The Fell Sword (8 page)

He got one foot in the stirrup, powered into the saddle, and turned for home.

Two hundred feet in front of him, a young doe bolted from the trees into the meadow. She was too young to be cautious, and she turned towards him, never seeing the man or the horse.

Behind her, a dozen boggles burst from the wood line. One stride into the clearing, the lead creature paused – a slim dark figure against the light, and it took Ser John a moment to register what he was seeing. The boggle had a throw-stick.

The spear left the throw-stick as fast as an arrow and the missile took the little doe in her hindquarters. She tumbled, fell, and blood sprayed. But terror and wild determination fuelled her, and she rose and drove forward – right at the knight.

Between his knees he could feel his horse’s nerves. Old Jack had failed as a warhorse because he shied at the tilt – and had done so over and over.

‘Always another chance to excel,’ muttered Ser John, and he lowered the spear point.

The doe saw the horse and tried to turn, but her limbs failed her and she fell sprawling, and the boggles were on her.

Ser John put the spurs to his horse, and the gelding leaped out from beneath the old tree.

The doe screamed. One of the boggles already had her open and was dragging her guts out while another sank his four-way hinged mouth into her haunch. But the boggle with the throw-stick had a long knife. The thing made a keening noise, and wrenched his throwing spear from the dying deer.

Ser John didn’t have time to ride him down, and he didn’t fancy facing the throwing spear without armour, so he rose in his stirrups and threw his own spear – a cloth yard of steel at the end of six feet of ash. It wasn’t a clean throw but it caught the boggle in the head as it pin-wheeled through the air, and the thing shrieked.

Ser John drew his sword.

His horse put its head down as he rode straight at the doe’s carcass.

I’m avenging a dead deer, for Christ’s sake
, he thought and then he was reining in, and four of them were dead. The one he’d knocked down with his hastily thrown spear was bubbling as the little things did when they were broken, their liquid innards emerging throught rents in the carapace as if under pressure.

There was one missing.

The horse shied. It all but threw him with a sidestep and a kick – he whirled his head and saw the creature, covered in ordure, emerge from
within
the doe’s guts, exploding up in a spray of blood and muscle tissue. But its claws went for the man.

The horse kicked it – rear left, rear right. Ser John managed to keep his seat as the terrified horse then trampled the boggle which had been kicked clear of the carcass and lay in the dust of the old road.

Ser John let the horse kick. It made both of them feel better.

Then he checked his fish.

Afternoon was tending to evening and the nun was in the kitchen with Phillippa’s mother. Phillippa went there to help – as darkness fell, the cleanliness of the manor house chimney and the kitchen chimney had taken on paramount importance, and Helewise and the nun agreed between them to delay dinner a little longer.

There were birds’ nests in the chimneys, and raccoons in the chimney pots. Phillippa thought the task was better than finding more corpses, and she pitched in with a will, climbing the roof slates in the last light with Jenny Rose and shooing the raccoons out with a broom. They didn’t want to go – they looked at her over their shoulders as if to say ‘We just want a nice bit of chicken, and can’t we all be friends?’

She caught the flicker of movement away off to the north, and held out a filthy hand to Jenny Rose. ‘Shush!’ she said.

‘Shush yourself!’ Jenny said, but then she saw Phillippa’s face and froze.

‘Hoof beats,’ they both said together.

‘Can I light the fire, dear?’ called her mother.

‘Yes, and there’s someone coming!’ she shouted back, her voice a little higher pitched than it needed to be.

The nun was out the kitchen door in a moment, standing with her hands on her hips in the last real light. She turned all the way around, very slowly. Then she looked up at the roof. ‘What do you see, Phillippa?’ she asked.

Phillippa made herself do just what the nun had done. She turned slowly, balanced on the peak of the roof.

Jenny said, ‘Oh!’ and pointed. By the stream to the west of them, there was a flicker of light – beautiful pink light, and then another.

‘Faeries!’ said Jenny.

‘Blessed Virgin Mary,’ said Phillippa, who crossed herself.

‘Faeries!’ she shouted down to the nun. ‘By the creek!’

The nun raised her arms and made a sign.

The sound of hoof beats grew closer.

