Nita Qwan shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Or yes.’
Ota Qwan nodded seriously.
Skahas Gaho laughed.
‘Why are we not on the field?’ Nita Qwan asked.
‘Pie isn’t done yet,’ Ota Qwan said, and all the senior warriors laughed. There was a unanimity to their laughter that told Peter that Ota Qwan had passed some important test of leadership. He was the war leader, and they did not contest it. A subtle change but a real one.
Ota Qwan rolled over, carefully brushing bits of fern from the grease that carried his paint. ‘Thorn is going to fight the knights in the fields,’ he said. ‘Fields from which every scrap of cover has been burned.’
The older warriors nodded, like a chorus.
Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘We almost lost a lot of warriors last night,’ he said. ‘I won’t risk the people on such foolishness again. This time, we will go when it is right for us to go. Or not. And the pie is as good a sign as any.’
Off by the edge of the clearing, a woman – Ojig – sat up quickly, and her sister, Small Hands, stiffened like a dog at the scent of a wolf, and took up her bow, and suddenly all the people were moving – weaponed, alert-
‘Qwethnethog!’ shouted Small Hands.
Nita Qwan never heard an order given but in heartbeats, the clearing was empty, save only his fire, his pie, and the six eldest warriors standing around Ota Qwan.
The Qwethnethog emerged from the underbrush moving as fast as a racehorse, and she took several long strides to slow. She looked back and forth at the line of men, and at the fire.
‘Skadai,’ she said in her shrill voice.
‘Dead,’ said one of the aged warriors.
‘Ahh,’ she keened. Made an alien gesture with her taloned paws, and turned. ‘Who leads the Sossag people?’
Ota Qwan stood forth. ‘I lead them in war,’ he said.
The Qwethnethog looked at him, turning her head from side to side. Nita Qwan noted that her helmet crest was a deep scarlet, and the colour came well down her forehead. But the crest was smaller than on a male. It amused him – even through the terror she broadcast – that he’d become so well-versed in the ways of the Wild as to know male from female, clan from clan. She was of their own clan – the western Qwethnethog, who lived in the steep hills above the Sossag lakes.
‘My brother speaks for all the Qwethnethog of the Mountains,’ she said in her shrill voice. ‘We are leaving the field, and will fight no more for Thorn.’
Ota Qwan looked at the men to the right and left. ‘We thank you,’ he said. ‘Go in peace.’
The great monster turned and sniffed. ‘Smells delicious,’ she said, to no one in particular.
‘Stay and have a piece,’ Nita Qwan found himself saying.
She coughed – he assumed that was her simulation of laughter. ‘You are bold, little man,’ she said. ‘Come and cook for me another time.’ And with a flick of her talons, faster than a deer, she was gone into the woods again.
No sooner was she gone then a dozen women came out of the woods – matrons, every one. They spoke so rapidly in Sossag that Nita Qwan couldn’t understand even single words.
So instead, he went and opened his temporary oven.
It was burned all down one side, but the rest had steamed well and the crust was a nice colour – a rich golden brown, shot with darker brown. Perhaps the oven had cracked – he had no idea why part of the outer rim was so singed.
Nor did he care, for the people came forward like an avenging army and seized the pie as fast as he could cut slices off it. He had made enough, and it wasn’t the way of the people to complain.
Ota Qwan took a piece – a burned piece. ‘Well done. Now we are fed, and well-fed. We will run all night.’
He ate his piece in four bites and drank a cup of water. Nita Qwan emulated him, and noted that his wife had packed his baskets. He took one on his back. She smiled shyly at him.
He smiled back.
He shouldered his quiver and his sword, and then – with no further discussion – they were off into the trees.
Albinkirk – Desiderata
The row galley landed against the Bridge Fort’s dock; the garrison was alert and manned the walls. The captain was waiting on the dock.
The row galley was full of women, each one more beautiful than the last. It wasn’t what he’d expected.
One woman – short, blonde, and harried – stood on the foredeck. ‘I need a healer,’ she said. ‘A good one.’
The captain turned to Michael. ‘Get me a Knight of the Order,’ he said. Then he turned back. ‘They are superb healers.’ he said. Unfortunately, they had gone on a sortie to clear the trench at dawn, and they hadn’t returned.
‘I know,’ she spat. ‘How long?’
‘A few minutes,’ he said, hopefully.
‘She doesn’t have a few minutes,’ the woman said, her face cracking. She seemed to clamp down on a sob. ‘She’s lost a great deal of blood.’
‘Who has?’ he asked as he tried to get a leg over the gunwale. A dozen oarsmen reached to pull him into the boat.
‘The Queen,’ she said. ‘I’m Lady Almspend. Her secretary. This is Lady Mary, chief among her ladies.
The Queen.
The Red Knight ignored the people gathered around the figure on the deck. The woman lying on the deck was losing blood at a tremendous rate. He could feel it.
And he had very little strength, at least in terms of power. What he had he’d squandered, fighting boglins. And to heal her here, now, would give himself away – at least as a Hermeticist.
So much blood.
She was young – imbued with power, herself.
In that moment, he realised that if she died, he could take her. As he had taken the boglin chief. She was defenceless – wide open, trying to use her power to strengthen herself. She drank in the sun’s rays – the pure power of Helios. She was very potent.
He put a hand on her back.
‘Well?’ Lady Almspend asked, impatient. ‘Can you help?’
Vade Retro, Satanus, the captain thought. He took his arming cap off his head, and pushed it into the wound. Put one finger on the cap as it turned from dirty white to brilliant scarlet.
He almost grinned. He was linked to a legion of healers. It was easy to forget that.
The palace seemed empty without Prudentia. He knew the basic phantasms of healing now – he wondered if he could release the power of Mag’s bindings to power them. And keep the power – and funnel it through workings he knew mostly from long ago lessons.
‘Amicia?’ he asked.
She was there. ‘Hello!’ she said. She took his hand, smiled – and let his hand drop.
‘I need to heal someone.’ He wished-
‘Show me,’ Amicia said briskly.
He took a moment to kneel by the fallen statue, and brush a hand across Prudentia’s marble back. ‘I miss you, ‘he said. ‘Help me, if you can.’
Then he took Amicia’s hand and laid it on the Queen.
She pointed to workings he now knew – through her – in a mind-wrenching moment, he was on her bridge using her memory palace even as he stood on Prudentia’s pedestal and collected what was left of his power.
It wasn’t enough.
Amicia shook her head. ‘I have nothing to give,’ she said. He looked up at her, and even in the aethereal her exhaustion was obvious. ‘So many wounded,’ she said.
Sighing for the loss, he tested the binding of power on Mag’s cap. He cast, as Harmodius had taught him, guided by Amicia’s sure hand on his – three workings, each contingent on the other, like nested equations on the chalkboard. The loosing, the binding for power, the healing. He used what was left of the life force he had taken from the boglin chief.
‘Saint Barbara, Taurus, Thales. Demetrios, Pisces, Herakleitus. Ionnes the Baptist, Leo, Socrates!’ he invoked, pointed, pivoted, and the room moved – the gears of his imagined rooms turning at the speed of a man’s muscles, so that the room spun like a top.