The Red Knight (32 page)

‘I tol’ em that this house was protected!’ the thin boy shouted.

‘Did you?’ The big man said. He eyed the two archers.

‘We was gentle as lambs!’ said the one with dead eyes.

‘Fucking archers. Piss off and get on with it,’ the big man said, and offered her a hand up.

The two archers got to their feet and went out the back to collect her chickens and her sheep and all the grain from her shed, all the roots in her cellar. They were methodical, and when she
followed them into the shed, the dead-eyed one gave her a look that struck fear into her. He meant her harm.

But soon enough the boy had her donkeys rigged and loaded, and she put her husband’s pack on her back, her two baskets in her arms, and went out into the square.

From where she stood, her house looked perfectly normal.

She tried to imagine it burned. An empty basement yawning at the sun. She could see the place where she rested her back when she sewed, rubbed shiny with use, and she wondered if she would ever
find such a well-lit spot.

The Carters were next to be ready – they were, after all, a family of carters with two heavy carts of their own and draught animals, and six boys and men to do the lifting. The
bailli’s housekeeper was next, with his rugs – Mag had lain on one of those rugs, and she blushed at the thought. She was still mulling over her instinctive use of his name – his
Christian name—

The Lanthorns were the last, their four sluttish daughters sullen, and Goodwife Lanthorn, in her usual despair, wandered the village’s column of animals, begging for space for her bag and
a basket of linen. Lis the laundress was surrounded by soldiers, who competed to carry her goods. But she knew many of them by name, having washed their linens, and she was both safely middle-aged
and
comely, an ideal combination in the soldiers’ eyes.

At last the Lanthorns were packed – all four daughters eyeing the soldiers – and the column began to move.

Three hours after the men-at-arms rode into Abbington, the town was empty.

Albinkirk – Ser Alcaeus

Ser John gave him a company of crossbowmen – members of the town’s guilds, all of them a little too shiny in their guild colours. Blue and red predominated, from the
furriers, the leading guild of Albinkirk. He might have laughed to think that he, cousin to the Emperor, was commanding a band of common-born crossbowmen. It would have amused him, but . . .

They came at sunset, out of the setting sun.

The fields looked as if they were crawling with insects and then, without a shout or a signal the irks changed direction and were coming up the walls. Ser Alcaeus had never seen anything like
it, and it made his skin crawl.

There were daemons among them, a dozen or more, fast, lithe, elegant and deadly. And they simply ran up the walls.

His crossbowmen loosed and loosed into the horde coming at them, and he did his best to walk up and down behind them on the crenellations, murmuring words of encouragement and praising their
steadiness. He knew how to command, he’d just never done it before.

The first wave almost took the wall. A daemon came right over and started killing guildsmen. It was nothing but luck that its great sword bounced off a journeyman armourer’s breastplate
and the man’s mates got their bolts into the lethal thing. It still took four more men down while it died, but the sight of the dead daemon stiffened the guildsmen’s spines.

They staved off the second wave. The daemons had grown careful and led from the back. Alcaeus tried to get his crossbowmen to snipe at them, but there was never a moment when they could do
anything but fight the most present danger.

A guild captain came to him where he was standing, leaning heavily on his pole-axe because he knew enough not to waste energy in armour. The man saluted.

‘M’lord,’ he said. ‘We’re almost out of bolts. Every lad brings twenty.’

Ser Alcaeus blinked. ‘Where do you get more?’

‘I was hoping you would know,’ said the guild officer.

Ser Alcaeus sent a runner, but he already knew the answer.

The third wave got over the walls behind them, they heard it go. The sounds of fighting changed, there was sudden shrieking and his men started to look over their shoulders.

He wished he had his squire – a veteran of fifty battles. But the man had died protecting him in the ambush and so he had no one to ask for advice.

Ser Alcaeus set his jaw and prepared to die well.

He walked along the wall again as the shadows lengthened. His section was about a hundred paces, end to end – Albinkirk was a
big
town, even to Ser Alcaeus who hailed from the
biggest city in the world.

