Standing in the courtyard were hundreds of men; the Guard. A hundred Nordikans stood in knee-length hauberks, with five-foot hafted axes on their shoulders and round aspides on their left arms. Every man of them wore a magnificent helmet in the ancient style, tall helmets of bronze and steel with hinged cheekplates and tall horsehair crests in red, white and black, and long cloaks of Imperial purple with the gold double-headed eagle of the Emperor embroidered on their left shoulders.
Across the courtyard from the Nordikans stood the Scholae; almost twice the number, with spears and teardrop-shaped shields. They wore blued and gilt bassinets and coats of plate covered in scarlet leather over bronze scale haubergeons and hip-high boots of red leather. Every man had the same Imperial purple cloak that the Nordikans had.
At the back of the yard, three hundred Ordinaries stood in matching scarlet gowns with gold buckles and white leather shoes.
It looked like a vision of a particularly martial heaven.
An officer stood forth, marched briskly to the centre of the gates, and called out in High Archaic.
‘Halt! Who is there? Who dares come to the gate of the Divine Emperor?’
Harmodius chuckled in the Red Knight’s head. That must be really old. I don’t think we see the Emperor as divine any more – fascinating.
Could you shut up?
Bah.
‘The Duke of Thrake, Megas Ducas, commander of the Imperial Armies, and his bucellarii!’ roared the Red Knight.
The sound from within the courtyard was palpable. Men murmured.
The officer in the gateway paused, obviously at a loss.
The Red Knight sat on his horse and waited, enjoying the mess he’d just made.
That’s put the cat among the pigeons. Bucellarii – splendid scholarship.
Thank you, Harmodius. I was quite proud of it, I confess.
You are forcing her hand.
I am, at that. It would suit her to use me while keeping me at arm’s length – to retain the option of allowing the former Duke to return to the fold. I thought I’d save us all time.
You have a plan?
Yes.
Can I be of service?
I’d like to know why the Empire commands all this hermetical talent and these superb soldiers and yet remains so toothless.
See the boy coming out of the Ordinaries?
Ah, a message.
The boy was dressed in stark black and white parti-colour. Just like the Imperial birds – an Imperial messenger. He ran to the officer at the gate, knelt, and presented him a red ivory scroll tube.
The officer bowed deeply and kissed the tube. Then he opened it. He bowed again, and returned the tube to the messenger and pivoted sharply.
In High Archaic, he called, ‘General salute – the Megas Ducas enters the palace victorious!’
Six hundred feet stamped the ground. The drums rolled and rattled. Six hundred arms swept up in the Imperial salute.
The Red Knight didn’t even turn his head – he shouted, ‘March!’
The company – knights and squires, pages and archers and saddlers and armourers and priests and whores and wives and children and wagoners – marched neatly through the palace gates. If they lacked the formal dignity of the Nordikans or the magnificent plumage of the Scholae, they had a great deal of mirror-polished Gallish and Etruscan plate armour and their scarlet wool surcoats and matching white ostrich plumes in every hat or helmet made them any soldier’s envy.
It had been Mag and Lis who had provided every one of the company’s non-combatants with a neat red surcoat and a black wool cap with a white ostrich plume. The wool wasn’t the best and the boxwood dye would run in rain, but at night in a torchlit courtyard they looked like a magnificent embassage, or the retinue of a king.
The company rode to the centre of the great yard.
‘Halt!’ called the Captain. ‘Imperial salute!’
He was two horse lengths in advance of Ser Michael, who swept his lacs d’amour banner in a great figure of eight and then laid it across the marble parquetry under his horse’s hooves, the six-pointed star at the tip of the banner pole resting on the ground. Every man and woman in the company swept their right arms out straight from the shoulder, parallel to the ground and extending the line of the shoulder.
‘Ave, Kaisar!’ roared the company. They’d practised it in the hills, with Ser Alcaeus rolling his eyes at their bad Archaic and their lewd gestures. Tonight, by torchlight, in a two-thousand-year-old palace, it seemed – right.
