‘No?’ he asked.
‘Do you question me?’ she asked, and felt the root of her being and the foundation of her love melt like wax in a fire.
He sat up. ‘We should not have this conversation. Not now,’ he said carefully.
She sat up beside him. She found a taper, leaning across him so that, quite deliberately, her breasts trailed across his chest. She conjured the taper to light and set it in a small stick so that she could see his eyes.
He looked like a wounded animal.
Tears welled up, but she fought them, because something told her that she would only have this one chance to convince him they had a child before he would armour himself away – the bluff King, untouchable.
‘Love, look at my tummy. This is me. I would never lie with another – nor would I quicken unless I chose to.’ She leaned close. ‘Think of who I am. What I am.’
‘I cannot make a child. I am – cursed.’ He sobbed the last word.
She put a hand on his chest and he didn’t resist. ‘Sweet, I have power. I am as God made me. And I think – I think that I have overcome your curse.’ She smiled. ‘With God’s help, and the novice’s.’
‘Not my curse!’ he groaned.
‘Whose, then?’ she asked.
He shook his head and would not meet her eyes.
‘Husband, when the belle soeur worked her will on us – and made us whole—’ She paused, remembering the moment, and trying to grasp a little of the glory she had felt. The sense of release. She kissed him. ‘She cracked your curse, or shattered it. I can feel this.’
The King put his head on her chest. ‘If only you might be right,’ he said.
He fell asleep, and she lay awake, running her hand over his chest and trying to find the jagged ends of the curse, but the breaking had happened too long before, and she felt only the edge of the wound that the curse left in the world.
Later he awoke, and they made love.
And when she awoke with him, it was a day nearer Christmas, and she thought that perhaps everything would be healed.
A hundred rooms away, the Sieur de Rohan laid Lady Emota on a bed, and she sighed.
‘It is sin,’ she said. She pushed him away. ‘Can’t you just kiss me?’
‘What sin, when two lovers make one soul?’ he asked. He ran a tongue lightly across the top of her exposed breast, and she clenched her hands on his shoulders, which were hard with muscle – and he slid into the bed next to her, warm and solid and smelling only of cinnamon and cloves.
She kissed him, and breathed in the scent of him. And let his hands roam.
It was beautiful – and then it wasn’t.
He put a knee between hers and she didn’t like that. She pushed him away – hard.
‘Make way, slut,’ he said. ‘You want it.’
He pushed her down. She bit him, and he struck her.
She tried to fight him.
She cried.
He laughed. ‘What did you think you were here for?’ he asked her.
She turned to weep into the pillow, which smelled of him, and he slapped her. She pulled the bed clothes around herself, and he pulled them off again. ‘I’m not done with you yet, ma petite.’
‘You!’ she managed. ‘You – false—’
‘It is no crime to fuck a whore,’ he said.
She choked.
‘Like mistress, like maid,’ de Rohan said. ‘Don’t worry, my little putain. When the court finds out what your mistress has done, no one will even notice your fall from grace. Besides – you have a body made to satisfy a man.’ He cooed over her, using warm love terms again.
For a little while.
N’gara – Mogon and Bill Redmede
The woods were full of snow, and there was something else there – something that moved at the very edge of Redmede’s senses, something too fast to see, too small, or too quiet.
Mogon ran east, her heavy feet carving great triangular holes in the snow. The elk ran lightly, and sometimes he skimmed the surface of the snow. They would stop from time to time, and Redmede would hold the amulet in his hand and watch the fire in its depths. They followed the spark – east and north.
After full dark, they crossed tracks that showed clearly in moonlight – tracks of a man with a hand sleigh. Redmede rubbed his beard. ‘That’s Nat Tyler,’ he said. ‘I know his tracks.’
Mogon waggled her mighty head. ‘It is too cold for me to think well, man. Does this other man mean something?’
‘No idea,’ Redmede admitted, but when he tested the amulet, he found that Tyler’s tracks diverged at a sharp angle from the true line to Tapio.
They ran on.
