“And me,” Ser Gavin said.
The captain smiled impishly. “Knights errant,” he said. “Mercy mild. Father Arnaud, Gavin, our lances, and Zac.” He put a hand up. “No more!”
Other knights volunteered, and Sauce thought they were a pack of tomfools. So did Bad Tom when he came up.
The “empty” wagons proved to be full to bursting with the loot of southern Thrake, and some very red-faced archers-and men-at-arms-watched their belongings unloaded onto the wet stone road.
The captain was scathing. “A fine thing if they were to hit us right now,” he said. “Ripped to pieces because we had too much loot. Get it put away, gentlemen. Or dump it in the ditch.” He saluted Ser Michael.
Ser Michael did not sound like the nice young man they all knew. He sounded like the son of a great noble.
“Well, gentlemen?” they heard him say. “Time’s passing. I’ll just say a prayer for the captain’s success. And when I’m done, I’ll ask Mag to set fire to anything left on the road. Understand?”
Mag smiled.
Sauce laughed. Ten minutes later, moving again, she looked up at the wise woman. “Would you have burned it?” she asked.
Mag laughed. “With pleasure,” she said.
Sauce swore. “He sounds like the captain,” she said, waving at Ser Michael.
Mag laughed again. “He went to all the best schools,” she said.
The captain took his command lances; Atcourt, Foliak, de Beause and Laternum, as well as the new Occitan knights, Danved Lanval and Bertran Stofal. With Father Arnaud’s lance and Ser Gavin’s and his own, he had a powerful force, and the spring sun glittered on their red and gold as they rode back down the road towards the Hole. Count Zac rode ahead, the red foxtail of his personal standard shining in the sun, and half a dozen of his steppe riders spread through the trees on either side.
The company archers rode on either side of the wagon. They were all veterans, and Cully, the captain’s archer, was the company master archer. He rode a fine steppe horse and his eyes were everywhere. All of the archers had their bows strung and in their hands. Ricard Lantorn, despite being mounted, had an arrow on the string of his war bow.
The pages brought up the rear. In the captain’s household, even the pages had bows and light armour, and they, too, were strung and ready. The captain’s caution had communicated itself fully.
The spring day was pleasant. The sun was high, and the world and the woods seemed at peace. Robins sang in the high branches of the beech wood through which the Royal Road ran. A woodpecker began his endless hammering, searching for early bugs on a tall dead tree. A few early insects droned along the column. The weather was cool enough to make an arming coat and a few pounds of mail and plate seem comfortable. At the clearing, they could see the loom of the Adnacrags in the north-low hills, dark with trees, in the foreground, and farther, the sharper shapes of the high peaks-snow capped, streaked in the dark lines of distant streams.
The captain rode with his senses stretched.
His brother glanced over at him.
“Asleep?” he asked with a smile.
Gabriel shrugged. “Something is troubling me.”
“Beyond that we are riding into an ambush?” Ser Gavin asked.
“That thing-whatever the hell it was,” Gabriel said. “I wish I’d had a corpse. But it’s not from here.” He struggled for words. “And when I think about the things Master Smythe said-I wonder what that means.”
Gavin gave him a look that suggested that his brother thought that watching the woods for ambush might be more productive.
“I need to-never mind. I’m not going to be very communicative for a few minutes.” Gabriel shrugged his shoulders, moving the weight of his harness off his hips for a moment.
“Should we change horses?” Gavin asked.
Gabriel looked around. “Not yet. I want my charger fresh.”
All around him were excellent knights who had killed very powerful things. He
turned inside himself and went into his palace. Everything was there, and he bowed to Prudentia, who smiled.
“Watch for me, Pru,” he said. “I need to go in there.”
She turned her ivory head and glanced at the door. “On your head be it,” she said. “It should be safe enough.”
Very cautiously, like a man approaching a sleeping tiger, Gabriel walked over to the red door. With a deep breath that had no real meaning in the aethereal, he put his hand on the knob and pushed it open.
Instantly he was in Harmodius’s memory palace. But nothing was crisp and clear except the golden door at his back and Harmodius’s mirror, a device he’d used. It was an internal artefact that allowed the user to “see” any potentia -any workings-cast directly on his person. Harmodius had spent too long imprisoned in another’s false reality to allow himself to ever be fooled in such a way again. Gabriel was briefly surprised that the old man hadn’t taken the artefact with him, but he smiled at the thought-of course, it was a memory artefact.
Harmodius’s abandoned memory palace stretched away from the centre checkerboard and the free standing mirror to a distant and dusty obscurity, like a summer house infrequently used. Gabriel moved cautiously across the parquetry floor and then-very carefully-began to examine some of the old man’s memories.
It was very dark, and he could only see things dimly. He was rarely frightened in his memory palace; casting in combat would have been too difficult otherwise, and the lack of time inside the palace usually gave a caster time to be calm and thorough, but here, in this unlit shadow realm of another man’s mind, Gabriel was scared almost to panic. He had no idea what rules guided his passage through Harmodius’s mind or memories. He only knew that as the man had occupied his head for almost a year, the red door must lead here. Harmodius had entered his own memory palace often enough, but this was only the third or fourth time that Gabriel had gone the other way, and the first time since it was-unoccupied.
And of course, with the guiding light of the other essence gone, it was dark.
“Summoning,” Gabriel said aloud.
It grew lighter. And he watched a memory flit across the floor in wisps, like a marred projection or a magic lantern slide with honey on it. It was an interesting memory; Harmodius was sitting with Queen Desiderata in a room and casting. She provided the ops.
Gabriel watched the summoning. Because it had involved the casting of a form, the memory was very clear, and he could follow the shadows of its casting around the chamber of Harmodius’s mind.
But the experience began to leach at him somehow. He couldn’t put a finger on the experience to name it, but he felt as if-as if he was Harmodius-so he was not Gabriel. And it was almost physically painful, almost like dreams of leprosy or watching another man get kicked hard in the groin.
There was more light.
He stepped towards the golden door, which seemed farther away.
The lights grew brighter.
Gabriel moved-decisively. He ran across the tiles, past the mirror and, to his immense relief, the door did not flee before him and he grasped the golden handle. He pulled the door open and found Prudentia standing at the other side with an arm outstretched to him and he stumbled through.