The Last Knight (3 page)

The true problem was that he resented having to be grateful to me. I understood that.

Listening now to the tramp of many horses arriving outside our cell—knowing who it must be, curse it—I feared I was about to find myself in the same position.

Fisk heard them too, and fell silent.

“’Tis all right,” I assured him, trying to steel, or at least conceal, my quaking nerves. “They’re coming for me, but they’ll bring you along.”

“That makes it all right? Who’s coming? Murder is redeemed in blood, if not in life! I don’t know the penalty for helping a murderess escape, but—”

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “This price is mine alone to pay—which is fair, since the error was mine. I only wish it was to be paid in blood. It would hurt less.”

Fisk opened his mouth to call me a lunatic—and not for the first time—but the lock clicked, the door opened, and in he came. He looked well, though he must have ridden the night through to get here from Seven Oaks so quickly.

“Hello, Michael. I see I needn’t ask how your career as a knight errant is progressing.”

I remembered how Fisk had stood up to the judicars in the marketplace, straight and calm. When your fate is upon you, ’tis best to face it boldly. Especially when fate is blocking the only exit.

“Hello, Father.”

F
ather?
You poor bastard
. Needless to say, I didn’t speak the thought aloud.

There are two kinds of noblemen. (Actually there are probably twenty or thirty kinds, as there are within any subset of humanity, but still…) The first kind are men who, if they hadn’t been high-born, would have been perfectly ordinary shepherds or shopkeepers or whatever. They make wonderful gulls. The second kind are men who would have clawed their way to the top no matter what they were born. And as a man whose name wasn’t Jack Bannister used to say, you don’t even want to think about gulling them.

Baron Seven Oaks was obviously one of the latter. His dark wool doublet and britches looked plain, until you saw how well they were made. Good fabric, well cut, needs no other ornament, and Baron Seven Oaks evidently knew it—or maybe he just didn’t care. His iron-gray hair was cut shorter than most nobles’, though not quite peasant short. He could have shaved it to his scalp—no one who saw the straightness of his back, and the arrogant way he held his head, would ever mistake him for anything but what he was.

I began to feel more hopeful. With this man on our side, we might keep our hides intact after all.
But was he on our side?
My father had his faults, but he’d never looked at me as if he was dispassionately considering whether or not to eviscerate me.

Sir Michael stood up under that look better than I would have. Perhaps he was accustomed to it.

The old man’s keen eyes took in the scruffy wool and leather, the shaggy, too-long hair, the small scar that marked one side of Sir Michael’s jaw. My employer looked more like a down-on-his-luck bandit than a noble’s son—until you saw his eyes.

Sir Michael let his father finish his examination and then asked him straight out, “Have you redeemed me, Sir?”

“Yes,” said his father, with equal bluntness.

“And my squire as well?”

The old man turned that eviscerating look on me—I sat up straighter. The baron sighed.

“There was no need. Your testimony cleared him of everything but serving an idiot.”

Sir Michael drew a deep, bracing breath. “How much?”

Was there a trace of pity in the baron’s gaze? His face and voice were neutral. “Five thousand gold roundels.”

Sir Michael paled. “Sir…can you afford that?”

“Can I
afford
it? Not easily. Can I pay it? Yes. I already have.”

Some of the stiffness went out of Sir Michael’s back. His voice was rough with relief and pain as he asked, “And how am I to repay so great a sum?”

His father considered him. “I’m not sure. I’m still thinking about it.”

A flicker of surprise crossed Sir Michael’s face, and I guessed that the baron was seldom unsure about anything.

“You’ll let me know when you make up your mind?” Had it been anyone but Sir Michael, I’d have sworn I heard sarcasm in his voice.

The baron heard it too and smiled—a rather grim smile. “Oh, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, we might as well go home.” He cast a distasteful look around the cell, turned, and went out.

Taking another deep breath, Sir Michael started after him and I followed.

Sir Michael soon caught up with the old man. “My horses? My gear?”

“I brought the horses. There’s gear on their saddles, so I assume ’tis yours.”

We clattered up the rickety wooden steps and into the sunlight. I hadn’t been out of the prison since yesterday, and the air, still fresh from last night’s shower, smelled wonderful: clear, crisp, and lightly scented with woodsmoke from the nearby village and the spicy smell of wet fallen leaves.

