This is what we do. This is who we are.
—Becket
The two men stepped silently out of the darkness, and into the light of the dying campfire.
The night became quiet, instantly. Spring nights near Cannich tend toward the quiet and dark, and sounds never travel far in the thin air of the Highlands.
The apparently insatiable McGlennon brothers had still been taking turns with the girl, although Dughall didn't see much point to it, by now. Being the leader, Dughall had gone first. A matter of taste; old William used to like to let some of the younger bucks soften them up a little first, but old William was dead these three months, and Dughall had different preferences. The fresher, the better, was his way of looking at it.
When Dughall had taken his turn with her, hours before, the girl had been so lively that it had taken four other men to hold her down—although not too firmly; Dughall enjoyed the squirming—but that had, after all, been hours ago, and all of the fight had long since been taken out of her.
Well, it wasn't as though they were going to keep her; she'd end the night with her throat slit. Nothing else to be done about it.
At least the sheep and goats could be driven over the mountains and down the other side to be sold in Rhanich, or perhaps closer, at Tean-ga na Dubhaird. It wouldn't quite be impossible to sell a girl, and in fact they had more than once ransomed one back to her clan and family, but not this time—she was just a crofter's daughter, and her parents had been poor in life, and were dead now. It was said that a man with the right connections could sell anything in Rotterdam to a Guild trader, but even if Dughall had those connections, Rotterdam was a long way away, and he had never in his life come far down out of the hills, and knew that he would be like a fish flopping on a lakeshore if he tried.
"Stand easy," the older one said. Not in the mither tongue, of course. English, with a heavy Sassenach accent. "Put up your arms, the lot of you," he went on, seemingly addressing all of the dozen raiders.
He was a wide-shouldered, squat little man, his head bare save for a wreath of mussed hair. His voice held a definite, almost comical lisp.
Michael Gwinnie, the stealthiest of them all, had been off to the edge of the clearing, wrapped in his cloak for the night, but he was gone now.
Good. Get them to talk while Michael made his way around behind them.
Dughall couldn't tell anything about his complexion under the bright moonlight that gave his face the same ghastly, ghostly complexion that it did everyone, but, even so, the older man had the look of the south about him. No proper beard; just a bristle of mustache, and no whiskers on his fat cheeks and many chins. He started to take a step toward the McGlennons, but desisted at a minimal head shake from the other one, and besides, young Davy had rolled off the girl, and was eying his gear lying nearby, something that the young one seemed to have noticed.
No weapons had come out, yet.
"In the name of the king," the younger one said, "lay down your arms and surrender, and I swear that you'll be given a fair trial before you're hanged."
He was even more of an outlander than the Sassenach; his voice held an almost musical lilt.
"I guess we have no choice." Dughall rose slowly, laid his own broadsword on the ground before him, and dropped to one knee. "I'll accept the king's justice," he said, formally. "Accept my sword as its token."
He hoped, for a moment, that the younger one was going to step forward, but the moment was gone when the older one snorted.
"And he should ignore the sgian dubh strapped to your hairy thigh?"
Well, it had been worth a try, although he hadn't much hope for the ploy. That was the traditional purpose of the sgian dubh, after all—to stick into the belly of some Sassenach demanding surrender or fealty, turning the moment of defeat into one of victory.
"Surrender now, or die now," the younger one said.
"Sounds awfully generous of you, under the circumstances." Dughall laughed as he rose and brushed himself off. "And I'd suppose that you've got a whole troop of Mordred's soldiers hidden in the woods?"
Granted, there had been a troop of soldiers—probably the earl's troops, but possibly the McPhee's—chasing them for the past few days. But once you got up into the rocks and the mist that you knew as well as you did the back of your hand, it was just a matter of letting them trail you through increasingly difficult country until they got tired of it, and went back to the lowlands.
The younger one shook his head. "No."
"That you're not just a couple of travelers who have stumbled into the wrong place, and are pissing yourselves in fear?"
The younger one didn't appear to move, but his cloak slid from his shoulders and fell about his feet. Beneath it, he was dressed in very strange garments: over his white tunic he wore a short black robe, split down the front although wrapped tightly about his chest. His leggings were bloused into his boots. The short robe was belted at the waist with a plain sash, and two scabbarded swords were stuck through it.
Two swords? And this outlandish garb? No. It couldn't be.
"There's much to be afraid of here, but not the lot of you," the younger one said. He let his hand rest on the hilt of one of his swords.
It couldn't be, but it was—the short black robe, the sash, the two swords . . . The only men that Dughall had ever heard of who carried two swords were knights of the Order, Mordred's—some called him King Mordred, but Dughall bowed before no king, and no clan chief, either—personal bodyguards and bullyboys.
"Sir Niko—"
"Shush, Nigel," he said. "They must be given a chance to surrender. Mercy."
Surprisingly, this Nigel chuckled. "As you wish, young sir." He leaned on his staff. "You're going to have to kill the lot of them, you know. And—meaning no disrespect, Sir Niko—you're no Cully of Cully's Woode or Gawaine the Legendary to take on so many with the sword that I resharpened for you just yesterday. You'll need the other."
It was hard to make out the Sassenach's words; he had a dreadful lisp that in other circumstances Dughall would have thought comical.
"Be that as it may." The young man turned back to Dughall. "You're the leader of this band of clanless scum?"
"Aye, although I'd dispute with any steel you care to name the—"
An arrow sprang from the side of the young man's chest. He looked down for a moment, as though he couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be, then wrenched it out with a quick pull.
"Bad choice," the one called Nigel said. "Should have gone for the head."
Dughall had never seen anyone move as fast as the young man did when he drew one of his swords and tossed the scabbard aside.
Red light, impossibly bright, flared, not just in his eyes, but in his mind.
And then it was all pain, forever.
Niko stood over what was left of the bodies, Nadide scabbarded, his hand carefully holding the scabbard, not letting his finger rest against her steel.
It got easier each time, he thought, and was vaguely disgusted with himself for that.
So be it.
When Niko first moved, Fotheringay had of course made a dash for the girl, and covered her with his own body, as Niko would have told him to, had it been necessary. It wasn't necessary, or possible, for Fotheringay to protect her from Niko and Nadide—but it would have been tragic if one of the bandits had managed, in his death throes, to fall upon her.
