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.
‘Christ!’ he screamed.
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,
