De Ribeaumont smiled like a wolf. ‘Ahh. Yes.’ He shook his head. ‘My lords, I’m old and slow. If de Vrailly is only one half as successful as the bastard claims, and if we could gain any force at all in the northern wild—’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Good Christ, my lords, we could crush the Emperor like a nut. Or the King of Alba.’ He nodded. ‘Take Nova Terra for ourselves.’
‘We might not need to,’ Abblemont said, tossing a scroll tube on the table with a rattle. ‘You gentlemen can read that at your leisure. One of my letter-writing friends.’ He leaned back.
The King extended a long black-clad arm and his delicate fingers snapped up the scroll like the sharp-tipped arm of a spider. ‘Who is he?’ he asked, his eyes darting rapidly over the author’s elegant hand.
‘I do not know myself, and I would not say his name even in this august assembly if I knew it,’ Abblemont said. ‘Remember our little disaster last year in Arles.’
Tancred Guisarme, the Constable, made a face as if he’d swallowed something bitter. ‘Someone talked,’ he said.
‘The fucking herald talked,’ said de Ribeaumont. ‘And he’s dog food now. But that’s not the point.’
Abblemont nodded. ‘Exactly. Do you know that in the Archaic Empire, the Master of Spies referred to every agent by the name of a flower or an animal or some such – never by their own names. Not even their sexes were known.’
‘Sex?’ asked Guisarme. ‘We wouldn’t use women as spies, would we?’
There was the briefest pause, as there always is when a dozen men realise that one of their number is a fool.
‘Unchivalrous,’ muttered Guisarme, in the tone of a man who’s just discovered that his neighbours worship Satan.
De Marche cleared his throat. ‘If Your Grace will admit of the possibilities,’ he began carefully.
The King was mindful that one of his duties was not to leave his best servants blowing in the wind. He smiled and sat up. ‘What do we need to start our horse in this race?’ he asked.
De Marche smiled. ‘Your Grace, it was in my mind to send a trade expedition, well dowered with our goods – swords and armour, which the Outwallers value above all things; wool and linen, flashy, cheap jewels such as peasant women wear, and bronze and copper pots for cooking. I’m told, by our Etruscan source, that these sell well in the north.’ He nodded. ‘Those have to be well made. The Outwallers like shiny things, but they are not children nor yet fools. So the Etruscan tells me.’
The King pulled at his beard and looked at his Horse.
Abblemont nodded slowly. ‘I would do this thing,’ he said carefully. ‘But I would prime the pump first – with a mailed fist.’
That was the right kind of talk for the war council. De Ribeaumont – obviously bored and ill at ease talking to a merchant, even one who’d fought at sea and earned himself a knighthood – sat up and smiled. ‘A military expedition?’ he asked.
Abblemont smiled his simian smile. ‘Something a trifle subtler than a charge of knights, Marshal.’
‘Of course,’ the Marshal said.
‘Perhaps a sellsword,’ Abblemont said, almost as an afterthought.
It was the King’s turn to straighten up. ‘Not that arrogant boy and his company of thugs,’ he shot. The King had endured an unfortunate encounter with a company of lances the year before, when he tried to take Arles by subterfuge, and failed.
Abblemont smiled. If I could hire that company then I would, he thought, but they had apparently left for Nova Terra and vanished into its maw.
De Marche leaned forward. ‘Your Grace, I have a man in mind – a very successful adventurer, one of Your Grace’s own subjects. Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus.’
‘The slaver knight?’ the King said, and he winced. ‘The Black Knight? The Knight of Ill Renown?’
De Marche shrugged. ‘They are just names, Your Grace. His loyalty is deep and entirely to Your Grace. He has sailed far to the south, landed in Ifriquy’a and come away the conqueror.’
‘In the Middle Sea, he’s served our purposes well,’ Abblemont said. ‘Though I confess I wouldn’t invite him home to dinner. Nor would I allow him to address my daughter, no matter how honourable his intentions.’
‘Tar sticks,’ said the King. ‘He has an evil name. He fought for the Necromancer in Ifriqu’ya!’
De Marche sighed. ‘Your Grace, it takes a remarkable man to go to a distant land at the head of a tiny company, and make war for us. To make decisions—’
‘Decisions that would bind us,’ the King said. He looked pensive.
