The Fatal Child (49 page)

‘I will take my place with you in the morning, gentlemen, if I may,’ he said.

They looked at him – a young knight of the Delverdis clan and a fat mercenary captain called Hawskill, who had been hired by the town to lead its bands to war.

‘Oho! His Majesty wants to keep an eye on us, does he?’ said Hawskill cheerfully.

Padry shook his head. ‘I can be of little use to His Majesty tomorrow. But I was born in Pemini and I have walked with you on your way here. Give me leave to be one of you.’

He was, he felt, no more than a simple foot soldier now. Since all he could do was strike a foot soldier’s blow for his King, it did not matter much where he did it. And over the past weeks, in Pemini and walking with the Pemini men, he had found himself at last growing fond of the town he had left behind him so long ago.

‘Have you a pike?’

‘I am one-handed, master, from a little wound I have. But I have found myself a knocking stick.’ He showed them the cruel-headed mace he carried, which was as long as a man’s arm.

Hawskill looked at it thoughtfully. ‘Oho! You may stand beside me tomorrow, master. But I should be glad if you did not use that without you can see what you are hitting.’

A faint white flare flickered across his face. Long
seconds later came the
thump
of the cannon.

‘Gueronius keeps to his lines, it seems,’ said the young knight tightly.

‘If he retreats now, he must leave those things behind him,’ said Hawskill.

‘He will not do that,’ said Padry. (Gueronius, abandon a new weapon of war that no one else had? He would love those things more than any children!)

‘I hope we shall see Lackmere’s banners tomorrow,’ said Delverdis as they resumed their walk along the ridge.

‘He presses hard,’ said Padry. ‘They say he drives his men like a madman. He has swept the land for horses to mount his foot and will march them through the night.’

‘So the King tells us. How he is so sure what happens ten leagues from hence I know not.’

Padry smiled. From the corner of his eye he could see another figure walking off into the darkness, long-limbed and moving in jerky steps like a crane. Prince Talifer had received his instructions. Now he would slip into the shadows, and in an hour or two he would walk out of the shadows ten leagues to the south, and speak with the son of Lackmere where he stood raging by the night roads.

Gueronius had his weapons. But against him Ambrose had a power that Gueronius could not dream of.

‘No force will cover ten leagues in a few hours’ march,’ grumbled Hawskill. ‘Not the half of it. We
shall not see him in the morning, and we may not by the night’

‘He will come,’ said Padry.

‘I like it that you are so sure. Oho! Here we are, Master Chancellor. My lads have made a fire and I have a flask of wine yet that I need someone to share with me. Will you do me the honour?’

‘Gladly,’ said Padry.

‘I must pray,’ said the knight shortly. ‘And then I will sleep.’ He stalked off into a tall, circular tent that stood in the darkness nearby. Hawskill and Padry seated themselves on saddles by the Pemini watchfire.

‘First time for him,’ said Hawskill, grinning. ‘His old man heard there was to be a fight and sent him off to strike a blow for the King. I’m supposed to keep him alive. Although the Angels may know how I’m going to! Mind of his own, that one. Not a good thing at a time like this. He’ll be in the King’s battle anyway. All the knights will. Here, I’ve a spare bowl that will do for you. Your health, Master Chancellor!’

‘And yours,’ said Padry. ‘You’ve seen all this before, I suppose?’

‘Oh, a few times. Tell you the truth, I never sleep so well before a fight. Show me the fellow that can and I’ll tell you he’s a better man than me, oh yes. No use tossing and turning and worrying about the sleep you’re not getting. Better to sit up with a bottle and a bit of company to take your mind off things. And if our heads ache tomorrow – why there’s always the chance that some kind fellow will pass by to take the problem from us!’

He chortled to himself, a sound like ‘Hoh-hoh-hoh’, and began to tell a story of a captain he had known who had been so drunk on the morning of a skirmish that he had led his men from one disaster to another. It was a stupid, sad tale, but they both laughed over the black humour of it and repeated the worst bits of it to one another as they refilled their bowls by the fire.

