The Red Knight (97 page)

Thorn watched the action develop from the utter safety of the western edge of the woods. He was not strong enough to risk himself today – because he’d thrown too
much in a single casting. It rankled. But he had thousands of servants to aid him, and today he was spending them like water, his usual caution forgotten.

Many of his servants would have been disturbed to note that he had already decided to use them all, if he had to. He knew where more creatures of the Wild could be raised. He himself was
irreplaceable.

And she was dead.

He had made mistakes, but the end game was going to play out with the inevitability of one of those ancient plays he had once so enjoyed, and now could no longer remember.

The king would come, and be defeated. That trap was already laid.

And then it would all be his.

Albinkirk – de Vrailly

He could no longer set his tent away from the army. Tonight, the army was camped hard by a small stream that ran down to the Cohocton; the carcass of a great beast of the Wild
lay in sodden and hideous majesty, the bones picked redly clean in mid-stream. A litter of corpses and the screams and quarrels of the animals that fed on the recent dead marked the scene of a
recent battle.

The king ordered the wagons pulled in, trace to axle tree, a fortress of tall, wheeled carts chained at the hubs, and even de Vrailly couldn’t fault him for his caution. They were in the
very midst of the Wild, and the enemy was palpable, all around them. Many of the footsoldiers and not a few of the knights were afraid – scared, or even terrified. De Vrailly could hear their
womanish laughter in the firelit dark, but he himself knew nothing but a fierce joy that at last –
at last
– he would be tested, and found worthy. The much-discussed fortress of
Lissen Carak was three leagues away to the north, the Queen’s flotilla was, by all reports, already lying in mid-stream, ready to support their attack in the morning. Even the cautious old
women of the king’s council were forced to admit that there would be a battle.

He was kneeling before his prie-dieu when the angel came. He came with a small thunderclap and a burst of myrrh.

De Vrailly cried out.

The angel hovered, and then sank to the earth, his great spear touching the cross-beam of the great tent.

‘My lord de Vrailly,’ the angel said. ‘The greatest knight in the world.’

‘You mock me,’ de Vrailly said.

‘Tomorrow will see you acknowledged as such by every man,’ said the angel.

Jean de Vrailly was struggling with his doubt. He felt as a man does who knows he should
not
mention a certain fact to his wife, but does so, anyway – precipitating an avoidable
argument. ‘You said we would fight a battle,’ he said, hating the whine of doubt in his voice. ‘At Albinkirk.’

The angel nodded. ‘I am not God,’ he said. ‘I am merely a servant. The battle will be here. It
should
have been at Albinkirk, but forces – circumstances –
forced my hand.’

The angel’s hesitation froze de Vrailly.

‘What forces, my lord?’ asked Jean de Vrailly.

‘Mind your own role, and leave me to mine,’ said the angel. His voice sounded like a whip-crack. Like de Vrailly’s own. Beautiful and terrible. Imbued with power.

De Vrailly sighed. ‘I await your orders,’ he said.

The angel nodded. ‘Tomorrow, at dawn, the king will attack. The Enemy has a blocking force on the road between here and the bridge. Let the king lead the attack on that force, and when he
falls—’ The angel paused.

De Vrailly felt his heart stop.

‘When he falls, seize command. Cut your way free, save the king’s army, and you will save the day.’ The angel’s voice was pure and precise. ‘His day is done. He has
failed. But he will die well, and you, my lord, will take the woman and be king. She is the kingdom. Her father was the greatest lord of Alba next to the king. With the woman, you will rule.
Without her – you will not. Am I making myself clear to you?’

De Vrailly’s eyes narrowed. ‘And what of the north?’ he asked. ‘If I am to save the army, am I to let this mighty fortress fall?’

‘You can retake it,’ the angel said reasonably. ‘When you bring an army from Galle.’

De Vrailly bent his proud head, shading his eyes from the brightness of the angel. ‘Pardon me, my lord,’ he said aloud. ‘I have doubted, and been misled by false
images.’

The angel touched his head. ‘God forgives you, my son. Remember – when the king falls, take command, and cut your way clear.’

