The Red Knight

‘In which case, we’ll tie him to a wagon wheel and cut open his back-’ the captain went on, and Sym whimpered.

Mag swayed.

The captain grinned at her. ‘It may sound awful, but it is better than rape, and once it starts it will not stop. Sorry – I am too blunt.’ He looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘You are the seamstress – yes?’ he asked.

She made a curtsy. ‘I am, my lord.’

‘Could you be kind enough to make the time to visit me, Mistress? I need . . . everything.’ He smiled.

She nodded. ‘So I can see,’ she said. Business straightened her back. ‘Shirts? Braes? Caps?’

‘Three of each?’ he asked. He sounded wistful.

‘I’ll wait on you this afternoon, my lord,’ she said with a quick bend of her knee.

‘Well, then,’ he said, towing his archer away by the ear. He walked back to the locals – boys were competing to comfort the Carter girls. Curiously, the Harndon boy was standing uncertainly by, taking no part. Mag flashed him a smile and went about her business.

Lissen Carak – Bad Tom

Tom Lachlan was sitting at his table in the garrison tower. It had become his office – his and Bent’s, because Bent was becoming his right hand.

He looked over his cards, and his ears picked up the unmistakable sound of spurred boots on the stairs.

He was on his feet, cards in a bag, and looking out an arrow slit at a party of boglins digging in the sun before the captain crested the stairs.

Low Sym was all but thrown across the table. He gave a long squeal as the captain released his hold on the man’s ear.

Tom sighed. ‘What’s the useless fuck done now?’ Low Sym was one of the company’s leading lights – in crime. ‘

There were a dozen boys coming up the steps behind the captain.

The captain indicated them with a shift of his eyes. ‘New recruits. Archers.’

Tom nodded. They were likely boys – he’d been eyeing them himself – yeomen’s sons, all big, well-fed lads with good shoulders and muscles. At their head was a boy who looked as if he might, in time, be as tall as Tom himself.

Tom nodded again, and as he rounded the table to greet the recruits he slammed his fist into Low Sym’s head. ‘Don’t move,’ he said.

‘I’ll be in my Commandery,’ the captain said.

Tom bowed, and turned to the boys. ‘Who here can shoot a bow?’ he asked.

‘There’s one other,’ the captain said. ‘Red Beve is lying in the courtyard with a busted noggin. Captain’s court tomorrow for both. Nice and public, Tom.’

Captain’s court was official – not a casual ten lashes and no questions asked situation, but for a crime for which the captain might have a man broken, or executed.

The captain nodded at the boys. ‘Tell the truth and do your best. We don’t take everyone, and your parents have to agree,’ he said.

Tom all but choked on laughter, but the Red Knight was good at this – he was a fine recruiter, while Tom had never been able to recruit anyone for anything unless he had a club in one hand and a whip in the other. We don’t take everyone. He allowed a laugh to escape his gut.

‘Let’s go down to the archery butts and see what you boys are made of,’ he said in what he thought was his kindliest voice. Then he leaned down to Sym. ‘Best lie still, laddy. Captain means to have your guts on a stick.’

Then he followed the boys down the steps to the courtyard.

The captain leaned on the railing of the hoardings that had been assembled outside his Commandery – in effect, giving him a covered and armoured porch that jutted from the walls four hundred feet above the plain. He was watching a party of men – captives? They had to be captives – under the direction of something horrible. They were digging trenches.

As far as his eyes could see, men and monsters were digging trenches. It was a maze – a pattern that he suspected was deliberate, and the scope of it was inhuman and both grotesque and awe-inspiring. The trenches were not in concentric rings, like those a professional soldier would have built – they clung to the ground, marking the edges of every contour like a tight fitting kirtle on a curvaceous woman.

Someone had planned it, and now drove it to execution. In one day.

He wanted Amicia. He wanted to talk to her, but he was too tired and the fortress was too full to find her. But he knew another way – if she was on her bridge. All it required was that he open his door a little. He reached to-

Enter the room. He waved at his tutor, Prudentia, and walked to the iron-bound door.

‘Don’t,’ she said.

She’d been telling him not to do things his entire life and, mostly, he ignored her.

‘You can’t trust her,’ Prudentia said. ‘And Thorn is right outside that door. He waiting for you.’

‘He has to sleep sometime.’

‘Stop!’