The towers were manned, and the gate; local Redesdale militia in russet red wool cotes over browned maille; hard men and women who lived on a frontier and saw more fighting than most militia, every year. They numbered in the mere hundreds, but their well-oiled gear and clean swords gave Gavin hope.
“Milett, my lord,” said the grey-haired man at the gate in a nice Etruscan kettle helm. “I’m the capt’n, right eno; hight Ralph Milett. I ha’e six hundred good people; another thousand in my arriere ban, but they’re mostly unarmed and good for digging; small folk, and tenant farmers, and new folk out from the east.”
Milett said east as if it was a curse word.
Ser Gavin looked back out the gate. “I have more than ten thousand soldiers coming in, Captain. My people include wardens, bogglins, and irks. I expect my allies to receive every courtesy …”
“Not past this gate,” said a man in a fine maille shirt.
There was grumbling.
The Green Earl backed his horse. “Listen up,” he said. “I only have an army because the wardens and the bears and the bogglins and the irks fought like lions to keep us in the thing. My people have fought six times in three weeks. Any of you farmers have any idea what that means?”
“No need to insult us,” Milett said. “There’s good men here who ha’e faced the Wild. Good men.”
“No fucking monster is passing my wall,” said another man.
“Stow it, Rob Hewitt,” the captain said.
“We’ll all be kilt,” the man said. Others nodded.
Gavin shook his head. “Listen, gentles. We are allies. We are fighting the enemy together.”
“Monsters are the enemy,” the first man said. “And who are you, any road?”
“I’m the Earl of Westwall,” Gavin said. “And you?”
“I’m a free farmer, Rob Hewitt by name, and I take orders from no man. Monsters are the fuckin’ enemy of man; allies o’ Satan …” He looked around.
Gavin could see that he had some support.
Gavin leaned forward. “Well, Master Hewitt, I’m the queen’s commander for the west, as well as your feudal lord.”
“Feudal lord? I wipe my arse—”
“Stow it, Rob,” said another.
“That’s Jack talk,” the captain said.
“Let him have his say,” Gavin said. He dismounted, and his worried squire dismounted and took his horse.
“You come here, lording it, and I say, fuck off to yer castle and leave us be. We need none o’ ye.” Hewitt stood his ground, hands on hips. Men nodded.
Ser Gavin pursed his lips. “Master Hewitt, I have ten thousand men and monsters who’ve spent the last six weeks fighting so that you can farm.”
“Dogswaddle,” Hewitt said. “We protect our own. Don’t need you.”
“They will be coming down this road,” Ser Gavin continued, “all night and into tomorrow and I expect you to feed them and help them build a camp …”
“Who’s payin’?” Hewitt asked. “Not my food!” He laughed. “Show me yer gold.”
The militia captain looked pained. “My lord,” he began.
“Nah, we’ll have no ‘milord’ here.” Hewitt waved at the men who stood behind him. “Will we? No lords an’ no monsters.”
Gavin pushed forward. There was now quite a crowd of men in the three gates—militia, but also Albin knights and squires. Ser Gregario followed him, and a dozen others.
Hewitt stood his ground.
“I command you to let us pass,” Gavin said formally.
“Sod off. There’s another road north o’ the river,” Hewitt said. “An’ no free farms to mess about.”
“This is treason,” Ser Gavin said in a reasonable voice.
Hewitt shrugged. “War an’ plague is all the kingdom has ever brought us. You want to bring monsters in the gate? You’re the fuckin’ traitor. Everything we have here, we made. None of it is yours.”
“Every knight who has died in the last year died for you, you fool. Every knight, every archer, every irk and bogglin who died fighting for the alliance died for you. And you did not make everything; you have an Etruscan helmet paid for by the king; a Harndoner made your sword; the wall was built by Livia, not by you. Your roads are maintained by the queen.”
“Words,” the man said. “Empty words.”
More and more of the chivalry were packing into the gate.
No weapons had been drawn yet.
Gavin was now nose to nose with Hewitt.
“If I order my knights to take the gate,” Gavin said, “you will die.”
