The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (47 page)

“That can’t have been the only news,” Amicia said.

Ser Alcaeus looked as if he might protest, but Ser Gabriel smiled at her—a warmth to his smile which she bathed in for a moment. A guilty pleasure. “No. The Queen’s trial is set for Tuesday next week—at the tournament. There’s a long list of attainders, forfeitures and treasons.”

“My father is to be executed,” Ser Michael said with chilling equanimity.

“Half the nobility is to be taken and executed,” Gabriel said. “Apparently by the other half, and a handful of Galles.”

“Scarce a handful,” Ser Thomas said. “Three hundred lances with that monster, Du Corse.”

Ser Michael laughed. “Seldom is a man so aptly named.”

“There’s open faction and war in Harndon,” Gabriel said. “The commons against the nobles, or so it appears. The King has managed to attaint Ser Gerald Random.”

“The richest
and
the most loyal man in the kingdom,” muttered Ser Gavin.

“There’s refugees fleeing the city, the King is considering martial law, and it would appear that the Archbishop of Lorica is the prime mover of all this.” Gabriel flung a small, almost transparent piece of parchment on the table.

Ser Michael frowned. “It’s as if he
wants
civil war.”

Gabriel nodded. “Someone wants civil war. Someone very clever.”

Michael shook his head. “Send for the company.”

Gabriel shook his head in turn. “Why? We’re not under attack. Listen, my friends—we have a licence to ride armed to a tournament. We’re going to the tournament, and we are within the law.”

Suddenly, Amicia saw it. “You’re going to fight for the Queen!” she said.

Ser Michael’s head snapped around, and so did Ser Gavin’s.

Gabriel had the look of insufferable triumphant pleasure that he wore when one of his little schemes went well. His lips pursed and his cheeks were stretched and he looked like a cat who had caught a mouse.

“I am, too,” he said.

“May we all live to get you there,” Ser Michael said. “You bastard. I want to fight for the Queen!”

Gabriel shook his head. “You’re going to rescue your father. And some other people.”

Bad Tom rubbed his hairy chin. “We’re going to cut our way in and out?” he said with evident pleasure.

The Red Knight sighed. “No, Tom. No, we’re going to make every effort to be reasonable, responsible knights who do not want to inflict public violence on people already at the verge of civil war.”

Bad Tom grinned. “You’re just saying that.” He smiled. “You’ll need to run courses every day.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “I will—but I don’t want to be injured.”

His brother laughed mirthlessly. “You are the original glory-thief. If you’re injured, I’m sure one of us can find the time to take your place.”

There was some forced laughter.

Bad Tom grinned ear to ear. “It’s fewkin’ de Vrailly?” he asked.

Ser Gabriel shrugged. “It won’t be the King in person. De Vrailly is his champion.”

Ser Gavin looked at his brother. “He’s mine,” he said. “As God is my witness. I want him.”

The knights at the table looked at each other.

Ser Gavin leaned forward. “I’m the best jouster.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “Yes,” he said slowly, and then smiled at his brother. “Some days.” He sat back. “The Queen asked me, last fall. I don’t think she knew what was at stake then—”

Tom Lachlan slapped his thigh. “At stake!” he said, laughing. “Damn me, that’s good.”

The next two days on the road were not like the first week. They moved faster, into the northern Albin, on better roads, crossing the great bridges over the river with each great bend, and paying tolls to local lords at every bridge. The King’s officers maintained the bridges and the roads, and local men collected the tolls and passed them to Harndon. Trade on the Royal Road was one of the major sources of northern revenue.

“Why doesn’t the Royal Road run all the way to Albinkirk?” Sister Katherine asked one evening.

Ser Gavin, who had just sung evensong with the nuns, made a face. “Mostly, because of my da,” he said. “In the dark times before Chevin, the creatures of the Wild ruined every road they could find—they tried to cut Albinkirk off from Harndon altogether.” He shook his head. “The great lords of the north used to maintain the northern stretches of the road. My da doesn’t see any need to be connected to Harndon or to pay taxes there.”

“So—” Amicia could see it as if on a map in her head—which it was, in a way, in her memory palace. “So north of Sixth Bridge…”

“North of Sixth Bridge is a network of little muddy trails rather than a single maintained road. Even under the old King, the gorge and the highlands made it hard to maintain a big road.” Ser Gavin stared off into the evening. “If we had a good king, and time, and peace, we’d finish the road—and that would spur trade, and link the north more closely to the south.”

