The Red Knight

Alweather frowned, but Galahad refused to be moved by the older man’s caution. Galahad was suffused with joy. He was living one of his secret dreams.

Alweather, clearly wanted to go back to the king.

‘They fought a battle,’ Galahad said, his eyes sparkling in the firelight. ‘And we didn’t even hear them.’

The Prior smiled at Galahad. ‘Not really a battle,’ he said. ‘More of a massacre. The irks didn’t see us coming.’ He shrugged. ‘Have some soup. Tomorrow will be harder.’

Lissen Carak

It was a quiet night. The besieged collapsed into sleep. Sauce cried out in her dreams, and Tom lay and snored like a hog. Michael muttered into his outstretched arm, sleeping alone. The Abbess wept softly in the dark, and rose to kneel, praying at the triptych that sat on a low podium in the corner of her cell. Sister Miram lay on her stomach to sleep, exhausted from healing so many wounded men. Low Sym woke himself up repeatedly as he shouted, and then lay with his own arms wrapped around him staring at horrors in the dark until the pretty novice came and sat with him.

But however long and dark the night was, the enemy was quiet, and the besieged slept.

In the first light of morning, they struck.

The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Nine

Today, the enemy burned all the country around the fortress, as far as the woods. The men – the traitor Jacks – burned all the farms, all the steadings and barns – even the patches of woods.

The farmers stood on the walls and watched. Some wept. We were cursed for being poor soldiers, for allowing the fields to be burned.

The Abbess came out and watched, and then promised that it would all be rebuilt.

But many hearts turned. And before noon, the creatures of the enemy were in the air over the fortress, and we could feel them again.

Lissen Carak – Mag the Seamstress

It was a simple, unstoppable act that changed the nature of the siege, and that cut at the farmers and the simple people of the fortress more effectively than all the military victories that could be scored.

The first fires were visible to the north-east. Hawkshead, the furthest east of the fortress’ communities was put to the torch before morning creased the sky, and the last watch saw the town burn, just two leagues from the walls.

Just as the sun began to cast forth a ruddy light, Kentmere went up to the west. By then, the walls of the fortress were lined in farm folk. Then Abbington.

Mag watched her town burn. From this high, she could count roofs and she knew when her own cottage burned. She watched it with a desperate anger until she could no longer see which house was hers. They were all afire – every cottage, every house, every stone barn, every chicken coop. The fields around the fortress ridge were suddenly full of the enemy – all the creatures who hadn’t shown themselves in the first days. There were boglins, and irks; daemons and trolls, great things like giants with smooth heads and tusks which the soldiers told her were behemoths. And, of course, men.

How she hated the men.

The enemy was now girdling every tree. Orchards of apple trees and pears, of peaches and persimmons, were being destroyed. Vines that had grown for generations were gone in an hour, their roots destroyed or seared by fire, and every structure was burning. As far as the eye could see, in every direction, there was a sea of fire and Lissen Carak a dark island in it.

Mag couldn’t take her eyes away from the death of her world.

‘Sausage without mustard, eh?’ said a heavy voice at her elbow.

She started, turned to find the giant black-headed hillman, the company’s savage, sitting on the other barrel beside her, watching over the wall.

‘War without fire is like sausage without mustard,’ he said.

She found herself angry at him. ‘That’s – my village. My house!’

The big man nodded. He seemed not to know she was crying. ‘Stands to reason. I’d hae’ done the same, in his place.’

She turned on him. ‘War! In his place? This isn’t a game! We live here! This is our land. We farm here. We bury our dead here. My husband lies out there – my daughter-’ The tears became too much for her, but in that moment, she hated him more than she hated the boglins and their horrible faces and their willingness to burn her life away.

Tom looked hard at her. ‘Not yours unless you can hold it,’ he said. ‘Way I hear it, your people took it from them. Eh? Melike, their dead are buried there too. And right now, I’d say it was theirs. I’m sorry, goodwife, but war is my business. And war involves a lot of fire. He’s showing us that we only hold what we stand on – that he can win without taking the fortress. We hurt him last night and now he strikes back. That’s war. If you don’t want to have your farm burned, you had better be strong – stronger than you were.’

She struck him, then – a glancing blow, pure anger without force.

He let her do it.

‘Not many folk can say they’ve struck Bad Tom and lived to tell the tale,’ he said. He flashed a crooked smile in the early morning light, and she turned and fled.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn watched the farms burn with no great satisfaction. It was a cheap victory, but it would help break the will of the farmers to resist him.

He shrugged inwardly. Or it would harden their resolve to fight to the end. Now they had nothing to save but themselves, and even when he’d been a man, he’d had trouble understanding men. And, increasingly, he felt this contest was too complex for even his intellect. He had made himself the Captain of the Wild, and yet his own interests were scarcely engaged, here. He was far more interested in the puzzle that was the dark sun, and in her, then he was in the prosecution of the siege.

He wondered, not for the first time, what he was doing here, and how he’d ended up so committed to this action that he was willing to risk himself in combat. Last night he’d taken his invincible new form out onto the field, and the fortress had hurt him. None of the blows he had taken were deadly, but he felt the pain of his exertions and their blows. The pain had angered him, and in anger he had unleashed some of his carefully hoarded power – enough to damage the fabric of the fortress. It had impressed his allies, but the cost-

Again, he rustled his leaves in what would have been a shrug, in a man.

Last night, he had felt the breath of mortality for the first time in twenty years. He didn’t like the smell of it. Or the pain.

But as the siege continued it was becoming a rallying point for the Wild in the North Country, and despite minor set-backs, more and more creatures were coming in. His prestige was increasing, and that prestige would directly affect a rise in his power.

None of which would matter if he were dead.

He thought of her.

He could no longer shake his head – it was now a continuous armoured growth from his neck, and he had to pivot around the waist to look to the left and right. But he made an odd clucking sound as he considered her. She had attempted to hurt him directly, last night.

And finally, he considered the third presence in the fortress besides the dark sun. Power – cold, blue power – had struck him. Pure power, untrammelled by doubt or youth. Trained and honed, like fine steel.

It was his apprentice, of course. Had Thorn been able to smile, he would have.