A white flash lit the distant hill lines. Some seconds later there was a muffled
thump
. In the light of the flames Padry saw Hawskill’s face, listening, with a wry grin upon his lips.

‘Here’s to those fellows over there,’ the mercenary said. ‘May they drink bad water and have the flux by tomorrow.’

‘Amen!’ said Padry fervently and took refuge in the wine.

He felt curiously at ease with himself. Nagging voices in his head told him that perhaps he should be with the King, at prayer, or walking among the soldiers, encouraging them in the King’s name. Perhaps there were around him men who even now would profit from a few words about the Angels. Perhaps his own soul would benefit from a short period of quiet meditation. But these thoughts only made him the more comfortable. He found that he rather enjoyed the wickedness of it – squandering these last hours in the company of a man who knew nothing of the Path, but whose ease and humour were a blessing in this long and horrible night when one could do nothing but
wait for sleep that would not come, and for the distant dawn.

‘There used to be an inn in this country,’ said Hawskill. ‘No, I tell a lie. It was between here and Tuscolo – a day or more from here, where road forks south for Jent—’

‘I know it. They have rebuilt it.’

‘Have they? I must go and look. But if the landlord is the same I will not touch his wine no matter how cheap he sells it. I swear the damned stuff smoked when he uncorked the bung. And in one mouthful I had so much grit I must take another to spit the first out with! If the trade of the landlord is to cheat his guest blind, that fellow was the master of it…’

And so the hours passed, in story after story. Padry told a few of his own. Hawskill listened. And at the end of each one, or maybe even before, he would nod and say, ‘Aye, that puts me in mind of…’ and off he would go on another, yet more gross or obscene than his last, and chortling ‘Hoh-hoh-hoh’ as he drew breath. Around them the night deepened and the murmur of the camp diminished. Horses called shrilly to one another. But even these sounds grew fewer. Every now and then there came the flash and thump of Gueronius’s cannon, still battering at the walls of Trant. No one remarked on it now. Men were lying all around them, low shapes wrapped in blankets, faceless, but for now still breathing under the stars.

Around midnight, or perhaps some time after, a loud groan sounded from nearby. It was a pitiful, anguished sound, of a soul that could not sleep and
could not tear itself from the thought of tomorrow. Padry looked up, wondering who it had been. Hawskill checked in the middle of another story and lifted his head to listen.

‘That’s the grief of the young, you see,’ he said. ‘They expect too much of themselves.’

Padry followed the jerk of his chin towards the tent of the knight Delverdis. There, in those coloured folds, a man lay with his mind consumed with horrors. Padry could feel sorry for him. Very probably the lad had never seen a fight before. Now he was waiting for the moment for which he had been raised and was feeling unequal to it. Padry wondered what the King was doing: whether he was asleep or awake; calm, or fevered with guilt and the burning caress of his wound.

‘How do you think it will go tomorrow?’ he said softly.

Hawskill pulled a face. ‘Sometimes you can tell before it starts. Sometimes you can’t. The King’s got to break through to Trant. That’ll be hard – across the stream with the other bank held against us. If you fall in that, you’ll drown. And it’s easy to fall in the mud and the press. If you’re attacking you can’t hold your formation. If you’re defending you can. If we don’t break through …’ Hawskill frowned. ‘What’s Gueronius going to do? He’s still banging away at Trant. So he must reckon that the wall’s about to go. If it does go, maybe he can take the castle before we can get to it. Even then he must deal with us. He’ll have to come to us then, so the boot will be on the other foot.
And at the same time he must block Lackmere if he can’t bribe the man to stay away. All in all, I’d rather be where we are than where Gueronius is. By a whisker, perhaps.

‘Of course,’ he added, ‘if just one of us gets close enough to Gueronius to knock him on the head, it’ll all be over in a trice.’

