Guilbert smiled broadly. ‘M’lord, is more like. But he’s the king’s mark. And that’s a sword.’ He turned to the knight. ‘Your name, m’lord?’
The young man waited so long it was obvious he was going to lie. ‘Ser Tristan?’ he said, wistfully.
‘Fair enough,’ Guilbert said. ‘Come wi’ me, and we’ll see to it you have a place to sleep.’
‘Mind you,’ said Random. ‘You work for Guilbert and then for me. Understand?’
‘Of course,’ said the young man.
What am I getting myself into? Random thought. But he felt satisfied with the man, broken or not. King’s knights were trained to a high level – especially trained to fight the Wild. Even if the young man was a little addled . . . well, no doubt he was in love. The gentry were addicted to love.
He slept well.
North of Lorica – Bill Redmede
Bill Redmede led his untrained young men up the trail. Their irk stayed well ahead, moving like smoke through the thick trees. He tended to return to the column from the most unexpected directions, even for a veteran woodsman like Bill.
The lads were all afraid of him.
Bill rather liked the quiet creature, which spoke only when it had something to say. Irks had something about them. It was hard to pin down, but they had some kind of nobility
‘Right files watch the right side of the trail,’ Bill said, automatically. ‘Left files watch the left side.’ Three days on the trail and all he did was mother them.
‘I need a break,’ whined the biggest and strongest of them. ‘Christ on the Cross, Bill! We’re not boglins!’
‘If you was, we’d move faster,’ Redmede said. ‘Didn’t you boys do any work on the farm?’
It was worse when they made camp. He had to explain how to raise a shelter. He had to stop them from cutting their twine, and teach them how to make a fire. A small fire. How to be warm, how to be dry. Where to take a piss.
Two of them sang while they worked, until he walked up and knocked one to the ground with a blow of his fist.
‘If the king catches you because you are singing, you will hang on a gibbet until the crows pick your bones clean and then the king’s fucking sorcerer will grind your bones to make the colours for his paints,’ Bill said.
The angry silence of wronged young men struck him from all sides.
‘If you fail, you will die,’ he said. ‘This is not a summer lark.’
‘I want to go home,’ said the biggest man. ‘You’re worse than an aristo.’ He looked around. ‘And you can’t stop all of us.’
The irk materialised out of the dusk. He looked curiously at the big man. Then he turned to Bill. ‘Come,’ he said in his odd voice.
Bill nodded to them, the debate now unimportant. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said, and followed the irk.
They crossed a marsh, over a low ridge, and then down to a dense copse of spruce.
The irk turned and made a motion with its head. ‘Bear,’ it said. ‘A friend. Be kind, Man.’
Near the centre of the spruce was a great golden bear. It lay with its head in its paws, as if it was resting. A beautiful cub stood licking its face.
As Bill come up, the bear stirred. It raised its head and hissed.
Bill stepped back, but the irk steadied him, and spoke in a sibilant whisper.
The bear rolled a little, and Bill could see it had a deep wound in its side, full of pus – pus was dryed on either side of the wound, and it stank.
The irk squatted down in a way a man could not have done. Its ear drooped – this was sadness, which Bill had never seen in an irk.
‘The bear dies,’ the irk said.
Bill knew the irk was right.
‘The bear asks – can we save her cub?’ The irk turned and Bill realised how seldom the elfin creature had met his eyes, because in that moment, the irk’s gaze locked with his, and he all but fell into the forest man’s regard. His eyes were huge, and deep like pools-
‘I don’t know a thing about bears,’ Bill said. He squatted by the big mother bear. ‘But I’m a friend of any creature of the Wild, and I give you my word that if I can get your cub to other golden bears, I will.’
The bear spat something, in obvious pain.
The irk spoke – or rather, sang. The line became a stanza, full of liquid rhymes.
The bear coughed.
The irk turned. ‘The cub – her mother named her for the yellow flower.’
‘Daisy?’
The irk made a face.
‘Daffodil? Crocus? I don’t know my flowers.’
‘In water.’ The irk was frustrated.
‘Lily?’
The irk nodded.
So he reached out a hand to the cub, and the cub bit him.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The captain was so tired and so drained by the fear that it was all he could do to push one boot in front of the other as the trail became a track and the track became a road.
Nothing troubled them but the coming darkness, their exhaustion, and the cold. It was late in the day and increasingly clear that they would have to camp in the woods. The same woods which had produced a daemon and a wyvern.
‘Why didn’t it kill us?’ the captain asked. Two daemons.
Gelfred shook his head. ‘You killed that first one. Pretty. Damn. Fast.’ His eyes were always moving. They had reached the main road, and Gelfred pulled up on his horse’s reins. ‘We could ride double,’ he said.
‘You’ll lame that horse,’ the captain snapped.
‘You cast a spell.’ Gelfred wasn’t accusatory. He sounded more as if he was in pain.
‘Yes,’ the captain admitted. ‘I do, from time to time.’
Gelfred shook his head. He prayed aloud, and they rode on until a drizzle began and the light began to fade.
‘We’ll have to stand watches,’ the captain said. ‘We are very vulnerable.’ He could barely think. While Gelfred curried the poor beast, he gathered firewood and started a fire. He did everything wrong. He gathered bigger wood and had no axe to cut it; then he gathered kindling and broke it into ever smaller and better sorted piles. He knelt in his shallow fire-pit and used his flint and steel, shaving sparks onto charred cloth until he had an ember.
Then he realised that he hadn’t built a nest of tow and bark to catch the ember.
He had to start again.
We’re a pair of fools.
He could feel that the woods were full of enemies. Or allies. It was the curse of his youth.
What exactly have I stumbled into? he asked himself.
He made a little bird’s nest of dry tow and birchbark shreds, and made sparks again, his right hand holding the steel and moving precisely to strike the flint in his left hand. He got a spark, lit the char-
Dropped it into the tow and bark-
And blew.
The fire caught.
He dropped twigs on the blaze until it was steady, and then built a cabin of dry wood, carefully split with his hunting knife. He was very proud of his fire when he’d finished, and he thought that if the Wild took him here, at least he’d started the damned fire first.
Gelfred came and warmed his hands. Then he wound his crossbow. ‘Sleep, Captain,’ he said. ‘You first.’
The captain wanted to talk – he wanted to think, but his body was making its own demands.
But before he could go to sleep he heard Gelfred move, and he was out of his blankets with his sword in his fist.
Gelfred’s eyes were big in the firelight. ‘I just wanted to move the head,’ he said. ‘It – it’s hard to have it there. And the horse hates it.’
The captain helped to move the head. He stood there, in the dark, freezing cold.
There was something very close. Something powerful.
Perhaps building the fire had been a mistake, like coming out into the woods with just one other man.
Prudentia? Pru?
Dear boy.
Pru, can I pull the Cloak over this little camp? Or will I just make a disturbance in casting?