‘Dismount!’ called the Captain, and the order was echoed by the corporals, and five hundred legs swept up and crossed five hundred saddles. The Ordinaries broke ranks and came forward to take the horses and in a moment the Outer Court appeared to be a riot of colour and movement, but it didn’t last. The Ordinaries had performed this task for hundreds of years, and the warhorses and palfreys were taken into the Imperial stables faster than the Red Knight would have thought possible. Indeed, he thought it was the greatest expression of raw power he’d seen yet – perhaps would ever see – that five hundred horses could be taken and stabled as fast as a man could say, ‘Hail Caesar.’
An officer of the Ordinaries appeared, along with the officer of the Nordikans who had stood in the gate and a pair of Imperial messengers – both, in this case, women.
‘Durk Blackhair, my lord Duke,’ said the Nordikan. His accent was thick enough to cut with a knife, even in Archaic.
The officer of Ordinaries bowed deeply. ‘My lord Duke, I am to take you to the throne. This would usually be the duty of the Mayor of the Palace but I regret to say that there is no such person at this time. No offence is intended. While I am unworthy to perform this task, I will make every effort to satisfy.’
‘You are the Captain of the Ordinaries?’ asked the Red Knight.
‘I have that honour,’ answered the Imperial servant. ‘May I add that your High Archaic is elegant? Bucellarii? The Imperial messengers had to consult a book.’ He gave the slightest nod to the two women and then bowed deeply and walked away into the torchlight.
‘Where will my people be placed?’ asked the Red Knight.
‘The Athanatos barracks were built for a thousand soldiers, and are currently unoccupied. As their former occupants have made some unwise choices, the Imperial will is that they be given to you. Bedding may be a trifle tight—’
The Red Knight caught Sauce’s eye and indicated that he wanted her. He turned to Toby, already at his shoulder, and as his squire took his helmet and gauntlets and changed his sword, he sent Nell for Ser Gavin and Ser Michael and Ser Thomas.
‘You cannot keep the throne waiting!’ said the Captain of Ordinaries.
‘I am not keeping the throne waiting. I’m seeing to my soldiers as quickly as I can, while preparing myself to greet the throne, which I cannot do in full armour.’ He smiled as graciously as he could. ‘Sauce, see to it that the wagons are only unloaded into the Athanatos barracks. Barrack by mess group; men-at-arms are responsible for the behaviour of their mess.’ He saw John le Bailli. ‘John! Collect the wagoners and barrack them together – draught animals to the stables. Mag – Mag!’
The seamstress was as self-effacing as usual, although when she stepped forward she was striking in her red surcoat over a black travelling gown. Her hat was – pert.
‘My lord Duke,’ she said with a curtsey that had just the smallest hint of mockery.
The Captain of Ordinaries grew pale.
The Red Knight, despite the throbbing at his temples, had to laugh. ‘Mag, can you see to all the non-combatants? I’ve meant to appoint you corporal – will you accept the job?’
‘At a corporal’s pay?’ she asked quietly.
‘Of course,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘I’ll have Kaitlin as a lieutenant,’ she said.
‘Place them all together. Best behaviour all round.’
His soldiers saluted with their free hands, and Mag dropped another curtsy.
‘We
have food for three days,’ John le Bailli said quietly to the Captain of Ordinaries.
The palace officer puffed out his cheeks in relief. He turned to another Ordinary, this one distinguished by a loop of white braid or rope on his right shoulder. ‘Are you following, Stephanos?’
The man saluted.
The Red Knight had light leather gloves on his hands, a small fur hat with a gold enamel brooch and a white ostrich plume on his head and the baton of his captaincy in his hand. He bowed to his officers. ‘Ser Gavin, Ser Thomas, Ser Jehan, Ser Milus, Ser Alcaeus – on me.’
Toby just got his ermine-trimmed cloak over his shoulders as he turned away and followed the Captain of the Ordinaries. The Captain’s leg harnesses littered the ground, but they were off, and the sabatons, and the arm-harnesses too, so that the Captain looked as if he might be wearing his breast and back by choice.
