The Fell Sword (72 page)

Well off to the east, perhaps ten miles away in the rugged hills he’d crossed on the way from the disaster at Lissen Carrak, there was a rumble like a mighty avalanche, and the flash of green-tinted lightning was followed by pulses of lavender lightning, and then the thunder carried – crack, crack and then a rumbling like the sound of a mighty army on the march.

Tyler threw more wood on the fire. He shivered, pulled his blankets closer, and sat with his sword across his knees. He was reasonably sure it wouldn’t stand him in any stead against either foe, but he felt more comfortable having it ready.

Distant thunder mocked him. He had time to ponder Thorn’s words. To imagine Bess, ensorcelled, locked in Redmede’s embrace.

I’ll show them, though.

He threw more wood on his fire, and then Thorn was back – the long spruce splinter still transfixing him. The warlock gestured. ‘I will show you a secret,’ he said.

‘I want none of your secrets,’ Tyler said. ‘Did you defeat the irk?’

‘Of course,’ Thorn said. ‘What a foolish question. Listen, man. You will die here. Or at your next camp, or your next. Winter is a more formidable foe than either Tapio or Thorn and you have neither the training nor the fortitude to defeat it. I, too, seek the death of Alba’s King. Let me help you live to try it.’

Tyler felt the cold all around him. Sometimes, even when you know you are being manipulated, you have very few options.
Flow with the river.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a long spoon.’ He managed a brave grin. ‘Like I always say, needs must when the devil drives.’

Thorn’s human form seemed to frown. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Come.’

He held out his hand.

‘I’ll need my kit,’ Tyler said.

Thorn’s face remained unchanged. ‘Very well.’

Tyler gathered his blankets and what remained of his food, including frozen portions of venison. His cold fingers were not quick, and the darkness hindered him at every turn. ‘I could use some light,’ he muttered.

‘Make a torch, then. I do not make light.’

Eventually he was done, and he pulled his toboggan to where the sorcerer stood with a four-foot length of wood through his body. Some of his entrails had been blown out of his back and a length of spine showed.

Tyler shuddered.

‘Take my hand,’ Thorn said.

‘Where are we going?’ Tyler asked.

‘An excellent question. We are going through the
aether
to an entrance to the Serpent’s Walk.’

Mont Reale – Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus, the Black Knight

The Gallish fleet turned into the Great Huran River out of the lake in good order. They camped for three days, built great fires, got warm and ate sparingly. The Black Knight took every precaution to prepare his men, and he ignored de Marche’s whining, assembled his men, and gave his orders.

The fleet sailed after mass on a Sunday, and he kept them moving through the night, with oil lamps in the sterns of his four war galleys and exhortations and occasional trumpet calls, and as the sun rose on Monday, he looked over the stern of his own
Saint Michael
and counted the boats, and reached a satisfactory number.

‘Now, we will see something, I think,’ the Black Knight said.

Oliver de Marche elected to try one more time. The loss of his servant left him without a confident translator – Lucius had been killed by the Imperial troops who’d materialised out of the snow and wrecked the Black Knight’s already precarious campaign against the Southern Huran. With Lucius at his side, he could have attempted to contact the Northern Huran leaders directly.

But de Marche had little choice, so he put on a bold face and climbed the steps to the quarter deck. ‘Ser knight?’ he asked. ‘Ser Hartmut?’

The Black Knight gave him a hard smile. ‘Ah – merchant. Come to dissuade me? Eh?’

De Marche nodded. ‘Ser knight, it cannot help the King or your own reputation to do this.’

Ser Hartmut laughed aloud, and the sound was fell. ‘Merchant, I am called the Black Knight for a reason, and what I am about to fashion will suit my reputation exactly. Indeed, what I do, I do in part so these beasts of the woods will know me – and fear me.’

‘They will fear you, and being brave, then they will make war on you,’ de Marche said.

‘Brave? De Marche, I would have had the Southern Huran in the palm of my hand if those cowards had done my bidding. Even without them—’

De Marche bit the end of his moustache and planted his feet. ‘Either way, you never had a chance against a professional army and a string of well-supplied forts. Seizing Osawa was beyond you, so taking Ticondaga is a goal as far over our heads as that bird. We would not have taken Osawa, even if the Outwallers had thrown themselves at its walls like automatons. You seek to make them bear the weight of your – of
our
– own failings.’

