Knight's Shadow (12 page)

One of the patrons shouted ‘Coin? For a story? This beer’s all the courage that’ll do for us!’

‘Aye,’ another said, ‘keep your silly girls’ songs.’

The man next to him punched him in the shoulder. ‘Leave be, Jost, there’s nothing wrong with a story now and then. T’aint the point t’were it true or not.’

‘Ah,’ the storyteller said, his voice still smooth, ‘but I’m one of the Bardatti, my friends.’ He looked around as if that revelation should produce a reaction in the audience. It didn’t. ‘The tales I tell are more real than that moon you see outside, and more honest than even the strong trees in the forest.’

At this point Jost stood up. ‘You’re tellin’ me that whole thing is true? That some git managed to rile up the Duke hisself, what? And the people all just stood up and saved some little girl just on his say-so?’

Jost swallowed his remaining beer and looked as if he might be thinking of throwing the cup at the bard.

‘Don’t you go makin’ trouble now, Jost,’ the barman said as he laid down plates in front of us. I noticed the beef was severely outmatched by the onions and potatoes. A lithe young woman with red hair set down our beers and gave Brasti a smile. Brasti smiled back and was about to speak, but I jabbed him with my elbow.

Jost threw up his hands. ‘Ah, leave me be, Berret, ah’m not doin’ nobody no harm. Just don’t like people what lie to me and then ask for coin, that’s all.’

‘Then you’re in the wrong tavern!’ someone else chimed in.

‘Inn!’ Berret said angrily. He turned to me. ‘See what you’ve started?’

‘Friends! Friends!’ the storyteller said, standing. He looked nervous, realising his chance at coin was slipping away. The woman with him paid no attention, just continued picking out a low, sweet tune. ‘Pay me or not, it’s your choice. But question not the word of a true Bardatti’ – and here he made his voice deeper, as if it might terrify the crowd into tossing him their money – ‘for it’s ill luck to slight a man of Saint Anlas-who-remembers-the-world. I tell you the story is true, and only I know it so well, for I was there that day.’ He put one foot up on the stool and pointed southwards as if he were captaining a ship. ‘Aye. I was in Rijou that very morning. I saw him speak. I was one of his twelve. And here, if you need more proof.’ The troubadour raised his fingers and a coin appeared between them. It was gold and had the King’s symbol on it – a seven-pointed crown, along with a sword behind it. My mouth went dry. It was a Greatcoat’s coin, the ones we give jurors who risk their own lives to uphold verdicts. A single gold coin could feed an entire family for more than a year.

There was a kind of gasp that emerged from the audience. ‘So it’s true . . .’ Jost said, his hand reaching out of its own accord towards the coin.

The troubadour made it disappear again. ‘Every word.’

‘Well then,’ another man said, standing up and looking around at his tablemates to see how much support he could drum up, ‘seems to me a man with a gold coin can afford to buy all of us a round, eh?’

‘No,’ the storyteller said, ‘a true juryman would never part with his coin. And I would sell my very soul before I gave up this one, given to me by the Greatcoat himself.’

‘Then where is he now, this hero of yours? Lives in some castle with a dozen wives, does he?’

The storyteller looked over at us and for a moment I thought he might point us out to the crowd, but the woman with the guitar hit a slightly discordant note and the man turned back to the crowd. ‘That I don’t know, my friend. No one does. But wherever he is, I pray Falsio is somewhere warm, eating a fine meal and enjoying good beer tonight.’ Then the troubadour lifted his cup high in the air. ‘To Falsio Dal Vond!’ he said.

The crowd raised their cups. ‘To Falsio Dal Vond!’ they said in unison.

I looked at Brasti, who was staring at me with a ridiculous smile on his face. ‘Put down your damned cup, you fool,’ I said.

‘What’s the problem? We’re famous! And not for the usual things like, you know, murder, cowardice and treason.’ Brasti glanced around the room, probably looking for the redheaded waitress.

