The Red Knight

‘Stay and have a piece,’ Nita Qwan found himself saying.

She coughed – he assumed that was her simulation of laughter. ‘You are bold, little man,’ she said. ‘Come and cook for me another time.’ And with a flick of her talons, faster than a deer, she was gone into the woods again.

No sooner was she gone then a dozen women came out of the woods – matrons, every one. They spoke so rapidly in Sossag that Nita Qwan couldn’t understand even single words.

So instead, he went and opened his temporary oven.

It was burned all down one side, but the rest had steamed well and the crust was a nice colour – a rich golden brown, shot with darker brown. Perhaps the oven had cracked – he had no idea why part of the outer rim was so singed.

Nor did he care, for the people came forward like an avenging army and seized the pie as fast as he could cut slices off it. He had made enough, and it wasn’t the way of the people to complain.

Ota Qwan took a piece – a burned piece. ‘Well done. Now we are fed, and well-fed. We will run all night.’

He ate his piece in four bites and drank a cup of water. Nita Qwan emulated him, and noted that his wife had packed his baskets. He took one on his back. She smiled shyly at him.

He smiled back.

He shouldered his quiver and his sword, and then – with no further discussion – they were off into the trees.

Albinkirk – Desiderata

The row galley landed against the Bridge Fort’s dock; the garrison was alert and manned the walls. The captain was waiting on the dock.

The row galley was full of women, each one more beautiful than the last. It wasn’t what he’d expected.

One woman – short, blonde, and harried – stood on the foredeck. ‘I need a healer,’ she said. ‘A good one.’

The captain turned to Michael. ‘Get me a Knight of the Order,’ he said. Then he turned back. ‘They are superb healers.’ he said. Unfortunately, they had gone on a sortie to clear the trench at dawn, and they hadn’t returned.

‘I know,’ she spat. ‘How long?’

‘A few minutes,’ he said, hopefully.

‘She doesn’t have a few minutes,’ the woman said, her face cracking. She seemed to clamp down on a sob. ‘She’s lost a great deal of blood.’

‘Who has?’ he asked as he tried to get a leg over the gunwale. A dozen oarsmen reached to pull him into the boat.

‘The Queen,’ she said. ‘I’m Lady Almspend. Her secretary. This is Lady Mary, chief among her ladies.

The Queen.

The Red Knight ignored the people gathered around the figure on the deck. The woman lying on the deck was losing blood at a tremendous rate. He could feel it.

And he had very little strength, at least in terms of power. What he had he’d squandered, fighting boglins. And to heal her here, now, would give himself away – at least as a Hermeticist.

So much blood.

She was young – imbued with power, herself.

In that moment, he realised that if she died, he could take her. As he had taken the boglin chief. She was defenceless – wide open, trying to use her power to strengthen herself. She drank in the sun’s rays – the pure power of Helios. She was very potent.

He put a hand on her back.

‘Well?’ Lady Almspend asked, impatient. ‘Can you help?’

Vade Retro, Satanus, the captain thought. He took his arming cap off his head, and pushed it into the wound. Put one finger on the cap as it turned from dirty white to brilliant scarlet.

He almost grinned. He was linked to a legion of healers. It was easy to forget that.

The palace seemed empty without Prudentia. He knew the basic phantasms of healing now – he wondered if he could release the power of Mag’s bindings to power them. And keep the power – and funnel it through workings he knew mostly from long ago lessons.

‘Amicia?’ he asked.

She was there. ‘Hello!’ she said. She took his hand, smiled – and let his hand drop.

‘I need to heal someone.’ He wished-

‘Show me,’ Amicia said briskly.

He took a moment to kneel by the fallen statue, and brush a hand across Prudentia’s marble back. ‘I miss you, ‘he said. ‘Help me, if you can.’

Then he took Amicia’s hand and laid it on the Queen.

She pointed to workings he now knew – through her – in a mind-wrenching moment, he was on her bridge using her memory palace even as he stood on Prudentia’s pedestal and collected what was left of his power.

It wasn’t enough.

Amicia shook her head. ‘I have nothing to give,’ she said. He looked up at her, and even in the aethereal her exhaustion was obvious. ‘So many wounded,’ she said.

Sighing for the loss, he tested the binding of power on Mag’s cap. He cast, as Harmodius had taught him, guided by Amicia’s sure hand on his – three workings, each contingent on the other, like nested equations on the chalkboard. The loosing, the binding for power, the healing. He used what was left of the life force he had taken from the boglin chief.

‘Saint Barbara, Taurus, Thales. Demetrios, Pisces, Herakleitus. Ionnes the Baptist, Leo, Socrates!’ he invoked, pointed, pivoted, and the room moved – the gears of his imagined rooms turning at the speed of a man’s muscles, so that the room spun like a top.

It was the most complex conjuring he had ever attempted – and the power that flared from it astounded him, a backlash of released power that rose in the room around him.

The arming cap immolated itself in a paroxysm of power – a brief flare, and all that power vanished into her.

A red mist crossed her back from her spine to the top of one tanned leg and around to her hip, right across the kidney. A flake of grey-white ash fell away from it.

The captain fell back away from her.

The Queen gave a squeak, and then sighed, as if stroked by her lover. And then gave a low moan.

Lady Almspend clasped her hands together. ‘Oh, by the power of God, ser! That was brilliant!’

The captain shook his head. ‘That wasn’t me,’ he admitted. ‘Or not just me.’ His voice was a croak.

The wound began to bleed again. They bandaged it tightly, being careful of the wound which still seemed to be open.

The captain shook his head. ‘But I felt the power flow,’ he said in frustration.

‘I feel the pain less,’ the Queen said bravely. ‘It was well done, Ser Knight.’

A red-haired giant threw his cloak over the Queen. ‘We need to get her ashore.’

The captain shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t. That castle is the lynch pin of the battle, and I’ve been holding it all night. I wouldn’t risk the Queen of Alba in it.’

But other boats were pulling up against the pilings of the bridge, anchoring or tying up, their crossbowmen engaging the boglins on the north bank. The bolder boatmen were pulling under the bridge, through the narrows, to further outflank the enemy in the meadows north of the river.

‘I have twenty brave men to add to your garrison,’ Red Beard said.

‘I’d rather have all those nice crossbowmen,’ the captain said. He smiled to take any apparent sting from his remark. ‘Very well. Land the Queen. Don’t mind the boglin guts – we haven’t had time to tidy up.’

He rose from the deck, almost unable to walk. He clambered back over the side to the dock, and managed to give the required orders.