Orley grew taller. It shocked him – he’d have said he was past his last growth. He was, in fact, standing looking at the bottom of his beaded leggings, and his bare anklebones, and wondering why he’d suddenly grown four fingers, and what this portended, when suddenly the human skin of Thorn was with him.
‘Choose me your two most useless mouths,’ Thorn said.
‘Too easy,’ Orley said. He led the mage out into the main shed, and found a big boy with slabs of muscle like hams on his legs and arms. The boy was pissing on another boy while three others held him down.
‘Tail!’ Orley called.
The big boy raised his breach clout. ‘Hah! What?’ he whined.
‘You are wanted.’ Orley cuffed the boy and then grabbed the other – the runt being held by the others. ‘And the Squirrel. The master wants you both.’
The two boys were immediately silent, and their fear stank.
‘Things will begin to move, now,’ Thorn said. ‘Your warriors do not impress me, Orley.’ His voice was hoarse and low. The warriors cringed away from him.
Perhaps the long shard of wood that transfixed his abdomen and the curl of intestine protruding from his lower back was the reason. Or perhaps it was the smell.
‘You are injured?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Thorn.
Orley had never found the sorcerer so alien as in that moment. But he made himself shrug. He made himself stand up, like Orley. ‘Pulse and Dragonfly tell me that the Galles have sacked Mont Reale.’ He paused to watch his master, but the effort was wasted. In the skin of Speaker of Tongues, Thorn gave nothing away. ‘We will have many more recruits if we make war on them,’ Orley asserted.
Thorn didn’t even shrug. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We will use them as allies. They have broken the Northern Huran. There is nothing to be had from broken people.’
Orley’s eyes encompassed the boys and girls who made his ‘army’. ‘I see,’ he said.
Not for the first time, Orley wondered how fickle his new master was, and how easily discarded his little force might be.
‘When I am done with a project here, I will go to the Galles and help them determine their next course of action.’ Thorn nodded. His face was perfectly blank. It was like communicating with a stone.
Orley stood his ground. ‘I need armour, swords, more crossbows – helmets. Perhaps horses. Space to train.’
Thorn nodded. ‘Good. I can find these things.’
‘When will we fight?’ Orley asked. ‘You were going to deliver Muriens to me.’
‘His wife did well to warn him against me.’ Thorn sounded distant. ‘It will all happen in the spring. Train well, Orley. Be worthy. Because with the Galles, I may not need you, as you do not need this pair, even though this one is of the strongest.’
Both boys began to weep.
They were still weeping when Thorn fed them to the eggs, which ate their souls.
N’gara – Redmede, Mogon, and the Faery Knight
Insistent knocking at his door, and Redmede threw on a robe and went to open it. The whole house shook – the straw mats let in gusts of cold air. He drew his falchion, opened the door-
Mogon stood there, as tall as a warhorse, her plumes erect on her head. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I need you. Dress warmly.’
Redmede looked back at Bess, who was sitting up on their snug pallet, throwing a heavy wolf fur around her shoulders.
‘I’ll come,’ Redmede said. It was a complex decision. She might eat him. Even now, he could feel the wave front of her rage. But she had more control than any of the other Wardens and her urgency communicated itself even through the medium of her alien body.
He pulled on two pairs of hose, one over another, and then deerskin leggings over all, and took Outwaller shoes – heavy moose hide, lined in fur – off the wall and laced them high on his legs. He had a good wool gown in Jack white, and he wore his falchion and took his bow, which he strung in the warmth of his little hut. He buttoned his old hood onto his head and put a fur cap atop it, and then pulled light gloves over his hands. Bess pulled heavy mittens like a knight’s gauntlets made in wool and leather over his gloves.
Bess was more than just his partner, now. He saw the Hold through her eyes, sometimes – she loved to see the faeries, the irks, and the Wardens. To her, they were childhood tales made real, and she was living in some sort of paradise. He only saw the Wardens as monsters, and her vision of them steadied him.
‘Help her,’ Bess whispered. ‘If Mogon seeks your aid, it can only help all of us.’
He kissed her, and went out into the brutal cold and snow.
The tall daemon was wrapped in furs, so that she was twice as big in girth as usual. ‘My kind broadcast all our heat,’ she admitted. ‘Winter is very dangerous for us.’
‘What’s this about, lady?’ he asked.
‘Can you ride?’ she asked.
He made a face. ‘There’s not a horse in this town,’ he said.
She trotted off, her mighty three-toed feet crushing the snow flat for him, and he could walk easily except where she went through a drift. But she led him only as far as the cavernous main gate of the Hold. ‘Tapio keeps war elk. Tamsin has one saddled for you.’
‘What is this about?’ Redmede asked.
‘Tapio is missing in the snow,’ she said. ‘I can find him, but I need help. And this is not something he, or I, will wish to have known.’
‘Shit,’ Redmede said. He felt hopelessly over his head but he clung to how much Bess liked these . . . monsters. And Tamsin had ever been like a creature out of a faery tale to him. He plunged into the cavern, through the curtain of warmth, some mighty working that protected the dooryard, and just inside, a pair of small irks held a sharp-faced animal like a moose but with back-swept antlers. The animal had the complete tack of a horse, although oddly shaped, decorated with tiny bells over mottled green leather.
The two irks bowed.
Tamsin, who Bess called the Faery Queen, was standing on the other side of the animal. He felt her presence – and smelled her, too. She smelled like sunlight and cinnamon and balsam of Gilead all together. He bowed. It was reflexive – he, Bill Redmede, every man’s equal, had no hesitation in bowing to the Faery Queen.
‘Find him, ser knight,’ she said.
‘I’m no knight,’ he said.
Her sad smile told him that his opinion held no weight.
‘What of your own people?’ he asked.
‘Please go,’ she begged.
He had no resistance against her. He got a foot into the near-side stirrup and the great beast grunted.
‘You aboard? ’
Redmede gave a little shriek.
Tamsin held out an amulet. ‘It will find him. Even if he is dead.’
The bull elk trotted out into the storm.
‘Can you hear me, boss? ’
Redmede fought his trembling hands – everything in irkdom seemed to scare him. ‘I’m – how do you do that?’
‘Who knows? Good seat. Don’t worry, I won’t drop you. You do your part and I do mine. And don’t use that fucking bit unless you have to, or we’ll see which of us is stronger. Understand me? ’
Redmede put the reins carefully on the warm beast’s neck and left them there, tied together. The elk increased his pace, and Mogon trotted alongside.
Too soon, they’d left the warm darkness of the Hold and the surrounding huts behind.
‘Why?’ Redmede asked. ‘I’m not unwilling, lady. But why me?’
Mogon ran on. She ran for long enough that Redmede thought he wasn’t going to get an answer, and then she crossed a series of downed trees and paused.
‘We’re in the Wild, man. If his own nobles suspected that he was alone in the snow, badly injured – well. Suffice it to say that his mate asks a Warden and a man to save her lord.’ She turned, far more agile than a creature of her bulk had any right to be, and headed into the open woods.