The Red Knight by Miles Cameron
Random nodded. ‘I, too, can swing a sword.’
The captain had noticed that he was wearing one, and reports had it that the merchant had acquitted himself well.
‘So,’ he went on, ‘we have forty men-at-arms well enough to wear harness, and our squires; call it sixty knights. We have almost triple that in archers, thanks to the better farmers and the guildsmen.’ He looked around. ‘Our Enemy has at least five thousand, boglins, irks, allies and men taken together.’
‘Good Christ!’ Ser Milus sat up.
Ser Jehannes looked as if he’d eaten something foul.
Master Gelfred nodded when the captain looked at him. ‘Can’t be less, given what I saw this morning,’ he said. ‘The Enemy can cover every road and every path at the same time, and they rotate their forces every few hours.’ He shrugged. ‘You can watch the boglins digging trenches out beyond the range of our trebuchets. It’s like watching termites. There are—’ he shrugged, ‘a great many termites.’
The captain looked around. ‘In addition, we have another hundred merchants and merchants’ folk, and four hundred women and children.’ He smiled. ‘In the East, I’d be sending them out right now, to fill the besieger’s lines with useless mouths.’ He looked around. ‘Here, they’d literally fill the enemy’s bellies, instead.’ No one appreciated his humour.
‘You can’t be serious!’ said the Abbess.
‘I am not. I won’t drive them out to die. But the merchants and their people must be put to work, and I’d like to assign a dozen archers and two men-at-arms to training them. If we cannot be rid of these useless mouths, we must make them useful. We have about forty days’ food for a thousand mouths. Double that at half rations’
‘And we have all that grain!’ the Abbess said.
‘Grain for two hundred and eighty days,’ he said.
‘The king will be here long before then,’ the Abbess said firmly.
‘Good day to you,’ said a voice from the door, and Harmodius, the Magus, came in. He smiled around, a little unsure of his welcome. ‘I received your invitation, but I was in the midst of a dissection. You, my lords, have a plentiful supply of candidates for dissection.’ He smiled. ‘I have learned some exciting things.’
They all stared at him as if he was a leper newly arrived at a feast. He pulled out a chair and sat.
‘There were rats in the grain, by the way,’ Harmodius said. ‘I’ve disposed of them. Do you know,’ he asked, his eyes on the Abbess, ‘who the captain of the Enemy is?’
She flinched.
‘You do, I see. Hmm.’ The old Magus didn’t look nearly so old, today. He looked closer to forty than seventy. ‘I remember you, of course, my lady.’
The Abbess trembled – just for a moment – and then forced herself to look at the Magus. The captain saw the effort it took.
‘And I you,’ the Abbess said.
‘Well, three cheers for the air of dangerous mystery,’ the captain said. ‘I for one am delighted you both know each other.’
The Magus looked at him. ‘This from you?’ He leaned forward. ‘I know who you are too, lad.’
Every head in the room snapped to look – first at the captain, and then at the Magus.
‘Do you really?’ asked the Abbess, and she clutched at the rosary around her neck. ‘Really?’
Harmodius was enjoying his moment of drama, the captain could see it. He wished he knew who the old charlatan was. As it was, he fingered his rondel dagger.
‘If you reveal me, I swear before the altar of your God I will cut you down right here,’ the captain hissed.
Harmodius laughed, and rocked his chair back. ‘You, and all the rest of you together couldn’t muss my hair,’ he said. He raised his hand.
The mercenaries were all on their feet, weapons in hand.
But then he shook his head. ‘Gentlemen!’ he said. He raised his hands. ‘I beg your pardon, Captain. Truly. I like a little surprise. I thought, perhaps – but please, never mind me, a harmless old man.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ asked the captain, across his bare blade.
The Abbess shook her head. ‘He is Harmodius di Silva, the King’s Magus. He broke the enemy at Chevin. He bound the former King’s Magus, when he betrayed us.’
‘Your lover,’ Harmodius muttered. ‘Well – one of your lovers.’
‘You were a foolish young man then, and you still are in your heart.’ The Abbess settled primly back into her seat.
