She only had one left.
She was the smaller of the two, and the gold of her fur was brighter, and she was on the edge of exhaustion, suffering from dehydration and panic. She had lost the power of speech and could only mew like a dumb animal. Her mother feared she might have lost it for life.
But she had to try. The very blood in her veins cried out that she had to try to save her young.
She picked the cub up in her teeth the way a cat carried a kitten, and ran again, ignoring the pain in her paws.
Lorica – Ser Mark Wishart
The knight cantered around the western edge of the woods and saw the river stretching away in a broad curve. He saw the shambing golden creature in the late sunlight, gleaming like a heraldic beast on a city shield. The bear was running flat out. And so very beautiful, Wild. Feral.
‘Oh, Bess,’ he said. For a moment he considered just letting the bear go.
But that was not what he had vowed.
His charger’s ears pricked forward. He raised his sword, Bess rumbled into a gallop and he slammed his visor closed.
Bess was faster than the bear. Not much faster, but the great female was hampered by her cub and he could see that her rear paws were mangled and bloody.
He began to run her down as the ground started to slope down towards the broad river. It was wide here, near the sea, and it smelled of brine at the turn of the tide. He set himself in his saddle and raised his sword—
Suddenly, the bear released her cub to tumble deep into some low bushes, and turned like a great cat pouncing – going from prey to predator in the beat of a human heart.
She rose on her haunches as he struck at her – and she was faster than any creature he’d ever faced. She swung with all her weight in one great claw-raking blow, striking at his horse, even as his blow cut through the meat of her right forepaw and into her chest – cut deep.
Bess was already dead beneath him.
He went backwards over his high crupper, as he’d been taught to. He hit hard, rolled, and came to his feet. He’d lost his sword – and lost sight of the bear. He found the dagger at his waist and drew it even as he whirled. Too slow.
She hit him. The blow caught him in the side, and threw him off his feet, but his breastplate held the blow and the claws didn’t rake him. By luck he rolled over his sword, and got to his feet with it in his fist. Something in his right leg was badly injured – maybe broken.
The bear was bleeding.
The cub mewed.
The mother looked at the cub. Looked at him. Then she ran, picked the cub up in her mouth and ran for the river. He watched until she was gone – she jumped into the icy water and swam rapidly away.
He stood with his shoulders slumped, until his breathing began to steady. Then he walked to his dead horse, found his unbroken flask, and drank all the rest of the contents.
He said a prayer for a horse he had loved.
And he waited to be found.
West of Lissen Carak – Thorn
A two hundred leagues north-west, Thorn sat under a great holm-oak that had endured a millennium. The tree rose, both high and round, and its progeny filled the gap between the hills closing down from the north and the ever deeper Cohocton River to the south.
Thorn sat cross-legged on the ground. He no longer resembled the man he had once been; he was almost as tall as a barn, when he stood up to his full height, and his skin, where it showed through layers of moss and leather, seemed to be of smooth grey stone. A staff – the product of a single, straight ash tree riven by lightning in its twentieth year – lay across his lap. His gnarled fingers, as long as the tines of a hay fork, made eldritch sigils of pale green fire as he reached out into the Wild for his coven of spies.
He found the youngest and most aggressive of the Qwethnethogs; the strong people of the deep Wild that men called daemons. Tunxis. Young, angry, and easy to manipulate.
He exerted his will, and Tunxis came. He was careful about the manner of his summons; Tunxis had more powerful relatives who would resent Thorn using the younger daemon for his own ends.
Tunxis emerged from the oaks to the east at a run, his long, heavily muscled legs beautiful at the fullness of his stride, his body leaning far forward, balanced by the heavy armoured tail that characterized his kind. His chest looked deceptively human, if an unlikely shade of blue-green, and his arms and shoulders were also very man-like. His face had an angelic beauty – large, deep eyes slanted slightly, open and innocent, with a ridge of bone between them that rose into the elegant helmet crest that differentiated the male and female among them. His beak was polished to a mirror-brightness and inlaid with lapis lazuli and gold to mark his social rank, and he wore a sword that few mere human men could even lift.
