The Fell Sword (75 page)

Gelfred swirled his hot wine and poured a cup for Amy’s Hob, who took it with a surprisingly civil inclination of his head, as if they were all lords. ‘Besides,’ he said in his cultured voice. ‘We have sentries well out, on the road and on the hill.’

‘Sweet Jesu, Master Gelfred, that hillside is cold as a witch’s tit,’ added Will Starling, their newest scout, a former Royal Forester.

Gelfred glanced at the man. They were of an age, and the former Forester liked to swear hard and talk bawdy, which did not sit well with Master Gelfred.

‘Cold as a virgin’s—’ he added with relish.

Gelfred handed him a cup of hot wine. ‘Master Starling, life is hard enough without reminding these men of the women they do not have among them. And it is my pleasure, while you serve with me, not to hear my Saviour’s name taken in vain, or even the parts of a woman’s body. Here. Have some wine.’

Starling was interested in being provoked, but it is difficult to maintain a resentment against a man with mild manners and a cup of hot, sweet wine for you on a winter’s day, and he subsided muttering something about priesthood.

Young Daniel took his horn cup and nodded. ‘But he has a point, Ser Gelfred. We ought to build a blind. A lie. Like we was hunting deer, or duck. The wind on that hillside goes through my cloak and my cote and my gown and my boots all together.’

‘Cuts me to the prick,’ Starling said, but his heart wasn’t in it.

The oil lamp that burned by the entrance flared, and there was a slight buzz, like that of a hornet in high summer.

‘Company!’ Gelfred said, and every man had a blade in his hand. They piled into their winter gear – most had their boots to hand. Favour threw his white wool gown over his head, picked up a boar spear, and emerged into the freezing sunset air. He got his feet into the loops of his snow rackets and trotted towards the road.

The sentries each had a device rigged by Gelfred, who had command of the
ars magicka.
The buzzing meant the road, and a high, clear tone meant the hillside. Favour trotted well to the north of the sentry’s position – it was Short Tooth who had the road, and he wasn’t given to false alarms. Favour moved quickly, but he stayed clear of what little undergrowth stood proud of the snow and he didn’t give his position away. When he crested the low bluff which dominated the road, he fell flat in the soft snow and wriggled forward.

‘I
have
a pass, you nitwit!’ shouted the man on the wagon. ‘It’s
fucking
cold and I want to get over the pass before it snows again.’

Short Tooth moved slowly clear of the huge wagon, which towered twice the height of a man, and whose wheels sank all the way to the roadbed through three feet of snow without putting the wagon body near the surface. They were exceptionally tall wheels.

‘What you carrying?’ Short Tooth asked.

Favour saw Wha’Hae drop into the snow a few yards to his left, closer to the wagon. He worked the action on a crossbow – a latchet – while rolling on his back. Across the road, Will Starling glided up behind a dead tree and froze.

‘Grain for farmer’s market,’ the driver said. ‘Hey, you for the old Duke or the new Duke?’

‘Why don’t you shut your trap and we’ll just see your grain,’ Short Tooth said. He had worked his way to the rear of the tall wagon and he carefully cocked his own crossbow. It was a very expensive weapon – another steel latchet.

The man on the wagon box saw it.

Favour jumped down into the road and ran lightly along the surface in his rackets.

Short Tooth spared him a glance and waited for him.

‘There’s another one!’ shouted the man on the wagon box, and everything went to shit.

The back of the wagon seemed to lift off, and Short Tooth shot a man on instinct. His bolt vanished into the man’s coat-of-plates and blood splashed the snow.

Behind him, another man spanned a crossbow, but the bow itself was yew and he hadn’t warmed it so it cracked. Favour’s spearshaft caught him alongside the head.

The driver fell face first into the snow with Starling’s arrow in the back of his neck. Blood poured out of him, and he thrashed, leaving an obscene snow angel in red agony.

But there were more men in the wagon body, and Favour caught a shaft – right through his abdomen. The pain doubled him up and he fell, the snow cold against his face, and there was a cold wetness ruining his cote.

Gelfred worked – the air grew warm, there was a flash above his head, and then the men on the bluff began to pour shafts down into the wagon bed. Favour knew he was hurt badly, but he was still fully aware – he could hear Short Tooth, the man’s latchet clicking away as he pulled the cocking handle back against the weight of the steel bow and then slapped it forward.

The man was
under
the wagon, loosing his quarrels up into the wagon bed. And the canvas roof of the wagon provided no cover to the men inside. Blood began to drip out from between the boards.

‘Surrender,’ Gelfred called. ‘Or we will surely slay you all.’