‘I’m not sure how Falcio’s fame extends to us,’ Kest said.

‘Don’t you recall? We were right there with him – twenty, no,
fifty
ducal guardsmen came rushing for him when you and I stepped up and saved Falcio with my bow. I killed fifteen of them in the first few minutes.’

‘And how many did I kill?’ Kest asked.

Brasti pursed his lips and looked up as if he were counting sums in his head. ‘Two,’ he said finally. ‘Maybe three.’

‘That’s—’

‘Enough,’ I said.

‘Now, now,’ Brasti said, ‘no need to be so—’

‘Shut up.’ I thought through the details of the troubadour’s story, wishing I’d listened more carefully from the start. I didn’t know whether he’d been in Rijou or not, but he wasn’t one of the jurymen, that I would have remembered. What was really bothering me was that Brasti was right. It had been years since any of us had heard a tale about the Greatcoats that didn’t involve accusations of cowardice and betrayal. I was surprised the troubadour dared say anything good about us in public – and yet the audience had applauded. They appeared willing to believe I was some kind of hero, standing up to the Dukes. I couldn’t imagine such a story would find favour with a man like Isault.
Ah, hells.

‘What is it?’ Kest asked.

‘I know why Isault sent us to deal with this village uprising.’

‘Because of the troubadour? It’s just one story, Falcio.’

‘It won’t be just here,’ Valiana said. ‘If such a ballad’s made it to a little backwater tavern like this, it’s being told all over. Falcio’s right. Word must be spreading that the Greatcoats are coming back and Isault is afraid that the common folk are starting to admire all of you again.’

Admire all of
you
again
. I heard it in her tone and saw again that sadness in her eyes that told me that she considered herself an outsider. I considered saying something, but right now I had more urgent matters to deal with than Valiana’s feelings. Behind her I saw Dariana’s eyes catch mine and she mouthed the word ‘idiot’.

‘Admire
us
,’ I said and clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Don’t think you’re getting out of this mess. We’re all in the same soup.’

She smiled, just a bit, and Dariana mouthed
better
at me.

‘Fine,’ Brasti said, still trying to attract the attention of the pretty waitress. ‘We’re all in terrible, terrible trouble. People like us again. Whatever will we do?’

‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘This is why Isault wanted us to come out here. It’s not to prove we can be trusted to enforce the laws. He wants us to put down the village rebellion and then he’s going to make sure the whole world hears about it. He’s using us to destroy our own reputation.’

Brasti gestured to the redheaded waitress, who was now standing near the door, and when she smiled back at him, rose from the table. ‘Well, you worry about it if you want, Falcio. But don’t spend too much time on it. It’s just a story, after all.’

Brasti never did understand how powerful a story could be.

Chapter Eleven

The Village

‘Is there any way we could go back to inhaling the Dashini dust?’ Brasti asked. ‘Because while that involved being scared out of my wits and mumbling like a madman while pissing and shitting myself, I swear this is worse.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’ I asked. When no sound came from my mouth I realised it was morning and I was hallucinating from the paralysis again.
How long will it be this time?
I wondered.

Despite my eyes being closed, I could see a large room in front of me, the bare stone flags a stark contrast to the purple and silver hangings on the walls. It was hazy, of course, as hallucinations always are. Yet it still felt as if I were there, with two dozen Greatcoats, men and women I hadn’t seen in years, sitting on the floor next to Kest and Brasti. We were back in Castle Aramor, training in one form of combat we’d never expected to study.

Salima, the troubadour the King had hired to teach us to sing, struck an angry chord on her guitar. I swear it gave me a pain in the back of my head whenever she did that.

‘If you open your mouth again and I do not hear music coming from it,’ she said, her voice dark and rich, ‘I will play such a song that will drive you to run off a cliff to your doom.’

Brasti looked troubled for a moment, then grinned and opened his mouth and in a sing-song voice said, ‘If you keep making me sing, I’ll run off the cliff without any further prompting.’