A wedge of surviving grass and shrubs marked the spot where the stocky little man was slowly working his way to his feet. Fotheringay was capable of rushing, when need be, but there was no need here, no need now: the rest was just destruction.
The bodies and parts of bodies lay smoking on the dead ground, ground where nothing would grow for years, if not forever.
Niko turned. The bodies of the five at the edge of the clearing were still smoking, and—thank the Good and Kindly Ones, although never even think their names!—the awful smell of roasting flesh was carried away on the night wind. There were those who said it smelled like roasting pork, but they were either idiots or liars. It smelled like roasting flesh; utterly horrible.
He thought for a moment about chasing after the two others, the two who had managed to flee into the dark and mist. But there weren't more than those two left, not from this band, and they knew this strange land better than he ever would. No point in it. Landless, clanless men, outlawed . . . they were only dangerous when they were gathered together, with some leadership.
At least, that's what Becket had said. Among other things.
Still, he wanted to go after them. Justice was to be tempered by mercy, yes, but not by laziness, not by exhaustion.
It was hard for Niko to keep his feet beneath him. Using Nadide—using the sword was always that way, and it didn't seem to get any easier. His hands were trembling, but he had found that if he fastened his thumbs in his sash, the trembling wasn't perceptible to anybody else.
That would have to do.
"I'd not suggest we go chasing off after them," Fotheringay said from behind him. "We'd never find them, not at night, not even if they were blazing a trail, Sir Niko."
True enough. And in his woolgathering, he was neglecting his duty. He turned to where Fotheringay was kneeling over the girl. "Is she alive?"
"No." Fotheringay shook his head. "Sorry, sir."
Damn them. Damn them all. And him, too, for that matter—if only he and Fotheringay had been a touch faster.
"Not your fault, Sir Niko; the body's already getting cold. She was dead when we got here. Seems that they didn't know when to stop." He stripped off a kilt from one of the raiders, and moved toward the girl, as though to cover her with it.
"No," Niko said. No. Enough of them had touched her in life.
Fotheringay didn't protest. He rarely did. He just dropped the kilt to the ground, and stripped off his tunic, revealing the reticulated plate chest piece underneath, and laid his own tunic gently over the dead girl's face.
"Sorry, Sir Niko," he said. "Bled to death—I think one of them ruptured something . . ." He gestured awkwardly, ". . . inside."
It was hard to speak, but he forced his voice to obey his will. He could do that.
"I'll do what's needful." It would be better if Fotheringay could, but, of course, he couldn't. Fotheringay was a man of faith, in his own way, but he wasn't a priest, even in the limited, mostly false way that Niko was.
Niko dropped to his knees beside the body, and made the sign of the Cross, first on his own chest, and then across her forehead. It was warm to the touch.
"Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," he said. "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever. Amen." There was no emotion or intensity in the words; he just spoke them quietly, quickly, as though trying to get them over with, as indeed he was.
The magic was, he had been taught, in the words and the office of the man who spoke them, not in the tonality in which they were pronounced. "Incline Your ear, O Lord, unto our prayers, wherein we humbly pray Thee to show Thy mercy upon the soul of this, Thy servant . . ." —his voice didn't break; he didn't let it— "Thy servant whose name we knoweth not, whom Thou hast commanded to pass out of this world, that Thou wouldst place her in the region of peace and light, and bid her be a partaker with Thy saints, through Christ our Lord. Amen."
The words didn't mean much of anything to him. The Order could require much of him, but not meaning, not sincerity. Service, honor, and obedience; yes. Faith, too, but faith in what? Yes, he had taken the oath, but his oath couldn't compel him in that, no matter how hard he tried.
Fotheringay hadn't said anything. Niko looked over at him.
"Amen," the older man finally said. "And for the rest?"
Niko looked at the bodies and parts of bodies strewn across the clearing. " ' Service, honor, faith, obedience. Justice tempered only by mercy; mercy tempered only by justice,' " he said.
"Yes, sir," Fotheringay said. "And how would you be applying that, Sir Niko? Leave them where they fell, in the name of justice? Or give them a decent Christian burial, in the name of mercy?"
"What do you think?"
Fotheringay shook his head again. "Not my place, sir. And, by and large, I do know my place, rumors to the contrary." His grin seemed forced.
"And if I pressed?"
"Then I'd let the crows eat out their eyes, Sir Niko. I'd put up a sign threatening the life of any who gave this lot a proper burial, or failed to piss on the ashes as he passed." Fotheringay spoke without heat, without emotion. "But I'm known to be more of a sentimental than a generous man."
"And if I said that we'll bury each one of them, properly? And give them last rites?"
"Well, then, I'll stand, head bowed, while you give them their rites, and I'll bury them for you. At your command, Sir Niko."
It would have been easy to just do what Fotheringay wanted to do. It was tempting.
But let their judgment come from Another, if he and Nadide hadn't already damned them anyway.
"We'll bury them," he said.
Fotheringay had already retrieved a camp shovel from the bandits' gear. "Aye-aye—I mean, 'as you wish, Sir Niko.' "
"Nigel—"
"I mean no offense, Sir Niko, and pardon me for the interruption, but if it can wait for later, Sir Niko, can you leave it for later?" Fotheringay's broad face was as impassive as it usually was, and his voice didn't seem to be overly controlled, but . . .
"It can wait."
They got to work, and took turns with the shovel, and for once Fotheringay didn't offer even the expected muttered complaint about how something as common as grave digging was beneath Niko's station.
The soil of the Scottish Highlands is hard and rocky, much like the people who live there; it was midmorning before they had finished, and at that they had buried the raiders only shallowly, in a common grave at the entrance to the clearing, as though leaving them on guard for the cairn in the center that held the body of the girl.
Fotheringay used the blade of the shovel to hammer a rough cross into the ground at the head of the cairn. He didn't look toward the south, but he gestured toward it. "A troop on the way," he said, then frowned. "Could have waited and let a bunch of McPhees do the digging, as it happens."
"Shut up, Nigel," Niko said.
