The Red Knight (18 page)

I killed my brother.

It still made him sick.

He didn’t want to have to face the foe again, not for all the pretty ladies in court and not for all the lands he stood to inherit. He was no coward. He’d
done it.
In front of
his father and fifty other men. There probably weren’t fifty knights in all Alba – from one end of the Demesne to the other – who had bested a daemon in single combat. He
certainly hadn’t wanted to.

But he had. And that should have been that.

But of course, the king hated him, as he hated all his brothers, hated his mother, loathed his father.

Fuck the king. I’ll ride home to Pater.

Strathnith was one of the greatest fortresses in the Demesne. It was a citadel of the Wall, and the Muriens had held it for generations. The Nith was a mighty river – almost an inland sea
– that defined the ultimate border between the Demesne and the Wild. His father ruled the fortress and the thousands of men and women who paid their taxes and depended on it for protection.
He thought about the great hall; the ancient rooms, some built by the Archaics. The sounds of the Wild carrying across the broad river.

The constant bickering, the drunken accusations. The family fighting.

‘Good Christ, I might as well go find a cursed monster and kill it,’ he said aloud. Going home meant returning to a life of constant warfare – in the field against the daemons,
and in the hall against his father. And his brothers.

I killed my brother.

‘They can have it,’ he said.

He’d been sent south, the young hero, to win a bride at court. To raise the family in the estimation of the king.

Another of his father’s brilliant plans.

He had fallen in love, but not with a woman. Rather, he’d fallen in love with women. And the court. Music. Card games. Dice. Good wine and wit. Dancing.

Strathnith wasn’t going to offer
any
of those things. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it. In retrospect, maybe his loathsome brother had a point.

His mother
—

He banished the thought.

‘Lorica, m’lord,’ Adam sang out. ‘Shall I find us an inn?’

The idea of an inn helped douse his moment of self-doubt. Inns – good ones – were like miniature courts. A little rougher, a little more home-spun. Gawin smiled.

‘The best one,’ he said.

Adam grinned, touched his spurs to his horse, and rode off into the setting sun. Drink. And maybe a girl. He thought fleetingly of Lady Mary, who so obviously loved him. A beautiful body, and,
he had to admit, a fine wit. And the daughter of the Count. She was a fine catch.

He shrugged.

The sign of the Two Lions was an old inn built on the foundation of an Archaic cavalry barracks, and it looked like a fortress; it had its own curtain wall, separate from Lorica’s town
wall, and it had a tower in the north-east corner where any soldier could see the original gate had been. Built against the tower was a massive building of white plaster and heavy black beams, with
a hipped thatch roof with expensive copper sheathing around the chimneys; glass windows opened onto the porches that ran all along the front and sunlit side, and four massive chimneys, all new
masonry, rose out of the roof.

It was like a piece of the Palace of Harndon brought into the countryside. Lorica was an important town, and the Two Lions was an important inn.

Adam appeared to hold his horse. ‘A king’s knight is very welcome here,’ he said through his grin. Adam liked to serve a great man – it rubbed off. Especially forty
leagues north of the city.

A prosperous man, razor thin, wearing a fine woollen hood lined in silk and edged with silver crosses and a fur band, swept off the last and bowed to the ground. ‘Edard Blodget,
m’lord. At your service. I won’t call my inn humble – it’s the best inn on the Highway. But I do like to see the king’s knights.’

Gawin was startled to see a commoner so well dressed and so frankly spoken – startled, but not displeased. He returned the bow, all the way to the ground. ‘Ser Gawin Murien,’
he said. ‘Knighthood doesn’t necessarily make a man rich, Master Blodget. May I enquire – ?’

Master Blodget gave a tight lipped smile. ‘Your own room for a silver leopard. Share with your squires for two cats more.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I can make it cheaper,
m’lord, but it will be in a common room.’

Gawin mentally reviewed his purse. He had a good memory, well-trained, and so he could almost literally see the contents – four silver leopards and a dozen heavy copper cats. And gleaming
among them, a pair of rose nobles, solid gold, worth twenty leopards apiece. Not a fortune, by any means, but enough that he needn’t stint on his first night on the road, or on the
second.

