The Red Knight

‘It’s what I’d do. Bleed us with the easily replaced critters and save the others. He needs them to fight the king. This was all just to fix us in place.’

‘We can hold until the king comes,’ the Prior said. He was pulling his sodden arming cap off his head and paused to slap a mosquito.

‘Despite wyverns and daemons? I hope so,’ said the captain. He got to his feet. ‘Michael – tell the valets to serve beer and maple sugar.’ He smiled at the Prior. ‘It’s going to be a long night.’ He looked around. ‘Gelfred?’

‘My lord?’ Gelfred said.

‘I need you to do something insanely brave,’ he said.

Gelfred shrugged.

‘Can you get a message to the king?’ the captain asked.

‘In the dark? Through a host of enemies?’ Gelfred smiled. ‘I can with God’s help. And by my faith, messire, if you make a crack about God not caring, you can take your cursed message yourself.’

The captain got to his feet and gave the huntsman his hand. ‘I am rebuked, Gelfred.’

Gelfred shrugged. ‘Join me in prayer,’ he said.

‘Let’s not get carried away,’ the captain replied.

Gelfred laughed. ‘Why do I like you so much?’ he asked.

The captain shrugged. ‘The feeling is mutual.’

Half an hour later, Gelfred went straight into the river from the docks. He swam for fifteen minutes in the dark, and then went with the current for a while to rest. He heard, or felt, a wyvern in the dark air overhead, and he went under the water and stayed down as long as he could. When he surfaced, his heart was beating so fast that he had to head for shore.

‘There goes the bravest man in all my company,’ the Red Knight said to the Prior.

‘Because he faces his fears?’ the Prior asked. ‘He has God’s aid.’

The captain shook his head but said nothing. Only watched the darkness, and wished he was in the castle. He touched the soiled handkerchief pinned to his arming cote. It was no longer white, indeed, it held the blood and ichor of several foes, and it was cut almost in two.

Lissen Carak – Amicia

Amicia tried not to go to the gate. She tried not to look out the window. When a party of men-at-arms clattered in on exhausted horses, she forced herself to wait until the wounded came in.

Ser Tancred told her that the Red Knight was spending the night in the Bridge Castle.

When the last wounded were healed, she knelt in the chapel by the Abbess’s bier and prayed. She opened herself, as the nuns had taught her, to God. And she made God a hard, heartfelt promise.

Somewhere – Gelfred

He was tired and cold and very, very scared when he heard the sound of men’s voices on the other bank, and he struck out for them. He swam quietly, as well as he could.

They had boats.

After some time, he swam to the boats, and a sentry saw him.

‘Halt! Alarm! Man in the water!’ A crossbow loosed, and the bolt passed somewhere near him.

‘Friend!’ he spluttered. He was short of breath. ‘From the fortress!’

They were too alert, but they weren’t great marksmen. He swam in, shouting that he was a friend. Eventually, they stopped loosing their bolts at him, and strong arms pulled him into a big barge.

‘Take me to the king!’ he said.

A big man with a hillman’s accent pulled him over the side and put him on a bench. ‘Drink this, laddy,’ he said. ‘You’ve found the Queen, not the king.’

Chapter Sixteen

Ser Jehannes

Lissen Carak – Michael

Michael watched the captain sleep. It was dawn, or near enough, and he cursed that he was awake. He rose, pissed in a pot, drank half a glass of stale wine and spat it out into the courtyard.

The place stank like a charnel house, and most of the soldiers had slept in rows in the tower. In their harness.

He walked to the table, opened his wallet, and took out a pair of wax tablets, withdrew his stylus, and wrote:

The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Fifteen

Yesterday the enemy tried to storm Bridge Castle and, despite putting monsters inside, was repelled. We lost more than forty men, women, and children of the convoys, and three men-at-arms and two archers, as well as four men of the militia. These are our worst losses so far.

But the king is coming. Knights of the Holy Order of Saint Thomas came at nightfall on the thirteenth day to tell us we were saved. And yet we fought all day and the king did not come.

Where is the king?

Michael looked at the last line. He took the butt of the stylus to rub that line out. Then he shook his head, and went to wake the captain.

Near Lissen Carak – The King

The sun was an arc of fire in the east.

The king’s magnificent golden armour and brilliant red and blue heraldry caught the first rays of the sun so that he seemed to catch fire.

Behind him stood three hundred of the most heavily armoured knights Alba had ever seen, their heavy horses left in camp.

The golden helmet moved to the right and left, examining the dressing of the long line of chivalric warriors that vanished into the woods on either flank, each with his heavily armoured squire at his back.

His golden gauntlet was raised high, and fell, and the line of the vanguard advanced along the line of the old Bridge Road. The three hundred knights were each a man’s height apart, their line was a half-mile long, and the men at either end had hunter’s horns – noted horns, which they played back and forth like huntsmen.

The figure of the king seemed to dance forward joyfully.

He pressed through the woods, and the woods parted before him. There is nothing in the woods that can impede a man in full harness – no branch, no trailing vine, no bank of thickset canes, no matter how thorny, will stop a man in armour. Or slow him.

The line ground forward at a walking pace.

Half a mile.

A mile.

He raised his hand and his own horn bearer played a long note and the line stopped.

Men-at-arms raised their visors and drank water, but the morning was still early and it was cool in the dark woods.

Men pulled the branches out of their knee-armour, out of their elbow cops, out of the joints in their faulds.