The Best Weapon Read online

  The Archpriest knew this for a fact, which is why he was all the more astonished when it happened. The man responsible, a red-bearded menial in the green and gold uniform of a royal valet, was standing in front of his desk. His broad face was dripping with sweat, his breathing laboured. and his blue eyes threatening to bulge from their sockets.

  "Archpriest Flambard!" the valet gasped, remembering to snatch off his cap, "you must come! The students!"

  For a moment Flambard could only gape at him, but then the well-oiled machinery of his mind clicked smoothly into gear.

  "Gently, gently," he murmured, rising in his seat and waving a plump hand at the valet, "take your time, get your breath back. And refer to me as 'Lordship' or 'Your Grace.'"

  The flustered valet stared hopelessly and twisted his cap in his hands. "The Grace, your students," he began, and then corrected himself, "I mean, the students, Your Grace."

  "What of the students?"

  "They are rioting! They have taken over the University and blocked the Iron Bridge, and they are overrunning the Old Quarter and throwing watchmen into the Life! Bands of them are looting shops and breaking into merchants' houses, and setting light to churches and warehouses! It's chaos, Archpriest—I mean Lordship. You must come!"

  Flambard pushed out his lower lip, making him look like a thoughtful bulldog, and rose to his feet. His city needed him.

  The riot wasn't half as bad as the valet had described, but it was bad enough. The students had indeed taken over their University, ejecting the Principal and most of the tutors. Some of the senior staff had stubbornly refused to budge and so were tossed out of their windows into the icy waters of the Life. After rampaging through the libraries, study chambers and private apartments of the grand old centre of learning, the rioters had poured out into the streets.

  Flambard watched the chaos from the highest tower of the Founders' Palace, which offered a dizzying view of the entire city and the surrounding countryside, if you liked that sort of thing. The Archpriest did not like it all, having no head for heights, and his back ached from the long climb up the winding stairs. With him were the Aldermen of the city, half a dozen concerned greybeards in rich robes and furs, and Captain Marshall, chief officer of the Palace Guard.

  "The Iron Bridge must be cleared," said Flambard, leaning heavily on his stick. "It is the only way into the Old Quarter. If the city watch can't do it, then use the Palace Guard."

  Captain Marshall clicked his heels and saluted, his trim little figure vibrating with the anticipation of violence. The old man next to him clicked his tongue in disapproval.

  "Enough blood has been shed already," he piped, "I suggest we close off the Old Quarter and wait for the students to come to their senses. Then we can open negotiations with the ringleaders."

  Flambard turned and glared at him. He wasn't used to opposition, particularly not from a greasy little tick like Alderman Chapuys. This was no time for the man to suddenly develop a backbone.

  "Negotiate with the scum who are smashing up my city?" he growled.

  Chapuys was stubborn. "They may have genuine grievances," he persisted, "we all know that the University has been underfunded in recent years."

  Flambard smiled mirthlessly. "And I suppose you blame me for the lack of funding."

  "No! I...I meant no criticism..."

  "Be silent. We have heard your views. Feel free to go and write them down, that I may have something on which to wipe my ass. Since this riot is apparently my fault, like everything else that goes wrong in the Winter Realm, then it is my responsibility to deal with it. Does anyone disagree?"

  No one objected, as Flambard knew they wouldn't. Since the death of the old king, his word was law, and it was a brave or foolish man who questioned it.

  "Very well, then." The Archpriest took a deep breath and shifted his weight, wincing as a bolt of pain shot through his right leg. "Captain Marshall will take six brigades of the Palace Guard, leaving only the reserve, and cordon off the Old Quarter. Nobody gets in or out. The students blocking the Iron Bridge must be removed, with archers if necessary. Then Marshall will lead the Guard over the bridge and restore order."

  "With fists and clubs, I suppose," grumbled Chapuys. The Archpriest's thick lips twitched into a mirthless smile.

  "This is not some minor riot we are dealing with. The students have issued a direct challenge to the government's authority. My authority. I do not shy away from challenges. Captain Marshall, you have my permission to raise Dragon."

