Robin, who was a good sort and widely popular, was also a lord in his own right. Nell liked him because he kept order well, was polite to young girls and worked all the time. Nell mostly rated people by the amount of work they did.
She bent her knee. “My lord?” she said.
“Morning, Nell,” Robin said, still polishing. “Who’s he?”
“Took the silver penny last night. Hight Diccon Twig.”
Robin nodded to the new boy. “Welcome to the company, young Diccon.”
Robin was perhaps three years older than Diccon, but no one made any comment. Robin had fought well at the big battle outside Lonika—he was no longer “young Robin.” Soon he would be “Ser Robin.” Everyone knew it.
“My da—” Diccon looked at the ground. “… my da calls me ‘Bent.’”
Robin smiled. “No. Sorry, Diccon. It’s a good name, but a master archer had it and it died with him. Got another?”
“My mother calls me a God-Damned Fool,” Diccon said with a smile.
“Good, you’ll fit right in. Don’t worry about a nickname, Diccon. You’ll get one when it comes and not before.” Robin looked at Nell.
Nell said, “I think he’s to be your archer.”
Robin raised an eyebrow. “Well—we can certainly use the help. Diccon, get me four armloads of firewood and talk to that woman in the blue kirtle and the soldier’s cloak for further orders.”
“Who’s she?” Diccon asked.
Robin’s face became a shade less friendly. “Diccon, in the normal run of things, you don’t speak to me at all and you don’t ever ask me a question. Eventually—” He smiled at Nell. “Eventually you’ll be welcome to say what you please and ask all the questions you like. But just now, I gave you an order—to do work that will benefit everyone in our mess group. Don’t give me any shit. Go do your work.”
Nell stood with crossed arms and didn’t do anything to support the boy. He flushed with anger, but he swallowed it and went to get wood. Nell followed him. “She’s Lady Kaitlin’s maid, and she’s sort of the head non-combatant in your mess group. She and Robin give the orders.”
“What’s a fewkin’ mess group?” Diccon asked.
She looked at him, as if enjoying his confusion because it reminded her how far she’d come. “Do you know what a lance is?”
He didn’t stay in an ill-humour long. He grabbed a good armload of wood—nice dry maple—and started back to the fires. Just to be supportive, Nell took an armload, too.
“A spear about ten feet long?” he said.
“It’s a knight, a squire, an archer or two and a page,” she said. “Two lances make a mess group, with their lemans and their—”
“What’s a leman?” he asked.
“Lover. Whore. Partner. Wife. Husband. Whatever.” Nell laughed. “You only get to have one permanent-like with the captain’s permission.”
“Christ, it’s worse than being a monk!” Diccon said. He dropped his wood on the right pile and then stooped to stack it before going back for another load. Six pairs of watching eyes noted him stack the wood he’d just dumped with approval.
Nell shrugged. “Lemans cost money for food and bedding and everything. Any road, we don’t leave ours behind. So the veterans have lemans and they bring up the numbers of a mess group to ten or twelve. Everyone in that group eats together, sleeps together, and works together. Most of us fight together.” She grunted as she lifted a big chunk of oak.
He took it from her and held out his arms to be loaded up. “You in my group?” he asked.
“No, sweet. If I were, I wouldn’t buss you or allow any liberties. Got that? It’s a rule, too.” She smiled. “I’m the captain’s page. I’m in the command lance.”
“Is that special?” Diccon asked. His eyes were brimful of questions.
“It’ll be more than a mite special if I don’t have the horses ready for inspection. We move in two hours.” She dropped her load on the pile. “Stack mine, will ye?” she asked. “I’ll come see you later. Anything you fuck up, just say you’re sorry. Don’t cross the captain or the primus pilus. That’s all the advice I have.”
She went back to where Robin was sitting. He had a cup of hippocras in his hand and he was looking at Ser Michael’s sabatons, which had somehow started to rust overnight.
“I’m a dead man,” he said.
Nell thought that was probably true, but felt no pity. She bobbed her head. Squires got one bended knee first thing and then they were pretty much just folk. “I don’t think the new boy has anything,” she said. “Not even a blanket, and certes no horse or arms.”
