He took her hand and kissed it – on the palm.
Her whole body reacted. She snatched the hand away, but she was suddenly warm. Her wrists tingled.
‘Oh!’ she said, and then backed away.
‘Give me but the smallest token, and I will guard the shrine of love wearing it as a gage,’ he said.
Emota had watched the older girls play this game. Holding his eyes, she untied the lace point on her left sleeve, and unlaced it, grommet by grommet. It was blue silk, made by her own hand, with a pretty silver point. She laid it across his palm. ‘Warm from my body,’ she said – shocked at her own daring, but she’d heard another of the Queen’s ladies use the phrase.
The Gallish knight flushed. ‘Ah – ma petite!’ he said. ‘I had no idea you were so practised in the game of love.’
Her heart was ripping along like a ship under full sail – she was overwhelmed, and at the same time that she felt like bursting with his attentions, she also wanted free of him. It was clingy, or sticky or merely—
His mouth descended towards hers, and she got a hand up, brushed his face lightly and ducked through his arms.
She ran.
Behind, she could hear him laugh. And no sooner was she free of him and a corridor away than she wanted him back. When she attended the Queen later, and they began the table arrangements for the Christmas feast, she glowed a little in her heart. And when the Queen cursed the perfidy of the Galles, Emota began to wonder.
Lonika – Duke Andronicus
Duke Andronicus looked at a table tiled to look like a chart of Thrake. ‘You say he’s east of Mons Draconis, at the edge of the Green Hills,’ he snarled. ‘Not on the coast to the east?’
Master Kronmir and Captain Dariusz, his master of scouts, stood before him. Dariusz kept glancing at the green-clad Thrakian with the traditional distrust of the scout for the spy. Seeing nothing on the other man’s face, he turned back to the Duke.
‘He’s got half the regiment of Vardariotes with him, my lord, and I’ve lost men.’ He stood stiffly, as soldiers do when forced to admit failure. ‘He passed over the mountains like a spring flood in full spate, and I can’t put men over the passes after him – they’ll be snapped up.’
Demetrius nodded. ‘So? Now the city is open to us by the coast road,’ he said.
The Duke scratched his beard. ‘Where is he going, do you think?’ He whirled and faced Kronmir. ‘And how could our special source be wrong?’
Kronmir shook his head. ‘He’s taken most of the guard troops – and some militia and stradiotes we lost in the fall.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s surprised us. Not much use in assigning blame over it.’
The Duke looked at his son. ‘How soon can we have a western army together?’ he asked. ‘As Master Kronmir says – let’s not trouble ourselves as to how we came to believe he wouldn’t leave the city, or that he’d turn east to the coast.’
Demetrius shook his head. ‘It’ll be ten days before we have enough force to take him.’
The Duke shook his head. ‘Make it five. And where does he get all this money? Christ Pantokrator, if the Emperor had this much ready silver, we’d never—’ He paused.
Demetrius looked at the maps, ‘He must be going for the fur caravans. That must be it. He’d have access to the Riding Officer’s reports. Someone’s talked. He may even know about the Galles.’
The men around the table looked at each other for as long as it took a winded man to draw a breath.
‘Demetrius – go. Take all your guards, Kronmir, Aeskepiles. Do whatever you have to keep them from getting to Osawa.’ The Duke made a face. ‘Mother of God. I took for granted that he wouldn’t march through Thrake. Kronmir, your palace report—’
‘What if he goes for the Emperor?’ Kronmir asked.
‘Should we kill the Emperor?’ Demetrius asked.
The Duke turned to Kronmir, and the two exchanged a long look.
‘No,’ Kronmir said. ‘That would, at this point, only make her stronger. But move him to the coast, so that he’s far from the scene of action.’
Albinkirk and the North Woods – Ser John Crayford
Ser Richard dismounted heavily and all but fell. When he walked from the mounting block in Albinkirk’s citadel’s main yard, he walked like an old man, with his left hand pressing against his backplate.
Ser John Crayford sat – fully armed – in his ‘hall’ with the Bishop of Albinkirk, two Hoek merchants, an Etruscan named Benevento Amato, and representatives of most of the fur trade companies in Alba. They all fell silent when Ser Richard entered.