De Marche braced himself for death.

The Black Knight’s rage passed over his face like a shower on a sunny day – passed over, and was gone. Ser Hartmut fingered his beard, ‘You are a good blade, de Marche. I have learned to respect you – you are not one of us, but you are no coward. But in this, you are a complete fool. These Outwallers are not worth a fart, as my men – and yours – will demonstrate in an hour. And in the spring I will take some of them and train them as soldiers – real soldiers – as I did in Ifriqu’ya. They will learn, and they will obey.’

De Marche fought an urge to shout, or tremble. ‘You cannot storm Mont Reale. It is the largest Outwaller settlement in the north. Even the armies of Alba have never attempted it, not at the height of the old King’s power. Nor the Moreans.’

‘More fool they. Watch and learn, merchant. Your way might work, but it is too slow.’ The Black Knight brushed a pair of moths away from his helmet. ‘When the ice clears in spring, we will have another fleet coming down the river bringing me more soldiers. Men who will follow me willingly, for loot, for plunder – perhaps even for God.’ He smiled, and his smile was the final nail.

‘You will get us all killed!’ de Marche shouted. The moths flitted away. ‘You will incur the wrath of God and every decent man!’

Ser Hartmut laughed. ‘Listen to me, merchant. I am a man of honour, and I live by the rule of war. I will do this openly, not in the dark, and my message will be loud. I do exactly what the Moreans have done, what the Albans have done – indeed, what every
man
has done since men first came to Nova Terra. Outwallers are not men. They are outside the walls of the church and of civilisation. Their deaths will not even leave a stain on our blades.’

‘You are insane!’ spat de Marche.

A pair of marines grabbed him from behind.

‘This has been said to me before,’ said the Black Knight. ‘Yet kings continue to employ me. So which of us is really insane, do you think?’

Mist was still rising from the Great River when the fleet drew even with the island at Mont Reale, and Ser Hartmut took the flag of Galle from one of his squires and was the first man over the bow, splashing through the shallow water and up the beach. A handful of early risers from the massive Outwaller town came down to help the Galles land, and Ser Hartmut brushed past them as his marines formed up behind him and de Marche’s sailors, as eager as the soldiers, knelt in the gravel, were blessed by a priest, and then picked up their weapons.

An Outwaller boy threaded in among the sailors. He saw something he liked, and a quick hand darted out – he took a dagger, and ran, laughing.

One of the marines raised a crossbow and casually shot him in the back. The bow was one of the new steel varieties and the bolt ripped through the boy and tossed his small body several yards. The shamefaced sailor retrieved his knife.

Up on the bluff above the beach, the boy’s sister began to scream.

At a nod from Ser Hartmut, another marine silenced her with an arrow.

‘I claim this island, the river, and the land along its shores for the King of Galle,’ said Ser Hartmut. He began to walk up the broad path towards the town.

His squires and men-at-arms walked behind him in a loose wedge, and the marines spread out on either side.

The crossbows coughed, and the Outwallers who had made the mistake of waking too early died first.

Mont Reale had sentries. They were, however, normal men who had trouble believing that their allies would betray them. It was not until the first flames were licking at the longhouses kept for visitors that they screamed the alarm.

Mont Reale had almost a thousand warriors.

They came from their houses and cabins half armed, and were shot down in the slushy mud of the streets. Or they attempted, unarmoured, to face Ser Hartmut and his knights as they cleared small knots of resistance. Ser Hartmut had divided the town into four quarters, and his troops cleared a quarter at a time, emptying a street, torching a few houses. As the red ball of the sun peeked above the distant mountains, Ser Hartmut clambered over the palisade of the citadel, helped by the snow already piled against the walls. The last organised resistance was crushed.

Officers moved through the town, ordering sailors to put out the fires, assigning houses to soldiers and ejecting their occupants into the snow. The survivors stood, stone-faced, watching their snug cabins turned into housing for their former allies. Then they were gathered into groups and chained together.

An old man had his squirrel robe ripped from his body. He turned with the dignity of an emperor and spat at Ser Hartmut’s feet.

Ser Hartmut met his eye. ‘You would not serve alongside me as allies?’ he said. ‘So be it. In God’s name, you will serve me as slaves.’

