Morgan Mortirmir, in borrowed armour, ran three courses with Ser Francis Atcourt, scoring on the older knight’s helm in the first pass, exchanging shattered lances on the second, and being unhorsed on the third. Out of practice, he fell badly.
The twenty prisoners sat alone and untended in solitary cells beneath the palace. They were not tortured on the feast of Saint George. They were merely kept awake.
Kronmir had seen the wagon coming back into the city, and he knew what that meant.
He sat thoughtfully with his fingers steepled for some time. He contemplated how long it would take for the foreigners to break his agent, and what that agent could tell them. He reviewed his message system, and assured himself from his code book that he knew the ‘cease all activity’ messages for his three most important agents. Then, when his inn had fallen quiet, and even the lowliest serving maids were asleep, he emptied his room, packed his valise, and pondered the deaths of the innkeeper, his wife, and the young woman Kronmir had slept with from time to time. Killing the three of them would leave the enemy with no witnesses to his presence, but he disliked such waste and he had his own rules. He smiled wryly and admitted to himself that he liked the girl and he couldn’t really muster the sang froid to kill her. Instead, he carefully blocked the chimney in the inn’s common room with flammables and relaid the fire for morning, taking care to relay it exactly the way the night maid had put it down.
He walked past Nianna’s bordello and left a white cross in chalk on the door of the saddler’s across the street. He walked through the deserted streets to the slums by the warehouses on the eastern shore, and left a lamda inside a circle in white chalk on a door across the street from a man who was still recovering from his wounds – the captain of the professional assassins he’d hired from Etrusca, who’d almost died storming the palace.
Then he sat in a waterfront soup house for an hour, watching his back trail, before walking uphill to the old aqueduct, removing a stone, and leaving forty silver leopards in a bag in the gap behind it. He replaced the stone, walked down the hill, and stuck a silver pin into the olive tree that stood in the centre of a tiny square near the assassin’s house. He placed the pin so that it was very hard to see – but easy to find if a man leaned casually against the tree to prise a stone from his shoe.
Then he walked along the sea wall and left two more lamda-in-circle signs tucked in among the graffiti of a hundred generations.
He sat on the wall and waited to see if he had been followed. He walked right down his back trail – bad practice, but he was in a hurry and the sun would be up soon. Then he went to the drop where his Navy Yard contact left his messages – badly spelled, scrawled on leather, rolled up and fitted inside an abandoned clay water pipe from a system half a thousand years old. Kronmir knelt in the dark, felt the presence of leather, and nodded. He withdrew the report, put it in his valise, then put a bag of gold in its place, sealed the pipe, and sketched a broad black ‘X’ in charcoal across it.
He had other agents, but they could rot or be captured. None of them had ever seen him – nor had they ever provided him with anything worth having. And he didn’t think the butcher knew they existed.
Then he walked across the city to the western walls, where the lampmaker’s guild had failed for years to keep the walls in good repair. His rope – cunningly woven of grey and brown horsehair – was right where he wanted it to be. He slipped over the wall, and climbed the ditch, cursing middle age and the sword at his side. He climbed the outer wall at its most ruinous point and jumped down the far side, walked half a league across the fields to a farm, and stole a horse.
The taken wagon had told Kronmir a great deal. It told him that the Red Knight controlled access to the mountains to the north. He rode west, not north, into the hills.
Two days after the feast of Saint George, the Scholae went to two houses in the city. Both of them were empty, and the inn they had intended to raid was found to have burned to the ground. The inn staff had gone to stay with relatives.
The Duke rode through the Navy Yard gates with a handful of armoured men-at-arms led by Francis Atcourt. At his side rode an unarmoured man, who sat and watched the work of the yard with professional admiration – and some obvious discomfort.
The Duke dismounted and went into the main building, so old that it was built of the same red and yellow brick as the main walls of the city. ‘Look at everything,’ he said casually to the unarmoured man.
‘Who is he?’ asked the master shipwright, William Mortice of Harndon. He’d arrived two weeks before, overland.