Lord Robin sighed. “I’m going to catch it. Nell, can you ask Toby to help me?”
“If’n you’ll see to it that the new boy gets sorted,” Nell said. She smiled to show she wasn’t entirely serious.
Robin looked pained. “You like him,” he said.
Nell shrugged. “Yes, sir.”
Robin nodded. “Please find Toby,” he said.
Toby was attending the captain, and Nell didn’t even try and find him until all the horses were done. The sun was well up by the time she found them both, out behind the inn’s barns.
“Toby, Toby,” the captain said. “Again.”
Toby was stripped to hose and a doublet and both men were covered in sweat. They both had arming swords in their hands and, after the captain spoke, Toby cut hard at the captain’s head.
The captain retreated his front foot to his back foot so that he stood in a narrow stance and his forward leg was pulled out of an adversary’s range, standing straighter as he slipped the front foot back and covered his head with his sword. Garda di testa. Nell knew all the guards, now.
Then he uncoiled like a viper striking and Toby got his sword up. But his slip wasn’t deep enough—he didn’t pull back his front foot enough. Still, he covered his head well, and he countered—the same cut.
The captain pulled back his front foot and covered his head. And cut—
Toby raised his sword without retreating.
The captain’s sword moved so fast that it was like watching a hummingbird strike. It came to rest against Toby’s outthrust thigh.
Ser Gabriel frowned. “You’re tired. We’ll call it for today, Toby. But you have to learn to move your legs.”
Toby looked frustrated and angry.
The captain’s eye caught Nell. “Good morning, young lady. How is my beautiful new horse?”
“Eating, my lord,” Nell answered. “It’s all he does. He’ll need exercise today.”
The captain smiled. “If I don’t get on him today, you take him tonight. Yes?”
“Of course, my lord.”
He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Do you need something, Nell?”
“No, my lord. But I need Toby, if he’s at leisure.” She hoped that Robin appreciated how well she was keeping her end of the bargain, because this was leading with her chin. The captain could be savage, especially early in the morning after he’d been drinking.
Toby sheathed his arming sword after looking at the blade for nicks. “I’m with you, Nell,” he said.
The captain made a sign that they could talk. He was examining his own blade, the new red-gripped arming sword that matched his long sword for war—gilt-steel guard and round pommel, and two newfangled finger rings on the guard.
“What do you need?” Toby asked. He was breathing hard.
“Robin needs you. He’s hard pressed for time and water got at Ser Michael’s armour.”
“Sweet Jesu and all the saints!” Toby shook his head. “If a man will spend all night in the arms of a—” He looked at Nell. “I’ll go.”
“Feel free to give him some shit,” Nell said. “But I promised to fetch you.” Whatever Toby lacked in fighting skills—he was late to the life of arms and a slow physical learner—he was the best metal polisher in the company.
The captain had not sheathed his sword. “Nell—do I gather that you are at leisure?”
/> Nell’s heart did a back-flip. “Er… yes?” she said.
The captain nodded. “I don’t think I’ve paid enough attention to your training, lass. Have you been practising?”
“Yes, my lord. Sword and poleaxe. Ser Bescanon and Ser Alison. And gymnastika with Ser Alcaeus and swimming with—” She flushed. “With the women.”
The captain nodded. “You relieve my mind, Nell. But I know you took a wound in Morea and I have a mind to be a little more attentive to your life of arms. Draw.”
She had her arming sword on her hip and she took her sword carefully from her scabbard.
She was afraid of the captain at the best of times. She admired him, but he was older, bigger, and he had a temper. And his eyes glowed red when she made him angry or frustrated him.
Standing across the grass from her, he was as tall as Ataelus and his sword seemed huge, but the worst of it was that his eyes weren’t red. They were reptilian.
“I’m going to make some simple attacks,” he said. “Try not to die.” He smiled. “It would take me years to find another page as good as you.”
That cheered her up.
He struck.
