The captal touched his sword hilt. ‘No man tells me my men are not trained,’ he said.
The Prior shrugged. ‘I will not take you, no matter how bad your manners.’
Gaston put a hand on his cousin’s steel clad forearm. In Alba, as in Galle, a man did not threaten or challenge a knight of God. It wasn’t done.
Or perhaps his mad cousin thought himself above that law, too.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
A commander is seldom alone.
For the captain there was paperwork, often done with Ser Adrian. Drills to supervise, general inspections, particular inspections, and an endless host of small social duties – the expectations of a band of people bonded by ties forged in fire. A band of people who, in many cases, are rejects from other communities because they lack even the most basic social skills.
The captain needed to be alone, and his usual expedient was to ride out over the fields of whatever countryside his little army occupied, find himself a copse of trees, and sit amongst them. But the enemy occupied the countryside, and the fortress itself was full to bursting with people – people everywhere.
Harmodius had left him with a set of complex instructions – in effect, a new set of phantasms to learn, all in aid of defending himself against direct workings from their current enemy. And there was a plan, too – a careful plan – reckless in risk, but cunning in scope.
He needed time and privacy to practise. And he was never alone.
Michael came, served him chicken, and was dismissed.
Bent came to pass a request from some of the farmers that they be allowed to visit their sheep in the pens under the Lower Town walls. The captain rubbed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Sauce came in with an idea for a sortie.
‘No,’ he said.
And went somewhere else to find himself some privacy to practise thaumaturgy.
The hospital seemed like the best bet.
He climbed the stairs without meeting anyone – evening was falling outside, and he felt as if he’d fought a battle. He had to force his legs to push him up the winding stairs.
He passed the sister at the head of the stairs with a muttered word – let her assume that he was on his way to visit the wounded.
In fact, he did visit his wounded first. John Daleman, archer, lay on the bed nearest the far wall with a line of sutures from his collarbone to his waist, but by a miracle, or perhaps by the arts of the sisters, he was not infected and was now expected to live. He was also in a deeply drugged sleep, and the captain merely sat by him for a moment.
Seth Pennyman, Valet, had just come from the surgery, where they had set his broken arm and broken leg. He’d been brushed from the wall by a wyvern’s tail. Nothing had set properly, and the sisters had just reset the breaks. He was full of some drug, and muttered curses in his sleep.
Walter La Tour, gentleman man-at-arms, sat reading slowly from a beautifully illustrated psalter. Fifty-seven years old, he wore new glass spectacles on his nose. He’d received a crushing blow from the behemoth in the fight by the brook.
The captain sat down and clasped his right hand. ‘I thought I’d lost you when that thing put you down.’
Walter grinned. ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me laugh, my lord. Hurts too much.’
The captain looked more closely. ‘Are those things new?’ he asked, reaching for the glass spectacles.
‘Ground by the apothocary right here,’ Walter said. ‘Hurt the nose like anything, but damn me, I haven’t been able to read this well in years.
The captain put them on his own nose. They wouldn’t really stay, the heavy horn frames merely pinching. There was a fine steel rivet holding the two lenses together so that they pivoted – the captain knew the principle, but had never seen them in action.
‘I . . . that is, we-’ La Tour looked wistful. ‘I might stay here, Captain.’
The captain nodded. ‘You’d be well suited,’ he said. ‘Although I doubt me that you are too old to chase nuns.’
‘As to that,’ Walter said, and turned crimson. ‘I am considering taking orders.’
The things you don’t know. The captain smiled and clasped the man’s free hand again. ‘Glad to see you better,’ he said.
‘I owe God,’ Walter said, by way of explanation. ‘They saved me, here. I was dead. That behemoth crushed me like an insect, and these holy women brought me back. For a reason.’
The smile was wiped from the captain’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I, too, owe something to God.’
He moved on down the line of cots. Low Sym lay with his face to the wall, his back carefully bandaged. Justice tended to be instant, in the company. He moaned.
‘You are an idiot,’ the captain said with professional affection.
Sym didn’t roll over. He moaned.
The captain was merciless, because next to La Tour and the others, Sym’s pain was like the sting of a fly. ‘You picked the fight because you wanted the girl. The girl didn’t want you, and beating up her brothers and her fellow farm-hands wasn’t going to ever make her like you. Eh?’
Moan.
‘Not that you care, because you are not above a spot of forced love, eh, Sym? This is not Galle. I didn’t approve of your way in Galle, my lad, but this is our country and we are all holed up in the fortress together, and if you so much as breathe garlic on a farm girl, with or without her permission, I’ll hang you with my own hands. In fact, Sym, let’s be straight about this. You are the single most useless fuck in my whole command, and I’d prefer to hang you, because the message that I mean business would cost me nothing. You get me?’ He leaned forward.
Sym moaned again. He was crying.
The captain hadn’t been aware that Low Sym was capable of crying. It opened up a whole new vista.
‘You want to be the hero and not the villain, Sym?’ he asked very quietly. Sym turned his head away.
‘Listen up, then. Evil is a choice. It is a choice. Doing the wicked thing is the easy way out, and it is habit forming. I’ve done it. Any criminal can use force. Any wicked person can steal. Some people don’t steal because they are afraid of being caught. Others don’t steal because it is wrong. Because stealing is the destruction of another person’s work. Rape is a violence against another person. Using violence to solve every quarrel-’ The captain paused in his moralizing lecture, because, of course, as a company of mercenaries, they tended to use violence to solve every quarrel – he laughed aloud. ‘It’s our work, but it doesn’t have to define us.’
Sym moaned.
He captain leaned close. ‘Not a bad time to decide to be a hero and not a villain, Sym. Your current line will end on a gallows. Better to end in a story than a noose.’ He thought of Tom. The man was a hillman – easy to forget, but his notions of word fame lingered. ‘Finish in a song.’
The small man wouldn’t look at him. The captain shook his head, tired and not very happy with his job.
He got up from the nursing stool by the archer and stretched.
Amicia was right behind him. Of course. There he was, the prince of hypocrites.
She looked down at Sym, and then back at the captain.
He shrugged at her.
She furrowed her brow, and shook her head, and waved him on his way.
He stumbled away, cast down.
He made an exasperated sound, and stepped out into the corridor that ran from the recovery beds to the serious patients’ ward. He walked a few paces and turned the corner only to find himself standing by Gawin Murien’s bed. The younger man had one leg bandaged from the crotch to the knee.
He sat by Ser Gawin’s bed. ‘No one will look for me here,’ he said in bitter self-mockery.
Gawin’s eyes opened.
This is not my day, the captain thought.
There was a pause long enough for vast conversations. For debate, argument, rage. Instead, they stared into each other’s eyes like lovers.
‘Well, brother,’ Gawin said. ‘So it seems you are alive, after all.’
The captain made himself breathe in and out. ‘Yes,’ he said, very quietly.