‘The kind of decisions that the Outwallers would respect,’ Abblemont said cautiously.
‘He has been very successful taking slaves in Ifriquy’a,’ de Marche put in.
‘He almost started a war with Dar-as-Salaam that could have broken our Middle Sea trade,’ hissed the King.
Abblemont shrugged. ‘To be fair, he also defeated the Emir’s fleet at Na’dia.’
The men around the table shared a glance. A long one. The King looked from one to another.
‘Great plans require great risks, and I suspect that the employment of this terrible man is not the smallest risk we will incur to take Nova Terra,’ said the King. He swirled the wine in his golden cup and stood. ‘Let it be so,’ he said, and de Marche smiled.
‘Your Grace,’ he agreed, with a bow. ‘I have him waiting below.’
The King paled. He put a hand on his chest. ‘I don’t intend to meet him,’ the King snapped. ‘Send him to massacre heathens and bring me what I desire, but do not expect me to suffer his odious spirit in my chambers.’
The merchant recoiled. He bowed with proper ceremony. The King relented and gave him a hand to kiss, and de Marche bowed deeply.
‘I approve of what you are doing,’ the King said in a low voice.
Abblemont smiled very slightly – much as he had when the King had shown his pleasure to the Lady Clarissa.
If only people would simply believe me, he thought, this would all be so much easier. He had a strategy of campaign ready for Ser Hartmut. He had a strategy that would end in the subjugation of Alba and the Empire – and Arles and Etrusca as well. He doubted he’d see it all done in his own lifetime, but the recruitment of the Black Knight was a vital step.
‘He’ll need a siege train,’ Abblemont added.
‘Whatever for?’ asked the King. De Marche was already gone.
‘It would take us years to build a port in Nova Terra,’ Abblemont said. ‘So much easier to seize one instead.’
The King sighed. ‘I sense that you have already chosen your target,’ he said.
Abblemont smiled. ‘One of the foremost castles in the world,’ he said. ‘Ticondaga.’
‘I’ve never heard of it, Abblemont.’ The King shrugged, distancing himself from the idea. He leaned back. ‘May I send for the lady now, my Horse?’
Abblemont pursed his lips.
‘Why target such a powerful castle, then?’ asked the King.
‘It will save money in garrison. And it will send a strong message to Your Grace’s enemies. And rebound all the more to Your Grace’s glory.’ Abblemonte bowed.
‘And if the Black Knight fails, or commits some hideous crime instead?’ the King asked.
Abblemont shrugged. ‘Then we disown him and speak much of the rapaciousness of merchants and mercenaries.’ He rubbed the back of his thumb against a small hermetical instrument that looked like a stud on his sword belt. It would cause a low musical tone to play in Clarissa de Sartres’ ear, summoning her. It was the Horse’s method of ensuring that she always ‘happened’ upon the King.
The King gave his courtier a wry smile. ‘Let it be so,’ he said.
The Long Lakes – Squash Country – Nita Qwan
Peter – Nita Qwan – wouldn’t have gone back to Ifrquy’a if he’d been offered a winged ship and a company of houris.
He had this elaborate thought as he lay on his back under a magnificent maple tree, watching his wife’s round botto
m as she hoed their squash, cutting weeds with the bronze-tipped hoe he’d made from a scrap of discarded armour.
She was probably pregnant, and that neither lessened her beauty nor made him feel that he should leap to his feet and hoe the ground for her. It was women’s work.
Behind him three great hides stretched on frames indicated that he had pulled his weight. And the shape of her buttocks and complete lack of any covering beyond a single layer of deerskin – their rhythmic movement—
She turned and looked at him under her lashes. She laughed. ‘I’m a shaman – I can read your mind.’
She went back to hoeing her way down the row. She reaped the weeds like a soldier killing boggles – efficient and ruthless. He had never imagined her to be such a good farmer, but then, when he killed her husband and took her, he’d known nothing about her but the softness between her thighs.
She was working her way back along the edge of the corn now – the head-high, ripe corn. The matrons had already harvested the first ears and all the maidens of the right age had run through the corn with young men chasing them. There had been a great deal of laughter and gallons of good cider, and Ota Qwan had taken a young wife.