‘Adam will take care of it, then. I would prefer we were all in a room. With a window, if that’s not too much to ask?’

‘Clean linen, window, well-water, and stabling for three horses. The pack horse will cost another half a cat.’ Blodget shrugged, as if such petty amounts were beneath him, which they
probably were. The Two Lions was at least a third of the size of the massive fortress of Strathnith, and was probably worth – Gawin tried to do the mathematics in his head – wished for
his tutor – and finally arrived at a figure that had to be recklessly wrong.

‘I’m flattered you came to greet me in person,’ Gawin said with another bow.

Blodget grinned from ear to ear.

Another thing I learned at court – men like to be flattered just as much as ladies,
Gawin thought.

‘I have a group of singers tonight, m’lord – on their way to court, or so they hope. Will you join us for dinner in the common room? It ain’t a great hall – but
it’s not bad. And we’d be honoured to have you sit with us.’

Of course, I’m as fond of flattery as the next man.

‘We will join you for dinner and music,’ he said with a slight bow.

‘Evensong at Saint Eustachios. You’ll hear the bell,’ the innkeeper said. ‘Dinner follows the service directly.’

Harndon City – Edward

Master Pyle appeared in the yard after evensong and asked for a volunteer.

Edward had a girl, but she worked, too. She would have to understand, because a chance to work with the master was every apprentice’s dream.

The master mixed the powder differently this time. Edward didn’t see how. But he moved a heavy iron pitch-bowl for repousse work into the yard, and cleared a lot of old rubbish –
bits of ruined projects and soft wood for making temporary moulds and hordles – out of the way, in case they should catch fire. It wasn’t skilled work, but he was still working for the
master.

The smoke was thicker this time, and the flame burned whiter.

Master Pyle looked at it, fanning his face to get the evil smelling smoke to clear. He had a bit of a smile.

‘Well,’ he said. He looked at Edward. ‘Are you ready for your examination, young man?’

Edward took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said. And hoped that didn’t sound too cocky.

But Master Pyle nodded. ‘I agree.’ He looked around the yard. ‘Clear all this up, will you?’

That night in the loft, the apprentices whispered. The older boys knew when the master was making progress. They could tell just be the way he held his head. And because rewards suddenly emerged
from the master’s purse, and boys got new work, and apprentices were suddenly tested to be journeymen. Lise, the eldest female cutler, had gone to the masters the week before. She’d
passed.

And so Edward Chevins, senior apprentice and sometime shop boy, found himself up for journeyman. It was so sudden it made his head spin, and before the next morning was old enough to drink his
beer, the Guild Hall had checked his papers, the Guild Masters examined him, his nerves were wracked, his hands shook – and he was left to sweat, alone, in a richly decorated room fit to
entertain a king. It was plenty to overawe a seventeen-year-old blade smith.

Edward was a tall, gangly young man with sandy red hair and too many freckles. Standing under the stained glass of Saint Nicholas, he could think of twenty better answers he might have given to
the question: ‘How do you achieve a bright, constant blue on a blade with a heavy forte and a needle point?’

He groaned. The other four boys who’d been tested with him looked at him with a mixture of sympathy and hope. It was too easy to believe that someone else’s failure raised
one’s own hopes of success.

An hour later, the masters came into the hall. They all looked a little red in the face, as if they’d been drinking.

Master Pyle came and put a ring on his finger – a ring of fine steel. ‘You’re made, boy,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

Lorica – Ser Gawin

Gawin was awakened from his nap by the sound of men shouting in the courtyard. Angry voices have a timbre to them – especially when men mean violence.

Adam was at his bed. He had a heavy knife in his hand. ‘I don’t know who they are, m’lord. Men from overseas. Knights. But—’ Squires didn’t speak ill of
knights. It was never a good idea. So Adam shrugged.

Gawin rolled off his bed, wearing only his braes. He pulled a shirt over his head, and with Thoma’s help got his legs into his hose and his torso laced into his pourpoint and his hose tied
on.

Down in the courtyard one voice sounded clear above the others. Accented, but powerful controlled, elegant. The words ended with a long, clear laugh that sounded like bells.

Gawin went to his window and threw it open.

