The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (66 page)

We were tricked by the vile sorceress, and thwarted. But all is well, my knight. All is as it should be. Today, you will defeat the Queen’s army and her cause will collapse. You will kill her champion—

De Vrailly mastered himself. He raised his head and his eyes met the angel’s. “I am told that the King of Galle has been defeated in a great battle in Arelat,” he said.

That is of no moment now
, the angel said.
You will be King, here.

De Vrailly rose from his knees. His right hand picked up the small silver cup, and with a flick of his wrist, the holy water struck the angel.

Black fire rent the angel. With a shriek, the angel shook himself—and was whole and gold and beautiful, without expression on his serene and commanding face.

That was childish.

De Vrailly was standing with his hand on his sword hilt. “The archbishop tells me that I am a child,” he said.

Come, my knight. I confess that we failed at the tournament. I was surprised at a number of developments—but the black sorceress who opposes me was before me in many ways. I pray your pardon, mortal—I, too, can be confused. And even hurt.

De Vrailly thought of what he had just seen.

“By the black sorceress, you mean the Queen?” de Vrailly asked carefully.

I do not think you will find this line of questioning to your comfort, my knight. But yes, I mean the Queen, and the malign presence that defends and abets her—a succubus of hell.

De Vrailly wanted very much to believe what the angel said. He balanced on an exquisite, torturous knife edge.

“I think that you killed the King. I think that you manipulate events. I think I have been your pawn.” De Vrailly threw the words like blows in a fight to the death. Now his head flooded with all his doubts—now he could marshal his doubts like armies, whereas when the angel first manifested, he couldn’t even breathe. The holy water had changed something.

And yet, the archangel looked like everything that de Vrailly wanted. From this world, and from his God.

I think it would be better for you to banish these doubts and do what you were created to do, my child. I wish you to see that all the world is a shadow, and that there are many truths and many realities. But for you, there must be just one reality. One world, one spirit. The Queen is a sorceress who arranged that you be taken from your rightful place as the King’s champion and manipulated events to kill the King. I have worked tirelessly to defend you—

“Have you put magical protections on me and my armour?” de Vrailly asked.

The angel paused. The pause was so brief that it scarcely existed, yet to de Vrailly, used to the angel almost seeming to read his thoughts, it seemed long.

I would never do anything that would prevent men from giving you the glory which you deserve of your right. Stop this, my knight. Go forth and conquer your enemies. Tomorrow the Queen will send someone to offer you single combat. Defeat him, kill him, and you will be master here. These doubts will only confuse you. This is not the time to be confused. This is the time to get revenge.

De Vrailly returned to his knees.

Sometime in the night, all the Harndon militia marched away from the army.

The Company

B
ad Tom and Ser Michael and Long Paw and Gelfred pushed the column like daemons from hell. The captain was everywhere—up and down the column—from the moment they passed the gap under an arch of trees and took the road north to Lorica.

He had a brief officers’ call in the saddle. He was terse, dividing their small force into a vanguard under Lord Corcy with his powerful force of knights—local men who knew the road and the ground around it, a main body under Gavin, and a rearguard under Tom Lachlan.

Twice, Michael and Tom turned and laid an ambush in the greenwood, with archers and a dozen knights filling the road, but no pursuit threatened them. At three in the afternoon, Gelfred launched back down the road with five of his best foresters—Will Scarlet, Dan Favour, Amy’s Hob, Short Tooth and Daud—to scout.

But for the rest of the column the afternoon passed in a haze of dust and sun and horse sweat.

Bad Tom would roar, “Halt! Change horses!” and they’d have five minutes.

Bob Twill learned to eat while holding his horse. He learned to piss while holding his horse.

Worst of all, he learned to ride.

The Queen seemed to grow with every mile they rode—louder, larger, and happier. She rode the dusty lane with her babe clutched to her, and sang him songs in Occitan and Gallish, songs of chivalry and love. Her singing was a tonic, and when she came to one the men around her knew,
they’d sing the chorus—
Prendes i garde
or
C’est la fin quoi que nus die
, which made the woods ring.