Two men-at-arms, whose pine-green cloaks bore the Seven Oaks badge, were waiting for us, holding Chanticleer, Tipple, and a big, roman-nosed, dun stallion that was so ugly most nobles wouldn’t have been caught dead on him.

Tipple looked like a midget jester between two knights, and the baron winced at the sight. He looked more displeased about Tipple than he had about me, which I took as a hopeful sign.

Sir Michael noticed his father’s expression. “You were the one who taught me that a horse’s color is irrelevant, Sir. She’s sound and well-mannered.”

The baron sighed again, and I made a mental note to keep Tipple
far
away from beer. Then his face softened.

“At least you’ve taken good care of this fellow.” He stroked Chanticleer’s nose and the horse snuffled at him. “How’s that injured leg of his doing?”

That topic got us mounted and onto the road. It was almost dry now, with only intermittent mudholes remaining from the last big rain.

The prison where we’d been held was in an abandoned mill on the outskirts of Willowere, a village nearly large enough to be called a town. It was very late in the afternoon, and I had hopes of a bath and bed at an inn, not to mention a better meal than the thin stew that had served as prison fare. So I was disappointed when we took the road away from Willowere.

At this time of day sensible people were heading into the village, so we passed a steady stream of returning plow horses, with a handful of carts and carriages, a tinker, a traveling bookseller, and a wandering beggar thrown in for good measure. The beggar hauled out his cup and called for alms as we rode by.

Sir Michael reached for his purse but the sheriff had taken it. It was probably in the pack on Chanticleer’s rump.

The baron tossed a handful of fracts into the cup.

“Thank you, Noble Sir!” the beggar cried, rattling the coins with a vigor that made Tipple shy. I barely managed to keep my seat. Not being a nobleman, I wasn’t thrown onto a horse’s back before I could walk, and I’m not ashamed of it.

The baron scowled. “Horn and hoof! Son, if you had to have a…squire, why couldn’t you take one of the men-at-arms instead of a town-bred gutterling with ‘knave’ written all over him?”

I was too surprised to take offense, for most people don’t see past my honest face. The baron obviously had the Gift of reading people—it’s common among nobles. A pity his son didn’t have it. He might have seen through Lady Ceciel.

“Fisk
was
a knave,” said Sir Michael. “But now he is a squire. Mayhap the writing you see will change, in time.”

The baron looked exasperated, an attitude with which I could sympathize.

Sir Michael asked, rather hastily, how someone named Benton was doing.

Benton was at university and had started his master’s work. I forgot that I was trying to avoid notice and asked what his subject was. The baron looked surprised at such a knowledgeable question. He replied that it had to do with a new way to learn about the lives of the ancients by digging up their ruins, though that was as much as he could figure out from Benton’s letters.

It sounded like a promising thesis, but I’d gone back to avoiding attention, so I just nodded. If the baron could pay five thousand gold roundels to redeem Sir Michael, he could buy his other son a place at university whether his master’s work was judged worthy or not.

For Benton, I learned, was a son, as were Justin (who was doing well at the High Liege’s court, and might find himself in the treasury) and Rupert (who had probably returned home by now from looking at some new breeding stock).

They all appeared to be older than Sir Michael, which gave me my first clue as to why a noble’s son was wandering the countryside as a knight errant. A wife’s dowry usually provides for the second son, but any others have to find their own place. Of course, there are better places than knight errant—in fact, almost any job would be better, an opinion I suspect the baron shared.

Sir Michael’s mother and his sister, Kathryn, were also fine, and some of the neighbors with sons of the right age were beginning to talk of marriage. Old Nan had finally died, but Merriot was…

Family gossip is boring if you aren’t part of the family, but I did glean a few interesting bits. The number of neighbors who wanted to marry Kathryn told me that Sir Michael’s sister was as Gifted as his father was rich.

The magic-sensing Gift is the most important, and since most nobles select their wives for it, most nobles have it. But the sensing Gift brings with it a host of lesser abilities, which vary widely in type and strength. Some scholars hold that these other gifts aren’t true magic. When a magica rabbit freezes to hide itself, it literally becomes invisible—you can look right through it and see the grass it rests on. But the odd talents with which some humans are Gifted consist more of an exaggerated knack for something anyone might do. As the baron recently demonstrated, when he looked at me and saw past the outward indicators to the person I really am, though he had no way to deduce that with the senses granted most folk.

