Miles Cameron - The Red Knight

Diota straightened her back, putting a fist into it like a pregnant woman. Her free hand fingered the rich paternoster at her neck. ‘You sound like a whore pleasing a customer, mistress – if you’ll pardon the crudity of an old woman-’

‘ Who’s known you all these years ,’ the Queen completed the sentence. Indeed, she’d had Diota since she was weaned. ‘Do I? And what do you know about the sounds whores make, nurse?’

‘Now, my lady!’ Diota came forward, waggling a finger. Coming around the screen, she stopped as if she’d hit an invisible barrier. ‘Oh! By the Sweet Lord – put some clothes on, girl! You’ll catch your death! It’s not spring yet, morsel!’

The Queen laughed. She was naked in the new sunlight, her tawny skin flecked with the imperfections of the glass in her solar’s window, lying on the pale brown profusion of her hair. She drew something from the sunlight falling on her skin – something that made her glow from within.

Desiderata rose and stood at the mirror – the longest mirror in the Demesne, made just for her, so that she could examine herself from the high arches of her feet, up her long legs, past her hips and thighs and the deep recess of her navel to her breasts, her upright shoulders, her long and tapered neck, deep cut chin, a mouth made for kissing, long nose and wide grey eyes with lashes so long that sometimes she could lick them.

She frowned. ‘Have you seen the new lady in waiting? Emmota?’ she said.

Her nurse chuckled alongside her. ‘She’s a child.’

‘A fine figure. Her waist is thin as a rail.’ The Queen looked at herself with careful scrutiny.

Diota smacked her hip. ‘Get dressed, you hussy!’ she laughed. ‘You’re looking for compliments. She’s nothing to you, Miss. A child. No breasts.’ She laughed. ‘Every man says you are the beauty of the world,’ she added.

The Queen continued to look in the mirror. ‘I am. But for how long?’ She put her hands up over her head, arching her back as her chest rose.

Her nurse slapped her playfully. ‘Do you want the king to find you thus?’

Desiderata smiled at her woman. ‘I could say yes. I want him to find me just like this,’ she said. And then, her voice coloured with power, she said, ‘Or I could say I am as much myself, and as much the Queen, naked, as I am clothed.’

Her nurse took a step away.

‘But I won’t say any such thing. Bring me something nice. The brown wool gown that goes with my hair. And my golden belt.’

‘Yes, my lady.’ Diota nodded and frowned. ‘Shall I send some of your ladies to dress you?’

The Queen smiled and stretched, her eyes still on the mirror. ‘Send me my ladies,’ she said, and subsided back onto the couch in the solar.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

At Ser Hugo’s insistence, the master archers had set up butts in the fields along the river.

Men grumbled, because they’d been ordered to curry their horses before turning in, and then, before the horses were cared for, they were ordered to shoot. They had ridden hard, for many long days, and there wasn’t a man or woman without dark circles under their eyes.

Bent, the eldest, an easterner, and Wilful Murder, fresh back from failing to find a murderer’s tracks with the huntsman, ordered the younger men to unload the butts, stuffed with old cloth or woven from straw, from the wagons.

‘Which it isn’t my turn,’ whined Kanny. ‘An’ why are you always picking on us?’ His words might have appeared braver, if he hadn’t waited until Bent was far away before saying them.

Geslin was the youngest man in the company, just fourteen, with a thin frame that suggested he’d never got much food as a boy, climbed one of the tall wagons and silently seized a target and tossed it down to Gadgee, an odd looking man with a swarthy face and foreign features.

Gadgee caught the target with a grunt, and started toward the distant field. ‘Shut up and do some work,’ he said.

Kanny spat. And moved very slowly towards a wagon that didn’t have any targets in it. ‘I’ll just look-’

Bad Tom’s archer, Cuddy, appeared out of nowhere and shoved him ungently towards the wagon where Geslin was readying a second target. ‘Shut up and do some work,’ he said.

He was slow enough that by the time he had his target propped up and ready for use, all nine of the other butts were ready as well. And there were forty archers standing a hundred paces distant, examining their spare strings and muttering about the damp.

Cuddy strung his bow with an economy of motion that belied long practice, and he opened the string that held the arrows he had in his quiver.

‘Shall I open the dance?’ he said.

He nocked, and loosed.

A few paces to his right, Wilful Murder, who fancied himself as good an archer as any man alive, drew and loosed a second later, contorting his body to pull the great war bow.

Bent put his horn to his lips and blew. ‘Cease!’ he roared. He turned to Cuddy. ‘Kanny’s still down range!’ he shouted at the master archer.

Cuddy grinned. ‘I know just where he is,’ he said. ‘So does Wilful.’

The two snickered as Kanny came from behind the central target, running as fast as his long, skinny legs would carry him.

The archers roared with laughter.

Kanny was spitting with rage and fear. ‘You bastard!’ he shouted at Cuddy.

‘I told you to work faster,’ Cuddy said mildly.

‘I’ll tell the captain!’ Kanny said.

Bent nodded. ‘You do that.’ He motioned. ‘Off you go.’

Kanny grew pale.

Behind him, the other archers walked up to their places, and began to loose.

The captain was late to the drill. He looked tired, and he moved slowly, and he leaned on the tall stone wall surrounding the sheepfold that Ser Hugh had converted to a tiltyard and watched the men-at-arms at practice.

Despite fatigue and the weight of plate and mail Ser George Brewes was on the balls of his feet, bouncing from guard to guard. Opposite him, his ‘companion’ in the language of the tilt yard, was the debonair Robert Lyliard, whose careful fighting style was the very opposite of the ostentatious display of his arms and clothes.

Brewes stalked Lyliard like a high-stepping panther, his pole-arm going from guard to guard – low, axe-head forward and right leg advanced, in the Boar’s Tooth; sweeping through a heavy up-cut to rest on his right shoulder like a woodcutter in the Woman’s Guard.

Francis Atcourt, thick waisted and careful, faced Tomas Durrem. Both were old soldiers, unknighted men-at-arms who had been in harness for decades. They circled and circled, taking no chances. The captain thought he might fall asleep watching them.

Bad Tom came and rested on the same wall, except that his head projected clear above the captain’s head. And even above the plume on his hat.

‘Care to have a go?’ Tom asked with a grin.

No one liked to spar with Tom. He hurt people. The captain knew that despite all the plate armour and padding and mail and careful weapon’s control, tiltyard contests were dangerous and men were down from duty all the time with broken fingers and other injuries. And that was without the sudden flares of anger men could get when something hurt, or became personal. When the tiltyard became the duelling ground.

The problem was that there was no substitute for the tiltyard, when it came to being ready for the real thing. He’d learned that in the east.

He looked at Tom. The man had a reputation. And he had dressed Tom down in public a day before.

‘What’s your preference, Ser Thomas?’ he asked.

‘Longsword,’ Bad Tom said. He put a hand on the wall and vaulted it, landed on the balls of his feet, whirled and drew his sword. It was his war sword – four feet six inches of heavy metal. Eastern made, with a pattern in the blade. Men said it was magicked.