Lady Blanche—they were all calling her that in the exuberance of victory—rode with all the skill of Bob Twill, and her pretty face could not hide her annoyance at the Queen’s constant correction of her seat and her hands. But she cleaned the baby and changed his linen, and at some point during the third halt, in a moment of vexation, she balled up the child’s filthy towels and threw them into the woods.

“Fie! And linen towelling so dear!” The captain was just behind her, at the edge of the trees.

She flushed. “I’m sorry, my lord.”

“I’m not. It’s the most human thing I’ve seen from you all day.” He tossed her an apple. “Toby!” he shouted.

Toby appeared, carrying the captain’s standard. He was still mounted, although the rest of them were on foot.

“Clean shirt,” the captain said. “And my towel. Give them to Lady Blanche.”

Toby didn’t ask questions. He reached behind his war saddle, to a very small leather trousseau. He extracted a linen shirt that smelled of lavender, and a slightly soiled damp towel.

“I used the towel to shave this morning,” the captain admitted.

Blanche caught the work on the shirt—mice teeth on the cuffs, embroidered coat of arms, beautiful fine stitching as good as her own or better. “What’s this for, then?” she asked. “My lord?”

“Tear the shirt up for swaddling,” he said. “The towel’s so you can wipe your hands clean before you eat the apple.” He smiled.

She did just that. Then she tossed it to him—as if they were peers. He caught it and threw it to Toby, who shied away.

“Afraid of a little baby poo?” the captain cried.

Toby blushed furiously. He rolled the towel very tightly and put it away behind his war saddle as if afraid of disease.

He smiled at her and rode off down the column.

By nightfall, Michael and Tom had begun to use the rougher sides of their tongues, and the captain was the calm, cheerful one. Bob Twill was found to have stayed on the ground at a halt. Bad Tom rode back, scared him almost to incontinence, and got him on his exhausted horse.

Cat Evil, never the best rider, complained of the pace and found himself docked a day’s pay.

“Mew mew mew!” Tom roared. “I don’t hear nowt from the babe but laughter, and you lot—old soldiers—cry like babies. A little fight an’ a few hours in the saddle—” He laughed. “We’ll shake the fat off you.”

Cat Evil, who was as thin as a young girl and had the long hair to match and a very nasty disposition, put a hand on his knife.

Tom laughed again. “If you ha’ the piss to face
me,
” he said, “then ye’re not e’en tired yet. Bottle it and keep riding.”

Most of the older men expected they’d halt at last light. Even Cully, who, as an officer and a trusted man, was careful not to vent his irritation at the pace, muttered that with no pursuit and no danger, it was cruel hard.

Ser Michael reined in. “Think it’s possible that the captain knows something you don’t know, Cully?”

Cully looked resentful, like a good hunting dog accused falsely of stealing food. But he kept his mouth shut, and didn’t rise to Cuddy’s open mutiny when they kept riding into the moonlight.

“We’re going all the way to Lorica, then?” Michael asked. Ser Gabriel was up and down the column, and where Tom and Michael used ridicule and open coercion to keep men moving, Ser Gabriel was everyone’s friend.

So far. He grinned at Michael, his teeth white in the moonlight. “Look ahead of you,” he said.

In the middle distance, the cathedral of Lorica rose above the town’s walls, which gleamed like white Etruscan marble in the moonlight. Just short of the walls, fires burned.

He waved, and turned his horse—his fourth of the day—back down the column. “Less than an hour now, friends,” he called.

Outriders greeted them well outside the silent town. Ser Ranald embraced his cousin, and then dismounted and bent his knee to the Queen and her son.

The Queen gave him a hand. “It was you—in the darkness,” she said.

“Not just me, your grace,” he said. “But yes, I was there.”

She smiled in the moonlight, and for the first time that Gavin had seen her, she seemed older, with lines around her mouth and under her eyes. Not old—just not the vision of youth she had been that afternoon, riding in the shadow-spackled sunlight.

“Will you command my son’s guard?” she asked.