“Ser Gerald showed that it could be done by boat. All the way to Lorica.” Sister Amicia couldn’t help but watch as Ser Thomas and Ser Gabriel came together on the plain to her right. Their armour glowed in the twilight, and their horses’ hooves shook the earth.

Ser Gavin nodded. “I will go join them—I’m late getting armed. Random’s boats made it, and will again this year. But it’s four days getting around the falls, and in a wet spring, with the river high—a hard row above the falls in the gorge.” He looked out over the rich fields. “But if the kingdom’s ever to be united—the river and the road will both have to go all the way through.”

South of Fifth Bridge, there was traffic on the roads. They passed a late convoy rolling north—a convoy that knew less than they did about events in Harndon. They were still three days from Lorica.

“Lorica on Good Friday,” Amicia said to Sister Mary. “We can observe it in the Basilica!”

She made bright small talk with her nuns and tried to ignore the signs around her, but the soldiers looked grimmer and grimmer as they moved south. They had begun to see refugees on the roads—at first, they were mostly prosperous people with carts. But a day out from Lorica, they were seeing hundreds of people, families, and some had already been robbed. They looked like tinkers—dirty, carrying sacks of belongings with spare clothes and odd items attached any which way.

Neither the nuns nor the soldiers could ignore them. Many begged for food—many told harrowing tales.

Ser Gabriel found her towards afternoon on the tenth day on the road. “I’m not going to Lorica,” he said.

“I saw you send Mikal off to the east,” she replied.

“Good eye, then. There are small roads now, on both sides of the river. We’ll turn east and make for the highlands and try to outflank the refugees.”

“You’re not telling me everything,” she said.

For the first time, anger flashed across his face, and he was impatient. “I’m not lying. I can tell you what I guess, but what I know makes a very slim volume. I wish you were not here. Is that too frank? They want you. This is… orders of magnitude worse than what I expected. I feel like a fool—practising for a joust when the whole kingdom is coming apart like a doll crushed under a wagon wheel.”

He looked away, as if he’d annoyed himself.

“You don’t like to feel as if you are not in control,” she said.

“That’s facile. No one’s in control in a war, but this is—insane. A king, ripping apart his own land and his own marriage?”

Amicia nodded. “Well, I shall miss Easter in the basilica of Lorica,” she said. “But I’m not foolish enough to ride off on my own.”

He nodded. “Good,” he said.

That was it—no flirting and no discussion.

“I think we’ve become part of their company,” she confided to Katherine, who laughed mirthlessly.

“One of the pages offered to marry me, if his knight would allow it,” Katherine said. “I think I’m old enough to be his mother.”

Sister Mary blushed.

They rode east, away from the setting sun.

That was a long night.

What the captain hadn’t mentioned was that they wouldn’t be stopping to camp. The turn east was accompanied by a further increase in speed, with veteran squires leading the files in alternating walking and trotting their horses. Even Katherine began to suffer, and by moonrise, Amicia was chewing her lower lip in mingled fatigue and pain. Sister Mary was moaning.

The column halted. The moon was three-quarters full; the narrow road was clear and fairly hard between darkened fields.

“Dismount,” came down the column.

Ser Christos, very chivalrously, leapt from his riding horse and helped Sister Mary off her mount.

Sister Katherine slid from the saddle, tired but unbeaten. “Don’t tell me that this is nothing next to Christ’s Passion,” she said. “I know it is nothing, but it is sufficient penance for everything I’ve ever thought about Miriam.”

Pages came down the column, shadows shifting in the odd, moon-shot darkness. They had feedbags already prepared, and they helped the nuns put them on their horses’ heads.

Nell appeared at Amicia’s elbow. “Cap’n says you have about half an hour, and is everyone all right?” she asked, in his accent exactly.

Amicia waved a tired hand. “No one ever died of riding sores,” she said. “I hope.”

All too soon, they were off again, the whole column a quiet jingle of horse harness and mail and steel plate and leather. They passed through a small hamlet—dogs barked, but no one came to their doors.

Past the hamlet they turned suddenly south, and she realized they were riding along the crest of a tall, shallowly sloped ridge, and she could see the twinkling lights of a dozen distant villages—odd that they should have light so late.