He stopped when he saw three of his men looking back at the town.

‘Eyes front,’ he snapped.

‘A house on fire!’ some idiot said.

More men turned and, just like that, he lost them. They turned, and then there was a daemon on the wall, killing them. It moved like fluid, passing through men, round them, with two axes
flashing in its taloned hands – even as Alcaeus watched, one of the daemon’s taloned feet licked out to eviscerate a fifteen-year old who’d had no breastplate.

Alcaeus charged. He felt the fear that it generated – but in Morea knights trained for this very thing, and he knew the fear. He ran through it, blade ready—

It hit him. It was faster by far, and an axe slammed into his arm. He was well-trained and caught much of the blow. His small fortune in plate armour ate the rest, and then he was swinging.

It had to pivot to face him. The twitch of its hips took a heartbeat, and he swung his pole-axe up from the garde of the boar, like a boy swinging a pitchfork at haying, but with twice the
speed.

Ser Alcaeus was as shocked as the daemon when his axe caught the other creature’s axe-hand and smashed it. Ichor sprayed and its axe fell. It slashed at him with the left, turned and
kicked him with a taloned foot. All four talons bit through his breastplate and knocked him flat, but none reached him through his mail and padded arming cote.

A crossbow struck the daemon. Not a bolt but the bow itself, swung by a terrified guildsman.

The daemon bounded onto the wall, scattering defenders, and jumped.

Alcaeus got to his feet. He still had his pole-axe.

He was proud of himself for two breaths, and then he realised that the town behind him was afire, and there were two more daemons on the wall with him, and irk arrows were suddenly everywhere.
Worse, they were coming from the town.

He had a dozen men by him, including the stunned looking man who’d hit the daemon with his crossbow. The rest of his fools were leaving the wall, running for their houses.

He shook his head and cursed. They were surrounded, half his men gone, and it was growing dark rapidly.

He made his decision. ‘Follow me!’ he called, and ran along the wall. He was headed for the castle, which towered over the western end of town by the river gate. It had its own
defensive walls.

The whole town was falling. It was the only place to make a stand.

When he paused to breathe, Albinkirk was afire from south to north, and a sea of Wild creatures were running through the streets. He knew the difference between the irks – elfin and
gnarled and satanic in the firelight – and the boglins, with their leather midsections and their oddlyjointed arms. He’d studied pictures. He’d trained for this, but it was like a
nightmare. He was running
again
with the half dozen of his crossbowmen who stuck with him. The rest ran off into the town despite his admonitions. One died at their feet, ripped to pieces by
boglins and consumed by something worse.

He could see the river, and the castle, but the next section of wall was crowded with enemies. The streets below were worse.

But at the edge of the firelight, he could see a company of soldiers with spears still holding one street, a crowd of panicked refugees behind them pressing on the castle gates.

Unbeckoned, a thought whispered into his head.

Time to earn your spurs.

‘Let me go first,’ he said to his crossbowmen. ‘I will charge. You will follow me and kill anything that gets past me. You understand?’

He longed, just for a second, for wine and his lyre, and for the feeling of a woman’s breast under his hand.

He raised his pole-axe.

‘Kyrie Eleison!’
he sang, and charged.

There were perhaps sixty boglins on the wall. It was too dark to count, and he wasn’t that interested.

He smashed into them, taking them by surprise. The first one died, and after that nothing went right. His pole-axe fouled in the boglin; his blow had caught the thing in an armpit, and it fell
off the wall taking his precious weapon with it.

He was instantly surrounded.

He got a dagger unsheathed with a practised
flick –
because a bastard cousin of the Emperor does not survive long at court without being able to use a dagger expertly, in or out of
armour – and then they piled on him and he was all but buried standing up.

His right arm began stabbing largely of its own accord.

A tremendous blow knocked him forward, and he stumbled a few steps smashing pieces of boglin beneath his feet – suddenly panicked that he would fall off the wall. Panic powered his limbs,
he spun and felt his steel-clad back slam into the crenellations. Suddenly his arms were free, and the thing trying to open his visor was the top priority, and then it was gone too and he was
clear.