The faeries moved gracefully along the streambed. Phillippa had seen faeries before, but she loved them, even though they were a sign of the dominance of the Wild and it was supposedly a sin to admire them. But combined with the sound of galloping hooves, they seemed more sinister.

The sun passed behind the ridge to the west.

Almost instantly the temperature fell, and darkness was close. Phillippa shivered in nothing but her shift and kirtle.

Steel glittered on the road, and the hoof beats were close now. The horse was tired, but the man rode well. He was very old, and had wild grey hair flowing out behind him, but his back was straight and his seat was solid. He was dressed like a peasant, yet he wore a long sword. She had spent the summer among men who went armed. He had a spear in his hand, too.

He reined up for a moment at the ruins of their gatehouse, stood in his stirrups, and then said something to his mount. The horse responded with a last effort, and the man passed out of sight only to reappear walking under the two old oaks on the drive.

The nun held up a hand. ‘The sele of the day to you, messire,’ she said in a clear voice.

The old man reined up at the edge of what had once been the yard. ‘Greetings, fair sister. I had no thought that the resettlement had come this far. Indeed, I passed this way this morning and I’d wager there was no one here.’

The nun smiled. ‘Neither there was, good knight.’

‘
Ma belle
, you speak most courteously. Is there a bed here for an old man with an old horse?’ He bowed to her from horseback. It was fun to watch them from the roof, unobserved. Phillippa gave them both high marks for courtesy – they spoke like the people in the songs of chivalry that she loved. And
not
like the stupid boys in Lorica, who were all sullen swearwords.

‘We cannot give you as fair a hostel as we could in times past, Ser John,’ her mother said, emerging into the door yard.

‘Helewise Cuthbert, as I live and breathe!’ said the old man. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘It’s my house, I believe,’ her mother said with some of her characteristic asperity.

‘Christ on the cross,’ said Ser John. ‘Be careful. I killed three brace of boggles five miles back on the road.’ He grinned. ‘But I’m that glad to see you, lass. How’s Pippa?’

Phillippa hadn’t allowed her mother to call her Pippa in years, and while she had an idea who this man must be she couldn’t remember seeing him before.

‘Well enough, for her age. You’ll want a cup of wine,’ her mother said. ‘You’d be welcome here.’

He dismounted like a younger man, kicking his feet clear of his stirrups and leaping to the ground – an effect he spoiled slightly by putting a hand in the small of his back. ‘Is this to be a religious house?’ he asked the nun.

The young nun smiled. ‘No, ser knight. But I’m a-visiting; I’m to ride abroad to every new resettlement north of Southford.’

Ser John nodded and then caught both of her mother’s hands. ‘I thought you would be gone to Lorica,’ he said.

She reached her face up to his and kissed him. ‘I couldn’t stay there and be a poor relation when I have a home here,’ she replied.

Ser John stepped away from her mother, smiling. He looked away from her and then back, smiled again, and then bowed to the nun. ‘I’m Ser John Crayford, the Captain of Albinkirk. Yester e’en, I’d have said “ride and be of good cheer”, but I’m none too pleased with my little boggle encounter this evening. Which puts me in mind that I’d be in your debt for a rag and some olive oil.’

Phillippa was fascinated by the whole scene. Her mother was . . . odd. She’d
tossed her hair
like a young girl – it was down because she’d been working. And the old man was
old
but he had something about him, something difficult to define. Something that the boys in Lorica did not have.

‘I’ll fetch you a rag, John, but please stay. We’re all women here.’ Her mother’s voice sounded odd, too.

‘Helewise, don’t tell me I’ve stumbled on the castle of maidens. I’m not nearly young enough to enjoy it.’ The knight laughed.

Old Gwyn cackled. ‘Hardly a maiden here, old man,’ she said.

Phillippa was appalled to see the nun giggle. Nuns, in her experience, were strict, dour women who didn’t laugh. Especially not at jokes that involved
sex
, even in the most harmless way.

The nun finished her laugh and she and the knight met each other’s eyes. ‘I can handle myself on the road,’ she said.

‘By Saint George, you are the Bonne Soeur Sauvage!’ he said. ‘Sister Amicia?’

She curtsied. ‘The very same.’

