The Red Knight let Gelfred have his head. The huntsman was better at understanding terrain than anyone else; if he lost his way, it was best to give him time to find it again. So he sat, reining in his frustration as hard as he reined his warhorse, a big gelding with whom he was just beginning to have a warm relationship.
Gelfred rode ahead in person, vanishing into the slate grey. He came back two very long minutes later.
‘I have it,’ he said. ‘My apologies, my lord. Things look different in this light.’ He shrugged. His stress showed clearly on his face.
The Red Knight clapped him on an armoured shoulder. ‘Lead on.’
Gelfred had Amy’s Hob to hand, and his page. ‘Go fetch everyone in – we’re too far west,’ he said. To the Captain, he said, ‘We need to wait until the skirmisher screen is out again.’
The Captain looked at the wolf’s tail of dawn – it was a false dawn, but their time was running out. ‘I misdoubt that we have the time to wait for your men to collect themselves,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to be our own pickets.’
Gelfred nodded. ‘I’ll lead, my lord. You know the risk.’
The Red Knight laughed aloud. ‘We could be ambushed!’ he said. ‘Let’s go. I hear the early bird gets the worm.’
Gelfred winced.
Ranald Lachlan came up level with the huntsman. ‘Why is he so fucking cheerful in the morning? But it could be worse – he could be blaspheming.’
Gelfred sighed. ‘I take your point,’ he muttered, and turned his horse’s head.
Unfortunately their troubles weren’t over.
With no scouts, there was no one to move early farmers off the road. And so it was, as they came to a major crossroads somewhere within a mile of their goal, they found the entire intersection filled from wall to wall with sheep. Hundreds of sheep.
The two shepherds were mounted on ponies, directing a dozen dogs with whistles and shaken staffs. Gelfred’s Archaic wasn’t up to the altercation. And the intersection was blocked as completely as it would have been if a company of armoured spearmen were standing on the same ground. Worse, the warhorses hated having the sheep close in among their vulnerable legs.
‘Just kill them and have done with it,’ shouted Bad Tom.
The Captain reached into his belt pouch and rode forward. ‘Toby!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Money!’
In a matter of moonlit moments the shepherds went from from terrified belligerence to eager cooperation. Whips cracked, dogs barked, and the vast, amorphous herd of sheep began to move back along the road and up one of the side roads. The shepherds bowed and called benedictions, and the company was finally free to move. The sky was definitely grey.
Gelfred’s scouts had caught up during the delay and finally they spread out again in front, covering all three branching roads. ‘Almost there,’ Gelfred said. He had gone as grey as the dawn.
‘Can you imagine what this would be like if we had to move and fight?’ asked Michael.
No one answered.
They moved at a trot now that their flanks were secure, and as the sun crested the city in front of them, gilding a hundred church towers each topped with a dome of copper gilt that burned like a new fire in the rising sun – as three thousand monks in fifty monasteries began to chant the hymns that marked the break of a new day – as seventy thousand cocks crowed their relief that the darkness was over – as a quarter of a million people rose to face another day of uncertainty – they reached the main road. It was a circuit road a thousand years old, build from hewn and matched stone, wide enough for six carts to travel abreast, and it ran all the way around the walls from the Gate of the Vardariotes on the eastern shore of the Morean Sea, around nine miles of walls to reach the Royal Gate at the north-west end of the circuit.
The company arrived at its chosen point – where the road dipped into a low vale. There wasn’t a scrap of cover for a long bowshot in any direction, except a single huge oak tree and a small villa well off the road.
The Red Knight didn’t have to dispose of his troops – every section rode to their place as they had practised twice in the last week, and dismounted.
The Red Knight joined hands with Mag the seamstress and Gelfred and the three of them threw a working over the company, and then tossed in a little ground fog at the bottom of the dale. The Captain, aided by Harmodius, placed the whole working inside a deep green peridot, a fine stone he’d picked up from a peddler. A good jewel helped focus a complex casting; the crystal also gave the complex working stability and thus durability.
Half an hour later, Gelfred rode back to the Captain and opened his visor. ‘Nothing behind us, m’lord. They haven’t passed this way.’
Twenty long minutes later, a great black and white eagle the size of a warhorse began to circle overhead.
Ser Alcaeus rode up to the Red Knight. ‘M’lord – that bird is for us. It can’t see through your phantasm. But it will mark our place to any Morean.’
The Captain sighed.
Working with Harmodius, he extracted the working from the jewel. With careful control, he adjusted the casting to open a sight line into the top of the illusion.
The bird spied them and stooped.
He closed the working and replaced it in the jewel. ‘That cost me more than half the working I can do in a day,’ he said sulkily. ‘The next crisis will have to be met the old-fashioned way.’
Alcaeus read the note while every horse within eyeshot shied away from the gigantic bird. ‘The Vardariotes are on the move,’ he said. ‘Last night – after midnight. They are armed and mounted in formation at the Gate of Ares.’
The Captain nodded. ‘Well, we did our part,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ve been too subtle?’
His men had begun to fidget. The sun rose; flies came. Horses grew fractious. The women with the baggage began to talk, and a low mutter came to the command group from the soldiers.
Dan Favour rode in just as the monks in the city began to celebrate matins.
‘Two thousand men,’ he said happily. ‘Less than a mile away.’
The Captain failed to hide his sigh of relief. He grinned ruefully.
‘Of course, we still have to win the fight,’ he reminded them.
The Morean stradiotes came down the road in good order, with a strong vanguard of almost six hundred men, and a hundred Eastern horse bowmen. They were late, and they were moving fast. Their main body was several hundred yards to the rear, almost two thousand horse, no infantry, no baggage. There were no banners, but in the centre of the main body were two great icons, held aloft by strong men on lances.
The Captain dismounted and put his peridot on a rock. Toby handed him a war hammer and stood by, holding his helmet and lance.
‘If we stay here, I’m going to want a straw hat,’ he said. The sun was hot.
The Moreans came at a trot, right along the road. From time to time, groups of Easterners would break off from the column and ride to look at something, but the column was in a hurry, and crossing safe terrain.
When the enemy vanguard was at short bow shot, the Captain raised his hammer and brought it down smartly on the peridot, which blew apart into a thousand tiny green pieces. The complex phantasm collapsed with the death of the stone, allowing every man covered by the working to see clearly.
Whistles sounded, and the archers nocked.
Before the Red Knight had his aventail over his head, the first flight of livery arrows leaped from his archers’ great white bows. Two hundred bowmen loosed five shafts apiece in rapid succession – most men were drawing their last shaft before the first one hit home.