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.
&nbs
p; 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.