The Red Knight (30 page)

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The camp below the Abbey vanished as quickly as it had appeared, the tents folded and packed into the wagons, the wagons double-teamed and hauled up the steep slope into the
fortress.

The first chore that face all of them was billeting the company. Captain and Abbess walked quickly through the dormitory, the great hall, the chapel, the stables, and the storehouses, adding,
dividing, and allocating.

‘I will need to bring all my people in, of course,’ the Abbess said.

The captain bit his lip and looked at the courtyard. ‘Eventually, we may have to re-erect our tents here,’ he said. ‘Will you use the Great Hall?’

‘Of course. It’s being stripped even now,’ she said. She shrugged. ‘It is Lent – all of our valuables are put away already.’

One of the company’s great wagons was just crossing the threshold of the main gate. Its top just fitted under the lintel.

‘Show me your stores and all your storage places,’ he said.

She led him from cellar to cellar, from store room to the long, winding, airless steps that led deep into the heart of the living rock under their feet, to where a fresh spring burbled away into
a pool the size of a farm pond. She was slower coming back up the winding steps than she had been going down.

He waited with her when she stopped to rest.

‘Is there an exit? Down there?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Of course – who would hollow out this mountain and not make one? But I haven’t the strength to show you.’ They reemerged through the secret door behind the
chapel altar, and the Abbess was immediately surrounded by grey-clad sisters, each demanding her attention – matters of altar care, of flowers for the next service, of complaints about the
rain of blasphemous oaths falling from the walls, now fully manned.

‘All you cock suckers get your fucking arses in armour or I’ll chew off the top of your sodding skulls and fuck your brains,’ Bad Tom was dressing down a dozen men-at-arms just
going onto the wall. His tone was conversational and yet it fell into a moment of silence and was carried everywhere inside the fortress.

An older sister stared at her Abbess in mute appeal.

‘Your sisters are silent,’ the captain said.

The Abbess nodded. ‘All are allowed to speak on Sundays. Novices and seniors may speak when they are moved to – which is seldom for seniors and often for novices.’ She made a
gesture with her hands. ‘I am their ambassador to the world.’ She pointed at the cowled figure who followed her. ‘This is Sister Miram, my chancellor and my vicar. She is also
allowed to speak.’

The captain bowed to Sister Miram, who inclined her head slightly.

The Abbess nodded. ‘But she prefers not to.’

Whereas you –
the captain thought that perhaps she liked to speak more than she let on, and liked to talk to him, to have an adult to spar with. Yet he did not doubt her piety. To
the captain, piety came in three brands – false piety, hypocritical piety, and hard won, deep and genuine piety. He fancied that he could tell them apart.

At the far end of the chapel stood Father Henry. He looked harried – hadn’t bathed or shaved, the captain suspected. He looked at the Abbess. ‘Your priest is in a bad
way,’ he said.

He knew that she had cast a phantasm on him last night. She’d done it expertly, and so revealed she was more than a mere mathematical astrologer. She was a magus. She’d probably
known the instant he cast his glamour in her yard, and on her sisters.

And she was not the only magus. There were wheels within the wheels that powered this situation. He looked at Sister Miram, his sense of power reaching tentatively towards her, like a third
hand.

Aha
. It was as if Sister Miram had slapped that hand.

The Abbess was looking at the priest. ‘He’s in love with me,’ she said dismissively. ‘My final lover. Gentle Jesu, might you not have sent me someone handsome and
gentle?’ She turned and smiled wryly. ‘I suspect he was sent me as a penance. And a reminder of what – of what I was.’ She shrugged. ‘The Knights of our Order
didn’t send us a priest last winter, so I took him from a local parish. He seemed interesting. Instead, I find he’s—’ She paused. ‘Why am I telling you this,
messire?’

‘As your captain, it is my duty to know,’ he said.

She considered him. ‘He’s a typical ignorant parish priest – can scarcely read Archaic, knows the Bible only from memory, and thinks women are less than the dirt on his bare
feet.’ She shook her head. ‘And yet he came here, and he is drawn to me.’

The captain smiled at her, took her right hand between his and kissed it. ‘Perhaps
I
am your last lover,’ he said.

As he did it, he saw the priest squirm.
Oh, my, what fun.
The man was loathsome, but his piety was probably genuine too.