He laughed. ‘Sweet wounds of the risen Christ, Helewise, you don’t need me here. This good sister has probably slain more boggles than all the knights west of the Albin.’ He smiled at the nun. ‘I have a package for you, back in the Donjon. I’ll send it on to you.’

‘A package?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘Arrived a month ago, by messenger from the east. Sent from the Inn of Dorling.’

She flushed.

The knight went on, ‘At any rate, if you plan to ride my roads, I’d appreciate knowing what you find. The Wild is still out there – closer, I would say, than they were a year ago. These ladies are lucky to have you,
ma soeur
. They won’t need me!’

Phillippa wanted her dinner, so she and Jenny Rose swarmed down the ladder to the ground and they missed Mistress Helewise saying, very softly, ‘Some of us need you, ser knight.’

Ticondaga Castle on the Wall – The Earl of the Westwall and Ghause Muriens

She looked into her silver mirror for far too long.

And sighed.

Her blond hair remained as nearly white-gold as artifice and
phantasm
could make it, and it fell down her back to the rise of the swell in her buttocks. Her breasts were full and firm, the envy of women half her age.

What do I care?
she thought.
I am so much more than the sum of my breasts and the length of my legs. I am me!

But she cared deeply. She wanted to be all that she was
and
continue to beguile any man she wanted.

She picked up a fur-lined robe. The morning chill was rising, the fires weren’t lit, and a rash of goose-bumps was not going to enhance her beauty. Nor was a bad cough.

She pulled the robe around her and, on impulse, cupped her breasts with her hands, and heard the movement—

‘Not now, you fool!’ she hissed at her husband, the Earl, but he had the neck of her gown in his hand, lifted her effortlessly and threw her on the bed, pinned her to it with a strong hand and shrugged out of his own heavy robe.

‘I’m – Stop!’ she said, as his weight came atop her.

He put his mouth over hers.

She writhed under him. ‘You oaf! I’m rising! Can’t you knock?’

‘If you will preen that marvellous body of yours in front of an open door, you get what you deserve,’ he breathed into her ear.

His feet were cold – he never would wear slippers. But his insistence had its own charm – his strong hands had many skills – and when his knee went to part hers, she locked his arm and rolled him over like a wrestler, and sat on his chest – leaned back and caught his prick with her hand, and he groaned.

She flicked him with a practised nail and impaled herself, and his eyes widened to have their roles so quickly reversed. He took her breasts in his hands. ‘Happy birthday, you faithless bitch,’ he growled into her throat.

‘What did you get me, you great fool?’ she asked as he sought to throw her over and get atop her again. She caught an arm and kept him pinned, and threw her hair over his face so he couldn’t see. She was laughing – he was laughing, but he got one of his iron-hard arms across her back, ran it down and down, and she moaned—

—and then he was atop her, grinning like the beast he was. But he kept his hand under her, and raised her – with one hand – cradling her on his hand as they rutted so that all the muscles in her back were stretched. She locked her legs over the back of his knees and bit his shoulder as hard as she could, her teeth drawing blood. His nails bit into her back. She wriggled, clenched her knees on his sides, and moved her head – he leaned forward to fasten his mouth on her left breast—

They fell off the bed slowly, the bed-hangings holding their weight for three long heartbeats and then tearing – she caught the floor under her right foot and then she was atop him and
his
back was to the cold stone floor,
his
head was lifted to hers. He tasted the blood on her lips, and she tasted her own salt—

There was a moment when they merged with the Wild. She flooded him with
potentia.
His back arched so hard that she almost came off him.

And then they were done.

‘Christ and his saints, bitch, you nigh broke my head,’ he said.

She licked his lips. ‘I
own
you,’ she said. ‘I rode you like a horse. A big warhorse.’

He smacked her naked arse hard enough to draw a cry. ‘I came to tell you there’s a letter,’ he said. ‘But there you were cupping your boobies with your hands and you looked good enough to eat.’ He passed a hand over his left shoulder and it came away bloody, and he laughed. ‘Jesus wept, it’s me who got ate. How to you do it, you witch? Yer as old as a crone, and I want no other.’

‘Fifty today,’ she said. She ran her hand over his shoulder and put a tiny working into it and it closed.