He was angry – but Tunxis was at the age when young males are always angry.
‘Why do you summon me?’ he shrieked.
Thorn nodded. ‘Because I need you,’ he answered.
Tunxis clacked his beak in contempt. ‘Perhaps I do not need you. Or your games.’
‘It was my games that allowed you to kill the witch.’ Thorn didn’t smile. He had lost the ability to, but he smiled inwardly, because Tunxis was so young.
The beak clacked again. ‘She was nothing.’ Clacked again, in deep satisfaction. ‘You wanted her dead. And she was too young. You offered me a banquet and gave me a scrap. A nothing.’
Thorn handled his staff. ‘She is certainly nothing now.’ His friend had asked for the death. Layers of treason. Layers of favours asked, and owed. The Wild. His attention threatened to slip away from the daemon. It had probably been a mistake to let Tunxis kill in the valley.
‘My cousin says there are armed men riding in the valley. In our valley.’ Tunxis slurred the words, as all his people did when moved by great emotion.
Thorn leaned forward, suddenly very interested. ‘Mogan saw them?’ he asked.
‘Smelled them. Watched them. Counted their horses.’ Tunxis moved his eyebrows the way daemons did. It was like a smile, but it caused the beak to close – something like the satisfaction of a good meal.
Thorn had had many years in which to study the daemons. They were his closest allies, his not-trusted lieutenants. ‘How many?’ Thorn asked patiently.
‘Many,’ Tunxis said, already bored. ‘I will find them and kill them.’
‘You will not.’ Thorn leaned forward and slowly, carefully, rose to his feet, his heavy head brushing against the middling branches of the ancient oak. ‘Where has she found soldiers?’ he asked out loud. One of the hazards of living alone in the Wild was that you voiced things aloud. He was growing used to talking to himself aloud. It didn’t trouble him as it had at first.
‘They came from the east,’ Tunxis said. ‘I will hunt them and kill them.’
Thorn sighed. ‘No. You will find them and watch them. You will watch them from afar. We will learn their strengths and weaknesses. Chances are they will pass away south over the bridge, or join the lady as a garrison. It is no concern of ours.’
‘No concern of yours, Turncoat. Our land. Our valley. Our hills. Our fortress. Our power. Because you are weak—’ Tunxis’ beak made three distinct clacks.
Thorn rolled his hand over, long thin fingers flashing, and the daemon fell flat on the ground as if all his sinews had been cut.
Thorn’s voice became the hiss of a serpent.
‘I am weak? The soldiers are many? They came from the east? You are a fool and a child, Tunxis. I could rip your soul from your body and eat it, and you couldn’t lift a claw to stop me. Even now you cannot move, cannot summon power. You are like a hatchling in the rushing water as the salmon comes to take him. Yes? And you tell me “many” like a lord throwing crumbs to peasants. Many?’ he leaned down over the prone daemon and thrust his heavy staff into the creature’s stomach. ‘How many exactly, you little fool?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tunxis managed.
‘From the east, the south-east? From Harndon and the king? Fro
m over the mountains? Do you know?’ he hissed.
‘No,’ Tunxis said, cringing.
‘Tunxis, I like to be polite. To act like—’ He sought for a concept that could link him to the alien intelligence. ‘To act like we are allies. Who share common goals.’
‘You treat us like servants! We serve no master!’ spat the daemon. ‘We are not like your men, who lie and lie and say these pretty things. We are Qwethnethogs!’
Thorn pushed his staff deeper into the young daemon’s gut. ‘Sometimes I tire of the Wild and the endless struggle. I am trying to help you and your people reclaim your valley. Your goal is my goal. So I am not going to eat you. However tempting that might be just now.’ He withdrew the staff.
‘My cousin says I should never trust you. That whatever body you wear, you are just another man.’ Tunxis sat up, rolled to his feet with a pure and fluid grace.