They passed together from the Outer Court to the Inner. The Red Knight turned to Darkhair. ‘My pardon, Captain. I needed to see to my men.’
Darkhair was not an old man. He grinned, and showed a mouth missing a great many teeth. He was the same size as Bad Tom – the two giants were already sizing each other up. He pointed with his axe – moving the three-pound head and five-foot haft like a child flicking a straw – and beckoned six men from the rightmost two files of the Nordikans.
‘Dismiss!’ he roared.
The whole body of Nordikans dissolved like salt into warm water and vanished into the torchlit darkness, pouring in through their barracks’ gate, which was six men wide. The Red Knight caught a glimpse of darkly carved wood, knot work, great gaping-mouthed dragons and running dogs and whitewash, and then he was past, and the six men in long chain cotes were swinging along, three on each side, every one of them the size of Tom or Ranald or the Gallish nobles.
‘I’m no captain,’ said Darkhair. He smiled again. ‘I’m acting Spatharios. That means—’
‘Sword bearer,’ chorused Ser Michael and the Red Knight together. They grinned at each other. Ser Jehan rolled his eyes.
‘There is no captain in the palace except the Captain of the Ordinaries,’ Darkhair went on. ‘The commander of the Nordikans is called – Jarl.’ He shrugged. ‘The Jarl was killed by the traitor.’
‘But of course, your men call you Captain,’ said the palace functionary. ‘I’m sure we can arrive at some mutually beneficial—’
The Red Knight smiled. ‘I’ll settle for Duke,’ he said.
Bad Tom grinned. ‘Duke it is, then.’
The throne was occupied by one very small, and very magnificent, young woman. She was dressed in purple and gold, and her hair was so wound about with pearls that it was almost impossible to determine what colour her hair might be. A veil of gold tissue hung over her face, and the vestments she wore must have rivalled the Red Knight’s armour for weight.
He walked down the purple carpet, painfully aware that his leather-soled shoes had grass stuck in them from the Field of Ares. The Imperial throne room was intended to strike barbarians dumb with wonder, and the Red Knight found it difficult to keep his gaze fixed on the princess. Over his head, the dome soared a hundred feet, with a round crystal window set exactly in the centre, through which distant stars glittered; the rest of the vault displayed a mosaic of the creation of the world, an hermetical artefact that moved as it retold the story.
Under the wonder of the dome was the Imperial throne, twice the height of a man in gleaming ivory and solid gold, with a single yellow-red cabochon ruby the size of a man’s fist set high over the canopy. It was hermetical, and it glowed from within, casting a rich golden light over the princess.
Sitting on a footstool by the throne – also of ivory – sat an older woman in midnight-blue robes embroidered with stars and moons and crosses. She had a pair of shears in her hand and appeared to be cutting a thread – an act that seemed bizarre amidst the incredible opulence.
The acting chamberlain raised his staff. ‘The Duke of Thrake!’ he called. ‘Megas Ducas of all the Imperial Armies, Admiral of the Fleets, Lord of the Mountains, the Red Knight.’
The Duke had been well briefed in his long walk through the palace – and, today, he was not interested in flouting etiquette. He made himself put one foot boldly in front of the other until he reached the edge of the throne, and then he went to one knee, sweeping his fur cap from his head, and then lay, full length, at the princess’s feet.
She might have been seen to smile, and extended one red-slippered foot.
He kissed her toe and then put his forehead back against the scarlet carpet. Even at this angle, with his head almost flat against the floor, he could see that the marble under the ivory throne was perfectly clean. Further back, among the hangings that partially covered a pagan mosaic by a small door, he could see the four paws of a cat.
He smiled to himself.
He lay on the thick carpet and felt the pain in his hip, the numbness creeping into the small of his back, the fatigue in his shoulders. It was, in fact, very comfortable at the foot of the throne.
Don’t say a word, he said to his annoying guest.
A mass of rattles, rustles, and clanks told him that his knights were throwing themselves to the floor as well. The cat started at the motion and put its head almost to the marble, looking under the throne to see if there was some threat to which it needed to attend.
