The Red Knight

They want me to believe. Because my disbelief threatens their belief, and they need solace.

The service rolled on as the sun flared its last, nearly horizontal beams throwing brilliant coloured light from the stained glass across the white linen shrouds of the dead.

Dies ir?! dies illa

Solvet s?clum in favilla:

Teste David cum Sibylla!

The coloured light grew – and every soldier gasped as the blaze of glory swept across the bodies.

Tuba, mirum spargens sonum

Per sepulchra regionum,

Coget omnes ante thronum.

It’s a trick of the light, you superstitious fools! He wanted to shout it aloud. And at the same time, he felt the awe just as they did – felt the increase in his pulse. They hold the service at this hour to take advantage of the sun and those windows, he thought. Although it would be very difficult to time the whole service to arrange it, he admitted to himself. And the sun cannot be at the right angle very often.

Even the priest had stumbled in the service.

Michael was weeping. He was scarcely alone. Sauce was weeping and so was Bad Tom. He was saying ‘Deo gratias’ over and over again through his tears, his rough voice a counterpoint to Sauce’s.

When it was all done, the knights of the company bore the corpses on litters made from spears, out of the chapel and back down the hill to bury them in the consecrated ground by the shrine at the bridge.

Ser Milus came and put his hand on the captain’s shoulder – a rare familiarity – and nodded. His eyes were red.

‘I know that cost you,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

Jehannes grunted. Nodded. Wiped his eyes on the back of his heavy firze cote sleeve. Spat. Finally met his eye too. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

The captain just shook his head. ‘We still have to bury them,’ he said. ‘They remain dead.’

The procession left by the chapel’s main door, led by the priest, but the Abbess was the focal point, now in severe and expensive black with a glittering crucifix of black onyx and white gold. She nodded to him and he gave her a courtly bow in return. The perfection of the Abbess’s black habit with its eight-pointed cross contrasted with the brown-black of the priest’s voluminous cassock over his cadaver-thin body. And the captain could smell the tang of the man’s sweat as he passed. He was none too clean, and his smell was spectacular when compared with the women.

The nuns came out behind their Abbess. Virtually all of the cloister had come to the service, and there were more than sixty nuns, uniform in their slate grey habits with the eight pointed cross of their order. Behind them came the novices – another sixty women in paler grey, some of a more worldly cut, showing their figures, and others less.

They wore grey and it was twilight, but the captain had no difficulty picking out Amicia. He turned his head away in time to see an archer known as Low Sym make a gesture and give a whistle.

The captain suddenly felt his sense of the world restored. He smiled.

‘Take that man’s name,’ he said to Jehannes . . . ‘Ten lashes, disrespect.’

‘Aye, milord.’ Marshal Jehannes had his hand on the man’s collar before the captain had taken another breath. Low Sym – nineteen, and no woman’s friend – didn’t even thrash. He knew a fair cop when he felt one.

‘Which I was-’ he began, and saw the captain’s face. ‘Aye, Captain.’

But the captain’s eyes rested on Amicia. And his thoughts went elsewhere.

The night passed in relaxation, and to soldiers, relaxation meant wine.

Amy’s Hob was still abed, and Daud the Red was fletching new arrows for the company and admitted to being ‘poorly’, company slang for a hangover so bad it threatened combat effectiveness. Such a hangover would be punishable most days – the day after they buried seven men was not one of them.

The camp had its own portable tavern run by the Grand Sutler, a merchant who paid the company a hefty fee to ride along with his wagons and skim their profits when they had some to share. He, in turn, bought wine and ale from the fortress’ stores, and from the town at the foot of Lissen Carak – four streets of neat stone cottages and shop fronts nestled inside the lower walls and called ‘The Lower Town’. But the Lower Town was open to the company as well, and its tavern, hereabouts known as the Sunne in Splendour, was serving both in its great common room and out in the yard. The inn was doing a brisk business, selling a year’s worth of ale in a few hours. Craftsmen were locking up their children.

That was not the captain’s problem. The captain’s problem was that Gelfred was planning to venture back to the tree line alone, while the captain had no intention of risking his most valuable asset without protection. And no protection was available.

Gelfred stood in the light rain outside his tent, swathed in a three-quarter length cloak, thigh high boots and a heavy wool cap. He tapped his stick impatiently against his boot.

‘If this rain keeps up, we’ll never find the thing again,’ he said.

‘Give me a quarter hour to find us some guards,’ the captain snapped.

‘A quarter hour we may not have,’ Gelfred said.

The captain wandered through the camp, unarmoured and already feeling ill-at-ease with his decision to dress for comfort. But he, too, had drunk too much and too late the night before. His head hurt, and when he looked into the eyes of his soldiers, he knew that he was in better shape than most. Most were still drinking.

He’d paid them. It improved his popularity and his authority, but it gave them the wherewithal to be drunk.

So they were.

Jehannes was sitting in the door of his pavilion.

‘Hung over?’ the captain asked.

Jehannes shook his head. ‘Still drunk,’ he answered. Raised a horn cup. ‘Want some?’

The captain mimed a shudder. ‘No. I need four sober soldiers – preferably men-at-arms.’

Jehannes shook his head again.

The captain felt the warmth go from his heart to his cheeks. ‘If they are drunk on guard, I’ll have their heads,’ he growled.

Jehannes stood up. ‘Best you don’t go check, then.’

The captain met his eye. ‘Really? That bad?’ he said it mildly enough, but his anger came through.

‘You don’t want them to think you don’t give a shit, do you, Captain?’ Jehannes had no trouble holding his eye, although the marshal’s were bloodshot and red. ‘This is not the moment to play at discipline, eh?’

The captain sat on an offered stool. ‘If something comes out of the Wild right now, we’re all dead.’

Jehannes shrugged. ‘So?’ he asked.

‘We’re better than this,’ the captain said.

‘Like fuck we are,’ Jehannes said, and took a deep drink. ‘What are you playing at? Ser?’ He laughed grimly. ‘You’ve taken a company of broken men and made something of them – and now you want them to act like the Legion of Angels?’

The captain sighed. ‘I’d settle for the Infernal Legion. I’m not particular.’ He got to his feet. ‘But I will have discipline.’

Jehannes made a rude noise. ‘Have some discipline tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask for it today. Show some humanity, lad. Let them be sad. Let them fucking mourn.’

‘We mourned yesterday. We went to church, for god’s sake. Murderers and rapists, crying for Jesus. If I hadn’t seen it, I’d have laughed to hear about it.’ Just for a moment, the captain looked very young indeed – and confused, annoyed. ‘We’re in a battle. We can’t take a break to mourn.’

Jehannes drank more wine. ‘Can you fight every day?’ he asked.

The captain considered. ‘Yes,’ he said.