Fotheringay gave him a toothless grin. "I've got my virtues, sir, and I'll be the first and p'raps the only man to swear to them. But if I was any good at keeping my mouth shut when I ought to, I'd still be sergeant in the Blue, sir, and not sweaty from digging a hole that a sergeant would have privates to dig for him." His grin widened. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but . . ." He cocked his head to one side. "Twelve, maybe fifteen horses."
Niko cocked his own head to listen, but couldn't hear anything.
This was such a strange land, all of it. The whole idea of being able to walk for days without so much as smelling the sea, much less seeing it, was something that he still wasn't used to.
And even when you did see the sea, it was different—dark, harsh, threatening, never the pleasant blueness tinged with dark that he had grown up with, that had been, save for a few bits of land, his whole world, back when he had been Niko the fisherboy.
It was frustrating. Everybody else seemed to understand things without effort that Niko couldn't duplicate, even with effort.
Michael, even without the aid of his gamekeepers or woodsman, could follow a boar's trail anywhere within a day's ride of Fallsworth, and that wasn't considered unusual for a young nobleman. And when the future baron turned his hand to a bit of blacksmithing, even the dour McLennahan would admit that he had a fine eye for color, and a steady hand with a hammer.
Niko's teachers at Fallsworth, both formal and informal, were preposterously skilled at their own trades. As Niko was with the one he had been raised in.
But there was little call for the skills of a fisherman there.
And it wasn't just the teachers. The two novices who acted both as Becket's attendants and, at least in theory, as Niko's fellow students, were accomplished at all of the knightly arts and crafts that Niko was utterly clumsy at.
Scoville—Niko kept forgetting and calling the boy by his first name—didn't seem faster than Niko, but he could score on him easily five-to-one, when they went at it with practice swords.
And never mind how useless Niko's hand was when he turned it to his letters, while both of the novices could turn out page after page in glorious quantity and quality.
And Fotheringay—Fotheringay had heard the horsemen easily a minute before Niko could begin to make out the faint clopping of their hooves on the hard ground.
Fotheringay had dropped his own rucksack at Niko's feet and pulled out a water bottle and some rags.
"I can wash my own hands, Nigel," Niko said.
"That's true enough, Sir Niko, but you can't see the dirt on your face better than I can, you being without a mirror, and the dirt on the back of your neck you can't see at all," he said, ignoring Niko's vague protests as he gave Niko's face a quick and not particularly gentle scrubbing, then pulled off Niko's tunic, letting him shiver in the cold air until he replaced it with a fresh one, then helping him replace his swords properly in his sash, finishing just before the first of the horses came around the bend.
Fotheringay congratulated himself with a brief nod that as much as said that he had, once again, made his master presentable in time.
It was good to have the fat old man at his side, and not just because Niko would have, more than likely, been too distracted to deal with matters that were, for reasons beyond him, important, but didn't seem important. Why an Order Knight should always appear to be fresh, crisp, and untouched was beyond him—although Becket certainly belabored the point, more than enough. There were some things you had to take on faith, and Fotheringay's attention to the right details was one of the easier ones.
Niko wasn't surprised to see the McPhee at the head of the party, although Fotheringay seemed to be, and if Niko could read his expression aright, Fotheringay didn't much like it.
"Sir Niko," the leader of the McPhee clan said, leaning forward to where his thick hands rested on the peak of his saddle, "it appears that we're too late to do anything, save congratulate you." From the back of his huge, Campbell-bred gelding, he seemed almost tiny, boylike in size, if not in age, what with the heavy scrub of red-brown beard that covered his face. "And, perhaps, inquire as to the clans that gave birth to the dogs," he said, as he climbed down from the saddle and dropped heavily to the ground. He stalked over to where fragments of kilts lay on the ground. "No tartans, of course—the dogs would have worn plaincloth," he said, fingering a singed scrap. "But I wonder if perhaps this was dyed dark? Be interesting to see if the dye could be removed, and find some trace of McGlennon or MacDonald beneath."
"Perhaps that decision should be left to Sir Martin," Niko said.
"I've no objection. Sir Martin's palanquin should be along shortly," the McPhee said, "although I can't see why he'd not want to know, too. I thought it better to move the rest of us along and see if we could be of some assistance, than to wait. In the meantime, it looks like the sheep and goats that the bandits stole are scattering?"
Niko hadn't given the animals a thought. "Yes, certainly—I . . . I can't see why you wouldn't want to have them rounded up."
The McPhee was a surprisingly small man, all in all, not what Niko would have expected in a clan chief. Thick-bearded and barrel-chested, the only thing that distinguished him in appearance from his clansmen-soldiers was that the cloth of both his blouse and his kilt was more densely woven than the others, coming from finer fabric; it was of precisely the same dense green-on-red pattern that Niko had learned meant clan McPhee, as opposed to the broader red squares of the MacGregors.
One of his soldiers said something to him in the local language, as though protesting, but desisted at a nod of the McPhee's head.
It wasn't fair, but life was often not fair. Knights of the Order were supposed to be learned men, as well as everything else, and while Niko, of course spoke fluent Hellenic and enough Arabic, Turkish, and Shqiperese to get by, he was having enough trouble with Francaise and Latin, and understood barely a few words of Gaelic.
"In English, man, English," the McPhee said, with a quick glance to Niko, "and—"
As though ignoring the order, which he probably hadn't heard anyway, a soldier toward the rear of the troop called out something in that incomprehensible Gaelic.
The McPhee frowned. "Well, we've got a wee bit of a problem," he said. "One of the outriders"—he gestured toward a ridge to the north and east—"has spotted a party of MacDonalds coming up the . . ." He paused for a moment. ". . . up the Road Where Donald Gibbie Died Bravely—doesn't sound quite so grand in the English, does it?—and we've got half an hour or so before their arrival. Less if they flog their horses; more if they split their party and have one half swing about to cut off retreat. About forty of them, all in all," he said, with a frown. "Obedient to the earl's orders, I am, and a peaceable man by nature, but—"
"But this will not become a skirmish between the two clans," Niko said, as he knew he had to. That was why Becket and he had been sent here.