By the height of the moon, Redmede estimated it was midnight by the time they found Tapio. His body hung high in a tree, because he was impaled on one of its shattered branches. His blood flowed down the old oak.
‘Sweet Christ,’ Redmede said.
‘Very like,’ Tapio whispered. ‘Onssse again, Man, I will owe you my life.’
Mogon shook her head. ‘What will we do?’ she asked. ‘I can manipulate the powers. But how to reach him down from the tree?’
‘Can you lift him?’ Redmede asked. ‘With sorcery?’
Mogon nodded. ‘If I can make my sluggish brain work, yes.’
In the end, Redmede climbed the tree and cut the branch that impaled the Faery Knight while the red blood flowed over the old wood and didn’t freeze. He put the irk – tall as a man but light as air – across the rump of the great elk, who grunted.
‘Can’t carry the both of ye. Sorry.’
Redmede got his rackets off his saddle and put them on his feet. He already missed the warmth of the beast.
Tapio raised his head. ‘You both have my thanksss.’
Mogon bowed her head. ‘It was Thorn?’
Tapio Haltija laughed, and something bubbled in his chest. ‘We must go quickly if you two care to sssave my worthlesss carcasss. It wasss not Thorn. It wasss the ssshadow of Asssh.’
Mogon growled and made a fearful growling deep in her throat that raised the hackles of Redmede’s neck. ‘So – my brother was correct.’
‘Ash?’ he asked.
Mogon shook her head. ‘We have twenty miles to walk before we find warmth and safety, and this night is full of terror, even for one such as I. Let us go.’
Redmede could never recall more than the impression of enormous fatigue and the cessation of warmth. They walked, and they ran – when he lost feeling in his feet, he ran for a while until they hurt, and then he walked again. The woods around them snapped and cracked in the dense cold which came down like a hermetical working, vast and suffocating, and sat over the whole of the forest.
When the first light showed in the east, Redmede was so tired he wanted to lie down on the snow and sleep, but he knew where that would lead.
It was the great Warden, Mogon, who flagged first. She began to wander – in fact, she appeared drunk, and she wove about and made little grunting noises.
Tapio, who had not made a sound in many miles, raised his head. ‘Man! ’ he hissed. ‘She needs fire, or she will die. Very – suddenly.’
Redmede knew how to kindle fire. And the threat seemed to ignite him – he gathered wood as fast as his feet would carry him, and he found a birch tree, down and dead and still clear of the snow, and he pulled off his mittens, hung them around his neck, and froze his hands stripping the bark. He stripped a mountain of bark, and he piled it under all the branches he’d found – where two dead spruce trees lay across one another at the end of a clearing.
Mogon was keening, and otherwise immobile.
Up to you, Bill Redmede. Fate of the world. Smile when you say that. Tinder box – there it is. Char cloth – good. He laid a piece of the black cloth on his flint and snapped it along his stele. They were warm from being carried next to his body, and the sparks flew.
The char cloth lit. He thought of Bess, that night in the wet woods, and he blew on his sparks and his glowing embe
rs and pressed them into his dry tow. It was cold – but it was dry – and in a moment, he had fire.
He threw the whole burning clump onto his pile of birch bark.
There was pungent smoke . . .
For a moment, he thought that it wasn’t going to light.
And then the birch bark’s resin thawed enough to catch, and light and heat exploded into the world – the only magic that Bill Redmede knew how to make, except perhaps a little with a bow. The fire rose and licked at more bark.
‘Nice work, boss,’ said the elk – even as it shied away. Nothing in the Wild loved fire.
The two dead spruce trees caught from the branches and the bark and the fire rose.
Redmede finally had to take Mogon by the hand and lead her to the fire. She would barely stir.
But in minutes, she was herself again.
‘Be sure and roast Tapio on both sides,’ she said.
The elk turned and presented its other flank to the fire – and then Mogon shook her head.
‘One more effort. Thank you, man. You are a useful ally. I missed my moment. I should have built a fire, and I—’ She shook her head again. ‘Do you know that fire scares me? I cannot remember when I have been this close to one, naked to it.’