‘My lady, if I am, it is because he has glamoured me for years,’ Harmodius said. ‘I was not as victorious as I had thought. And he is still with us.’ Harmodius looked around the table. ‘The captain of the Enemy, my lords, is the former King’s Magus. The most powerful of my order to arise in twenty generations.’ He shrugged. ‘Or so I suspect, and my guesswork is based on observation.’
‘You are too modest,’ the Abbess said bitterly.
‘I tricked him, as you well know,’ Harmodius said. ‘I could never have even hoped to match him phantasm for phantasm. And less so now, when he has sold himself to the Wild and I have languished in a prison of his making for a decade, at least.’
The soldiers and the merchant watched these exchanges – back and forth – like spectators at a joust. Even the captain, whose precious anonymity had teetered at the edge of extinction, was lost.
‘Let me understand this,’ he said. ‘Our Enemy is really a man?’
‘Not any more,’ Harmodius said. ‘Now he is an entity called Thorn. His powers are to mine as mine are to the lady Abbess’.’
The priest at the end of the table had stopped writing. Now he looked at them all in horror. The captain almost felt sorry for the man. His aversion to those who possessed the power – Hermetic or natural – was like most men’s aversion to coming in contact with disease.
The captain leaned forward. ‘Can we stop the flood of reminiscence and revelation and try to dwell on the siege?’ he asked.
‘He underestimated you, and you hurt him, and that’s over now,’ Harmodius said. ‘Now he’ll hurt us, in turn.’
‘Thanks for that,’ the captain said.
‘Now that he’s closed off our access to the outside world, there will be no more surprise sorties, no more victories.’ The Magus sat back. ‘Nor can you imagine that I can face him, because I can’t. Although my presence here will make him hungrier to take this place.’
‘We can still make sorties with every prospect of success,’ the captain insisted. ‘With the addition of Messire Random’s convoy, we have more men-at-arms and more archers than we had at the start.’
Harmodius shook his head. ‘I don’t doubt it. I mean no disrespect – you have done nobly. But the trick with the falcons and the dogs won’t work again, and his intellect – pardon me, Captain – is staggering. He’ll have traitors inside the walls and he’ll be working to get traitors within the ranks of your companies and your merchants. He also has the power to reach out to any person among us who has power. How strong is your will, my lady?’ he asked.
‘Never very strong,’ she answered levelly, ‘but where he is concerned, it is like adamantine.’
Harmodius smiled. ‘I imagine that’s true, my lady,’ he admitted.
‘Even if he has us locked in a box,’ the captain insisted, ‘even if he threw his allies at the walls every day—’ He shrugged. ‘We can last.’
‘He won’t,’ Harmodius said. He leaned forward, and it was as if he deflated, the change was so sudden. ‘What he will do is seek to undermine us, because that is how he works. He will use craft and misdirection – he prefers to use a traitor to open the gate, because that excuses his own betrayal. And because he likes to imagine his intellect is superior to any other.’
The captain managed a smile. ‘My old sword master used to say that a good swordsman likes not just to win, but to do it his own way,’ he said.
‘Very true,’ the Magus said. ‘Hubristical, but true.’
The captain nodded. ‘Hubris – a co
Harmodius smiled bitterly.
The captain leaned forward. ‘I have two questions, and here you are to answer them,’ he said. ‘Can he attack the walls directly? With a phantasm?’
‘Never,’ the Abbess said. ‘These walls have half a millennia of prayer and phantasm in them, and no power on earth—’
‘Yes,’ Harmodius said. He shrugged at the Abbess. ‘He is not Richard Plangere, gentleman Magus, my lady, just dressed up in feathers and gone a bit bad. He is Thorn. He is a Power of the Wild. If he puts himself to it, he can assault the very walls of this ancient fortress with his powers, and he will, in time, break them.’ He turned to the captain. ‘But in my estimation, and I might be horribly wrong, he won’t take that option unless all else fails, because the cost would be staggering.’
The captain nodded. ‘Not very different from the answer I expected. Second question: you are the King’s Magus. Do you have the power to distract him? Or to defeat him?’
