The Red Knight (96 page)

The farm-boys slammed spears past him – sometimes they fouled his sword arm, and one pinked him in the buttock, but he was their shield and they were his weapon, their nine-foot spears
pinning the armoured things so that Random cut pieces off them – and just past the door, the hail of shafts continued to reap the enemy.

But there were more and more of the things out in the courtyard.

To all appearances, the sortie emerged after a concerted volley from all the engines in the fortress – a veritable rain of projectiles from fist-sized rubble to
twenty-pound rocks; crossbow shafts two feet long and weighing two pounds.

The sortie rode down the fortress ridge at top speed, a blur of motion at the edge of the dark, and halted at the foot of the ridge to form its wedge. But they took too long. Men and horses were
too far behind – other men had over-ridden the assembly point and had to turn back – and a hundred heartbeats were consumed achieving their formation.

Thorn watched the enemy sortie emerge. He watched them ride down the cliff face and he tasted the power of the phantasm that surrounded them. And spat at the taste.

Thorn sent the signal to his ambush, and triggered the massive spell he had spent the day preparing. Power leapt across the late morning light, raw and green, and coalesced—

Thorn choked.

That was
not
the sortie. It was an illusion. The spectre of a sortie.

The Fallen Magus roared his rage. But it was too late, and the carefully prepared power of his magic fist slammed to empty earth.

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

‘He didn’t used to be this easy,’ Harmodius said, looking up to the captain, who sat on a borrowed destrier. The Magus grinned like a small boy. ‘The
Wild has sapped his imagination.’

The shattering thunderclap of the outpouring of the Enemy’s power rang in their ears and the massive flash still burned across the captain’s retinas. ‘Can he do that
again?’ the captain asked.

‘Perhaps, Harmodius admitted. ‘I doubt it, though.’

The captain exchanged a glance with Sauce, who rode by his side. It was Tom’s turn to have the duty, and the big man was fretting about missing the sortie.

‘No heroics,’ the captain called. ‘Right across the plain to the castle, then around the walls. Kill anything that comes under our hooves.’

The Wild – Peter

Peter had just finished making breakfast when the two boglins came to his fire. They had a pair of rabbits, already skinned, in each arm – eight rabbits in all. They also
had a large animal carcass – also field dressed – carried between them on a pole.

‘U kuk fr us?’ said the larger one.

Peter realised with a shock that the larger mammal was a woman – beheaded and skinned. Gutted.
Cleaned.

‘Kuk?’ said the larger boglin.

Peter took a deep breath, pointed at the dead woman, and shook his head. ‘I will not cook a person,’ he said.

He had his fire going, and he had already fed his friends. So he handed the remains of his squash and squirrel stew with oregano to the larger boglin. ‘Eat,’ he said.

The boglin looked at its partner. They touched their heads together for a moment, and a flood of acrid, complex smells filled the air.

The smaller boglin opened its gullet and swallowed half, and then passed the small copper pot to the larger boglin, who consumed the rest.

Peter didn’t watch.

Ota Qwan came and stood by him. ‘Aren’t you two supposed to be in the big attack?’ he asked.

They remained perfectly still. Animal still. As if they couldn’t hear him.

‘Kuk?’ asked the larger.

‘I – will – cook – the – rabbits.’ Peter spoke slowly.

‘Gud.’ The larger boglin bobbed. ‘Go kill. Back to eat.’ He made a chittering noise, his partner joined him, and they bent forward and loped off into the gathering
night.

Ota Qwan looked at Peter. ‘Do you have the power, laddy?’ he asked.

Peter shook his head.

Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘Among the Sossag people it is mostly shamans who can talk to the Wild,’ he said. ‘I would like to have boglins to follow me,’ he said. ‘If they
offer to join us, accept.’

Peter swallowed. ‘You would have them in camp?’

Ota Qwan shook his head in mock anger. ‘Boglins are big medicine, you know that?’

‘Where do they come from?’ Peter asked. ‘I had never seen one before – I came here.’

