The Red Knight

‘Your only stealth will be speed.’ One of Hywel’s many aphorisms.

‘That’s what you said,’ Tom agreed. ‘So we didn’t sweat it too much, but went for them. If they had sentries, we never saw ’em, and then we were in among their fires. I slit a lot of sleeping cattle,’ he said, with a horrible smile. ‘Stupid fucks, asleep with a killer among them.’

Remorse was not in Tom’s lexicon. The captain winced. The big man looked at Long Paw. ‘I got busy. You tell it.’

Long Paw raised an eyebrow. ‘All the archers had an alchemical on our backs. I threw mine in a fire – to start the ball, so to speak.’ He nodded. ‘They were spectacular. If that’s the word.’ Long Paw was obviously proud of it.

Tom nodded. ‘Made us plenty of light,’ he said, and the words, combined with his look, were horrible enough that Long Paw looked away from him.

‘We didn’t see no tents. But there was men sleeping on the ground, critters too. And beasts – horses, cattle, sheep. And wagons, dozens of them. They’ve been hitting the fair convoys, or I’m a Galle.’

The captain nodded.

‘We burned it all, killed the animals, and then any critter we come across too.’

‘What critters? Boglins? Irks? Tell me.’ the captain asked, and the words just hung there, between them.

Tom made a face. ‘Little ones. Boglins and irks mostly. You know. Nightmares and daemons pursued us. Fucking daemons are fast. I fought a golden bear, sword to its axe and claws.’ He blew his nose into his hand and flicked the contents out the window. ‘But I didn’t get to fight a daemon,’ he said regretfully.

The captain wondered if, in the entire world, there was another man who could regret not having met a creature that projected terror.

Bad Tom was not like other men.

‘How many? Total? What are we still up against?’ the captain asked.

Long Paw shrugged. ‘Dark and fire, Cap’n. My word ain’t worth shit – but I say we killed maybe fifty men and more creatures.’ He shrugged. ‘And all we really did was kick the ant hill.’

Tom gave Long Paw a look of appreciation. ‘What he said,’ Tom admitted. ‘We kicked the ant hill. But we kicked it hard.’

Michael sputtered. ‘You two killed fifty Jacks?’ he asked.

Tom looked at him as if he’d discovered a bad smell. ‘We had help, younker. And it weren’t all Jacks. I killed I don’t know how many – five? Ten? – before I realised they was all yoked together. Poor fucks.’

Michael made a choking sound. ‘Captives?’ he managed.

Tom shrugged. ‘Got to think so.’

Michael’s outrage showed, and the captain raised a hand. Pointed at the door. ‘More wine,’ he said. ‘And take your time.’

Long Paw shook his head as the young man slammed out. ‘Not for me, Captain. It’ll send me to sleep.’

‘I’m done, anyway,’ the captain said. ‘Better result than I thought. Thanks.’

Long Paw clasped his hand again. ‘One for the books, Cap’n.’

The clerk looked at his pencil scrawl. ‘I’ll just copy this out for fair,’ he said, exchanging a parting look with Long Paw and heading for the door himself.

His departure left the captain alone with Bad Tom, who stretched his naked legs out beneath his blanket and took a long drink of his wine.

‘That Michael’s too soft for this life,’ Tom said. ‘He tries, and he ain’t worthless, but you should let him go.’

‘He doesn’t have anywhere to go,’ the captain said.

Tom nodded. ‘I’d wondered.’ He took another sip and grinned. ‘That girl – the nun?’

The captain looked blank.

Tom wasn’t fooled for a moment. ‘Don’t give me that. Asking you why you curse God. Listen, you want my advice-’

‘I don’t,’ the captain said.

‘Get a knee between her legs and keep it there ’til you’re inside her. You want her – she wants you. I’m not saying rape her.’ Tom said this with a professional authority that was more horrible than his admission of killing the captives. ‘I’m just saying that if you get it done, you can have a warm bed as long as you’re here.’ He shrugged. ‘A warm bed and a soft shoulder. Good things for a man in command. None of the lads will blame you.’ His unspoken thought came through, too. Some of the lads might see you in a better light for it.

Tom nodded at the captain, and the captain felt a black rage boil up inside him. He worked on it – trying to shape it, trying to plug it. But it was like the brew they’d sent against the enemy – oily black, and when it hit fire-

Bad Tom took a deep breath and stepped back. ‘Beg your pardon, Captain,’ he said. He said it with as much assurance as he’d suggested everything else. ‘Overstepped, I expect.’

The captain swallowed bile. ‘Are my eyes glowing?’ he asked.

‘Little bit,’ Tom said. ‘You know what’s wrong with you, Captain?’

The captain leaned on the table, the burst of rage dying away and leaving fatigue and a headache of Archaic proportions. ‘Many things.’

‘You’re a freak, just like me. You ain’t like them. Me – I take what I want and let the rest go. You want them to love you.’ Tom shook his head. ‘They don’t love the likes of us, Captain. Even when I kill their enemies, they don’t love me. Eh? You know what a sin-eater is?’

That came out of nowhere. ‘I’ve heard the name.’

‘We have ’em up in the hills,. Usually some poor wee bastard with one eye or no hands or some other freak. When a man dies, or sometimes a woman, we put a piece of bread soaked in wine – they used to soak it in blood – on the corpse. Goes on the stomach and the heart. And the poor wee man comes and eats the bread, and takes all the dead’s sin on them. So the dead un goes off to heaven, and the poor wee man goes to hell.’ Tom was far away, in memory. The captain had never seen him that way before. It was odd, and a little scary, to be intimate with Bad Tom.

‘We’re sin-eaters, every one of us,’ Tom said. ‘You and me, sure – but Long Paw an’ Wilful Murder and Ser Hugo and Ser Milus and all the rest. Sauce too. Even that boy. We eat their sin. We kill their enemies, and then they send us away.’

The captain had a flash of the daemon eviscerating his horse. We eat their sin. Somehow, the words hit him like a thunderclap, and he sat back. When he was done with the thought – which cascaded away like a waterfall, taking his thoughts in every direction – he realised the shadows had changed. His wine was long gone, Bad Tom was gone, his legs were stiff, and his hand hurt.

Michael was standing in the doorway with a cup of wine in his hand.

The captain dredged a smile out of his reverie, shrugged and took the wine.

He drank.

‘Jacques went down to Bridge Castle with grain and came back with a message for you from Messire Gelfred,’ Michael said. ‘He says it’s urgent he speak to you.’

‘Then I’ll have to put my harness on,’ the captain said. He sounded whiney, even to himself. ‘Let’s get it done.’

The Albinkirk Road – Ser Gawin

He had lost track of time.

He wasn’t sure what he was any more.

Gawin rode through another spring day, surrounded by carpets of wildflowers that flowed like morning fog beneath his horse, rolling away in clumps and hummocks, a thousand perfect flowers in every glance, blue and purple, white and yellow. In the distance, all was a carpet of yellow green from the haze of sun on the mountainsides that were coming closer every day, their peaks woven like a tapestry in and out of the stands of trees that grew thicker and closer every mile.

He’d never had the least interest in flowers before.