Кэтрин Фишер - Sapphique

It was certainly fresh and cold.

He took the horse’s reins in hand, and climbed up on to its back.

He could not have survived such a fever without warmth.

Without water. He should be parched with thirst, and he wasn’t. And yet no one had been here.

As he urged the horse to a gallop he thought about the power of vision; whether Sapphique had been an aspect of his own mind, or a real being. None of it was that simple.

There were whole shelves of texts back in the Library discussing the powers of the visionary imagination, of memory and dreams.

Jared smiled wanly to the trees of the wood.

For him it had happened. That was what mattered.

He rode hard. By midday he was in the lands of the Wardenry, tired, but surprising himself by his endurance. At a farm he climbed down a little stiffly and was given milk and cheese by the farmer, a stout, perspiring man who seemed on edge, his glance always wandering to the horizon.

When Jared offered money the man pressed it back at him.

‘No, Master. A Sapient once treated my wife for free and I’ve never forgotten that. But a word of advice. Flurry on now, wherever you’re bound. There’s trouble brewing here

‘Trouble?’ Jared looked at him.

‘I’ve heard the Lady Claudia is condemned. And that lad with her, the one who claims to be the Prince.’

‘He is the Prince.’ The farmer pulled a face. ‘Whatever you say, Master.

High politics are not for me. But this I do know; the Queen has an army on the march, and they’re maybe at the Wardenry itself by now. I had three outlying barns fired by them yesterday, and sheep snatched. Thieving scum.’ Jared stared at him in cold terror. Grabbing the horse he said, ‘I would be grateful, sir, if you hadn’t seen me. You understand?’ The farmer nodded. ‘In these hard times, Master, only the silent are wise.’ He was afraid now He rode more carefully, taking field paths and bridleways, keeping to deep lanes between high hedges. In one place, crossing a road, he saw the tracks of hooves and waggons; deep ruts of wheels dragging some heavy ironware. He rubbed the horse’s coarse inane.

Where was Claudia? What had happened at Court?

By late afternoon he came up a track into a small copse of beeches on a hilltop. The trees were quiet, their leaves brushed only by a faint breeze, full of the tiny whistlings of invisible birds.

Jared climbed down, and stood for a moment letting the ache ease in his back and legs. Then he tied up the horse and walked cautiously through the bronze leaf-litter, ankle-deep in its rustling crispness.

Under the beeches nothing grew; he moved from tree to tree, awkwardly, but only a fox confronted him.

‘Master Fox,’ Jared muttered.

The fox paused a second. Then it turned and trotted away.

Reassured, he moved to the edge of the trees and crouched behind a broad trunk. Carefully, he peered round it.

An army was encamped on the broad hillside. All around the ancient house of the Wardenry there were tents and waggons and the glint of armour. Squadrons of cavalry rode in arrogant display; a mass of soldiers were digging a great trench in the wide lawns.

Jared drew in a breath of dismay.

He could see more men arriving down the lanes; pikemen led by drummers and a fife-player, the reedy whistle audible even up here. Flags fluttered everywhere, and to the left, tinder a brilliant standard of the white rose, a great pavilion was being raised by sweating men.

The Queen’s tent.

He looked at the house. The windows were shuttered, the drawbridge tightly raised. On the roof of the gatehouse metal glinted; he thought there were men up there, and perhaps the light cannon that were kept there had been prepared and moved up to the battlements. His own tower had someone on its parapet.

He breathed out and turned, sitting knees up in the dead leaves.

This was a disaster. There was no way the Wardenry could withstand any sort of sustained attack. Its walls were thick but it was a fortified manor and not a castle.

Claudia must simply be playing for time. She must be planning to use the Portal.

The thought made him agitated; he stood and paced. She had no idea of the dangers of that device! He had to get inside before she tried anything so foolish.

The horse whickered.

He froze, hearing the tread behind him, the footsteps through the rustling leaves.

And then the voice, lightly mocking. ‘Well, Master Jared.

Aren’t you supposed to be dead?’

‘How many?’ Finn asked.

Claudia had a visor that magnified things. She was staring through it now, counting. ‘Seven. Eight. I’m not sure what’s on that contraption to the left of the Queen’s tent

‘It barely matters.’ Captain Soames, a grey, stocky man, sounded gloomy. ‘Eight pieces of ordnance could shell us all to pieces.’

‘What do we have?’ Finn asked quietly.

‘Two cannon, my lord. One authentic Era, the other a mishmash of base metal — it will likely explode if we try to fire it. Crossbows, arquebuses, pikemen, archers. Ten men with muskets. About eighty cavalry’

‘I’ve known worse odds,’ Finn said, thinking of a few ambushes the Comitatus had tried.

‘I’m sure,’ Claudia said acidly. ‘And what were the casualties like?’ He shrugged. ‘In the Prison, no one counted.’ Below them, a trumpet rang out, once, twice, three times.

With a great grinding of gears, the drawbridge began to creak down.

Captain Soames went to the circular stair. ‘Steady there.

And be prepared to pull it up if I give the order.’ Claudia lowered the visor. ‘They’re looking. No one’s making any moves.’

‘The Queen hasn’t arrived. A man who came in last night says she and the Council are making a royal progress to show off the Pretender; they’re in Mayfleld, and will be here in hours.’ With a thud, the drawbridge was down. The flock of black swans on the moat skidded noisily down to the weedy end and flapped.

Claudia leant over the battlements.

The women walked out slowly, with bundles on their backs. Some carried children. Older girls walked hand in hand with their brothers and sisters. They turned, waving at the windows. Behind, on a great wain pulled by the biggest carthorse, the older servants that were leaving sat stoically, rocking with the bumps on the wooden bridge.

Finn counted twenty-two. ‘Is Ralph going?’ Claudia laughed. ‘I ordered him to. He said, ‘Yes, my lady. And what will you be requiring for dinner tonight?”

He thinks this place would fall down without him.’

‘He, like all of us, serves the Warden,’ Captain Soames said.

‘No disrespect to you, my lady, but the Warden is our master. If he’s not here, we guard his house.’ Claudia frowned. ‘My father doesn’t deserve any of you.’ But she said it so quietly only Finn heard her.

When Soames had gone to supervise the drawbridge being raised Finn stood beside her, watching the girls trudge down into the Queen’s camp.

‘They’ll be questioned. Who’s here, our plans.’

‘I know. But I won’t be responsible for their deaths.’

‘You think it will come to that?’ She glanced at him. ‘We have to set up talks. Play for time.

Work on the Portal’ Finn nodded. She walked past him to the stairs and said over her shoulder, ‘Come on. You shouldn’t stand up here.

One arrow from that camp and it would be all over.’ He looked at her, and just as she got to the stairs he said, ‘You do believe me, Claudia, don’t you? I need you to believe that I remember.’

‘Of course I believe you,’ she said. ‘Now come on.’ But she had her back to him, and she didn’t turn around.

‘It’s dark. Hold that torch higher.’ Keiro’s voice came impatiently down the shaft; the echoes made it hollow and strange. Attia stretched up as high as she could, but the torchlight showed her nothing of him. Below her Rix shouted, ‘What can you see?’