‘Whatever I am, without me you have no chance against the forces of the Rock. You will never reclaim your place.’
‘Men are weak,’ Tunxis spat.
‘Men have defeated your kind again and again. They burn the woods. They cut the trees. They build farms and bridges and they raise armies and your kind lose.’ He realised that he was trying to negotiate with a child. ‘Tunxis,’ he said, laying hold of the young creature’s essence. ‘Do my bidding. Go, and watch the men, and come back and tell me.’
But Tunxis had a power of his own, and Thorn watched much of his compulsion roll off the creature. And when he let go his hold, the daemon turned and sprinted for the trees.
And only then did Thorn recall that he’d summoned the boy for another reason entirely, and that made him feel tired and old. But he exerted himself again, summoning one of the Abnethog this time, that men called wyverns.
The Abnethog were more biddable. Less fractious. Just as aggressive. But lacking a direct ability to manipulate the power, they tended to avoid open conflict with the magi.
Sidhi landed neatly in the clearing in front of the holm oak, although the aerial gymnastics required taxed his skills.
‘I come,’ he said.
Thorn nodded. ‘I thank you. I need you to look in the lower valley to the east,’ he said. ‘There are men there, now. Armed men. Possibly very dangerous.’
‘What man is dangerous to me?’ asked the wyvern. Indeed, Sidhi stood eye to eye with Thorn, and when he unfolded his wings their span was extraordinary. Even Thorn felt a twinge of real fear when the Abnethog were angry.
Thorn nodded. ‘They have bows. And other weapons that could hurt you badly.’
Sidhi made a noise in his throat. ‘Then why should I do this thing?’ he asked.
‘I made the eyes of your brood clear when they clouded over in the winter. I gave you the rock-that-warms for your mate’s nest.’ Thorn made a motion intended to convey that he would continue to heal sick wyverns.
Sidhi unfolded his wings. ‘I was going to hunt,’ he said. ‘I am hungry. And being summoned by you is like being called a dog.’ The wings spread farther and farther. ‘But it may be that I will choose to hunt to the east, and it may be that I will see your enemies.’
‘Your enemies as well,’ Thorn said wearily. Why are they all so childish?
The wyvern threw back its head, and screamed, and the wings beat – a moment of chaos, and it was in the air, the trees all around it shedding leaves in the storm of air. A night of hard rain wouldn’t have ripped so many leaves from the trees.
And then Thorn reached out with his power – gently, hesitantly, a little like a man rising from bed on a dark night to find his way down unfamiliar stairs. He reached out to the east – farther, and a little farther, until he found what he always found.
Her. The lady on the Rock.
He probed the walls like a man running his tongue over a bad tooth. She was there, enshrined in her power. And with her was something else entirely. He couldn’t read it – the fortress carried its own power, its own ancient sigils which worked against him.
He sighed. It was raining. He sat in the rain, and tried to enjoy the rise of spring around him.
Tunxis killed the nun, and now the lady has more soldiers. He had set something in motion, and he wasn’t sure why.
And he wondered if he had made a mistake.
Chapter Two
Bad Tom
Harndon Palace – The Queen
Desiderata lay on the couch of her solar chewing new cherries and savouring the change in the air. Because – at last – spring had come. Her favourite season. After Lent would come Easter and then Whitsunday, and the season of picnics, of frolics by the river, or eating fresh fruit, wearing flowers, walking barefoot . . .
. . . and tournaments.
She sighed at the thought of tournaments. Behind her, Diota, her nurse, made a face. She could see the old woman’s disapproval in the mirror.
‘What? Now you frown if I sigh?’ she asked.
Diota straightened her back, putting a fist into it like a pregnant woman. Her free hand fingered the rich paternoster at her neck. ‘You sound like a whore pleasing a customer, mistress – if you’ll pardon the crudity of an old woman—’
‘Who’s known you all these years,’ the Queen completed the sentence. Indeed, she’d had Diota since she was weaned. ‘Do I? And what do you know about the sounds whores make, nurse?’