Minor feuding among the clans was, basically, inevitable, and could be handled by the local earl's forces, or perhaps the Crown duke's, if it didn't start to spiral out of hand too quickly, too dramatically. But the forces of the Crown were stretched thinly across the world, and far too many of the regiments had been seconded into the king's service—the Kindallaghan Guard was keeping the peace south of Vlaovic, while the Blairgowries were just recovering from the disaster at Jelgava, where supposed bandits that everybody knew were really Imperials had more than decimated the garrison.
Some cattle or sheep stealing? Hardly anything to take notice of. But even a small band of bandits striking along clan boundaries was the sort of thing that could easily become much larger, and much more of a problem—and sending in troops to put down open warfare between the clans was always a bloody thing, and had been necessary far too often, so Niko had been told. The Glengarry Massacre of 1542 had become part of Scottish myth and legend, as well as history.
Stopping problems while they were small was just pissing on fires, Becket called it, and it was among the duties of the Order, and if Sir Niko didn't see any great glory in such mundane matters, that would have to be his problem.
Niko didn't see any glory, but it wasn't a problem. Why Becket expected him to care so much about glory was one of the many things that he didn't understand.
"Whether or not there is to be fighting, perhaps, is up to the MacDonalds, Sir Niko," the McPhee said.
He knew what was required. "No. It's not. It's up to Sir Martin, and to me. This will end here."
"Well, I guess we'll see as to the accuracy to that. You won't mind, Sir Niko, if I make some preparations just in case you're wrong?"
Niko had been about to say something—he wasn't sure what—when Becket's palanquin rattled into view.
It wasn't surprising that it had taken much longer for Becket to make it up the road, which was far too rocky and broken in places for any carriage or cart. His traveling palanquin was supported by two sullen dray horses, more suitable for plowing a field than for conveying a knight of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon.
Niko hurried to the where the lead rider was already dismounting, and managed to beat Scoville to the door.
Scoville kept his face studiously neutral, something he did around Niko except when in his cups, and usually even then. While Thomas Scoville was two years older than Niko, and far more adept at all of the knightly arts, he was still a shaved-headed novice of the Order, albeit a fourth-former, and Niko was not only Sir Niko Christofolous, a made knight of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon, but a knight of the Red Sword, as well.
Michael Winslow, who was still at the side of Becket's palanquin, was easier to read, and upon not infrequent occasion less restrained in his muttered comments.
Niko touched his thumb to Nadide's steel.
I don't think he really hates you, she said. But how couldn't he resent you?
It wasn't competitiveness that had Niko at the door, and handing Becket down to the high-backed chair that Michael had quickly unfolded. It was just that, well, it was something that he knew how to do, and the fact that Becket's mostly limp body was closer to twelve stone of limp meat than further from it didn't mean anything more than a mild annoyance. Niko the fisherboy had hauled more weight than that up to the rocky beach at home—at his former home—in the nets, and his muscles had not been given the opportunity to go soft under Becket's tuition, after all.
"Hurry up with it," Becket whispered, almost limp in Niko's arms. "I've disgraced myself again, and I'd rather that the whole damn world doesn't share in it."
Sir Martin Becket was a human wreck. His service in the order had left his legs crippled and barely able to move. His shoulders, though, were massive, and his arms thickly muscled, although when his sleeve slipped open, the scars that had severed tendons and left his right hand useless showed, and he had retained only the thumb and forefinger of his left, beyond the stubs.
But then there was the face. His beard had been neatly and properly trimmed, and the cheeks shaved—although how Michael had managed to do that in a bouncing palanquin without cutting the old man's face to ribbons was something that Niko wouldn't have believed possible if he hadn't seen it himself, on more than one occasion.
But there was Becket's face. It was, still, the face of a knight of the Order, and it showed more in the eyes than the beard, eyes that missed nothing, and could see right into the soul of a man or boy.
Still, Becket smelled of piss and shit—his injuries had long ago lost him control of his bowels and bladder—despite the earliness of the day. Niko was vaguely familiar with all the details, although Becket had the novices attend to his needs, which included the sausage-skin tubes whose open ends that had to be tied around the old man's penis, the tubes terminating in a former wineskin bag tied to a leg, and which Niko quickly concealed with a blanket.
Not that they could do anything about the smell at the moment, but the novices were quickly erecting the portable screen from the back of the palanquin. Given a few moments, they could give the old knight at least a modicum of a sponge bath, get him into fresh swaddling and clean robes.
But for now, Niko belted Becket into the chair, and tucked a blanket tightly around Becket's lap and over the restraining strap, and left it at that. Save, of course, for the final step—he quickly retrieved both of Becket's swords from the palanquin, and set them in the boot on the left side of Becket's traveling chair.
He was rewarded with nothing more than a glare from Becket's shockingly blue eyes.
Becket surveyed the scene. "Well, you handled it bloodily enough, I suppose." He cocked his head to one side. "Any idea of the clans of the bandits?"
Niko shook his head. There hadn't been any formal introductions. He didn't even know the Christian names of the men he had killed, much less their clan affiliations. "I'm sorry, but no."
"Hmmph," Becket said, his scowl making it clear he disapproved. "The thing about information, fisherboy, is that if you don't have it, you can't use it. You can't decide whether or not to share it, or conceal it, or—" He shook his head and snorted in disgust. "Well, I guess it was about to be expected. I know that the abbot's been none too impressed with my reports on you."
As always, Niko waited for the words he had been expecting for more than a year: You'll not do as a knight, Niko. Go back to being a fisherboy.
The abbot general, of course, would have supported Becket. Ralph Francis Wakefield, both archbishop of Canterbury and the abbot general of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon, had no use for Niko, and particularly no use for Sir Niko Christofolous as a knight of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon, and even more particularly no use whatsoever for the notion of Sir Niko being a knight of the Red Sword.
He had made that abundantly clear in their one interview, shortly after Bear's funeral, that one word from Sir Martin was all that it would take to have Niko stripped of his knighthood—and, of course, the sword—and that nothing that Baron Shanley, Cully, or anybody else could do or say would reverse that decision. His Majesty had decided to give Sir Niko a try—but the moment that Becket found him wanting, well, that try would have been accomplished, that moment would be his last in the Order.