Hewitt drew his sword. “A lot of you will die …” Hewitt raised it, point first, and he put the point threateningly on Gavin’s breastplate. “You first.”
Gavin took his sword away. He grabbed the blade with his left hand and rotated the man’s arm, stripping the weapon with his steel-gauntleted hand, and his right hand shot out, caught the other man’s armoured shoulder, and threw him effortlessly to the ground.
Swords leapt from scabbards.
“This is not what I expected in the first chartered town of Alba,” Gavin said. He had the farmer’s sword at the prostrate man’s throat. “Treasonous talk and ingratitude.”
“They’re just a faction,” Captain Milett said. “I’m sorry, milord.”
“Behind us on the road,” Gavin said, “is an army of a million monsters, led by a dragon as big as your town. A million, Captain. When the morning comes, look west. See the columns of smoke rising there. The arch enemy raised volcanoes, mountains of fire, from the ground by magic. That is our foe. All free peoples stand together. The world teeters on a razor’s edge.” Gavin looked at the man at his feet. “I will not hesitate to put the entire population of your town to the sword to prevent defeat. Do you understand?”
The captain shook his head. “It don’t ha’e to be this way—”
“Apparently it does. So let’s understand each other, gentlemen. My people will take control of the gate. Then we will lay out the ground for a camp, and you will bring food. If we do not receive enough food, we will come and take it. I don’t have the time to be nice, so I will kill anyone who gets in my way. And Captain, if you tolerate any more of this treason, you will become my enemy. I hold you responsible, personally, for your people. I will keep Master Hewitt, and these twenty men with him, as hostages.” He turned to Gregario. “Take this man.”
Ser Gregario nodded. “With pleasure,” he said. “On your feet, traitor.”
Alban and Brogat knights moved rapidly through the gate. It was clear that the militia contemplated resistance, but they thought too long about it, and there were armoured men-at-arms everywhere.
Gavin stared down the militia captain. “I had hoped to find friends here,” he said sharply. “Do not make me treat you like a conquered populace. I need food for ten thousand men.”
“Milord,” the captain said. “No one will give their food willingly. Folk could starve come winter.”
“This will be a hard winter for everyone,” Gavin said. “Harder still if Ash wins.”
“You’ll eat well eno’,” spat a disarmed militiaman. “Grow yer own food, ye fuckin’ noble.”
Gavin ignored him. “Food,” he said. “About twenty tons of it.”
“Twenty tons?” Milett paled.
“Five hundred head of cattle, and five tons of grain,” Gavin said.
“You will beggar us!” Milett protested.
Gavin tried to keep his savage reaction at bay. He was too tired to shrug. So he looked back, where his two surviving squires and Ser Gregario’s household had a dozen militiamen who’d stood with Hewitt under guard. “Food,” he snapped. “Now.”
The army’s baggage arrived next, and then the army itself. Despite the losses at the fords, the baggage had escaped; tents sprang up, and fires were lit from firewood provided by scared-looking yeomen with heavy wagons of their own. With the baggage came the militia of Brogat and Albin and the Morean spearmen; Thrakian veterans who ha
d marched with Demetrios and were now doing their penance for former treason in the Army of the West. The guild bands of Lorica were in once-gaudy purple and gold, so faded from the long campaign that the hues almost matched the leaves on the trees.
Behind the Moreans came the Long Dam bears, now led by Stone Axe and Elder Flower. The bears were footsore and dull-eyed, although they gave great growls when they could smell the cooking from over the wall. A small huddle of locals watched them come in, and there were jeers.
Then came the wardens, led by Mogon.
No one jeered. The wardens projected fear, and the crowd simply melted away. Mogon accepted an armoured embrace from Ser Gavin and saw her people into two stone barns seized for that purpose.
The N’gara irks marched in, heads high, in their shining maille of bronze links, with Tamsin riding at their head, but there was no crowd to see or greet or curse. The irks went into tents; enough men had died to leave a surplus of them.
“Thirty days of retreating and we haven’t lost a wagon,” Gavin said bitterly.
