The Red Knight

‘He’s going to have to keep waiting,’ the boy said. He was proud of his work, and his careful preparation. ‘Look, it’s sympathetic Hermeticism. The wicks on the fire bundles are all made from the same piece of linen and soaked in oil. I have a scrap here, too, already charred.’

The breath of green touched his symbols.

‘You are the cleverest boy,’ Prudentia said.

‘Were you and Hywel lovers, Prude?’ the boy asked.

‘None of your business,’ she shot back.

He rose in his stirrups, and his charred piece of linen caught and burned red hot.

On the bank, forty-four firebombs made of oiled tow and old rags and wax and birch bark burst into flame with one, simultaneous roar.

Harndon City – Edward

Edward cast the first of the master’s tubes in the yard. He cast it in sand, and used the same mandril, polished to a mirror shine, as the model for the wax tongue he put in the mould to make it hollow. He cast the walls of the tube a finger’s width thick, as the master requested.

When it was done it wasn’t much to look at. Edward shrugged. ‘Master, I can do better. The hole would be better if I bored it, but that would require-’ he shrugged ‘-a week to make the drills and other tools. I’d like to add decoration.’ He felt incompetent.

The master picked it up and held it in his hands for a long time. ‘Let’s try,’ he said.

He bored a small hole in the base of the bronze with a hand drill, and Edward was fascinated to watch his careful patience, coaxing the fine steel drill through the heavy bronze. Then he took the tube out of the shop and into the yard, and packed it with his burning mixture – four scoops. He searched for something to put down atop the powder.

Silently, Edward handed him a one-inch hawk bell. It wasn’t perfectly round, and it was hollow, but it fitted well enough for purpose.

The master tied it to the oak tree, put wick in the hole, and lit it. They both hid behind the brick wall of the stable.

Which was just as well.

The fizzing, burning mixture made a flash and a bang like – like something hermetical.

It stripped a handspan of bark from the tree.

The tube had torn loose from its bindings and had smashed through a horse trough – a solid wood horse trough – flooding the yard with dirty water . . . and it was a day before the apprentices found the hawk’s bell. Even then, they didn’t find the bell itself, just the neat round hole it had punched through the tile roof of the forge building.

Edward looked at the hole and whistled.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain had six magnificent bruises from the archery. Other men had worse. Bootlick was dead, despite Bill Hook – known to the gentles as Ser Willem Greville – despite his best efforts at rescue. Francis Atcourt had a Jack’s arrow right through the join in his cote of plates – through his gut. Wat Simple and Oak Pew both had arrows in their limbs and were screaming in pain and mortal afraid the heads were poisoned.

If they hadn’t had the nuns, all of them might have died of their wounds.

As it was, the skill and power of the nuns seemed to mean that any man who wasn’t killed outright would be healed. The captain, who was just coming to terms with the idea of a convent of women of power, was staggered by the healing power they poured into his men – Sauce had six badly wounded men, including Long Paw – one of their best men in every respect.

But the barrage of phantasm was more effective than the barrage of arrows had been.

The captain walked through the hospital ward in his arming clothes. The wounded were cheerful – as any man or woman might be, waking to find an ugly wound completely banished. Oak Pew, a woman whose dark wood-coloured skin and heavy muscles had given her the name, lay laughing helplessly at one of Wilful Murder’s stories. Wat Simple was already gone, the captain had seen him playing at piquet. Long Paw lay watching Oak Pew laugh.

‘Thought I was a goner,’ he admitted, when the captain sat on his counterpane. He showed the captain where a shaft had gone into his chest.

‘I coughed up blood,’ he said. ‘I know what that means.’ He raised himself, coughed, and looked at the nun in the corner. ‘Pretty nun says if it’d been a finger’s width lower, I’d ha’ been dead.’ He shrugged. ‘I owe her.’

The captain squeezed Long Paw’s shoulder. ‘How do you feel?’ he asked. He knew it was a stupid question, but it was part of the job of being captain.