as more and more monsters crested the ridge and entered the field, following that fire-raining figure of terror.

‘Well.’ The captain allowed his eyes to close for a moment and then jolted awake. ‘Son of a bitch. I have to tell the Abbess.’

‘They might attack us again, any moment,’ Michael said.

The captain gave him a hard look. ‘Whatever they are, they aren’t so different from us. They know fear. They do not want to die. We hurt them today.’ They hurt us, too. I was too rash. Damn it all.

‘So now what happens?’ Michael asked.

‘We scurry into the fortress. And that thing comes and lays siege to us.’ The captain got slowly to his feet. For a moment, absent the weight of his harness, he felt as if he could fly. Then the fatigue settled again like an old and evil friend.

‘Attend me,’ he said.

The Abbess received him immediately.

‘It seems you were correct. Your men look badly beaten.’ She averted her eyes. ‘That was unworthy,’ she allowed.

He managed a smile. ‘My lady, you should see the state they’re in.’

She laughed. ‘Is that cockiness or truth?’

‘I think we killed a hundred boglin and fifty irks. Perhaps even a few Jacks. And we kicked the hornet’s nest.’ He frowned. ‘I saw their leader – a great horned creature. Like a living tree, but malevolent.’ He shrugged, trying to forget his panic. Tried to keep his voice light. ‘It was huge.’

She nodded.

He put that nod away for future consideration. Even in his fatigue, he caught that she knew something.

She went to the mantel of her chimney and picked up her curious ivory box. This time, she opened it and took the slip of bark between her hands. It turned jet-black. He felt her casting. Then she threw it in the fire.

‘What shall I do now?’ the captain asked. He was too tired to think.

She pursed her lips. ‘You tell me, Captain,’ she said. ‘You are in command.’

Lissen Carak – Father Henry

Father Henry watched the mercenary come down the steps of the Great Hall with the Abbess on his arm, and his skin crawled to watch that spawn of Satan touch her. The man was young and pretty, for all his bruises and the dark circles under his eyes, and he had an air about him that Father Henry knew in his soul was all pretence; the sham of concern and the worm of falsity.

The big mercenary barked a laugh. And then the sergeant at arms and the master warder both appeared from the donjon tower.

Father Henry knew his duty – knew that he could not allow major decisions to be made without him. He walked forward to join them.

The Abbess gave him a look that he suspected was meant to drive him away, but he schooled his face to hide his feelings and bowed to the loathsome killer and his minion.

The master warder rolled his eyes. ‘Nothing for you here, Father,’ he said.

The old soldier had never liked him, had never made a confession.

The mercenary returned his bow pleasantly enough, but the Abbess didn’t introduce him or let any one else do so. She indicated the mercenary. ‘The captain is now the Commander of this fortress. I expect all of you to give him your ready obedience.’

The master warder nodded and the sergeant at arms, who commanded the tiny garrison, merely bowed. A possible ally, then.

‘My lady!’ Father Henry rallied his arguments. His thoughts were a riot of confused images and conflicting motives, but they were united by the knowledge that this man must not be given command of the fortress. ‘My lady! This man is an apostate, an unrepentant sinner, a bastard child of an unknown mother by his own admission.’

The mercenary now looked at him with reptilian hate.

Good.

‘I’ve never suggested my mother was unknown,’ he said with mild condescension.

‘You cannot allow this piece of scum into our fortress,’ the priest said.

He was too vehement, he could see them closing their minds against him. ‘As your spiritual adviser-’

‘Father, let us continue this conversation at a more seemly time and place,’ the Abbess said.

Oh, how he hated her tone. She spoke to him – him, a man, a priest – as if he was a errant child and just for a moment the quality of his rage must have shown through, because all of them – except the mercenary – took a step back.

The mercenary, on the other hand, looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, and gave a sharp nod.

‘I feel you are making a grave error, my lady,’ the priest began again, but she turned on him with a speed that belied her years and put her hand on the pectoral cross he wore.

‘I understand that you disagree with my decision, Father Henry. Now please desist.’ Her tone of ice froze him in place.

‘I will not stop while the power of the Lord-’

‘Me Dikeou!’ she hissed at him.

The bitch was using arcane powers on him. And he found himself unable to speak. It was as if his tongue had gone to sleep. He couldn’t even form a word in his mind.

He staggered back, scarred hands over his mouth, all of his suspicions confirmed and all of his petty errors transformed into acts of courage. She had used witchcraft against him. She was a witch – an ally of Satan. Whereas he-

She turned to him. ‘This is an emergency, Father, and you were warned. Return to your chapel and do penance for your disobedience.’

He fled.

North of Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn strode east as fast as his long legs would carry him, a swarm of faeries around his head like insects, feeding on the power that clung to him like moss to stone. ‘We continue,’ he said to the daemon at his side.

The daemon surveyed the wreckage of tents and the scatter of corpses. ‘How many did you lose?’ he asked. His crest moved with agitation.

‘Lose? Only a handful. The boglins are young and unprepared for war.’ The great figure shook like a tree in the wind.

‘You took a wound yourself,’ Thurkan said.

Thorn stopped. ‘Is this one of your dominance games? One of them distracted me. He had a little magic and I was slow to respond. It will not happen again. Their attack had no real affect on us.’

The great figure turned and shambled east. Around him, irks and boglins and men packed their belongings and prepared to march.

Thurkan loped alongside, easily keeping pace with the giant sorcerer. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why Albinkirk?’

Thorn stopped. He despised being questioned, especially by a troublemaker like Thurkan, who saw himself – a mere daemon – as his peer. He longed to say, ‘Because I will it so.’

But this was not the moment.

‘Power summons power,’ he said.

Thurkan’s head-crest trembled in agreement. ‘So?’ he asked.

‘The irks and boglin hordes are restless. They have come here – was that at your bidding, daemon?’ Thorn leaned at the waist. ‘Well?’

‘Violence summons violence,’ Thurkan said. ‘Men killed creatures of the Wild. A golden bear was enslaved by men. It cannot be borne. My cousin was murdered; so was a wyvern. We are the guardians. We must act.’

Thorn paused, and pointed his staff. They were passing to the north of the great fortress; it was just visible from here, high on its ridge to the south.

‘We will never take the Rock with the force we have,’ Thorn said. ‘I might act to destroy it, or I might not. This is not my fight. But we are allies, and I will help you.’

‘By leading us away from that which we wish to reclaim?’ snapped the daemon.

‘By unleashing the Wild against a worthy goal. An attainable goal. We will strike a blow that will rock the kingdoms of man, and that will send a signal throughout the Wild. Many, many more will come to us. Is this not so?’

Thurkan nodded slow agreement. ‘If we burn Albinkirk, many will know it and many will come.’

‘And then,’ said Thorn, ‘we will have the force and the time to act against the Rock, while the men worry over smoking ruins.’

‘And you will be many times more powerful than you are now,’ Thurkan said suspiciously.

‘When you and yours can again drink from the spring of the Rock, and mate in the tunnels beneath the Rock, you will thank me,’ Thorn said.

Together, they began to walk east.