‘John of Reigate, sister.’ He was young enough to drop his eyes and look like a schoolboy caught out in a lark. Which he was. She had to remember that they killed for a living, but they were still people.
The third man was the handsomest. He had polish and good looks. And he blushed.
‘And you are the captain’s squire,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Unfair. My fame proceeds me.’
‘Don’t ape your master,’ Miram said. ‘The three of you, gently born, should be ashamed of yourselves. Now go.’
Lyliard looked abashed. ‘Listen, sister, we merely crave some female company. We are not bad men.’
She sniffed. ‘Do you mean you would pay for what you take?’ She looked at all three of them. ‘You seduce innocents instead of committing out and out rape? Is that supposed to impress me?’
The captain’s squire sniffed. His left hand patted the bandage around his waist. ‘You really have no idea who or what we are. What we face.’
Miram caught his eye and stepped very close, close as a lover. Almost nose to nose. His eyes were blue, and she had once been a woman to enjoy handsome men.
Hers were a deep, old green.
‘I know, young squire,’ she said. ‘I know exactly what you face.’ She didn’t blink and he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her. ‘Save your posturing for whores, boy. Now go and say twenty Pater Nosters, mean them, and think about what it might mean to be a knight.’
Michael would have liked to have stood his ground, but the moment her regard dropped away, he stumbled a step.
She smiled at the three of them, and they backed away from the door.
Sister Miram went back into the laundry, where the Lanthorn girls were huddling, terrified, and trying to cover their bare legs.
Sister Mary came in, carrying a huge basket. ‘Miram!’ she called out. ‘What’s amiss?’
‘The usual,’ Miram said. And started searching for her missing cap.
North of Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn felt bitten by the old bear’s disdain. His walk back was full of thoughts about how the men in the Rock had, apparently, inflicted two defeats on him. He had to face the hard truth; to the irks and boglins and even to the daemons, these little fiery pinpricks were defeats.
He didn’t really think that either of his lieutenents would challenge him, and he reached out more and more to the east as he walked, until he could feel the intense wrongness of the invaders. They were not like the peasants, the nuns, and the shepherds in the fortress. They smelt of violence.
He had always hated their kind, even when he walked among them as a man.
Also in the fortress, surrounded by all that cold stone worked by man, the enchantments an aeon old and proof against all but his strongest enchantment, he could feel the Abbess, a sun of power, with her nuns a star field behind her.
He flinched away from her.
And the tendrils of his questing power saw another, darker sun – the beacon that the daemons had seen – that Thurkan, the sharpest of the daemons, had seen and avoided. The shielded one, who had resisted, however briefly, his workings on the battlefield.
The bears hadn’t refused him, precisely. But nor were they helping him with any force but a few angry warriors bent on revenge. He drew deep breath of clean air and turned north, back into the mountains, and lengthened his stride until he was all but running, his giant body now moving faster than the fastest horse. He could get where he wanted to with a phantasm, but he was suddenly wary of using too much power. Power attracted other power, and in the Wild, that could spell a quick end – all too often, something bigger than you arrived unexpectedly. And ate you.
Even as he ran the forest highways, Thorn contemplated eating Turkan.
Lissen Carak – Kaitlin
The four Lanthorn girls were quick to recover from Sister Miram, and the afternoon found them coring winter apples behind the kitchens. There were no sisters and no novices.
The eldest Lanthorn girl was Elissa. She was dark haired, as tall as a man, thin, with long legs and very little figure and a nose like a hawk. Despite this men found her irresistible, mostly because she smiled a great deal and was selective in her use of the family’s principle weapon: a sharp tongue.
Mary was the second daughter. She was the very opposite of her elder sister; short, but not squat, with a full figure, guinea gold hair, a narrow waist and a snub nose. She thought herself a great beauty and was always puzzled when boys preferred Elissa.
Fran was brown haired, full-lipped and full hipped. She had her mother’s looks, her father’s brains and sense of honesty, and she seldom cared whether boys noticed her or not.
