The Red Knight

and the captain restored order and none were injured. The priest, Henry, was taken into custody. The Enemy’s engines pounded the Bridge Castle, but the enemy was hesitant and careful in their movements, and we saw a large force crossing the river to the west. We had heavy rain in the afternoon, and at nightfall the captain (crossed out) the people celebrated the Feast of Saint George. After dark a party of Knights of St Thomas entered and told us we were to be relieved by the king.

It was a lovely late-spring morning. There was a low fog, and Master Random looked out at it for a moment, enjoying his small beer. He waved to Gelfred, who was fussing with his falcons, and found young Adrian to get armed.

While he was still getting his arm harnesses on, the alarm sounded.

Before the bell had stopped ringing, he was on the curtain wall of the Bridge Castle with the master huntsman. The bridge was still down, and although the bridge gates were closed and heavily barred, it was still the hope of every merchant in the lower fortress that more survivors would stumble in from the Wild – despite all evidence to the contrary.

Gelfred had a trio of big hawks with him, and from time to time he flew one away into the morning light. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist – mostly he spoke to the hawks, murmuring to them in much the same language that Random’s daughters spoke to their dolls.

Two archers assisted him.

Random watched the open ground out to the line of trees. Plenty of movement this morning – boglins crawling through the deep grass. They continued to believe that they were invisible in the grass, and Random, for one, hoped they continued to believe it.

He motioned to one of the small boys who had survived the caravans. ‘Tell Ser Milus that there is a boglin attack coming on the curtain wall,’ he said. And was proud that his voice remained steady and professional. He refused to let his mind dwell on how he had seen a line of boglin take his men apart.

The boy ran along the wall.

The bell rang again. The new company formed. It was a hodge-podge of men; a dozen goldsmiths with crossbows, with a dozen spearmen, all farmers sons or young merchants in borrowed armour; but the front rank was all men-at-arms, and Ser Milus led them in person.

When they were well-formed and he’d inspected their armour, he led them up the ladders onto the curtain wall.

‘Good morning, Master Random,’ he said, as he got to the top of his ladder.

‘Good morning, Ser Milus,’ Random answered. ‘Nice of them to announce themselves.’

‘I’ve doubled the watch in the towers,’ Ser Milus said. ‘Look sharp!’ he said, loud and clear, and the men on the wall stopped their conversations and looked through the crenellations. ‘You – Lusty Luke, or whatever you name is. Where’s your gorget? Get it fastened.’

Out in the deep grass, irks and boglins began to loose arrows.

One, lucky or perfectly aimed, struck one of the third rank spearmen and killed him instantly, and he fell bonelessly from the wall into the courtyard behind them.

The other farmer-spearmen shuffled nervously.

‘And did he have his gorget properly fastened?’ Ser Milus roared. ‘And did I just speak to him about it?’ he bellowed.

Gelfred finished lashing his birds to their perches and putting on their jesses and hoods. He went into the north tower followed by his two archers. His calm, unhurried movements contrasted with the spearmen.

Their shuffling stopped.

The boglins made their run at the wall. There were enough of them that they covered the ground – it was like a charge by a nest of ants. The grass seemed to come alive, and there they were – hundreds of them, scurrying to the wall, the elfin irks bounding ahead in great leaps.

Like most fortress walls at the edge of the Wild, this one had a slope at the base and then rose sheer for the last few metres. The design had an immediate function beyond stability – as Random had seen in the last four attacks. Boglins misjudged the wall because of the initial slope and attempted to run straight up it – over and over. Apparently, they couldn’t help themselves, and they ran at the wall, harder and harder, and very few ever made it to the top.

Random had come to believe that this, too, was by design, as the success of a few egged the rest on to continue their mostly-fruitless runs.

The men-at-arms with pole-axes and heavy swords began the slaughter of the soft-bodied things.

The crossbowmen cleared any that managed to alight on the crenellations, their heavy bolts plucking the creatures off the wall to a body-crushing fall.

The spearmen were there to catch any who got through the defence.

Random appointed himself to the third rank. He was much better armoured than the farm kids, and yet – he was more one of them than he was a knight. Or a man-at-arms.

The fight went very well for two long minutes. The armoured professionals massacred the boglins, and the crossbowmen covered their backs, and one big, fast boglin who knocked Ser Stefan to the ground got a farmer’s spear between his limbs and writhed – literally like a bug pinned to paper – until a half-dozen axes finished it. Ser Stefan got back to his feet, unharmed.

Random was unengaged – almost bored, despite the tide of monsters lapping at the wall. But his boredom saved them, because he was the one who heard the screams of the sentries in the north tower.

Random whirled and saw boglins on the tower top.

He turned and went into the tower through the open curtain wall door, drawing his heavy sword as he ran. He had a buckler on his hip and he got that into his left hand.

‘Boglins on the tower!’ he shouted at a huddle of men – Gelfred and his huntsmen.

Then he ran up the ladder to the tower top.

‘Ring the alarm,’ shouted Gelfred – a better response than Random’s one-man fire brigade.

Random threw back the roof-trap and immediately received a blow to his head. It fell on his bassinet and glanced away and he was up another step, buckler over his head – two fast blows to the small shield, and he was atop the ladder and cutting low with his sword, and he felt it cut into the firewood-hard flesh of a boglin’s leg and then he pushed with his legs and got clear of the trap door.

A blow to his back plate.

Random punched with his buckler, the steel rim cracking a boglin’s head with the same feeling of a lobster’s shell giving under a hard blow, and then he pivoted on his hips – a new move, learned from Ser Milus – and cut with his sword – one, two. The second blow was wasted – his first went home, splitting a head, and the back cut plucked the head off the body and blood spewed from the thing.

But they were all around him, stabbing with spears. One spear skidded across his back plate and went in under his buckler arm, stopped only by his chain voiders, and another spear-blow hit the side of his head hard enough to make him see stars. He stumbled forward and tangled with yet another of the things, who tried to pin him by wrapping all four limbs around his legs, but he put the pommel of his sword into the centre of the boglin’s face and – it’s nose seemed to open into a horrible parody of a gullet, lined in spikes – it shrieked in pain, and all four limbs began to scrabble at a tremendous rate.

Random swept his buckler in a desperate arc, let go his sword, and whipped his dagger from his belt. He rammed it into the leathery parts of the boglin’s six-segmented chest, stabbing more times than he cared to count, and the thing almost literally fell to pieces under his hands.

Then he saw a flash of dark green, and Gelfred was there, swinging a short-hafted boar spear with practised efficiency – cut, thrust, cut, thrust, like a weapon’s master demonstrating for a class.

And then they were done.

Random was covered in blood – but he felt like a god.

He leaned over the wall to call down to Ser Milus and saw that the courtyard was full of boglins.

White boglins. In armour. Wights.

‘Gelfred!’ he screamed.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight