The Red Knight (The Traitor Son Cycle, #1)

by Miles Cameron

“Like all beautiful women, you seek to make an insult of my flattery,”

Harmodius was above such feelings as nausea. Or so he kept telling himself.

And he followed his mate into the woods, leaving Peter lying on the ground. He lay there and waited to die. But no one came for him, and you can only be so terrified for so long.

camp was too strong a word for a place where three men had built a fire the size of a rabbit and lain on the bare ground.

had remembered her skills at avoiding pinching fingers, or delivering a slap where it was needed.

and he moved with a grace that God only bestowed on women and exceptional athletes.

there was nothing to be done. He wished the screaming woman would just die.

Tom shrugged back. “They killed a lot of people.” He raised an eyebrow. “But not many of our people.” “You’re a hard bastard, Tom Mac Lachlan.”

The breach was narrow—two men wide. They filled it with their bodies. And the enemy came for them.

Suddenly Ser John was there with his mace. The five foot weapon moved like a goodwife’s broom on a new spring morn, and he shattered first the boglins around them, and then Benois’s skull.

In the main square irks had taken the time to carefully flay a man and hang him on a cross. He was still alive.

Ser John was slumped against the other wall. James helped the old man get his visor up. He winked. He winked. In that moment the old knight became a hero, in Ser Alcaeus’s estimation.

People were often stupid, but he wasn’t used to being one of them.

“I want you to see that victory and defeat are a question of perception, unless you are dead.

Now, if it is not too much trouble, I’d like Long Paw and Bad Tom, please.” Michael stood and saluted. “Immediately!” “Harumf,” said the captain.

Remorse was not in Tom’s lexicon. The captain winced.

Gelfred brought out a game bag. It was stiff with blood, but then game bags generally were.

“I am a lord, and I have the High Justice, the Middle Justice, and the Low Justice right here in my scabbard. I need no man’s leave to take a life.

He was aware of every tree past its tenth season; of the large patches of iris flowers; of the wild asparagus growing by the river where a man had built a cottage a century before; of the cattle that his raiders had taken to feed the Jacks; of the tuft-eared lynx that was both terrified and angered to have his army camped in its territory,

“Do not ask,” Flint said. “What I do—” Thorn began. “Has nothing to do with bears,” Flint said. He nodded. “This is the cub of Sunbeam, of the Clan of the Long Dam. Sunbeam’s brother will no doubt come and avenge her.” The old bear said this with obvious sadness. “As will his friends.” Flint picked up the cub. “They are young, and understand nothing. I am old. I see you, Thorn. I know you.” He turned his back and walked away.

All at once Thorn wanted to chase down the old bear and sit at his feet. Learn. Or protest his—not his innocence, but his intentions. But another part of him wanted to turn the old bear to ash.

Power attracted other power, and in the Wild, that could spell a quick end—all too often, something bigger than you arrived unexpectedly. And ate you. Even as he ran the forest highways, Thorn contemplated eating Thurkan.

She thought herself a great beauty and was always puzzled when boys preferred Elissa.

Elissa folded up her smile and put it away.

I do not know you. “I know a little of you,” Thorn said. “I know that I need allies. Your kind are said to be fearsome warriors.” I can feel your power. It is considerable. “I can see your speed and strength. They, too, are considerable.” Thorn nodded. Enough talk. What do you WANT?

To Thorn, it was like arm wrestling with a child. A strong child—but a child nonetheless. He slammed his will down on the troll’s, and it crumbled. That was the way of the Wild.

the successful raid had given him credit in the hard currency of leadership—no commander is ever much better than his last performance.

“Good night, Bent,” he said, and touched the man’s shoulder, to say, And over is over, unless you dick up. He’d learned from experts, and he wanted to believe he was doing the captain thing well.

He was disoriented, at first. The dark sun had dimmed and strengthened, dimmed and strengthened, and years of patient growth of power had taught him not to read too much into the fluctuations in power wrought by distance, weather, old phantasms that lingered like ghosts of their former powers, or animals who used power the way bats used sound. There were thousands of natural factors that occluded power the way other factors might affect sound.

he spun off a part of himself to contemplate the movement of sound over distance as an allegory—or even as a direct expression—of power. Meanwhile, he sat and breathed in the night air and maintained, almost without effort, the chains of power that bound the trolls, and a third part of him looked for the dark sun with increasing frustration.

Twenty leagues to the south a hundred of his creatures stirred and rumbled and slept in the cold darkness, and two hundred men huddled close to their fires and posted too many sentries, and over the mountain to the north, hundreds of Sossag warriors woke and made their fires and prepared to come to his cause. And west, and north, creatures woke in their burrows, their caves, their holes and hides and homes—more irks, more boglins, and mightier creatures—a clan of daemons, a moiety of golden bears. And because power called to power, they were coming to him.

No one spoke to Peter, but then, no one spoke much anyway, so he focused on trying to move the way they did.

I’m eager to buy—if I serve you a steak tonight, Hector Lachlan, you’ll have to sell me the cow first. I’m that short.”

Drovers never sought to hold land. Drovers drove.