Favour heard the men in the wagon, and heard the sound of someone throwing something heavy in the snow.

Gelfred was at his side in a dozen heartbeats. ‘Stay with me, boy. It’s Christmas. No one dies on Christmas. Everyone lives.’

Favour coughed, and blood came out.

Suddenly, everything seemed further away.

‘Right – clear them out of the wagon. Disarm all of them. Get young Daniel in the wagon. Starling, come with us. Keep him warm. Hob – you take the post.’

Then Gelfred leaned over him and passed his hands across Favour’s eyes, and that was all—

Gelfred turned to the wounded prisoner. ‘I’m in a hurry. I won’t make threats.’

The man was an Easterner, and he shrugged.

‘He won’t talk, even if we cut his fingers off,’ Starling said. ‘This one will.’

The young Thrakian whom Favour had bashed with his spear shaft held his head and retched.

The other rangers took the rest of the Thrakians away, leaving Gelfred and Starling, Wha’Hae and the Thrakian boy.

‘Just tell me,’ Gelfred said.

The boy looked at him. His pupils were enormous.

‘He can suck the soul out of your body,’ Starling said. It might have been a terrifying threat, except that the boy spoke only Morean Archaic and no Alban at all.

Gelfred leaned over. ‘You’re only six miles from the city in the worst weather in ten years. And you’re coming out of the hills with a guard of Easterners.’

The boy put his head in his hands.

‘Do you serve Duke Andronicus?’ Gelfred asked gently.

‘Yes,’ the boy answered, and was undone.

In a moment, he poured his fears out, while Starling watched in contempt.

Finally, Gelfred motioned for Wha’Hae to take the young man to the other prisoners.

‘The Duke will want to meet all of them,’ he said. ‘Leave Amy’s Hob and Wha’Hae and Short Tooth here. Watch the road and forget the hillside. The rest of you get to sleep warm tonight. Horses!’

There was a cheer, and in a handful of minutes, they were off.

‘Bring us back something nice,’ Amy’s Hob said. ‘It being Christmas.’

‘We’ll settle for the boy’s life,’ Wha’Hae said. ‘And some ale.’

Chapter Fifteen

Harndon – Christmas Court

T
he Queen loved Christmas above all things, and she decorated the Great Hall of the palace the way her mother had decorated her childhood hall – with wreaths of ivy and balls of mistletoe. She visited jewellers and tailors and made herself as busy as she might to keep away her darker thoughts.

‘You’ll hurt your bairn,’ Diota said. ‘You’ve no business keeping yon secret from the King.’

The Queen shrugged. ‘I am my own mistress, I think,’ she said with some of her old spirit, but in truth, the daily sickness and the bloated feeling sapped her interest in sparring with her nurse. And her temper was sharp – sharper than usual. Weary anger was the mood of her Advent, and she resented this wicked intrusion on her life.

‘Baby is his business, too,’ Diota said. ‘And with the wicked lies I hear told every day in these halls, I would think you’d want to tell him he’s going to be a papa.’

‘There are things I want to know first,’ Desiderata said.

‘Beware lest the King want to know some things as well,’ Diota rumbled.

‘Nurse, are you – what—’ Desiderata spluttered.

Diota gave her a quick hug. ‘I ain’t impugning your bairn’s paternity, if that’s what you mean. I’m saying: just tell him.’

So a few days before Christmas Eve, after they shared a loving cup and he kissed her under the ball of mistletoe, she led him away to their bed, snug amidst a veritable castle of tapestries and warming pans.

The King moved quickly along his usual course of events and she laughed into his beard and slowed his rush to conclusion and finally forced his hand onto her belly.

‘Listen, love. There’s something stirring in there,’ she said.

‘Dinner?’ he asked with a low laugh.

‘A baby,’ she said.

His hand stiffened. ‘Are you – sure?’

She laughed. ‘I know what a milkmaid knows – and a little more. He’s a boy. He’ll be born in June.’

The King breathed silently by her in the darkness.

‘Say something, love,’ Desiderata said.

‘I cannot make a child,’ he said grimly. He rolled away from her.

She caught at his hip. ‘Yes, you can. And did.’

‘Madam, I am not a fool,’ he spat.

‘My lord, that court is still out. For I have never lain with any man but you.’

‘No?’ he asked.

‘Do you question me?’ she asked, and felt the root of her being and the foundation of her love melt like wax in a fire.

He sat up. ‘We should not have this conversation. Not now,’ he said carefully.

She sat up beside him. She found a taper, leaning across him so that, quite deliberately, her breasts trailed across his chest. She conjured the taper to light and set it in a small stick so that she could see his eyes.