But, once again, Becket just shook his head. "And now, with the MacDonalds on their way . . . there wouldn't happen to be precisely fourteen of them, would there?"
Also as usual, Niko didn't know what Sir Martin was getting at. "The McPhee said forty, not fourteen, Sir Martin."
"Forty." A quick nod. "Good. Or, rather: it should be good, and it should be a curb on the McPhees' temper, if the damned Scots were capable of being sensible. Which they aren't." He chuckled. "Pity that prima nocte has always been a ritual of loyalty for the past few centuries, rather than what it was in the Tyrant's time; with any luck, some English sensibleness could have been bred into these barbarians, and some of the young lasses are, well, delectable; it'd be a rare baron or earl who wouldn't enjoy the exercise. But enough of that." He shook his head. "I was thinking of the number fourteen? It's a number of some significance to our Order, and a second-year novice should have picked up the reference. I know you've studied Mallory; I watched you move your lips excessively as you read."
Niko didn't quite understand how Becket's eyes could become all distant and vague, and at the same time make it appear as though the old knight was reading from a book in front of him, but he did.
"Book XXI, Chapter IV," Becket said. " 'Then were they condescended that the false king, Arthur the Tyrant, and the true king, King Mordred, should meet betwixt both their hosts at the field of Bedegraine, and each of them should bring fourteen persons, and no more; and they came with this word unto Mordred.' Do you remember any of this?"
"Yes, Sir Martin." Niko nodded. "Yes, I remember." Yes, he had studied Mallory, although he didn't have the way of memorizing that Becket and the novices had.
Arthur the Tyrant and Mordred the Great had met between their armies, to try to make peace, as though such a thing was possible. Oh, there was a bargain: Mordred was to have Kent, and the Crown after Arthur's death—unless, of course, the Tyrant had managed, as all knew that he would try, to have Mordred assassinated and a bastard conceived by Lancelot the Damned on Guinevere the Whore, as he surely would have, and as he had been trying to do, to cheat his son out of his patrimony.
It was hardly the Tyrant's first attempt to kill his only begotten son, after all. The bargain would not have held, but Mordred the Great had seen enough destruction done to his people, and he was willing to make it, and deal with the consequences later.
There wasn't to be a later. The Tyrant could not give up on his treachery.
One of Arthur's knights—Niko couldn't remember Mallory well enough to have said which one it was; Dinadan, perhaps?—shouted that he spotted an adder in the grass, drew his sword, and made straightaway for Mordred, and had it not been for the fact that Mordred had chosen as his companions the very first of the knights of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon, the Pendragon dynasty would have ended there in reality, if not in name, with Mordred dead on the field at Bedegraine, the impotent Tyrant unable to conceive a son upon his wife, and a battle for the Crown upon the death of the Tyrant.
But it hadn't ended there.
Yes, this was before the Age of Crisis, and the knights of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon had no Whites nor Reds among them. And, truth to tell—for Sir Thomas Mallory had written the truth as he knew it, both for good and ill—when the fleeing Mordred had first found himself among them, they had been but a group of bandits from the Arroy, preying on travelers and villages beyond the Bedegraine and retreating into the Arroy when pursued.
They had little armor, and were probably even more clumsy with swords than Niko was, as banditry was accomplished with a bow and a dirk, not armed head to foot from the saddle of a warhorse.
But they were, after all, knights of the Order, the first of their kind, and while Mallory had never been clear on the point, how could they not have understood that what they did there would set the pattern for their successors?
Sir William Stutely had been to Mordred's right, and Sir John Little to his left, and Sir Arthur Tanner stood before the king, and as the two hosts rushed together in battle, they and the rest of the Order Knights had protected the king with their swords, and their shields, and their bodies, until tens of thousands lay dead about the field, leaving but Red Will and the Tanner alive amongst the all Order knights, and the Tyrant to face Mordred the Great, alone.
And while Mordred's blade had shattered on Excalibur, Mordred had still closed with the Tyrant, and cut his throat with the shards of the shattered sword.
Then, if you believed Mallory, Mordred had turned to his knights, his face full of black anger and red grief, and said to them, "With this sword I have slain my father, and am ever after a despicable parricide, despite the provocation, and no fit company for decent men, and you, my faithful servants, must leave me, and my service," and then threw the broken hilt upon the ground.
" 'And then,' " Niko said, quoting, for he owned at least some of the words, " 'Sir Arthur and Sir William knelt down before the king, and Sir William picked up the hilt of the broken sword, said unto the king, I beg of thee: 'swear that thou shalt send not thy servants from thy Presence, Sire, and if there be any burden from Your actions this day, we shall pray to God that they will be our burdens, not thine, for the one you slew was the Tyrant Arthur, murderer of babies, and unfit to rule our land.' "
And the king took up the sword. Ever since, the Pendragon Kings had been crowned while holding the hilt of that shattered sword high above their heads, with no man standing closer to him than knights of the Order.
There the history ended, although not the legends.
Becket nodded, just as the sounds of hoofbeats reached Niko's ears. He called out to the novices. "Get this damned chair over there," he said, his good hand gesturing toward the road where the McDonald's were approaching. "Then stand back and aside, the lot of you."
"And let you face them alone?" the McPhee asked. "I'd not like to have word of that reach the earl, should things go badly."
Becket turned to stare the McPhee down. "You and your men will keep still," he said. "No matter what should happen." His eyes locked on the McPhee's until the Scot nodded.
"As you command, Sir Martin."
The boys quickly conveyed Becket's chair to the center of the road, then backed off, while the McPhee grounded the last of his men, with muttered orders in Gaelic that Niko couldn't follow, but had them clutching the reins of their horses with white knuckles.
Niko was never sure why the man at the head of the troop of MacDonalds halted just a few feet in front of the man in the wheeled chair, but sure enough, he did, although horsemen behind started him to spread out, fingers clutching at sword hilts.
Thomas, the elder of the two novices, stood by Niko's right side, while Fotheringay had taken up a position a little to his left, with Michael beyond them.
If it all fell apart, it would be up to Niko, and Nadide. Four men couldn't hold two troops of soldiers apart.
The foremost of the MacDonalds looked more French than Scottish to Niko's eyes—his hair was dark and straight, and he had a delicacy to his features that made him look almost pretty.
