The Red Knight (63 page)

And he really had to piss.

There was no way to measure the time. An ant crawled the length of his body, from moccasined left foot to right shoulder. Something larger crossed one of his knees. A pair of hummingbirds came
and visited a flower by his head, and he was so still in the agony of his need to relieve himself that the male, bright red in spring plumage, all but landed on his painted face.

There were three hundred men – more, perhaps five hundred – lying on either side of the road as it led downhill to a ford over a deep running stream. They were somewhere east of
Albinkirk. No one made a noise.

He had to piss.

He heard the metallic scrape of an iron-shod hoof on stone, and a shriek – a cry, and then a scream that seemed to come from the other side of his tree.

No one was moving.

The scream was repeated and suddenly cut off, and its sudden removal left another sound – the sound of shod hooves galloping away.

Suddenly Skadai was on the trail, just a few arm’s lengths away, calling softly. ‘Dodak-geer-lonh!’ he said. ‘Gots onah!’

All around Peter, warriors rose from their ambush spots, rubbing themselves, or scraping bark off their skin. Half of them immediately began to relieve themselves. Peter followed suit,
previously unaware that urination could be such a great pleasure.

But Skadai was moving. Ota Qwan swatted Peter on the shoulder. ‘Move!’ he said, as if Peter was a child.

Peter gathered his bow and followed.

They ran east on the trail for twenty horse lengths, and there was a horse, dead, across the trail, and a man pinned beneath it with his face and hair cut away and his throat slit. His blood
pooled between the rocks and ran in a sticky rivulet headed downhill to the stream.

After running for what seemed a long time, they began to spread out amid big trees. The stream was well behind them, and Peter was terrified – they were running at the enemy, or so it
seemed.

Skahas Gaho must have felt the same, because when they stopped running he got in front of Ota Qwan and said something that was clearly remonstration.

Ota Qwan struck him – not a hard blow, but a fast one, and the younger warrior bent over with the pain.

Ota Qwan spoke quickly, spittle flying from his mouth.

Skadai ran up silently, listened to Ota Qwan, and nodded, running off down the loose line of warriors that extended as far as the eye could see into the great trees on either flank. The trees
here – mostly Adnacrag maples and beeches, tall old trees with magnificent tops – were big enough that two men couldn’t get their arms around them. But there was little
undergrowth because of the high canopy, and despite the sun-dappled forest floor, little grew amidst the carpet of old leaves except the most magnificent irises that Peter had ever seen.

Skahas Gaho got to his feet, glared resentfully at Skadai and spat at Ota Qwan. He said something to the other warriors, and ran off down the line. Brant turned to follow him, and Ota Qwan
raised his bow.

Peter acted without thought. He pushed Ota Qwan’s bow arm, hard.

The warrior tried to hit him in the ear with the tip of the bow but Peter caught it and, in a single turn of his arm, he had Ota Qwan’s right arm in an elbow lock that threatened to
dislocate the man’s shoulder.

‘I wasn’t
born
a slave,’ Peter said. ‘Don’t fuck with me.’

‘They are deserting me!’ Ota Qwan watched the two men running off.

‘You hit Skahas Gaho when you needed to reason with him.’ Peter wanted to laugh to hear himself explaining basic leadership to Ota Qwan. But he had the arm lock, and he wasn’t
letting go.

The other man stiffened, and then went limp. ‘He was about to disobey. To disobey Skadai!’

Peter let the black painted man go. ‘I’ve only been Sossag for three days, but it seems to me that’s Skadai’s problem, not yours. I think you thought like an Alban, not a
Sossag.’ Peter shrugged.

The other three – Pal Kut, Barbface, and Mullet, watched them warily.

‘You will be loyal to me!’ Ota Qwan hissed at Peter. ‘Will you?’

Peter nodded. ‘I will,’ he said, finding that the words made him feel queasy.

Pal Kut called something. The line, well-spread, was moving rapidly forward, almost at a run. Most men had an arrow on their bows.

Peter sprinted to make his place in the line, fumbled an arrow and dropped it, and turned back to get it – he had too few to lose one. He bent, and in that moment, the world exploded.

