His pole-axe was on his horse, and he didn’t think he could negotiate the deep snow. So he drew the heavy dagger at his hip, and ploughed forward towards the nearest troll, all the while cursing himself as a fool.
The one he’d wounded was face down in the road. That made him smile despite the pain.
The second one was fully engaged with a blur of gold – the noise the two made was like a hundred savage dogs fighting. Ser John couldn’t make out who his new ally was, but he stumbled forward – turned his whole body to look north, in case there was a third – and the black shape descended from the sky.
This time he was more ready. The dagger flicked out and feathers fell to the ground – there was a discordant shriek that pierced even through the awesome sounds the troll and its adversary made.
The great black bird-thing stooped, wings spread, and a thick line of molten gold came out of the snow and struck it in the middle of its black breast. It – exploded.
Ser John was knocked flat. This time, he didn’t lose consciousness and so he was aware as the whirlwind of the fight passed over him. The troll planted a foot by his head, and Ser John rolled, fuelled by desperation, and he plunged his dagger in behind its hip with both hands driving the hilt. The steel shrieked-
Ser John felt his leg break, saw the armour buckle as the troll’s foot flashed out and caught him, but he didn’t lose his grip on the dagger, sunk like a piton in rock, and he fell pulling on the hilt with two hands.
The troll toppled. It fell across him, and its arm struck his chest, denting his breastplate and snapping ribs in a cascade of raw pain.
But he saw the troll’s end with almost religious clarity. He didn’t pass out – that mercy was denied him – and, instead, he was almost preternaturally aware as the troll went into the snow, the heat of its body sending up a cloud of steam and suddenly there was a golden bear in its place gripping a club, or perhaps a warhammer, and it struck so rapidly that its motions were a blur, and so hard that stone chips flew as if the great bear was a mason shaping marble.
There was a final, sharp crack, and the troll shrieked and turned to sand and rock.
The enormous bear stood over Ser John.
‘That was unexpected,’ it said. ‘I think p’raps you saved me.’
Or perhaps Ser John merely imagined that the bear said that. He expected to die.
It raised its hammer again.
The convoy reached the scene of carnage – three dead knights, Ser Anton badly wounded and the others all torn to shreds, and three damp sand-spots, and what appeared to be tens of thousands of black feathers.
Sister Amicia stood over Ser John, who was once again able to speak. She’d flooded him with healing and he was alive. Willing hands got him into a wagon. He was cold – cold all the way through. It had taken time for the bear to break him loose from the dead stone that had been a living troll.
‘We rescued bears,’ Ser John said. ‘Sweet Christ, sister – you risked us all to save some fucking bears.’
‘Some day they may save you,’ she said, more sharply than he’d heard her speak. ‘Now lie quietly.’
‘What was the thing with the feathers?’ he asked her.
She paused. ‘A Bargest,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think they were real.’
The men of the convoy were still in shock. A wave of boggles had struck the column and been defeated, but the shock of the attack and its aftermath – the dozen golden bears trotting along the flanks of the column while Amicia begged the bowmen to hold their shafts – had left men shaken, and some had gagged at the ruin of the knights killed by the trolls.
Amicia had kept them going – she wasn’t sure what else to do, and Ser John was so badly hurt that she feared to wake him, and the knights were all too young to take charge – Jarsayans with too little appreciation of the north.
And they all trusted her.
So she kept them moving – the reaction after the fight left men cold, and short of halting and gathering wood, the only recourse they had was food and movement. She ordered them to eat and men did, as if taking orders from young nuns was part of their military training. And when they’d eaten their bread or their bacon or whatever each man had, she ordered the column forward and they marched without much complaint.
Liveried cavalrymen met them – the light-armoured horsemen that Northerners called ‘prickers’ for their long spurs. They wore the Earl’s livery and they were entirely respectful.
‘Lady said there was a convoy in trouble,’ their officer said after a bow to Sister Amicia. ‘I’m Ser Edmund, sister.’
‘Your lady was right.’ Amicia was very proud of her little army – proud that they’d held together, proud that they hadn’t shot a golden bear by mistake. ‘But we won our skirmish.’
Ser Edmund nodded. ‘Didn’t think your lads looked beat,’ he said. ‘Damme! Is that John Crayford? He looks like shit.’
Alicia raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s had all the help I can provide,’ she said.
Ser Edmund nodded. ‘Well, I’m sure we can do better at the castle. I’d best be taking command, eh? You must have been terrified.’
Amicia thought of a number of replies, and settled for one she’d learned from the old Abbess. ‘Not at all,’ she said. And turned her horse and rode on, leaving the Earl’s officer sitting in the middle of the road.
Ser John was next aware when he was surrounded by stone – arches everywhere, and a pair of armoured men in green and gold livery.
‘Careful, there,’ Amicia said. ‘If those wounds open-’
‘Of course, sister!’ one man said.
Ticondaga was built on the same scale as Lissen Carrak – all grey stone and red brick rising into the heavens like a cathedral of war. The courtyard itself was twice the size of the yard at her convent, and the barracks building had the new internal chimneys and a lead roof.
Now safe in the greatest fortress in the north, they sagged to the ground in relief. The knights got themselves off their horses, and their squires – including the squires of the dead men – took their horses and then the castle’s men-at-arms flooded the courtyard, and the Earl Muriens was there, barking orders and offering hot stew – from a great bronze cauldron which he and another knight had hauled into the yard with their own hands.
‘You – lass. Out of those wet clothes,’ he barked at her. Then bobbed his head in an insolent parody of a bow. ‘Oh – you’re a nun. Well – here, drink this and then get out of your wet clothes.’ He leered. ‘You are the fucking lovesomest nun I’ve seen for many a year. Are there more like you?’ he asked.
He was big, with iron-grey hair and an attitude she knew immediately. The Red Knight might despise his father, but he certainly carried himself with the same air of cocky dominance.
‘I’ll see to the convoy first,’ she said. ‘My lord Earl. That worthy knight is Ser John Crayford, and he brought this convoy here to succour the fur trade.’
Amicia watched the old knight being carried into the castle. The Earl walked beside his stretcher for a few paces and said something, and she heard a weak grunt for Ser John.
‘That’s a fine man-at-arms. He must be fifty! As old as me – a good knight.’ The Earl grinned. ‘You his?’
Amicia laughed.
The Earl had the grace to be abashed by her laugh. ‘Well – there’s no fool like an old fool. So you’re here for our furs?’
‘If we can do it, it will save Albinkirk. As a trade town.’ Amicia tried to follow his mercurial changes, and was reminded . . .
‘Might save our trade, too.’ Muriens laughed. ‘I’ll take all the money I can get, but we haven’t a tithe of the furs we usually have. The trade went east to the fucking beg-your-pardon Moreans as soon as folk heard about the attacks in the south.’