‘Should I box your ears for that? I understand that’s the fashion,’ the Abbess said. ‘Please desist, Captain.’

He retreated as if she’d struck him. Sister Miram was frowning.

To regain his composure, he summoned Jehannes and Milus. ‘Get the drovers to dismantle the wagons. Put the hardware in the cellars – Abbess, we’re going to need some
guides.’

The Abbess sent for the old garrison – eight non-noble men-at-arms hired at the Great Fair a dozen years before. They were led by Michael Ranulfson, a grizzled giant with gentle manners,
the sergeant at arms the captain had met briefly the night before.

‘You know that I’ve placed the captain in charge of our defence,’ she said. ‘His men need help moving in, and guides to the storerooms. Michael – I trust
them.’

Michael bowed his head respectfully, but his eyes said
on your head be it.

‘How are you set for hoardings?’ the captain asked. ‘Do you have pre-cut lumber?’

The old sergeant at arms nodded. ‘Aye. Hoardings, portable towers, a pair of trebuchets, some smaller engines.’ He rolled his head on his neck, as if trying to rid himself of a
stiffness. ‘When you are in garrison, you may as like do a good job of work.’

The captain nodded. ‘Thanks, Ser Michael.’

‘I’m no knight,’ Michael said. ‘My da was a skinner.’

The captain ignored his statement to look at Jehannes. ‘As soon as the lads are unpacked, give this man fifty archers and all the riff-raff and get the hoardings up while the men-at-arms
stand to.’

Jehannes nodded, obviously in full agreement.

‘Store the dismantled wagons wherever the hoardings are now,’ the captain said. ‘And then we’ll start on patrols to fetch in the peasants. Gentlemen, this place is going
to be packed as tight as a cask of new-salted mackerel. I want to say this in front of the Abbess. There will be no rape and no theft by our men. Death penalty on both. My lady, I can’t do
much about casual blasphemy, but an effort will be made – you understand me, gentlemen? Make an effort.’

She nodded. ‘It is Lent,’ she said.

Jehannes nodded. ‘I gave up wine,’ he said, and then stared at the floor.

‘Jesu does not care what you give up, but rather, what you give him,’ Sister Miram replied, and Jehannes smiled shyly at her.

She returned his smile.

The captain released a heavy sigh. ‘Ladies, you may well cure all of our souls yet, but it must wait until the hoardings are up and all your people are safe. Michael, you are in charge of
them. I recommend that my men live in the towers and galleries – if we have time, we’ll build them beds.’

‘My people will go four to a room,’ the Abbess said. ‘I can take the older girls and single women from the farms into the dormitory, and all the men and their families will go
in the hall. Overflow into the stables.’

Michael nodded. ‘Yes, my lady,’ he replied. He turned to the captain. ‘I’m at your orders.’ He looked back and forth. ‘Will we hold the Lower Town?’

The captain stepped up onto the gate wall and looked down at the four streets of the town, a hundred feet below.

‘For a little while,’ he said.

Albinkirk – Ser Alcaeus

Ser Alcaeus passed a bad night and drank too much wine in the morning. The man whose daughter had been abducted sat in the garrison barracks and wept, and demanded that the
garrison send out a sortie to her rescue.

The mayor agreed with him, and hot words were exchanged.

Alcaeus didn’t want any part of it. They were too alien – the commoners were both too servile and too free, and Ser John was no knight. Even the churches were wrong. Mass was said in
low Archaic.

It was disorienting. Worse than the convoy of slaves had been, because he could ignore them.

Mid-morning, as he finished his ablutions – he, the Emperor’s cousin, washing without so much as a servant or slave to help him – he heard the mayor’s shrill voice in the
guardroom, demanding that Ser John come out.

Alcaeus dressed. He had spare shirts because the boy had saved his packhorse, and he’d see the page richly rewarded for it.

‘Come out of your hole, you doddering old coward!’ shrieked the mayor.

Alcaeus was trying to lace his cuffs by himself. He
had
done his own in the past, but not since he became a man. He had to press his right hand against the stone of the castle wall and
pin the knot in place.

‘Master Mayor?’ he heard. It was Ser John, his voice calm enough.