  The Aldermen gasped in horror. To raise Dragon meant to raise the Dragon banner, a half-legendary piece of canvas stored in a vault beneath the palace and only brought out in times of emergency. The canvas bore a crude image of a rearing dragon, and it was traditionally raised as a warning that no quarter would be given.

  "You cannot...you cannot unleash that thing inside the city!" insisted Chapuys. "The mere sight of it drives soldiers mad. Such an act would result in the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent citizens!"

  Flambard's grin widened and his heavy hands tightened their grip on his walking stick. "What a shame," he murmured.

  4.

  Comrade Fulk—Fulk No Man's Son—woke with a start. For a few panicky moments, he wondered where everything had gone. Archpriest Flambard, Captain Marshall...all the concerned, bearded faces, the dizzying height of the tower with the city spread out below, all had disappeared.

  He realised he had been dreaming again. Usually his dreams were like those of other men, fragmentary and obscure, but occasionally he experienced one that was extraordinarily vivid. And unlike most dreams, he remembered the details when he woke up.

  The memory of Flambard's face made him shudder. Fulk recalled that in his dream he had argued with the rancorous old tyrant, something he wouldn't do for a pension in reality. He also recalled that he had been richly dressed, and old, his ageing limbs weighted down with years and rheumatism. Alderman Chapuys, the Archpriest had called him, and he remembered the weird sensation of looking out through another man's eyes. But how could that be? Fulk happened to know that Chapuys was a real person, not some dream-figment.

  He sat up and shook his head. A follower of Occido, the War God, should not fall prey to such bizarre fantasies. What he needed was some hard exercise. He would rise early and visit the tiltyard.

  Like all the other young knights, Fulk slept in the huge dormitory in the left wing of the temple. Dressed only in his nightgown, he padded on bare feet down the aisle between the long rows of narrow beds and their sleeping occupants. Knights of Occido were supposed to reject comfort, and so each slept under a single thin, cotton blanket and with a smooth rock for a pillow.

  Beyond the dormitory was a huge vaulted chamber, dominated by the forty-foot high Sword of Occido. The tip of the massive iron broadsword was buried in the middle of a stone plinth riveted to the floor.

  A dozen priest-knights, wearing white robes over their chain mail, were kneeling in front of the Sword and chanting prayers. There were always a dozen men kneeling in prayer here, no matter what the hour. Comrade Fulk stopped to bow his head and make the sign of the sword on his chest, and then hurried away.

  The tiltyard was an enclosed courtyard at the heart of the temple. It was a space for the knights and cadets to practice their skills, and full of exercise equipment. This included a quintain, various sets of weights, some wooden swords and shields neatly stacked against a wall, and the Block.

  It was still dark when Fulk padded into the yard.

  A cold winter morning, he thought as he slipped off his night-shift and let it drop to the ground. The kind of morning when most sensible people are still bundled up in their warm beds. But a Templar is not a sensible person. He likes nothing better than venturing out naked in the bitter dark and warming up his blood with some extreme exercise.

  There was no one to spar with at this hour, so Fulk decided to tackle the Block. It was an old enemy of his, a six-foot lump of varnished hardwood carved roughly into the s
hape of a man. The straightforward challenge was to punch it in the head until one's knuckles bled or the head fell off.

  In three hundred years nobody had managed to "knock the Block off." Three centuries of pummelling had beaten to a pulp whatever definition the crude statue's face might have once had, but still its battered head remained on its shoulders. One of Fulk's burning ambitions was to be the first to dislodge it.

  He strode up to the Block and took up a boxing stance. Fists protecting his face, legs slightly bent, he shuffled forward a few inches and unleashed a straight left. The punch made little impression, but Fulk was just warming up. A right hook followed, and another, and then another left. He kept at it, fists moving in a blur as he hammered away at the unyielding hardwood.

  A lesser man would have given up after the first few punches, his knuckles splintered and bleeding. Fulk's were hardened by sixteen years of brutal training. He intended to keep going until breakfast.