To the front of the line, off amidst the drover’s herd, a bull gave a long, low growl. And suddenly the air was full of arrows flying both ways. And the Sossag gave a great cry, almost
like a scream . . .

. . . and charged.

Peter had his arrow on his bow. He ran forward, saw Pal Kut take an arrow in the gut, an arrow so big and so powerful that it emerged from his back in a gout of blood, and the head was shaped
like a swallow and gleamed with a horrible red-blue malevolence.

Peter ran forward, following Ota Qwan.

He saw his first enemy – a tall blond boy in ring mail who coolly rose from behind a bush and loosed an arrow into a warrior he didn’t know – shot him from so close that the
man was knocked off balance by the arrow and stumbled like a beheaded chicken before collapsing in death.

But Ota Qwan leaped at the man with a dire scream and loosed his own arrow at arm’s length, and the barbed head drove through his ring mail at the shoulder. A dozen warriors converged on
the wounded boy and he was dead and scalped in a few heartbeats.

Ota Qwan took the boy’s sword – four feet of shining steel – and brandished it, and all of the warriors who had seen him attack gave a great cry, and then they were pelting
forward again.

Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Hector Lachlan

As soon as the scouts reported, Lachlan knew he was in serious trouble. North of the Inn, in the Hills, the Wyrm of Erch kept the Outwallers at bay. It cost him animals to keep
the Wyrm happy, but that was the way of the Hills. For a thousand years or more, the Wyrm had kept the Wild out of the Hills, to the benefit of generations of clansmen and drovers.

Here in the south, the king was supposed to keep the Outwallers away. Otter Creek was taken by some to be the border between the Green Hills and the Kingdom of Alba. But for Lachlan,
whoever’s territory it was, Otter Creek was safe ground. Not battle ground. Otter Creek ran down into the Albin. Albinkirk itself would be visible from the height of the next ridge but one
– even if there was still a long day to drive the beeves to get them to the ford at Southford.

But the point was that they were
almost there.

But now – he had scouts, and they knew their business. The clansmen and drovers knew the Outwallers. Outwallers were fierce, savage, and expert in arms. And they’d set an ambush for
his drove, which meant they had scouted his herds, knew his strength and felt that they could take him. That meant three to four hundred warriors.

Hector didn’t hesitate. It was a situation he’d imagined many times, although he’d never had to face it.

He turned to his tanist, Donald Redmane ‘Go back to the drag guard. Take every animal you can, turn them, and run for the Inn.’

Donald was a good man – loyal, dogged. Not the smartest, but a wonderful man in a fight, with a beautiful voice and clever hands that made things. ‘You go, Lachlan. I can hold them
here.’

Lachlan shook his head. ‘With your bruised ribs and all? Go. Now.’

Redmane shook out his hair. ‘By the Wyrm, Hector. We’re just a day’s march from Albinkirk. Let’s stampede the cows at the bastards, and put the survivors to the
sword.’

Hector looked at the woods under his hand. ‘No. My word on it, Donald. They’re two to one or more against us, and scattering the herd in these woods—’ He held his peace,
lest he lower spirits more than he had to.

He turned and looked at the scout. ‘Ride clear all the way to the Inn. Take two horses so that you can change. Ride like the wind, yunker – they may already be in the High Country.
Don’t come back unless you can bring a hundred swords with you.’

The other men with him in the vanguard loosened their swords in their scabbards. A few checked bows, and one took off his arming cap, replaced it, and went to his mule for his helmet.

‘Bad luck you boys are with me, this day, and not in the rear with the drag,’ Hector said. ‘None of us will be dining this evening, I fear.’

Ian Cowpat, a big man with a muddy brown face, gave him a grin. ‘Bah. Never met a loon I couldn’t kill.’

‘Outwallers,’ Hector said. ‘We’ll meet them in the woods where they can’t shoot us down. Make a fight of it as long as we can. When I sound the horn, every man to
me, and we form a shield wall and make a song of it.’ He looked around. The duty changed every day, because working the back of the herds was so much worse than walking in front, and so he
didn’t have the oldest or the youngest, or all the best fighters, or even all men he knew. He had a scattering of his own and the Keeper’s men; but they were well armed, fifty strong,
and not a face betrayed the terror that every one of them must feel. Good men for making a song.