And Kaitlin was the youngest: just fifteen. She was not as tall as Elissa, not as full-figured as Mary, nor yet as witty, or as cutting, as Fran. She had pale brown hair that framed a heart-shaped face, and she appeared to be the quietest and most respectable of the Lanthorns.
‘Bitch,’ Fran said, tossing a core aside. ‘She thinks we’re going to be good little girls with pig shit on our feet for the rest of our lives.’
Elissa looked around carefully. ‘We have to play this right,’ she said thoughtfully. She ate a slice of of apple, deftly taking a knife from beneath her kirtle, cutting a slice, wiping the knife on her apron and putting back in her sheath faster than most people could follow. She looked down her long nose at Fran. ‘I hearby convene a meeting of the “Marry a Noble” club.’
‘Silly kids’ nonsense,’ Mary scoffed. She was eighteen. ‘No one around here is going to marry any of us.’ She flicked her eyes around the circle. ‘Maybe Kaitlin,’ she admitted.
Fran tossed an apple core viciously into the sty behind them. ‘If some people would stop making the beast with two backs with every farm boy in every blessed hay stack—’
Elissa’s smile didn’t even thin. ‘Ahh, Fran, you’ll go a virgin to your wedding, won’t ya?’ She snorted.
Fran’s next apple core hit Elissa in the nose and she hissed.
Mary shrugged. ‘Scarcely matters if I bed ’em or don’t,’ she said, ‘seeing they say I did, and folks believe ’em.’
The others nodded.
Elissa shrugged. ‘Listen, the men-at-arms don’t talk to the farmers. They don’t know shit about our lives. And even the archers—’ She shrugged. ‘The archers have more money than any farm boy in this place. The men-at-arms—’
‘They ain’t all gents,’ Mary said. ‘I wouldn’t touch that Bad Tom if I had armour on.’
Fran shrugged. ‘I rather like him.’
‘You’re dumber than I thought then. Aren’t you supposed to be the smartest, fastest one? He gives me the creeps.’ Mary shivered.
Elissa raised a hand for silence. ‘That’s as may be. What I’m saying is that we—’ She looked around. ‘We have something. Of value.’ She smiled. The smile lit her face and turned her from a square jawed young harridan into a very attractive woman. Mary turned and saw that Elissa’s smile was for a middle-aged squire just walking past the kitchen with a pail of ash. Off to polish armour somewhere.
Elissa folded up her smile and put it away. ‘There’s sixty men-at-arms,’ she said. ‘Sixty chances one of them might marry one of us.’
Mary snorted.
But Fran leaned forward, the apple in her hand forgotten. ‘You might have something there,’ she said.
Elissa and Fran weren’t usually allies. But Elissa met her look and both smiled.
‘So we don’t,’ Elissa said. ‘We just don’t. That’s all you have to do, girls. Don’t. Let’s see what we’re offered.’
Mary wasn’t so sure. ‘So what. We don’t bed them? What else do we do? You’re planning to learn to shoot a bow? Go to Mag and take up fine sewing?’
Elissa shook her head.
‘Lis won’t stop opening her legs for any likely lad,’ Mary said.
‘Lis can do as she likes. She’s old and we’re not.’ Fran looked around. ‘Captain’s not bad looking.’
Elissa made a crude noise. ‘He’s doing one of the nuns.’
‘He ain’t!’ said Kaitlin. She’d been silent thus far, but some things couldn’t be allowed to pass.
‘Oh, you’re an expert, are ya?’ asked Mary.
‘I clean his room,’ Kaitlin said. She blushed. ‘Sometimes.’
Elissa looked at her. ‘You, young maiden, are a dark horse.’
‘I ain’t!’ Kaitlin said, prepared for their mockery.
‘You go right in his room?’ Elissa asked.
‘Almost every day.’ Kaitlin looked around. ‘What?’
Elissa shrugged. ‘One of us could be in his bed.’
Kaitlin put a hand to her mouth. Mary spat. Fran, frankly, looked as if she was considering it.
