She gazed at him, eyes level, devoid of artifice or flirtation, mockery or subtle magnetism or even her usual humour.
‘And this means?’ she asked, her voice a whisper.
‘Ask me again, your Grace, after I conjure him back a week hence. Tell me you will stand at my side that day – I’m beholden to you, but with you-’
‘What do you seek, Magus? Is this within the circlet of what the church will countenance?’ She spoke slowly, carefully.
He drew a breath. Released it. Sod the church, he thought. And aloud he said, ‘Yes, your Grace.’ No, your Grace. Perhaps not. But they’re not scientists. They’re interested in preserving the status quo.
The Queen gave him a beautiful smile. ‘I am just a young girl,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we ask a bishop?’
Harmodius narrowed his eyes. ‘Of course, your Majesty,’ he said.
The North Road – Gerald Random
Random’s convoy moved fast, by the standards of convoys – six to ten leagues a day, stopping each night at the edge of a town and camping in pre-arranged fields, with fodder delivered to their camp along with hot bread and new-butchered meat. Men were happy to work for him because he was a meticulous planner and the food was good.
But they had a hundred leagues to go, just to make Albinkirk, and another forty leagues east after that, to the fair, and he was later than he wanted to be. Albinfleurs – little yellow balls of sweet-scented, fuzzy petals that grew only on the cliff edges of the great river – were blooming in the hayfields that lined the roads; and when they were on his favourite sections of road – the cliff-edge road along the very edge of the Albin which ran sixty feet or more below them in the vale – the Albinfleurs were like stripes of yellow below him and layers of yellow on the cliffs nearly a mile distant on the other side. It was years since he’d left late enough to see the Albinfleurs. They didn’t grow in the north.
But after three glorious days of solid travel, they came to Lorica, and the Two Lions. His usual stop and supplier of bread and forage was a smoking hulk. It took him a day to establish a new supplier and get the material he needed, and the story of how the inn had been burned and the sheriff beaten by foreigners angered him. But the innkeeper had sent to the king, and stood in his yard with a bandaged head watching workmen with a crane lift the charred rooftrees off the main building.
He used one of his precious mercenaries to send a message about the killings back to the Guild Master in Harndon. Harndoners didn’t usually concern themselves with the doings of the lesser towns. But this was business, friendship, and basic patriotism all in one package.
The following day not one but two of his wagons broke spokes on their wheels – one so badly that the wooden wheel split and the iron tyre popped off the wheel. That meant finding a smith and wheelwright and forced him to go back to Lorica, where he had to stay in an inferior inn while his convoy crept north without him. He had to do it himself – the men in Lorica knew him but none of his hirelings, not Judson the draper, nor any of the other investors.
In the morning, the two wagons were ready to move, and he grudgingly paid the agreed fee for making two apprentice wheelwrights and a journeyman work by rush light through the night. Plus an extra silver leopard to the blacksmith for getting the tyre on before matins.
He finished his small beer and mounted his horse, and the smaller train was on the road as soon as he’d taken the Eucharist from a friar who said Mass at a roadside shrine. That roadside Mass was full of broken men and women – wastrels, a pair of vagabonds, and a troop of travelling players. Random had never been troubled by the poor. He gave them alms.
But the broken men worried him, for both his convoy and his purse. There were four of them, although they didn’t seem to be together. Random had never been robbed by men he’d just attended Mass with, but he didn’t take any chances, either. He mounted, exchanged meaningful glances with his drovers, and the carts moved on.
One of the broken men followed them on the road. He had a good horse and armour in a wicker basket, and he seemed listless. Random looked back at him from time to time.
Eventually, the man caught them up. But he hadn’t put on his armour and he didn’t even seem to know they were there. He rode up, slowly catching and then overtaking them.
Harndoners traditionally called the men they’d attended Mass with that day Brother or Sister, and so Random nodded to the stranger.
‘The Peace of God to you, Brother,’ he said, a little pointedly.
The man looked startled to be addressed.
In that moment, Random realised he wasn’t a broken man at all but a dirty gentleman. The differences were clear in his quality – the man had a superb leather-covered jupon worth a good twenty leopards, even covered in dirt. Hip boots with gold spurs. Even if they were silver gilt, they were worth a hundred leopards by weight.
The man sighed. ‘And to you, messire.’
He rode on.
Random hadn’t come to relative riches in the cut-throat world of Harndon’s shippers and guilds without having some willingness to grab at Fortuna’s hairs. ‘You’re a knight,’ he said.
The man didn’t rein in, but he turned his head and, feeling the weight shift, his horse stopped.
The man turned to look at him, and the silence was painful.
What have we here? Random wondered.
Finally, the young man – under his despair, the man was younger than Random by a generation – nodded.
‘I am a knight,’ the young man said, as if confessing a sin.
‘I need men,’ Random said. ‘I have a convoy on the road and if you wear spurs of gold, I’d be honoured to have you. My convoy is fifty good wagons headed north to the fair, and there’s no dishonour in it. I fear only bandits and the Wild.’
The man shook his head minutely and turned away, and his horse ambled on, a good war horse which was over-burdened with man and armour, the weight ill-distributed and ruining the horse’s posture.
‘Are you sure?’ Random asked. It never hurt to try.
The knight kept riding.
Random let his drovers stop for lunch, and then they pushed on – into the evening and even a little after dark.
In the morning, they rose and were moving on before the sun was a finger above the river which curved, snake-like, to the east. Later in the morning they descended into the vale and crossed the Great Bridge, the edge of the Inner Counties. He had a fine meal at the Crouching Cat with his drovers, who were honoured by his willingness to join them and pleased to eat so good a meal.
After lunch they crossed Great Bridge, twenty-six spans built by the Archaics and painstakingly maintained. And then climbed the far bank for an hour, with the drovers leading the horses. They crested the far bank, and Random saw the knight again, kneeling at a roadside chapel, tears cutting deep channels in the road-dust on his face.
He nodded to him, and rode on.
By evening he caught up the rest of the convoy, already in camp, and he was welcomed back by the men he’d left. His drovers regaled their peers with the minutiae of their days, and Guilbert saluted and told him how the column had proceeded, and Judson was resentful that he was back so soon.
Business as usual.
A little after dark, one of the goldsmith boys came to his wagon and saluted like a soldier. ‘Messire?’ he asked. ‘There’s a knight asking for ye.’ The boy had a crossbow on his shoulder, and was obviously puffed with pride at being on watch, on convoy, and in such an important role. Henry Lastifer, the name floated up from the merchant’s storehouse of ready knowledge.
Random followed the boy to the fire. Guilbert was there, and Old Bob, another of the men-at-arms.
And the young knight from the road, of course. He was sitting, drinking wine. He rose hurriedly.
‘May I change my mind?’ he, blurted.
Random smiled. ‘Of course. Welcome aboard, Ser Knight.’