There were a dozen armoured men in the courtyard. At least three were true knights, and wore armour as good as Gawin’s own. Their men-at-arms were nearly as well armoured. It was possible
they were
all
knights.

They all wore the same badge – a rose, gules, on a field d’or.

Not anyone he knew.

The leader with the magnificent laugh had silver-gilt hair and fine features – in armour, he looked like a statue of Saint George. He was
beautiful.

Gawin felt ill-dressed and somewhat doltish in comparison.

Master Blodget stood in front of this saint with his hands on his hips.

‘But,’ the knight had a smile on his face, ‘But that is the room I want, Master Innkeeper!’

Blodget shook his head. ‘There’s a gentleman in that room – a belted king’s knight, in that room. First come, first served, m’lord. Fair is fair.’

The knight shook his head. ‘Throw him out, then.’

Toma had his master’s doublet and helped him into it. While Adam did the laces, Toma fetched his riding sword.

‘Follow me,’ Gawin snapped at the scared boy, and sprang down the stairs. He went through the common room – empty, because every man in the inn was in the courtyard watching
the fun.

He stepped through the door and the knight turned to look at him. He smiled.

‘Perhaps I don’t wish to leave my room,’ Gawin called. He hated that his voice wavered. There was nothing to fear, here – just a misunderstanding, but the kind wherein a
knight had to make a good show.

‘You?’ he asked. His tone of disbelief wasn’t mocking – it was genuine. ‘You are a king’s knight? Ah – Gaston, they need us here!’

Closer up, the men in the courtyard were huge. The smallest of them was a head taller than Gawin, and he was not a small man.

‘I have that honour,’ Gawin said. He tried to find something wittier to say, but he was more interested in defusing the tension than in scoring points.

The one called Gaston laughed. The rest laughed too.

The beautiful knight leaned down from his saddle. ‘Have your man clear your things from that corner room,’ he said. And then, in a particularly annoying tone, he added, ‘I
would esteem it a favour.’

Gawin found that he was angry.

‘No,’ he said.

‘That was ill-said, and not courteous,’ the knight answered him with a frown. ‘I shall have it. Why make this difficult? If you are a man of honour then you may cede it to me
with a good grace, knowing I am a better man than you.’ He shrugged. ‘Or fight me. That would be honour too.’ He nodded to himself. ‘But to stand here and tell me I
can’t have it; that makes me angry.’

Gawin spat. ‘Then let us fight, ser knight. Give me your name and style, and I will name the weapons and the place. The king has announced a tournament in a two months,
perhaps—’ Even as he spoke, the man was dismounting.

He gave his reins to Gaston and turned, drawing his sword – a four-foot long war sword. ‘Then fight.’

Gawin squeaked. He wasn’t proud of the squeak, but he was unarmoured and had only his riding sword – a good blade, but a single handed weapon whose only real purpose was to mark your
status in life and keep riff-raff at arm’s length.

‘Garde!’ the man called.

Gawin reached out and drew his sword from the scabbard Toma held, and brought it up in a counter cut that just stopped his opponent’s first heavy overhand blow. Gawin had time to bless his
superb Master at Arms – and then the giant cut at him again and he slipped to the side, allowing the heavier sword to slide off his own like rain off a roof.

The bigger man stepped in as quick as a cat and struck him in the face with one gauntleted hand, knocking him to the ground. Only a turn of his head saved him from spitting teeth. But he was a
knight of the king – he rolled with the impact, spat blood, and came to his feet with a hard cut at his opponent’s groin.

A single-handed sword has advantages in a fight with a heavier sword. It is quicker, even if the wielder is smaller.

Gawin funnelled his anger into his sword and cut – three times, on three different lines, trying to awe the giant with a flurry of blows. The sword rang off the mirrored finish of his
opponent’s armoured wrist on the third cut. It was a fight ending blow.

If his opponent wasn’t covered in steel.

The giant attacked, drove him back two steps, and then Toma screamed. The boy had been unprepared for a fight and stood frozen, but now tried to turn and run he’d became entangled with his
master’s defensive flurry. Gawin almost fell, and the bigger man’s long sword licked out, caught his, and drove his thrust deep into Toma.