Admittedly, some commoners have Gifts too; a knack for growing plants to sizes, or in places, that no one else can is the most common. And I once lost a considerable sum to a man who could sense the cards that were about to be dealt to him—not often the exact card, as he reluctantly explained to the skeptical judicars, just whether it would be good or bad for his hand. Like most of the lesser Gifts it worked erratically, and sometimes not at all, but he still found it very useful.

Considering the wealth and power they control, it seems unfair that nobles should be blessed with these inborn talents so much more often than the rest of us. Of course, the possession of Gifts is one of the reasons they gain wealth and power, so I long ago decided to relieve them of a little of that wealth. After all, fair’s fair.

Half an hour west of town we turned north on a road that skirted the Derens River. The Derens was too small for shipping, which made it a pretty good bet that we wouldn’t encounter any more towns—and villages large enough to support an inn are rare. The temperature sank along with the sun. I huddled in my cloak, trying to resign myself to sleeping in another barn. But just as the dusk was fading we rode into a good-sized village and up to the gate of an inn called the Pig and Briar.

I can’t speak for the briar part, but the pig made itself evident the moment we rode through the gate. A servant had opened its pen to feed it and, for reasons known only to the porcine mind, it dashed out and ran across the yard, right behind the heels of a pair of oxen, which were yoked to a cart from which the carter was pulling a keg.

I’m told oxen are placid creatures, but few animals are that placid. The pig was between the oxen and the cart and they couldn’t see what it was. They kicked, and one heavy hoof connected. Rolled under the cart by the force of the blow, the pig screamed, and that finished the matter as far as the oxen were concerned.

The wagon’s brake snapped like a twig—only much louder—as two determined oxen headed away from the monster behind them and toward the gate, where we were. I’ve also been told oxen are slow, but you couldn’t prove it by this pair.

There was barely time to react. The men-at-arms and I were riding in the rear. Man and horse in complete agreement, Tipple and I veered off to the side. Sir Michael and his father were already in the gate—too late to go back, too narrow to turn. With a shout, Sir Michael clapped his heels against Chanticleer’s gray hide. The gelding leapt forward and right, with so little space to spare that his tail swept over the ox’s back.

The baron was trapped. Without a flicker of doubt in his face, he sent his ugly dun stallion straight toward the charging oxen. The dun sank on its haunches, gathered itself, and leapt, right over the length of oxen and cart. It landed neatly and pranced, snorting.

The pig rose to its feet and limped off. The servant ran after the pig and the carter ran after his oxen, swearing. The baron controlled his horse, and Sir Michael slid from the saddle and walked Chanticleer back and forth, looking for any sign of injury. The men-at-arms rode past me through the gate, one of them pausing to give my shoulder a brisk punch.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You never seen magica before?”

As a matter of fact, I hadn’t. I closed my hanging jaw and kicked Tipple forward. It’s one thing to hear about horses that can outrun the wind and leap six times their length, but it was different to actually see that great body floating through the air.

No wonder no one cared that the dun was ugly.

The citybred have little contact with magic since it belongs to the realm of plants, animals, and those few humans whose minds are not strong enough to suppress their instincts. The philosophers say that intelligence and magic are antithetical, and can’t exist in the same body. The old myths say that when First Man grew more intelligent than the gods, they took away his magic out of jealousy. The Savants, who are the only ones likely to know, have said nothing about why some plants and animals are born with magic that enhances their natural properties. No one really knows. Just as no one knows why men can inherit the Gift for sensing magic but only women can pass it on to their children.

I have no sensing Gift, and might not even have believed in magic if it weren’t for Potter’s house.

Potter lived about five streets from the small, ram-shackle house where I grew up. City born and bred, he didn’t believe in magic. So when he bought a load of lumber to replace the decaying floor in his workroom, he scoffed at the herbalist’s warning that there were boards from a magica oak in the load. “The stouter to build with if they are,” he said. He wasn’t the one who’d cut the tree. The Green God was a moon myth, Potter said…until the plants began to grow.

They were ordinary plants, grass and weeds, and they grew at a normal rate. But they grew between the new-laid floorboards of Potter’s workroom and pulled them apart. They grew in his foundation, tearing jagged cracks in the brick walls. They grew despite all the pulling, burning, and poisoning Potter and his wife could do. Finally, with their house falling around their ears, Potter and his wife moved out.

Today a thriving meadow grows over the ruins of Potter’s house, with a young oak in its center that the herbalists say is magica. No one dares build on that lot, although Potter would sell it for a few brass fracts if he could find anyone fool enough to buy.