The Red Knight

The constant bickering, the drunken accusations. The family fighting.

‘Good Christ, I might as well go find a cursed monster and kill it,’ he said aloud. Going home meant returning to a life of constant warfare – in the field against the daemons, and in the hall against his father. And his brothers.

I killed my brother.

‘They can have it,’ he said.

He’d been sent south, the young hero, to win a bride at court. To raise the family in the estimation of the king.

Another of his father’s brilliant plans.

He had fallen in love, but not with a woman. Rather, he’d fallen in love with women. And the court. Music. Card games. Dice. Good wine and wit. Dancing.

Strathnith wasn’t going to offer any of those things. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it. In retrospect, maybe his loathsome brother had a point.

His mother-

He banished the thought.

‘Lorica, m’lord,’ Adam sang out. ‘Shall I find us an inn?’

The idea of an inn helped douse his moment of self-doubt. Inns – good ones – were like miniature courts. A little rougher, a little more home-spun. Gawin smiled.

‘The best one,’ he said.

Adam grinned, touched his spurs to his horse, and rode off into the setting sun. Drink. And maybe a girl. He thought fleetingly of Lady Mary, who so obviously loved him. A beautiful body, and, he had to admit, a fine wit. And the daughter of the Count. She was a fine catch.

He shrugged.

The sign of the Two Lions was an old inn built on the foundation of an Archaic cavalry barracks, and it looked like a fortress; it had its own curtain wall, separate from Lorica’s town wall, and it had a tower in the north-east corner where any soldier could see the original gate had been. Built against the tower was a massive building of white plaster and heavy black beams, with a hipped thatch roof with expensive copper sheathing around the chimneys; glass windows opened onto the porches that ran all along the front and sunlit side, and four massive chimneys, all new masonry, rose out of the roof.

It was like a piece of the Palace of Harndon brought into the countryside. Lorica was an important town, and the Two Lions was an important inn.

Adam appeared to hold his horse. ‘A king’s knight is very welcome here,’ he said through his grin. Adam liked to serve a great man – it rubbed off. Especially forty leagues north of the city.

A prosperous man, razor thin, wearing a fine woollen hood lined in silk and edged with silver crosses and a fur band, swept off the last and bowed to the ground. ‘Edard Blodget, m’lord. At your service. I won’t call my inn humble – it’s the best inn on the Highway. But I do like to see the king’s knights.’

Gawin was startled to see a commoner so well dressed and so frankly spoken – startled, but not displeased. He returned the bow, all the way to the ground. ‘Ser Gawin Murien,’ he said. ‘Knighthood doesn’t necessarily make a man rich, Master Blodget. May I enquire – ?’

Master Blodget gave a tight lipped smile. ‘Your own room for a silver leopard. Share with your squires for two cats more.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I can make it cheaper, m’lord, but it will be in a common room.’

Gawin mentally reviewed his purse. He had a good memory, well-trained, and so he could almost literally see the contents – four silver leopards and a dozen heavy copper cats. And gleaming among them, a pair of rose nobles, solid gold, worth twenty leopards apiece. Not a fortune, by any means, but enough that he needn’t stint on his first night on the road, or on the second.

‘Adam will take care of it, then. I would prefer we were all in a room. With a window, if that’s not too much to ask?’

‘Clean linen, window, well-water, and stabling for three horses. The pack horse will cost another half a cat.’ Blodget shrugged, as if such petty amounts were beneath him, which they probably were. The Two Lions was at least a third of the size of the massive fortress of Strathnith, and was probably worth – Gawin tried to do the mathematics in his head – wished for his tutor – and finally arrived at a figure that had to be recklessly wrong.

‘I’m flattered you came to greet me in person,’ Gawin said with another bow.

Blodget grinned from ear to ear.

Another thing I learned at court – men like to be flattered just as much as ladies, Gawin thought.

‘I have a group of singers tonight, m’lord – on their way to court, or so they hope. Will you join us for dinner in the common room? It ain’t a great hall – but it’s not bad. And we’d be honoured to have you sit with us.’

Of course, I’m as fond of flattery as the next man.

‘We will join you for dinner and music,’ he said with a slight bow.

‘Evensong at Saint Eustachios. You’ll hear the bell,’ the innkeeper said. ‘Dinner follows the service directly.’

Harndon City – Edward

Master Pyle appeared in the yard after evensong and asked for a volunteer.