Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
‘God be with you,’ The Abbess said quietly, laying her hands on Wilful Murder’s head, and he flinched.
She caught the captain’s eye as the narrow gateway began to clear.
‘Any pursuit?’ he asked Ser George Brewes, the rear file leader – a man ready to be a corporal. One of Jehannes’ cronies, not one of Tom’s. Still waiting in the gate, aware it was open, eyes on the darkness outside.
Brewes shrugged. ‘How would I know?’ he asked. But he relented. ‘I wouldn’t think it.’ He shook his head. ‘We lit ten farms’ worth of the woods, and sent the fire downwind right at their camp.’
‘How many Jacks?’ the captain asked.
‘At least a hundred. Maybe thrice that – there’s no proper counting in the dark, ser.’ Brewes shrugged. ‘M’lord,’ he added, as an afterthought.
A pair of valets and an archer came up and began to winch the main gate shut.
‘Ware!’ shouted a voice from the highest tower, the one over the nuns’ dormitory, and the captain heard the unmistakable sound of a crossbow snapping off a shot.
Something passed over the moon.
Thankfully every man was on the walls and alert, or it might have been worse when the wyvern came down into the courtyard on wings a dozen ells wide, and its claws wreaked ruin among the unarmoured dancers and singers and merry-makers, but before the screams started it sprouted a dozen bolts, and it raised its head and screeched a long cry of anger and pain, and leapt back into the air.
The captain saw Michael, unarmoured, hurdle a pair of corpses and draw his heavy dagger, flinging himself at the wyvern’s back as it lifted into the air. Its tail flicked – and slammed full force into the squire’s hip. Michael screamed in pain and was thrown a horse’s length to the stone.
The Red Knight didn’t waste the time provided by his squire. He was down from the gatehouse, sword in gloved hand, before Michael’s scream had echoed off the stable walls and the chapel.
The wyvern whirled to finish the squire, and Bad Tom stepped between the monster and its prey. The big man had a long, heavy spear in hand, and he attacked, thrusting for the thing’s head. It was fast – but its sinuous neck served the creature as a man’s torso serves a man, and when it flicked its head to avoid the spear, it could neither strike nor rise into the air until it had its balance back.
Bad Tom stepped in closer, shortened his grip on the spear and struck hard, thrusting the spear brutally into the thing’s chest where the neck met its underbelly.
Long shafts began to feather the thing’s wings and abdomen.
It screamed and leaped into the air, wings beating hard, slamming its tail at Tom, but the big man jumped high and cleared the lashing tail by a fraction. But he missed the flicker of a wing in the dark, and the wingtip creased his backplate and slammed him to the ground.
The archers on the walls loosed shaft after shaft. Wilful Murder stood a horse’s length away, drawing shafts from the quiver at his hip and loosing carefully – aiming for any vulnerable part.
The bonfire in the courtyard illuminated their target, and the wickedly forged arrowheads cut into the beast’s hide like chisels through wood as the sparks from the courtyard fires rose like fireflies in the weakening wingbeats.
The captain was behind and above it when it leaped for the air, and he leaped too. He hit its neck and his sword whipped around its throat. His left hand grabbed the sword at the other side and he let himself drop, his sword become a vicious fulcrum, dragging the wyvern’s head down. It lost height and crashed on the steps of the chapel, his sword deep in the soft underside the neck, its jaws unable to reach him, the wyvern injuring itself as its head slammed into the steps again and again in fury and panic.
A lone crossbowman ran along the parapet, leaped down to the courtyard, stumbled, righted himself, and loosed his heavy weapon into the wyvern’s head from a distance of a few feet. The power of the bolt snapped its head back, and the captain rolled to his left, loosed his left hand, and got to his feet, his heavy blade already lashing out for the neck – again, and again, and then, when the head came up, he caught the blade in his left hand again, and slashed down into the creature’s head, his blade sliding down its armoured scales to slice softer flesh. He made ten strokes in as many heart beats, and the head suddenly snapped back, the whole beast rolled like a man and the brave crossbowman died when the mighty claws took him round the waist and tore him in half.
‘There’s another!’ shouted Tom, off to his left.
The tip of the thrashing tail caught his right ankle and ripped his feet from under him, and the captain cursed that he was not in armour.
He hit his head on a chapel step and lost an instant.
The wyvern reared over him.
A woman – the seamstress – appeared out of the darkness on his right, and threw a barrel at the monster – clipped the thing’s head, and it lost its balance, and one of his engineers loosed a scorpion into it.
The power of the scorpion shaft was so great that it took the creature’s neck and punched it
The captain got to his feet and found that he’d kept his sword. His chamois gloves were ruined and his left hand was bleeding where he’d grabbed the blade too high, above the area left dull for such purposes. He’d twisted his ankle, and he had to blink rapidly bring the world, spinning around him, back into focus.
The thing twitched, and he buried his point in the eye he could reach.
The courtyard fire glimmered on the belly of the second wyvern.
Forty archers threw shaft after shaft, so that the fortress seemed to have a new column of sparks rising into the fire-lit monster, and something happened – not suddenly, like the strike of the siege shaft, but gradually the wyvern’s wings tore, holed, it lost lift and screamed in fear as the men below brought it down and it realised there was no escape from the deadly upwards rain of steel. It slipped lower and lower, wings beating more frantically, turned sharply and suddenly one mighty wing failed. It plummeted to the hillside and crashing down with such weight and speed that the captain felt the steps shake under his boots.
‘Sortie!’ the captain shouted. He meant to shout, but it came out as more of a croak . . . although it was understood, and his eight armoured knights had the gate open and were away down the road, led by Sauce.
As the courtyard stilled it showed twenty dead people – dead or terribly maimed. A girl of fifteen or so screamed and screamed, and the woman who had thrown the barrel bent and gathered her into her arms.
A child tried to drag himself by his arms, because he had no legs.
Nuns were suddenly pouring from their dormitory – ten, twenty, fifty women, surrounding the injured and the dead in a storm of grey wool and clean linen, spreading out to access the scale of the dead, injured and traumatised. The captain slumped against a wall, his right leg a torrent of pain, and wished he could just slide into unconsciousness.
She screamed again and again. His eyes flickered to her but only after a long look did he see that most of the left side of her upper torso was
He wished the screaming woman would just die.
A pair of nuns wrapped her tight in a sheet, round and round, and the sheet turned red as fast as they could wrap another layer, and still she screamed, becoming one voice amongst a chorus of anguish that filled the night.
He staggered up and stumbled to Michael, who lay crumpled against the chapel.
The boy was alive.
He looked around for Amicia. She had been standing right there – there, where the woman screamed. But she was gone. He shouted for a sister – for anyone – and four responded. They ran their hands carefully over him before lifting him away from Michael.
Men were shouting now. Even over the screams, their shouts were triumphant, but he ignored them and dragged himself over to Tom.