Salima started plucking single strings on the guitar, fast and furious notes that never seemed to find a melody. Each one sounded ever so slightly off-key, though I’d heard her retuning only moments before. The notes got faster and faster, and as they did, my mind struggled more and more to make sense of them. But it couldn’t, and what began as a mild annoyance soon turned to a fearsome anxiety that threatened to overcome me. It suddenly occurred to me that the old stories of the Bardatti being able to drive a man mad with their songs might be true. Through the haze of pain and uncertainty I began, very slowly, to try to unsheathe my sword.

‘Saints, are we under attack?’ The King’s voice shattered the spell instantly – or at least his arrival in the room got Salima to stop playing. ‘Troubadour? Are we engaging in experimental melodies this evening?’

She smiled up at him from where she sat cross-legged on the floor. Bardatti never appeared to be too concerned about offending the nobility. ‘Merely chastising them, your Majesty. These “Greatcoats” of yours have very little discipline.’

The King agreed, apparently. ‘A problem I have yet to rectify. And yet I find your solution equally painful to me, and I can assure you, I have no issues with my own level of discipline.’

‘Your Majesty,’ Brasti said, standing up, ‘will you not put a stop to this? I can’t imagine I’m going to sing my way out of a duel, nor will my voice ever make a Duke accept a verdict he doesn’t like.’

‘It’s not for the Dukes, Brasti, and it’s not for you, either.’

‘Then forgive me, Sire, but I’m lost as to the point. It’s not like I’m going to launch a career singing for farmers and blacksmiths in inns and taverns, is it? So why are you making us all do this?’

The King didn’t answer. He had a habit of making us do things without giving us the reason. His argument was that a lesson you had to be told seldom stuck as much as one you had figured out on your own. The King always did have an overly ambitious impression of our skills as students.

‘It’s the melodies, isn’t it?’ Kest asked. His eyes had a faraway look, as though he were trying to do sums in his head. ‘We need people in the towns and villages to remember the verdicts we issue, but most of them can’t read and none of them will remember our words.’

‘But everyone remembers a good bar song. Right, Brasti?’

Brasti grinned. ‘I know a good many, your Majesty. Have I ever told you the one about the maiden who woke up to find diamonds in her—’

‘Shut up, Brasti,’ I said.

‘“The Maiden’s Diamonds”,’ Salima said. ‘The melody is called “The Traveller’s Third Reel”. It’s the same as is used for “Coppers & Ale” and for “The Old Man’s Bite”.’

I thought about that for a moment. I’d heard “The Old Man’s Bite” a time or two, and “Coppers & Ale” was sung in half the taverns in Tristia. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I’d never noticed that.’

‘And do you remember the words to those songs?’ the King asked.

I nodded, and so did everyone else.

‘Good,’ King Paelis said. ‘Then you’ll learn “The Traveller’s Third Reel”. And the first and second and fourth, and however many others we need. Then you’ll learn to set your verdicts to them. That way—’

‘That way every farmer and blacksmith will remember the verdicts we issue,’ I said. ‘They’ll remember them long after we leave. Hells, they’ll probably end up singing them whenever they get drunk.’

The King smiled. Sometimes he was a very clever man. When he noticed me staring he stopped smiling. ‘And then you will betray her, Falcio,’ he said, and he turned and walked away from me.

‘What? No!’ I tried to rise from the floor but I couldn’t move. The sensation of paralysis brought me back to myself and to the hard ground on which I slept.

‘Easy,’ a voice said, and I felt a gentle pressure on my shoulder.

My eyes opened reluctantly and let in the morning light. Kest was watching me. ‘You’re awake now,’ he said.

I tried to say something clever but couldn’t quite get the words out yet.

‘The others are getting ready to leave,’ Kest said. He rose and reached down a hand to help me up. ‘It was nearly an hour this time, Falcio.’

