The Fell Sword (68 page)

‘Ah, but this year that will not be the case. War will push the furs back north. And all of us here will go broke.’ The Etruscan smiled. ‘But if you will help us with soldiers – this has been done in the past, my pater assured me – if you would be so very kind as to assist us—’

Ser John nodded slowly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Next item of business?’

The Bishop came and sat by Ser John. ‘I’d like you to reconsider, John.’

Ser John smiled a thin, don’t-fuck-with-me smile. ‘My lord Bishop, I’m quite positive that you know a fair shot of theology and perhaps some new learning, too. But right now, in case you aren’t paying attention, we’re fighting something close to a war. If the King hadn’t sent half the court up here to wet their lances, we’d be in a sore straight. As it is, look at Ser Richard. Look at me. We’re a-horse
every day.
’

The Bishop nodded. ‘And you are uniformly victorious.’ He nodded. ‘I’d go so far as to say that this is more like a drill for your knights than a war.’

Ser Richard made himself sit up. ‘By God, Bishop – fighting boggles is like child’s play, but only until one gets its mandibles in behind your knee.’

The Bishop spread his thin hands. ‘I mean no offence. But hear me. This town needs trade to live. Without that trade, the small farmers have no reason to farm and no town to sell their produce. You’ve taxed the foreign merchants to pay for new walls and new defences and
they’ve paid.
Now they need guards to go into the Adnacrags.’

‘It’s a month too late,’ Ser John said flatly.

Amato spread his hands. ‘Must I beg, ser knight? The ground is frozen, there’s a little snow, and with good equipment and brave men we can be at Ticondaga in two weeks.’

‘No,’ said Ser John. But he had less conviction in his voice.

Men now prayed in the ferry chapel, reroofed. The ferry itself had a small fort on either side, with walls higher than a Ruk could scale, and signal towers. The work was all done in wood from the destruction wrought by the Ruk on the nearby forests, and the posts were built by the Captain of Albinkirk’s archers.

As soon as they had the two forts finished there was a queue of men to man the ferry, and Ser John made it a military position and raised the toll. That money now went to the town.

He garrisoned the ferry forts, and left detachments of archers at six manor houses along the valley of the Cohocton, each with a knight or a senior squire, including Middlehill.

Helewise stood in the yard looking at Lord Wimarc. ‘He’s awfully young. Wouldn’t you rather stay and help me hold my house yourself, old man?’

Ser John leaned down and took one of her hands, and she blushed. ‘For shame – my daughter is watching. And what she sees from me is what she’ll do.’

‘I’d love to stay and help you hold this house,’ he said. ‘But I’m off north to Ticondaga. The Bishop convinced me it was my duty.’

‘A pox on him, then.’ She was going to cry.

He smiled. ‘I wonder if you’d marry me. When I come back.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re just saying that.’

‘Well, try it on your daughter. Listen, sweet – I must away. Wimarc’s a good lad. If he says run for the town, you do that.’ He bowed.

‘I did last time, didn’t I?’ she answered, pertly enough. She stuck her chin in the air and kept being brave until he was out the gate.

Phillippa came and stood by her mother. ‘He fancies you, Mama,’ she said, with an air of troubled wonder.

Helewise laughed aloud. ‘That he does,
ma petite
. He just offered to marry me.’

Phillippa watched the broad steel back riding away. ‘But he’s so old!’ she said.

Ser John met Sister Amicia on the road, and they both dismounted. She had two other sisters with her and a pair of large men with axes. She grinned. ‘I had what you might call a “passage of arms” and decided that a couple of large lads with axes were going to be easy on my conscience,’ she admitted. ‘Boggles. More than I was really ready to handle.’

He nodded, shook hands with the young men, who stammered and shifted their weight and looked nervous, and bowed to the two nuns.

‘Thanks for the garrison at the ford,’ she added. ‘I’ve put far too much on Helewise, and I’m eating Middlehill Manor out of house and home.’

‘I have offered to marry her,’ Ser John said.

Amicia grinned. ‘Good! It will make her happy, and help Phillippa. I love it when people are happy.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I hear dark things from the court,’ she said. ‘I’m worried for the King and Queen.’

Ser John shrugged. ‘I can’t lift my eyes off the problem at hand,’ he said. ‘It is all I can do to protect this place. And now I’m off to the Adnacrags.’