  The cold of the morning soon lost its bite. His body was drenched in sweat and his mind focused on ignoring the screaming pain in his fists. Gradually, the dark grey early morning sky began to lighten, but he ignored that too. All that mattered was his private duel with an inanimate lump of wood.

  "You had better stop, boy. You're bleeding."

  Fulk took a smart step backwards and let his hands drop by his sides. Blood dripped from his knuckles and down his fingers, forming a couple of dark pools by his feet.

  He knew the voice, better than he knew the voice of his own mother—much better, in fact, since she had died of the Chill when he was two years old. It belonged to the Master-at-Arms, William Malet. Malet was also the Drill Instructor, Keeper of Discipline and a general all-round bastard. It was a voice to be obeyed, and Fulk had endured enough beatings and floggings from the man to know why.

  Malet slowly paced into the yard, tapping his cane gently against the side of his right boot. He was a big, blocky man, bald and dark-skinned, and, as ever, immaculately turned out. Every inch of him, from the top of his smooth head to his grey working uniform to the heel of his soft leather boots, shone as though it had been thoroughly scrubbed and polished.

  Fulk stood rigidly to attention, even managing to suppress a shudder when he felt the cold tip of Malet's cane pressed against the back of his neck. The warmth of his exercise had dissipated, but his heart still knocked rapidly against his chest.

  "Cheating at the block, Comrade Fulk?" Malet's voice was a low, mocking hiss. "Dear me, that deserves a flogging. More scars on your back. Do you never get tired of provoking me?"

  "I did not know you were here, Comrade Master," replied Fulk, trying and failing to keep his voice steady.

  "That's hardly an excuse, is it? You have Block-obsession. I've seen it before. Some men happily shatter their wrists trying to break the damn thing. Obsession is not the stuff of which good knights are made."

  Fulk felt the Master-at-Arm's hot breath on the back of his neck, and braced himself for the sting of the cane. It didn't come.

  "Flogging you is like beating a terrier," Malet mused, "you may quell the dog's fierce nature for a time, but you cannot change it. And why should I want to? You are supposed to be a fighter, after all. But, gods above, your lack of intelligence makes my fists itch."

  Fulk cleared his throat. "If I have given offence at any time, then I apologize," he croaked.

  Malet barked his harsh laugh. "You have never offended me," he said, "not really. If you had, you would not be walking and talking. You have never seen me truly angry, Comrade."

  The cane lifted off Fulk's back and he heard Malet's tight boots squeak as the man paced to and fro. "The truth is, I am glad I found you here. I was wondering who should fight in the upcoming Test, and then I saw you, thrashing away at the Block. Perfect."

  Fulk's shuddering breath caught in his throat. A Test. He had never fought in one, though he had witnessed many. Only veteran knights were chosen to fight in Tests. Perhaps this was a sign that Fulk was trusted by his superiors, and a possible first step on the ladder to glory.

  "Who am I to fight, Comrade Master?" he asked, as casually as he could manage. There was no question of refusing..

  The Master-at-Arms stepped in front of him. Fulk was tall, but William Malet was a clear foot taller, a hulking ebony statue of a man. His hands were clasped behind his back and he glowered down at Fulk with an expression of profound dissatisfaction.

  "He is the second son of a nobleman," he said, "vain, conceited and arrogant. In older and better days we would not have hesitated in rejecting him, but now we must be practical. His father is very important and very rich, and has promised a substantial sum to the Temple if his son gets through the Test."

  Fulk's dreams of glory crumbled like a hollow heap of sand. He was being used as a dupe. Malet was going to order him to deliberately lose the fight so this nobleman's brat could be accepted into the Temple.

  The Master-at-Arms lowered his face until it was a bare inch from Fulk's. "I think you understand the situation," he rumbled. "Or must I spell it out for you?"

  For one mad moment Fulk considered defiance, but his courage just as quickly shrivelled up and died. "No need, Comrade Malet," he replied, "I understand perfectly."

  Malet grunted and took a step back. "Good. Perhaps you are not quite as stupid as I thought. A couple of steps above a terrier. Small steps."