Harmodius nodded. ‘I can distract him, I think. Once at little risk to myself, and once at great risk to myself.’ He laughed. ‘I can feel him all around us, my lords. He seeks to know our minds and, so far, the power in this convent and in the fortress walls has stopped him. He knows I am here, but as yet I do not think he knows who I am.’ Harmodius shook his head and seemed, once again, to shrink. ‘Yet until a few days ago, I didn’t really know who I was myself. By God, the extent to which he cozened me.’ The captain sat back, already thinking hard. ‘Can you imagine any circumstance under which he would abandon the siege?’ he asked. ‘If the king comes, will he simply retire?’
Harmodius looked at all of them for a long time. ‘You really have no idea what you are dealing with, here,’ he said. ‘Do you seriously think the king will reach us?’ he asked.
The captain made a face. ‘You are the all-knowing Magus, and I’m just the young pup commanding the mercenaries, but it seems to me—’
‘Spare us your false humility,’ Harmodius snapped.
‘Spare us your overweening arrogance, then! It seems to me this is not a carefully wrought plan, and with due respect, Magus, this Thorn is not as staggeringly intelligent as you seem to think.’ The captain looked around.
Ser Milus nodded. ‘I agree. He makes beginner mistakes. He knows nothing of war.’ He shrugged. ‘At least, not of the war of men.’
Harmodius started to react and then pulled on his ample beard. There was a heavy silence. The men around the table realised they were prepared for the Magus to react.
But he shook his head. ‘That is – a very interesting point. And quite possibly a valid one.’
Father Henry came out of the Great Hall with his shoulders slumped, and Mag watched him enter the chapel and sit on a carved chair near the door, his head in his hands.
He wasn’t a bad priest – he had heard her confession and had passed her to God with an endurable penance. She wanted to like him for it, but there was something in his eyes she couldn’t like – a quality to his moist hand on her brow that unsettled her.
She was considering all these things when the archers came by. There were two of them, younger archers she didn’t know well. The taller one had bright red hair and a hollow smile. They had their brigantines off and were looking around the courtyard.
They looked like trouble.
The tall one with a beard like a Judas goat spotted Lis the laundress, but she didn’t truck with men his age, and she turned her back so his attention passed to Amie, the Carters’ eldest – a blonde girl with more chest than wit, as her mother herself had said, while her younger sister Kitty had all the wit as well as curly dark hair and slanted eyes.
The archers headed for the two girls who sat on stools by the convent kitchen, grinding barley for bread in hand mills. It was boring, exacting work that the nuns thought perfect for attractive young women.
They already had a court of admirers, and the young men – farmers’ sons and apprentices – were, naturally enough, doing the work. This was, Mag thought, probably not a common problem among the nuns, but if they didn’t wise up to it soon they were going to spoil the Carter girls and the Lanthorns and every other single woman in the fortress who wasn’t a nun. And perhaps a few nuns too, Mag thought to herself.
Mag had started to get to know some of the senior nuns—
She never heard what the archer said, but every one of the farm boys and apprentices was on his feet in a heartbeat.
The archers laughed and sat, and began using tow and ash to polish their helmets and elbow cops to the uniform dark gleam that seemed to mark the men of the company.
Mag walked closer. She saw trouble coming, and while the archers didn’t seem to be provoking it, they were.
‘Any clod can follow a plough,’ Judas Beard said. He smiled. ‘I did, once.’
‘Who are you, then?’ said an apprentice.
‘I’m a soldier,’ Judas Beard said. Just from his intonation, Mag, who had known some boys, knew that every word he said was aimed at the Carter girls.
Amie looked up from her mill. She’d taken the pestle back from the Smith boy because Mag was there and might tell. ‘Did you – fight? Yesterday?’
‘I killed a dozen boglins,’ Judas Beard said. He laughed. ‘It’s easy, if you know how.’
‘If you know how,’ said the other archer, who until now had been silent. He wasn’t doing much polishing.
‘Then it ain’t any different from any other trade,’ said a shoemaker’s apprentice.
‘Except that I’ll die rich while you’re still be up to your neck in your master’s piss,’ Judas Beard said.
