The Red Knight (84 page)

The ballista on the north tower loosed.

Whack.

The war engines on the towers of the Bridge Castle loosed.

Crack!

Crack!

High above them, Harmodius leaned out over the wall, hand in hand with the Abbess like lovers, and spread his fingers.

‘Fiat lux,’ he said.

The Lower Town seemed to explode as a hail of fire fell, a hand of fate that struck buildings flat.

The daemons were silhouetted in fire. At the back of their company, daemons turned to see what had happened.

The captain had to fight the vainglorious urge to charge them. He backed another step.

The two things came at them, and their fear . . .

Wasn’t as strong as it had been. Somewhere deep inside, or perhaps above, the fight, the captain had time to smile at the irony. He had lived his entire childhood in fear. He was afraid of
so many things.

Familiarity breeds contempt. He was
used
to acting while he was afraid.

The terror projected by the daemons wasn’t having any effect on him.

Despite which, it was all he could do to stand his ground, because they remained big, fast and dangerous.

Jehannes had a pole-axe. He cut two handed into a blade attack, and his axe-hammer broke the daemon’s sword arm. It stumbled back, and he got his haft between the other’s legs, and
as it stumbled, the captain had all the time he needed to step forward and cut overhand from the garde of the long tail, the sword flashing up, powered by his hips, his arms, his shoulders as he
levelled the blow, right to left.

His blow went under its weapon. Beheaded it.

Beside him Jehannes stepped forward again and rammed pole-axe’s spike into the supine daemon, so that it screamed.

There was a sound very like applause.

The captain wondered who was watching.

They were most of the way up the ridge, under the main gate. And still bathed in the silver-white light of his casting. He was breathing hard. His helmet was like a trap over his face,
constricting him, the visor was like a hand over his mouth, and he was bathed in sweat.

The daemons came on again. There were boglins trying to get around them on the left and right, and his archers were shooting with methodical regularity, but he couldn’t stop to think about
that. They were on him.

The daemon in front of him swung its axe two handed, and he cut at its hands – its blow turned to a defence, and it’s left claw shot out and slammed into his shoulder and he stumbled
back in a flash of pain.

He’d been hit.

Again.

Jehannes threw three fast jabs with his spear point, reversed his pole-arm to bat his opponent’s axe out of the way and planted his spike in the daemon – it screamed and fell back,
taking the haft with it, planted in its breastbone. Jehannes struggled too long to keep it.

The captain’s adversary swung on Jehannes from the side, catching the knight in the side of the helmet and Jehannes fell.

He came back for me
, the captain thought.

He lunged, his long sword held only by its pommel in his right hand, and raked the point across his opponent’s beaked face – an attack of desperation. But the blow landed, and the
daemon stumbled off balance. He recovered forward, grabbing the blade near the point, which he rammed into the daemon’s scaled thigh, and with that as leverage, he hurled it from the road. It
fell away into the darkness.

He stepped forward again, past Jehannes.

The one that had spoken jumped forward, shouldering past two of its own kind.

‘I am Thurkan of the Qwethenog,’ it said.

She hadn’t intended to come out onto the wall.

Her place was in the infirmary and wounded men were coming through the gate.

She told herself that she would only look. Only a moment. People were cheering.

She ran barefoot through the infirmary’s second floor balcony doors, and leaped lightly from the stone balustrade, between a pair of gargoyles that decorated the lower gable ends, and
skinned her thigh on the slates as she slid down to the curtain wall. She’d taken this path a thousand times to go out after the nuns blew out the last lights.

She was a level above the gatehouse. She skidded to a stop when she saw that a section of curtain wall was simply gone, and her left foot hovered over empty space.

Below her the hillside was bathed in a cruel white light.

When she was young, her Outwaller family had called them guardians and worshipped them. North of the wall she had thought they were angels.

Now a mighty one stood on the cobbled road, facing the Red Knight.

