The Red Knight

Nor did he think, If we win today, we’re saved.

He didn’t think that, because he didn’t really think much beyond his next stratagem, and he was now pretty much out of tricks.

All of this went through his head between one leap of his new mount and the next.

He hurt.

They all did.

And then the sortie was down onto the plain, and forming their wedge.

Random was more tired than he had ever been, and had he not been wearing first-rate armour, he’d long since have been dead. As it was, blows slammed into him more and more often as the monsters in the courtyard crawled over their own dead to reach him.

Twice, shouts behind him told him that more of the cursed things had made it onto the tower or the wall – apparently using their vestigial wings, or perhaps they were a new and horrible breed – but the spearmen at his back held their ground.

Twice he had a respite from the attacks on the door, but he had no idea why the white things stopped coming. He would pant, someone would hand him water, and then they’d come again. The white boglins were bad. The big irks were worse.

A farmer tried to help him in the doorway – braver or stupider than the rest – and died almost as soon as he took his place, while one of his mates begged him not to go.

‘Ye have no armour!’ a bigger, Harndon accented man called.

He didn’t have armour on his arms and legs, and the wicked scythes on their limbs sliced him to pieces, dragged him down and carved him up. And they ate him – even the dying ones took a bite.

Random couldn’t lift the buckler high any more. He knew it was just a matter of time before he was struck in the visor or the groin – only luck and the efforts of the spearmen kept him at it.

More irks came. They took their time coming over the low mound of dead, and they all came at him together. A shield caught his outstretched arm – the vambrace held the blow, but he was unbalanced, and the boglins dragged him to his knees – a blow struck the back of his helmet and he was down.

He could feel a sharp pain across his instep – something was hacking at his armoured shin – and then, to his horror, he began to be dragged out of the doorway, into the pile of corpses.

He couldn’t help it. He screamed.

And then he wasn’t being dragged, and a heavy weight crushed him. Only the strength of his breastplate and his backplate and their hinges kept the crushing weight from taking the breath out of him.

There was a sharper pain in his right foot.

He tried to call out, and suddenly his helmet was full of liquid – he spat. It was hell – dark – bitter. He choked and spat and realised that he was drowning.

In boglin blood.

He tried to scream.

More pain.

Christ, I am being eaten alive.

Christ, save me in my hour of need.

The Wild – Peter

Nita Qwan loped through the woods. The circle of the sun was high overhead. It was a poor time to set a trap, and he wanted to wait for night, but it was late spring, and darkness – true darkness – was still a long way away.

A brilliant emerald flash lit the sky to the south. A titanic concussion rocked the earth.

Ota Qwan grinned. ‘Our signal. He is mighty, our chief. Let’s go! Gots onah!’ The acting war chief ran ahead of the band, and they began to sprint over the grass, angling east, and the summer light threw shadows under them.

They had almost a mile to go. Nita Qwan was a strong man, and had lived with the Sossag for weeks, but running a mile to fight was the most exhausting work – especially after a morning of food gathering and cooking. He put his head down and tried to seal off his mind from his thighs and his lungs, and he ran.

It took many long minutes to run all the way to the east of the great ridge, but finally, Ota Qwan raised a hand. ‘Down!’ he called, and the People fell to the earth in the tall grass. He turned to Skahas Gaho and another warrior and sent them off farther to the east, and then he lay down by Nita Qwan.

‘Not long now,’ he said. ‘We are in the right place. Now we see if Thorn knows what he is doing.’

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn watched the action develop from the utter safety of the western edge of the woods. He was not strong enough to risk himself today – because he’d thrown too much in a single casting. It rankled. But he had thousands of servants to aid him, and today he was spending them like water, his usual caution forgotten.

Many of his servants would have been disturbed to note that he had already decided to use them all, if he had to. He knew where more creatures of the Wild could be raised. He himself was irreplaceable.

And she was dead.

He had made mistakes, but the end game was going to play out with the inevitability of one of those ancient plays he had once so enjoyed, and now could no longer remember.

The king would come, and be defeated. That trap was already laid.

And then it would all be his.

Albinkirk – de Vrailly

He could no longer set his tent away from the army. Tonight, the army was camped hard by a small stream that ran down to the Cohocton; the carcass of a great beast of the Wild lay in sodden and hideous majesty, the bones picked redly clean in mid-stream. A litter of corpses and the screams and quarrels of the animals that fed on the recent dead marked the scene of a recent battle.

The king ordered the wagons pulled in, trace to axle tree, a fortress of tall, wheeled carts chained at the hubs, and even de Vrailly couldn’t fault him for his caution. They were in the very midst of the Wild, and the enemy was palpable, all around them. Many of the footsoldiers and not a few of the knights were afraid – scared, or even terrified. De Vrailly could hear their womanish laughter in the firelit dark, but he himself knew nothing but a fierce joy that at last – at last – he would be tested, and found worthy. The much-discussed fortress of Lissen Carak was three leagues away to the north, the Queen’s flotilla was, by all reports, already lying in mid-stream, ready to support their attack in the morning. Even the cautious old women of the king’s council were forced to admit that there would be a battle.

He was kneeling before his prie-dieu when the angel came. He came with a small thunderclap and a burst of myrrh.

De Vrailly cried out.

The angel hovered, and then sank to the earth, his great spear touching the cross-beam of the great tent.

‘My lord de Vrailly,’ the angel said. ‘The greatest knight in the world.’

‘You mock me,’ de Vrailly said.

‘Tomorrow will see you acknowledged as such by every man,’ said the angel.

Jean de Vrailly was struggling with his doubt. He felt as a man does who knows he should not mention a certain fact to his wife, but does so, anyway – precipitating an avoidable argument. ‘You said we would fight a battle,’ he said, hating the whine of doubt in his voice. ‘At Albinkirk.’

The angel nodded. ‘I am not God,’ he said. ‘I am merely a servant. The battle will be here. It should have been at Albinkirk, but forces – circumstances – forced my hand.’

The angel’s hesitation froze de Vrailly.

‘What forces, my lord?’ asked Jean de Vrailly.

‘Mind your own role, and leave me to mine,’ said the angel. His voice sounded like a whip-crack. Like de Vrailly’s