‘Now, my lady!’ Diota came forward, waggling a finger. Coming around the screen, she stopped as if she’d hit an invisible barrier. ‘Oh! By the Sweet Lord – put some clothes on, girl! You’ll catch your death! It’s not spring yet, morsel!’
The Queen laughed. She was naked in the new sunlight, her tawny skin flecked with the imperfections of the glass in her solar’s window, lying on the pale brown profusion of her hair. She drew something from the sunlight falling on her skin – something that made her glow from within.
Desiderata rose and stood at the mirror – the longest mirror in the Demesne, made just for her, so that she could examine herself from the high arches of her feet, up her long legs, past her hips and thighs and the deep recess of her navel to her breasts, her upright shoulders, her long and tapered neck, deep cut chin, a mouth made for kissing, long nose and wide grey eyes with lashes so long that sometimes she could lick them.
She frowned. ‘Have you seen the new lady in waiting? Emmota?’ she said.
Her nurse chuckled alongside her. ‘She’s a child.’
‘A fine figure. Her waist is thin as a rail.’ The Queen looked at herself with careful scrutiny.
Diota smacked her hip. ‘Get dressed, you hussy!’ she laughed. ‘You’re looking for compliments. She’s nothing to you, Miss. A child. No breasts.’ She laughed. ‘Every man says you are the beauty of the world,’ she added.
The Queen continued to look in the mirror. ‘I am. But for how long?’ She put her hands up over her head, arching her back as her chest rose.
Her nurse slapped her playfully. ‘Do you want the king to find you thus?’
Desiderata smiled at her woman. ‘I could say yes. I want him to find me just like this,’ she said. And then, her voice coloured with power, she said, ‘Or I could say I am as much myself, and as much the Queen, naked, as I am clothed.’
Her nurse took a step away.
‘But I won’t say any such thing. Bring me something nice. The brown wool gown that goes with my hair. And my golden belt.’
‘Yes, my lady.’ Diota nodded and frowned. ‘Shall I send some of your ladies to dress you?’
The Queen smiled and stretched, her eyes still on the mirror. ‘Send me my ladies,’ she said, and subsided back onto the couch in the solar.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
At Ser Hugo’s insistence, the master archers had set up butts in the fields along the river.
Men grumbled, because they’d been ordered to curry their horses before turning in, and then, before the horses were cared for, they were ordered to shoot. They had ridden hard, for many long days, and there wasn’t a man or woman wi
thout dark circles under their eyes.
Bent, the eldest, an easterner, and Wilful Murder, fresh back from failing to find a murderer’s tracks with the huntsman, ordered the younger men to unload the butts, stuffed with old cloth or woven from straw, from the wagons.
‘Which it isn’t my turn,’ whined Kanny. ‘An’ why are you always picking on us?’ His words might have appeared braver, if he hadn’t waited until Bent was far away before saying them.
Geslin was the youngest man in the company, just fourteen, with a thin frame that suggested he’d never got much food as a boy, climbed one of the tall wagons and silently seized a target and tossed it down to Gadgee, an odd looking man with a swarthy face and foreign features.
Gadgee caught the target with a grunt, and started toward the distant field. ‘Shut up and do some work,’ he said.
Kanny spat. And moved very slowly towards a wagon that didn’t have any targets in it. ‘I’ll just look—’
Bad Tom’s archer, Cuddy, appeared out of nowhere and shoved him ungently towards the wagon where Geslin was readying a second target. ‘Shut up and do some work,’ he said.
He was slow enough that by the time he had his target propped up and ready for use, all nine of the other butts were ready as well. And there were forty archers standing a hundred paces distant, examining their spare strings and muttering about the damp.
Cuddy strung his bow with an economy of motion that belied long practice, and he opened the string that held the arrows he had in his quiver.
‘Shall I open the dance?’ he said.
He nocked, and loosed.
A few paces to his right, Wilful Murder, who fancied himself as good an archer as any man alive, drew and loosed a second later, contorting his body to pull the great war bow.