Kitty put her hands on her hips. ‘Mind your language,’ she said.
The archers exchanged a glance. ‘Anything for a pretty lady,’ the quiet one said with a smile. He got up and bowed, a courtly bow, better than any of the farm boys, Mag knew. ‘I’m sure you hear too much of that already, eh, lass?’
‘Don’t you lass me!’ Kitty said.
Amie was smiling at the red-bearded archer.
Mag didn’t know what she felt was wrong here – the tone of it? The anger of the local boys seemed to fuel the archers.
‘If’n you put some tallow on that flax, it’d hold the grit better,’ said another boy – really, a young man. ‘Less you’re just doing it for show.’ The lad grinned. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, and no more a local than the archers.
Silent gave him a mocking look. ‘If I need a yokel to tell me how to polish my armour, I’ll ask,’ he said.
The big lad grinned again. ‘Yokel yourself, farm boy. I’m from Harndon, and I can smell the shit on your shoes from here.’
Kitty giggled.
It was the wrong sound – feminine derision at a critical moment – and Silent turned on her. ‘Shut up, slut.’
And suddenly everything changed, like cream turning to butter in the churn.
Kitty turned red, but she put a hand on the nearest farm boy. ‘No need to do ought,’ she said. ‘No need to defend me.’
Mag was proud of the girl.
But Judas Beard stood up and dusted his lap of tufts of tow. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Be reasonable.’ He smiled. ‘Learn to spread your legs like she does, when there’s a man about.’
Every farm boy was back on his feet, and both archers suddenly had knives – long knives. They took up practised, professional stances. ‘Anyone here got balls?’ Judas Beard said. ‘Heh. You’re just sheep who pay us to guard you. And if I feel like fucking one of your ewes, I will.’
The big Harndon boy stepped out of the knot of locals. ‘I’ll take you both,’ he said. ‘And I’ll see to it you are taken to law.’ He spat on his hands, apparently in no hurry – but as he spat on his left hand, his left leg shot out. He was in close with Silent, his left knee behind the archer’s knee, and suddenly the knife hand was rotating and the knife wielder was face down in the dust, his knife hand behind his back.
‘
The Harndon boy had his knee in the archer’s back. He turned to the other. ‘Drop your whittle or I’ll shatter his shoulder. And I’ll still come and break your skull.’
Judas Beard growled, and a heavy staff hit him in the back of the head – hit him so hard that he dropped like a sack of rocks.
Mag was all but nose-to-nose with the mercenaries’ commander, who had appeared – apparently out of thin air – and hit the red-haired archer with his staff of office. She squeaked.
He was standing over the big Harndonner and the smaller archer, who was still locked face down in the bigger boy’s grip. ‘Let him go,’ said the captain quietly. ‘I’ll see he’s punished, but I need his bow arm working.’
The big youth looked up and nodded, and in one fluid motion he rose to his feet and let the archer drop to the cobbled pavement. ‘I could have taken your other man,’ he said.
‘I’m know you could,’ the captain said. ‘You’re a wagoner, aren’t you?’
‘Daniel Favor, of Harndon. My pater is Dick Favor, and he has ten carts on the roads.’ He nodded.
‘How old are you, Daniel?’ the captain asked, as he leaned down and seized Silent’s ear.
‘Fifteen,’ the Harndonner said.
The captain nodded. ‘Can you pull a bow, lad?’
The big youth grinned. ‘And fight with a sword. But a bow – aye. Any kind, any weight.’
‘Ever thought about the life of a soldier?’ the captain asked.
Daniel nodded solemnly.
‘Why don’t you come along and see this miscreant punished,’ the captain said. ‘There won’t be any carting for some weeks, if I’m any judge, and a boy who can pull a bow can help save his friends. Save some fair maidens, too,’ the captain said, with a pretty bow to the two girls and then to Mag.
Will Carter stepped forward. ‘I can pull a bow too, Captain,’ he said. His voice trembled.
The captain smiled. ‘Can you, now?’ he asked. He looked at Mag. ‘A word with you, goodwife?’
She nodded. The captain took her aside, with the silent archer stumbling after as he kept his grip on the archer’s ear.