His lance shaft snapped.
The creature’s legs spasmed and its talons tore into his horse’s forequarters, raking flesh and tendon from bone, flaying the poor animal while it screamed. The captain flew back over its rump on force of the impact, with no brace against his back from a tilting saddle. The horse reared and the talons eviscerated it, its guts spilling onto the road in a great gout.
The daemon got its feet on the ground and its forearms shredded the last of his web of power-
It turned from the ruin of his horse and he saw the damage he’d done, the angry orange of its remaining eye – no slit, no pupil. Nothing but fire. It
The terror of its presence pounded him like a hammer of spirit – for a moment, the terror was so pure in him that he had no self. He was only fear.
It came for him then, rising up fast on its haunches – and, like a puppet with the strings cut, it collapsed atop the corpse of his riding horse.
He gagged, clamped down on the vomit, failed, and heaved everything in his stomach down the front of his jupon. When he was done he was sobbing in the backwash of the terror.
As soon as he had any control over himself, he said ‘Ware! There’s another!’
Gelfred approached him slowly, holding a cup in one hand and a cocked and loaded crossbow balanced carefully on his arms.
‘It’s been a long time.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve prayed the whole rosary, waiting for you to recover.’ He was shaking. ‘I don’t think the other one is coming.’
The captain spat out the taste of vomit. ‘Good’ he said. He wanted to say something witty. Nothing came. ‘Good.’ He took the cup. ‘How – long did I kneel here?’
‘Too long,’ Gelfred said. ‘We need to ride.’
The captain’s hands shook so hard he spilled the wine.
Gelfred put his arms around him.
The captain stood in that unwanted embrace and shook. Then he washed in the creek. He felt violated. And different. He was suddenly afraid of everything. He didn’t feel at all like a man who had faced a daemon, the greatest adversary to the rule of man, in single combat, and the adoration in Gelfred’s eyes made him sick.
Gelfred cut the head from the daemon.
He threw up again, a stream of bile, and wondered if he could ever face a creature of the Wild again. His bones felt like jelly. There was something in the pit of his gut – something that had gone.
He knew exactly what this felt like: like being beaten by his brothers. Beaten and humiliated. He knew that feeling well. They’d been younger than him. They’d hated him. He’d made their lives a misery, when he learned that-
He spat.
Some things are best left unexamined. He held the line at that memory, and felt his fear recede a little, like the first sign the tide is in ebb.
It would pass, then.
Gelfred couldn’t get the horse to bear the head. The captain didn’t have enough concentration to conjure anything to help them with it. So they tied a rope to the head and dragged it.
It would be a long walk back to camp. And after an hour, something behind them began to howl, and the captain felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
Lissen Carak – Mogan
Mogan watched her cousin’s killer as he mounted slowly and rode up the road.
Mogan was a hunter, not a berserker. Her cousin’s death terrified her, and until she had understood it she was not going down to face the men on the road. Instead, she edged cautiously from rock to rock, keeping well out of their line of sight, and she watched them with her superb eyes, made for spotting the movement of prey a mile across the plains to the west.
When they were well clear of the scene of the fight, she trotted down the ridge.
Tunxis lay in a pitiful heap, his once mighty frame hunched and flattened by death, and there were already birds on the corpse.
It was horrendous. Mogan threw back her head and howled her rage and sorrow.
After her third howl, her brother came. He had four hunters with him, all armed with heavy war-axes or swords.
Thurkan looked at his nest-mate’s corpse and shook his great head. ‘Barbarians,’ he spat.
Mogan rubbed her shoulder against his. ‘One man killed him. I chose not to try him. He killed our cousin so easily.’
Thurkan nodded. ‘Some of their warriors are terrifying, little sister. And you had no weapon to open his armour.’
‘He had no armour,’ Mogan said. ‘But he had Power. Our Power.’
Thurkan paused, sniffing the air. Then he walked to the edge of the stream, and back, several times, while his nestmates stood perfectly still.
‘Powerful,’ Thurkan said. He paused and licked his shoulder where a mosquito had penetrated his armoured flesh. Insects. How he hated them. He batted helplessly with a taloned forefoot at the cloud that was gathering around his head. Then he bent over his cousin’s form, raised his talons, and turned his cousin’s corpse to ash in a flash of emerald light.
Later, as they ran through the forest, Thurkan mused to his sister. ‘This is not as Thorn thinks it to be,’ he said.
Mogan raised her talons to indicate her complete lack of interest in Thorn. ‘You seek to dominate him, and he seeks to dominate you, but as he is not of our kind your efforts are wasted,’ she said scathingly.
Thurkan took a hundred running steps before he answered. ‘I don’t think so, little sister. I think he is the rising power of the Wild, and we must cleave to him. For now. But in this matter he is blind. This fortress. The Rock. Here we are, masters of the woods from the mountains to the river – and he would have us leave our winnings to assault this one place. And now the Rock has a defender – one who is also a power of the Wild.’ Thurkan ran on. ‘I think Thorn is making an error.’
‘You seek his throat, and his power,’ Mogan said. ‘And it is we who wish to return to the Rock.’
‘Not if the cost is too high. I am not Tunxis.’ Thurkan leapt a log.
‘How can the Rock have a defender who is one of us? And we not know him?’ Mogan asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Thurkan admitted. ‘But I will find out.’
Chapter Four
South of Lorica – Ser Gawin
Gawin Murien of Strathnith, known to his peers as Hard Hands, rode north along the Albin River in his armour, a knight bent upon errantry. And the further north he rode, the deeper his anger grew. Adam, the elder of his two squires, whistled, bowed from his saddle to every passing woman, and looked at the world with whole-hearted approval.
