The Red Knight

The staff of the Dormling Inn descended on the drovers like an avenging army, carrying trays of leather tankards of strong ale and mountains of soft bread and sharp cheese. By the time the youngest, dustiest drover far in the rear had been served his welcome cup and his bread, their lord was clean of the mud of the trail, sitting in a room as fine as most lord’s halls, looking at a new tapestry from the East and smiling at the back of a local woman – a grown woman with a mind of her own, as he’d just discovered. He rubbed his bicep where she’d pinched him hard as a land crab and laughed.

‘Cawnor tried to levy a toll on me,’ he went on.

The Keeper and the rest of the audience shook their heads.

The drover shrugged. ‘So we opened the road. I doubt there’s enough of his men left alive to hold their fort, should someone decide to take it from them now.’ Drovers never sought to hold land. Drovers drove.

His cousin Ranald pushed through the crowd.

‘You’re taller!’ Hector said, and crushed him in an embrace. Then he sank back into his chair and took a long draught of ale. ‘Albinkirk afire? That’s ill news. What of the fair?’

Ranald shook his head. ‘I was moving fast. I kept moving. I was already on the east side when I reached Fifth Bridge, so I stayed there and rode cross country.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t see a thing.’

The Keeper shrugged. ‘If I’d thought you’d be here today, I’d have held the two bloody peddlers,’ he said. ‘They claimed they’d been part of a merchant convoy headed west from Theva. Lost all their goods and slaves.’

Hector nodded. ‘Like enough.’ This was the time of year for the great convoys.

‘A pair of Moreans. Said it was an ambush. Whole convoy destroyed.’ The Keeper shrugged. ‘My sons say there was a good sized Theva convoy a ten-day back as well, on the south road, so they didn’t pass by here.’ He shrugged again. ‘I have no faith in Moreans, but they had no reason to lie either.’

‘Ambushed by what?’ Hector asked.

‘They couldn’t agree,’ the landlord said.

‘They said the Wild,’ said a bold young farmer, a frequent customer, and a suitor for one of the Keeper’s daughters. ‘Or, leastways, the younger one said the Wild.’

The Keeper shrugged again. ‘That’s true. Some of them said it was the Wild.’

Hector nodded slowly. ‘I certainly didn’t see an animal bigger than a dog the whole trip here,’ he said. He shook his head in weary disgust. ‘The Wild is set against Albinkirk? Where’s the king? His people eat my cattle too.’

The Keeper sighed. ‘I don’t know, and that’s a fact,’ he said. ‘I’ve put two of my sons and a dozen men on fast horses out to get ye news. We’ll see what they have. Folk have spied Outwallers in the woods. Sassogs. I think that if they were really there, they’d have been seen and et alive – but then I’m a suspicious bastard.’

Hector took a deep breath. ‘So it’s war then.’

The Keeper looked away. ‘I hope not.’

Hector took another pull of ale. ‘Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one smells most. How long until you hear from your fast horsemen?’

‘Tomorrow,’ the Keeper said.

‘Assuming the Outwallers don’t eat them.’ Hector kicked his sword out in front of him to make room for his legs and sat back, tipping his chair against the wall. ‘By the five wounds of Christ, Keeper. This will be an adventure to remember then – taking the drove into an army of the Wild. Not even my da did the like.’

‘Waste of courage and arrows, though, if the fair ain’t happening,’ the Keeper said. ‘Lissen Carak may be so many burned cots and splintered stones when you get there.’

Hector thumped his chair back down. ‘Truth in what you say,’ he said. ‘And no use pondering it until I know more.’ He looked around at the dozen men in the room. ‘But I have a real harper and a dozen other players in my tail – and unless Dormling’s fallen on hard times, I wager a golden noble to a copper cat we can have us some fine music and dancing to rival the fairies tonight. So enough talk of war. Let’s have wine and music.’

In the far doorway, the tall serving woman tapped her foot and nodded approvingly.

The Keeper’s youngest daughter clapped her hands. ‘Now that’s why you’re the Prince of Drovers,’ she said approvingly. ‘To Hector, Prince of the Green Hills!’

Hector Lachlan frowned. ‘The Green Hills have no lord but the Wyrm of Erch,’ he said. ‘The dragon will have no rival, and can hear all that’s said by men, so let’s not be naming me to the lordship of any hills – eh, Keeper?’

The Keeper took a long pull of his own ale and put an arm around his daughter’s shoulders, and said ‘Honey, you know never to speak so. The Wyrm is no friend of man – but he’s no foe to us, as long as we stay clear of him and keep the sheepfolds where he commands. Eh?’

She burst into tears and fled the room with every eye on her, and then the moment passed and the woman in the doorway clapped her hands. ‘Bother the Wyrm!’ she said boldly. ‘I want the harper!’

Harndon Palace – Desiderata