The Dread Wyrm by Miles Cameron
Du Corse’s cavalry were dead or dismounted. Many of them were still coming, because they were insanely brave. Near at hand, a man in a fine segmented breastplate had six or seven arrows in him and still came forward. He was only a few yards away.
Cuddy put a four-ounce arrow into his groin from almost close enough to touch, and the man went down to die in agony. But there were others.
A short bowshot behind them, Du Corse’s dismounted men came on unscathed. Du Corse led them in person, and they cheered as they came, trudging over the damp ploughed fields in their heavy armour.
The first of the original mounted men burst into the hedge—a knight on a dying horse came first, and Gavin put him down with a single blow of his axe. Then a trio of men whose horses were dead—they ran into one of the gaps.
It was Gabriel’s gap, and then the battle was no longer an intellectual exercise or a sport. Terror and pain filled the three with rage.
The Red Knight cut with his heavy spear and the first knight’s head leapt from his body. This time, Gabriel knew what to expect and his weapon passed through the low guard on the left side, point down, and rose again as fast as his arms could uncurl—it cut through the second man’s sword and his breastplate, too—up through his aventail, cutting through hundreds of links of riveted chain and then up through the man’s jaw and out the top of his helmet in an impossible cut, as if the man and his armour were made of butter.
And around in a reverso, crossing Gabriel’s hands briefly, right over left and then the right shot out along the haft. His adversary’s parry was useless, and he died, and fell in two pieces.
The men around Gabriel began to cheer.
It gave him no pleasure. It was like cheating on a test.
At his feet, the Gallish line had quickened its pace despite the steep hill and the near mud.
Just to the right of the enemy line—at the edge of the woods—a banner broke out of the trees, and horsemen began to enter the field.
Gabriel’s heart stopped. It was not Bad Tom, or Michael.
It was three antlered heads in black on a golden chevron and a white field, and a voice like thunder roared, “A Corcy!”
Gabriel leaned on his heavy spear. He sighed.
“Lord Corcy will not betray us,” said Desiderata. “You have too little faith in men, Ser Gabriel.”
She pointed. “Look!” she called.
And then Ser Michael and Bad Tom came out of the wood line, a little north and east of Corcy. They had all the Thrakian knights and men-at-arms, and Tom Lachlan led them in his favourite wedge, his heavy lance held well over his head.
“Mount!” Gabriel called. “Sound ‘mount’ Ganfroy!”
He was ready to weep again, from sheer relief. Just for a moment.
Corcy and his retainers struck the end of Du Corse’s line. The men on foot were caught in the flank at open shields, and many were simply knocked down as the local knights rode them over.
Bad Tom’s wedge crashed obliquely into the line of dismounted men-at-arms. They hit it like a plane cutting wood, and the ranks seemed to peel asunder.
Already, at the south end of the Gallish line, men were forming orbs. Pages were bringing war horses forward. It was not a rout—
Not quite a rout. But in the centre of the line Du Corse’s standard wavered.
The captain pointed with his war hammer at Du Corse’s standard. “Follow me!” he roared, and charged.
Down through the hedge poured his household knights—the tournament champions who’d been with him all day. Behind them came all the pages and archers—and the Queen and Blanche, and anyone else with a horse. Even Bob Twill the ploughman, on Blanche’s spare rouncy.
Du Corse’s banner went down. Tom Lachlan’s great axe went up and down, and then he swept out his dread sword, and men cheered. Ser Michael’s lance was as steady as a fence pole, and every man he touched, he threw to the ground, broken.
The whole mass bunched in one melee, the line crumbling and bunching, like a thin snake trying to eat a very big meal. But the company men stayed together, and followed their orders. They knocked a hole the width of twenty lances in Du Corse’s line and took his banner, and then swept through.
Tom Lachlan, having knocked his own hole in the line, dismounted by Du Corse.
Lord Corcy rode right past him and slammed a slim steel axe into the wounded Galle’s helmet. He reined in and raised his visor. “I need him to trade for my sons,” he said.
Du Corse’s men did not break. Some died, but more were simply knocked into the ground. The rest clumped into the corner of the field by the lane and prepared to sell their lives dearly. Only as they rallied did they see how few their assailants were, but by then the Thrake stradiotes had swept into their pages, and were herding a fortune in Gallish war horses—even ill-fed and spoiled by sea voyage as they were—up the road to Lorica.
A half dozen archers—trapped in the woods west of the road since the original charge of the Galles—slipped out of the trees and joined the company and were double mounted. Will Starling grinned and Daud the Red and Wha’hae slapped their bared arses at the distant Galles.
And then, the Queen well-protected in their midst, with a handful of high-ranking prisoners and some rich ransoms, they mounted fresh horses where they could and rode north, towards Lorica.
De Vrailly rode up to the Earl of Towbray. The hilltop town lowered above them.
Towbray shrugged. “The militia won’t advance, and Du Corse ordered me to cover the hill,” he said. “What can I do?”
De Vrailly glared at him with unconcealed contempt.
He rallied Du Corse’s veterans and made camp in the field below the town, which he had the survivors of the routiers clear, loot, and burn to the ground. But burning Picton couldn’t get him back his army’s morale, or the three hundred horses he’d lost.
The archbishop ordered Corcy’s sons hanged. De Vrailly remanded the order. The archbishop sat and dictated a dispatch, claiming victory as that they held the battlefield, and denouncing the Queen as a whore and strumpet who was spreading a false rumour that she’d born an heir.
De Vrailly made himself as distant as he could. The routiers were happy enough to burn Picton, but the Gallish knights were drawing away, in body, from the archbishop.
When the archbishop slept, de Vrailly summoned a herald and sent him to the Red Knight, at Lorica.
Then he went to his pavilion, where his squires had already laid out his plain bed and his prie-dieu with the triptych of the Virgin, Saint Gabriel and Saint Michael. He poured a cup of water from a magnificently ornate gold and crystal bottle on a shelf in the prie-dieu, blessed himself, and placed the cup carefully behind the flange that covered the inside of his right knee.
He knelt for a long time, in his harness, without even a single candle. His knees ached, and he ignored them. He ignored the feeling that his greave tops and his knee articulation were cutting gradually through his padded hose.
Pain is penance.
Come, beautiful angel. I have things to ask and say.
The pain continued, and so did the darkness. From time to time his meditations were broken—outside, he heard Jehan, his squire, trying to explain to the Corcy boys that he had saved their lives and that they should be grateful for being alive.
The archbishop’s tempers were infantile.
De Vrailly thought of the figure of the Queen, seen in the distance, riding across the hillside, the banner streaming behind her. It had moved him, at some point beyond simple decisions.
So easy to believe that she is a witch.
He thought of the King—his friend. In many ways, his closest friend. No man in Galle had ever been so close to him.
I failed to protect him.
I never even saw the arrow, because I was sulking in my tent—because I was ensorcelled.
His rage grew.
His hands began to shake, and an unaccustomed heaviness grew in his throat and chest.
And then th
He hovered above de Vrailly’s head, his fair form shining almost perfectly gold, his robes a paler white gold and his armour paler yet. In his right hand was a heavy spear, and his left hand held a small round shield with the cross in stark black.
You called for me, my knight.
De Vrailly looked at the angel and struggled for his rage and his belief.
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.
Chapter Ten
The Company
Bad 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 a
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!”