The Red Knight (105 page)

There would be no gap in their line when the Enemy struck.

The two lines were approaching each other at the combined speed of a galloping horse. The boglins were not going to flinch but they were spread out over the ground, all cohesion lost, like a
swarm of insects pouring over the ground.

‘Charge,’ he shouted. Carlus and Jacques might not have heard him over the drumming hooves, but he swept his lance down to point at his first target – locked it into the
hook-shaped rest under his arm, and Jacques sounded the charge.

The captain leaned forward into his lance.

For a few glorious heartbeats, it was the way he had imagined, when he was a small boy dreaming of glory.

He was the wind, and the roar of the hooves, and the tip of the spear.

The slight bodies of the boglins were like straw dolls set in a field, and the lances ripped through them so smoothly that creatures died without dragging the lances down, and the stronger men
were able to engage three, four even five of the creatures before their lances broke, or their points touched the ground, dug in and shattered or had to be dropped.

The horses were spread widely enough to allow horse and rider to thread the enemy line, to take advantage of spaces between boglins, to weave their path.

For a few deadly heartbeats, the knights destroyed the boglins, and there was nothing the boglins could do to retaliate.

But like mud clogging a harrow, the very density and sheer numbers of the boglins began to slow the knights’ charge and even their heavy horses had to shy – or simply could no longer
trust their hooves to ground that was so thickly littered with boglins. The charge slowed, and slowed.

And then the boglins began to fight back.

Lissen Carak – Father Henry

Father Henry paused at the base of the steps to gather his courage. His hate. He was deep underground, and his candle was guttering, and he had no idea how far it was to the
outside. And he
hurt.

He prayed, and then he walked. Walked and prayed.

And, of course, it wasn’t much farther than walking down the castle road, outside.

He finally found a pair of double doors, as high as two men, and as wide as a church. He expected them to be locked with all the power of Hell. But the sigils lay cold and empty. He reached for
the two great handles. There was a key between them.

Lissen Carak – The King

The king had his queen on a litter between four horses, and he and his household knights got out the main Bridge Castle gate even as the garrison shot bolt after bolt over their
heads into the oncoming line of creatures.

Even as he watched he saw the Prior and the sell-sword knight lead their men-at-arms over a pair of narrow wooden bridges and onto the plain.

He looked to the right and left, trying to imagine why they were charging the enemy.

But it was
glorious
to see.

The knights took their time, formed up neatly, and the endless horde of enemies ran at them silently – perhaps the most horrible aspect of the boglin was its silence. He could hear the
mercenary captain calling orders, and his trumpeter repeated them.

‘Ready,’ Ser Alan said.

The king gestured across the front of the trench. ‘Since our friends have been kind enough to clear us a path,’ he said, and touched his spurs to his mount.

As he rode, he watched the charge go home.

It was superb, and he was annoyed that he wasn’t a part of it. He leaned back to Ser Alan. ‘As soon as we have the Queen to the fortress, we will join them,’ he said, pointing
to charge which was cutting through the enemy like an irresistible scythe.

Ser Ricar shook his head. ‘My lord,’ he protested. ‘We have only sixty knights.’

The king watched the charge even as his household trotted across the front of the trench. ‘He hasn’t much more than that.’

‘But you are the
king!’
Ser Alan protested.

The king began to feel the onset of the indecision that infected him on every battlefield. A lifetime of training in arms as a knight demanded that he lead his knights in that wonderful charge
– a charge that even now was beginning to lose its impetus, three hundred paces from the trench at his feet.

He was also aware – as a man is aware of a distant call – that it was not his duty as king to perform feats of arms.

But Desiderata had said—

The fighting was so close.

And his queen didn’t need him. She had a clear path all the way to the gate of the fortress.

‘Knights!’ roared the king. ‘On me!’

Lissen Carak – Father Henry

The priest had the secret doors open, and he stood back and watched the boglins flood through the great opening, squirming in a very inhuman way, to vanish onto the steps which
ran up and up into the ridge. He watched for a moment, and then something slammed into his head.