Ser John stood. ‘More giants?’ he said, reaching for the mace that lay on the oak table.
Ser Richard shook his head. ‘Boggles this time,’ he spat. He collapsed into a chair brought by Ser John’s squire. ‘By the Lord’s grace, gentles. I offer my apologies for the smell.’
Ser John met Ser Richard’s eyes. ‘Any losses?’
Ser Richard shook his head. ‘We caught them well outside of the settlement area.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not the only knight who is tired. Ignore me, gentles. It was a small passage of arms, and we were victorious.’
The Bishop came over, placed a hand on him, and blessed him, and Ser Richard felt – something. Since being healed by Sister Amicia, he’d felt closer to God than he’d ever felt in his life, but . . .
‘The Bishop was just saying we must take a convoy into the mountains to take the year’s furs,’ Ser John said.
Messier Amato rose and bowed. ‘With all due respect to the church, my lords, I am not a rich man but I know this trade. My cousins are even now reaping the richest part of the trade at Mont Reale. But Ticondaga is an old centre for furs and other goods – Wild honey in particular.’
Ser John looked out the window. ‘Albinkirk and Lissen Carak receive most of that trade,’ he said.
‘Ah, but this year that will not be the case. War will push the furs back north. And all of us here will go broke.’ The Etruscan smiled. ‘But if you will help us with soldiers – this has been done in the past, my pater assured me – if you would be so very kind as to assist us—’
Ser John nodded slowly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Next item of business?’
The Bishop came and sat by Ser John. ‘I’d like you to reconsider, John.’
Ser John smiled a thin, don’t-fuck-with-me smile. ‘My lord Bishop, I’m quite positive that you know a fair shot of theology and perhaps some new learning, too. But right now, in case you aren’t paying attention, we’re fighting something close to a war. If the King hadn’t sent half the court up here to wet their lances, we’d be in a sore straight. As it is, look at Ser Richard. Look at me. We’re a-horse every day.’
The Bishop nodded. ‘And you are uniformly victorious.’ He nodded. ‘I’d go so far as to say that this is more like a drill for your knights than a war.’
Ser Richard made himself sit up. ‘By God, Bishop – fighting boggles is like child’s play, but only until one gets its mandibles in behind your knee.’
The Bishop spread his thin hands. ‘I mean no offence. But hear me. This town needs trade to live. Without that trade, the small farmers have no reason to farm and no town to sell their produce. You’ve taxed the foreign merchants to pay for new walls and new defences and they’ve paid. Now they need guards to go into the Adnacrags.’
‘It’s a month too late,’ Ser John said flatly.
Amato spread his hands. ‘Must I beg, ser knight? The ground is frozen, there’s a little snow, and with good equipment and brave men we can be at Ticondaga in two weeks.’
‘No,’ said Ser John. But he had less conviction in his voice.
Men now prayed in the ferry chapel, reroofed. The ferry itself had a small fort on either side, with walls higher than a Ruk could scale, and signal towers. The work was all done in wood from the destruction wrought by the Ruk on the nearby forests, and the posts were built by the Captain of Albinkirk’s archers.
As soon as they had the two forts finished there
was a queue of men to man the ferry, and Ser John made it a military position and raised the toll. That money now went to the town.
He garrisoned the ferry forts, and left detachments of archers at six manor houses along the valley of the Cohocton, each with a knight or a senior squire, including Middlehill.
Helewise stood in the yard looking at Lord Wimarc. ‘He’s awfully young. Wouldn’t you rather stay and help me hold my house yourself, old man?’
Ser John leaned down and took one of her hands, and she blushed. ‘For shame – my daughter is watching. And what she sees from me is what she’ll do.’
‘I’d love to stay and help you hold this house,’ he said. ‘But I’m off north to Ticondaga. The Bishop convinced me it was my duty.’
‘A pox on him, then.’ She was going to cry.
He smiled. ‘I wonder if you’d marry me. When I come back.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re just saying that.’
‘Well, try it on your daughter. Listen, sweet – I must away. Wimarc’s a good lad. If he says run for the town, you do that.’ He bowed.
