The Red Knight

you.’

The captain ignored him, and opened the iron-bound door.

And she was there.

And he was healed.

She looked at the plinth and her eyes widened in horror. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘What have you done?’

And she was gone.

North of Lissen Carak – Peter

They stopped in a clearing in the woods. The ground had been rising steadily to the north, and they were running almost due north, and that was all Nita Qwan knew except that, as usual, he had never been so tired in all his life.

They all lay down in a muddle and slept.

In the morning, Ota Qwan stood up first, and they ran again. The sun was high in the sky before they straggled over a ridge, and young warriors were sent back without their baskets to fetch the matrons and mothers of newborns who had lagged behind.

And when the last of the women was over the ridge, fires were lit carefully and the people made food, and ate.

And when Nita Qwan felt as if life might be worth living, Ota Qwan came to the centre of the ring of fires with a spear. And Little Hands, the senior woman, came and faced him.

He handed her the spear. ‘Our war is over,’ he said. ‘I give you the spear of war.’

Little Hands took it. ‘The matrons have it, ready for any enemy. Our thanks, Ota Qwan. You have surprised us, and done well.’

No one said anything more – there was neither applause nor censure.

An hour later, they were running north again.

Chapter Seventeen

Ranald Lachlan

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

Days passed.

Wounded men were healed, and slept.

Dead men and women were mourned, and buried.

The creatures of the Wild were burned, and their ashes spread over the fields.

The company was not entirely dead. A few men-at-arms were found wounded, and healed. Ser Jehannes and Ser Milus had not been part of the charge; Bad Tom and Sauce were untouched, although they each slept for more than thirty hours after their armour was stripped. But the archers were still alive, many of the valets and a few squires.

The captain was very difficult to find. Some said he was drunk, and some said he was with his pretty novice, and some said he was taking service of the king, or of the Knights of Saint Thomas.

None of these things were true.

The captain spent a great deal of time weeping, and when he buried his company dead, he invited no others. They lay in neat rows, sewn in white linen by Mag and her friends, who now stood silent in a light rain. Dora Candleswain stood with Kaitlin Lanthorn, and the Carter sisters stood watching their surviving brother who, with Daniel Favor, was in the ranks of the company.

And the knights of Saint Thomas appeared from the rain. The Prior came out at their head, and said the service for the dead. Bad Tom, Sauce, Ranald and the captain himself lowered the bodies. There was Carlus the Smith, smaller in death but no lighter; there was Lyliard, no longer the company’s handsomest man. They went into marked graves with headstones, each of them marked with the eight-pointed cross of the Order. It made a great difference to many of the man and women – better, in fact, than most mercenaries ever imagined.

One corpse absorbed the captain, and he wept. He wept for all of them, and he wept for his own errors, and the ill-judgement of others, and a thousand other things – but Jacques was his last tie to childhood, and was gone.

Your mother’s still alive, lad. Doesn’t she count? said the old Magus in his mind.

‘Could you shut up?’ muttered the captain to the interloper in his head.

Sauce looked at him, because he muttered to himself a great deal, lately, and because Sauce helped Dora Candleswain to stop screaming every night. She was sensitive to the other men and women in the company who were near the breaking point, or past it. Not all wounds bled.

They all stood there in the light rain – the survivors. Atcourt, and Brewes and Long Paw. Ser Alcaeus, who wore the red tabbard and stood with the knights; Johne the Bailli. Bent. No Head. Knights and squires and archers and valets, men and women, soldiers and prostitutes and laundresses and farm girls and servants. And to a man and woman, they looked at the captain and waited for him to speak.

Like a fool, he hadn’t planned anything. But their need was palpable – like a spell.

‘We won,’ he said, his young voice as harsh as the croaking of a raven. ‘We held the fortress against a Power of the Wild. But none of these men or women died to hold the fortress – did they?’

He looked at Jehannes. The older man met his glance. And gave him a small nod of agreement.

‘They died for us. We die for each other. Out there in the world, they lie, and cheat each other, and betray, and we, here, don’t do that.’ He was all too aware that sometimes, they did. But funerals are the time to speak high words. He knew that, too. ‘We do our level best to hold the line, so that the man next to us can live. We – we who are alive – we owe our lives to these, who are dead. It could have been us. It was them.’ He managed a smile. ‘No one can do more than to give his life for his friends. Every drink of wine you ever taste, every time you get laid, every time you wake and breathe the spring air, you owe that to these – who lie here in the ground.’ His eye caught the smallest bundle – Low Sym. ‘They died heroes – no matter how they lived.’ He shrugged and looked at the Prior. ‘I suspect it’s bad theology.’ He had more to say, but he was crying too hard, and he found that he was kneeling by the mound of damp earth that was Jacques.

Who had saved his life so many times.

‘Jesus said, I am the way, and the life,’ said the Prior in a calm, low voice.

The captain shut out the sound of his company praying.

And eventually, there was a hand on his shoulder. It was a light hand. But he didn’t have to open his eyes to know to whom it belonged.

He rose, and she stepped back. She smiled at the ground. ‘I thought you’d just hurt your back again, with all that kneeling,’ she said.

‘Marry me?’ he asked. His whole face ached from crying – and he knew she didn’t care how he looked, or sounded. It was the most remarkable thought.

She smiled. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow,’ she said lightly. ‘Open to me?’ she asked, and he thought he heard an immense strain in her voice. He put it down to fatigue, and he opened his door, and she entered in. She kept her distance from Harmodius, and instead she pulled him out his own door and into the green wonder of her bridge – but it was no longer a simple green. Overhead, the sky was a golden blue, and the sun shone in splendour in heaven and the water that rushed under her bridge was clear as diamonds and the spray was as white as a the brightest cloud. The leaves of the trees were green and gold, and every tree was in flower. The smell was of clean water and brilliant air and every flower scent he’d ever imagined or smelled.

‘God,’ he said, involuntarily.