He said something in Gaelic to Becket. Gaelic, dammit. The McPhee had told his men to speak English, at least when Niko could overhear them. It wasn't just courtesy, Niko thought, but that the McPhee didn't want Niko thinking that they were planning any treachery, as though even Niko couldn't figure out that treachery could simply be planned in his absence.
Still, without being prompted, Thomas leaned over and whispered in Niko's ear. "He said, 'And what have we here? Do the McPhees have a new pet?' "
"Fair knight," Sir Martin said, "I pray thee tell me thy name." The formal language seemed to come to his lips naturally, although most of the time Niko felt like a fool when he practiced it.
That seemed to take the MacDonald back. "I'm no knight, but my name is no secret," he said, his Scottish accent thick and guttural. "I'm Donald MacDonald."
"There be many named Donald among the MacDonalds, and the ClanRanads of Cromarty are no exception," Becket said. "Art thou better known elsewise?"
Some of the men behind the lead MacDonald said something, and the leader nodded.
" 'I'm known as Donald Gwinnie, mostly, which means much to someone from Carlops, and probably little to you, whoever you might be,' " Thomas whispered. " 'An' so much the worse for you, or you'd know better then to speak so boldly to me, even if you weren't a cripple.' "
This Donald MacDonald looked across at the waiting McPhees. " 'Davy Bella, there, might be able to identify me, if that'd be a help to you; we've traded cows, and sheep—and insults and blows—on a few occasions. Not thought much of him, him being a McPhee, and all, but I'd not expected to find him standing over a fresh-dug grave that, I'll warrant, contains the body of my clansman's daughter, nor standing between MacDonalds and livestock stolen from my kinsmen.' "
Some of the McPhees started grumbling at that, only to be silenced by the McPhee himself.
The McPhee took a slow step forward. "At another time, I'd want some satisfaction over the slur on my kinsmen," he whispered, desisting at a be-still motion from Niko.
" 'And you are?' " Donald McDonald asked.
"I am Robert, son of William; I am the McPhee," the McPhee said. "We were in pursuit of the same gang of bandits that you seem to have been."
" 'Pursuit, eh? They raid into villages and crofts to the north and east in MacDonald land, and yet you pursued them from the south and west?' "
"You don't think they've been raiding only into MacDonald land, do you—"
" 'And why would a bunch of McPhees be raiding—' "
"Silence!" Becket thundered, his eyes on Donald MacDonald. His body was crippled, but his voice was strong. "I have asked thee thy name, Donald Gwinnie MacDonald of Carlops, and thou hast given it, as is only proper—but thou hast not asked me mine."
"Why would I want to know the name of an old cripple who conspires with thieving McPhees?"
Thomas had started repeating the words in Niko's ear, even though the rider had started speaking in English; Niko waved him away.
"That was most discourteously said, and I shall not abide it," Sir Martin said. "For no man, noble or common, kicks dirt on the name of Martin Becket without he be held to answer for it."
This MacDonald snickered. "Then let us have at it, Sir Knight," he said, slowly dismounting. "But if you think to distract me while your allies attack my clansmen, you'll have bought them but little time."
"A knight of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon means what he says, and says what he means," Becket said. "I'm sure that after you've killed me, your men will fall on the McPhees, and that they'll give a good accounting of themselves, for McPhee is an honorable name, and they are honorable men.
"But you are forty, and they half as many. Still, you'll find the price of their lives high, and those deaths bought not easily, but dearly.
"As to me, you may find my life bought quite easily, but perhaps most dearly of all." He raised his good hand. "Bide but a moment, an' it please you. Sir Niko."
Niko was at the old knight's side in a moment. "Yes, Sir Martin." His hand was near Nadide's hilt, and his eyes were on the Scot's, not on Becket's.
"You're thinking to avenge me on these MacDonalds, when I fall," he said.
Well, yes, he assumed that was the plan, or close to it—that he was to draw Nadide and fall upon the troop, in the hopes that he would be in time to save Becket's life.
And to add another forty souls to his tally. The thought made him want to gag.
"No, Sir Martin," Niko said, "I think to try to see that not one of them so much as lays a finger upon the hem of your garment."
"No, Sir Niko," Becket said, shaking his head, "for that would be an unknightly thing to do. The challenge was offense that was given to me, not to you, and not to the Order. Yes, the offense is great, and it will become greater—and, as such, it must lay heavily not just on this one, not just on these two score, but on the clan they represent.
"You are not to save them from the dishonor that they bring, Sir Niko.
"In the name of our Order, I do charge you, as Mordred the Great charged Sir Thomas the Rhymer: make your escape; take to your heels; flee. On your honor, Sir Niko—you are to run away." He raised a hand and pointed to a nearby ridge. "Watch as I defend my name, and the name of our Order. Watch as these MacDonalds strike down not only a knight of our Order, but two novices, and then kill half their number of McPhees—all who are as innocent of these crimes as is Our Lord Himself.
"And let the king know, let all of our Order know, that Donald Gwinnie MacDonald of Carlops, leading a troop of MacDonalds, has struck down a knight of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon, who but stood in a roadside, politely asking his name. Let the name of MacDonald be known for what it shall become: the name of coward, the name of bully, the name of the murderer of the innocent."
Donald MacDonald's face whitened, and his jaw clenched, and he started to say something, and his hand went to the hilt of his sword.
But Niko already had Nadide in his hand.
And the world changed.
It was always the same; it was never different, although he would never remember that later. It wasn't clear when he touched his finger to Nadide's steel, and they could talk with one another in the quiet words that nobody else could hear; it was only clear, it was only right, when he drew her from her sheath, and the two of them became one.
It was like recovering a lost portion of himself, of herself, of themselves. Colors somehow became much brighter, without being blinding; light itself pulsed redly through his tendons and veins. His own heart, which had been pounding like the tattoo on a navy drum, slowed to a lub-dub, lub-dub, that was so loud and strong that it should have been deafening painful, but he could barely hear, he could feel no pain.
No: they could feel no pain. They were one: Niko the fisherboy and Nadide the infant, sharing his body as much as the steel that either imprisoned or sheltered her soul. The sweet taste of the milk from the breast of She Who Smells Like Food was as utterly familiar to them as the weight of a net straining against the kicking of a madly flailing tunnyfish.