‘I did last time, didn’t I?’ she answered, pertly enough. She stuck her chin in the air and kept being brave until he was out the gate.
Phillippa came and stood by her mother. ‘He fancies you, Mama,’ she said, with an air of troubled wonder.
Helewise laughed aloud. ‘That he does, ma petite. He just offered to marry me.’
Phillippa watched the broad steel back riding away. ‘But he’s so old!’ she said.
Ser John met Sister Amicia on the road, and they both dismounted. She had two other sisters with her and a pair of large men with axes. She grinned. ‘I had what you might call a “passage of arms” and decided that a couple of large lads with axes were going to be easy on my conscience,’ she admitted. ‘Boggles. More than I was really ready to handle.’
He nodded, shook hands with the young men, who stammered and shifted their weight and looked nervous, and bowed to the two nuns.
‘Thanks for the garrison at the ford,’ she added. ‘I’ve put far too much on Helewise, and I’m eating Middlehill Manor out of house and home.’
‘I have offered to marry her,’ Ser John said.
Amicia grinned. ‘Good! It will make her happy, and help Phillippa. I love it when people are happy.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I hear dark things from the court,’ she said. ‘I’m worried for the King and Queen.’
Ser John shrugged. ‘I can’t lift my eyes off the problem at hand,’ he said. ‘It is all I can do to protect this place. And now I’m off to the Adnacrags.’
‘The court’s troubles are coming here,’ Sister Amicia said. ‘The Queen’s best friend – Lady Mary – is coming to Lissen Carak. She’s been sent from the court, and she doesn’t want to go home to her father’s lands out west. She’s coming to stay with us.’ She shrugged. ‘The price of my celebrity, I think,’ she said.
‘Lady Mary? Hard Heart herself?’ Ser John whistled. ‘Here? Sweet Christ, my knights will all kill themselves and each other in a flood of glory. Best I get them on the trail.’ He smiled. But the lines around his eyes and his mouth suggested that she’d added to his burdens.
‘You are worried,’ she said, somewhat uselessly.
He shrugged. ‘In the spring, we fought the Wild, and bested them.’ He gave her a wry smile and started walking back to his horse. ‘I thought we’d won. I assumed we’d have time to recover. Now I think it was merely the first skirmish.’ He looked at her, and said, his voice very low, ‘Can you feel him?’ he paused. ‘Thorn?’
She paled, and then laughed unsteadily. ‘Just for a moment, I thought you meant someone else. Yes, I can feel him – every moment. He thinks of us often.’ She looked at the older knight, trying to decide how much to tell him. ‘He has sent most of the things your knights are so busy killing. Is that what you wanted to know?’
Ser John shook his head. ‘No – I mean, I assumed as much, sister. But I would like to know why? If he was, say, the lord of a nearby town – or the King of Galle – I could send him a herald, protest his war, and ask what might allow us to make peace. What does he want?’
Amicia was playing with the crisp linen of her wimple. ‘As with most things, Ser John, it is complicated. And I see only through a glass darkly, and anything I say is only my own inference and deduction. But . . .’
She actually bit her lip.
‘Try me,’ said Ser John.
She leaned against her donkey’s withers and the animal shifted and grunted. ‘I don’t think he knows himself,’ she said. ‘And worse yet, I think he’s under the control of something else.’
Ser John kissed her ring and nodded. ‘Thank God,’ he said, ‘I don’t even know what that means. So I’ll just go back to killing boggles. Pissing on fires. That sort of thing.’
‘You are taking a convoy to Ticondaga?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Ser John.
She looked around. ‘May I come?’ she asked. ‘I have a small matter to look into. And if you go so far north, you will need me.’
He didn’t have to think that over. ‘Come and welcome, sister.’
She laughed and he laughed with her, and they went their way.
The fur convoy left for the north after the sabbath. Ser John took ten lances and left Ser Richard to command Albinkirk. There were twenty heavy wagons in his convoy, all full of trade goods – some for Outwallers, to which he turned a blind eye, and some for the Earl and his people.