He started to fall. Out of the corner of his eye he could see some sort of spike.

In a moment of vertigo, he realised it had to be
through
his head.

He tried to move, and couldn’t.

Something hurt more than his back.

Slowly, like a tree falling, he went to the ground. He tried to pray, but he could not, because they pressed all around him and he screamed, trying—

Trying to die before they began to eat him.

Lissen Carak – Ser Gawin

Ser Gawin had risen with the dawn and managed to get himself to the chapel to pray. He remained on his knees for a long time in the morning light, unaware of anything except the
pain in his side and the crushing sense of his own failure.

But, eventually, he roused himself when he heard the soldiers bellowing for every man-at-arms to get mounted. He rose and crossed himself, and then walked as steadily as he could manage out the
door of the chapel, and hauled himself in front of Ser Jehannes.

‘I can ride,’ he said.

Jehannes shook his head. ‘He didn’t say the wounded,’ Jehannes said. ‘I’m not riding, myself, lad. Stay here.’

Gawin was minded to disobey. The longer he was on his feet, the better he felt. ‘I can ride,’ he said again.

‘Ride tomorrow, then,’ Jehannes said. ‘Tom’s got all the men-at-arms already. If you want to be a help, arm yourself as much as you can and walk around looking confident.
It’s bad out there.’ Ser Jehannes pointed into the courtyard of the fortress, where the farmwomen and the nuns stood in knots, silent. Most of them were watching the plains below.
‘We’ve perhaps forty men to hold the fortress, and yon ladies feel they’ve been abandoned.’

‘Sweet and gentle Jesu,’ Gawin swore. ‘Forty men?’

‘Captain’s trying to win the day,’ Jehannes said. ‘Stupid bastard. All we had to do was sit tight in the fortress and let the king do as he would. But the little bourc
always has to be the fucking hero.’

Gawin gave the older man a lopsided smile. ‘Family affliction,’ he said, and went to do his share.

It took him long minutes to find his armour, left unpolished in a heap and not in the hospital but in a closet off the apothecary.

But he couldn’t seem to get into it.

He managed, in the end, to get into his arming cote, and to get his breast and back closed by lying full length on the floor and closing it around him like a clamshell. But then the pain in his
side kept him from buckling it.

‘I’ll do your buckles, if you’ll let me,’ said a voice.

It was the novice. The one whose appearance made his brother squirm. The one who had used power to heal him.

‘You are—’

‘Amicia,’ she said. She nodded at an archer, who stood quietly across the room. He looked tired and unhappy. ‘He was left to guard me, but he’s bored, and I haven’t
turned into a boglin or a dragon yet. Stop moving.’

Her hands were curiously confident. And strong.

‘You are using power,’ he said.

‘I’m giving you some strength,’ she said. ‘Something evil is coming – I can feel it. Something of the Wild. We’re going to go and stop it.’ She sounded
fey, terrified, and overly bright. Brittle.

Gawin took her assertion at face value. He looked at the archer. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

The boy wouldn’t meet his eye. ‘Sym, my lord,’ he said sullenly.

‘Sym, can you fight?’ Gawin asked.

‘Anything,’ Sym said assertively. Looked away. ‘Only thing I’m any good at, and look at me – left to guard the captain’s nun.’

The fingers on Gawin’s shoulder harness stiffened.

Sym looked at the two of them from under his eyebrows. ‘Sorry. Know you ain’t. But I’d rather be with my mates.’ He shrugged. ‘This is the big fight. I never been
in one. All the oldsters talk big about this fight and that fight, but this is the biggest the company was ever in, and I want my part of it by fucking God.’ He looked away. ‘Want to be
a hero.’

Gawin laughed. He surprised himself with the purity, the unforcedness, of his laugh. ‘Me, too,’ he said. He slapped his shoulders. He couldn’t bear the weight of his arm
harness, but he had a breast and back, and she put the gauntlets on his hands, and then, with Sym’s help, they put his bascinet on his head, slipping the aventail over his hair.

