Hundreds of leagues to the north, the same sun rose on a fortress which was complete in every warlike respect – high wooden hoardings crowned the turrets and curtain walls, and a major engine of war stood atop every tower: the donjon tower bore the weight of a trebuchet, and smaller mangonels and ballistae decorated the smaller towers.
Aside from a dozen men on duty, the garrison, who had laboured two days and nights by torchlight, lay asleep in heaps of straw. The dormitory was full of local people and so was the hall and the stable.
Sauce awakened the captain because there was movement down by the river. He had placed a garrison of ten archers, three men-at-arms and a pair of knights in the tower at the bridge under Ser Milus’ command the evening before. They had their own food and a mirror with which to signal, and this morning they were apparently flashing away merrily.
Ser Jehannes had gone with them, as a mere man-at-arms. He had gone without comment and left no note. The captain awoke to find it still on his mind.
‘Damn him,’ he said, staring at the newly whitewashed plaster over his head. Jehannes had always disliked him because he was young and well-born.
As far as the captain saw it, Messire Jehannes could have both his birth and his youth. He lay on his bed, his breath steaming in the air, and found himself growing angrier and angrier.
‘Damn who?’ asked Sauce. She flashed him a smile that was probably meant to be winsome. She was an attractive woman, but the missing front teeth and the scar on her face tended to made her winsome look slightly savage.
Sauce and the captain went backaways. The captain considered confiding in her – but he was the captain, now. Everyone’s captain.
He got his feet on the cold stone instead. ‘Never mind. Call Toby for me, will you?’
She leered. ‘I’m sure I could dress you, mesself.’
‘Maybe you could and maybe you can’t, but neither will get me moving fast enough.’ He stood up, naked and she swatted at him with her gloves and went out calling for Toby.
Toby and Michael arrived together, Toby with clothes, Michael, sleepy to the point of clumsiness, with a cup of steaming wine.
The captain armed himself in the ruddy light of the new sun, Michael fumbling with buckles and laces so that it seemed to take twice as long as arming usually did and he almost regretted sending Sauce away. But he ran lightly down the steps to the great courtyard and patted Grendel’s nose when he was led out. He took the tall bassinet on his head, pulled steel gauntlets over his hands, and vaulted into Grendel’s war-saddle. He was giving his men a good example – he was also riding out of a fortress into the unknown.
It occurred to him as he ducked his head to pass through the narrow postern – he had ordered that the main gate be shut for the duration – that if nothing attacked them, he was going to look a ripe fool. Followed by the image of a taloned foot ripping the guts out of his riding horse, which made his stomach lurch and his throat go cold.
He rode down the steep road, leaning well back into the comforting buttress of his war-saddle, with Wilful Murder, Sauce, Michael Rankin and Gelfred all fully armed at his back. At the base of the hill he turned away from the bridge and rode west – not onto the narrow track he’d followed and fought the daemon, but around the base of the fortress.
He rode slowly around it, looking up so hard that his neck hurt, examining his hoardings from their attackers’ perspective. The fortress was a hundred feet above him, huge, imposing and very, very far away.
After he passed the donjon the first trebuchet released. He heard the crack of the wood base of the counter-weight striking its restraint and saw the rock pause at the height of its arc. Then it fell with a crash well to the west.
The captain turned to Wilful Murder. ‘Go and put an orange stake on it, Will. They won’t loose again.’
‘It’s always me,’ Wilful grumbled and did as he was told.
The rest continued to ride around the base of the fortress. Two other engines released, and both times the captain sent Wilful off to mark the fall of shot.
‘Tough nut,’ Sauce said, suddenly.
‘Some of our enemy have wings,’ the captain replied and he nodded heavily, because he was in full harness and couldn’t really shrug well. ‘But yes. With our company on the walls and all the defences up we should be able to hold until we starve.’ He looked beyond her. ‘We’ll lose the Lower Town first, then Bridge Castle.’ He shrugged. ‘But the – the king will come first.’
With that, he leaned his weight forward and led them at a slow, lumbering canter across the fields to the Bridge Castle.
Milus met him, also fully armoured, at the tower gate. Behind him, on the bridge, were a dozen heavy wagons laden with goods and fifty or more men and women all pale as parchment. Merchants.
‘Come for the fair,’ Milus said. He made a face. ‘They say there’s five convoys behind them.’
The captain turned and looked at Michael, who grimaced. ‘We don’t even have all the farmers in,’ he said. ‘Fifty, you say? And their wagons?’
‘And I’ll bet they don’t have any food,’ the captain said. ‘I’ll guess they have carts full of cloth and luxury goods, because they’ve come to buy grain.’ He looked around. ‘How many more mouths can you take, Milus?’
The older knight narrowed his eyes. ‘I can take all of ’em,’ he admitted. ‘And thirty more like ’em. But I’ll need more grain, more salt meat, more of everything to do it. Except water. We’ve plenty of that, out of the river.’
Back up the hill he went to report to the Abbess. A heavy military wagon was raised from the cellars and reassembled, then loaded to heaping with food and provender, and hand-hauled down the steep slope, teams of men on gate winches letting it down a few feet a time. The captain disarmed, handing his harness to his squire. His hips were screaming, and once it was finally off he felt light enough to fly away.
Even as they increased the supplies to the lower fort, more merchants arrived. Some were angry at the interruption of trade, and some were clearly already terrified. The captain went back down the hill and wasted the morning trying to calm them. He finally told them to send a deputation up the hill to the Abbess.
Then he made the climb back up to the fortress to hide in his Commandery, a small cell with a door directly onto the courtyard and a pair of arched windows separated by a fluted column. Open, the windows let in a spring breeze carrying the scent of wildflowers and jasmine, and he could see fifteen leagues to the east over the low hills.
Today, instead of turning to the parchment scrolls full of accounts that awaited him, he unbuckled his sword and hung it on the man-high bronze candelabra and leaned his elbows on the sill of the leftmost window.
Booted footsteps announced Michael. ‘Your armour,’ the young man said quietly.
The captain turned to see two archers with a heavy wicker basket, and his valet with an armload of dressed lumber. While he watched, the archers argued about which pre-cut peg went in which hole and the valet stared off into space while idly providing the correct piece, even when the archers asked for the wrong thing. Before the sun had moved the width of a finger, they had assembled a rack for the captain’s armour, man sized, a little taller than the man himself, and Michael dressed the heavy wooden form carefully. A good arming rack could speed a man into his harness by precious minutes. And with every inch of the fortress convent crammed to capacity and past it with soldiers and refugeees, his office was his sleeping room.
When the archers and the valet went back out, the noise vanished and the captain returned to his window.
‘Will that be all, ser?’ Michael asked.
‘Well done, Michael,’ the captain said.
The younger man jumped as if he’d been bitten. ‘I – that is-’ he laughed. ‘Your valet, Jacques, did most of it.’
‘The more credit to you that you give him credit,’ the captain observed.
Emboldened, Michael came forward and, very slowly, leaned into the right hand window. His stealthy progress was not unlike that of a convent cat the captain had observed that morning, which had been intent on stealing a piece of cheese. He smiled. It took Michael as long to rest in the window as it had for the three men to build the armour rack. ‘We’re fully provisioned,’ Michael said carefully.