As a little girl, Amicia’s village had a bonfire for All Hallows. She could remember it-the making of it, the anticipation, and her horror as she saw its power, not just in the real, but the aethereal. Fire. Fast, and ruthless and without intelligence.
The fire had all the fuel of the royal box-hangings, painted with oils, and tapestries and wood partitions, furniture and beams and bleachers. It had an aethereal component, too. Someone-something had pushed the fire.
The two children were heartbeats from death with the smoke and fire-and the girl could not stop screaming. Her brother had already fainted.
Amicia lacked the potentia, after healing, and a foolish struggle with death, to both lift the beam and hold the fire. But her trust in God was so absolute that she drained herself, holding the fire at bay, while four brave normal men-a father, and three of his servants-heaved with futile intensity at the beam. The father was weeping openly at his own impotence.
“Why?” he screamed.
Amicia pushed on the flames.
Something on the other side pushed back, and laughed.
“Got you,” Gabriel said at her shoulder. He put his hands on the beam and it moved.
A sudden gust of wind, like the back of a storm god’s hand, slapped the fire away from Amicia.
She was knocked to her knees-instantly soaked to the skin, and steam rose, scalding, and stopped on her shield.
The bigger servant pulled the girl clear.
Gabriel grunted.
The father, his fine clothes ruined by smoke, got his son by the shoulders and pulled, and the boy screamed, denied the mercy of oblivion as his broken legs were wrenched from under the heavy wood.
They retreated the length of a house, and Amicia knelt. “Give me-” she demanded.
Gabriel put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m out,” he said. “Now get on my horse.”
“You saved us all,” the man said. “I’m-oh, my God-”
“Get on my horse-Nell!” he shouted.
The crowd had thinned-men-at-arms could be seen on the other side of the smoke.
Nell came through the crowd. She had no choice, and men cursed and women screamed at the two horses.
“I can save them,” Amicia said.
“Get on my horse,” Gabriel said. “Don’t be a fool. There’s no more you can do today. Other people can bandage them, and we’re about to be taken. Taken! Amicia!”
He got up on Ataelus, and extended his hand-his good right hand.
Behind him, his bees set upon the soldiers and the crowd somewhat indiscriminately.
“You’re the Green Knight?” asked a pretty blonde woman. She was so pretty, that with his life at stake and Amicia hesitating, he still saw her.
“Sometimes,” he answered.
She became bolder, and caught his stirrup. “Are you going to the Queen?” she asked. “I’m one of her women. A laundress.”
He could see no evil in her. “Nell!” he shouted.
Nell reached down and without a shade of his hesitation, grabbed Amicia’s hand and dragged her across her saddle.
Gabriel might have laughed, except he was too tired and too angry. He reached for the blonde woman as he turned his horse, got his good hand under her armpit a little more roughly than he had intended, and put his spurs into poor Ataelus, who deserved nothing of the kind.
The blonde woman squawked, and then he had her. She got a leg over the saddle even as Ataelus exploded into one of his bursts of speed.
A knot of men-at-arms and mounted soldiers burst out of the smoke, the crowd, with the bees at their heels.
Gabriel looked back. They were riding through the camp Ser Gerald Random had built for the visiting knights. Half the pavilions were empty, and some held squatters. But there were streets of wedge tents and streets of round pavilions, and double-ended pavilions for the richer lords, with cross streets so retinues could move about. It was like a clean, neat, festive military camp, and the tents stretched away for a third of a mile. The ropes-guy ropes and pegged wind-ropes-often came well out into the streets making it, in fact, a riding nightmare, even without twenty armed pursuers.
He locked his left arm across the young woman in front of him. “If I have to fight,” he shouted, “just fall off. Don’t stay.”
She didn’t answer.
Ataelus was a fine horse-the best, really-but he was not fast. His pursuers hadn’t made multiple passes in the lists, or been awake since dark morning.
They began to gain rapidly.
Nell, despite her smaller horse, had no such troubles-she was small, Amicia was thin, and they were drawing away from Ataelus and from the pursuit.
I’m going to be captured, Gabriel thought angrily.
He had a thought-glanced into his palace and was saddened to see that the golden thread was gone from his ankle.
Not so much gone, as a mere slip, a spider web filament.
So much for invulnerability.
He leaned into the ear of the woman in front of him. “I need you off,” he said.
“I’m ready,” she said.
He reined Ataelus in, turning to the right. Ataelus understood immediately, and when a little of his heavy speed was shed, he pivoted on his hind legs, almost fully stopped-and the woman slid to the ground with real agility, catching her skirts and rolling.
Nice legs…
Gabriel had his sword in his right hand and his reins in the left. There were at least a dozen men coming at him. But they were spread out over a furlong, and none of the leaders were knights.
They were on the main street of the northern knights’ camp-where the Red Knight and his company would have been in other circumstances. Gabriel could see the red pavilion that was his rally point-he was south and west of it, too far away to do any good.
He had no curses left. He went through the first six men without taking a bad blow-his own actions had been a blur of covers and short, vicious counter-cuts-and the seventh man was all alone and Gabriel reached out with his injured left hand, caught his bridle, and pulled as he back cut with his sword from a high left guard, parrying the man’s boar spear.
The pain was briefly intense as he pulled the horse’s head over-until the horse rolled, crushing its rider.
“That was stupid,” Gabriel said aloud, aware he’d just maimed his own hand.
In that moment, a red thunderbolt struck the rear of the men coming at him. Gavin-in his coat armour-had it all-the red surcoat, the panache, and the magnificent horse barding of red silk-and he looked like an ancient god of war as he struck the pursuers with a war hammer, killing and dismounting men with every swing.
Gabriel sat and watched his brother rout a small army. It was a brilliant feat of arms, and all Gabriel could manage was some desperate panting.
Gabriel backed Ataelus, looking to see if any of the men he’d dismounted were coming at him from behind. He turned his horse, and the blonde woman was astride one of the armoured pages, with a dagger at his throat.
He didn’t take her threat seriously, and he struck her in the side with his armoured fist.
She killed him. One push from her slim hands and he was dead.
She turned her head away and rolled off him.
“The rendezvous is this way,” Gavin said with some brotherly sarcasm. “Unless you’ve found more maidens to rescue? Christ, you have.”
Gavin saluted with a shockingly bloody war hammer. “Your servant, fair maid.”
The blonde woman put a hand to her mouth.
Gabriel put his own hand on hers. “Let’s see if we can manage the mounting better on a second try,” he said.
“You fair pulled my arm out of the socket last time,” the woman said reproachfully.
“I promise to do better,” Gabriel said.
“Who’s he?” the woman asked, pointing at the gore-besmattered knight. The pursuers had baulked-facing Toby and Michael and Ser Bertran.