The Duke smiled. ‘Master Mortice, he is none other than the Mighty and Puissand Lord Ernst Handalo of Venike.’ The Duke nodded.
‘He’ll burn my pretty sharks on their stocks!’ Mortice said, rising.
‘No, no. He’ll go home and tell his city to ally itself with us.’
Sparrow was still getting used to the Red Knight and to Liviapolis. ‘Us? Who is “us”? Alba? Nova Terra? The Empire?’
‘You and me and the new navy,’ the Duke said, swirling wine in his cup and adding something from a flask.
An hour later, in the biting wind on the sea wall, Handalo stood with his short cape whipping behind him. He had to shout to be heard. ‘You can’t sustain the expense!’ he roared. ‘Not without trade and a merchant fleet.’
‘I agree!’ roared the Duke.
‘And winter is here!’ shouted Handalo. ‘It would be insane to put to sea this late in the year.’
‘I agree!’ roared the Duke.
‘Then why don’t you just buy us off and stop this?’ Handalo said.
The Duke smiled. ‘Every archer in my company carries two bowstrings in a small waxed pouch. When they are inspected, the master archers check for them. Because once, I was caught unprespared by a loss of bowstrings.’
Handalo raised an eyebrow.
The Duke looked out over the sea. ‘I could make a mercantile agreement with you right here, messire. But in three years or less, it would be . . . inconvenieint for you. And you would abrogate it – or your successor would.’ He met the Etruscan’s eye. ‘I can defeat you militarily, but not for long. Am I correct?’
Handalo nodded. ‘You have a good head.’
‘Both bowstrings. I build a fleet and then I’ll offer a trade agreement, and you and the Genuans will have every reason to keep it.’ The Duke shrugged.
‘The princess is lucky to have you,’ the Venike captain said.
The Duke shook his head. ‘The Emperor is lucky to have me,’ he said.
Two weeks later, the first Morean galley built in the city in twenty years slipped down the ancient stone slipway and splashed stern first into the ocean, watched by the Etruscan squadron from across the strait. The next day the captured Etruscan galley was repaired, and by week’s end the new Imperial Navy had four hulls in the water.
There followed the first winter storm, a vicious display of nature’s power over water, when all work in the yard had to be halted and a small fortune in lumber, left uncovered, was blown into the sea and lost. The new Imperial ships uncrossed their yards and were stored in covered ship sheds – sheds built a thousand years before.
The Eturcans didn’t have thousand-year-old stone ship sheds, so they had to strip their ships, turn them over, and store them under temporary shelters for the winter. Morea got snow and ice despite its warmer clime and the warm current off the straits, and winter was brutal for galleys.
Two days after the storm, the Etruscans had all their ships stowed safely away. They could only watch in horror in the cold and watery sunlight, as the new Imperial squadron put to sea and cruised to the mouth of the gulf unopposed. The Imperial fleet returned from a day at sea with a trio of great Alban round ships. As there was no blockade, the Alban ships docked without danger, packed to the gunwales with wool, leather and other Alban wares, and a hundred grateful merchants met the Alban traders on the docks. Meanwhile the Imperial ships dashed across the straight under the
command of the Megas Ducas, landed marines, and burned the whole Etruscan squadron in their sheds.
Before the fires were out, Ser Ernst Handalo led a deputation of the Merchanter League to the palace from which he had so recently been released. That afternoon, the Etruscans abandoned their alliance with Duke Andronicus and signed a peace with Princess Irene and her father, the Emperor, and a document demanding that ‘The traitorous usurper previously known as the Duke of Thrake’ immediately restore the Emperor to his throne. They paid an indemnity and their Podesta signed a set of articles guaranteeing their tax rate – a rate on which they made a sizeable initial payment. All of the Etruscan officers were released.
The Imperial Army continued to drill. Every day, more of the local stradiotes reported. And every day, a few more merchant ships appeared in the gulf – all from Alba. The round ships were at less risk in the late autumn than galleys. But someone was taking a risk nonetheless.