Ser Gregario was out of his harness for the first time in weeks. He shrugged and swallowed more roast beef. “Grumf,” he said around his fourth plate of food.
They were sitting in Ser Gavin’s great green pavilion, lined in green wool and heated by braziers full of charcoal. “Grumf?” he asked.
Gregario wiped his mouth. “What I meant to say is, we haven’t done so badly.”
Gavin nodded. “I have lost almost half the army,” he said.
Gregario gave a wry smile. “Looked at another way, you’ve preserved more than half the army,” he said. He rolled more beef in good white bread and ate it. “My clothes are dry,” he said. “What happens now?”
Gavin stretched out his booted legs. “We have to take a day,” he said. “We only have Tamsin and some minor university types for hermetical defence, so we can’t fight. We need to get under the defences of Lissen Carak as soon as we can.”
Gregario nodded. “Over the bridge at Lissen Carak?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gavin said.
Gregario nodded. “So we need to beat the enemy to the bridge,” he said.
“Yes,” Gavin said. “And we need to find Tapio. I was hoping to convince the militia to put boards over the piers at the river; the old bridge piers.”
Gregario frowned. “That seems unlikely,” he said.
Ser Gavin nodded agreement. “Give everyone a few hours of sleep and another meal, and we’ll march,” he said.
He was still yawning, but he took a pen case and began writing a dispatch. It occurred to him that he was almost thirty hours late in writing about the Battle of the Fords, and that there would no doubt be panic in some quarters.
He had a thought and woke Griatzas. “Sorry, lad,” he said.
His Morean squire looked like an eyeless mole resisting the light. “Mmm?” he mumbled.
“I need you to find Lady Tamsin,” he said. “And one of the imperial messenger officers. Quick as you can, and then you can go back to sleep.”
If Tamsin had been asleep, she showed no sign, and if she was worried that her powers were all that stood between the army and extinction, she showed no sign of that, either.
“Gavin?” she asked in her low voice and she straightened from entering the pavilion’s low door.
He rose and bowed. “I’m sorry to wake you, Your Grace,” he said. “Can you magick a messenger bird to find Tapio?”
She considered only a moment. “Yes,” she said.
Gavin nodded. “If you do this,” he said, “Tapio will have a bird. And once he has one, he can start communicating with us. And with Alcaeus and Gabriel.” Gavin was tapping his teeth with a quill.
Tamsin laughed. She reached out a motherly thumb and wiped ink and spit from the corner of his mouth. “You look like a child who has eaten too many berries,” she said.
“Damn,” Gavin said, looking at the ink, and then he subsided and allowed the Faery Queen to use her powers to remove it. “I’m glad I can still be funny,” he said.
She smiled. “A little sleep and the world will be bright again,” she said.
“Really?” Gavin asked.
She shrugged. “It is better to think so, is it not?” she asked. When the messenger arrived, a great black-and-white bird on her fist, Tamsin talked to the bird at length, and B.13 cocked her head to one side as if listening intently.
“Does she understand?” Gavin asked. “What does she say?”
“She says, ‘More chicken,’” Tamsin answered. “That’s mostly what they say, to tell the truth.”
Grazias entered and bowed. “Captain Redmede to see you, my lord.”
Gavin sat back.
Harald Redmede came in. He didn’t bow. “The enemy has passed the fords,” he said. “He is moving the whole host east. Some bogglins crossed the ford this morning and probed the rear guard.” He smiled. “They found something they like; they’re all with 1Exrech now.”
Gavin sighed. “And the dragon himself?”
“Not a sign,” Redmede said. “I’m the last, by the way. We’re all inside the wall. I hear you had trouble with the locals?”
Gavin managed a smile. “Jacks,” he said.
Redmede didn’t smile. “When this is over,” he said, “without the enemy looming over us … do you think there will be change?”
Gavin frowned. “What kind of change?” he asked.
“Justice,” Redmede said. “Justice for the poor. An end to slavery.”
“These men didn’t want justice for the poor! They wanted to keep their grain and pretend that they didn’t need the rest of the world.” Gavin looked at Redmede. “You and I have more in common than either of us do with the likes of them.”
