The Red Knight

‘The king is right here,’ Fitzroy said.

‘Dead?’ the foreign knight asked.

The captain shook his head. He could easily come to dislike this foreigner. Galles were superb knights but very difficult people.

His mind was wandering.

Don’t give him the king, said Harmodius.

The captain stiffened in shock. How did you do that? Prudentia never spoke to me outside the memory palace.

Do I look like Prudentia? Harmodius muttered. Do not give this man the king. Take him to the fortress, yourself. Take him to Amicia, with your own hands.

‘Give him to me,’ said the foreign knight. ‘I will see he is well guarded.’

‘He’s well-guarded right here,’ said Sir Richard.

Bad Tom leaned forward. ‘Sod off, son.’

The captain reached out a hand to steady Tom.

‘You need manners,’ said the mounted knight. ‘But for my charge, you would all be dead.’

Tom laughed. ‘All you did was to lower my body count, pipkin,’ he said.

They glared at each other.

The Prior waded over to them. ‘Ser Jean? Captal?’

De Vrailly backed his horse. ‘Messire.’

‘A litter for the king.’ He waved.

Other knights rode forward – there was the banner of the Earl of Towbray, and there was the Count of the Borders. They came in a rush, now that the king had been discovered. Towbray found the king’s squires and the Royal Standard, and raised it, covered in ichor.

There was a low cheer.

A long line of infantrymen came over the field of the dead. They had to pick their footing, and they weren’t quick about it. As they came, the captain and Michael got the king’s breast and back off, and got his hauberk up. Bad luck had slit a dozen rings – worse luck to receive a second blow that bent the fauld and penetrated the leg. There really was a lot of blood.

Do I have anything left?

You can stop the blood flow. But I’ve been squandering your power, keeping you alive, for a long time now. Amicia?

I’m right here.

The captain smiled, knelt, placed his hand on the king’s bare thigh when Michael peeled back his braes and his hose, and with no conscious effort he released Amicia’s power.

Harmodius did the actual casting.

It made the captain feel a little sick, as if he was three people.

You feel sick? The dead Magus laughed in his head.

And then the footmen of the Royal Guard were there – everywhere around them – and the king was lifted high, placed on a cloak across two spears . . . and he held onto the captain’s hand. So they walked, hand in hand, across the stricken field. It was the longest walk the captain had ever taken – the sun was beating down like a new foe, the insects descended like a plague, and the footing was impossible.

But eventually, they were free of the corpses and were climbing the long road to the fortress.

Soldiers stopped and bowed, or knelt. Men in the field had begun to sing the Te Deum, and its strains rose like the casting of a mighty phantasm from the fields below. The captain felt the king’s hot hand in his own, and tried not to think too much about it.

The Queen lay in the chapel – on the altar. She raised her head, and smiled.

The king released a sigh, as if he had been holding his breath.

The captain saw Amicia. She stood in the light of the window behind the altar. She appeared inhuman, a goddess of light and colour, and she was, to his sight, sparkling with power.

Christ. Look at her, boy.

The captain ignored the dead man.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her anyway.

She was healing each injured person brought to her. The power went into her as easily as breathing – she was drinking the unspent green from Thorn’s hammer blow, and from the sun streaming through the broken chapel window, and the well – taking all three streams of power and releasing it in a cloud of rainbow light so that soldier after soldier approached her, knelt, and arose healed. Most stumbled away and went to sleep in the arms of their comrades.

She passed her hands over the king as if he were any other soldier, any of the women wounded in the desperate defence of the courtyard, any of the children injured in the collapse of the West Tower – and he was healed.

And then she turned, and her eyes looked into his.

He couldn’t breathe.

He had the foolish impulse to kiss her.

She touched him. ‘You must open your powers, or I cannot heal you,’ she said. She gave him a smile. ‘You were not this powerful, a few days ago.’

He sighed. ‘Nor were you,’ he said.