‘I demand that you gather all the useless mouths you call your garrison and go out and find this man’s daughter. And open the gates – the grain convoys are on their way. This
town needs money, though I’m sure you’ve been too
drunk
to notice.’ The mayor sounded like a fishwife – a particularly nasty one.

‘No,’ said the captain. ‘Was that all?’

Alcaeus couldn’t, in that moment, decide exactly what he thought of the knight. Over-cautious? But memories of yesterday’s ambush were still burned onto the backs of his eyelids.

He reached for his boots – uncleaned, of course. He pulled them on, and fought with all the buckles, his head suddenly full of irks and boglins and worse things. The road. The
confusion.

He had been trained to fight the Wild. Until yesterday, he’d only fought other men – usually one to one, with knives, at court.

The images in his head made him shudder.

‘I order you!’ the mayor screamed.

‘You can’t order me, Master Mayor. I have declared martial law, and I, not you, am the power here.’ Ser John sounded apologetic rather than dismissive.

‘I represent the
people
of the town. The burgesses, the merchants, and the artisans!’ The mayor’s voice sank to a hiss. ‘You don’t seem to
understand—’

‘I understand that I represent the king. And you do not.’ Ser John’s voice remained level.

Alcaeus had made his decision. He was going to go support the low-born knight. It didn’t matter what the two men were debating – it was their manners. Ser John was knightly. He might
even survive at court.

Alcaeus tested his feet in his boots, and took his heavy dagger and put it in his belt. He never left his rooms without a dagger. Then he went out into the hall – a hall crowded with
garrison soldiers listening to the argument in the main room below. He ran light-footed down the stairs.

He’d missed an exchange. When he entered, the mayor, red-faced, thin and tall and blond as an angel, was silent, his mouth working.

Ser Alcaeus went and stood behind the old knight. He noted that the mayor wore a rich doublet of dark blue velvet trimmed in sable, and a cap to match, embroidered with irks and rabbits. He
smiled – his own silk doublet was worth about fifty times the value of the mayor’s.

The irks in the mayor’s cap were ironic, to say the least.

‘This is Ser Alcaeus,’ Ser John said. ‘The Emperor’s ambassador to our king. Yesterday his convoy was attacked by
hundreds
of Wild creatures.’

The mayor shot a venomous glance at him. ‘So you say. Go do your
fucking
job, sell-sword. Aren’t you even a little humiliated to think that this man’s daughter is the
plaything of monsters while you sit and drink wine?’

The man – who stood behind the mayor with a dozen other men – gave a sob and sank to a wooden bench, his fist in his mouth.

‘His daughter has been dead since yesterday and I won’t risk men to look for her corpse,’ Ser John said with casual brutality. ‘I want all the woman and children moved to
the castle immediately, with victuals.’

The mayor spat. ‘I forbid it. Do you want to panic the town?’

Ser John shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘In my professional opinion—’

‘You
have
no professional opinion. You were a sell-sword – what? Forty years ago? And then a drinking crony of the king’s. Very professional!’ The mayor was beside
himself.

Alcaeus realised the man was afraid. Terrified. And that terror made him belligerent. It was a revelation. Alcaeus was not, strictly speaking, a
young
man. He was twenty-nine, and he
thought he knew how the world worked.

Yesterday had been a shock. And now today was a shock too. He watched the fool mayor, and watched Ser John, and understood something of their quality.

‘Messire mayor?’ he asked in his stilted Gothic. ‘Please – I am a stranger here. But the Wild is real. What I saw was real.’

The mayor turned and looked at him. ‘And who in God’s name are you?’ he asked.

‘Alcaeus Comnena, cousin to the Emperor Manual, may his name be praised, the drawn sword of Christ, the Warrior of the Dawn.’ Alcaeus bowed. His cousin was too old to draw a sword
but his titles rolled off the tongue, and he was annoyed by the mayor.

The mayor was, for all his belligerence and terror, a merchant and an educated man. ‘From Morea?’ he asked.

Alcaeus thought of telling this barbarian what he thought of their casual use of Morea for the Empire. But he didn’t bother. ‘Yes,’ he shot back.

The mayor drew a breath. ‘Then if you are a true knight,
you
will go and rescue this man’s daughter.’

Alcaeus shook his head. ‘No. Ser John is correct. You must call in your out-farmers and move the people into the castle.’