He stood in his own palace and breathed deep. The sun fell like golden fire from the dome overhead and outside his green door, great gouts of green potentia rolled and seethed like the sea in a storm.
“Something is coming,” Prudentia said.
Gabriel patted her ivory hand.
“Was it bad?” she asked.
“Whatever that was, it misses its master,” Gabriel said. “I don’t think I could face it again.”
He surfaced into the real and looked around. It was still a brilliant spring day. Squirrels were running along branches that overhung the road.
“Stay sharp,” the captain yelled.
After the captain’s shout, every man looked around carefully, and for fifty jingling strides, the only sounds were those of horse hooves on stone, the woodpecker in the distance and the rattle of armour and horse harness.
The captain pushed his aethereal sense out as far as he could. He was surprised how far that was. He was not broadcasting-to do so would be to announce his presence as far away as the villages of the Huran. Instead, he listened passively. He was able to detect a strong presence well to the east; another enormous presence the same distance and more to the north that almost had to be his mother.
The Wyrm was a dull warmth from over the aethereal horizon-a line that had almost nothing to do with the actual horizon. It had never occurred to the captain before that moment to ask why distances and horizons were different in the aethereal, but in that moment, he thought of how he might hide-if he could map the gradients of power.
Distraction is one of the most dangerous failings in a hermeticist. He was building a mapping process in his memory palace when he realized that his horse had stopped moving.
Ser Gavin gave him a look left over from childhood. “Fat lot of good you are, my overmighty brother,” he said. “Asleep?”
Gabriel looked round, disconcerted. The wagon was rolling to a stop in front of the goodwife’s house. The older girl had just run inside, calling for her mother, and the archers were leering. The girl had been on the porch, spinning, wearing only a shift.
Francis Atcourt was leering, too. Gabriel raised an eyebrow and the dapper knight raised his and grinned.
“Not something I expect to see in the woods every day-a girl that pretty,” he said.
Chris Foliak, Atcourt’s usual partner in crime, grunted. “And she’s coming with us,” he said.
“And we’re protecting her from the monsters,” Ser Gabriel said slowly. “Not, gentlemen, being the monsters ourselves.”
“I won’t hurt her at all!” Foliak said, grinning. But when he met the captain’s eye, his smile vanished. “Only having a joke, my lord.”
Gabriel reached out again. There was something-
Father Arnaud emerged with the goodwife.
“How can you be sure it was my man?” she asked on the porch.
“We can’t. But having seen the signs, the captain feels you’re better in the walls of Albinkirk.” Father Arnaud glanced at Ser Gabriel.
“Shall I describe him for you? The old da, he was not a tall man-”
Father Arnaud shook his head.
“But what if there’s some mistake, and I pack and leave?” she asked. “And he comes back looking for his bairns and a spot o’ supper?”
“Mama,” the older girl said carefully. She had a low voice and she was still wearing only a shift. “Mama, these gentlemen think there’s somewhat unnatural, right here. They want to go. They ain’t stayin’. If’n we want to be with them, we need to go.”
The goodwife looked around. “It’s me home,” she said quietly.
“And I hope that in a month you can return to it,” Gabriel said. “But for the moment, ma’am, I’d request you and your oldsters get everything you can into that wagon.”
The goodwife wrung her hands for as long as a child might take to count ten.
“Yes,” she said. “But what if it were’n my old man?”
“We’ll leave a note,” Ser Gabriel said.
“Ee can’t read,” the goodwife answered. “You take the kiddies and I’ll stay.”
“I’d rather you came, ma’am,” Ser Gabriel said.
She went in, and her two eldest, a boy and a girl, went to help. When the girl emerged with the first armload, she was fully dressed in a kirtle and a gown of good wool, which showed that she had some sense, or quick ears.
The boys began to move wooden crates and trunks into the wagon, and before the sun had sunk a finger’s width, the children-all twelve of them-were up on top of the load.
“By Saint Eustachios,” the woman said. “It’s lucky we’d scarce unpacked. I hate to leave my good spinning wheel. There it is. And my baskets. Good boy.”
“You’re coming, then?” asked the captain.
She looked down. “Children need me,” she said. “The priest says… he says-” She put her head down.
Father Arnaud looked hurt.
“War horses,” the captain called. “Three leagues to go and three hours of good light. Let’s move.”
Cully shook his head. He took a heavy horse-dropper out of his quiver and tucked it through his belt. He exchanged a long look with flap-eared Cuddy, his best mate.
“Fuck me,” Cuddy said.
The captain rode with his head down, concentrating. He was nearly sure he’d caught something, or someone, breaking cover-a hermetical power trying to conceal itself.
Count Zac’s horsemen moved back and forth at the forest edge, winnowing the ground like a team of hayers with scythes. They now rode with arrows on their bows, and once, when a deer broke cover, they all shot before they fully identified the threat, or lack thereof. The deer was butchered on the spot-intestines removed, and the rest hung between two of the spare horses.
“That will attract anything we haven’t already attracted,” Gavin muttered. He scratched his shoulder. Then he reached back under his harness to scratch.
The captain looked up into the branches and saw the edge of a wing-a flash of a talon.
“Wyvern!” he called.
In an instant, every weapon was drawn. Eyes strained towards the sky.
The Red Knight backed his horse a few steps. “I think it wanted to be seen. And we’re still in the Wyrm’s circle. Someone’s either cocky or insane.”
Gavin frowned. “Or trying to make our friend show his hand.” His voice was muffled by the pig snout on his bascinet.
“Move!” called the captain. “Eyes on the woods. Only men on the road watch the sky. Keep moving. Let’s not be out here after dark, eh?”
“Didn’t Alcaeus get ambushed right here?” Gavin asked.
“Further east-four hours’ ride from Albinkirk,” Ser Gabriel said. “Drat.”
“Drat?”
“I have a flickering contact. There’s something out there, trying not to be seen, but using power. Only a little. It has some sort of ward.” He frowned.
Ser Gavin rose in his stirrups and looked around.
Ser Gabriel’s horse plunged forward. “Faster,” he said.
The wagon team began to canter, and the wagon jolted along the ancient stone road. The horses began to go faster.
“No bird song,” Ser Gabriel shouted. “Ware!”
Off to their right, one of Count Zac’s men drew to his cheek, his body arched in his light saddle, and loosed as he rose in his stirrups. He loosed down as if shooting at the ground, and his horse sprang away.
Something as fast as a rabbit and ten times as large appeared and struck the archer’s horse.
He loosed his second arrow, point blank, into the thing’s back from above.
His mare stumbled, and four more of the things hit her, tearing chunks off her haunches. She screamed but lacked the muscles to kick or even stand, and she slumped, and her rider somersaulted clear, drew his sabre and died valiantly, ripped to pieces by a wave of the things-ten or more, as fast as greyhounds but ten times as ferocious.