She’d gotten into a guard—Ser Alison said always do what you know, and she knew that she liked having her sword out in front of her. In a world where everyone was bigger, stronger and longer limbed than she, Nell had learned that basic centreline guards were for her.
She flicked her blade into frontale, crossing the captain’s blade. His wrist was like iron, but she’d swaggered blades with Wilful Murder and Long Paw and even Ranald Lachlan in the practice yards of Morea.
He bounced back and cut again. She made sure to slip her front foot and sure enough, he cut at her leg.
He saluted her. “It’s such a pleasure to find that someone is paying attention.” He cut at her head—left/right in two tempi.
She covered and covered, but the second was sloppy and late.
He did it again, faster. But she was ready and made both covers.
He thrust.
He left the needle sharp point of his arming sword at the laces of her pourpoint. “Up until that point, you were positively excellent, except your sloppy draw.”
All she could think was, How can anyone be that fast?
From that point until they were summoned to breakfast, he made her draw her sword and return it without looking at her scabbard. She put the point of her sword through the web of her left thumb and cursed. He made her continue, and she hated him.
Father Arnaud came out in his black pourpoint. It was a handsome garment for a priest sworn to poverty—black wool velvet, closely embroidered in organic curves that emphasized his physique, which was excellent even by the company’s standards.
“You’re my third customer this morning,” the captain joked, waving his sword at his confessor. “Nell, don’t be angry. You are coming along nicely. But if you fumble your draw you never get to test your swordsmanship, because you’re dead. And if you can’t sheath your sword while you watch your opponent—” He shrugged. “You might still be dead.”
Nell bent her knee to the captain. “Thank you, my lord, for the lesson.”
Ser Gabriel nodded his head. “Every morning, now, I think—you and Toby.”
She had moved from anger to floating on a cloud. Praise? For her use of arms? Training with Ser Gabriel his self?
Nell wanted to be a knight. So badly she could taste it. And she knew she’d just moved a rung up that ladder.
“She pricked her hand,” Ser Gabriel said to Father Arnaud.
The priest smiled. It was a happy smile, a joyous smile. “May I see?” he asked.
She held out her hand.
He made a face and said, “In nomine patris,” and her hand was whole. Just like that. It didn’t even hurt.
“My God!” she said, shocked.
“Yes,” said Father Arnaud. He beamed.
Breakfast had been called twice, but one of the advantages of being the captain of a rich company of mercenaries is that you know someone will keep your food hot.
“He doesn’t threaten your beliefs?” the captain asked as he stepped to the right, trying to baffle his adversary’s patient attempts to change the tempo.
Father Arnaud smiled. “Not in the least,” he said. “If belief were easy, everyone would do it.”
The captain’s sword flicked out. The two men were wearing steel gauntlets as a concession to the sheer danger of sparring with sharps. Father Arnaud twisted and flicked the captain’s blade up and to his own right but his counter-cut found the captain out of distance.
“He scares the crap out of me,” the captain said. He cut down from a high inside guard—sopra di braccio—but it was a feint. Father Arnaud pulled his hand back but the captain’s blade wasn’t there anymore, but describing the almost-lazy arc of an envelopment. Father Arnaud slipped it with a wrist-flick to find that it, too, had been a feint.
“That’s it,” he said with the captain’s sword at his chest. “Now I know you are the spawn of Satan. No mortal man can use a double envelopment with a war sword.”
The captain laughed so hard he had to go down on one knee. “You should fight my brother,” he said, breathing like a smith’s bellows. “They must have searched your entire order for a man so good with both weapons and flattery,” he wheezed. “Hah!” He laughed again. “It was pretty good. I was afraid… I don’t know.”
“You are a curious man,” Father Arnaud said. “You were afraid that I would be hurt by your friend the dragon. Instead, he healed me, and in more than just my own powers.”
Gabriel sat back on his heels. “I’m glad. Let’s eat.”
