And to the west instead of his Easterners, enemies had appeared.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
Dariusz shrugged, as if the whole subject wearied him.
Surrounded by his Guard, he rode south.
‘Gabriel!’
The Red Knight reined up and waited for the spike of pain in his forehead, but it didn’t come.
‘Harmodius?’
‘I go my own way now. This field is yours – you’ll want to stop the killing as soon as you can.’
‘Tom will be outraged.’
‘I may not see you again. As Master Smythe suspected, Aeskepiles was a tool just as Thorn is. Ash is using them. One of the First. I have done something morally dark. I wish to ask a favour. I think, despite using your body for months, that you owe me.’
Gabriel knew – almost intuitively – what must have happened. Because there was no more lightshow.
‘You have taken Morgan Mortirmir’s body,’ he said.
‘No. That option presented itself, and represents a temptation which, thankfully, I resisted. I took Aeskepiles’body. In fact, I AM Aeskepiles. He is not.’
‘And your favour?’ Gabriel asked.
‘Don’t pursue me. Our goals are the same.’
Gabriel looked carefully at his mentor. ‘You have made a dark choice.’
‘In a good cause.’
Gabriel nodded. ‘I will not pursue you.’
Harmodius extended an aethereal hand. ‘You will be very powerful now. Mortirmir – when he regains his wits – will eventually be even more so. With Mag and Amicia and some other allies you may still not last any longer than a candle in a rainstorm against our true foe. But you must try.’ The old man’s aethereal form shrugged. ‘You have a sort of ferocious luck that gives me hope.’
Gabriel nodded. ‘Thanks for the good rede, old man.’ He reached out, and the two embraced in the aether - a gesture of trust in that environment beyond the imagining of many practitioners.
‘Where are you going?’ Gabriel asked.
Harmodius paused. ‘Best you don’t know, lad. Desperate times, desperate measures.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve left you a set of my guesses as to what is going on.’ He handed over a scroll – an aethereal scroll, a concept that made Gabriel’s head ache.
‘Go with God,’ Harmodius said.
And then Gabriel was truly alone.
There is a point in a savage action where no prisoners can be taken; where men are too afraid, or too committed to destruction, to give mercy.
But there is another point, where both sides near exhaustion. Then, in sheer fatigue, it is possible to see past the fear and the blood rage.
When one of the captains of Andronicus’s veterans held out his sword by the blade Ser Michael saw it. He took the hilt and raised it – both arms high, armpits open to an attack. ‘They yield!’ he roared.
It took time. For the last man hacked down between Kelvin Ewald and Wilful Murder, it took too much time. Some men in closed helmets couldn’t hear. Other men couldn’t see.
As the surrender spread, some of the Nordikans had to be physically restrained. Ser Milus had a dent put in his helmet by Harald Derkensun, who was determined to wipe knights – all knights – from the face of the earth. Blackhair lay dead between his feet, pierced through with a mercenary’s lance.
The Red Knight sat on his charger, surveying the end. He had only just discovered that Ser Jehan was dead. And John le Bailli.
Ser Gavin caught his stirrup. ‘There goes the bastard,’ he said, pointing at a golden helm and a white horse, vanishing to the south.
The Red Knight let a moment’s rage guide him. ‘Let’s get him,’ he said.
‘I’m your man,’ Gavin said. He hobbled back into the press of horses and pages behind the fighting line.
To the left and right, the beaten Moreans had slumped down. Most simply sat in the mud and blood. The company weren’t doing much better. Half of them were on one knee, or bent double.
Ser Alcaeus dragged himself from the right of the line. ‘You must finish Demetrius,’ he said. ‘This isn’t done until that imp is dead.’ He looked around. ‘Thrakians are stubborn, brave men. And we need them.’
The Red Knight looked down at the Morean knight. ‘I know,’ he said. Better than you.
Alcaeus grabbed his horse, and Dmitry, his squire, mounted his. Their horses were fresh; it was the men who were exhausted from forty minutes of fighting.
The Red Knight bent low in the saddle to Ser Michael, who was insisting he would come.
‘Shut up,’ the Duke said. ‘I need you to stay right here and prevent a massacre. We need every one of these stiff-necked bastards. Right? Don’t let Wilful and Long Paw decide to “make anything right” for Bent. Got me?’
Michael nodded.
‘And get a messenger to Gelfred and the scouts and tell them to get their arses back here.’ The Red Knight looked at his brother. Father Arnaud was there, getting a leg over his own jet-black charger.
‘Father, fetch Mag. And Father-’
‘I know,’ Arnaud said heavily.
‘She has to be told.’ For once, the Red Knight looked young; very young, and not very happy. ‘Why does your God allow all this shit, Father?’
The priest’s eyes travelled over the line of dead that marked the high-water mark of the Thrakian charge. ‘Because we have free will,’ he said. ‘The shit is ours, not His. I’ll tell Mag.’
The Red Knight raised an eyebrow. His mouth opened but his brother leaned over and smacked him in the side with the pommel of his dagger. His mouth closed, and then he reached out to the priest, steel gauntlet to steel gauntlet. ‘Thanks. I’ll come back as soon as I can.’
There were a dozen of them when they rode. Ser Alcaeus and his squire Dmitry, Ser Gavin, Toby, Long Paw, Nell, Ser Milus, Ser Besancon, Kelvin Ewald and three pages who had their horses handy and were fresh. Plus one of the Lanthorn boys, and two Morean recruits.
It was a very small army.
Every one of them took two horses, and they took the time to fetch water and food, and most of them were eating cheese or sausage when they trotted out of the battle line, headed south.
They alternated between a fast trot and a canter while the sun set. No one said anything.
Ten miles south of the battlefield, they dismounted while Long Paw looked at a dead horse in the road. It wasn’t dark; March in Morea was almost like late spring in Alba, and the red sun threw long shadows. To the west, they could see the broken remnants of the Thrakian left wing being pursued by the Vardariotes, who clearly had not received an order to stop killing.
The Red Knight watched wearily, and sent Ser Bescanon with the two Morean pages as interpreters.
‘I would rather go with you, my lord,’ Bescanon said.
‘Well. I’d rather go drink with the Vardariotes and stop the killing, so we’re even,’ said the Duke.
Long Paw scratched under his chin. ‘They’re an hour ahead of us, and riding harder. Galloping, I’d say.’
Ser Gavin nodded. ‘If he makes Eves, he’ll be a tough nut to crack, and we don’t have the men.’
The Red Knight nodded. ‘Nothing for it,’ he said. And pressed his horse to a heavy gallop.
They changed horses with nothing left of daylight but a red streak in the western sky, so that the spikes and peaks of the highest Adnacrags showed black against it. They galloped on. They could see the acropolis of Eves rising ahead of them, and they could see the black spots of a dozen horsemen riding along the road.