The Red Knight

times, until someone on the walls saw the trail of blood he was leaving and a pair of archers appeared to hold him up.

Amicia cut the sabatons off his feet, and found the flint javelin which had cut deeply into the muscle at the back of his leg. Blood was flowing out like beer from an open tap.

She was speaking rapidly and cheerfully, and he just had time to think how beautiful she was.

Lissen Carak – the Abbess

The Abbess watched the captain’s sortie head east along the road, moving so fast that they were gone from sight before she recovered her eagle.

I have certainly given away my station to every gentleman here, she thought. She wondered if the siege would leave her any secrets at all.

Parcival, her magnificent Ferlander eagle, was killing his way through the flocks of wild birds like a tiger let loose in a sheepfold. But she could see the big old bird was tiring, and she began to cast her lure. Just to be sure.

She whirled it carefully over her head, and Parcival saw it, turned at the flash of Tyrian red, and abandoned his pursuit of his defeated enemies. He came to her like a unicorn to a maiden – shyly at first, and finally eager to be caught.

His weight was far too much for her, but young Theodora helped her, and got a faceful of wings for her trouble as the creature bated and bated again, unused to his mistress having a helper. But she got the jesses slipped over his talons, and Theodora put the hood on him, and he calmed, while the Abbess said, ‘There’s my brave knight. There’s my fine warrior – you poor old thing.’ The eagle was tired, grumpy and very pleased with himself, all at the same time.

Theodora stroked his back and wings and he straightened up.

‘Give him a morsel of chicken, dear,’ the Abbess said. She smiled at the novice. ‘It’s just like having a man, child. Never give him what he wants – only give him what you want. If he eats too much we’ll never get him into the air again.’

Theodora looked out from the height of the tower. The plain and the river were far below them, and the eagle’s sudden stoop from this height had shattered the lesser birds.

Amicia appeared from the hospital with a message from Sister Miram. The Abbess looked at it and nodded. ‘Tell Miram to use anything she needs. No sense in hoarding.’

Amicia’s eyes were elsewhere. ‘They’re gone,’ Amicia said. ‘The enemy’s spies. Even the wyverns. I can feel it.’

Theodora was startled that a novice would speak directly to the Abbess.

The Abbess seemed untroubled. ‘You are very perceptive,’ the Abbess said. ‘But there’s something I don’t like about this.’ She walked to the edge of the tower and looked down. Just below her, a pack of nuns stood on the broad platform of the gatehouse and watched the end of the rout below and the disappearing column of dust that marked the captain’s sortie.

One nun left the wall, her skirts held in her hands as she ran. The Abbess wondered idly why Sister Bryanne was in such a hurry until she saw the priest. He was on the wall, alone, and praying loudly for the destruction of the enemy.

That was well enough, she supposed. Father Henry was a festering boil – his hatred for the captain and his attempts to discipline her nuns were heading them for a confrontation.

But the siege was pushing the routine away, and she worried that it would never return. And what if the captain went out and died?

‘What do you say, my lady?’ Amicia asked, and the Abbess smiled at her.

‘Oh, my dear, we old people sometimes say aloud what we ought to keep inside.’

Amicia, too, was looking out to the east where a touch of dust still hung over the road that ran south of the river. And she wondered, like every nun, every novice, every farmer and every child in the fortress, why they were riding away, and if they would return.

North of Albinkirk – Peter

Peter was learning to move through the woods. Home for him was grass savannah, dry brush and deep-cut rocky riverbeds, dry most of the year and impassable with fast brown water the rest. But here, with the soft ground, the sharp rock, the massive trees that stretched to the heavens, the odd marshes on hilltops and the endless streams and lakes, a different kind of stealth was required, a different speed, different muscles, different tools.

The Sossag flowed over the ground, following trails that appeared out of nowhere and seemed to vanish again as fast.

At mid-day, Ota Qwan stopped him and they stood, both of them breathing hard.

‘Do you know where we are?’ the older man asked.

Peter looked around. And laughed. ‘Headed for Albinkirk.’

‘Yes and no,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘But for a sailor on the sea of trees, you are fair enough.’ He reached into a bag of bark twine made into a net that he wore at his hip all the time, and drew forth an ear of cooked corn. He took a bite and passed it to Peter. Peter took a bite and passed it to the man behind him – Pal Kut, he thought the man called himself, a cheerful fellow with a red and green face and no hair.

Peter reached into his own bag and took out a small bark container of dried berries he’d found in Grundag’s effects.

Ota Qwan ate a handful and grunted. ‘You give with both hands, Peter.’

The man behind him took half a handful and held them to his forehead, a sign Peter had never seen before.

‘He’s telling you that he respects the labour of your work and the sacrifice you make in sharing. When we share pillaged food – well, it never really belonged to any of us to begin with, did it?’ Ota Qwan laughed, and it was a cruel sound.

‘What about the dinner I cooked?’ Peter asked, ready to be indignant.

‘You were a slave then!’ Ota Qwan thumped his chest. ‘My slave.’

‘Where are we going?’ Peter asked. He didn’t like the way Ota Qwan claimed him.

Skadai appeared out of thin air to take the last handful of the dried berries, he, too, made the gesture of respect. ‘Good berries,’ he said. ‘We go to look at Albinkirk. Then we hunt on our own.’

Peter shook his head as the war captain moved on. ‘Hunt on our own?’

‘Yesterday, while you rutted like a stag – wait, do you know even who Thorn is?’ Ota Qwan asked him, as if he were a child.

Peter wanted to rub his face in it, but in truth, he’d heard the name mentioned but didn’t know who he was. And he was increasingly eager to know how his new world worked. ‘No,’ he said, pouting.

Ota Qwan ignored his tone. ‘Thorn wishes to be the lord of these woods.’ He made a face. ‘He is reputed a great sorcerer who was once a man. Now he seeks revenge on men. But yesterday he was defeated – not beaten, but bloodied. We did not follow him to battle because Skadai didn’t like the plan he heard, so now we go east to fight our own battles.’

‘Defeated? By whom?’ Peter looked around. ‘Where was this battle?’

‘Six leagues from where you rutted with Senegral, two hundred men died and twice that number of creatures of the Wild.’ He shrugged. ‘Thorn has ten times that many creatures and men at his beck and call and he summons more. But the Sossag are not slaves, servants, bound men – only allies, and only then when it suits our need.’

‘Surely this Thorn is angry at us?’ Peter asked.

‘So angry that if he dared he would kill us all, or destroy our villages, or force Skadai to die in torment.’ Ota Qwan cackled. ‘But to do so would be to forfeit the alliance of every creature, every boglin, every man in his service. This is the Wild, my friend. If he had won we would look foolish and weak.’ Ota Qwan gave a wicked smile. ‘But he lost, so it is he who looks foolish and weak while we go to burn the lands around Albinkirk, which was built on our lands many years ago. We have long memories.’

Peter looked at him. ‘I assume you were not born a Sossag.’