‘The court’s troubles are coming here,’ Sister Amicia said. ‘The Queen’s best friend – Lady Mary – is coming to Lissen Carak. She’s been sent from the court, and she doesn’t want to go home to her father’s lands out west. She’s coming to stay with us.’ She shrugged. ‘The price of my celebrity, I think,’ she said.

‘Lady Mary? Hard Heart herself?’ Ser John whistled. ‘Here? Sweet Christ, my knights will all kill themselves and each other in a flood of glory. Best I get them on the trail.’ He smiled. But the lines around his eyes and his mouth suggested that she’d added to his burdens.

‘You are worried,’ she said, somewhat uselessly.

He shrugged. ‘In the spring, we fought the Wild, and bested them.’ He gave her a wry smile and started walking back to his horse. ‘I thought we’d won. I assumed we’d have time to recover. Now I think it was merely the first skirmish.’ He looked at her, and said, his voice very low, ‘Can you feel him?’ he paused. ‘Thorn?’

She paled, and then laughed unsteadily. ‘Just for a moment, I thought you meant someone else. Yes, I can feel him – every moment. He thinks of us often.’ She looked at the older knight, trying to decide how much to tell him. ‘He has sent most of the things your knights are so busy killing. Is that what you wanted to know?’

Ser John shook his head. ‘No – I mean, I assumed as much, sister. But I would like to know why? If he was, say, the lord of a nearby town – or the King of Galle – I could send him a herald, protest his war, and ask what might allow us to make peace. What does he want?’

Amicia was playing with the crisp linen of her wimple. ‘As with most things, Ser John, it is complicated. And I see only through a glass darkly, and anything I say is only my own inference and deduction. But . . .’

She actually bit her lip.

‘Try me,’ said Ser John.

She leaned against her donkey’s withers and the animal shifted and grunted. ‘I don’t think he knows himself,’ she said. ‘And worse yet, I think he’s under the control of something else.’

Ser John kissed her ring and nodded. ‘Thank God,’ he said, ‘I don’t even know what that means. So I’ll just go back to killing boggles. Pissing on fires. That sort of thing.’

‘You are taking a convoy to Ticondaga?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Ser John.

She looked around. ‘May I come?’ she asked. ‘I have a small matter to look into. And if you go so far north, you will need me.’

He didn’t have to think that over. ‘Come and welcome, sister.’

She laughed and he laughed with her, and they went their way.

The fur convoy left for the north after the sabbath. Ser John took ten lances and left Ser Richard to command Albinkirk. There were twenty heavy wagons in his convoy, all full of trade goods – some for Outwallers, to which he turned a blind eye, and some for the Earl and his people.

For fifteen leagues, they travelled on roads – good, for the first day. The second day, the roads began to narrow, and when they made camp thirty leagues north of Albinkirk in the foothills of the Adnacrags, on the south side of the West Kinatha ford, they were far enough into the Wild to listen to the wild wolves howl, to see eyes around their fires when the early darkness fell, to fear every noise on sentry duty, and to wear full harness on watch.

The West Kinatha roared down out of the High Peaks, full of new snow, and in the morning the younger men, already hesitant to leave warm blankets and big fires, stared with loathing at the rapid flow of icy water and the distant, snow-capped mountains.

Sister Amicia laughed at them, and her very graceful derision moved them faster than Ser John’s curses.

Ser John got them all together, and their breath rose like the steam from their cauldrons of porridge. ‘Listen up! Crossing a river in winter is ten times as dangerous as facing a charging boggle. If you fall in you could die. If you get your feet wet and you don’t change your stockings and hose then you’ll be uncomfortable for an hour, and then a little cold, and then very cold indeed – and then it can be bad. Take precautions. Keep your spares dry, and we’ll keep fires on this bank until the last man is across. Be wary – and take as good care of your horse as of yourself.’ He looked around. They seemed suitably awed.

His two advance lances crossed first – cleared a space by riding about in the dead grass of an old deer lie, and waved their success. Ser John put a line of experienced horsemen upstream to break the current for the greener men, and the nuns, and he and four veteran knights from Harndon rode into the rapids just south of the ford to catch the unlucky sod who went down in the rapid flow.

The wagons began to roll at full light, and an hour later the last supply horse was across, and the men in the river allowed their patient horses to pick their way over – then dismounted and rubbed their mounts down, drying them carefully before changing their own hose.

By the time nonnes would have been sounding in a monastery, they were across, and his squire, Jamie, rode up by him. The boy was grinning. ‘That went well, didn’t it, my lord?’ he said. ‘We’re through the ford!’

