The Red Knight

Tom nodded. ‘Aye. She won’t take it well.’ He looked at Michael. ‘I won’t ask you what you were thinkin’, ’cause I can guess it well enough.’

‘Get him out of my sight,’ the captain said. ‘Toby, get the girl dressed and get her . . . I don’t know. Can you get her out of here without everyone seeing?’

Toby nodded soberly. ‘Aye,’ he said, eager to help. Toby didn’t like it when his heroes were angry, especially not with each other.

The captain had a splitting headache, and he wasn’t even into the day yet.

‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ he asked Tom.

‘Sauce has a patrol out and there’s the remnants of a convoy in the Bridge Castle,’ Tom said. ‘Bad news.’

Sauce reported an hour later, handing a child down off the saddlebow of her war horse and saluting her captain crisply.

‘Twenty-three wagons. All burned. Sixty corpses found, not yet ripe, and not much of a fight.’ She shrugged. ‘Slightly chewed.’ She lowered her voice, as there were dozens of people in earshot, all looking for news. ‘Many eaten down to sinew and bone, Captain.’

The captain fingered his beard, looked at the desperate people surrounding his horse, and knew that any morale won by his raids on the enemy camp was now dissipated in a fresh wave of terror.

‘Back to your work,’ the captain called.

‘We ain’t got no work!’ a man shouted, and the crowd in the courtyard rumbled angrily.

The captain had mounted in anticipation of taking out a patrol. He was restless and depressed himself, and craved action – anything to distract him.

But he was the captain. He nodded to Gelfred. ‘Go north, and move fast. You know what we want.’

He swung one spurred foot over Grendel’s back and slid from the saddle. ‘Wilful Murder, Sauce, on me. The rest of you – well done. Get some rest.’

He led them inside. Michael dismounted too, looking as furious as the captain felt having lost an opportunity to substitute honest fear for nagging terror. He clearly knew that he now had no opportunity to expiate his sin. But he took his own destrier and the captain’s and headed for the stable without untoward comment.

Sister Miram – the heaviest and thus most easily identified of the sisters – was passing through the courtyard with a basket of sweet bread for the children. The captain caught her eye, and waved.

‘The Abbess will want to hear this,’ he said to her. She put a biscuit in his hand with a look that might have curdled milk – a look of blanket disapproval.

There was a slip of vellum underneath it.

Meet me tonight

A bolt of lightning shot through him.

The Abbess arrived while he was still standing in his solar. He’d just stripped off his gauntlets and placed them on the sideboard, his helmet was still on his head. Sauce took it from him, and he turned to find the Abbess, hands clasped loosely in front of her, wimple starched and perfect, eyes bright.

The captain had to smile, but she did not return it.

He sighed. ‘We’ve lost another convoy coming to the fair – six leagues to the west, on the Albinkirk road. More than sixty dead. The survivors are panicking your people, and they aren’t helping mine much.’ He sighed. ‘In among them are refugees from Albinkirk, which, I am sorry to report, has fallen to the Wild.’

To Sauce, he said, ‘In future, no matter how badly off they are, take new refugees to Ser Milus. Let him keep their ravings contained.’

Sauce nodded. ‘I should have thought-’ she said wearily.

The captain cut her off. ‘No, I should have thought of it, Sauce.’

Wilful Murder shook his head. ‘It’s worse than you think, Captain. You’re not from around here, eh?’

The captain gave the archer a long look, and Wilful quailed.

‘Sorry, ser,’ he said.

‘It happens that I know the mountains to the north well enough,’ the captain said quietly.

Wilful was not so easily put down though. He produced something from his purse and put it on the table.

The Abbess turned as white as parchment when she saw it.

The captain raised an eyebrow.

‘Abenacki,’ he said.

‘Or Quost, or most likely Sassog.’ Wilful nodded respectfully. ‘So you are from around here.’

‘How many?’ the captain asked.

Wilful shook his head. ‘At least one. What kind of question is that?’ The feather he had placed on the table – a heron feather – was decorated with elaborate quillwork from a porcupine, the quills dyed bright red and carefully woven up the stem of the feather.

Wilful looked around, and then, like a conjuror, produced a second item, very like the first in look – a small pouch, decorated with complex leather braids. When his audience looked blank, he grinned his broken-toothed grin. ‘Irks. Five feet of muscle and all of it mean. They make amazing stuff. Fey folk, my mother used to call them.’ He looked at the Abbess. ‘They like to eat women.’

‘That’s enough, Wilful.’

‘Just saying. And there was tracks.’ He shrugged.

‘Nicely done, Wilful. Now give me some quiet.’ The captain pushed his chin towards the door.

Wilful might have been surly, but he found a silver leopard pushed across the table to him, too. He bit it, grinned and left.