“Without forage and fodder, a knight and his horse are worthless,” Desiderata said. “If we want them to win glory, they must be fed.”

In a way, it had been marvellous. Young magi have energy and old ones have skill. Somewhere in the continuum between young and old lies a practitioner’s greatest moment. Harmodius had assumed his had been twenty years ago, and yet last night he’d thrown a curtain of fire five furlongs long—and swept it ahead of his galloping horse like a daemonic plough blade. “Heh,” he said aloud.

A bull’s-eye lantern opened its baleful eye in front of him, the powerful oil lamp all but blinding him. “Who are you, then?” asked the annoying young voice. “I’m the fucking King of Alba,” Harmodius snapped. “I’m an old man on a done horse and I’d love to share your fire, and if I was a horde of boglins you’d already be dead.” There were chortles from the darkness.

One does not work with the ultimate powers of the universe for many years without developing a concentration bordering on utter ruthlessness.

That wrongness would instantly have repelled him, had he not the scientific assurance of his earlier experiment that a creature of the Wild could interact with the Hermetic. The reverse had to be true.

But he worked with it, first a complex binding, then two simultaneous phantasms run by dividing himself into two working halves, as his master had taught him so long ago. And there was so much power that he could divide himself once again, to leave an awareness to watch the darkness. Taking the green energy, as he had, seemed to have kicked a beehive. A village witch could funnel power independently through each hand. Harmodius could use each finger as a channel, and could use other foci on his body—rings and the like—as reserves, or clamps. He used many of them now.

Toby nodded soberly. “Aye,” he said, eager to help. Toby didn’t like it when his heroes were angry, especially not with each other.

“I gather that the youngest Lanthorn girl spent the night here?” she said archly. “Yes she did. I raped her repeatedly and threw her naked into the courtyard in the morning,” the captain said. His annoyance showed. “Damn it, this matters.” “And Kaitlin Lanthorn doesn’t? My Jesu says she matters as much as you do, ser knight. As much as I do. Perhaps more. And spare me your posturing, boy. I know why you’re so touchy. She spent the night with your squire. I know. I have just spent a few minutes with the girl. We spoke about this.” She looked at him. “Will he marry her?” “You can’t be serious,” the captain said. “He’s the son of a great lord. He may be on the outs with his family just now, but they’ll forgive him soon enough. His kind doesn’t marry farm sluts.” “She was a virgin a few days ago,” the Abbess said. “Calling her a whore doesn’t make her one. Nor does it make you stand any better in my sight.” “Fine,” said the captain. “She’s a fine upstanding lass with impeccable morals and my nasty squire got her to bed. I’ll see to it that he pays for it—both morally and financially. Now can we please talk about the true threat here?”

“It is none of your affair,” she said primly. “You are not telling us things that would be of value to us,” the captain said. “You, on the other hand, are the very soul of openness,” she replied. “Get a room,” Tom muttered under his breath.

Michael looked at his captain, whom he feared more than ten abbesses. “I love her, my lord,” he said.

“Very well,” he said. “All the best romances bloom in the midst of a good siege. Michael, you are not so much forgiven as pardoned for this. Your pardon does not include further tumblings of said girl in my solar. Understood?”

“You know what makes me piss myself laughing when I watch you?” Tom leaned forward until his nose was almost touching the older man’s nose. “When he issues his orders, you just fucking obey like the trained dog you are. And that’s why you hate him. Because he’s born to it. He’s not new at this, he’s the bastard of some great man, he grew up in one of the big houses, with the best tutors, the best weapons masters, the best books, and five hundred servants. He gives orders better than I do, because it’s never occurred to him that anyone would disobey. And you don’t. You just obey. And later, you hate him for it.”

Harmodius went from man to man, pulling the poison by grammerie. He’d had a day to gather power and rest, and he was full of sunlight, his aids charged and ready except for the two wands, whose charging required greater time, attention, and investment.

As his sixth light casting began to fade, and the deadly, wasp-like arrows began to come in again, Harmodius felt the presence of an enemy. A practitioner. Another magus. There was a moment’s warning—possibly as the other one raised a defensive ward. Harmodius raised his own. And then, like a man fighting with a sword and buckler, he pushed his ward across the open space between himself and the other source of power. If his ward was held close to his body, it could only cover him. Held close to the other magus, the ward could cover the whole convoy. A simple exercise in mathematica that most practitioners never learned.

In his youth, Harmodius had been an accomplished swordsman. And the practice of hermetical combat had many close analogues in swordsmanship. Harmodius had always meant to write a treatise on the subject.

His wards flared a deep blue-green—and Harmodius struck. In the tempo of the opponent’s own attacks, he launched a line of bright, angelic white—a line like a lance that connected his index finger and the enemy’s wards. It cost Harmodius almost no power, but the enemy, having over-committed to warding in the wrong place, now used his reserve ward to block… … nothing. The light beam was just that. Light. There was no force behind it. Like a fencing master going for an elegant, killing thrust, Harmodius drew power for his attack, and launched it, all in a tenth of a beat of a panicked guildsman’s heart. And as the blow went in—over one ward, under a second, and through the weakened energies of the third—he felt his enemy collapse. Felt him experience the despair of defeat.