De Vrailly nodded, eyes downcast. ‘I understand very well. My lord.’

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain pointed his wedge south and raised his hand. He could feel the heat coming off the hot glass circle to their right – it went right through his steel gauntlet
and his glove.

Ouch
, he thought. And thanked Harmodius with a silent nod.

‘Let’s ride,’ he called, and they trotted forward, formed tightly. A perfect target for another burst of power.

His back tingled as he rode
away
from where he felt his enemy to be, towards the near corner of the Bridge Castle, just two hundred horse-lengths away or less.

The wedge negotiated the trench – last night it had been an inferno – crossing it carefully and wasting precious time. Some men had to dismount.

It was still better than riding the other way around the walls.

Some men jumped it, but most men were less flashy and more cautious.

They reformed on the far side, unopposed.

The captain rose in his stirrups. He pointed across the darkening grass toward the near corner of the Bridge Castle.

‘It’s a trap. If it wasn’t, those boglins—’ the captain pointed at a hundred or more boglins who were watching them from a hastily erected earthen assault ramp that
rose to the top of the wall of the Bridge Castle ‘—those boglins would have tried to hold the trench against us. Instead of watching like spectators.’

‘Has the Bridge Castle fallen?’ Sauce asked.

The captain watched it for ten heartbeats. ‘No,’ he said.

The Prior of Harndon came up on his left side. ‘If you let me send my signal, my knights will ride to meet us,’ he said. ‘They are just there, in the woods closest to the
river.’

The captain looked a little longer. ‘Catching their ambush between two hammers,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ He turned to his valet. ‘Sound – single rank, full
interval.’

Lissen Carak – Peter

Ota Qwan was on his knees in the high grass. The enemy – a small party of knights in highly polished armour – had hesitated at the edge of the Trench of Fire, as the
Sossag called it now, though it was black and cold in the sun.

‘That lordling knows his business,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘I don’t know him – lacs d’amour? Whose banner is that?’ He spat. ‘He’s spreading his
knights.’

‘So?’ Nika Qwan asked.

‘So in a tight bunch, his men kill a few unlucky warriors and we massacre them from all sides. In a long line, every one of them kills a warrior – or maybe five. It is a lucky
warrior who gets an arrow into one of them.’

The knights began to come forward in the strong light, and the blue sky was mirrored in their harness. They looked like monsters from the Aether – like mythical beasts. The overhead sun
sparkled from their harness and stung men’s eyes.

Skahas Gaho appeared as if by magic from the grass. ‘More tin-men behind us,’ he said. ‘Forming by the woods closest to the river.’ He shrugged. ‘Their horses are
wet. They swam the river.’

Ota Qwan made a grunt. Nita Qwan could see he’d made his decision, just in that moment. The war leader stood, put a horn to his lips, and sounded a long call.

The Sossag stood and ran like songbirds before an eagle. They ran north, even as the two long lines of knights closed on them.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain watched the painted man rise from the grass just a hundred horse lengths in front of him, sound his horn, and begin to sprint north, out of the closing jaws of the
counter-trap. He watched with a sense of failure and the vaguest professional admiration. He knew the Outwallers.

He ordered his valet to sound ‘Charge – ahead!’

His line caught a handful of stragglers but, obedient to his orders, the line swept east and south, and didn’t deviate to pursue the Sossag. Arrows flew as the Sossag rearguard gave their
lives for their fellows, and one man-at-arms went down in a tangle of armour plate and dead horse, and then the black-clad knights from the riverside swept over the rearguard, killing every one of
them in an instant, no quarter given.

The Prior moved past him, raised his hand, and summoned the military order knights to him without a word being spoken. It was a magnificent display of power.

The captain shook his head. ‘I thought we were good,’ he said.

Sauce had blood on her lance tip, and she reined in. Jacques was sounding the rally, and a wounded knight – Ser Tancred – was being hauled bodily onto Ser Jehannes’ horse. She
leaned over. ‘We are good,’ she said.

To their left front the whole squadron of black- and red-clad knights went from a galloping charge to a dead stop in a few hoofbeats – then wheeled right around as if performing some gypsy
horse trick and halted facing the Bridge Castle in a neat wedge.

Sauce shook her head – not a big motion in an aventail and bassinet. ‘Sweet Jesu. They are good,’ she admitted reluctantly.

The Prior cantered to the centre of the new line. ‘Well, Captain?’ he asked. ‘Shall we relieve the castle?’

The captain raised his hand. ‘At your command, Prior.’

Seventy mailed knights made the earth tremble.

The boglins scattered.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn watched in weary anger as his useless allies ran rather than face the knights. So many claims – so many boasts that they could fight anything, that they could
conquer the maille-clad riders.

He watched them run, and knew – with the pain of intimate and exact intellect – that his entire plan for the day would come apart.

A burst of power from the field alerted him. The power itself was very low in intensity, but also very tightly controlled. Only someone as imbued with mastery as he himself would detect it.

And immediately recognise the wielder.

Prior Mark.

Thorn watched as the Prior used his power to pass signals to his knights – to turn them into finely crafted weapons, responsive to his will. Another man who loved power.

For a moment, he considered using all of his remaining puissance in a single spell to kill the Prior.

But that was foolish. He needed that power. He reminded himself that there was no hurry. That the king’s army would never reach the river.

But the fall of the Bridge Castle would have made all that unnecessary.

Thorn rarely spoke aloud. He had no peers to whom he could speak his mind – voice his indecision, his secret fears.

But he turned to his startled guards. The shamans who worshipped him. The cloud of midge-like followers who attended his every need. His voice came out as a harsh croak, like the voice of a
raven.

‘Thirty days ago, a daemon sought to take this place from an old woman with no soldiers,’ he said. ‘Fate and bad luck have left
me
to contest it with the King of Alba
and whole armies of knights, with a dozen able magi and now with the best warriors in the world.’ He laughed, and his wicked croak startled the birds in the trees. ‘And yet I will still
conquer.’

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

Nothing withstood their charge, and the strong band of knights scoured the ground around the Bridge Castle. They rode all the way around it, close against the walls, killing
every creature of the Wild that didn’t scuttle clear of their path. The lesser boglins rose in brief bursts of flight or lay flat in the tall grass where they were difficult to find, and the
greater boglins and irks, those with armour, struggled into their hastily dug tunnels to emerge in one last spurt of violence to the burning hell of the Bridge Castle courtyard.

The captain raised his hand for his company to halt when they returned to the base of the soft earth ramp that the worker-Boglins had run up to the curtain wall on the north side of the Bridge
Castle.

‘Dismount!’ he called. The sun was past noon, but still high. There were streaks of cloud in the west, but hours of daylight remained. Still, experience told him that if he
didn’t clear the courtyard before full dark he would lose the Bridge Castle.

And thus lose his connection to the king.

If the king was coming at all.

Every fifth valet took ten horses in his fist.

‘Spears!’ the captain called, and his men formed a tight line at the base of the ramp; men-at-arms in front, valets and squires in the middle, and archers in the rear rank.

The Prior rode up and saluted. ‘We’ll cover you!’

The captain saluted as Michael handed him his heavy spear. ‘If we aren’t out before full dark,’ the captain said, ‘Assume the bridge is lost.’

The Prior crossed himself. ‘God go with you, Ser Knight.’

‘God doesn’t give a shit,’ the captain said. ‘But it’s the thought that counts. On me!’ he called, and started up the slope of new turned earth. It was damp
and hard – hardened with something excreted by the boglins, to judge from the smell. Acrid, like naphtha.

There were fifty boglins on the wall, and they died when the men-at-arms ripped through them.

The captain looked down into the inferno of the courtyard. All the merchant wagons were afire, and the courtyard crawled with figures like the damned in hell – men stripped of their skin,
shrieking their lungs out; armoured boglins in glowing, fire-lit white. Most of them crowded to the door of the nearest tower, but more poured from a gaping wound in the earth where a dozen
flagstones had been hurled aside, like maggots in a bloated corpse when it is opened. More boglins on the walls – but on the east wall, a small, disciplined company fought back to back,
holding the opposite curtain against assault from both directions.