His right arm was slick with green-brown blood. He took up the low guard – All Gates are Iron – with his dagger back over his right hip, left fist by his left hip, looking over his
left shoulder.

A boglin threw a spear at him.

He blocked it with his left hand, and stumbled forward into them. His breath was coming in great bursts, but his brain was clear, and he rammed the point of his heavy dagger into the first one,
right through its head, and ripped it out again. His armoured fist snapped out in a punch and smashed the noseless face of a second.

The next two boglins were folded over their midriffs, shot with bolts. He stepped past them, his dagger switching hands with a dexterity his uncle’s master of arms would have approved of,
he was drawing his sword right-handed as he advanced.

The boglins began to back away.

He charged them.

They had their own gallantry. One creature gave its life to trip him, and died on his dagger as he fell. He rolled on a shoulder, but then there was nothing under his feet—

He hit a tiled roof, slid, hit a stone lintel with his armoured shoulder, flipped . . .

And landed in the street, on his feet. He still had both sword and dagger and took the time to thank God for it.

Above him, on the wall, the boglins were staring at him. ‘Follow me!’ he shouted to his men. He hadn’t meant to come down to the street – but from here he could see irks
coming along the wall from behind his archers.

Two made the jump. The rest froze, and died where they stood.

The three of them ran for the castle, which was lit up as if it was a royal palace ready for a great event. Albinkirk was ablaze, and the streets were carpeted with dead citizens and their
servants and slaves.

It was a massacre.

He ran as well as he could in sabatons. His two surviving archers ran at his heels, and they killed the only two enemies they found, and then they were in the open street in front of the
castle’s main gate.

The spearmen were still holding the street.

The gate was still shut.

And the three of them were on the wrong side of the fighting.

He flipped up his visor. He no longer cared that he might die; he had to breathe. He stood there for as long as it took for his breathing to slow – bent double, he was easy meat for any
boglin or irk who wanted him.

‘Messire!’ shouted the panicked crossbowmen.

He ignored them.

It seemed like eternity, but he got his head back up after he vomited on the cobbles. There was a half-eaten young boy at his feet, his body cast aside after his legs had been gnawed to the
bone.

Across the square, the spearmen were barely holding. There were fifteen of them, or perhaps fewer, and they were holding back a hundred irks and boglins. The Wild creatures weren’t
particularly enthusiastic – they wanted to loot, not fight. But they kept pressing in.

Alcaeus pointed across the small square. ‘I’m going into that,’ he said to the crossbowmen. ‘I intend to cut my way through to the spearmen. Die here or die with me
– it’s all one to me.’ He looked at the two scared boys. ‘What are your names?’ he asked.

‘James,’ said the thin one.

‘Mat,’ said the better accoutered one. He had a breastplate.

‘Span, then. And let’s do this thing,’ he said.

He knew that he didn’t want to do it – and he knew that if he didn’t make himself go then he’d die right here, probably still trying to catch his breath.

‘Holy Saint Maurice, stand with me and these two young men,’ he said. And then, to the boys, ‘Walk right behind me. When I say to loose, kill the creatures closest to
me.’ He began to walk around the edge of the square.

Off to the right a pack of irks were fighting over bales of furs. He ignored them.

A daemon loped into an alley, chasing a screaming, naked man, and he ignored it, too. He kept walking, hoarding his strength, sabatons making a grim metallic sound on the bloody stones.

He didn’t look back. He just kept going, under a tree hanging over a house wall, and then along a stone bench on which, in happier days, drunks had no doubt passed out.

When he was ten paces from the back of the enemy mob, he shrugged. He wanted to pray, but nothing came to his mind but the sight of a beautiful courtesan in Thrake.

‘Loose,’ he said.

Two bolts snapped into the mass of Wild flesh, and he followed them in, his sword and dagger flashing.

The lowest caste of boglins had no armour, but just their soft leather carapaces, and he cut them open, slammed them to earth, and crushed them with his fists. One.