‘Aye,’ said Ser John. ‘Now we’re in the Wild. With a winter river between us and safety.’

Northern Morea – The Red Knight

The Red Knight waved goodbye to most of his army at sunset and headed east into the low, wooded hills, snow-dusted and cold. He took Gelfred and the scouts and a handful of his household, Count Zakje and two dozen Vadariotes.

He handed over command to Bad Tom and Ser Jehan with a casual wave of the hand. ‘We know Demetrius and his cavalry are somewhere east of us.’ He grinned. Gelfred smiled, too, and glanced at the hawk on his wrist. ‘I intend to make contact with the Thrakians and brush them back.’

‘Meaning you get a fight and we don’t,’ Tom said. ‘Take me with you.’

The Duke shrugged. He wore only his breast- and backplate and his beautiful gauntlets and a steel cap with an aventail and a white wool hood. ‘You keep everyone warm, Tom. I’ll be back in a day.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to ride by daylight?’ Ser Jehan asked.

The Duke nodded. ‘Yes. But also no.
A demain, mes braves
!’ he said, and sixty mounted men leading sixty spare horses trotted off into the snow-covered hills.

The next morning, Mount Draconis rose to the west, a near-perfect cone, covered in snow, almost bare of trees. At their feet, the icy rocks of the Meander represented a barrier to advancing further. The arrival of an Imperial messenger bird at first light occasioned the impromptu officer’s call.

‘How many times do we have to cross this fucking river?’ muttered Bad Tom. He was cold and tired and deeply frustrated by the lack of fighting. The night had been long, the wolves had howled, and already the growing feeling was that they should turn back. Six men had frostbite.

Ser Thomas sat with Ser Jehan and Ser Alison. Their horses were head to head, and their breath rose like smoke. Ser Gerald Random and Ser Bescanon sat off to one side, with the Imperial messenger.

Jehan looked at the Imperial messenger, an attractive young woman in black and white furs holding the newly arrived bird on her wrist. ‘Where do they find them?’ he asked wistfully.

Ser Milus laughed. ‘Most attractive people, Moreans. But Christ, who would send a girl that young with an army?’

Bad Tom was rereading the message, sounding out the words. Reading was not his strongest suit.

Ser Alison leaned over and read aloud.

Gallish Army within one day’s march. Cannot protect the Fur convoy. Request immediate assistance. Gallish Army five hundred men, with Outwaller allies. Assume siege train. Two hundred canoes, four large war galleys. Turkos – Osawa.

They had marched impossible distances in eight days – and found camp sites pre-scouted, and supply dumps of food in stone cairns. The company had lost two wagons, and crossed almost three hundred leagues of ground.

And now they had to cross the Meander for the third time, and there was no bridge.

‘Anyone seen the Duke?’ Sauce asked.

Ser Jehan shook his head. ‘Gone with Gelfred at last light yesterday.’

Tom looked at the icy ford, the ruins of the old bridge, and the good road just a few hundred yards away on the other side.

‘He ordered us to wait for him,’ Ser Jehan said.

Tom looked at Gerald Random. ‘Ser Gerald – I’m no big thinker, but mayhap this is your call to make and not mine.’

‘Everything depends on those furs,’ Random said. ‘The Duke would say the same.’

Tom raised both eyebrows. ‘Everything?’ he asked.

‘Your Captain’s been spending all the profits of the spring on the Moreans, and betting
that
against having a monopoly on the fall furs to sell me,’ he said. ‘I backed his play. We need those furs, Tom. It’s not just a fight.’

Bad Tom grinned in the way that made men uncomfortable – when all his teeth showed. ‘All the better,’ he said. ‘Get me Mag.’

Mag looked at the wide river. ‘A bridge?’ she said.

Bad Tom grinned at her.

‘I can’t,’ she said.

He looked away. ‘Is this about me and Sukey?’ he asked quietly.

‘No, sir, it ain’t, although if you want to have a quiet word about how I feel about the way you treat my daughter, I am, as John says, at your service.’ She met his mad glare with her own.

Sauce shifted uneasily. ‘Time’s wasting, gentles. Tom, if we push half the horses into the stream—’

He shook his head. ‘We’ll lose too many lads, Sauce.’

Ser Milus laughed bitterly. ‘Sauce, just think what it means when
Tom
hesitates to do something.’