For fifteen leagues, they travelled on roads – good, for the first day. The second day, the roads began to narrow, and when they made camp thirty leagues north of Albinkirk in the foothills of the Adnacrags, on the south side of the West Kinatha ford, they were far enough into the Wild to listen to the wild wolves howl, to see eyes around their fires when the early darkness fell, to fear every noise on sentry duty, and to wear full harness on watch.
The West Kinatha roared down out of the High Peaks, full of new snow, and in the morning the younger men, already hesitant to leave warm blankets and big fires, stared with loathing at the rapid flow of icy water and the distant, snow-capped mountains.
Sister Amicia laughed at them, and her very graceful derision moved them faster than Ser John’s curses.
Ser John got them all together, and their breath rose like the steam from their cauldrons of porridge. ‘Listen up! Crossing a river in winter is ten times as dangerous as facing a charging boggle. If you fall in you could die. If you get your feet wet and you don’t change your stockings and hose then you’ll be uncomfortable for an hour, and then a little cold, and then very cold indeed – and then it can be bad. Take precautions. Keep your spares dry, and we’ll keep fires on this bank until the last man is across. Be wary – and take as good care of your horse as of yourself.’ He looked around. They seemed suitably awed.
His two advance lances crossed first – cleared a space by riding about in the dead grass of an old deer lie, and waved their success. Ser John put a line of experienced horsemen upstream to break the current for the greener men, and the nuns, and he and four veteran knights from Harndon rode into the rapids just south of the ford to catch the unlucky sod who went down in the rapid flow.
The wagons began to roll at full light, and an hour later the last supply horse was across, and the men in the river allowed their patient horses to pick their way over – then dismounted and rubbed their mounts down, drying them carefully before changing their own hose.
By the time nonnes would have been sounding in a monastery, they were across, and his squire, Jamie, rode up by him. The boy was grinning. ‘That went well, didn’t it, my lord?’ he said. ‘We’re through the ford!’
‘Aye,’ said Ser John. ‘Now we’re in the Wild. With a winter river between us and safety.’
Northern Morea – The Red Knight
The Red Knight waved goodbye to most of his army at sunset and headed east into the low, wooded hills, snow-dusted and cold. He took Gelfred and the sco
uts and a handful of his household, Count Zakje and two dozen Vadariotes.
He handed over command to Bad Tom and Ser Jehan with a casual wave of the hand. ‘We know Demetrius and his cavalry are somewhere east of us.’ He grinned. Gelfred smiled, too, and glanced at the hawk on his wrist. ‘I intend to make contact with the Thrakians and brush them back.’
‘Meaning you get a fight and we don’t,’ Tom said. ‘Take me with you.’
The Duke shrugged. He wore only his breast- and backplate and his beautiful gauntlets and a steel cap with an aventail and a white wool hood. ‘You keep everyone warm, Tom. I’ll be back in a day.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better to ride by daylight?’ Ser Jehan asked.
The Duke nodded. ‘Yes. But also no. A demain, mes braves!’ he said, and sixty mounted men leading sixty spare horses trotted off into the snow-covered hills.
The next morning, Mount Draconis rose to the west, a near-perfect cone, covered in snow, almost bare of trees. At their feet, the icy rocks of the Meander represented a barrier to advancing further. The arrival of an Imperial messenger bird at first light occasioned the impromptu officer’s call.
‘How many times do we have to cross this fucking river?’ muttered Bad Tom. He was cold and tired and deeply frustrated by the lack of fighting. The night had been long, the wolves had howled, and already the growing feeling was that they should turn back. Six men had frostbite.
Ser Thomas sat with Ser Jehan and Ser Alison. Their horses were head to head, and their breath rose like smoke. Ser Gerald Random and Ser Bescanon sat off to one side, with the Imperial messenger.
Jehan looked at the Imperial messenger, an attractive young woman in black and white furs holding the newly arrived bird on her wrist. ‘Where do they find them?’ he asked wistfully.
Ser Milus laughed. ‘Most attractive people, Moreans. But Christ, who would send a girl that young with an army?’
Bad Tom was rereading the message, sounding out the words. Reading was not his strongest suit.
Ser Alison leaned over and read aloud.