The Red Knight

their guild colours. Blue and red predominated, from the furriers, the leading guild of Albinkirk. He might have laughed to think that he, cousin to the Emperor, was commanding a band of common-born crossbowmen. It would have amused him, but . . .

They came at sunset, out of the setting sun.

The fields looked as if they were crawling with insects and then, without a shout or a signal the irks changed direction and were coming up the walls. Ser Alcaeus had never seen anything like it, and it made his skin crawl.

There were daemons among them, a dozen or more, fast, lithe, elegant and deadly. And they simply ran up the walls.

His crossbowmen loosed and loosed into the horde coming at them, and he did his best to walk up and down behind them on the crenellations, murmuring words of encouragement and praising their steadiness. He knew how to command, he’d just never done it before.

The first wave almost took the wall. A daemon came right over and started killing guildsmen. It was nothing but luck that its great sword bounced off a journeyman armourer’s breastplate and the man’s mates got their bolts into the lethal thing. It still took four more men down while it died, but the sight of the dead daemon stiffened the guildsmen’s spines.

They staved off the second wave. The daemons had grown careful and led from the back. Alcaeus tried to get his crossbowmen to snipe at them, but there was never a moment when they could do anything but fight the most present danger.

A guild captain came to him where he was standing, leaning heavily on his pole-axe because he knew enough not to waste energy in armour. The man saluted.

‘M’lord,’ he said. ‘We’re almost out of bolts. Every lad brings twenty.’

Ser Alcaeus blinked. ‘Where do you get more?’

‘I was hoping you would know,’ said the guild officer.

Ser Alcaeus sent a runner, but he already knew the answer.

The third wave got over the walls behind them, they heard it go. The sounds of fighting changed, there was sudden shrieking and his men started to look over their shoulders.

He wished he had his squire – a veteran of fifty battles. But the man had died protecting him in the ambush and so he had no one to ask for advice.

Ser Alcaeus set his jaw and prepared to die well.

He walked along the wall again as the shadows lengthened. His section was about a hundred paces, end to end – Albinkirk was a big town, even to Ser Alcaeus who hailed from the biggest city in the world.

He stopped when he saw three of his men looking back at the town.

‘Eyes front,’ he snapped.

‘A house on fire!’ some idiot said.

More men turned and, just like that, he lost them. They turned, and then there was a daemon on the wall, killing them. It moved like fluid, passing through men, round them, with two axes flashing in its taloned hands – even as Alcaeus watched, one of the daemon’s taloned feet licked out to eviscerate a fifteen-year old who’d had no breastplate.

Alcaeus charged. He felt the fear that it generated – but in Morea knights trained for this very thing, and he knew the fear. He ran through it, blade ready-

It hit him. It was faster by far, and an axe slammed into his arm. He was well-trained and caught much of the blow. His small fortune in plate armour ate the rest, and then he was swinging.

It had to pivot to face him. The twitch of its hips took a heartbeat, and he swung his pole-axe up from the garde of the boar, like a boy swinging a pitchfork at haying, but with twice the speed.

Ser Alcaeus was as shocked as the daemon when his axe caught the other creature’s axe-hand and smashed it. Ichor sprayed and its axe fell. It slashed at him with the left, turned and kicked him with a taloned foot. All four talons bit through his breastplate and knocked him flat, but none reached him through his mail and padded arming cote.

A crossbow struck the daemon. Not a bolt but the bow itself, swung by a terrified guildsman.

The daemon bounded onto the wall, scattering defenders, and jumped.

Alcaeus got to his feet. He still had his pole-axe.

He was proud of himself for two breaths, and then he realised that the town behind him was afire, and there were two more daemons on the wall with him, and irk arrows were suddenly everywhere. Worse, they were coming from the town.

He had a dozen men by him, including the stunned looking man who’d hit the daemon with his crossbow. The rest of his fools were leaving the wall, running for their houses.

He shook his head and cursed. They were surrounded, half his men gone, and it was growing dark rapidly.

He made his decision. ‘Follow me!’ he called, and ran along the wall. He was headed for the castle, which towered over the western end of town by the river gate. It had its own defensive walls.

The whole town was falling. It was the only place to make a stand.

When he paused to breathe, Albinkirk was afire from south to north, and a sea of Wild creatures were running through the streets. He knew the difference between the irks – elfin and gnarled and satanic in the firelight – and the boglins, with their leather midsections and their oddlyjointed arms. He’d studied pictures. He’d trained for this, but it was like a nightmare. He was running again with the half dozen of his crossbowmen who stuck with him. The rest ran off into the town despite his admonitions. One died at their feet, ripped to pieces by boglins and consumed by something worse.

He could see the river, and the castle, but the next section of wall was crowded with enemies. The streets below were worse.

But at the edge of the firelight, he could see a company of soldiers with spears still holding one street, a crowd of panicked refugees behind them pressing on the castle gates.

Unbeckoned, a thought whispered into his head.

Time to earn your spurs.

‘Let me go first,’ he said to his crossbowmen. ‘I will charge. You will follow me and kill anything that gets past me. You understand?’

He longed, just for a second, for wine and his lyre, and for the feeling of a woman’s breast under his hand.

He raised his pole-axe.

‘Kyrie Eleison!’ he sang, and charged.

There were perhaps sixty boglins on the wall. It was too dark to count, and he wasn’t that interested.

He smashed into them, taking them by surprise. The first one died, and after that nothing went right. His pole- axe fouled in the boglin; his blow had caught the thing in an armpit, and it fell off the wall taking his precious weapon with it.

He was instantly surrounded.

He got a dagger unsheathed with a practised flick - because a bastard cousin of the Emperor does not survive long at court without being able to use a dagger expertly, in or out of armour – and then they piled on him and he was all but buried standing up.

His right arm began stabbing largely of its own accord.

A tremendous blow knocked him forward, and he stumbled a few steps smashing pieces of boglin beneath his feet – suddenly panicked that he would fall off the wall. Panic powered his limbs, he spun and felt his steel-clad back slam into the crenellations. Suddenly his arms were free, and the thing trying to open his visor was the top priority, and then it was gone too and he was clear.

His right arm was slick with green-brown blood. He took up the low guard – All Gates are Iron – with his dagger back over his right hip, left fist by his left hip, looking over his left shoulder.

A boglin threw a spear at him.

He blocked it with his left hand, and stumbled forward into them. His breath was coming in great bursts, but his brain was clear, and he rammed the point of his heavy dagger into the first one, right through its head, and ripped it out again. His armoured fist snapped out in a punch and smashed the noseless face of a second.

The next two boglins were folded over their midriffs, shot with bolts. He stepped past them, his dagger