“You have sssaid hisss name often enough to invite him to your fire,” the Faery Knight said.
The human nodded. “He will not come. He will not even attempt to contest my passage. In fact, he can neither see me, nor hear me, even when I say his name.”
The irk nodded and knocked back his wine. “Then I know who you are. I congratulate you on being alive.”
The man smiled. “It is rather delightful.”
The Faery Knight laughed-all the faeries laughed by the stream. “Perhapsss that isss how we will pick up the sssidesss for this fight,” he said. “Not good againssst evil, but merely thossse who find thisss world a delight againssst thossse who find it a burden. Thorn feelsss the world isss dark and grim.”
“God knows he does his best to make it so. Very human of him,” said the man.
“In the woodsss, it isss sssaid that you are on the dark path,” the Faery Knight said.
The human shrugged. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” he said. “Perhaps I’m on it. But I have a goal, and an enemy. I will fight until the fight is over, or I am beaten.”
“Ssso,” the irk said. He poured more wine. “You know the truth.”
“I know a truth,” said the man who had once been Harmodius.
They touched their cups.
“I will ask no vasssalage of one ssso puisssant asss you,” said the irk. “We will be alliesss.”
Harmodius touched the rim of his cup to the other. “Well met by firelight, my lord. We will be… alliesss.”
Bill Redmede was preparing for war. He and his Jacks-those who had survived the long march-had to make many things themselves that they’d always bought or stolen. Arrows first and foremost, but also clothes and quivers. Hard leather purses were replaced with softer Outwaller bags and wool hose with leather stockings of carefully tanned deerskin.
Most still had their white cotes, now stained and worn to a hundred earthy hues.
Bill watched them work-watched them loft shaft after shaft into the stumps he’d prepared for them, led them on runs through the woods with targets to the left and right. Winter had made them fat. But it had also made them steadier. Most of the men and not a few of the women had found mates among the Outwallers, almost as if a suggestion had been planted among them that they sink roots. Weddings-with no priests-had been celebrated. More than a few bellies were round, since Yule.
But since the snow began to retreat into the wood lines, and then to melt away altogether-since Nita Qwan’s departure east, and then, ten days later, the sudden breakup of the ice-all the Dulwar and all the other Outwallers who lived around N’gara began to train their warriors, and Bill Redmede’s people joined in with a will. And they learned from the Outwallers, too-how to throw the small axes the Dulwars all carried, men and women, too, and how to make lighter arrows of the cane that grew around the inner sea and at this time of the year was standing, dried and ready to be harvested.
But Bill had agreed to the alliance. He knew what was coming, and what was expected.
Most of his men were going to war, and a few women, too. Bess was heavily pregnant, but grimly determined until the whole body of the Jacks voted together that no pregnant woman should come to the war.
“If’n we’re all killed,” Jamie Cartwright said, “you gels will keep our memory alive.”
Bess cursed and didn’t speak to anyone for a day.
Tapio-the Faery Knight-came and sat with her. She was always delighted to see him, as if he was an angel or a god.
He took one of her hands. “Besss,” he said. “If we triumph you will have misssed nothing but violenssse.” He shrugged. “But if we fail, I promissse you that our enemy will come here all too sssoon, and you and Tamsssin will have your belliesss full of fighting.”
But even to the Faery Knight, she frowned. “I didn’t become a Jack to get left behind because my body was full of a man’s seed,” she spat.
“I’m sssure there will be more war, asss sssure asss the sssun will ssshine,” he said with a twisted smile. “All the creaturesss of thisss world make war. It isss what we have in common.” He rose with an elegance no human frame could match, like a sinewy serpent.
So Bess straightened arrows and made the pine pitch resin that they used to help bind the heads to the shafts, and while the Outwallers did their war dances and Mogon’s wardens came in from the north and Exrech’s people swarmed in from the far west with tales of war and flood behind them, the Jacks completed their preparations, loaded their bags with food, and contemplated their allies.
Fitzalan had a new beard and a new, more mature manner. He didn’t attack everything he saw anymore. He had an almond-eyed Outwaller woman named Liri from far to the west, where they said there was a river as broad as a lake. Her people were called Renerds, and their skin was a golden red, their eyes and hair much the same.
Or perhaps she had him. She seemed the more imperious of the two.
Two nights before the whole of the Faery Knight’s army was due to march east, he held a great council in his hall. Harpers sang of wars from the past. No song was of glory, and most were of defeat and pain, the agony of loss, the despair of a bad wound. The music was haunting and beautiful.
Bill Redmede sat thinking of his distant brother. And of the Kingdom of Alba.
Of how little it all meant to him, now. He smiled grimly as he realized what Wat Tyler had known at midwinter.
To Redmede, this hall, N’gara, and its disparate inhabitants, had become home.
He twisted his mouth and glanced at Fitzalan, who was sharing a long stone pipe with Aun’shen, one of Mogon’s lieutenants. Some of the great wardens smoked. Some also ate their meat raw.
Living at N’gara was predominantly a matter of not being offended by the alien behaviour of others.
“The comrades might get more spirit from happier songs,” Redmede said.
Fitzalan shrugged. “They’re true songs, those,” he said.
Lady Tamsin appeared out of the air, or so it seemed. “The irks send warriors away with a reminder of where they go and what they leave behind,” she said. “Perhaps for your kind, with the life so short, there is less to lose. Yet this seems to me odd-I would think that with the life so short, your people would be more careful of it.”
Redmede found it hard to look at Tamsin for any length of time, so he tore his eyes away and looked at the harpers on the dais instead. Behind them, on the tapestry-that-lived, spear-armed warriors were cut down by humans in strange armour. Redmede had seen the armour somewhere before-on old statues outside Harndon. Archaic armour, helmets with crests, big rectangular shields. The legions.
Just when you thought you might understand the irks, or you thought they were just folks, they’d remind you that the older ones had been alive for a thousand years or so and remembered things that were long forgotten by most humans. Even in books.
Nor did they remember events the same way.
Redmede kept his eyes on the musicians. “Few of us are careful of life, my lady.”
“For your own sweet Bess’s sake, and all her kisses, mortal, the least you could do is bring yourself home.” She smiled sweetly, like all the young women in all the passionate springs of the world rolled into one woman with pointed teeth. “Forget about glory. Go late, fight briefly, leave early and come home alive.”
Bill Redmede laughed. “Lady, you incline me to desert.”
Tamsin spread her hands. “War is a monster that eats the sentient races. I would counsel any friend to avoid him.”
Bill Redmede nodded. “But who will stop the power of the sorcerer? Who will save the bears in the ’Dacks or the serfs in the fields?”
She nodded at the tapestry-that-lived. “Perhaps they should save themselves,” she said. She raised a hand. “Peace, friend. You can make no argument that will reconcile Tamsin to the loss of her lord to war.”