How she hated that substitute for a name.
The Red Knight.

He looked tired. And heroic.

She couldn’t watch.

She couldn’t look away.

The guardian struck with two axes, cutting with both at the same time – something a mere man could never hope to do.

He stepped forward and to the right, and smashed an axe to the ground; the guardian stepped back. She saw it draw power. Guardians were not like men in any way except for their love of beauty.
It took in power as if breathing – a natural movement – and then it snapped its working at the knight.

Who turned it. Then he stepped forward, and raised his sword slowly, an elaborate gesture like a salute.

Achieved his guard.

And froze.

The guardian raised its axes.

And froze.

Time stopped.

She couldn’t breathe.

When one of them moved, it would be over.

The Ings of the Albin – Ranald Lachlan

Donald came and sat on a rock by Ranald’s tiny fire. Half their force was out on picket – the men cooking breakfast spoke in low tones.

‘I’ve a notion,’ Donald said.

Ranald ate a piece of bacon, and raised an eyebrow. He was feeling better. More alive. Ian the Old had made him angry, pissing in the stream where they got drinking water.

Yesterday nothing had made him angry, so he savoured that anger as a sign he was alive.

All those thoughts flitted through his head while he chewed, and then he nodded. ‘I thought I smelled smoke,’ he said, and managed a smile – another triumph.

Donald leaned back. ‘None of yer sass, now. And you half my age.’ He grinned. ‘I think we should push the herd for Albinkirk. It is only twelve leagues, or like enough as makes
no difference.’

Ranald was alive enough, and enough of a hillman, to be taken with the boldness of it. ‘Right over the same terrain where we fought the Sossag?’ he said. He shrugged.

‘They’re gone, Ranald. Nobody’s seen dick of them for three days. Not a feather, not a scout, not a bare buttock. It’s their way. They don’t hold ground.’
Donald leaned forward. ‘What’s the herd worth at the Inn? A silver penny a head or less? And it’s a far longer walk to the Inn than it is to Albinkirk.’

Ranald stared into the flames of his small birch bark fire. He added leaves from a pouch at his belt to his copper cup full of water, stirred honey in, drank it, and gave a quiet thanks to God.
His belief in God had suffered – or maybe not. He wasn’t entirely sure.

I was dead.

Hard to take. Better not to think of it. Except that, in some horrible way, he could remember the
deadness.
He didn’t want to be dead again.

He sighed. ‘Daring,’ he said. But from Albinkirk he could send a messenger to the king. He owed the king that much. More. He sighed.

Donald’s eyes sparkled. ‘Let’s do it.’

Ranald knew that the older man needed to perform a deed of arms if only to justify the fact that he had lived and Hector had died.

But deep inside, he shared the feeling. And if they could get the herd through – why, then Sarah Lachlan would be rich, and all the little crofters and herders in the Hills would get their
shares, and the Death of Hector Lachlan would be a song with a happy ending.

He drank off the last of his scalding tea, and watched the stream. ‘We’re loons. And some of the boys may “decline to accompany us”.’ He gave the last words a
distinctive Alban accent.

Donald chortled. ‘Good to see you coming back to yourself. Faeries brought my Godmother back from dead – did you know that? Took her months to laugh again, but then she was dead a
whole day.’ He shrugged.

Ranald gave a little shudder. ‘Ouch,’ he muttered.

‘Oh, no. She said that having been dead, life was always sweet.’ He nodded.

Ranald was still thinking of that when the herd lumbered into motion, headed west. The boys had muttered about it but none of them turned for home.

Four hours they moved west, down the old drove road through increasingly wooded country. The west slope of the Morean Mountains had been farmed once – grape vines still grew over the new
trees, and they passed a dozen farmsteads standing open-roofed and abandoned. None were burned. Men had simply left, one day, and not returned.

Ranald had seen it all before. But now he noticed it more.