He considered saying something flirtatious –
Best looking squire I’ve ever had.
But at the thought of
squire
he choked.

While Sym pulled his aventail down over his back plate, she did something – something that started as a word, and rose in pale yellow fire, and ended like the pop of a soap bubble.

‘Mater Mary,’ she said, and crossed herself. ‘They are here. Right here. In the fortress. Follow me!’ she called and ran for the door.

Sym followed her, leaving Gawin to find his long sword resting in a corner, pick up Sym’s buckler, and follow.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

Whatever his other failings, the captain’s borrowed young destrier had a great heart, and he loved to fight.

The horse swung back and forth – pivoted on his forefeet and kicked with his iron-shod back hooves, half-reared and pivoted on his back feet, punching with his front, keeping the captain
in the centre of a carefully cleared circle devoid of standing foes. Boglins who tried to get under the horse to hamstring him or worse were trampled to sticky ruin or simply kicked clear.

The captain had long since lost track of how many of the creatures he’d killed. His arm was tired – but then, he’d
started
the action almost too tired to lift his
weapon.

But, as they had practised, the companions were drawing together – horse to horse, man to man.

The captain swung from the shoulder, nipped both arms off an enemy on the foreswing like a farmer pruning vines, leaned well forward using his stirrups for balance, and cut back into another
creature’s head, clearing his front, and George – somewhere in the combat, the captain had named his horse George – backed a few paces.

And tucked in behind Bad Tom, who was like a millwheel of destruction.

He let Tom do it. Thumbed his visor, and raised his face plate, and drank in great gouts of fresh air.

George wanted to be back at it.

The captain stood in his stirrups and looked over the battle line. His people had formed up well and althought there were gaps, there were not many.

His people going to get buried.

He had no sense of time – no one did, in a hand-to-hand fight. But at his back, the purple and yellow tabards had flowed all the way down the trench to Master Random’s guildsmen, and
a sturdy line of scarlet was filling in behind them. And beyond them, just crossing the bridge, was solid green. Archers of the Royal Hunt.

‘Jacques!’ he roared.

His valet was two horse lengths away, fighting for his life.

‘Carlus!’ he roared.

The trumpeter didn’t even look around.

‘Damn,’ the captain said. It was a game of seconds and hard-fought inches, and he was losing time. They needed to ride clear.

He gave George his head and sent the war horse crashing into one of Jacques’ adversaries. A ton of war horse versus a hundred pounds of irk was no contest at all.

His sword took another, and then Jacques went down as his horse fell – killed by one of the dozen creatures under its hooves. That quickly, Jacques was gone. The captain turned, cut at the
irk under George’s feet and watched a spear catch Carlus under the jaw, killing him instantly. Down he went, with his trumpet, and with it, their chance to cut their way free. The captain cut
down, his sword beheading a boglin even as the hideous thing bit into Jacques’ throat – and he roared and looked for help, but there was none.

Lissen Carak – Desiderata

Guarded by Ser Driant and five knights, the Queen’s litter started up the long and twisting road to the great gate of the fortress.

The king had ordered his knights to form a compact company behind him.

‘Once more, my lord,’ Ser Alan said, ‘I’d like to remind the king that if Lord Glendower were alive, he would never allow this.’

At the word
allow
all sense left the king’s head. ‘I’m the king,’ he said. ‘Follow me!’

Most of the mercenary knights and their retainers had formed in a thick knot, almost dead centre in the field. The king aimed his horse’s spiked head at the banner with the lacs
d’amour. ‘Follow me!’

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius spat with rage, turned his horse, and followed the king, who was throwing himself into the arms of his enemy when almost any other action would have saved him.

The Queen would die. And he, Harmodius, loved her in a way the king never could – she was the perfect child of Hermeticism. An angel, come to earth.

But like an artist with a favourite painting, Harmodius could not bear to see the king die either. Not here – not so close to triumph, or at least to survival.