They walked companionably into the common room. There were boards laid on a trestles and long benches and boxes, and grey-clad drovers sat intermixed with the knights and archers of the company. It was warm, and there was food—piles of cut bacon in big, deep wooden bowls cut from tree burls, and bread fried in fat with egg on it; good maple syrup in pitchers, buttermilk and hot wine and sassafras tea. Again, the inn staff moved like the professionals they were—huge wooden platters of food emerged from the kitchens to replace those emptied by guests—hot wine was produced, and honey.
There was a hush when the captain came into the hall, and then everyone went back to eating. The captain sat at a table with Father Arnaud, Sauce, and Ser Alcaeus. Bad Tom paused to talk to a drover and then came and settled next to Sauce, making the bench creak.
“Well?” Tom asked.
Gabriel shook his head. “We have to be very careful about our talking,” he said.
“Do you trust him?” Sauce asked with a head jerk to indicate the absent Wyrm.
Gabriel wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something bad and shook his head rapidly. He pulled a knife and a pricker from his baselard sheath and began to eat.
Tom nodded. “I need to move while the weather holds,” he said. “My lads will be that sorry to miss another night here, but I have—” He shrugged. “Three thousand head or more for Harndon. Last year the whole herd went to Lissen Carak. And the army.”
Gabriel didn’t quite look up, but their eyes met. “You’re going to Lissen Carak and then to Harndon? Yes?”
Tom frowned. “If I can find a buyer at Southford, I’m of a mind to sell him part of the herd for Lissen Carak—for the fair.”
“I need you at Ser James’s council,” the captain said.
Tom was entirely reasonable. “I wouldn’t miss it. But that’s Albinkirk, and I don’ need to risk me beasties one league west o’ the fords.” He leaned forward. “Keeper says there’s daemons in the woods and the Huran are moving.”
Ser Gabriel’s smile was thin. “Then we should probably stop talking and get a move on. Corporals and above, outside in the yard. Then we move.”
His authority was so palpable that Ser Gavin almost saluted his brother.
Armoured and ready to ride, Sauce stood by her horse in her ancient arming jacket, the one she’d stopped wea
ring almost a year before. She’d been forced into it this morning because her new, beautiful scarlet arming coat with its finely worked grommets and fancy quilting had torn—two grommets ripped clean through by the lace that held her right arm harness. The old one was smelly and too tight and crisp with old sweat on old leather and linen so filthy it felt like felt.
She mused on the feeling. Considering, as she munched an apple still hale after a winter in the inn’s cellars, that she’d once been used to clothes this filthy; she’d once been quite a tough thing, and now she chafed, her shoulders unused to the rough fabric.
“I’m getting soft,” she said.
Mag was already up in her wagon seat, high above Sauce. “Don’t you believe it, my sweet,” Mag muttered. “What you are getting is older.”
Sauce winced.
Mag was sewing away at her nice arming coat, and Sauce, who was virtually blind to both ops and potentia was still able to feel the strength of the older woman’s working, the way a blindfolded prisoner might feel the kiss of the sun.
Around them, one by one, the knights and men-at-arms of the company came out of the common room, paid their tabs and tallies at a long table set in the yard for the purpose and went to get the last points tied on their harnesses, or to get a strap or buckle looked at.
Ser Dagon La Forêt paused by Sauce’s horse. He was shifting uncomfortably inside his new six-piece breastplate. He settled it on his hips and winced. He gave Sauce a rueful smile. “Must we ride in harness every day? Couldn’t we let some of the bruises heal?”
Sauce was pleased at some remove to know that she wasn’t the only one bitching.
Ser George sighed. “If there’s a safer place in all Nova Terra than the country around the Inn of Dorling,” he said.
Mag laughed and nodded her agreement. “Only a fool would come inside the Circle of the Wyrm,” she said.
The Wyrm of Ercch—sometimes known as Master Smythe—held a territory many leagues across, centred on the white-topped Mons Draconis. The drovers and the inn lived within the Wyrm’s claim, and prospered. Travellers were seldom disturbed, although a few faint-hearted souls claimed to have seen a flying creature as big as a ship and refused to pass that way again. Merchants, on the other hand, always travelled across the Wyrm’s dominion.