He looked like a wounded animal.

Tears welled up, but she fought them, because something told her that she would only have
this one chance
to convince him they had a child before he would armour himself away – the bluff King, untouchable.

‘Love, look at my tummy. This is me. I would never lie with another – nor would I quicken unless I chose to.’ She leaned close. ‘Think of who I am.
What
I am.’

‘I
cannot
make a child. I am –
cursed.
’ He sobbed the last word.

She put a hand on his chest and he didn’t resist. ‘Sweet, I have power. I am as God made me. And I think – I think that I have overcome your curse.’ She smiled. ‘With God’s help, and the novice’s.’

‘Not my curse!’ he groaned.

‘Whose, then?’ she asked.

He shook his head and would not meet her eyes.

‘Husband, when the
belle soeur
worked her will on us – and made us whole—’ She paused, remembering the moment, and trying to grasp a little of the glory she had felt. The sense of release. She kissed him. ‘She cracked your curse, or shattered it. I can feel this.’

The King put his head on her chest. ‘If only you might be right,’ he said.

He fell asleep, and she lay awake, running her hand over his chest and trying to find the jagged ends of the curse, but the breaking had happened too long before, and she felt only the edge of the wound that the curse left in the world.

Later he awoke, and they made love.

And when she awoke with him, it was a day nearer Christmas, and she thought that perhaps everything would be healed.

A hundred rooms away, the Sieur de Rohan laid Lady Emota on a bed, and she sighed.

‘It is sin,’ she said. She pushed him away. ‘Can’t you just kiss me?’

‘What sin, when two lovers make one soul?’ he asked. He ran a tongue lightly across the top of her exposed breast, and she clenched her hands on his shoulders, which were hard with muscle – and he slid into the bed next to her, warm and solid and smelling only of cinnamon and cloves.

She kissed him, and breathed in the scent of him. And let his hands roam.

It was beautiful – and then it wasn’t.

He put a knee between hers and she didn’t like that. She pushed him away – hard.

‘Make way, slut,’ he said. ‘You want it.’

He pushed her down. She bit him, and he struck her.

She tried to fight him.

She cried.

He laughed. ‘What did you think you were here for?’ he asked her.

She turned to weep into the pillow, which smelled of him, and he slapped her. She pulled the bed clothes around herself, and he pulled them off again. ‘I’m not done with you yet,
ma petite
.’

‘You!’ she managed. ‘You – false—’

‘It is no crime to fuck a whore,’ he said.

She choked.

‘Like mistress, like maid,’ de Rohan said. ‘Don’t worry, my little
putain
. When the court finds out what your mistress has done, no one will even notice your fall from grace. Besides – you have a body made to satisfy a man.’ He cooed over her, using warm love terms again.

For a little while.

N’gara – Mogon and Bill Redmede

The woods were full of snow, and there was something else there – something that moved at the very edge of Redmede’s senses, something too fast to see, too small, or too quiet.

Mogon ran east, her heavy feet carving great triangular holes in the snow. The elk ran lightly, and sometimes he skimmed the surface of the snow. They would stop from time to time, and Redmede would hold the amulet in his hand and watch the fire in its depths. They followed the spark – east and north.

After full dark, they crossed tracks that showed clearly in moonlight – tracks of a man with a hand sleigh. Redmede rubbed his beard. ‘That’s Nat Tyler,’ he said. ‘I know his tracks.’

Mogon waggled her mighty head. ‘It is too cold for me to think well, man. Does this other man mean something?’

‘No idea,’ Redmede admitted, but when he tested the amulet, he found that Tyler’s tracks diverged at a sharp angle from the true line to Tapio.

They ran on.

By the height of the moon, Redmede estimated it was midnight by the time they found Tapio. His body hung high in a tree, because he was impaled on one of its shattered branches. His blood flowed down the old oak.

‘Sweet Christ,’ Redmede said.

‘
Very like,
’ Tapio whispered. ‘
Onssse again, Man, I will owe you my life.
’

Mogon shook her head. ‘What will we do?’ she asked. ‘I can manipulate the powers. But how to reach him down from the tree?’

‘Can you lift him?’ Redmede asked. ‘With sorcery?’

Mogon nodded. ‘If I can make my sluggish brain work, yes.’

In the end, Redmede climbed the tree and cut the branch that impaled the Faery Knight while the red blood flowed over the old wood and didn’t freeze. He put the irk – tall as a man but light as air – across the rump of the great elk, who grunted.

‘
Can’t carry the both of ye. Sorry.
’

Redmede got his rackets off his saddle and put them on his feet. He already missed the warmth of the beast.