On the next Monday, the whole of the Imperial Army formed on the Field of Ares; almost a thousand of the company, almost five hundred Scholae, three hundred Nordikans, and as many Vardariotes with nearly a thousand Tagmatic infantry from the city and four hundred stradiotes cavalry from the countryside. Most of the army was clothed in white wool – fresh, new Alban wool, heavy as armour, the colour of snow. The new winter gowns were the products of feverish sewing by every tailor and sempter in Liviapolis.
Ser Gerald Random sat on a horse with the Red Knight and his staff and watched them. He shook his head in wonder. ‘You have your own army!’ he said.
‘You should know,’ the Red Knight said. ‘You’re paying them.’ He smiled. ‘And bringing the wool.’
Random laughed with all the knights. ‘You realise that if this doesn’t work, I’ll be broken – I have, in effect, risked the entirety of my fortune on you.’
The Red Knight looked over his army with satisfaction. ‘It looks like a good bet so far,’ he said. He looked around. ‘The Etruscan indemnity should have paid your bills.’
‘But she spent it elsewhere,’ Random said.
The Red Knight shrugged.
Random glared. ‘While you continue to spend money like a drunken sailor in a whorehouse.’
The Red Knight shrugged again. ‘You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy skill with weapons, bravery, and fine equipment.’ He scratched his beard. ‘They aren’t cheap.’ And he looked back at the merchant. ‘Anyway, you are made of money. Why will this break you?’
‘I agreed to manage the Queen’s tournament. That reminds me – here’s your official invitation. I’m to tell you to your face that you are required, as a knight and a gentleman, to open it and answer her. What happened to the others?’ Random was playing with his reins and trying to judge how much the lack of a foot was going to change his balance if he rode hard.
‘I ignored them.’ The Red Knight opened the scroll tube, unrolled the scroll, and a small working took place and flew off in the form of a tiny dove which hovered like a white hummingbird.
The Queen is gaining in skill, Harmodius said.
‘You’ve been knighted, and now you are in charge of the Royal Tournament?’ the Red Knight asked.
Gerald nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And the cost is staggering?’ the Red Knight asked.
Random grimaced. ‘Yes.’
‘And you are fronting the money,’ the Red Knight continued.
Random shrugged. ‘She’s the Queen. The King knighted me.’ He grinned. ‘I love a good tournament,’ he added.
The Red Knight glared at him. ‘And yet, despite that, you came here and risked your fortune to pay my bills.’
Random met his eyes squarely. ‘That’s right, Captain.’
The Red Knight looked at Ser Michael. ‘I think that I’m learning the meaning of largesse from a merchant,’ he said.
‘I plan to joust, at the tournament,’ Random said. ‘I’ll take it out of you in lessons.’
The Red Knight looked at the hovering dove. ‘I will attend, with all my knights, fair Queen,’ he said formally.
The little dove bobbed, and flew away.
The Red Knight – the Megas Ducas, the Duke of Thrake, Gabriel Muriens – turned his horse and made it rear slightly, and raised his baton. Every eye followed him.
‘Now let’s show this so-called Duke Andronicus how to make war,’ he said.
Chapter Twelve
Lutece, Galle – The King of Galle and his Horse
The Seneschal d’Abblemont tapped a parchment scroll against the great oak table for attention, and the war council gradually came to order.
Tancred Guisarme, the Royal Constable, was not in his magnificent dragon armour, but wore a plain brigandine covered in deerhide and a pair of Etrucan steel arms; Steilker, the Master of the King’s Crossbowman, still wore his black armour with gold lettering praising God; Vasilli, the architect of the King’s castles, wore only a maille shirt. Ser Eustace de Ribeaumont, one of the Marshals of the realm and once a famous mercenary, wore black armour with golden edges and bronze maille – very elegant. Abblemont himself wore his plain Etruscan white harness. The only unarmoured man was Messire Ciamberi, a man whose role on the council was almost always left undiscussed.
D’Abblemont waved at his secretary, and the man began to read off a scroll.
Item — The Sieur de Cavalli and four hundred lances have passed from the service of Genua and are now available for employ.
Item — The Senate and Council of Ten of Venike have come to terms with the Emperor and consequently the order for sixty galleys placed to the Arsenal. The man looked up.
