switching hands with a dexterity his uncle’s master of arms would have approved of, he was drawing his sword right-handed as he advanced.
The boglins began to back away.
He charged them.
They had their own gallantry. One creature gave its life to trip him, and died on his dagger as he fell. He rolled on a shoulder, but then there was nothing under his feet-
He hit a tiled roof, slid, hit a stone lintel with his armoured shoulder, flipped . . .
And landed in the street, on his feet. He still had both sword and dagger and took the time to thank God for it.
Above him, on the wall, the boglins were staring at him. ‘Follow me!’ he shouted to his men. He hadn’t meant to come down to the street – but from here he could see irks coming along the wall from behind his archers.
Two made the jump. The rest froze, and died where they stood.
The three of them ran for the castle, which was lit up as if it was a royal palace ready for a great event. Albinkirk was ablaze, and the streets were carpeted with dead citizens and their servants and slaves.
It was a massacre.
He ran as well as he could in sabatons. His two surviving archers ran at his heels, and they killed the only two enemies they found, and then they were in the open street in front of the castle’s main gate.
The spearmen were still holding the street.
The gate was still shut.
And the three of them were on the wrong side of the fighting.
He flipped up his visor. He no longer cared that he might die; he had to breathe. He stood there for as long as it took for his breathing to slow – bent double, he was easy meat for any boglin or irk who wanted him.
‘Messire!’ shouted the panicked crossbowmen.
He ignored them.
It seemed like eternity, but he got his head back up after he vomited on the cobbles. There was a half-eaten young boy at his feet, his body cast aside after his legs had been gnawed to the bone.
Across the square, the spearmen were barely holding. There were fifteen of them, or perhaps fewer, and they were holding back a hundred irks and boglins. The Wild creatures weren’t particularly enthusiastic – they wanted to loot, not fight. But they kept pressing in.
Alcaeus pointed across the small square. ‘I’m going into that,’ he said to the crossbowmen. ‘I intend to cut my way through to the spearmen. Die here or die with me – it’s all one to me.’ He looked at the two scared boys. ‘What are your names?’ he asked.
‘James,’ said the thin one.
‘Mat,’ said the better accoutered one. He had a breastplate.
‘Span, then. And let’s do this thing,’ he said.
He knew that he didn’t want to do it – and he knew that if he didn’t make himself go then he’d die right here, probably still trying to catch his breath.
‘Holy Saint Maurice, stand with me and these two young men,’ he said. And then, to the boys, ‘Walk right behind me. When I say to loose, kill the creatures closest to me.’ He began to walk around the edge of the square.
Off to the right a pack of irks were fighting over bales of furs. He ignored them.
A daemon loped into an alley, chasing a screaming, naked man, and he ignored it, too. He kept walking, hoarding his strength, sabatons making a grim metallic sound on the bloody stones.
He didn’t look back. He just kept going, under a tree hanging over a house wall, and then along a stone bench on which, in happier days, drunks had no doubt passed out.
When he was ten paces from the back of the enemy mob, he shrugged. He wanted to pray, but nothing came to his mind but the sight of a beautiful courtesan in Thrake.
‘Loose,’ he said.
Two bolts snapped into the mass of Wild flesh, and he followed them in, his sword and dagger flashing.
The lowest caste of boglins had no armour, but just their soft leather carapaces, and he cut them open, slammed them to earth, and crushed them with his fists. One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He had no more to give-
– but he struck blindly, and something caught his dagger hand and threw him to the ground.
He rolled to his feet, because he was a knight, as an irk – one of the deadly ones – slammed a spear into his midriff. He went backwards and suddenly there were men all around him-
He was in among the spearmen. It put power into his limbs, and he got up again, his sword rising and falling.
He could see the thin crossbowman, James, still standing. The boy had flattened some of the things with his crossbow, and now had his side sword in his hand.
The creatures, panicked by even this very small attack from their rear, were flinching away from them both.
Ser Alcaeus gathered himself. One more time.
He tottered forward, and swung – one.
Two.
Three times. In those swings two boglins went down. The big irk flinched, turned, and hopped back.
The two hellish things feeding on the older boy died on James’ sword, and then abruptly the square cleared.
Behind them huddled two hundred shocked survivors.
The men on the castle walls finally opened the gate. Or perhaps were ordered to, now it was safer, and people flooded through, utterly panicked. More died, trampled by others, than at the Wild’s hands – the crush of women panicked beyond the capacity for anything but herd animal flight.
The spearmen backed up after them, step by step.
Step.
By.
Step.
In the shadowed streets beyond the square a pair of daemons rallied their own panicked forces, and added irk archers – good ones. Using the light of the burning town, the irks began to loose long shots across the square. Their elfin bows were light but deadly.
Ser Alcaeus couldn’t cover them all. He was almost immune to their hits but the shafts hurt when they struck his helmet or his greaves, and he was already beyond normal pain, beyond normal fatigue. He looked to the right and left and found that he had reached the gate. The guards were trying to close it; he was trying to back in. But the crush of injured men and trampled corpses underfoot was jamming them open as the enemy made their charge.
He was able to get his sword arm up in time; he managed to cover himself against a daemon’s heavy sword, and then old Ser John was there. He had a mace. It had a five-foot handle.
He used it well.
He stepped out past Ser Alcaeus, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if eager for the contest, and his mace moved like a piston. The daemons flinched back from his strike. A boglin died. Another daemon took a blow in the torso and staggered and the mace hit its foot, shattering the bone. It screamed as it went down.
It wasn’t glorious work but Alcaeus bent and grabbed the corpse of a trampled woman and threw it out into the darkness.
The gate moved.
He got his hands under a dead boglin’s skull and threw the corpse into its fellows.
The gate moved another hand’s breath.
