The Red Knight

Ser John walked over to his latest squire, young Harold, and got his visor lifted and his helmet removed. He was suddenly ashamed of his armour – brown on many surfaces, or at least the mail was. His cote armour was covered in what had once been good velvet. How long ago had that been?

‘Clean that mail,’ he said to Harold. The boy winced, which suited Ser John’s mood well. ‘Clean the helmet, and find me an armourer. I want this recovered in new cloth.’

‘Yes, Ser John.’ The boy didn’t meet his eye. Lugging armour around the Lower Town would be no easy task.

Ser John got his gauntlets off and walked across the courtyard to the guard room. There were two men – prosperous men; wool cotes, proper hose; one in all the greys of local wool, one in a dark red cote.

‘Gentlemen?’ he asked. ‘Pardon my armour.’

The man in the dark red cote stood forward. ‘Ser John? I’m Will Flodden and this is my cousin John. We have farms on the Lissen Carak road.’

Ser John relaxed. This was not a complaint about one of his garrison soldiers.

‘Go on,’ he said, cheerfully.

‘I kilt an irk, m’lord,’ said the one called John. His voice shook when he said it.

Ser John had been a number of places. He knew men, and he knew the Wild. ‘Really?’ he said. He doubted it, instinctively.

‘Aye,’ said the farmer. He was defensive, and he looked at his cousin for support. ‘There was tre of ’em. Crossing my fields.’ He hugged himself. ‘An’ one loosed at me. I ran for ta’ house, an’ picked up me latchet and let fly. An’ tey ran.’

Ser John sat a little too suddenly. Age and armour were not a good mix.

Will Flodden sighed. ‘Just show it to him.’ He seemed impatient – a farmer who wanted to get back to his farm.

Before he even undid the string securing the sack, Ser John knew what he was going to see. But it all seemed to take a long time. The string unwinding, the upending of the sack. The thing in the sack had stuck to the coarse fabric.

For as long as it took, he could tell himself that the man was wrong. He’d killed an animal. A boar with an odd head, or some such.

But twenty years before Ser John had stood his ground with thousands of other men against a charge of ten thousand irks. He remembered it too damned well.

‘Jesus wept. Christe and the Virgin stand with us,’ he said.

It was an irk, its handsome head somehow smaller and made ghastly having been severed from its sinuous body.

‘Where, exactly?’ he demanded. And turning, he ignored Tom Lickspittle, who was a useless tit in a crisis. ‘Clarkson! Sound the alarm and get me the mayor.’

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

Patience had never been the captain’s greatest virtue, and he paced the great hall of the convent, up and back, up and back, his anger ebbing and flowing as he gained and lost control of himself. He suspected that the Abbess was keeping him waiting on purpose; he understood her motives, he read her desire to humble him and keep him off guard; and despite knowing that he was angry, and thus off guard.

Gradually, frustration gave way to boredom.

He had time to note that the stained glass of the windows in the clerestory had missing panels – some replaced in clear glass, and some in horn, and one in weathered bronze. The bright sunlight outside, the first true sign of spring, made the rich reds and blues of the glass glow, but the missing panes were cast into sharp contrast – the horn was too dull, the clear glass too bright, the metal almost black and sinister.

He stared at the window depicting the convent’s patron saint, Thomas, and his martyrdom, for some time.

And then boredom and annoyance broke his meditation and he began to pace again.

His second bout of boredom was lightened by the arrival of two nuns in the grey habit of the order, but they had their kirtles on, open at the neck and with their sleeves rolled up. Both had heavy gloves on, tanned faces, and they bore an eagle on a perch between them.

An eagle.

Both of them bowed politely to the captain and left him with the bird.

The captain waited until they were clear of the hall and then walked over to the bird, a dark golden brown with the dusting of lighter colour that marked a fully mature bird.

‘Maybe a little too fully mature, eh, old boy?’ he said to the bird, who turned his hooded head to the sound of the voice, opened his beak, and said ‘Raawwk!’ in a voice loud enough to command armies.

The bird’s jesses were absolutely plain where the captain, who had been brought up with rich and valuable birds, would have expected to see embroidery and gold leaf. This was a Ferlander Eagle, a bird worth-

– worth the whole value of the captain’s white harness, which was worth quite a bit.

The eagle was the size of his entire upper body, larger than any bird his father – the captain sneered internally at the thought of the man – had ever owned.

‘Raaaawk!’ the bird screamed.