The Red Knight (53 page)

Threw back its head at an unnatural angle and screamed.

Then it held out the bowl for more.

Peter scooped two more bowls, put oregano on both, and handed one to each boglin.

The entire process was repeated.

The smaller of the two boglins opened and closed its beak-mouth three or four times, emitting a chemical reek that caught at the back of Peter’s throat.

‘Fud gud!’ it chirped.

Long, agile tongues of a shocking pink-purple emerged from their mouths, and they licked the bowls clean.

They emitted a long scratching noise together, and raced off, running lightly on the ground, bent half over.

Peter stood by his fire with two empty food bowls. He was shaking a little.

Skadai came. ‘You have been honoured,’ he said. ‘They seldom notice us.’ He looked like a man with more to say, but then he pursed his lips, patted Peter on the shoulder,
smiled and loped off, as he always did.

Peter was still trying to decide what to make of the incident when the woman came and put a hand on the small of his back.

That hand on his back was a palpable thing – another means of communication, a thing he hadn’t expected, and it conveyed a wealth of information to him – so much, in fact, that
an hour later he was between her legs . . . and moments after that another man kicked him in the head.

Such a blow might have killed, but the painted man was barefoot and Peter had a little warning. And despite being a former slave and a cook, Peter had been bred to war, so as the kick turned his
head, as he ripped himself free of the dark-haired woman’s embrace, he was already moving, calculating, reaching for the knife he wore around his neck.

The painted man expected him to be easy prey. He screamed, in rage or feigned rage, and attacked again. Peter had rolled on his back with the force of the kick, and he had the knife in his hand,
and when the painted man – his red and black and white mixed in blotchy patches that looked like a skin sickness – jumped at him, Peter killed him as easily as such a thing could ever
happen. He rammed his blade deep into the man’s belly and then rolled him over as he screamed in shock and desperation, his wild eyes suddenly wide with the despair of agony leading
inevitably to death.

Peter ripped the knife up his abdomen, spilling his guts and covering himself in the man’s gore.

Then, full of his own terror, he plunged the knife into the man’s eyes, one and two.

By then, the blotchy man was dead.

Peter lay there for a moment. Every one of the last hundred heartbeats was open to him like a long book, carefully read, and the remnants of his erection reminded him that he had passed from one
extreme of life to the other in that time.

He tried to get to his feet but his knees were shaking and there were men all around him.

All Sossag men.

Skadai held out a hand and hauled him to his feet with a firmness that seemed threatening. But was not.

Then Ota Qwan was there, with a steadying hand.

‘Open your mouth,’ he said.

Peter opened it, and Skadai stuck a bloody finger into his mouth and began to chant. Ota Qwan grabbed his arm tightly. ‘This is important,’ he said. ‘Listen: Skadai says,
“Take your foe, Gruntag, into your body.” ’ Ota Qwan squeezed again. ‘Skadai says, “Now you and Gruntag are one. What you were, he is. What he was, you are.”
’

Peter wanted to retch at the taste of coppery, warm blood inside his mouth.

‘I say, don’t make a habit of killing Sossag,’ Ota Qwan said.

‘He attacked me!’ Peter squeaked.

‘You were fucking his woman, who was only using you to be rid of an inferior man. She avoided the shame of sending him from her blankets by arranging for you to kill him.
Understand?’ Ota Qwan turned to a group of painted men and said something, and they all laughed.

Peter spat. ‘What’s so funny?’

Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘Our humour. Yours later, but not now, I think.’

‘Tell me,’ Peter said.

‘They asked how you were. I said you weren’t sure whether the dick or the knife went in more smoothly.’ Ota Qwan’s eyes were a bright blue, and the man was amused.
‘You are now a man, and a Sossag. Killing your own should not be a habit, but you must know by now what the Wild is.’

Peter spat again. ‘It’s every hand raised against every other hand,’ he said. He had trained to kill all his young life, and his first failure to kill another man had made him
a slave. But this sudden success felt more like rape than victory. He was covered in blood and worse, and yet these men were congratulating him. ‘There is no law.’

Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘Don’t be foolish,’ he said. ‘There are many laws. But the greatest of them is that the strongest is the strongest. And every creature, weak or
strong, makes a good meal.’ He laughed. ‘It’s no different at the king’s court. But here, it’s fair and honest, at least in that no one lies. Skadai is faster and
deadlier than I will ever be. I will never challenge him. But another man might – or a woman – and the matrons would name a form of challenge, and the challenger would face Skadai. Or
perhaps simply attack him – but that sort of victory does not always result in the killer gaining the power and prestige he seeks. Am I making sense?’

‘Too much sense,’ Peter said. ‘I want to wash.’ Peter wanted free of this alien man and his paint and his aura of violence.

‘I tell you this because now other warriors see you as a man and you may be challenged. Or simply killed. Up until now, I have protected you.’ Ota Qwan shrugged.

‘Why kill me?’ Peter asked.

Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘To raise the number of men they’ve killed? Or to claim Senegral, your woman?’ He laughed. ‘Grundag died easily because he thought you were a slave. He
wasn’t much of a man, but he was a fighter, and his very stupidity made men afraid of him. They are not afraid of you – although the way you opened him and cut out his eyes may make
some men afraid. But many men want Senegral, and she doesn’t like to say no.’

Peter had made it to the stream, and despite the cold and the sharp rocks, he threw himself into the low pool where the men washed their cups, heedless of the layer of water-swollen grains where
a hundred wooden bowls had been washed after dinner. Heedless of leeches. Wanting only to get the sticky blood and intestinal matter off his hands and his belly and his groin.

From the water, he said, ‘Perhaps I should just kill her.’

Ota Qwan laughed. ‘An elegant solution, except that her brothers and sisters would then surely kill you.’

The water woke his brain and froze his skin. He put his head under the water and come up floundering, feet aching from trying to balance on sharp rocks. ‘What can I do?’ he
asked.

‘Paint!’ Ota Qwan said. ‘As a warrior on a mission, you are exempt from such treatment. Unless you provoke it, of course. But men are not as swift as other animals, as deadly
in a fight, as well-taloned, or as long limbed. Eh? But in a pack, we are the deadliest animals in the Wild, and when we paint, we are a pack. Do you understand?’

Peter shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I will paint. And that commits me to make war against people I do not know to gain a little peace at home.’ He laughed. His
laughter was strange and wild and a little crazed. ‘But they enslaved me, so they can take the consequences.’

Ota Qwan nodded. ‘I knew you would make one of us from the moment I met you,’ he said. ‘Don’t disdain us. We do as other people do, we just don’t call it by pretty
names. We make war now to support Thorn, but also so that all the other killers and all the other predators will see our strength and leave us in peace. Will fear us. So we can go home and grow
squash. It is not all war and knives in the dark.’

Peter sighed. ‘I hope not.’

Ota Qwan made a noise. ‘You need to paint soon, I think. And have a name. But I will let someone else name you.’

He gave Peter a hand out of the stream, and then took him to a fire, where he removed the horde of leeches stuck to the former cook. On another day, the leeches would have appalled him, but
Peter bore their removal with hardly a glance, earning a respectful grunt from an older man.

Then Ota Qwan spoke, and all the men and several women stiffened, paid close attention, and went to their blanket rolls, returning with pretty round boxes of pottery and wood – some
covered in remarkable designs made with coloured hair or quills, and some made of gold or silver.

Every little vessel held paint – red, black, white, yellow, or blue.

‘May I paint you?’ Ota Qwan asked.

Peter smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said. He was exhausted and almost asleep.

Three men and a painted woman did the actual painting, under Ota Qwan’s direction. It took an hour, but when they were done Peter was black on one side of his body and red on the
other.

But on his face they had painted something more intricate. He had felt the woman’s fingers on his face, around his eyes, her own rapt expression and slightly open mouth oddly transfigured
by the fish she wore painted across her eyes.

When they were done one of the men brought a small round mirror in a horn case, and he looked at the mask over his face, the divisions of white and red and black like herring bones, and he
nodded. It spoke to him, although he wasn’t sure what it meant.

He left them his shirt.