They were one; they were no different; they were as they always had been, always would be.
It was the rest of the world that had changed about them, and they were merely right with the world and more than right with themselves.
That part of them that was Nadide blazed brightly over their head, brightly enough that it would have dazzled human eyes more than the sun could, although not even the brightened sun could do so much as make him blink. It would have been trivially easy, a nothing, to step in front of Becket, to protect him and burn down not only the MacDonald before him, but all the other MacDonalds behind that one.
And why stop there?
They didn't know what the limits of their destruction might be, could be, would be.
Perhaps it could not as great as that of the Khan that Gray carried, or the Sandoval borne by the false Knight Alexander Smith, but that was by no means certain. Burning down the bandits had been easy, and they could still taste the destruction not just of their bodies but of their souls, and it was a rich and heady brew, intoxicating in the way that milk of the One Who Smells Like Food had been, even moreso than the winter wine served at table at Fallsworth.
And these were mean men. They wanted to hurt.
They were bad.
Striking out at them would not only be right, but it would feel good. They, the part of them that was Nadide, had been hurt by the foul-smelling one, the one with rough hands, the one with the shiny thing that they now knew was a knife, and these mean ones had knives, all of them. No, they didn't smell the same as the foul-smelling one, the one with the rough hands, the one with the knife, but all of the men about her, about him, about them had knives, and would hurt, and they would—
No. There was that lullaby that they sang to each other. Not the one about the cabbages, the one that Niko sang that to her silently, on nights where they had trouble sleeping, and which eased both of them into dark, comforting sleep.
It was the other, the one about mercy. About honor and obedience.
They didn't understand much about honor, and it was hard for them to think about mercy; it was easier to just obey the one with the broken body and unbroken spirit.
So they ran. They ran past the first of the Campbells and right through the pack of horsemen, like a dolphin slipping through the water, barely disturbing the pack of sardines in its wake as it fed.
Except, of course, they didn't feed.
They didn't understand why, not really, but they were on their honor to flee, though it would have been so easy to just pause for a moment, to touch the fire of their steel to any of the men, but . . .
No. They were on their honor to run, and so:
They ran.
Niko never remembered releasing his hand from Nadide, although obviously he had; she was stuck through his sash, above the mundane sword that almost miraculously remained there. His breath came in gasps, and he had somehow managed to abrade the knees of his trousers, leaving them in bloody rags. His tunic felt pounds heavier, and was sweat-soaked beneath both arms.
He touched a finger—just a finger—to her steel.
Niko? You're hurting.
Not badly, little one. It's just a few scrapes, a little pain.
The pain was nothing he couldn't bear, but the exhaustion dropped him to a crouch, and then to the ground, the pain of the sharp rocks beneath his buttocks much less than that of the fire in his lungs.
In the clearing below, Sir Martin's chair still held his body, as the MacDonald stood before him, his men spread out an arc around and behind him, while the McPhees stepped forward. Over to the side, Nigel Fotheringay had gripped each of the two novices by the arms, pulling them away.
He—
No. Praise be to Zeus, to Athena, to Neptune, and to Jesus and all the saints!—Becket's good hand was raising his limp arm above his head, his fingers spread clumsily in what still was the sign of the Order, as McPhees and MacDonalds alike were busy stacking their swords and spears in two separate piles before him, watched over by Fotheringay, whose bald pate gleamed in the sunshine.
And, in a ragged wave, each and every man, McPhee and MacDonald alike, dropped to one knee before the knight of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon, who sat in his wheeled chair, no doubt still stinking of shit and piss.
Niko just sat there, his breath coming in ragged gasps, watching the MacDonalds reclaim their mounts, while the McPhees reclaimed their own, and as the two parties slowly rode off in separate directions, the MacDonalds chivying their livestock ahead of them.
Sir Martin Becket sat in his chair until they were all gone, and then made a small gesture, and the novices rushed to his side, and pulled his chair from the road.
Niko shook his head, and when his eyes were clear, he retrieved his gloves from his belt pouch, and started to make his way slowly down the side of the ridge, careful not to let Nadide slip from his sash.
The night was chilly, as nights often are in the Highlands of Scotland, and the four of them had gathered about the fire that Fotheringay had built. The old sergeant was good with a fire kit, and almost preposterously adept at finding fuel, whether it was thumb-thick base roots from dead scrub, or the blocks of peat—where had he found a peat bog?—that now gave off a gentle, pleasant heat.
The horses had been watered and hobbled for the night, and fed enough that they'd not be tempted to wander far while grazing. Wolves were always a possibility, of course, but the night had been quiet, without any howling of a wolf pack, and the ruddy dray horse was known to be nervous, and particularly quick with an alarm.
Becket had long since been taken from his traveling chair, and lay propped nearer the fire than he should have been, although he made no complaint, despite the way that the sweat rolled off his forehead.
Niko had expected Becket to say something about the morning's events, but perhaps he should have known better.
Instead, Becket had had Michael pull a battered copy of Herodotus from the palanquin, and had him read a few chapters by the firelight, correcting his Hellenic constantly—Michael seemed to have much trouble with the pronunciation of "Alcmaeonidae," for reasons that escaped Niko.
It was an easy enough word, after all, but neither of the novices was terribly good at Hellenic, which was surprising, given how easy a language it was, and how fluent they were with much more difficult ones. He had offered to tutor them in it, of course, but Becket had dismissed that with a sneer. He had enough of his own studying to do, after all, Becket had said, and was making precious slow progress at that. Master his own skills, and then perhaps, someday, he might be able to teach others.
The day, or perhaps the single mug of wine that Becket allowed himself, had Sir Martin nodding off while Michael read, and he finally shook himself, fighting with his sagging eyelids. "Ah, I think I'm to bed," he said, and without a word, Michael closed the book, and the two novices rose and began to prepare his bedding, a few yards to the lee of the fire.
"And I think you might be well to bed yourself, young sir," Fotheringay said, rising.
"I'll tell him when he's to go to bed," Becket said, with a decided snap to his voice.