South. She knew enough stars to know that they had turned south, towards Harndon, and that the smoke on the horizon to the west must be the breakfast fires of Lorica, the kingdom’s second city.

They didn’t stop or make camp.

By noon, Amicia was asleep in her saddle. She dozed away an hour or more, and woke sharply to find the column halted in deep forest. Behind her, Ser Christos was again helping Sister Mary to dismount—or rather, to collapse.

Pages appeared and gathered the horses. Amicia’s was done—lathered all down his flanks and wild-eyed.

She didn’t know the page who took her mount, but the boy smiled. “Never you mind, Sister, I’ll have your little mare right as rain by tonight.”

“So we’re to sleep?” she asked. She was too tired for anger or complaint.

It was like the convent, after all.

The page shrugged. “No one told me. But if we’re currying and feeding ta’ horses, stands ta’ reason we won’t move for some time. Eh?” He winked.

Sister Amicia gathered the other two nuns and led them to the shade of a great oak tree. They lay down—Mary collapsed—and slept.

Amicia awoke with a tree root carving a hole in her side to realize that she had slept through Christ’s Passion and she was instantly on her knees.
When most of the rest of the company was awake, she led them in prayers of contrition.

A valet brought her a bowl of oatmeal.

“Oatmeal?” she asked.

“Nicomedes says it’s Good Friday,” Bobert, the youngest valet, said. “No meat, no fish.”

Ser Gabriel rode up, and Amicia was distantly pleased to see that his red jupon was rumpled and something had left a crease on his forehead. He smiled at her.

“This is your notion of Good Friday observance?” she asked.

“Fasting and travail?” He nodded. “Pretty much—ah, here’s Tom.”

Ser Thomas came up with a dozen heavily armed Hillmen at his tail, all mounted. “Well, Kenneth Dhu has the herd until we get this done,” he said. “You made good time.”

“Only the next week will see what ‘good time’ might have been,” Ser Gabriel said.

Almost as soon as the column moved off they left the woods, which were not the deep forest Amicia had imagined but instead a small copse of carefully tended great oaks on a rich manor. As the sun set in the west, Amicia looked around her. She could see fields—and to the east, mountains, their tall, snow-capped summits catching sun.

“Wolf’s Head, the Rabbit Ears, White Face and Hard Rede,” Nell said, pointing to them. “My family’s from these parts. Morea’s another hundred leagues over that way.”

Ser Christos smiled at the page. “Not my part of Morea, young maiden. This is the soft south, where men grow olives, not warriors.”

Behind his back, Nell made a face. “Who’d want to grow warriors?” she asked.

They rode until the sky was dark and the stars twinkled overhead, and then dismounted and drank a cup of wine, every man and woman, their reins in their hands. Then most men changed horses, and the nuns were put up on three strange riding horses, and the next few miles passed swiftly as the three women learned to manage bigger, more dangerous animals. But no one was thrown, and they had another halt at a crossroad. There were four big wagons pulled into the other arm of the cross, blocking any traffic from the high hedges on either side.

Ser Christos grunted.

“What is it?” Amicia asked him.

“Food,” Christos said. “I wondered. He’s purchased food.” He nodded, as if satisfied.

The captain himself materialized out of the darkness like an unclean spirit. “It’s easy to get food now,” he said. “Wait ’til we’re running north. Then it will be exciting.” But he smiled, and his smile suggested he was more comfortable with the situation than he had been the day before.

Morning found them in another grove—this one bigger, on the eastern slope of another great ridge. Amicia thought she glimpsed the Albin running down to the sea in the middle distance—twenty miles. That put them far east of Harndon.

Holy Saturday.

They made a small camp. The women cooked—a rare event in the company—and made beef soup with dumplings and new greens—something Amicia hadn’t had before, but the nuns ate without complaint.

Ser Gavin and the other knights came for morning prayers. As they were singing, Sister Amicia saw one of the great imperial messengers circle and land on the captain’s wrist, and suddenly her outdoor service was much smaller. But the captain must have brushed them off—most of the knights came back to sing.

They turned west. For some reason, Amicia’s heart quickened. They moved at a trot for more than an hour and then turned south towards the river, rode into the outer wards of a small castle, dismounted, and collapsed into sleep.