Tom rose from behind the desk. ‘You have the duty, ser.’
The Morean groaned.
‘And you can have it again tomorrow – just to teach ye to read the roster. Eh?’ Tom grinned, and got up – all six foot five inches of him – from behind the desk. ‘All yours, with my compliments.’
‘Oh, Tom,’ Alcaeus moaned. ‘I’m shot! I’ve done the throne’s paperwork all day. I’m not even armed.’
Ser Thomas grinned. ‘You need more exercise, boyo. Let’s fight tomorrow.’
Alcaeus met the big man’s eye and matched his grin. ‘Horse or foot?’
‘That’s my boy. Let’s be a-horse. I’ll be gentle on ye, and let ye sleep in after yon stint at the night watch. Go get your armour.’
Alcaeus found Dmitry, his squire, awake, and managed to get himself armed in less than fifteen minutes. The Morean boy was all contrition. ‘I tried to find you and tell you you had the duty, ser!’ and so Alcaeus learned that the Imperial Ordinaries had turned the boy out of the palace. He sighed, scraped his knuckles on his vambrace, and ran back to the guard room with Dmitry following him carrying his sword and helmet.
Tom nodded. ‘All yours. Long Paw is out in town on a pass with Cully and Bent. The rest are in barracks. The Captain – the Duke – doesn’t want the lads and lasses loose in the fleshpots until we’re better liked here so you should have a quiet night.’ He paused. ‘The – er – Duke ordered that the quarter guard keep their horses saddled and ready though. You might want to order the same for your own.’ He smiled nastily. ‘Perhaps not such a quiet night after all, eh?’
Tom clapped his shoulder and retired, sabatons snapping crisply on the stone floor. Alcaeus leaned back in the heavy chair, breathing hard, and cursing his luck. He waved Dmitry to see to his horse, and the younger man went out into the cold night. Alcaeus leaned back in the big seat – big enough for a man in armour. His eyelids were heavy and he cursed.
The last thing I need is to fall asleep on duty.
He poured himself some mulled cider, heating on the hearth, his arms heavy in harness, drank it off, and felt a little better.
No Head sat at the other table, and he was writing furiously. Alcaeus leaned over and found that the man was copying a poem from a copybook – in low Archaic.
As Alcaeus loved poetry, he began to follow along.
‘Do ye mind?’ No Head asked. ‘I don’t like to be watched.’
Alcaeus rose and apologised. He could hear commotion in the courtyard. ‘That’s good stuff. Where’d you get it?’ he asked.
No Head looked up. ‘No idea. Ser Michael gave it to me to copy.’ The man stretched his right hand. ‘He’s teaching me to read and write.’
Alcaeus, who took literacy for granted, paused and then reordered his thoughts. ‘Ah – I crave your pardon. I wasn’t watching you write, I was reading the poem.’
No Head laughed. ‘It is a poem, I suppose. I can’t read it. I’m just copying the letters.’ He leaned back. ‘And it cramps my hand worse than a sword fight. But I’m keen to learn – I want to write a book.’
Alcaeus thought he should stand watch more often. He’d seldom met anyone who struck him as less bookish than No Head. ‘Really?’ Alcaeus asked, worrying in the same moment that he sounded a little too surprised.
No Head leaned over. ‘I hear you are a writer, eh?’
Alcaeus nodded. ‘I think I write all the time. In my sleep, even.’ He shrugged. ‘If I’m not scribbling, I’m thinking about it.’
No Head nodded. ‘That’s just it, ain’t it? It is like a bug that bites you, and then you can’t let it go. What do you write about?’
Alcaeus shrugged. ‘Life,’ he admitted. ‘Love. Women. Sometimes war.’ He shrugged. The commotion in the courtyard was growing closer. ‘And you?’ he asked.
‘I want to write a book about how to conduct a siege,’ No Head said. ‘How to build the big engines – how to choose the wood, how to make the torsion ropes, how to site ’em. How to dig a trench, and how to hold it. How to make fire.’
Alcaeus laughed. ‘That’s a good title. How to Make Fire.’ He sighed. ‘Or maybe Kindles Fire. It sounds different from my books – but half the world would want a copy, I suppose. Have you thought that you might be telling someone how to lay siege to you? You could be on the receiving end of your own-’
At that moment, the doors to the guardroom opened and a pair of Nordikans stood there with a tall, bearded man in a black travelling gown.
‘Your man doesn’t know the passwords,’ said the smaller of the two Nordikans. He grinned at Alcaeus.
Alcaeus had never seen the man before, so he shook his head. Then he thought of the latest command meeting and the Duke’s instructions about spies. His mother’s comments in the same vein.
‘Bring him here,’ Alcaeus ordered.
‘I’m not a member of the company,’ the man said quietly.
Alcaeus shook his head in exasperation. There was more commotion out in the courtyard, and the door was open and cold air was pouring into the guardroom.
Long Paw came through the door with three more Nordikans.
‘Quarter guard,’ Long Paw shouted.
Alcaeus choked. It was the company’s habit to keep almost a quarter of their men in full harness, archers with bows strung, at all times when under threat, but in barracks in the palace, they’d reduced this commitment to just twenty men. And he hadn’t inspected them-
But of course, Tom had. And as the shout went up, they came pounding down the corridors – Oak Pew was the first one through the double doors at the barracks’ end of the guardroom. She had a war bow in her fist and she already had a steel cap on her head. Ser Michael was next, and then the Captain himself, appearing fully armed from his office with Toby at his heels, and then the rest of them – Gelfred looked as if he’d been asleep in full harness while John le Bailli looked fresh, and right behind him was one of the new men-at-arms – Kelvin Ewald, a small man with a long scar. He wore a fancy harness.
‘To horse,’ said the Captain.
Long Paw said, ‘There are twenty or thirty men to take them. It was an ambush.’
The Captain was already getting his leg over his new gelding, bought from the Imperial stables. He cursed.
Long Paw rolled onto a small Eastern horse, and they were off, and the Nordikans had the gate open. Then they rode across the square and thought the streets – first a broad street, and then a sharp corner, and then another, the street narrowing all the way, and then another turn, a Y intersection . . .
Long Paw raised his arm.
There were two more men – dead or dying – in the doorway of the tiny room, and Bent had a dagger wound in his left arm.
The man on the bed was unconscious, as Cully had punched him in the head.
‘My turn,’ Cully said. ‘Make room.’
He and Bent switched – even this movement was the result of practice, and they changed like dance partners. Cully had his buckler off his hip, and he wrapped it around Bent from the left, caught a blow intended for the wounded man and made a short slash with his arming sword as Bent ducked away behind him. His new adversary didn’t really want to be there, alone, against a much better swordsman, and he backed away, assuming that Cully wouldn’t follow him from the safety of the doorway.
He was wrong, and he died for it, and then Cully was loose in the corridor, and he cut down two men – whirled, and managed to slam his buckler into the archer’s head – there was an archer in the corridor, looking for a shot he never took. Cully’s point sliced through the candle in a wall sconce, and a kick smashed the table with a dozen small oil lamps.
In the comparative saftey of a considerably darker corridor he got his back into the room, and took a knee.
‘I’m too old for this shit,’ he said.
Bent cackled.
And then a faint smell of smoke caught at the back of Cully’s throat.
Long Paw sent half a dozen archers down the black maw of an alley. He turned to the Duke and shook his head. ‘Never thought they’d have so many men. They have archers on two buildings, that I saw – maybe more.’