Tapio raised his head. ‘
You both have my thanksss.
’

Mogon bowed her head. ‘It was Thorn?’

Tapio Haltija laughed, and something bubbled in his chest. ‘
We must go quickly if you two care to sssave my worthlesss carcasss. It wasss not Thorn. It wasss the ssshadow of Asssh.
’

Mogon growled and made a fearful growling deep in her throat that raised the hackles of Redmede’s neck. ‘So – my brother was correct.’

‘Ash?’ he asked.

Mogon shook her head. ‘We have twenty miles to walk before we find warmth and safety, and this night is full of terror, even for one such as I. Let us go.’

Redmede could never recall more than the impression of enormous fatigue and the cessation of warmth. They walked, and they ran – when he lost feeling in his feet, he ran for a while until they hurt, and then he walked again. The woods around them snapped and cracked in the dense cold which came down like a hermetical working, vast and suffocating, and sat over the whole of the forest.

When the first light showed in the east, Redmede was so tired he wanted to lie down on the snow and sleep, but he knew where that would lead.

It was the great Warden, Mogon, who flagged first. She began to wander – in fact, she appeared drunk, and she wove about and made little grunting noises.

Tapio, who had not made a sound in many miles, raised his head. ‘
Man!
’ he hissed. ‘
She needs fire, or she will die. Very – suddenly.
’

Redmede knew how to kindle fire. And the threat seemed to ignite him – he gathered wood as fast as his feet would carry him, and he found a birch tree, down and dead and still clear of the snow, and he pulled off his mittens, hung them around his neck, and froze his hands stripping the bark. He stripped a mountain of bark, and he piled it under all the branches he’d found – where two dead spruce trees lay across one another at the end of a clearing.

Mogon was keening, and otherwise immobile.

Up to you, Bill Redmede. Fate of the world. Smile when you say that. Tinder box – there it is. Char cloth – good.
He laid a piece of the black cloth on his flint and snapped it along his stele. They were warm from being carried next to his body, and the sparks flew.

The char cloth lit. He thought of Bess, that night in the wet woods, and he blew on his sparks and his glowing embers and pressed them into his dry tow. It was cold – but it was dry – and in a moment, he had fire.

He threw the whole burning clump onto his pile of birch bark.

There was pungent smoke . . .

For a moment, he thought that it wasn’t going to light.

And then the birch bark’s resin thawed enough to catch, and light and heat exploded into the world – the only magic that Bill Redmede knew how to make, except perhaps a little with a bow. The fire rose and licked at more bark.

‘
Nice work, boss,
’ said the elk – even as it shied away. Nothing in the Wild loved fire.

The two dead spruce trees caught from the branches and the bark and the fire rose.

Redmede finally had to take Mogon by the hand and lead her to the fire. She would barely stir.

But in minutes, she was herself again.

‘Be sure and roast Tapio on both sides,’ she said.

The elk turned and presented its other flank to the fire – and then Mogon shook her head.

‘One more effort. Thank you, man. You are a useful ally. I missed my moment. I should have built a fire, and I—’ She shook her head again. ‘Do you know that fire scares me? I cannot remember when I have been this close to one, naked to it.’

She did, however, douse the fire.

And they ran into the cold morning, towards the Hold.

It was late morning when they entered the tunnel, and the heat of the Hold almost suffocated Redmede. But willing hands plucked their lord from the elk and bore him away, and Tamsin placed a warm kiss on Redmede’s cheek that burned there like faery fire until he met his own lady-love at the door of their own hut.

She threw her arms around him. ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said.

Ticondaga – Ghause, Amicia, and Ser John

The road along the lake was yet another military road built by the Imperial legions, and it was good stone covered in good gravel. The wagons moved well, even in snow, until they reached the Break, a three-mile stretch where low limestone cliffs had collapsed into the lake, wrecking the road and forcing a wide detour into the Wild. Those three miles of paths and rutted cart tracks took them two days; they made camp at the edge of a frozen swamp that nonetheless seemed to move, and no one from the lowliest squire to Ser John himself went to sleep.

The woods were alive, despite the season. Ser John’s outriders brought in deer, and a cold-slowed boggle; they saw a
hastenoch
, one of the monstrous armoured elk, across a beaver swamp, and every archer in the column cranked his crossbow.

Something low to the ground, black as night and fast, tracked the column, and on the fourth night, despite torches, fires, and doubled sentries, they lost a horse. In the cold light of a frozen morning, the poor horse’s shocking wounds suggested that the black thing was huge and very hungry. And that it could fly. The horse had landed a blow and there were long black feathers in the snow.