His own wife stopped and pulled a ripe ear of corn from a stalk. Slowly she stripped back the husk and the silk. Her eyes met his. Her lips touched the end of the ear of corn—
He leaped to his feet and ran to her.
She stepped into the rows of corn and dropped her wrap skirt. ‘Mind the baby,’ she said. And laughed into his mouth.
Ota Qwan’s new wife was the daughter of the paramount matron, Blue Knife. Her husband was a quiet man – a gifted hunter and a deep thinker, but without apparent interest in the politics of the people.
The girl’s name was Amij’ha. She was very young – just exactly old enough to run through the corn, as the Sossag said. But she laughed well, she was prepared to ridicule her new husband like a proper wife, and she came of strong stock. She was well liked, and her marriage to Ota Qwan marked him for further advancement. And he surprised everyone by hunting deer, trapping, and even working beside his new wife in the fields. Their cabin was covered in drying hides, and when they had been home for a month from the war, he proposed to lead men to find honey – the great ponds of Wild honey that moved every year in the west, but could always be found by a party bold enough to look. When he made the proposition in front of the matrons who ruled the people in times of peace, his mother-in-law saw to it that he sounded appropriately humble, his wife supported him, and the matrons gave him the lead.
Peter had time to replace his breech clout and make tea in a fine copper kettle – almost his only loot from the summer campaign. He was still thinking how enjoyable his life was, and how much better than the fate he had expected when he was taken as a slave – when Ota Qwan’s shadow darkened his door.
‘Hello, the house!’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Hey, brother. May I come in?’
Peter threw back the deer hide and propped it open. ‘My wife says it lets flies in,’ he said. ‘I feel it lets them out.’
Ota Qwan gave him a quick embrace. ‘I suspect the Queen of Alba makes the same argument, and the King leaves the windows open anyway,’ he said, throwing himself on a bundle of furs. ‘You’ve been busy.’
‘I’m happy, and I want to keep it that way,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have a boy.’
Ota Qwan leaped to his feet and threw his arms around Peter. ‘Ah! Well done. Hence all the hunting.’
Peter shrugged. ‘I hear winter is nothing to laugh at,’ he said.
Ota Qwan was briefly sobered. ‘That’s no lie, brother.’ He made a face. ‘I mean to make a run west for some honey.’
Peter laughed. ‘Since I have a wife,’ he said, ‘I know all about it. And you know I’ll go. Not sure I was offered a choice.’
‘Honey trades well when the foreign geese come up the Great River – or even if we just trade it over the Wall.’ Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘But we get a better price from the geese.’
The wild geese, as the Sossag called them, were the great round ships from Etrusca that came into the river most years, in late fall, to trade. Sometimes there were only a few, and sometimes great fleets of them. They stayed to the east for the most part, but for the last decade, so the matrons had noted, the geese had come further and further up the Great River every year.
‘And beaver,’ Peter said. ‘I have more than thirty pelts.’
Ota Qwan made a motion that suggested that he thought beaver to be too much work. ‘If we’re quick, we can harvest as much as we can carry,’ he said. ‘I did it last year.’
‘And lost a warrior,’ Peter said.
Ota Qwan’s face darkened, but he and his brother had long since established their borders. Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘Yes.’ He looked at the ground. ‘In fact, it was my fault.’
Peter knew more about it than he wanted to know, so he remained silent. Wives talked. Husbands heard. Finally, he said, ‘I’ll be with you, anyway. You know that.’
Ota Qwan stood. ‘I’d take it as a favour if you’d say so at the fire,’ he said.
Peter nodded. ‘When do we leave?’ he asked.
Ota Qwan looked at the smoke from the hearth. ‘Water’s boiling,’ he said. ‘Two days, if I can get ten men to go.’
Peter slapped him on the shoulder, stooped for the pot, and made tea.
Harfleur and the Sea of Morea – Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus, the Black Knight
The three round ships towered over the quay, like towers over a castle wall.
The Black Knight towered over his fellows on the quay in direct proportion. He was a head taller than any Galle around him; his arm-harnesses had the circumference of a lady’s waist. He was fully armed and armoured, despite being in a merchant port in the very best-protected roadstead in Galle.
