‘U kuk fr us?’ said the larger one.
Peter realised with a shock that the larger mammal was a woman – beheaded and skinned. Gutted.
‘Kuk?’ said the larger boglin.
Peter took a deep breath, pointed at the dead woman, and shook his head. ‘I will not cook a person,’ he said.
He had his fire going, and he had already fed his friends. So he handed the remains of his squash and squirrel stew with oregano to the larger boglin. ‘Eat,’ he said.
The boglin looked at its partner. They touched their heads together for a moment, and a flood of acrid, complex smells filled the air.
The smaller boglin opened its gullet and swallowed half, and then passed the small copper pot to the larger boglin, who consumed the rest.
Peter didn’t watch.
Ota Qwan came and stood by him. ‘Aren’t you two supposed to be in the big attack?’ he asked.
They remained perfectly still. Animal still. As if they couldn’t hear him.
‘Kuk?’ asked the larger.
‘I – will – cook – the – rabbits.’ Peter spoke slowly.
‘Gud.’ The larger boglin bobbed. ‘Go kill. Back to eat.’ He made a chittering noise, his partner joined him, and they bent forward and loped off into the gathering night.
Ota Qwan looked at Peter. ‘Do you have the power, laddy?’ he asked.
Peter shook his head.
Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘Among the Sossag people it is mostly shamans who can talk to the Wild,’ he said. ‘I would like to have boglins to follow me,’ he said. ‘If they offer to join us, accept.’
Peter swallowed. ‘You would have them in camp?’
Ota Qwan shook his head in mock anger. ‘Boglins are big medicine, you know that?’
‘Where do they come from?’ Peter asked. ‘I had never seen one before – I came here.’
Ota Qwan sat by the corpse of the gutted woman. He didn’t seem to notice her, or care. ‘I don’t know, but I can tell you what men say. The word is that they grow in great colonies like giant termite hills in the deep Wild – way out west. All the creatures of the Wild fear them. The great Powers of the Wild cultivate them, recruit whole colonies, and send them to their deaths.’ Ota Qwan sighed. ‘I’ve heard said they were made – they were created – by a great Power. To fight an ancient war.’
Peter shook his head. ‘That’s just a way of saying you don’t know.’
‘Don’t I?’ Ota Qwan laughed. ‘You have so much to learn about the Wild. Because the Powers pretend that they fear nothing, but they fear the little boglins. A thousand boglins are a fearful sight. A million boglins-’ He shrugged. ‘If they could be fed, they could conquer the world.’
Peter swallowed bile.
‘Maybe you could cook for them, eh?’ Ota Qwan said. ‘You know the matrons have given you a name?’
Peter nodded expectantly.
‘Nita Qwan.’ Ota Qwan nodded expectantly. ‘A very potent name. Well done.’
Peer sounded it out in his head. ‘Gives – something.’
‘He gives life,’ Ota Qwan said.
‘Like your name,’ Peter said.
‘Yes. They see us together. I like that.’ He nodded.
‘What is Ota?’ Peter asked.
‘Take. Like
‘Take water. When we are on the march.’ Peter nodded. And then turned. ‘You are
Ota Qwan laughed. ‘Got it in one. You were Grundag. Now you are Nita Qwan. My brother. And my symbolic opposite.’ He nodded again. ‘Now – recruit me those boglins. This siege is almost over; we’ll go home as soon as the dead are eaten.’
Peter shook his head. ‘I lack your experience of war,’ he said. ‘But the Alban Royal Army is just coming up the Vale of the Cohocton.’
Ota Qwan rubbed his chin. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a very good point. But Thorn says we will triumph tonight.’
‘How?’ Nita Qwan asked.
‘Pick up your bow and spear and come with me,’ Ota Qwan said.
Nita Qwan put the rabbits on green stick spits and left his woman to turn them. He took up his bow and his new spear, tipped with the fine blued-steel head that had come to him as a share of his spoils from the Fight at the Ford. He had many new things, and his woman was impressed.
And it had only cost him a year of his life. But he spat and followed Ota Qwan, because it was easier to follow than to think. He ran, and caught Ota Qwan by the elbow. The war leader stopped.
‘One thing,’ Nita Qwan said.
‘Be quick, laddy,’ Ota Qwan said.
‘I’m not anyone’s lad. Not yours, not anyone’s. Got me?’ Nita Qwan’s eyes bored straight into the war leader’s.
He didn’t flinch. But after several breaths, his nostrils flared, and he smiled. ‘I hear you, Nita Qwan.’
He turned and ran, and Nita Qwan followed, better satisfied.
At the edge of the woods, many of the surviving Sossag warriors were waiting – almost five hundred of them. Beyond them, painted fiery red in the sun were Abenacki, and even a few Mohak, in their characteristic skeleton paint.
The Abenacki war chief, Akra Crom, walked to the centre, between the groups. He raised an axe from his belt and held it over his head.
Ota Qwan smiled. ‘If he falls today,’ Ota Qwan said, ‘I will be war chief of the Sossag, and perhaps the Abenacki, too.’
Nita Qwan felt as if he’d been punched in the gut.
‘Don’t be so naive,’ the older man said. ‘This is the Wild.’
Nita Qwan took a deep breath. ‘What does he say?’
‘He says that if we ever want to get home, we must fight well tonight for Thorn, and kill the armoured horsemen as we have so many times. We have a thousand warriors. We have bows, and axes. La di da.’ Ota Qwan looked around. ‘In truth, this Thorn doesn’t seem to have a serious plan for us – as if he thinks that by ordering us out of the woods and into the fields, we will kill all the knights.’ He shrugged.
Nita Qwan shuddered.
Ota Qwan put an arm around him. ‘We will go and lie in ambush by the enemy back gate,’ he said. He barely waited for the Abenacki man to stop his oration before he rose to his feet, shook his spear, and the Sossag gave a scream of power and followed Ota Qwan into the green of the woods.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The horses were all tired, and many of them bore light wounds, muscle strains, scars – and so did their riders.
There were twenty-five men-at-arms – a pitiful number against a sea of foes.
And at the base of the ridge, a perfect circle of cooling glass marked the best efforts of their foe.
The captain was operating in a haze of fatigue and minor pains that all but subsumed emotion. He knew – at a remove – that the Abbess was gone. That Grendel, almost a friend, was dead and probably eaten down on the plain. That his beloved tutor was cold marble – no longer even a simulacrum of life.
But at another level, he walled all that away.
He knew he could. Every day, until the sun died.
The place in his head where his friends were dying was like a bad tooth, and by an effort of will, he didn’t run his tongue over it.