He walked though the firelit darkness, and the air was cool on his painted skin, and the fires burning at every camp were warm, even from a distance. Ota Qwan led him from fire to fire, and
warriors murmured to him. He nodded and bowed his head.

‘What are they saying?’ he asked.

‘Mostly hello. A few comment on how much taller you are now. The old man tells you to keep your paint clean and sharp, and not muddy it as you used to do.’ Ota Qwan laughed.
‘Because, of course, you used to be Grundag. Understand?’

‘Christ,’ Peter said. And yet, the murmured welcomes straightened his spine. He had
triumphed.
He didn’t need to wallow in the killing.

He was alive, and tall, and strong, and he rather liked the paint.

At his own fire, Senegral had made all of Grundag’s belongings into a small display, and she gave him a cup of warm, spiced tea, and he drank it. Ota Qwan stood at the edge of the
firelight and watched.

‘She says, look at the good bow you have. Some of your arrows are very poor. You should make better, or trade for them. And she says that she will try not to inflame other men, if you will
only keep her the way she wishes to be kept.’

Peter went through the carefully laid out goods by the bark basket, holding each item up in the firelight. Two excellent knives and a good bow with no arrows to speak of; some furs, a pair of
leggings and two pairs of unadorned moccasins. A horn container full of black paint, a glass jar with red paint. Two cups. A copper pot.

‘I thought women made their men shoes?’ Peter asked.

Ota Qwan laughed. ‘Woman who fancy their men make them magnificent moccasins,’ he said.

‘I see,’ Peter said. He packed everything back into the basket. The woman came and stood next to him, and he put a hand under her skirt and ran it up her leg to her thigh, and then
around her thigh, and she made a sound, and soon enough, they were back where they had been when the dead man kicked him in the head.

At some point she moaned, and later he laughed aloud at the absurdity of it all. He wanted Ota Qwan to translate his thoughts to her, but of course, the man was gone.

Why is he helping me?
Peter thought, and then he was asleep.

And in the morning, all the painted men rose, took only the equipment they needed for violence, and followed Skadai. Peter took the bow and the best knife, and his paint and a single red wool
blanket and strode naked, after Ota Qwan. He found it surprisingly easy to ask no questions, simply follow.

Later, he asked Ota Qwan how to get arrows, and the man silently gave him a dozen.

‘Why?’ Peter asked. ‘Is it not every man against every other man?’

Ota Qwan laughed. ‘You know nothing,’ he said. ‘Do you not follow me? Will you do my bidding when the arrows fly and the steel fills the air?’

Peter thought about it. ‘I suppose I will.’

Ota Qwan laughed. ‘Come. Let’s go find your name.’

South of Albinkirk – de Vrailly

Jean de Vrailly clamped down on his impatience and it turned, as it always did, to anger. The blossoming of his rage always made him feel sinful, dirty, and less of a man and a
knight, and so, while riding easily through the high ridges and spring flowers of Alba’s fertile heartland, he reined up his second charger and dismounted, to the confusion of his brothers in
arms, and knelt in the dirt beside the road to pray.

The mild pain of kneeling for prolonged periods always steadied him.

Images floated to the surface of his thoughts as he imagined the crucifixion of the Christ; as he pictured himself as a knight riding to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, or inserted himself in
meditation into the adoration of the Magi, a lowly caravan guard sitting on his charger behind the princes who adored the newborn lamb.

Contempt
broke through his reverie. He despised the King of Alba, who stopped in each town to play to his peasants, win their sighs and their raucous laughter, still their fears and give
them law. It was done with too much drama and it took too much time, and it was obvious – obvious to a child – that something was happening in the north that required the instant
application of the kingdom’s mailed fist.

Disgust
. The knights of Alba were slow, slothful, full of vice and barbarity. They drank, they ate too much, belched and farted at table, and never, ever exercised in arms. Jean de
Vrailly and his retinue rode from town to town in full armour, cap à pied, with heavy quilted cotes under hauberks of ring mail surmounted by shining steel plate – three layers of
protection, which every knight in the East wore every day of his life – to town, to church or to ride out with his lady.

The Wild had not made a major incursion in the East in a century, yet their knighthood stood ready to fight at every moment.