*

We travelled that day in silence. Even Brasti knew enough not to make me any more angry than I already was. If I failed to deliver what the Duke asked for, he would never support Aline. If I did, he might still break his oath, and either way the Greatcoats would once again be seen as traitors to the people of Tristia.
You will betray her
.

‘We’ll be in Carefal soon,’ Shuran said, pulling his horse up to mine.

I didn’t reply. I didn’t feel much like talking to the Knight-Commander of Aramor that day.

After a few awkward moments Shuran said, ‘Maybe another mile.’

‘What happens when we arrive?’ I said at last.

‘We’ll meet a man named Tespet. He’s the Duke’s tax collector for this region. He and his clerk will brief us on the current state of affairs with the villagers.’

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘You’re quiet today, Falcio.’

When it became clear he wasn’t going to leave me alone, I asked, ‘Did you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘The story that’s been going around about me and what happened in Rijou? And that Isault made this deal with me so that the Greatcoats would be seen to have broken faith with the common people.’

‘
Duke
Isault consults me on many things, Falcio, but politics is seldom one of them.’

‘And still, somehow I think you knew,’ I said.

‘Oh? Why would you say that?’

‘The “entertainment” you mentioned yesterday – did you have us stop at that inn just so I could hear the stories? Did you know what the troubadours have been saying about me?’

Shuran looked at me, his expression betraying nothing. ‘I’m a Knight, Falcio. I don’t have much time for stories and songs. They rarely serve my cause.’ He flicked the reins and his horse pulled ahead.

Brasti stood up in his stirrups and peered ahead. He has the best distance vision of any of us – I suspect being an archer makes good eyesight something of a requirement. ‘The village is half a mile ahead of us.’ He shaded his eyes from the sun with one hand. ‘And there’s something outside the village. Two things, actually.’

‘What are they?’

‘It looks like a pair of cages.’

‘Cages? Can you see what’s inside them?’

He sat back down on his horse. ‘I can’t be sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say people.’

*

‘Are they dead?’ Shuran asked.

The two cages were made out of the trunks of saplings. Inside each one was a man, crouched on the ground.

I got off my horse and reached towards one of the bodies to feel for a pulse but stopped when I saw the chest move in and out. ‘No, just knocked out.’ I turned to the big Knight. ‘If I find out your tax collector Tespet put these men here we’re going to have a very big problem.’

‘He did not,’ Shuran said.

‘How can you be so sure?’ Dariana asked, coming closer to see for herself.

He pointed to the man in the cage on the right. ‘That’s Tespet. The other is his clerk.’

I got a whiff of the man’s breath, then went and knelt down by the second cage. Both men were very drunk.

‘Falcio,’ Kest said, ‘company.’

As I rose I saw nearly forty men and women emerging from the trees lining the road. Some had bows; others carried rudely fashioned clubs. Some were holding swords, and I wondered how they had acquired proper steel weapons.

Sir Shuran’s men drew their swords and one of them called out, ‘On your knees.’

‘On yours,’ a woman’s voice replied.

‘Everyone calm down,’ I said, holding up a hand in a peaceable fashion. ‘We’re not here to cause trouble.’

The woman came closer. ‘You’ll cause us no trouble, travellers, if you turn back around and go the way you came.’ She had short brown hair and a sturdy frame. She might have been forty, but then again, she could have been in her twenties; village life in Tristia was not easy. She pointed a sword at Shuran. ‘The Knights will stay as our hostages.’

‘I don’t think that will be possible,’ Shuran said. ‘I’m fairly sure my orders include not being captured.’

The woman ignored the Knight and looked more closely at me. ‘Are those Greatcoats you and your company are wearing?’

‘Why do they always assume he’s in charge?’ Brasti asked Kest.

‘Shut up, Brasti,’ Kest replied.

‘These are Greatcoats,’ I said.