  Chuckling at his joke, the huge figure strolled away. Fulk was left to contemplate his shame and the burning agony in his hands.

  5.

  The desolate flats of the Western Province were dominated by a lone mountain known as Silverback. Built on the upper reaches of this imposing spire of rock was the Temple of Occido. A suitably grim home for a grim god, the Temple had dominated the surrounding landscape for over six hundred years. From the outside it looked like a castle of sorts, with seven round towers on a series of uneven precipices linked by steep wooden staircases and paths hacked into the rock. The banner of the Temple, a black sword on a plain white background, flew from the battlements of the highest tower.

  The first Templars had chosen this high fastness for their home because of its remoteness, allowing them to commune in private with their savage god and pursue their secretive, highly ritualised existence. What the rest of the world didn't know about, and what Templar initiates were sworn to maintain a secret on pain of death, was a massive network of subterranean chambers carved out of the heart of the mountain itself.

  No human hand had created these underground halls and passages. The knights of Occido had discovered them, bare and apparently deserted, when they first came to explore Silverback. They had wasted no time in occupying the place and filling up the chambers. Of the strange symbols and diagrams found carved on the walls of some of the smaller rooms, no mention was made by the few senior knights who quietly rubbed them out. The existence of certain passages found at the rear of these rooms, leading down into dark catacombs under the mountain, was also hushed up.

  Over time the Temple became an integral part of local folklore and shrouded in a haze of conflicting legends. It was at the same time a place to be avoided and a place of refuge. When the heavy snowfalls came and buried the flat low-lying plains in layers of freezing white, people flocked to shelter behind its high walls. Many generations of local farmers, scraping a living from the thin soil and herds of shaggy-haired cattle that wandered the plains, grew up with the imposing shadow of the Temple forever in the background.

  The Tests were held on a wide meadow at the foot of the crag upon which the Temple rested. A square was marked out with silver rods inside the meadow and a barricade of logs erected around the edges. Farmers and villagers came from miles around to witness Tests, for the people of the plains were stark and warlike and loved to witness a good fight.

  The latest challenger was a young nobleman of House Beaumont, a very old and wealthy family that could trace their ancestry back to the Founding. A pavilion, decorated in yards of expensive cloth in the red and y
ellow colours of their House, had been set up for them on one side of the square.

  Lord Beaumont himself, a heavy, red-faced man with a bustling array of chins, sat in the seat of honour and weighed up facts and figures in his cold mind. His equally lumpen wife sat and simpered next to him. Seated to his left was a pretty young girl of about seventeen, blonde and slender and with a habit of blushing whenever anyone looked at her.

  The other prominent members of House Beaumont were crammed onto the lower benches, eating and drinking and making too much noise, like a crowd of overexcited, richly-dressed starlings.

  Another pavilion had been set up for the Masters of the Temple on the other side. This was a far more sombre affair, undecorated save for a shield bearing the symbol of Occido, a black sword on a white background. The four Lesser Masters sat on a single bench, while those knights permitted time off from their duties to watch the Test were obliged to stand at the barricade below.

  Seated on a carved, high-backed chair above the Lesser Masters was the Grand Master, Sibrand VI. A great knight in his time, Sibrand was now seventy-five years old. His shrunken frame was almost lost inside his chain mail, wolf skins and heavy fur-lined cloak, and his longsword lay across his skinny knees. Another man might have refused to endure the sword's pressing weight, but Sibrand was a Templar to his finger-tips and regarded pain as a blessing.

  The rest of the barricades around the square were crowded with local villagers, plains farmers and their families, and the air was full of excited chatter and the cries of vendors selling roasted chestnuts, hot meat pies and gingerbread.

  * * * *

  Despite the permanent wintry frost of the plains, Fulk was sweating inside his armour. His squire, Thomas, had woken him early to pray and arm himself. Nerves had prevented him from eating breakfast. Thomas was currently wrestling him into his tilting helm, a heavy, bucket-shaped object padded inside with several thicknesses of leather and straw. On the opposite end of the square his opponent was enduring the same torture.