"Of course you will, Sir Martin." Fotheringay didn't hesitate. "And surely he'll obey you, as is his duty, as surely I'll prepare for him, as is mine," he said, choosing his words slowly, with obvious care.
"And you'll speak when spoken to." Becket's voice seemed to soften, as it often did when addressed to Fotheringay. He sighed. "And at other times, as well, I suppose."
"That's as it will be, Sir Martin. You may teach the young master as you see fit, and if much of that seems to be merely trying to run him ragged, you'll hear no complaint from the likes of Nigel Fotheringay, about whom not much good can be said, save that he knows his place. But when Sir Niko is permitted to go abed this night, he'll have clean blankets over soft grass to sleep on, and he'll have clean clothes to put on in the morning, as that is my place, Sir Martin."
"And if I tell him to sleep on cold stones, and tell him to put on the very robes I've soiled today?"
"Then he'll obey you, I'm sure, Sir Martin—but he'll do so with his own blankets, soft grass, and his clean clothes nearby. That would be your doing, Sir Martin, not me failing the young knight." Fotheringay drew himself up straight. "Knights aren't the only ones who know their duty, sir."
Becket gave a long stare at Fotheringay.
The truth, of course, was that being Niko's manservant was a matter of Fotheringay's choice, not an obligation. The old Marine sergeant could have, after the affair of Better-Not-to-Think-the-Name-of-Where, taken not only his Marine pension, but the OC that His Majesty had said was due upon his retirement; the only thing he had left Londinium with was the promise of Order of the Crown. He had gone back to the Fleet, only to show up at Fallsworth but a couple of months later, asking Niko for a position as "the dogrobber that a young knight such as yourself ought to have."
Niko had, of course, said yes, and while he had occasionally hinted at his obvious curiosity as to what had gone on that had brought Fotheringay to Fallsworth, his hat quite literally in hand, Fotheringay had never said. Niko found himself unable to ask, although he had his suspicions about Fotheringay having gotten himself in some trouble, trouble that Niko didn't want to officially know about. If he didn't know about it, he didn't have to cover for it, after all.
Maybe it mattered; maybe it didn't.
But he couldn't have said no.
He remembered not only Fotheringay standing next to him on Better-Not-to-Think-the-Name-of-Where, but later, on a windy Portsmouth dock, and Fotheringay stepping between Niko and a troop of soldiers, after a whispered, casual promise that he'd spend his life buying Niko the time necessary to get Nadide free from her sheath, ending with, You can't count on much in this world, but you can count on that.
It hadn't been necessary for Fotheringay to prove that he could do that; the soldiers had turned out to be their escorts to the king. It hadn't been necessary to prove that he would try to do that; Niko had no doubts, then or later.
But Fotheringay hadn't known what would happen, and Niko could still hear that whisper in his mind. Turning Fotheringay away? That had only crossed his mind as something impossible to do, disgraceful to consider.
Niko found the whole idea of others doing for him to be strange, certainly enough, but it was convenient. When it was allowed.
Becket insisted that Niko wash his own clothing, and maintain the two-room suite in Fallsworth that the baron called the "Red Suite," but Becket invariably referred to as Niko's "cell," and do all the rest of the work of maintaining his gear and equipment, just as the other—as the novices did, and Niko did that, and Becket insisted on constantly inspecting his work, to be sure that he wasn't slacking off.
Niko didn't. He was clumsy with most of the tools, and all of the languages, and all the rest of the usages of knights, but he wasn't lazy, and, truth to tell, the dawn-to-dusk regimen of a knight in training was less strenuous in most ways than what he had lived with, day to day, as a Pironesian fisherboy. Hours and hours of the work of a knight in training, after all, involved sitting at a table, reading—in the daylight!—when he should, by rights, have been deepdragging nets across a far-too-often rocky bottom.
Fotheringay, of course, had his own ideas about what was proper for a young knight, and was perfectly capable of taking a stack of clean tunics and trousers out to the laundry in the back of the keep, rewashing them, and then ironing them himself, and more than a few times Niko found that the often clumsy mending and patching that he himself had done, obedient to Becket's orders, had miraculously, overnight, been transformed into much finer work.
That hadn't gone over very well with Becket, of course, but Baron Shanley had taken him aside, and had a word with him. There weren't many men that Becket would hear out, but the baron was one of them.
Becket finally nodded. "Very well. You may be about your work."
Fotheringay didn't move until Niko nodded, but then he walked off beyond the wan circle of the fire's light.
With obvious discomfort, although no grunt of pain, Becket managed to move his body until he could face more directly toward Niko.
"Tomorrow, we'll start to make our way down to the coast. We can report to the earl on the way to the duke. Then, if there's no word waiting at Dunbeg, we'll see whether it makes more sense to head back to Fallsworth than over to Colonsay." He almost grinned. "The baron's to be summering at Colonsay, you know."
Niko was aware of that, and didn't need to be reminded that to Becket "the baron" was always Giscard, Baron Shanley. Who, of course, when he summered at his Colonsay home, would be accompanied by his wife, Grace, who, true to her name, was as gracious and gentle a gentlewoman as there was in all of England, Niko was sure.
Even though she hated him.
Which is why if the Shanleys were on Colonsay, Niko would rather have been going back to Fallsworth. It wasn't the baron, as much as the baroness—she blamed Niko for Bear's death, he knew, although she had not let a word pass her lips to that effect. In fact, she treated him with exquisite formal courtesy that would have seemed warm if the hate hadn't always shown behind her eyes.
But he didn't say anything.
"Not a bad day's work, eh? A few clanless bandits planted in the soil, and a clan war at least put off for another day, and probably much longer."
There was no question at the end of Becket's words; Niko knew better than to respond.
"Be slow in your Latin; speak French like the Hellene that you are who can't even lisp the word monsieur properly; bounce up and down on the back of a fine warhorse like a sack of potatoes; and, if you must, wear the robes of the Order as though they're some sort of St. Swithin's Day costume that ill fits you, no matter how well it's tailored," he said, quietly. "Perhaps you can still be a true knight, and fail in all of that even now; it can be learned, I'm told, although I'm still skeptical about that, when it comes to you. We shall see.
"But understand this, Niko: this is what we do. This is who we are."