his armour was poor. He had an old cote of plates, mail chausses, and a shirt of good mail with heavy leather gauntlets covered in iron plates. It was, to Ser Milus’ eyes, very old-fashioned.
Gwillam had a heavy spear. He stepped up to the pell, chose his distance, and thrust. The spearhead went an inch into the oak. He shrugged, and tugged it clear with a heavy pull.
Dirk Throatlash, the next of the convoy’s men-at-arms, strode up and took a negligent swipe at it with his heavy double-bladed axe. He embedded his axe head deeply in the post.
Archers were gathering in the towers, and merchants had emerged to watch from their wagons.
John Lee, former shipman, also had a double-bitted axe. He swung hard and precisely – matching Dirk’s cut and carving a heavy chip out of the post.
Ser Milus watched them all.
‘That’s what you do at the pell?’ he asked Gwillam.
The sergeant shrugged. ‘I haven’t done much at a pell since I was a boy,’ he admitted.
Ser Milus nodded. ‘Want to kill a monster?’ he said to the men. ‘Or a man?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ Dirk said. His mates laughed.
Ser Milus didn’t even turn his head. There was no warning. One moment, he was leaning on his war-hammer, and the next, he had tossed Dirk Throatlash into the mud, face first, and still had one arm behind his back.
‘Wrong,’ he said.
‘Jesus
Ser Milus let him up. He smiled, because now he had their attention.
‘We’re all going to practise at the pell, every day we don’t fight on the wall,’ he said, conversationally. ‘Like it was real. I’ll teach you how. And if you can cut through it – good!’ He grinned. ‘And then you can demonstrate your zeal by helping put in the next pell.’ He pointed to John Lee. ‘You have an accurate cut.’
Lee shrugged. ‘I cut a lot of wood.’
‘Try again. But this time, cut as if you were fighting a man.’ Ser Milus waved at the pell.
The shipman stepped up and lifted his axe, like a man preparing to hit a ball.
Ser Milus nodded approvingly. ‘Good guard.’
The former shipman cut at the pell, and a chip of wood flew. He got the axe back to his shoulder and cut again.
Ser Milus let him go on for ten cuts. He was breathing hard, and his tenth cut wasn’t nearly as strong as the ninth.
Milus twirled his grey moustache with his left hand. ‘Leave off. Breathe.’ He nodded. ‘Watch.’
He stepped up to the pell, his pole-axe held under hand.
He cut up with the back-spike, and it just touched the post. He danced to the right on his toes, despite his armour, and his cut finished with the pole-axe head behind his shoulder – a very similar position to that of the shipman’s axe. Then he cut down, again stepping lightly, and the hammer-head slammed into the post, leaving four deep gouges. The knight stepped like a cat, back and then forward, powering the spearhead in an underhanded thrust – stepped wide, as if avoiding a blow, and reversed the pole-axe. The spike slammed sideways into the post, bounced, and Ser Milus was close into the pole and shortened his grip for another strike.
Lee nodded. ‘I could almost see the man you was fighting,’ he admitted.
Gwillam prided himself as a good man of arms, and he sprang forward. ‘Let me try,’ he said. His own weapon was a heavy spear with a head as long as his arm and as wide as the palm of his hand. He sprang forward on the balls of his feet, cut the pell – twice from one side, once from the other, and backed away.
‘But use your hips,’ Ser Milus said. ‘More power in your hips than in your arms. Save your arms; they get tired the fastest.’ He nodded to them. ‘It’s just work, friends. The smith practises his art every day – the pargeter daubs, the farmer ploughs, the shipman works his ship. Bad soldiers lie on their backs. Good soldiers do this. All day, every day.’
Throatlash shook his head. ‘My arms are tired already,’ he said.
Ser Milus nodded. ‘The irks ain’t tired.’
Southford by Albinkirk – Prior Ser Mark Wishart
The king sent two messengers with the knights when the Prior took his men north-west from Albinkirk’s souther suburb, Southford. The Prior moved his men carefully over the ground, their black surcotes somehow blending into the undergrowth. His men rode easily through the densest stands of woods, through thickets of spring briars.
They halted frequently. Men would dismount and creep forward, usually over the brow of a steep hill, and wave them forward.
Despite the halts, they made good progress. Individual knights would ride away – sometimes at right angles to the line of march – and unerringly find them again.
The thing the two king’s messengers found hardest to understand was the silence. The Knights of St Thomas never spoke. They rode in silence, and their horses were equally silent. They had no pages, no valets, no servants and no squires. Forty spare horses – a fortune in war horses – followed the main body, packed with forage bags and spares, but otherwise without bridle or lead. Yet the spares followed briskly enough.
It was, as the older messenger said, uncanny.
Still, it was a bold thing, to be riding through the North Country with the Knights of St Thomas. Galahad Acon had been named for the saint’s church in London, and felt he was almost one of them. His partner, Diccon Alweather, had been a professional messenger in the old king’s day, a weathered man with more scars than a badly tanned hide, as he liked to say himself.
The messengers were used to a hard day riding and no company but their horses, but it was a hard day, even for them – fifteen leagues over broken country that challenged their horsemanship every hour. The knights didn’t seem to tire. Many of them were older than Alweather.
Towards evening, one of the youngest of the knights rode back to the main body, and led them off to the right, north, and then up to a steep hill.
Without a word, every knight dismounted. They drew their long swords from their saddle scabbards, split into four groups of fifteen, and walked off.
The Prior waited a moment, looking at the two messengers. ‘Wait here,’ he said, aloud. The first words Galahad had heard from any of them since they left the Royal Camp.
The black-clad knights vanished into the woods.
An hour passed. It was cold – the spring evenings were longer, but not much warmer, and Galahad couldn’t decide whether he was cold enough to take his great cloak out of the bundle behind his crupper or not. He didn’t want to be caught dismounted at the wrong moment. He cursed the Prior and his silence.
He kept looking at the older messenger, Alweather, who waited, apparently calm, without fidgeting, for the whole hour.
‘Here they come,’ Galahad said suddenly.
The Prior walked up to his horse and sheathed his sword on the saddle. ‘Come,’ he said. He was smiling.
He walked off up the steep hill, and all the horses followed him.
‘Uncanny,’ Alweather said. He spat, and made an avert sign.
They wound around the hill, widdershins, climbing as they went around. It seemed a tedious way of getting to the top, but in the very last light, Galahad could see that the crown of the hill was steep and girt in rock.
The horse ahead of him shied, and then was quiet. Galahad looked down and saw a corpse. And then another. And another and another.
They were not human. He wasn’t sure what they were – small and brown, with big heads, and cords of muscle, beautifully worked leather clothes and huge wounds made by two-handed swords.
‘Good Christ,’ Alweather said aloud.
There was the smell of fire, and then they came over a crest.
The top of the hill was hollow. It was like a giant cup, and the knights had three fires going, and food cooking. Galahad Acon’s stomach, outraged by the inhuman corpses and their red-green blood, now seized on the smell of food. Pea soup.
‘Unsaddle your horse, and curry him,’ the Prior said. ‘After that, he’ll see to himself.’