That evening, they made camp under the Ings of the Albin. They’d pressed the herd hard and come twenty leagues or better, and the young men were exhausted enough that Donald made up a new
duty list, writing slowly and carefully on his wax tablet, making signs for some men and writing the names of others in the old way.

Kenneth Holiot was not a bard, but they all knew the boy could play, and that night he sang a few lines to his father’s old lyre, and shook his head, and laid down a few more. He was
writing the song of the Death of Hector. He knew the death of another Hector, in Archaic, and he had the bit in his teeth – he was going to write the song.

After an hour he cursed and went off into the darkness.

Ranald cried.

The other men just let him cry, and when he was cried out, Donald came and put a hand on his shoulder, and then he rolled up in his cloak and went to sleep.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

He watched his adversary, and waited to die.

His shoulder was bleeding. His face was bleeding. Jehannes was somewhere half a pace behind him, he didn’t dare try to retreat, and for some reason his people seemed to think he wanted
this to be a single combat.

Warm blood ran down his side.

The effort of holding his sword above his head in the Guard of the Window would eventually be too much. He would have to strike, and that would be the end.

It was faster and stronger than he was. He’d tried attacking, tried thrusting, tried most of his tricks. They all required some advantage – reach, perhaps – that he just
didn’t have.

The daemon just stood there, two axes above its head.

And then, as sudden as its attack had come, its eyes slipped past him and with a shrug it was
gone.
The air popped as it displaced itself.

He was damned if he was going to fall over. He stood there looking at an empty road down the hill, and the fires of hell raging in the Lower Town.

He turned around, and Michael had Jehannes under the armpits and was dragging the knight up the path.

Cuddy stood just behind him, with his bow at full draw. Very slowly, the archer let the tension out of the limbs, and the great bow returned to shape. He dropped the arrow back into the quiver
at his belt.

‘Sorry, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘You wasn’t going to win that one.’

The captain laughed. He laughed and laughed as they pulled him through the gate and slammed it shut, ands Ser Michael lowered the great iron portcullis.

He slapped Cuddy weakly on the backplate. ‘Nor was I,’ he said.

Then Michael had his helmet off his head, and he was sucking in great gouts of fresh, cool air. A dozen men were pulling at his armour.

He saw the Abbess. Saw Harmodius, who grinned at him.

Red Knight! Red Knight! Red Knight! Red Knight!

He drank it all in for a moment, and then, as his breast and backplate came off, he got to his feet. The men stripping him grinned and backed away, but their grins faltered when they saw how
much blood was running down his side.

He nodded, waved, and ran, unarmed, unaware of his wounds, into the crowd and seemed to vanish. He didn’t see Amicia. But he’d felt her there.

He went to find her.

She was waiting for him under the apple tree.

She bit her lip.

‘I won’t talk,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I—’

She pushed him down on the bench with a strong arm, and bent – he hoped, to kiss him. But his hope was cheated. He felt her breath, hot, moist, fraught with magic, on his face and felt his
wound heel. She raised her hands like a priest invoking the deity and he saw the power all around her, the well below the tree, the tendrils that connected her to her sisters in the choir and to
the Abbess.

She reached a hand under his arming doublet and her touch was cold as ice. Her hand passed over his chest and his back arched in agony as she touched the edge of his wound – one he
hadn’t felt.

‘Silly,’ she said. He felt the power go out of her, into his shoulder. For a moment, briefer than a single heartbeat, the pain was infinite. And for that moment, he was her. She was
him.

He lay back. To his shame, a whimper escaped his lips.

She leaned over him, her hair covering his face. Her lips brushed his. ‘Men will die if I stay with you,’ she said.

And she was gone.

Lissen Carak – Michael

Michael looked at the parchment and tried to think what he could write. Shook his head, and went to find Kaitlin, who’s father had died when the curtain wall fell.

In the first light, three wyverns came out of the rising sun carrying rocks the size of a man’s head in their claws.