She did, however, douse the fire.
And they ran into the cold morning, towards the Hold.
It was late morning when they entered the tunnel, and the heat of the Hold almost suffocated Redmede. But willing hands plucked their lord from the elk and bore him away, and Tamsin placed a warm kiss on Redmede’s cheek that burned there like faery fire until he met his own lady-love at the door of their own hut.
She threw her arms around him. ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said.
Ticondaga – Ghause, Amicia, and Ser John
The road along the lake was yet another military road built by the Imperial legions, and it was good stone covered in good gravel. The wagons moved well, even in snow, until they reached the Break, a three-mile stretch where low limestone cliffs had collapsed into the lake, wrecking the road and forcing a wide detour into the Wild. Those three miles of paths and rutted cart tracks took them two days; they made camp at the edge of a frozen swamp that nonetheless seemed to move, and no one from the lowliest squire to Ser John himself went to sleep.
The woods were alive, despite the season. Ser John’s outriders brought in deer, and a cold-slowed boggle; they saw a hastenoch, one of the monstrous armoured elk, across a beaver swamp, and every archer in the column cranked his crossbow.
Something low to the ground, black as night and fast, tracked the column, and on the fourth night, despite torches, fires, and doubled sentries, they lost a horse. In the cold light of a frozen morning, the poor horse’s shocking wounds suggested that the black thing was huge and very hungry. And that it could fly. The horse had landed a blow and there were long black feathers in the snow.
On the fifth evening, the advance guard caught a pair of Ruk crossing a frozen stream. The giants had to be careful of their footing, and the scouts began to pelt them with crossbow bolts.
As the rest of the company came up, the soldiers crowded to the stony bank and shot volleys of bolts. The men were excited – charged with spirit, animated, eyes glittering as they spanned and shot, spanned and shot, and the men-at-arms awaited the inevitable moment when the giants rushed their tormentors. But the twenty heavy crossbows made short work of the monsters. The larger went down last, screaming with rage, and yet the final look welded to its broad features was one of baffled puzzlement, like an old dog confronted with a strange new thing.
The men fell silent.
Sister Amicia rode up the column, looked at the dead creatures in the stream, and then at Ser John.
‘They had to die,’ he said defensively.
Amicia met his eye and he flinched. ‘If they’d got among us—’ he said.
She pushed a tendril of hair back into her hood. ‘Ser John, I will not debate military matters with you.’ More quietly, she said, ‘But the Ruk are as biddable as children, and I could have sent them about their own business as easily as you killed them. They were ensorcelled. I can feel it.’ She shook her head. ‘It is a crime,’ she added. ‘A crime to make them into tools, and a crime to murder them.’
The soldiers around her were dismayed, and they reacted in all the ways men react when dismayed. Some grew angry. Others turned their heads away.
Ser John shook his head. ‘Listen, sister. I understand – the Wild is not a simple enemy. But neither can we stop to bargain with the Wild.’
‘Men are always in a hurry,’ she said. ‘And they kill what they do not understand.’
The next day, Amicia said mass. It was odd, to say the least, for many of the soldiers to take communion from a woman, but it was odd to be in the Wild in mid-winter and Ser John made no scruple to kneel and take the host from her hands. Her mass was well attended.
The company marched away as the red ball of the sun peeked above the mountains to the east across the lake.
About the time the bells would have been sounding for nonnes at Lissen Carrak, they rolled into a heavy snow shower.
Amicia drew on her second hood, and Ser John reined in beside her. ‘We’re less than a day from Ticondaga,’ he said. ‘Can you foretell the weather?’
She steadied herself. ‘I can try,’ she said. She reached out—
She gasped. ‘There is something malevolent – in the woods.’ She paused. ‘Virgin protect us – they’re ahead of us and around us—’
Ser John loosened his sword in its sheath. ‘How close?’
She shook her head. ‘Let me pray,’ she said.