By which hillmen meant dying well.

He thought of his new bride, and hoped she had kindled with him because, while he had a few bastards, he didn’t have a son to avenge him. He caught the stirrup of his messenger.

‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Tell my wife that if she has a son he is to grow tall and strong, and when he is rich and well-loved, he is to take an army north and cut a bloody swath
through the Outlanders. I’ll take five hundred corpses as my wergild. Tell him when he’s old enough. And tell her that her lips were the sweetest thing I ever knew, and I’ll die
with the taste of them on my own.’

The young man was pale. He’d watched a boyhood friend die, and now he was being sent to ride a hundred leagues alone, quite possibly the only survivor of the drove.

‘I could stay with you,’ he said.

Hector grinned. ‘I’m sure you could, boyo. But you are my last message to my wife and kin. I need you to go.’

The messenger changed horses. A bull was lowing, and the cows were turning, the rear of the column was already moving north, away from the line of enemy that was out there somewhere.

Then he turned back to his men, most of whom were helmed and mailed and ready to fight. The lone priest, his half-brother, lifted his cross in the air and all the men knelt, and Paul Mac Lachlan
prayed for their souls. When they all said amen, the priest put the cross back into his mail cote and put an arrow on his bow.

His cousin Ranald had a great axe – a beautiful thing, and he was cutting the air with it. He also had steel gauntlets; having served the king in the south he had fine gear like a
knight.

‘Ranald takes command if I fall,’ Hector said. ‘We’ll go forward into the woods – the youngest ahead as skirmishers. Don’t get overrun. Shoot when you can and
then retreat. When you hear my horn, retreat. We have to hold until the sun reaches noon, and then Donald will be away and we will have died for something.’

Ranald nodded. ‘Thanks, cousin. You do me honour.’

Hector shrugged. ‘You’re the best man for it.’

Ranald nodded. ‘I wish your other brother were here with us.’

Hector looked out into the trees. He could all but feel the oncoming enemy. Perhaps – perhaps they would wait in ambush too long, or balk at a close fight.

But there was too much movement out at the edge of the meadow. The Outwallers were coming.

‘Me, too,’ Hector said. He looked up and down the line. ‘Let’s go. Spread well out.’

They went forward into the woods, moving quickly. His greatest fear was that the enemy was already at the woods’ edge – but they weren’t, and he got his fifty into the deep
woods where the irises bloomed like crosses in a graveyard.

He put two men at every tree, and his ten youngest and swiftest a spear’s throw in advance of his very open line, and then the bull roared again in the distance and suddenly the arrows
began to fly.

Hector almost died in the first moments. An arrow hit his bassinet, spinning him, and a second arrow hit the nose guard of his helmet and bent it in – a finger’s width from an arrow
in the eye and instant death.

His men did well, although the boys in front were overrun and killed – and it was his mistake. The Outwallers were faster, bolder, and more reckless than he had imagined – but they
still took a fearful toll among the savages. When his loose line retreated, running from cover to cover in their heavy mail, the Outwallers hesitated for a moment too long before following them,
allowing them a clean break and leaving another thin line of kicking, wounded and gutted corpses.

One lone Outwaller, painted red from head to toe, stood between two great trees and called, and then sprinted forward. He tackled Ian Cowpat, and Cowpat never rose again – but only a
handful of the painted men followed the red one.

Thanks be to God
, Hector thought.

His men had been forced back into the last cover before the meadow, and the sun was not yet halfway into the heavens.

Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Peter

Peter was out of arrows, and he had a great cut across his right shin – he’d been caught by the very end of a wild cut from a fleeing man’s sword, but it was
enough to send him to the earth for several long minutes.

He had a dead man’s big dagger, almost the size of a short sword, and he had a buckler from the same corpse. He was no longer close to Ota Qwan – the black painted warrior had
vanished early – and now Peter was close behind Skadai, who moved with more grace than any warrior Peter had ever seen.

Whomever they were fighting, the men were brave, big, silent, and far too well-armed.

The Sossag were dying. There were fifty men down already, perhaps more. Peter thought perhaps it was time for the Sossag to admit defeat. But Skadai didn’t agree, running right into the
enemy line, tackling a huge warrior and slitting his throat with a knife.