Ota Qwan sat by the corpse of the gutted woman. He didn’t seem to notice her, or care. ‘I don’t know, but I can tell you what men say. The word is that they grow in great
colonies like giant termite hills in the deep Wild – way out west. All the creatures of the Wild fear them. The great Powers of the Wild cultivate them, recruit whole colonies, and send them
to their deaths.’ Ota Qwan sighed. ‘I’ve heard said they were made – they were created – by a great Power. To fight an ancient war.’

Peter shook his head. ‘That’s just a way of saying you don’t know.’

‘Don’t I?’ Ota Qwan laughed. ‘You have so much to learn about the Wild. Because the Powers pretend that they fear nothing, but they fear the little boglins. A thousand
boglins are a fearful sight. A million boglins—’ He shrugged. ‘If they could be fed, they could conquer the world.’

Peter swallowed bile.

‘Maybe you could cook for them, eh?’ Ota Qwan said. ‘You know the matrons have given you a name?’

Peter nodded expectantly.

‘Nita Qwan.’ Ota Qwan nodded expectantly. ‘A very potent name. Well done.’

Peer sounded it out in his head. ‘Gives – something.’

‘He gives life,’ Ota Qwan said.

‘Like your name,’ Peter said.

‘Yes. They see us together. I like that.’ He nodded.

‘What is Ota?’ Peter asked.

‘Take. Like
ota nere
!’ he paused.

‘Take water. When we are on the march.’ Peter nodded. And then turned. ‘You are
Take Life
and I am
Give Life.
’

Ota Qwan laughed. ‘Got it in one. You were Grundag. Now you are Nita Qwan. My brother. And my symbolic opposite.’ He nodded again. ‘Now – recruit me those boglins. This
siege is almost over; we’ll go home as soon as the dead are eaten.’

Peter shook his head. ‘I lack your experience of war,’ he said. ‘But the Alban Royal Army is just coming up the Vale of the Cohocton.’

Ota Qwan rubbed his chin. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a very good point. But Thorn says we will triumph tonight.’

‘How?’ Nita Qwan asked.

‘Pick up your bow and spear and come with me,’ Ota Qwan said.

Nita Qwan put the rabbits on green stick spits and left his woman to turn them. He took up his bow and his new spear, tipped with the fine blued-steel head that had come to him as a share of his
spoils from the Fight at the Ford. He had many new things, and his woman was impressed.

And it had only cost him a year of his life. But he spat and followed Ota Qwan, because it was easier to follow than to think. He ran, and caught Ota Qwan by the elbow. The war leader
stopped.

‘One thing,’ Nita Qwan said.

‘Be quick, laddy,’ Ota Qwan said.

‘I’m not anyone’s lad. Not yours, not anyone’s. Got me?’ Nita Qwan’s eyes bored straight into the war leader’s.

He didn’t flinch. But after several breaths, his nostrils flared, and he smiled. ‘I hear you, Nita Qwan.’

He turned and ran, and Nita Qwan followed, better satisfied.

At the edge of the woods, many of the surviving Sossag warriors were waiting – almost five hundred of them. Beyond them, painted fiery red in the sun were Abenacki, and even a few Mohak,
in their characteristic skeleton paint.

The Abenacki war chief, Akra Crom, walked to the centre, between the groups. He raised an axe from his belt and held it over his head.

Ota Qwan smiled. ‘If he falls today,’ Ota Qwan said, ‘I will be war chief of the Sossag, and perhaps the Abenacki, too.’

Nita Qwan felt as if he’d been punched in the gut.

‘Don’t be so naïve,’ the older man said. ‘This is the Wild.’

Nita Qwan took a deep breath. ‘What does he say?’

‘He says that if we ever want to get home, we must fight well tonight for Thorn, and kill the armoured horsemen as we have so many times. We have a thousand warriors. We have bows, and
axes. La di da.’ Ota Qwan looked around. ‘In truth, this Thorn doesn’t seem to have a serious plan for us – as if he thinks that by ordering us out of the woods and into the
fields, we will kill all the knights.’ He shrugged.

Nita Qwan shuddered.

Ota Qwan put an arm around him. ‘We will go and lie in ambush by the enemy back gate,’ he said. He barely waited for the Abenacki man to stop his oration before he rose to his feet,
shook his spear, and the Sossag gave a scream of power and followed Ota Qwan into the green of the woods.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The horses were all tired, and many of them bore light wounds, muscle strains, scars – and so did their riders.