The woman grimaced. ‘Then you’ll be staying too. We don’t take kindly to those who steal greatcoats.’

Valiana took an imprudent step closer to the woman. ‘You’ll not take from us what is ours by right,’ she said. ‘What makes you think
we’re
not Greatcoats?’

An old man awkwardly holding a longbow, his arms shaking on the bent string, making me worry he’d end up killing one of us for no better reason than that his arm got tired, said, ‘Whoever heard of a Greatcoat mucking about with Knights?’

Brasti looked at me as if this somehow proved his point.

‘My name is Falcio,’ I said to the woman, ‘First Cantor of the King’s Greatcoats. These are Kest, Brasti, Dari and Valiana. The Knights with us are—’

The woman’s laughter cut me off. She turned to her men. ‘Look, boys, Duke Isault decided to put on a show for us. He’s sent actors to put on a play. “The Hero of Rijou and the Slayer of Saint Caveil”!’

‘Oh, aye,’ one of the men said, waiving a pitchfork in the air. ‘Falsio himself, here to liberate us! Come on, Vera, quit playing around. Let’s kill them and be done with it.’

‘Wait,’ Brasti said, ‘what about me?’

‘What about you?’ Vera asked.

‘I’m Brasti Goodbow. Haven’t you heard of me?’

‘’fraid not.’

‘Don’t worry though,’ the man with the pitchfork said, ‘we’ll kill you just as if you were famous, too.’

Sir Shuran put a hand on the pommel of his warsword. ‘I think you’ll find us difficult to murder.’

‘There’s more of us than there are of you,’ Pitchfork said. He motioned around at the other villagers. Few among them looked like warriors; they were simply farmers and merchants. A young girl with a knife in her hand brandished it defiantly, and for an instant I mistook her for Aline.
Saints, don’t let me start hallucinating while I’m awake.

A few of Shuran’s Knights laughed aloud and Vera looked at them through narrowed eyes. ‘Giggle all you want,
Sir Knights
, but some of us have heard enough of your laughter to fill a lifetime.’ She nodded to one of her men on the other side and then the two of them pulled on ropes I now saw were looped around the branches of two trees lining the sides of the path and a set of crudely fashioned spears held together with more sapling trunks rose up from the ground. At the same time, twenty more villagers appeared behind the others, all carrying a bow or a sling or a sword or even just handfuls of rocks.

I looked at Kest, who shook his head. I agreed; there wasn’t an easy way around this. All the time we were trying to navigate around the spears to reach our opponents, the villagers could pepper us with arrows and rocks.

‘What’s the matter,
Sir Knights
? Not laughing now?’

‘You’re making a mistake,’ I said.

‘Really? Because it seems to me that capturing the men sent to kill us and holding them hostage could hardly be a mistake.’

‘If we’d come to kill you,’ Sir Shuran said, ‘we would have brought thirty Knights and you’d all be dead by now. I am Sir Shuran, Knight-Commander of Aramor. Duke Isault sent us to settle your dispute in good faith.’

The villagers looked wary. A lifetime spent trying to survive under the weight of the nobility and their greed hardly made for a great deal of trust.

Vera turned to me. ‘You say you’re a Greatcoat. Prove it.’

‘How would you like me to do that?’

‘Tell me the Seventh Law of Property.’

I was about to answer but Valiana was ahead of me. ‘There is no Seventh Law of Property.’

Vera tried in vain to stare Valiana down, and watching them, I realised that the two weren’t as far apart in age as I’d thought. What differentiated them was that Valiana had spent her eighteen years living in security and luxury and Vera hadn’t.

‘Fine. What’s the Sixth Law then?’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘“The taxing of a thing can never be more than a quarter of the yield it creates”.’

I shouldn’t have been surprised that she could quote the King’s Laws from memory. It made sense – after all, she’d spent most of her life training to be Queen. No doubt she’d learned all the laws of Tristia, even those the Dukes would never have allowed her to enforce.