faceted light. She had the look of a woman who had once been very beautiful indeed – even in middle age her beauty was right there, resting in more than her face. Her wimple and the high collar of her gown revealed little enough of her. But her bearing was more than noble, or haughty. Her bearing was commanding, confident in a way that only the great of the land were confident. The captain noted that her nuns obeyed her with an eagerness born of either fear or the pleasure of service.
The captain wondered which it was.
‘You took long enough to reach us,’ she said, by way of greeting. Then she snapped her fingers and beckoned at a pair of servants to bring a tray. ‘We are servants of God here – don’t you think you might have managed to strip your armour before you came to my hall?’ the Abbess asked. She glanced around, caught a novice’s eye, raised an eyebrow. ‘Fetch the captain a stool,’ she said. ‘Not a covered one. A solid one.’
‘I wear armour every day,’ the captain said. ‘It comes with my profession.’ The great hall was as big as the courtyard outside, with high windows of stained glass set near the roof, and massive wooden beams so old that age and soot had turned them black. The walls were whitewashed over fine plaster, and held niches containing images of saints and two rich books – clearly on display to overawe visitors. Their voices echoed in the room, which was colder than the wet courtyard outside. There was no fire in the central hearth.
The Abbess’s people brought her wine, and she sipped it as they placed a small table at the captain’s elbow. He was three feet beneath her. ‘Perhaps your armour is unnecessary in a nunnery?’ she asked.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I see a fortress,’ he said. ‘It happens that there are nuns in it.’
She nodded. ‘If I chose to order you taken by my men, would your armour save you?’ she asked.
The novice who brought his stool was pretty and she was careful of him, moving with the deliberation of a swordsman or a dancer. He turned his head to catch her eye and felt the tug of her power, saw that she was not merely pretty. She set the heavy stool down against the back of his knees. Quite deliberately, the captain touched her arm gently and caused her to turn to him. He turned to face her, putting his back to the Abbess.
‘Thank you,’ he said, looking her in the eye with a calculated smile. She was tall and young and graceful, with wide-set almond-shaped eyes and a long nose. Not pretty; she was arresting.
She blushed. The flush travelled like fire down her neck and into her heavy wool gown.
He turned back to the Abbess, his goal accomplished. Wondering why the Abbess had placed such a deserable novice within his reach, unless she meant to. ‘If I chose to storm your abbey, would your piety save you?’ he asked.
She blazed with anger. ‘How dare you turn your back on me?’ she asked. ‘And leave the room, Amicia. The captain has bitten you with his eyes.’
He was smiling. He thought her anger feigned.
She met his eyes and narrowed her own – and then folded her hands together, almost as if she intended to pray.
‘Honestly, Captain, I have prayed and prayed over what to do here. Bringing you to fight the Wild is like buying a wolf to shepherd sheep.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘I know what you are,’ she said.
‘Do you really?’ he asked. ‘All the better, lady Abbess. Shall we to business, then? Now the pleasantries are done?’
‘But what shall I call you?’ she asked. ‘You are a well-born man, for all your snide airs. My chamberlain-’
‘Didn’t have a nice name for me, did he, my lady Abbess?’ He nodded. ‘You may call me Captain. It is all the name I need.’ He nodded graciously. ‘I do not like the name your chamberlain used. Bourc. I call myself the Red Knight.’
‘Many men are called bourc,’ she said. ‘To be born out of wedlock is-’
‘To be cursed by God before you are born. Eh, lady Abbess?’ He tried to stop the anger that rose on his cheeks like a blush. ‘So very fair. So
She scowled at him for a moment, annoyed with him the way older people are often annoyed with the young, when the young posture too much.
He understood her in a glance.
‘Too dark? Should I add a touch of heroism?’ he asked with a certain air.
She eyed him. ‘If you wrap yourself in darkness,’ she said, ‘you risk merely appearing dull. But you have the wit to know it. There’s hope for you, boy, if you know that. Now to business. I’m not rich-’
‘I have never met anyone who would admit being rich,’ he agreed. ‘Or to getting enough sleep.’
‘More wine for the captain,’ snapped the Abbess to the sister who had guarded the door. ‘But I can pay you. We are afflicted by something from the Wild. It has destroyed two of my farms this year, and one last year. At first – at first, we all hoped that they were isolated incidents.’ She met his eye squarely. ‘It is not possible to believe that any more.’
‘Three farms this year,’ said the captain. He fished in his purse, hesitated over the chain with the leaf amulet, then fetched forth a cross inlaid with pearls instead.
‘Oh, by the wounds of Christ!’ swore the Abbess. ‘Oh, Blessed Virgin protect and cherish her. Sister Hawisia! Is she-’
‘She is dead,’ the captain said. ‘And six more corpses in the garden. Your good sister died trying to protect them.’
‘Her faith was very strong,’ the Abbess said. She was dry eyed, but her voice trembled. ‘You needn’t mock her.’
The captain frowned. ‘I never mock courage, lady Abbess. To face such a thing without weapons-’
‘Her faith was a weapon against evil, Captain.’ The Abbess leaned forward.
‘Strong enough to stop a creature from the Wild? No, it was not,’ said the captain quietly. ‘I won’t comment on evil.’
The Abbess stood sharply. ‘You are some sort of atheist, are you, Captain?’
The captain frowned again. ‘There is nothing productive for us in theological debate, my lady Abbess. Your lands have attracted a malignant entity – an enemy of Man. They seldom hunt alone, especially not this far from the Wild. You wish me to rid you of them. I can. And I will. In exchange, you will pay me. That is all that matters between us.’
The Abbess sat again, her movements violent, angry. The captain sensed that she was off balance – that the death of the nun had struck her personally. She was, after all, the commander of a company of nuns.
‘I am not convinced that engaging you is the right decision,’ she said.
The captain nodded. ‘It may not be, lady Abbess. But you sent for me, and I am here.’ Without intending to, he had lowered his voice, and spoke softly.
‘Is that a threat?’ she asked.
Instead of answering, the captain reached into his purse again and withdrew the broken chain holding a small leaf made of green enamel on bronze.
The Abbess recoiled as if from a snake.
‘My men found this,’ he said.
The Abbess turned her head away.
‘You have a traitor,’ he said. And rose. ‘Sister Hawisia had an arrow in her back. While she faced something terrible, something very, very terrible.’ He nodded. ‘I will go to walk the walls. You need time to think if you want us. Or not.’
‘You will poison us,’ she said. ‘You and your kind do not bring peace.’
He nodded. ‘We bring you no peace, but a company of swords, my lady.’ He grinned at his own misquote of scripture. ‘We don’t make the violence. We merely deal with it as it comes to us.’
‘The devil can quote scripture,’ she said.
‘No doubt he had his hand in writing it,’ the captain shot back.
She bit back a counter – he watched her face change as she decided not to rise to his provocation. And he felt a vague twinge of remorse for goading her, an ache like the pain in his wrist from making too many practice cuts the day before. And, like the pain in his wrist, he was unaccustomed to remorse.
‘I could say it is a little late to think of peace now.’ He sneered briefly and then put his sneer away. ‘My men are here, and they haven’t had a good meal or a paid job in some weeks. I offer this, not as a threat, but as a useful piece of data as you reason through the puzzle. I also think that the creature you have to deal with is far worse than you have imagined. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say it’s far worse than I had imagined. It is big, powerful, and