D’Abblemont nodded. ‘I have a note from our last meeting – it was the largest order they have ever placed, eh?’
Vasilli fingered his beard. ‘And now cancelled. A lot of out of work shipwrights.’
‘Mayhap the Emperor can employ them,’ Abblemont quipped and they all laughed.
‘And is our man in place to trim the Emperor’s feathers?’ asked the Constable.
D’Abblemonth looked around. He waved at his secretary to sit. ‘Yes. If my sense of the timing is correct, he should be ready to storm Osawa today or tomorrow. I could be off by as much as a week.’
The Constable looked pained. He looked around like a guilty child and muttered, ‘Before the Church got so high and mighty about hermeticism, we used to be able to communicate with our – missions.’
Every head turned to Messire Ciamberi, who raised both eyebrows in mock surprise.
‘My lords – if anyone were to practise such heresy, I would have to remind you that a communication covering a thousand leagues and penetrating the Wild would require more power than—’ He shrugged. ‘Than the pagan ancients ever mustered.’
Abblemont waved a hand. ‘I trust that in this case, our agent is on our timetable.’
Men nodded. The Constable shuffled on his seat. ‘Then why are we here?’ he asked.
Abblemont tossed the parchment in his hand onto the table. ‘The Count of Arelat has sent a cartel to the King, challenging him to single combat.’
Guisarme winced. ‘Bound to happen. Of course, the old Count will eat the King up like a snack – one of the best lances in the world.’
Abblemont shook his head. If the subject pained him – and it did – he hid his complete disgust well. ‘The King will not fight,’ he said.
All the men startled. ‘This is Galle!’ de Ribeaumont said. ‘He has to fight.’
Abblemont sighed. ‘Gentlemen, the King sees in this challenge an obvious ploy by the Count to re-establish the lapsed kingdom of Arelat. Defeat of the King in single combat would probably be construed that way in the Arela – don’t you agree?’
‘Christ, spare me another mountain campaign,’ Steilker said.
It was clear from their faces that neither of the knights approved.
‘Wait until de Vrailly hears that the King refused a challenge,’ de Ribeaumont said.
There was silence.
Abblem
ont shook his head. ‘That’s not really the core of the difficulty,’ he said and smoothed out the parchment. ‘You see, while sending us a cartel of defiance, the Count has also sent us a detailed description of a skirmish – or rather, a series of skirmishes – in which his men-at-arms seem to have faced irks.’
‘Preposterous,’ said de Ribeaumont. ‘Now I think that our young King has a head on his shoulders. The Count de Sartre is merely using this absurd pretext to rally troops. And besides, Abblemont, did you not give us your word that your niece was at fault in the little contretemps with the King?’
Abblemont didn’t wriggle. His face retained the bland, affable look that the Horse wore at all times. ‘This matter is delicate,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps most delicate is this piece of evidence.’
At his wave, a servant opened a sack and put a severed head on the table. It reeked of rot.
It was, palpably, an irk, fangs and all.
Messire Ciamberi leaned forward. ‘Could it be faked?’ he asked.
Steilker shook his head. ‘Holy fuck.’
Gusisarme leaned forward. ‘I would hate to take you for a liar, my friend. But the Queen tells a different tale. She says that the little chit was innocent as a saint. In which case, the Count is in the right – isn’t he?’ The Constable had never been an ally of the King’s Horse. ‘He sends this head to prove he’s loyal. And he is. Isn’t he?’
Abblemont ignored the Constable’s tone. ‘It seems to me that whether the Count is loyal or not, we need to be ready in the spring with an army.’
De Ribeaumont leaned forward. ‘My lords! If we field an army in the south – that’s no men for de Vrailly and precious little for our effort in Nova Terra’s northlands.’
‘Money?’ asked the Constable.
Abblemont shrugged. ‘Not enough to buy a second army. Not even enough, I think, to pay Cavalli’s lances.’
Steilker smiled. ‘Ah, but my lords, once he’s on a ship for the Nova Terra, we don’t ever have to pay him again.’