The Red Knight

Best concentrate on the matter at hand, he reminded himself.

He’d left her a note at the tree. She hadn’t answered it.

He was running out of fog. Beyond, the spring fields were green with new grass that would eventually be hay and fodder – or weeds – all tinged red as the sun set.

He reined Grendel in, and waited for his company to sort themselves out.

Tom was at his shoulder, and he raised a gauntleted hand. ‘Everyone look around. The fog makes it hard to see, but look at how the ground is clear from here all the way to the wood’s edge – not a ditch, not a hedgerow, not a stone wall. Keep that in mind. It we make another sortie it’ll be along this path.’

Tom nodded.

Ser Jehannes shook his head. ‘Let’s survive today before we borrow trouble for tomorrow.’

The captain looked back at his senior officer. ‘On the contrary, messire. Let us plan today for tomorrow’s triumph.’

Anger touched the older knight’s face.

‘Peace!’ the captain said. ‘We’ll discuss this later.’ He kept his voice light, as if the issue were of no moment. ‘If we contact the enemy, we ride through them, rally on the trumpet, and retreat into the fog immediately. No more. If we find boats, we destroy them. Is that clear?’

He listened carefully. If he was nervous, it didn’t show – he seemed merely attentive.

Horses fidgeted. Men spat and tried to appear as unconcerned as their captain.

The fog seemed too thin to cover so many men. But nothing happened.

And then, well to the north, there were the sounds of men cheering, and horses neighing, and the clash of steel on steel.

‘There they are,’ muttered the captain; three words to express fifteen minutes of nervous impatience. Tom grinned. Jehannes reached up and hit the catch on his visor. The sound was repeated all along their line.

But now the captain seemed in no hurry.

The cries were redoubled.

And then there were coarse bugle calls behind them, and high-pitched horn calls to the north.

It was all happening as he’d expected, and there, on the edge of battle, he had a moment of panic. What if this is a trap? How can I expect to predict what they’ll do? I’m pretending to know what I’m doing but this can’t be so simple.

His tutor in the art of war had been Hywel Writhe, his father’s master of arms. His supposed father’s master of arms. A brilliant swordsman, a magnificent jouster. Madly in love with the Lady Prudentia, and to no avail.

A memory crept into place.

Right there, on the edge of battle, the captain realised that he’d been had. His two tutors had been lovers. Of course they had been lovers.

Why do I think of this sort of thing when I’m about to fight? he thought.

Laughed aloud.

Hywel Writhe used to say, War is simple. That’s why men prefer it to real life.

And his lesson for all six of the boys who would grow to be great lords, masters of armies: Never make a plan more complicated than your ability to communicate it.

The captain reviewed his plans one more time.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

They rode out of the fog at a canter. About half a league to the north, Sauce led the northern sortie out of the shower of arrows sent by the now fully alerted Jacks, boglins and the irks who were gathering like clouds before a storm around her small force.

The captain led his men west into the setting sun, out of the fog, and right along the river bank.

There was a unmanned barricade on the road and he rode around it, and up the bank above the road, and round the first bend, and there they were.

Boats.

Sixty boats, or more. Farmers’ boats, dug-outs, canoes. Rafts of lashed branches. All pulled up out of the water.

Every archer threw a linen wrapped parcel into a boat. Some got none – some got two – and he heard horns, and trumpets, and some shrill calls to the north.

They were taking too long.

The archers down at the far end of the beach received some arrows and charged into the woods on their horses, scattering the enemy archers. Tom set off in pursuit with half the men-at-arms, and the captain suddenly feared he‘d been trapped after all. He was over-extended and the size of the bank beneath the ancient trees dwarfed his paltry raid. And now half his men were getting too far-

More shouts behind him.

He turned to Michael. ‘Sound the recall,’ he said.

Michael’s trumpet playing wasn’t his strongest suit. He was on his third try when the trumpet rang out clearly, against the sound of screams and heavy crashes from the west of the bank. The captain sat on Grendel’s back in a rage of indecision – desperate to get his men back, afraid to commit the rest to the sortie all the way down the bank.

Tom emerged from the lowering trees, his sword raised.

The captain began to breathe again.