There were twenty-five men-at-arms – a pitiful number against a sea of foes.

And at the base of the ridge, a perfect circle of cooling glass marked the best efforts of their foe.

The captain was operating in a haze of fatigue and minor pains that all but subsumed emotion. He knew – at a remove – that the Abbess was gone. That Grendel, almost a friend, was
dead and probably eaten down on the plain. That his beloved tutor was cold marble – no longer even a simulacrum of life.

But at another level, he walled all that away.

Can you fight every day?

He knew he could. Every day, until the sun died.

The place in his head where his friends were dying was like a bad tooth, and by an effort of will, he didn’t run his tongue over it.

Nor did he think,
If we win today, we’re saved.

He didn’t think that, because he didn’t really think much beyond his next stratagem, and he was now pretty much out of tricks.

All of this went through his head between one leap of his new mount and the next.

He hurt.

They all did.

And then the sortie was down onto the plain, and forming their wedge.

Random was more tired than he had ever been, and had he not been wearing first-rate armour, he’d long since have been dead. As it was, blows slammed into him more and
more often as the monsters in the courtyard crawled over their own dead to reach him.

Twice, shouts behind him told him that more of the cursed things had made it onto the tower or the wall – apparently using their vestigial wings, or perhaps they were a new and horrible
breed – but the spearmen at his back held their ground.

Twice he had a respite from the attacks on the door, but he had no idea why the white things stopped coming. He would pant, someone would hand him water, and then they’d come again. The
white boglins were bad. The big irks were worse.

A farmer tried to help him in the doorway – braver or stupider than the rest – and died almost as soon as he took his place, while one of his mates begged him not to go.

‘Ye have no armour!’ a bigger, Harndon accented man called.

He didn’t have armour on his arms and legs, and the wicked scythes on their limbs sliced him to pieces, dragged him down and carved him up. And they ate him – even the dying ones
took a bite.

Random couldn’t lift the buckler high any more. He knew it was just a matter of time before he was struck in the visor or the groin – only luck and the efforts of the spearmen kept
him at it.

More irks came. They took their time coming over the low mound of dead, and they all came at him together. A shield caught his outstretched arm – the vambrace held the blow, but he was
unbalanced, and the boglins dragged him to his knees – a blow struck the back of his helmet and he was
down.

He could feel a sharp pain across his instep – something was hacking at his armoured shin – and then, to his horror, he began to be dragged out of the doorway, into the pile of
corpses.

He couldn’t help it. He screamed.

And then he wasn’t being dragged, and a heavy weight crushed him. Only the strength of his breastplate and his backplate and their hinges kept the crushing weight from taking the breath
out of him.

There was a sharper pain in his right foot.

He tried to call out, and suddenly his helmet was full of liquid – he spat. It was hell – dark – bitter. He choked and spat and realised that he was drowning.

In boglin blood.

He tried to scream.

More pain.

Christ, I am being eaten alive.

Christ, save me in my hour of need.

The Wild – Peter

Nita Qwan loped through the woods. The circle of the sun was high overhead. It was a poor time to set a trap, and he wanted to wait for night, but it was late spring, and
darkness – true darkness – was still a long way away.

A brilliant emerald flash lit the sky to the south. A titanic concussion rocked the earth.

Ota Qwan grinned. ‘Our signal. He is mighty, our chief. Let’s go! Gots onah!’ The acting war chief ran ahead of the band, and they began to sprint over the grass, angling east,
and the summer light threw shadows under them.

They had almost a mile to go. Nita Qwan was a strong man, and had lived with the Sossag for weeks, but running a mile to fight was the most exhausting work – especially after a morning of
food gathering and cooking. He put his head down and tried to seal off his mind from his thighs and his lungs, and he ran.

It took many long minutes to run all the way to the east of the great ridge, but finally, Ota Qwan raised a hand. ‘Down!’ he called, and the People fell to the earth in the tall
grass. He turned to Skahas Gaho and another warrior and sent them off farther to the east, and then he lay down by Nita Qwan.

‘Not long now,’ he said. ‘We are in the right place. Now we see if Thorn knows what he is doing.’

Lissen Carak – Thorn