The Red Knight

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.

Peter couldn’t hang back when such daring was shown.

The next time the enemy turned to run, Peter joined his wild yell to Skadai’s, and saw Ota Qwan, who suddenly appeared just an arm’s length away, do the same. The three of them rose from their cover, where they had lain to avoid the arrows – and charged. To Ota Qwan’s right, Skahas Gaho also rose to his feet, sword in hand, and others joined them – not many, but a dozen all told.

An arrow flicked out of the sunlight like a hornet and hit Skadai in the groin. He stumbled, tumbled, and lay still.

Peter kept running. The man who had loosed the arrow had lost a step on his companions, and Peter ran for him, his whole self concentrated on that man, a red-haired giant in a fine mail shirt that gleamed in the woodland shade. He had an iron collar, a gorget, and long leather gloves.

Peter opened his mouth and screamed. The man dropped his bow and drew his sword – an arrow stung the inside of Peter’s thigh as the head cut his skin, before flitting away between his legs, and Peter reached out with the buckler and the man’s sword slammed into it. Peter pushed forward, the buckler pinning the sword, and his own short blade cut hard into the man’s face, teeth sprayed and an eye was cut before the man turned away but Peter ’s sword was past his head, and he grabbed the blade with his buckler hand, locked the blade against the man’s throat and sawed back and forth until he crushed his windpipe through the mail and iron collar.

Arrows hit his dying opponent – a dozen shot by his friends. But they had loosed unthinking, Peter’s rush had spun him around, and every arrow intended for him hit the red-haired man.

He fell through Peter’s hands, dead before he hit the ground, and Peter dropped his long knife and stooped to pick up the great sword from the grass. Ota Qwan screamed in triumph, and the scream was taken up along their line.

Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Hector Lachlan

The priest, Paul Mac Lachlan, died badly, because he’d never been much of a swordsman, and one of the painted devils was through his guard and into him, slicing his face, choking him, using his body as a shield.

It demoralized them to watch one of their own carls die so easily, in single combat against an essentially unarmoured man.

On the other hand, Hector thought, they’d inflicted an incredible number of casualties. All the stories said that Outwallers were averse to taking casualties, and his people had killed fifty, perhaps more.

And their red leader was down.

Give the priest that – he’d shot him.

Hector grinned at the men around him. ‘We all have to do better than that,’ he said.’

‘Fucking Paul,’ Ranald said. One of the savages paused to scalp the priest, and Ranald flicked a shaft into the painted bastard. He screamed.

Hector held his horn over his head, so all the men left were ready.

‘We’re going to charge through their line and make our shield wall over there,’ he said. Retreating any further, into the open ground, was foolish.

The Outwallers were gaining courage from the success of the last rush, and they were coming forward now. His men were loosing their last shafts. Even as Hector watched, all the Outwallers went to ground again. If he had more woods, he’d retreat again. But he didn’t. The wildflowers of the long meadow were at his back.

He held his horn to his lips and sounded it.

Every man left to him turned and sprinted towards him. It only took heartbeats for them to join him, and in that time, only a bare handful of enemy shafts flew.

He didn’t wait for the laggards. When he had enough carls to make a song, he started forward.

Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Peter

Peter was running out of courage.

Ota Qwan was not. He rose to his feet and dashed forward even as one of their warriors bent over the corpse of the red-haired man, knife in hand, and died for it.

‘Gots onah!’ Ota Qwan roared.

But the warriors didn’t follow him.

Peter could scarcely breathe. The lightning nightmare of the close fight with the red-haired man had taken all his breath, all his energy, all his courage. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep.

The wound in his leg ached, and worried how deep it went.

Ota Qwan went bounding forward as the mail-clad men sounded a horn.

Peter forced himself to follow the black-painted man. As he looked back, he saw Skahas Gaho and Brant rise from the grass as well.

They were following him, and there were ten more with them. They loped after him, and he ran as hard as he could after Ota Qwan.

To the right, the enemy shocked all of them by charging – not a handful of them, but a solid wedge, which ran right for the centre of their line.

Peter was so far to the right that the end man of the wedge wasn’t even close enough to fight – the wedge ran by him in him moment of indecision and then there were cries deeper in the woods.

Ota Qwan continued to run forward. Peter didn’t think he’d even seen the enemy charge, but he followed.

Skahas Gaho stooped and scalped the red-haired man.

Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Hector

Hector was fresh and unblooded, and the first clump of Outwallers died on his sword point and edge as fast as he could roar his war-cry three times, and then they were down and his wedge was alone in the woodlands.

The essence of warfare is to force the pace and hope your enemy makes a mistake. That was his father’s law of war, and his own. So he didn’t stop and form a shieldwall.

‘Follow me!’ he roared, and continued on.

On, and on.

The Outwallers were faster but not fitter than the drovers, and tricks of terrain and bad luck – pulled muscles, wounds – left them at the mercy of the hard-faced armoured men, and their mercy had nothing of mercy in it. A dozen Outwallers died in a hundred paces.

Hector ran on, his sides heaving and his legs burning. Running any distance in mail was an effort.

Running five hundred paces was more than an effort. It was like a test.

Most of his men stayed with him. Those few who paused, died.

The Outwallers fled, but even in panicked flight they ran like a flock of swallows or a school of fish, and those ones unthreatened by the charge recovered first, and arrows started to lick through the trees.

‘Keep going!’ Hector cried, and his men gave him everything they had.

An Outlander boy tripped over a root and fell, and Ranald beheaded him with a flick of his wrists.

On and on.

And then Hector had to stop. He leaned on the hilt of his great sword, and his sides heaved.

Ranald put a hand on his armoured elbow. ‘Water,’ he said.

The length of a barn away they found young Clip, the farmer from the Inn, pinned under his dead horse with his throat slit. A bowshot farther on they came to the ford that they would have crossed. Outwaller arrows had begun