‘Too desperate,’ Fran pronounced. ‘He’s scary, too.’
‘Creepy,’ said Mary.
‘His squire’s pretty as a picture,’ Elissa said.
Kaitlin blushed. Luckily the rest weren’t watching.
North-west of Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn needed to know more. He needed his friend in the Rock to be less coy. Thorn summoned birds from the air even as he ran through the woods in the failing light. Now he was climbing ridges. The descent on the north side was never as steep as the ascent had been, and he was going higher and higher into the mountains. The trees thinned, and he moved faster as the land opened up.
A pair of ravens descended to his fists as if they were hawks to a knight. He spoke to them, planted messages in their wise heads, and sent them to the fortress. No one ever suspected ravens. They rose above him and then soared away to the south-east, and he turned and saw how very high he had come.
He looked out over the wilderness. At his feet – far, far below – was the chain of beaver ponds like miniature lakes sparkling in the last of the sun. The stream that connected them was a thread of silver, visible here and there in the warp and weft of trees.
He turned and climbed higher. The trail was steeper now, and he was not so fast. He had to use his long, powerful arms to pull himself from tree to tree. The stream began to descend in a series of waterfalls at his side.
Finally, he pulled himself over a slick rock and raised himself by main force to the top, his arms spread wide, grunting with effort as they lifted the full weight of his giant body. At his feet was a pool, deep and black, and a waterfall dropped a hundred feet into it. The spray coated him in moments. He stooped and drank deep of the magic pool.
A head broke the surface, just an arm’s length away, and he started.
Who drinks in my pool?
The words appeared in his mind without a sound being spoken.
‘I am called Thorn,’ he said.
The creature rose from the pool, black water flowing from him. As he moved up the side of the pool he grew and grew. His skin was jet-black and shone like obsidian.
He moved fast yet appeared to be perfectly still; the transitions were difficult to catch, movement always seemed to happen at the corner of Thorn’s eye. And when the creature fully emerged, he was a quarter taller than the sorcerer.
A shining black stone golem, with no face, no eyes, no mouth.
I do not know you.
‘I know a little of you,’ Thorn said. ‘I know that I need allies. Your kind are said to be fearsome warriors.’
I can feel your power. It is considerable.
‘I can see your speed and strength. They, too, are considerable.’ Thorn nodded.
Enough talk. What do you WANT?
The mind shout almost brought Thorn to his knees. ‘I want a dozen of your kind as my guards. As soldiers.’
The smooth monster threw back his head and laughed, and suddenly there was a mouth after all, with cruel teeth. The stone of his face – if it was stone – seemed to flow like water. We serve no one.
Thorn would have smiled if he still had the ability to. Instead, he simply cast his binding. Simultaneously, he shielded his mind from the shout that was sure to follow.
The troll stiffened. He screamed, and his teeth clashed like rocks in a flooded stream, and his smooth arms grew hands and talons that reached for Thorn.
The sorcerer didn’t stir. The net of his will settled in sparkling green strands over the creature and tightened, and that quickly it was over.
I will slay you and all your kind in ways too horrible for your mind to encompass.
Thorn turned. ‘No you will not,’ he said. ‘Now, obey. We have more of your kind to find, and a long night ahead of us.’
The troll thrashed in his binding like a wolf in a cage. He screamed, his bell-like voice ringing across the wilderness.
Thorn shook his head minutely. ‘Obey,’ he said again, and pushed a little more of his will into the binding.
The monster resisted, showing – or growing – wicked black in a black mouth. His whole body stretched for Thorn.
To Thorn, it was like arm wrestling with a child. A strong child – but a child nonetheless. He slammed his will down on the troll’s, and it crumbled.
That was the way of the Wild.
The other trolls weren’t hard to find, and the second was considerably easier to press than the first had been . . . but the seventh was much harder than the sixth, and by the time the sun had set he had a tail of mighty trolls and that sense a man gets when he has lifted so much weight that he can no longer lift his arms.