Padry nodded. It was a cheering thought, up to a point. Gueronius would certainly be in the thick of it, wherever that might be. Angels above! It might even be that he, Thomas Padry, would have the chance to bash out the brains of his former pupil – brains he had once tried to fill with matters other than war. He did not relish the idea. Mainly he did not relish it because he knew that if the two of them came face to face it would, saving a miracle, be Padry’s brains that would be left leaking from his skull.

‘And the same if Ambrose is killed, I suppose,’ he said. Then he wished he had not.

‘Oh, certainly.’ Hawskill looked into his bowl. He seemed to have finished it. He picked up the wine bottle and weighed it. There must have been some left, but not much. ‘All things come to an end, I suppose,’ he sighed. ‘Enough talk. I thank you for your company, Master Chancellor. But let me be by myself now.’

adry woke in a grey, chilly dawn. The air was misty, the ground he was lying on hard and cold.

He sat up. He thought no profound thoughts. He found that he had slept in his cloak on the bare grass. He was still wearing his mail shirt and under it his padded leather jacket. His skin was clammy with cold sweat. His boots were on his feet. His bladder was full and his head throbbed.

All around him men were stirring, picking themselves up, shaking off the night. Bread was being broken and passed hurriedly around. Things were being crammed into knapsacks, horses led past. Calls sounded here and there on the hilltop. The campfire had burned to cold ash.

He needed water. But first he needed to get rid of it. There was no privacy on this crowded campsite, but who needed privacy today? The eyes that saw him might soon be staring sightless at the sky. He got to his feet, found his round iron helmet and put it on his head. He picked up his great mace and blundered
down the hill a little way so that the greyness might make him more anonymous. From the sights and sounds around him he was not the only one. Of course not. Men were men, food-gobblers and piss-squirters all, until they stopped breathing.

He hitched his mail shirt up, got his hose down and did what he had to do. Then he reassembled himself. Thirsty but complete, he climbed back up the hill.

He could not see far in that light. The sun might or might not have been up – there was no telling. Low clouds had rolled in during the later part of the night. The lake was veiled. So was the bottom of the valley on the inland side and the rise of the far ground. Looking along the ridge, Padry could just make out the stand of oaks where the King had his tent. It loomed like a little low cloud in the greyness. The castle of Trant was hidden. So were all signs of the enemy. Padry could not remember when he had last heard the cannon. The army might have been all alone on its hillside.

Hawskill was standing by the blackened circle of the campfire, calling for the Pemini men to assemble.

‘Water, Master Chancellor?’ he said, holding out a flask. ‘Drink well, for it will be a long day.’

‘My thanks,’ said Padry. He gulped at it, made to pass it back, and then remembered what Hawskill had just said. He drank some more.

A lump of bread was put into his hand. He looked at it and saw how filthy were the fingers in which he held it. Then he bit into it anyway. A few yards away the young knight Delverdis was standing, wooden-faced, while his attendants fastened bits of
plate armour over his mail. He saw Padry looking at him and turned his head to stare out across the lake.

‘Here, Pemini!’ Hawskill bellowed. ‘Let’s have you now!’ Men were shouldering into a loose body around them. The air creaked with leather and rattled with pikes and helmets and spiked or flanged maces like Padry’s own. Twenty paces away a band of men in lighter armour, carrying crossbows, had begun to assemble.

‘One of Trant’s towers fell last night,’ muttered Hawskill.

‘Oh! Which?’

Hawskill shrugged.

‘Has Gueronius stormed it?’

‘Not yet. But the King will attack early in the hope that we can prevent him.’

‘Michael guard him – and us.’

‘Amen to that.’ And:
‘Come on, you lazy pigherds! Where are you?
’

Hooves churned on mud. A huge warhorse was being led up, with drapes of white and yellow and metal plates strapped to its head and chest. They were helping the knight Delverdis into the high saddle. A lance was being held up. The knight groped for it, half blinded by his helmet. His mailed fist closed around it. The horse blew and carried him ponderously forward, towards the grove of oaks which was now showing a little more clearly at the end of the ridge. Other knights of the north passed, coming up from their tents and campsites to gather around the King. Hawskill watched them go, frowning.