The captain of the foresters nodded. “It’s always funny,” he said. “I have passed this frontier fifty times. The men in the towns will join my brother and be Jacks and fight you nobles, but the men here on the wall are the most like Jacks. But they won’t call themselves Jacks.”
Gavin sighed. “It just makes me tired,” he said.
“Imagine how a man who works behind a plow all day every day for some other man must feel,” Redmede said. “Listen, my lord. You are a good leader; men follow you right willingly. I say this to you, man to man. Even friend to friend. When this is over, do you think that all these men and women—the militia of Brogat and Albin, the town guards, and the guildsmen—do you think that after three years of fighting to free themselves from a tyrant, they’ll just lie down? Do you think that my foresters will ever see the Jacks as enemies again? Things will change. You and your brother can lead it, or you can … be swept away. The militia here? Certes, they’re foolish and pigheaded and hidebound. But what they say …”
Gavin leaned back. “Christ,” he said, “I’m not working you hard enough if you have time for all this political blather.”
“It’s not blather, my lord,” Redmede said. “We’re not fighting Ash so we can go back to being serfs.”
Gavin put his head in his hands. “Alright, Harald. Point taken. Can we go back to the war now?” He shook his head. “No. Go sleep. We have rested men on the wall and gate. But we’ll march in the morning.”
“One night o’ sleep?” Redmede asked. “That’s all? I could sleep the clock round.”
“One night,” Ser Gavin said. He paused. “Listen, I do hear you. We ain’t Galles. And my brother … has plans. For real change.”
Redmede the elder grinned. “Now that’s a better tune. We ain’t just fightin’ here, my lord. We could be building something. Something new.”
Gavin nodded wearily. “If we survive, aye.”
After the forester was gone, he finished his dispatch, and sent it off by F.34.
F.34
F.34 rose into the rainy darkness of a September night on the Cohocton, attuned to all the dangers of air, and flew east, skimming north of the river at times, passing abreast of an endless flood of bogglins sprawled carelessly in the mud
and sand, asleep; passing above cave trolls and swamp trolls, wights and wardens. Just before dawn she sensed something larger flying to the north and she turned south, away from her goal, which burned before her like a beacon, and she saw the two wyverns in the first light of a cold, wet day and easily outdistanced them, untroubled by their alliance. F.34 was not trained to discriminate; she merely avoided potential danger, flying well south into the Albin and passing, by coincidence, over the great manor house of Weyland, where, in happier times, Lord Gregario had given great feasts and dispensed justice.
Passing over the Albin River, she turned north and followed it to the ford at South Ford, and she flew over the chapel that had been Amicia’s where a surprising number of pilgrims had, even in those dark times, or perhaps because of them, virtually buried her altar in flowers and offerings.
She flew on, in the new day, and landed with a rush of wings on the waiting perch in the citadel’s north tower, where a black-and-white-clad imperial messenger fed her a whole chicken and detached her tube. Her work was done, but the messenger took the tube down a floor, opened the flimsy, and copied it twice. The original went into a new tube, carried by I.31, who rose into the morning air, helped by a warm current, and raced east even as the sun rose to meet him. The first copy went to E.49, who made the shortest trip of his week, a one-hour flight to Lissen Carak, where his message was read immediately by Sister Miriam.
But F.34 flew on, wings beating, riding a thermal higher and higher into the air so that she climbed over the passes into the Green Hills and then, in late afternoon, a long, fast glide over the western plains of the Morea; Middleburg grew in the middle distance, and she passed directly over the fortress, one of her waypoints and often her destination, but today she had a mightier mission, and she flew on, tired now, but she was fortunate in her weather, and before the September sun fell into the ash clouds at her back, lighting the sky a livid orange, she glimpsed the sea, and stooped, a long, last dive into the waiting arms of a handler in the imperial messenger aviary in the stables of the imperial palace, Liviapolis. She was exhausted, and she’d lost weight; a handler weighed her and passed her to the rest cages, where birds who were not fit for immediate duty were kept.