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

by Miles Cameron

Gawin found himself pulled to the floor. He’d lost a moment’s attention and two of the things had him— But he was Hard Hands, and he closed his left hand and slammed it into a lobe-shaped eye, keyed his hand around his adversary’s arm, and ripped it off the boglin with a tearing like ripping old leather, and then he swung the taloned arm like a club beating the bleeding thing to the ground.

Because he lay across the enemy’s line, like the crossing of a T, and the enemy had committed all of his reserves. And there was no force on earth, in the Wild or out of it, that could stop a thousand of his kind charging in a line. He raised his lance high, feeling the astonishing, angelic vitality that filled him. “For God and honour!” he roared. “Deus veult!” cried the knights. Men closed their faceplates.

They went into marked graves with headstones, each of them marked with the eight-pointed cross of the Order. It made a great difference to many of the men and women—better, in fact, than most mercenaries ever imagined.

Out there in the world, they lie, and cheat each other, and betray, and we, here, don’t do that.” He was all too aware that sometimes, they did. But funerals are the time to speak high words. He knew that, too.

“You would not consider turning to God, my son? Become a knight of my order?” he asked, raising his eyes briefly. “No,” the captain said.

He tried to refuse the wine but she was a forceful woman, and a pleasant one, and her silence intimidated him.

Jehannes poured a cup of wine, sat on a stool, and raised his cup. “Absent friends,” he said. Tom’s laughter stopped. He rose to his feet, and so did the rest. “Victory and defeat are for amateurs,” Tom said. “For us, there is only life and death.” They all raised their cups, and drank. “Absent friends,” they chanted, one by one.

People were trickling back into the town. The captain bought bread for the whole company from a young woman with haunted eyes. Haunted, but practical.

How powerful is she, Magus? Hard to say, young man. Untrained talent. She had to learn everything for herself, from first principles. Ah. Possibly the greatest of us all, though. She was never trained. She has no chains.

Alcaeus finished his ale. “Beer makes men melancholy,” he said. “Let’s have wine, and I’ll think no more about it.” The captain nodded. “I don’t mean to be a touchy bastard. But I am.”

They rode higher and higher into the hills, and passed a pair of heavy wagons loaded to the tall seat with whole, straight trees—oak, maple, and walnuts, trunks bigger around than a tall man might reach, and straight as giant arrow-shafts. The wagoners allowed as there were lumbermen working in the vales.

Mag smiled at Ser Alcaeus. “Would you be so kind as to have the saddle off my horse, ser knight? I’m a poor weak woman.” Ser Alcaeus grinned.

The captain shrugged. “Either I have free will, or there’s no point in playing.” The Wyrm rocked its head back and forth. “What if I were to tell you that you only had free will in some things, and not in others?”

He smiled at them. “I have little interest in the affairs of the world, but I am choosing to help you, almost entirely to serve my own ends.

“May I leave you with some genuine wisdom, in place of all the humdrum claptrap? Do well. Act with honour and dignity. Not because there is some promised reward, but because it is the only way to live. And that is as true for my kind as for yours.”

The captain shook his head. “Mag, what do my thoughts of good and evil mean to the worms in the road? I can be the most honourable knight who ever lived, and my horse’s iron-shod hooves will crush their soft bodies every step, after a rain.” He smiled at her. “And I won’t even know.”

She laughed. Stretched like a cat, fists clenched and turned inward to the best advantage of her breasts and back. “I,” she purred, “beg leave to doubt your Majesty.”

“Come,” said the captain. Ser Jehannes had Ser Thomas and Ser Antigone, and Toby poured them all wine. In the distance, Oak Pew slammed a fist into Wilful Murder’s head. The archer sat suddenly. The captain shook his head. “It’s good to be home,” he said.