on a horse. It ran from west to east. The base was clear of undergrowth, like a – a road.
The whole gully was a mass of churned earth and tracks.
‘It’s an army!’ Gelfred said.
‘Let’s move,’ said the captain. He turned and ran back to their clearing and settled his gear on the poor horse.
Then they were moving.
For a while, every shadow held a daemon – until they passed it. The captain didn’t feel recovered; he was cold, hungry, and afraid even to make tea. The horse was lame from the cold and from being insufficiently cared for on a cold, damp spring night, and they rode her anyway.
It turned out they didn’t have to go very far, which probably saved her life. The camp’s sentries must have been alert, because a mile from the bridge, they were met by Jehannes leading six lances in full armour.
Jehannes’ eyes were still bloodshot, but his voice was steady.
‘What in the name of Satan were you doing?’ Jehannes demanded.
‘Scouting,’ the captain admitted. He managed to shrug, as if it was a matter of little moment. He was very proud of that shrug.
Jehannes looked at him with the look that fathers save for children they intend to punish later – and then he caught sight of the head being dragged in the mud. He rode back to look at it. Bent over it.
His wide and troubled eyes told the captain that he had been right.
Jehannes turned his horse with a brutal jerk of the reins.
‘I’ll alert the camp. Tom, give the captain your horse. M’lord, we need to inform the Abbess.’ Jehannes’ tone had changed. It wasn’t respectful, merely professional. This was now a professional matter.
The captain shook his head. ‘Give me Wilful’s horse. Tom, stay at my back.’
Wilful Murder dismounted with his usual ill grace and muttered something about how he was always the one who got screwed.
The captain ignored him, got a leg over the archer’s roncey with a minimum of effort, and set off at a fast trot, Wilful holding onto another man’s stirrup leather and running full out, and then they stretched to a racing gallop across the last furlongs, with Wilful seeming to run alongside in ten league boots.
The guard had already turned out at the camp gate – a dozen archers and three men-at-arms, all in their kit and ready to fight. For the first time since he’d set his spear under his arm the day before, the captain’s heart rose a fraction.
The head dragged in the dirt behind Gelfred’s horse left a wake of rumour and staring.
The captain pulled up before his pavilion and dropped from the saddle. He considered bathing, considered washing the clots of ordure from his hair. But he wasn’t positive he had the time.
He settled for a drink of water.
Jehannes, who had paused to speak to the Officer of the Watch, rode up, tall and deadly on his war horse.
Two archers – Long Sam and No Head, were ramming the head down on a stake.
The captain nodded at them. ‘Outside the main gate,’ he said. ‘Where every cottager can see it.’
Jehannes looked at it for too long.
‘Double the guard, put a quarter of the men-at-arms into harness round the clock as a quarter-guard, and draft a plan to clear the villages around the fortress,’ the captain said. He was having trouble with words – he couldn’t remember being so tired. ‘The woods are full –
‘Get two archers provisioned and mounted as fast as you can – a pair of good horses apiece, and on the road. Send them to the king, at Harndon.’
‘Good Chryste,’ said Jehannes.
‘We’ll talk when I’ve seen the Abbess,’ the captain called, and Toby brought up his second riding horse, Mercy. He mounted, collected Bad Tom with a glance, and rode up the steep slope to the fortress.
The gate was open.
That was about to change.
He threw himself from Mercy and tossed the reins to Tom, who dismounted with a great deal less haste. The captain ran up the steps to the hall and pounded on the door. The priest was watching from his chapel door, as he always watched.
An elderly sister opened it and bowed.
‘I need to see the lady Abbess as soon as may be,’ the captain said.
The nun flinched, hid her eyes and closed the door.
He was tempted to pound on it with his fists again, but chose not to.
‘You and Gelfred killed that thing?’ Bad Tom asked. He sounded jealous.
The captain shook his head. ‘Later,’ he said.
Bad Tom shrugged. ‘Must have been something to see,’ he said wistfully.
‘You’re – listen, not now, eh? Tom?’ The captain caught himself watching the windows in the dormitory.
‘I’d ha’ gone wi’ you, Captain,’ Tom said. ‘All I’m saying. Think of me next time.’
‘Christ on the cross, Tom,’ the captain swore. It was his first blasphemous oath in a long time, so naturally, he uttered it just as the frightened, elderly nun opened the heavy door.
Her look suggested she had heard a few oaths in her day. She inclined her head slightly to indicate that he should follow her so he climbed the steps and crossed the hall in her wake, to the doorway he’d never passed through but from whence wine had been served, and stools brought.
She led him down a corridor lined with doors and up a tightly winding stair with a central pillar of richly carved stone, to an elegant blue door. She knocked, opened the door and bowed.
The captain passed her, returning her bow. He wasn’t too tired for courtesy, it appeared. His mind seemed to be coming back to him and he found that he was sorry to have blasphemed in the hearing of the nun.
It was like the feeling returning to an arm he’d slept on – the gradual retreat of numbness, the pins and needles of returning awareness, except that it was emotion returning, not his senses.
The Abbess was sitting on a low chair with an embroidery frame. Her west window caught the mid-day rays of the spring sun. Her scene showed a hart surrounded by dogs, a spear already in his breast. Bright silk-floss blood flowed down his flank.
‘I saw you come in. You lost your horse,’ she said. ‘You stink of phantasm.’
‘You are in great peril,’ he replied. ‘I know how that sounds. But I mean it, just the same. This is not a matter of a few isolated creatures. I believe that some force of the Wild seeks to take this fortress and the river crossing. If they cannot take it by stealth and subterfuge, they will come by direct assault. And the attack could come at any hour. They have massed, in large numbers, in your woodlands.’
She considered him carefully. ‘I assume this isn’t a dramatic way of increasing your fee?’ she asked. Her smile was subtle, betraying fear and humour in the same look. ‘No?’ she asked, with a catch in her voice.
‘My huntsman and I followed the spore – the Hermetical spore – of the daemon that murdered Hawisia,’ he said.
She waved him to a stool, and he found a cup of wine sitting on the side table. He drank it – the moment the cup touched his lips, he found that he was tilting it back, feeling the acid fire rush down his gullet. He put the cup back down, a little too hard, and the horn made a click on the wood that caused the Abbess to turn.
‘It is bad?’ she asked.
‘We found a man’s corpse first. He was dressed as a soldier – as a
Her eyes wandered far from him, off into another time. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘My lover died fighting them,’ she said. ‘Ah, there’s a reason for penance. My lover. Lovers.’ She smiled. ‘My old secrets have no value here. I know the Jacks. The secret servants of the Enemy. The old king exterminated them.’ She raised her eyes to his. ‘You found one. Or at least you showed me a leaf.’
‘Dead. Looked as if he had been killed, quite recently, by one of his own.’ The captain found a flagon of wine and poured a second cup. ‘I’m going to wager that he died a few hours after Sister Hawisia. Killed by another of his kind, as if that makes sense.’ He shook his head. ‘Then we went west, still following the spore.’ He sat down again,