He was watching his warhorse swayed by a crane driven by fifty criminals as it carried the drooping equine up, up, up the ship’s side. But the dockmen knew their business, and, despite his curses, they got his horse aboard, and those of all his knights – twenty great horses, and ten more besides as spares.
At his side, Oliver de Marche looked up from a tablet. ‘. . . crossbows, mostly. They sell well among the Huran, or so the Etruscans tell me.’ He shrugged. ‘They’ve never dropped a horse, my lord.’
Ser Hartmut turned to Etienne de Vrieux, his squire. He raised an eyebrow.
De Vrieux bowed to the merchant captain. ‘I must remind you that Ser Hartmut does not speak with members of the third estate.’
De Marche cleared his throat. ‘But – That is – he asked me what we were carrying!’
De Vrieux shook his head slightly. ‘No, Master Captain, if I may beg to differ, he asked the air a rhetorical question. If you would care to inform me just what you have in lading, I will pass that information on to my knight, if it proves to interest him. Otherwise, it will best become you not to address him directly.’
‘And if we enter battle?’ de Marche asked the squire. ‘Does your Lord know I was knighted by the Lord Admiral himself?’
Ser Hartmut’s eyes never left his horse. ‘Battle ennobles,’ he said. ‘If we enter battle as companions, tell the man I will have no hesitation in speaking to him, nor even in listening to what he might have to say.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not know the Lord Admiral.’ His eyes passed over his squire and locked on the merchant captain. ‘Tell him that his unseemly staring will eventually anger me.’
In truth, the Black Knight was one of the handsomest men Oliver de Marche had ever seen. He stood a head taller than any other man on the dock, with blue-black hair and smooth, unscarred olive skin like the southerner that he was. His moustaches shone as if oiled. Perhaps they were, de Marche thought to himself. And his eyes were blue. De Marche had never seen a man with blue eyes and such dark skin.
They were also a very unlikely shade of blue – a dark blue, like lapis. Damn me, I’m staring at him again.
Maistre de Marche bowed to the squire. ‘Pl
ease tell monsieur your master that his wishes will be complied with. And please assure him that these men have never dropped a horse.’
Ser Hartmut’s eyes met his, just for a moment. ‘Best they not start with mine, then,’ said the giant. Rather than madness or arrogance, the dark eyes held amusement. ‘And ask our captain, Etienne, while we have his attention – how well armed are your sailors?’
‘I won’t ship a man who can’t fight,’ de Marche said, waving the squire aside. ‘The Etruscans are growing more outrageous every year. They won’t want us in the Great Huran River, either.’ He paused and bowed, again, to the squire. ‘That is, please tell your master that my men are all armed with a coat of mail and most have a breastplate of the new steel; everyone has a steel cap, a sword, and a pair of spears.’
Ser Hartmut managed a thick-lipped smile. ‘With three round ships and all my men-at-arms,’ Ser Hartmut said, with a slow smile, ‘I will endeavour to give these Etruscans an ill jest.’ He nodded. ‘We shall have some good adventures, Etienne.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Etienne de Vrieux replied, somewhat woodenly.
The Long Lakes – Squash Country – Nita Qwan
They left in the darkness, with dawn just a murmur of orange in the east. Each man had a pair of pails made of birch bark with spruce-root handles. They weighed almost nothing, and men tied them to their spears, put bows over their shoulders, quivers on their backs, five handfuls of pemmican in their pouches, tobacco for smoking while complaining about their wives, and one blanket per man. There were women who usually ran with the warriors, but not this time.
Ota Qwan led them out at a run, and women gathered and screamed or keened farewells, sounding like irks in the warm summer morning – many affectionate farewells, most of them taunting. Peter’s wife screamed that he was leaving her to bear the child alone, and Se-hum-se’s wife complained that she already felt empty, so empty . . .
They left to laughter.
Running hard.
Nor did they slow. Men who went with Ota Qwan knew who he was and who he wanted to be. He made no secret of his desire to be named war chief again. Every man present had fought by his side, painted like demons, against the drovers and the Hardskins, and every man present knew that the matrons already talked of war with the Huran to the east. Another tribe of Outwallers with dangerous ideas and a penchant for expansion.