required some advantage – reach, perhaps – that he just didn’t have.
The daemon just stood there, two axes above its head.
And then, as sudden as its attack had come, its eyes slipped past him and with a shrug it was
He was damned if he was going to fall over. He stood there looking at an empty road down the hill, and the fires of hell raging in the Lower Town.
He turned around, and Michael had Jehannes under the armpits and was dragging the knight up the path.
Cuddy stood just behind him, with his bow at full draw. Very slowly, the archer let the tension out of the limbs, and the great bow returned to shape. He dropped the arrow back into the quiver at his belt.
‘Sorry, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘You wasn’t going to win that one.’
The captain laughed. He laughed and laughed as they pulled him through the gate and slammed it shut, ands Ser Michael lowered the great iron portcullis.
He slapped Cuddy weakly on the backplate. ‘Nor was I,’ he said.
Then Michael had his helmet off his head, and he was sucking in great gouts of fresh, cool air. A dozen men were pulling at his armour.
He saw the Abbess. Saw Harmodius, who grinned at him.
He drank it all in for a moment, and then, as his breast and backplate came off, he got to his feet. The men stripping him grinned and backed away, but their grins faltered when they saw how much blood was running down his side.
He nodded, waved, and ran, unarmed, unaware of his wounds, into the crowd and seemed to vanish. He didn’t see Amicia. But he’d felt her there.
He went to find her.
She was waiting for him under the apple tree.
She bit her lip.
‘I won’t talk,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I-’
She pushed him down on the bench with a strong arm, and bent – he hoped, to kiss him. But his hope was cheated. He felt her breath, hot, moist, fraught with magic, on his face and felt his wound heel. She raised her hands like a priest invoking the deity and he saw the power all around her, the well below the tree, the tendrils that connected her to her sisters in the choir and to the Abbess.
She reached a hand under his arming doublet and her touch was cold as ice. Her hand passed over his chest and his back arched in agony as she touched the edge of his wound – one he hadn’t felt.
‘Silly,’ she said. He felt the power go out of her, into his shoulder. For a moment, briefer than a single heartbeat, the pain was infinite. And for that moment, he was her. She was him.
He lay back. To his shame, a whimper escaped his lips.
She leaned over him, her hair covering his face. Her lips brushed his. ‘Men will die if I stay with you,’ she said.
And she was gone.
Lissen Carak – Michael
Michael looked at the parchment and tried to think what he could write. Shook his head, and went to find Kaitlin, who’s father had died when the curtain wall fell.
In the first light, three wyverns came out of the rising sun carrying rocks the size of a man’s head in their claws.
They came in high, and dived almost straight on the trebuchet.
The watch was just changing and the soldiers were completely unready. The ongoing watch was already tired, the offgoing watch was exhausted, and no one reacted in time.
Before No Head could even rotate the ballista the first monster’s claws opened, and his rock fell – struck the stump of the tower a few paces from the engine, and bounced away with a crack like lightning to fall harmlessly to the hillside below.
The second wyvern dropped lower, wings folded against his back, but he opened his wings too early, bobbed, and his rock went sailing away to kill one of the hundreds of sheep who were still penned on the ridge.
The third wyvern was the oldest and the canniest. It swooped off the target Thorn had intended and laid its rock almost gently on the ballista, smashing the engine and throwing No Head off the tower.
The archer shrieked and grabbed at the gargoyles of the hospital balcony as he fell.
The wyverns swept away.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
An hour later the wyverns were back. This time all three imitated the eldest, coming lower along the ridge and rising on the last thermal before the walls of the fortress to unleash their missiles at point blank range.
This time they were met by a hail of darts, bolts and arrows, loosed from every corner of the courtyard, the towers, and even the hospital balcony.
All three were hit, and flew away, angry and unsuccessful.
Their stones knocked a hole in the captain’s Commandery, killed two nuns in the hospital, and crushed a war horse and a squire in the stable.
The captain slept through it.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
He didn’t wake until late afternoon. He awoke in the comfort of his own room, although it felt odd. Air was moving around him.
Someone had fixed blankets and an old tapestry over a hole the size of a cart. A hole in the wall that went right through to the outside air.
His little porch was gone, too.
He got his feet on the floor, and Toby Pardieu had his clothes laid out on the press, and long leather boots over his arm, clean and black.
His knight’s belt was polished, shining like something hermetical.
‘Which the Abbess has invited ye ta’ dinner,’ Toby said. ‘Master Michael is at his exercises.’
The captain groaned as his weight came on his thighs and hips, and just for a moment he had a flash of what old age might be like.
‘Ta semptress ha gi’in me these linens,’ Toby said. He pointed to a basket. ‘New, clean, an’ pressed. Shirts. Caps. Braes. Two pair black cloth hose.’ Toby pointed at the basket.
The captain ran his hands over a shirt. The stitches were neat, very small, almost perfectly even but not quite, almost a pattern. The seamstress had used an undyed thread on the glorious new white of the linen – so confident in her skills that the very slight contrast was itself a decoration. A very subtle declaration of skill. Subtle, like the power with which she’d imbued the garments.
He picked up the shirt. The power was golden – a bright, white gold, the colour of purity. The Sun.
The shirt didn’t burn him, nor did he expect it to. He’d found that out, years ago.
Toby interrupted his reverie. ‘Wine? Hot cider?’ he asked. He looked at the floor. ‘Cider is good,’ he mumbled.
‘Cider. And I’ll wear these new things, but with my scarlet cote, Toby. Black is for-’ He sighed. ‘Black is for other occasions.’
‘Sorry, my lord.’ Toby blushed.
