‘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 common failing in your profession too, surely?’
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
