The boglins on the north bank began to flick arrows at them.
The Queen started. The back of her throat was scratchy. For the first time, she was afraid.
‘We have come too far west,’ Ranald said. ‘There are enemies on both banks, and the king won’t yet know that we are here.’
The Queen had received a message from the king late in the afternoon, and she had ordered the boats to row all night. She’d picked up the messenger at midnight, and his information had been exact. Today was to be the day – she intended to see it.
She stood on the foredeck and shaded her eyes with her hand – to the front, and to the right, and to the left. To the left, she saw a flash of red, and then another – and then half a dozen Royal Guardsmen appeared on the bank. She waved, and her ladies cheered.
‘Anchor here,’ she ordered.
A half-dozen boglin arrows fell onto the lead galley – most were deflected by the leather curtains that protected the rowers, but one struck home, and the man’s oar fell from his hands as he screamed. The arrow was deep in his shoulder.
Boglins poisoned their arrows, and his screams froze her blood. He had laughed and joked with her maids when they lay on the banks of the Alba, eating sausage.
It was as much of a shock as the sight of a boglin.
An arrow plummeted from the heavens like a stooping hawk, struck her helm, ripped down her back and knocked her flat.
She lay on the deck – suddenly the day was darker, and her back was wet.
‘Ware the Queen!’ Ranald called.
She reached for the golden light of the sun – it was all about her, such a glorious day-
‘She’ll bleed out. It is in her back.’ Ranald was doing something.
‘Is it poisoned?’ Lady Almspend asked.
‘I don’t think so – give me your pen knife. Wicked bastard – a swallowtail point.’ Lachlan sounded afraid.
She was floating above them, able to see the hillman digging in the flesh of her back with a knife. He had the mail shirt hiked over her hips having cut the shaft of the arrow. She’d seldom seen herself look less elegant.
‘It’s in her kidneys,’ Lachlan said, and sat back on his haunches, suddenly defeated. ‘Sweet Jesu!’
The captain had slept in his harness like everyone else, his helmeted head in the corner of the curtain wall where the west wall met the north tower. Four assaults had failed to re-take the wall, but he was so tired-
‘Boats on the river, Captain.’ Jack Kaves, senior archer, stood over him. ‘I brought you a cup of beer. Young Michael tried to wake you and went off to find more wine.’
The captain took the beer, rinsed his mouth and spat onto the mound of dead boglins outside the wall, and then took a long pull. Half of the mound of boglin bodies was still moving, so that the whole pile seemed to writhe – and they made mewling sounds like a pile of kittens, somehow more horrible than the screams of men.
No more men were screaming. The wounded had been sent up the hill to the fortress during a lull between attacks – the Knights of Saint Thomas, like their sisters, were doctors as well as fighters, and they gave basic care and rigged stretchers between horses. And the enemy killed every wounded man they could.
He got slowly to his feet. The weight of his armour and his own fatigue combined to make the process of rising painful – his neck hurt like he had been kicked by a horse. ‘Michael?’ he asked, confused and looking around.
‘In the store rooms,’ Kaves said.
‘Jack, help me get my helmet off,’ the captain said. He unbuckled his chinstrap, and Jack lifted the helmet clear of his head. The aventail was clotted with gore, which dragged across his face. The visor was gone.
He unlaced his arming cap. It was one of Mag’s, and with the intense interest of total exhaustion, he noted that she had embroidered his lacs d’amour across the crown – lovely work.
The cap was full of power. He hadn’t seen it before – perhaps hadn’t been able to see it. He held it closer and saw that every stitch held a tiny rainbow of light – the whole, with the lines of embroidery, was not unlike a set of tiny fish scales.
Jack Kaves whistled.
The captain turned and looked at his helmet, which had a great gouge in it where some weapon had punched right through it. Indeed, with all too little effort, the captain could remember the boglin chief’s scythes, slicing at his unvisored face and never quite reaching it.
‘Well, well,’ he said. He leaned forward, and Jack upended a pot of river-water over his head.
The old archer handed him a rag and he dried his hair, face and beard. While he used the rag, he walked along the wall, feeling the damp spread down inside his breastplate. He could all but hear it rusting. Michael was going to be-
There were, indeed, boats on the river. Fifty row galleys – obviously crewed by men.
He stood and watched them for several long minutes.
Jack Kaves stood beside him, holding out a sausage. ‘What’s it mean, Cap’n?’ he asked.
The captain gave a wry smile. ‘It means we win,’ he said. ‘Unless we screw it up really badly, we win.’
Albinkirk – Desiderata
Lady Almspend shook her head. She was tying the points of her sleeves back. ‘Don’t be a ninny. That’s fat. You there – get my kit-bag up from the hold. The barbs – I have a tool for them.’
‘You do?’ Lachlan asked.
Almspend took the Queen’s hand. ‘I know you can hear me, my lady. Stay with us. Take power from the sun – take strength. I can get this out, with a little luck.’
Lachlan grunted.
An oarsman came up the foredeck ladder with her leather bag.
‘Dump it on the deck,’ she ordered. He did, breaking an ink bottle and putting black ink on every shift she owned.
She snatched the item she sought – a pair of matching halves, like a mould for an arrow.
‘Hold on, my lady,’ she said. ‘This will hurt.’
She pushed the mould over the arrow – in and in, along the path of the original wound, and the Queen moaned, and a long line of saliva mixed with blood came out of her mouth.
Lachlan spat. ‘She’ll-’
‘Shut up,’ said Lady Almspend. She gave her moulds a twist and they snapped over the arrowhead – covering the wicked barbs.
‘Pull it out,’ she said to Lachlan.
He tugged and looked at her.
‘Pull it out, or she dies,’ Lady Almspend insisted.
Lachlan set his shoulders, hesitated, and then pulled. The arrow – moulds and all – popped free with a horrible sucking noise.
Blood spurted after it.
Lissen Carak – Peter
Nita Qwan knew that the great battle had started. But he was cooking. He had built a small oven of river clay, fired it himself, and now he was making a pie.
A third of the Sossag warriors were watching him. Sometimes they clapped. It made him laugh.
The pair of boglins were back, too. If you didn’t look too closely at their bodies they looked like a pair of rough-hewn, slightly misshapen back-country men.
They lay full length in the grass, beyond the circle of men, so that their wing-cases were atop them like upturned boats. When they approved of his cooking, they rubbed their back legs together.
His pie was the size of a mill wheel.
His fire was even larger – a carefully dug pit that he had filled with coals from patient burning of hardwoods.
There was no reason that the project should work, but it kept him busy, and it entertained the other warriors.
Nita Qwan wondered what Ota Qwan intended. The man had touched up his paint, polished his bronze gorget, sharpened his sword and his spear and all his arrows, and now he lay watching Peter cook with the other warriors.
Waiting.
The problem with a pie was that you never really knew if it was done.
Battle seemed to have some of the same qualities.
Nita Qwan went and sat with the pie for a while, and then he went over and squatted on his heels by Ota Qwan.
The war chief raised his head off his arms. ‘Is it done yet?’ he asked.