‘We gather you have driven the traitor from the walls of my city and won a great victory,’ said the figure on the throne. ‘Accept the plaudits of the throne. We are most grateful. We would wish to meet you and your officers in private audience for further consultations.’
The Duke and his knights lay like effigies on the carpet. One did not speak to the throne during a full audience.
He smelled her perfume – a wonderful mixture of cedar and musk and lavender – as she rose to her feet. Slim, arched feet. He wondered if all the fuss about what kind of shoes the Emperor wore stemmed from the fact that his subjects spent so much of their time seeing him from ground level.
The cat was hunting a rat. The Red Knight could now see both of them.
The princess stepped down from the throne and swept out of the Great Hall with her retinue at her heels, leaving a trace of cedar and musk and lavender in her wake.
The acting chamberlain’s staff tapped the floor rapidly, and all the courtiers began to rise. The Duke gritted his teeth and got slowly to his feet, although his hip shot pulses of low, slow pain into his upper leg and torso like the thump, thump of the bass drum.
The Captain of the Ordinaries appeared at his elbow. ‘Follow me. Very elegant – well done,’ he said with well-practised effusiveness that the new Duke found suspect.
But he didn’t have long to be suspicious. His hip gave a click of protest, and he fell – his whole leg failed to support him. He hit his head, hard.
Ser Milus shouted something about blood.
They carried the new Duke to his new suite of apartments and laid him on a bed magnificent enough to use in a pageant, and he bled on sheets of purest white linen. Palace Ordinaries buzzed around him like wasps, and Ser Thomas grabbed the Spatharios by the shoulder.
‘He needs a doctor!’ Ser Thomas said, his slightly mad eyes bulging.
‘A doctor has been summoned,’ the Captain of the Ordinaries said with a bow.
Tom didn’t like the Captain of the Ordinaries. Something about the man was false – rotten to the core. Blackhair, on the other hand, might have been Tom’s twin brother – black hair, a forehead like the prow of a ship, and blue eyes that looked like they could cut you. Blackhair was tattooed from knuckles to eyelids – Tom thought he liked the look. And Tom was not a man to hesitate.
‘I would’na take water from him if I was dyin’ of thirst,’ Bad Tom said to Blackhair. ‘Do ye ha’ yer own doctor?’
The acting Spatharios shook his head. He turned and growled something in Nordikan at another giant, who pushed forward. ‘Harald Derkensun. I speak Alban – and Archaic.’
> Tom watched the Ordinaries for a moment and shook his head. ‘I want these fucking slaves out of the room an’ I want a doctor you trust,’ Tom said.
Derkensun nodded. He clapped his hands and rattled orders, and surprised Ordinaries fled the room.
The Captain of Ordinaries bowed. ‘I have sent for our doctor,’ he began, but Tom cut him off.
‘We’ll get our own,’ he said. ‘Ye can go, now.’
The Captain of Ordinaries sighed. ‘I’ll have water and bandages sent.’
Ser Jehan caught Bad Tom’s arm. ‘Mag. I sent for her. And for Toby and Nell and fresh men to stand guard.’
Bad Tom nodded. ‘Aye – thanks.’
Jehan pursed his lips. ‘I didn’t like the look of the pompous bastard either,’ he said.
Mag had the potentia to heal, but it was not her strongest hermetical skill, and she settled for easing the pain and manipulating the hip until she had the cracked bone aligned and then placing a light binding on it. ‘Don’t let him move,’ she told Toby.
Toby gave her the look that boys usually save for their mothers. ‘How’m I ta do that, ma’am?’ he asked, more than a little whine in his voice. He looked at Nell. Nell stared at the ground.
Mag stretched and looked at le Bailli, who was rubbing his chin. ‘Christ, I need some sleep,’ he muttered.
Mag turned to Bad Tom. ‘We still need a doctor. A good one.’
‘One of the Nordikans says he knows one – an old Yahadut with powers.’ Bad Tom jutted his chin at the door, where two axe-bearing giants stood. ‘In the Hills, we have great respect for the Yahadut.’