‘You are too modest,’ the Abbess said bitterly.
‘I tricked him, as you well know,’ Harmodius said. ‘I could never have even hoped to match him phantasm for phantasm. And less so now, when he has sold himself to the Wild and I have languished in a prison of his making for a decade, at least.’
The soldiers and the merchant watched these exchanges – back and forth – like spectators at a joust. Even the captain, whose precious anonymity had teetered at the edge of extinction, was lost.
‘Let me understand this,’ he said. ‘Our Enemy is really a man?’
‘Not any more,’ Harmodius said. ‘Now he is an entity called Thorn. His powers are to mine as mine are to the lady Abbess’.’
The priest at the end of the table had stopped writing. Now he looked at them all in horror. The captain almost felt sorry for the man. His aversion to those who possessed the power – Hermetic or natural – was like most men’s aversion to coming in contact with disease.
The captain leaned forward. ‘Can we stop the flood of reminiscence and revelation and try to dwell on the siege?’ he asked.
‘He underestimated you, and you hurt him, and that’s over now,’ Harmodius said. ‘Now he’ll hurt us, in turn.’
‘Thanks for that,’ the captain said.
‘Now that he’s closed off our access to the outside world, there will be no more surprise sorties, no more victories.’ The Magus sat back. ‘Nor can you imagine that I can face him, because I can’t. Although my presence here will make him hungrier to take this place.’
‘We can still make sorties with every prospect of success,’ the captain insisted. ‘With the addition of Messire Random’s convoy, we have more men-at-arms and more archers than we had at the start.’
Harmodius shook his head. ‘I don’t doubt it. I mean no disrespect – you have done nobly. But the trick with the falcons and the dogs won’t work again, and his intellect – pardon me, Captain – is staggering. He’ll have traitors inside the walls and he’ll be working to get traitors within the ranks of your companies and your merchants. He also has the power to reach out to any person among us who has power. How strong is your will, my lady?’ he asked.
‘Never very strong,’ she answered levelly, ‘but where he is concerned, it is like adamantine.’
Harmodius smiled. ‘I imagine that’s true, my lady,’ he admitted.
‘Even if he has us locked in a box,’ the captain insisted, ‘even if he threw his allies at the walls every day-’ He shrugged. ‘We can last.’
‘He won’t,’ Harmodius said. He leaned forward, and it was as if he deflated, the change was so sudden. ‘What he will do is seek to undermine us, because that is how he works. He will use craft and misdirection – he prefers to use a traitor to open the gate, because that excuses his own betrayal. And because he likes to imagine his intellect is superior to any other.’
The captain managed a smile. ‘My old sword master used to say that a good swordsman likes not just to win, but to do it his own way,’ he said.
‘Very true,’ the Magus said. ‘Hubristical, but true.’
The captain nodded. ‘Hubris – a common failing in your profession too, surely?’
Harmodius smiled bitterly.
The captain leaned forward. ‘I have two questions, and here you are to answer them,’ he said. ‘Can he attack the walls directly? With a phantasm?’
‘Never,’ the Abbess said. ‘These walls have half a millennia of prayer and phantasm in them, and no power on earth-’
‘Yes,’ Harmodius said. He shrugged at the Abbess. ‘He is not Richard Plangere, gentleman Magus, my lady, just dressed up in feathers and gone a bit bad. He is Thorn. He is a Power of the Wild. If he puts himself to it, he can assault the very walls of this ancient fortress with his powers, and he will, in time, break them.’ He turned to the captain. ‘But in my estimation, and I might be horribly wrong, he won’t take that option unless all else fails, because the cost would be staggering.’
The captain nodded. ‘Not very different from the answer I expected. Second question: you are the King’s Magus. Do you have the power to distract him? Or to defeat him?’
Harmodius nodded. ‘I can distract him, I think. Once at little risk to myself, and once at great risk to myself.’ He laughed. ‘I can feel him all around us, my lords. He seeks to know our minds and, so far, the power in this convent and in the fortress walls has stopped him. He knows I am here, but as yet I do not think he knows who I am.’ Harmodius shook his head and seemed, once again, to shrink. ‘Yet until a few days ago, I didn’t really know who I was myself. By God, the extent to which he cozened me.’ The captain sat back, already thinking hard. ‘Can you imagine any circumstance under which he would abandon the siege?’ he asked. ‘If the king comes, will he simply retire?’
Harmodius looked at all of them for a long time. ‘You really have no idea what you are dealing with, here,’ he said. ‘Do you seriously think the king will reach us?’ he asked.
The captain made a face. ‘You are the all-knowing Magus, and I’m just the young pup commanding the mercenaries, but it seems to me-’
‘Spare us your false humility,’ Harmodius snapped.
‘Spare us your overweening arrogance, then! It seems to me this is not a carefully wrought plan, and with due respect, Magus, this Thorn is not as staggeringly intelligent as you seem to think.’ The captain looked around.
Ser Milus nodded. ‘I agree. He makes beginner mistakes. He knows nothing of war.’ He shrugged. ‘At least, not of the war of men.’
Harmodius started to react and then pulled on his ample beard. There was a heavy silence. The men around the table realised they were prepared for the Magus to react.
But he shook his head. ‘That is – a very interesting point. And quite possibly a valid one.’
Father Henry came out of the Great Hall with his shoulders slumped, and Mag watched him enter the chapel and sit on a carved chair near the door, his head in his hands.
He wasn’t a bad priest – he had heard her confession and had passed her to God with an endurable penance. She wanted to like him for it, but there was something in his eyes she couldn’t like – a quality to his moist hand on her brow that unsettled her.
She was considering all these things when the archers came by. There were two of them, younger archers she didn’t know well. The taller one had bright red hair and a hollow smile. They had their brigantines off and were looking around the courtyard.
They looked like trouble.
The tall one with a beard like a Judas goat spotted Lis the laundress, but she didn’t truck with men his age, and she turned her back so his attention passed to Amie, the Carters’ eldest – a blonde girl with more chest than wit, as her mother herself had said, while her younger sister Kitty had all the wit as well as curly dark hair and slanted eyes.
The archers headed for the two girls who sat on stools by the convent kitchen, grinding barley for bread in hand mills. It was boring, exacting work that the nuns thought perfect for attractive young women.
They already had a court of admirers, and the young men – farmers’ sons and apprentices – were, naturally enough, doing the work. This was, Mag thought, probably not a common problem among the nuns, but if they didn’t wise up to it soon they were going to spoil the Carter girls and the Lanthorns and every other single woman in the fortress who wasn’t a nun. And perhaps a few nuns too, Mag thought to herself.
Mag had started to get to know some of the senior nuns-
She never heard what the archer said, but every one of the farm boys and apprentices was on his feet in a heartbeat.
The archers laughed and sat, and began using tow and ash to polish their helmets and elbow cops to the uniform dark gleam that seemed to mark the men of the company.
Mag walked closer. She saw trouble coming, and while the archers didn’t seem to be provoking it, they were.