Ranald grinned. “I have the better half of it right here,” he said. He waved in the direction of the camp.

But Ser Gabriel forbade any kind of ceremony. “Unless your grace overrules me directly,” he said, “I want everyone to bed.”

But Lady Almspend—Becca, to the Queen—was at Ranald’s side, and there were more hugs, and the Queen all but fell into her friend’s arms.

The captain rode up almost between them. “I’m sorry, your grace, but there’s two hundred men who have fought for you this day, and they want to be asleep.”

The Queen sat back. “Of course—I’m thoughtless. Go!”

But despite this admonition, men and women were roused as the column entered camp. Blanche was surprised at how orderly was the apparent
chaos. Sukey, who she had thought ere this to be a decorative camp follower or possibly the Red Knight’s lover, stood by the palisaded gate with two pages at her shoulders with torches and read off tent assignments. When Tom Lachlan rode up, Blanche was close behind. Too close.

Sukey graced him with a pleasant smile.

“Not my tent, Ser Tom,” she said.

He grimaced.

“You’ll find Donald Dhu and all the beeves he has yet unsold just a long bowshot to the west, by the river,” she said.

“And if I don’t want to ride any further, woman?” he asked.

She tossed her hair. “There’s space in the ditch outside,” she said. “Next!”

She put the Queen in the captain’s pavilion, on his feather bed, and she was waiting when the Queen’s woman—the tall blonde—came out of the pavilion with an armload of smelly linen.

“I have a bed for ye, if you’ll sleep. Give all that to one of my drudges. Come.” Sukey walked off towards the cook fires.

The same men—and a few women—who had bitched about fighting and riding all day were now sitting at fires drinking wine and re-telling it all. A dozen knights of the Order were listening to Ser Michael’s account of the ambush. Two nuns were brushing out Sister Amicia’s hair.

Prior Wishart, who Sukey knew from two days in camp, was deep in conversation with the captain, who gave her the “not now” sign. So she pushed past, Blanche at her heels, and took her around the fire that had become the hub of conversation—and thus, no work could be done—to the main fire line. There, despite the hour, twenty women and a few men were heating water, cooking, washing…

“Anne Banks! Get your nose out of his business and come over here,” Sukey yelled. A young woman who had been kissing a young man came, in a sulky, put-upon way.

“Annie’s a scullery and she’ll do as she’s told most o’ the time,” Sukey said. “Annie, this is Blanche, the Queen’s—friend. She has a mort of linen needs cleaning.”

Anne was prone to be difficult. Blanche knew her kind well enough. She smiled and kissed the younger woman’s cheek. “For the baby, Miss Anne. I don’t expect you to do my things.” She laughed. “Except I don’t have any things.”

Annie nodded. “For the baby?” She took the whole armload without demur. “For—the King?” she said.

“His shit is just as shitty as any other baby’s,” Sukey noted. “Anne Banks, if you lie down with that boy and get a baby in you, you’ll end a common harlot.”

“Which they gets paid a damn sight better than sculleries. An’ the work is restful,” Annie said in a tone aimed to infuriate her officer.

Sukey smacked the girl with her open hand. “Don’t be a fool,” she said. “You want to hear about being a whore, talk to Sauce. I’m sorry, Lady Blanche.”

“I’m no lady,” Blanche said. “They just call me that.”

Sukey was now clutching Anne to her chest. “I’m sorry, Annie. But you ain’t got a mama to teach you, so all you get is me.”

“You hit me!” Anne wailed.

Sukey winked at Blanche. Over Anne’s head, she said, “You and I are of a size. Want some clothes?”

Blanche contemplated refusal, but it seemed stupid. “Yes,” she said. “I can’t pay.”

Sukey smiled. It was an odd smile, as if she knew something that Blanche didn’t know. Which she probably did.

Back towards the gate, a voice called, “Sukey!” like the sounding of a great horn.

“Damn the man,” Sukey said. “Anne, wash those linens and bring them to…” She looked at Blanche. “I guess you’re
casa
24-R2.”