Kilkis, in Western Thrake – The Red Knight and Bad Tom

The ride south was almost a triumphal procession, despite the increasingly bitter weather. Mag and the Red Knight combined to lay bridges of ice over the Meander, and when the Captain laced his with turrets, Mag added rearing horses of wind-blown frost to hers. Tom affected to shudder with revulsion, but many of the soldiers were delighted. They were more delighted when the two casters placed a great shining hemisphere over them during a vicious snow squall.

They reached Kilkis, the westernmost settlement on the road to the Green Hills and the last village in Morea before the Inn of Dorling, at vespers. The town was fully prepared to receive them, and the Megas Ducas paraded his full force under the walls of the snow-capped fortress.

‘No rape, no plunder, no thieving. The man who steals or rapes will be executed, and the men who watch and do nothing will go to hell with him.’ He looked out over his little army, and they were silent
.
‘Christmas is coming, and these people fear us like Satan come to earth. Prove them wrong, and I promise you will see a reward come pay day. And perhaps even in the next life.’ He grinned. Off to his left, Gelfred winced. ‘There is more to winning a war than defeating your enemies in the field. Go and behave. Or suffer the consequence. Dismissed.’

Bad Tom rolled his eyes when they were done and riding up the winding stone street to the citadel. ‘Good Christ, Captain. They ain’t choirboys nor little bairns. This town hates us.’

The Megas Ducas didn’t even turn his head. ‘They can obey me, or be killed.’

‘You’re becoming a right bastard,’ Tom said. ‘Why don’t you get off your high horse and shag Sauce. Or find some pert thing that takes your eye and get it done so the rest of us can relax.’

The Duke dismounted with his household officers by him, and together they went into the Great Hall, which was so warm that the air seemed thick, and men who had worn four layers of wool over their armour for twelve hours now couldn’t get it all off soon enough. Squires and pages stabled their horses or handed them to servants and then ran to their masters’ sides to disarm them, and the Great Hall echoed like a battlefield as the armour came off – first helms and bassinets, and then gauntlets, then arm harnesses, carefully unlaced and unbuckled, and then the breastplates, or the cotes of plates, or the heavy brigantines, tossed to the carpeted floors. A legion of very young servants served wine while men stood enjoying the heat in sweat-stained arming cotes and plate leg harnesses, and gradually they, too, were unlaced and unbuckled, the squires and pages – still in their own armour – kneeling or crouching to get at buckles behind thighs and knees.

The men-at-arms grew louder.

Father Arnaud spoke briefly to one of the young attendants and then muscled his way to the Duke.

‘They’ve sent us their children,’ he said. ‘It is a sign of trust. Would you say a few words?’

The Duke sighed. ‘More than I’ve already said?’ he asked. But he motioned for Toby to finish, stepped out of his right leg harness, and grinned at Father Arnaud. ‘I feel as if I could fly, anyway,’ he said, and leaped on a table.

His acrobatics got near-instant silence.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘If you look at the pages serving wine, you’ll find that the people of this town have sent their children to wait on us. Please pay them every courtesy. Don’t treat them the way you’d treat your own children.’

They laughed obediently, and Father Arnaud introduced him to the Castellan, an elderly Morean captain named Nikolas Phokus.

‘I gather that we share a mutual friend,’ the Duke said, offering his hand.

The Castellan bowed and then clasped his hand. ‘We do, my lord. He instructed me to open my gates to you, and so far I have no cause for complaint. But my lord, I must tell you that my garrison is unpaid in twenty-eight months, and there is some ill-feeling about it.’

The Duke nodded. ‘Gerald!’ he shouted over the raucous atmosphere, and Random limped his way to the front of the hall near the mammoth fireplace. ‘My lord?’

‘Am I good for another twelve thousand florins?’ the Duke asked his financier.

Gerald Random rolled his eyes and nodded to the Castellan.

‘Ah – Lord Phokus, this is Ser Gerald Random, the prince of merchant adventurers. Gerald, without Lord Phokus, there would be no furs. Can we afford to pay his garrison?’ The Duke nodded amicably.

Random indicated a chair. ‘May I sit?’ he asked. ‘Yes, you can. It won’t help your spring campaign or your fleet, but you can. Remember, my lord, that when the fur money is spent, you don’t have another increase in capital until – well, you know.’