He sat in a narrow gully, and listened to the wind while his blank-faced trolls crouched all around him.
After some time, as the sun began to slip beneath the rim of the world and he felt better, he reached out a tendril of his power toward the dark sun in the distant fortress.
And he recoiled from what he found, because—
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The captain was leaning on the wall, the curtain wall that covered the outer gate. He’d walked here almost without volition, because the confines of the Commandery were suddenly too close and airless.
He’d written her a note. Because he was not fifteen he had written one, not ten of them, and he’d placed it in the crotch of the old apple tree. And then, after cursing himself for waiting and hoping she might appear by some sympathetic magic, he’d walked to the wall for some air.
The stars burned in the distant heavens, and there were fires in the Bridge Castle courtyard below him. The Lower Town at the foot of the ridge was empty – a skeleton guard held it and no more. And there was no light.
He looked out at the darkness – the Wild was as dark as the sea.
Something was looking for him. At first it was a prickle in his hair, and then a presentiment of doom, and then, suddenly, he’d never felt so vulnerable in all his life, and he crouched on the battlement fighting a particularly awful childhood memory.
When it didn’t relent, didn’t let up, he took a deep breath and forced himself to his feet. He turned and made himself walk, despite the crushing fear, up the steps set into the wall to the first tower. The second step was so hard he had to use his hands on the fourth and fifth – by the eighth he was crawling. He pushed, made a sword of his will, and pushed through. The feeling relaxed like the grip of an unwelcome suitor as soon as he entered the stone structure.
Bent leaped to his feet, a deck of painted cards in his hand. ‘Captain!’ he shouted, and a dozen archers leaped to their feet and snapped their salutes.
The captain glanced around. ‘At ease,’ he said. ‘Who’s on the walls?’
‘Acrobat,’ Bent answered. ‘Half-Arse on the main curtain, Ser Guillam Longsword and Snot commanding the towers with the engines. Watch changes in a glass.’
‘Double up,’ the captain ordered. He wanted to apologise – Sorry, boys, I have a creepy feeling, so I’m costing a lot of you a night’s sleep. But he’d learned not to apologise when he gave an unpopular order, much less over-explain it. And the successful raid had given him credit in the hard currency of leadership – no commander is ever much better than his last performance.
/> Bent grimaced, but he started lacing up his embroidered leather jack. Like many of the other veterans, Bent wore his fortune on his body – a subtle brag, a statement of his worth, a willingness to see that fortune taken by his killer. The dark-skinned man looked around, and like true soldiers his fellow gamblers avoided his eye.
‘Hetty, Crank, Larkin, with me. Hetty, if you don’t want the duty, don’t be so obvious about sneaking to the jakes.’ Bent glared at the youngest man in the tower room and then turned back to the captain. ‘That sufficient, m’lord?’
The captain didn’t know Bent very well – he was Ser Jehannes’ man – but he was impressed that his most senior archer would take the trick on the wall himself. ‘Carry on,’ he said coldly, and walked across the room surveying the piles of coins on the tables, and the dice and cards, as he did. He was pretty sure Ser Hugo would never have allowed such overt gambling. So he scratched his beard and beckoned to Bent.
The archer came up like a dog expecting a kick.
The captain pointed at the money on the main table. He didn’t say a thing.
Bent raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth.
‘Save it,’ the captain said. ‘Remind me of the company rule on gambling.’
Bent made a face. ‘Total value of the game not to exceed a day’s pay for the lowest man,’ he recited.
Two rose nobles gleamed up at the captain, with more than a dozen silver leopards and a pile of copper cats by them. The captain put his hand over the pile. ‘Must be mine then,’ he said, ‘I’m the only man in the company who makes this kind of money every day.’
Bent swallowed but his eyes narrowed in anger.
The captain lifted his hand, leaving the pile untouched. He locked eyes with the archer and smiled. ‘You get me, Bent?’
The archer all but sighed with relief. ‘Aye, Captain.’