“What’s that?” Blanche asked. Anne picked up the linens without another sniff and curtsied as if Blanche was indeed a lady. Blanche responded—it was a little like the laundry at home.

“24-R2 is the twenty-fourth tent of the second corporal of the red band,” Sukey said, already underway. “Look, I’ll show you.”

“Sukey!” called the deep voice.

“I’ll kill him. You know, he went off and lay with another girl at the Inn of Dorling, and now he thinks he can walk back in here—”

“Suuu-key!”

Blanche, always everyone’s confidante, giggled. “That’s Bad Tom?” she asked.

“Aye,” Sukey said. “That’s Bad Tom.”

“He’s very handsome.” Blanche hadn’t thought it aloud before that. But Tom’s sheer size was—remarkable.

“Aye he is, and he knows it, the devil.” Sukey was walking fast through a darkened camp. “See the captain’s pavilion? No, there. See? Red flags.”

“I see it,” Blanche allowed.

“All the lances of his household camp in a line behind—knights at the head of the camp, then men-at-arms and pages and then servants. See? R2 is Ser Francis, and a nicer gentleman you’ll never meet. Twenty-four is just a spare at the back of camp. I walked all the way around so you’d see the how and the why. See? And see the cook fires?”

Blanche swallowed heavily. “Yes,” she admitted. “So many tents!”

Sukey laughed. “Honey, wait until you see whole company—that’s nearly five hundred tents. An army! Christ and all his saints, you can get lost walking around looking for a spot to piss.”

“Suuk-keeyy!”

“He’ll make a fool o’ himself,” Sukey said. She seemed perfectly well pleased. “Come to my tent and I’ll gi’ you a gown and a couple of shifts.”

“You’ll want to get to sleep,” Blanche said.

Sukey laughed and licked her lips. “I doubt Tom has sleep in mind. He’s been fightin’.” She grinned. “Fightin’ makes him think o’ just one thing. Come on—I don’t mind makin’ him wait.”

Back, by some incomprehensible path through the endless rows of white wedges in the moonlight, like a monster’s teeth, like headstones in a churchyard. Blanche was instantly lost as soon as she couldn’t see the captain’s two red tent banners.

Then they emerged into a cross street, as broad as half a bowshot.

“Officer’s line,” Sukey said. “See, there’s the cap’n’s tent again. Got your bearings?”

Blanche shook her head.

“Well, never mind. Here’s my little home.”

Sukey’s home was a wagon with a tent on the wagon box. She lit a taper with magick, as easy as kissing her own thumb.

“I don’t ha’ my mother’s talent, but I can do a thing or two,” she said.

By candlelight, Blanche could see Sukey better. She was beautiful, with rich black hair, a pert nose and freckles and light eyes that were improbable in her face—large and full of humour, at odds with her nose and mouth. She wore a fine kirtle with the skirts pulled high enough to show a fair amount of leg, and the front cut low enough to advertise her figure, which was as good as Blanche’s own.

The two women eyed each other.

“I think you’ll fit me to a T,” Sukey said. She opened a chest in the wagon box. “Red?”

“I daren’t,” Blanche said.

“Cap’n won’t care. It’s his favourite colour,” Sukey said.

“I serve the Queen,” Blanche said. “Red’s the King’s colour.”

“Oh, aye,” Sukey said, as if the notion had no interest for her. “A nice dark brown?”

She held up a kirtle with side lacing and a low neck.

Blanche whistled. “That’s fine cloth.”

“Aye, my mother made it for me in Morea,” Sukey said. She put her hands around Blanche’s waist. “Oh, you’re as little as me in the tummy. Take the brown—I never wear it. It makes me look poor. You ha’ the hair for it.”

She took down two shifts from a basket. “I can spare you two. I’ve no stockings—I’m barefoot myself until we reach Albinkirk.”

Blanche took the other woman and kissed her. “You’re a true friend.”

“Sister, women in this lot need to be friends.” Sukey laughed. “Besides, soon eno’ I’ll need favours of you.”