‘Stand to!’ shouted Ser John, rising in his stirrups.
Conversation stilled. The wagons halted. The Etruscans leaped onto their wagon beds and untied heavy ropes and then lifted wooden shutters into place, making their four wagons into small fortresses full of crossbowmen in the twinkling of an eye. Horse harness jingled, and the bowmen spanned their weapons.
‘It is north of here, moving—’ She paused. ‘Moving west. I hid myself. Ser John – it is— There is already fighting. Hurry.’
‘What kind of fighting?’ he asked.
‘People are under attack,’ Amicia said. ‘Come!’
She rode ahead.
‘Damn it!’ Ser John cursed. ‘Cover her!’
Amicia bolted away and was lost in the soft curtain of snow, and the vanguard of the column cantered after her.
‘Contact!’ shouted a man in the main column, far behind him.
‘Shit,’ Ser John said. He heard crossbows snapping away. Behind him.
The convoy was his duty, but the belle soeur was his friend.
‘Follow me!’ he roared, and galloped into the snow after the mad nun and her palfrey into a snowfall that got worse by the second.
Men were riding hard, struggling to get frozen fingers into steel gauntlets as they rode through blinding snow, and none of them had their visors closed. It was a recipe for disaster.
He heard Amicia’s shout. Then she said – quite distinctly – Fiat lux.
He almost lost his seat at the burst of light. Behind him, a mounted knight and his horse went down on the road. It was as if he was at the centre of the sun.
Something hit him in the head, and darkness brushed his face – he felt a burning, and his sword arm acted. He connected – the thing screamed, his horse reared under him and he managed to get his visor closed by slamming his chin down onto his breastplate as the winged darkness descended again.
He cut at it, wondering what in the name of hell he was fighting.
‘Trolls!’ shouted one of his knights.
Ser John had time to think that whatever he was fighting was no troll.
He put his spurs into his mount as he was struck a third time – his horse burst forward, and he passed behind Sister Amicia, whose hands were the centre of a circle of radiance. As he rode through it, the black thing vanished from around his head and
he caught – in the interrupted peripheral vision of his visor – a glimpse of a wing with barbed black feathers.
There were two trolls in the road, towering over a red puddle, and then he struck two-handed and his great sword shattered – but so did the nearest troll’s arm. The thing roared, its bottomless violet gullet illuminated by Amicia’s working.
Its other fist knocked him from the saddle and he landed heavily. All that saved him was the snow, and even with a foot of the stuff over the rock, he hit hard, there was pain in his back and his head struck a projecting stone hard enough to deform his helmet.
He had no idea how long he’d been out and he made himself move. His back screamed. He couldn’t rise to his feet, but had to roll onto his stomach and get to his knees, and with every heartbeat he was conscious that the two trolls were just a horse length away in the snow. Men were screaming, and blood was pouring out of his nose.
Another wave of brilliant golden light. The nearest troll turned and counter-cast a purple-green fog, and where the two workings met they sparkled like metal struck with a hammer on the forge and there was a long crack like lightning striking close by – except that it went on and on. Ser John, who was old in the ways of pain, got his left foot under his left hip and pushed himself erect. His horse was screaming, down the bank, its shrill neighs speaking of pain and panic.
His pole-axe was on his horse, and he didn’t think he could negotiate the deep snow. So he drew the heavy dagger at his hip, and ploughed forward towards the nearest troll, all the while cursing himself as a fool.
The one he’d wounded was face down in the road. That made him smile despite the pain.
The second one was fully engaged with a blur of gold – the noise the two made was like a hundred savage dogs fighting. Ser John couldn’t make out who his new ally was, but he stumbled forward – turned his whole body to look north, in case there was a third – and the black shape descended from the sky.
This time he was more ready. The dagger flicked out and feathers fell to the ground – there was a discordant shriek that pierced even through the awesome sounds the troll and its adversary made.
The great black bird-thing stooped, wings spread, and a thick line of molten gold came out of the snow and struck it in the middle of its black breast. It – exploded.