Thorn stood at the edge of the burned fields, watching his massive assault leap towards the hated enemy; seeing the fruition of his revenge on the king and his useless nobles, watching as his boglins finally seized the empty Lower Town and boiled through its streets.
And all he could think was –
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The captain led his men in single file across the boards laid across the burned, vitrified trench. As he crossed, two farm boys with halberds waved. They gave a cheer.
Why not? They weren’t riding into a horde of boglins.
He laughed. Turned to find Jacques behind him, Carlus the armourer with his trumpet on his hip, and Michael carrying his banner.
‘Form your front,’ he called.
The line of boglins was about six hundred paces distant.
He looked back at Bridge Castle, hoping to see the king.
He looked across the river, but the main battle was just straggling down the ridge. Two thousand knights.
The king was just a little late.
He could see a handful of knights crossing the bridge. The banner was from Galle, and not one he knew.
He looked back.
His men-at-arms, with the addition of all the military orders knights, formed in two ranks, and took up two hundred yards of front – leaving as much again on either flank.
Empty air.
He was the centre man in the line.
The boglin line was four hundred paces away, give or take.
‘Advance! Walk!’ he called, and Carlus repeated it by trumpet.
‘Remember this, boys!’ Bad Tom called from his place in the ranks.
The big horses made the earth shake, even at a walk. Their tack rattled and clinked, and the sound of their riders’ armour added to it. The sound of a company of knights.
Two hundred and fifty paces.
‘Trot!’
Even a hundred and fifty armoured men on destriers make the ground rumble like an earthquake.
One last time, the enemy had underestimated them. They had more than a dozen of the great trolls, belling and ranting several hundred paces to the rear of the infantry line. They were coming on now – coming quickly. But like the king, they were going to be much too late for the moment of impact.
The captain had a feeling, though, that the trolls were not at their best in the open, and that they wouldn’t be particularly manoeuvrable. Or was that his own hubris?
But that was all passing away. Strategy and tactics were over, now.
He turned his head at the cost of some pain, and saw the Gallish knights pushing along the trench. The Lorican crossbowmen were moving too – Ser Milus was visible, roaring orders at them.
There would be no gap in their line when the Enemy struck.
The two lines were approaching each other at the combined speed of a galloping horse. The boglins were not going to flinch but they were spread out over the ground, all cohesion lost, like a swarm of insects pouring over the ground.
‘Charge,’ he shouted. Carlus and Jacques might not have heard him over the drumming hooves, but he swept his lance down to point at his first target – locked it into the hook-shaped rest under his arm, and Jacques sounded the charge.
The captain leaned forward into his lance.
For a few glorious heartbeats, it was the way he had imagined, when he was a small boy dreaming of glory.
He was the wind, and the roar of the hooves, and the tip of the spear.
The slight bodies of the boglins were like straw dolls set in a field, and the lances ripped through them so smoothly that creatures died without dragging the lances down, and the stronger men were able to engage three, four even five of the creatures before their lances broke, or their points touched the ground, dug in and shattered or had to be dropped.
The horses were spread widely enough to allow horse and rider to thread the enemy line, to take advantage of spaces between boglins, to weave their path.
For a few deadly heartbeats, the knights destroyed the boglins, and there was nothing the boglins could do to retaliate.
But like mud clogging a harrow, the very density and sheer numbers of the boglins began to slow the knights’ charge and even their heavy horses had to shy – or simply could no longer trust their hooves to ground that was so thickly littered with boglins. The charge slowed, and slowed.
And then the boglins began to fight back.
Lissen Carak – Father Henry
Father Henry paused at the base of the steps to gather his courage. His hate. He was deep underground, and his candle was guttering, and he had no idea how far it was to the outside. And he
And, of course, it wasn’t much farther than walking down the castle road, outside.
He finally found a pair of double doors, as high as two men, and as wide as a church. He expected them to be locked with all the power of Hell. But the sigils lay cold and empty. He reached for the two great handles. There was a key between them.
Lissen Carak – The King
The king had his queen on a litter between four horses, and he and his household knights got out the main Bridge Castle gate even as the garrison shot bolt after bolt over their heads into the oncoming line of creatures.
Even as he watched he saw the Prior and the sell-sword knight lead their men-at-arms over a pair of narrow wooden bridges and onto the plain.
He looked to the right and left, trying to imagine why they were charging the enemy.
But it was
The knights took their time, formed up neatly, and the endless horde of enemies ran at them silently – perhaps the most horrible aspect of the boglin was its silence. He could hear the mercenary captain calling orders, and his trumpeter repeated them.
‘Ready,’ Ser Alan said.
The king gestured across the front of the trench. ‘Since our friends have been kind enough to clear us a path,’ he said, and touched his spurs to his mount.
As he rode, he watched the charge go home.
It was superb, and he was annoyed that he wasn’t a part of it. He leaned back to Ser Alan. ‘As soon as we have the Queen to the fortress, we will join them,’ he said, pointing to charge which was cutting through the enemy like an irresistible scythe.
Ser Ricar shook his head. ‘My lord,’ he protested. ‘We have only sixty knights.’
The king watched the charge even as his household trotted across the front of the trench. ‘He hasn’t much more than that.’
‘But you are the
The king began to feel the onset of the indecision that infected him on every battlefield. A lifetime of training in
