‘Messengers, Sire. From across the river,’ called a herald.
The king looked north-west, and saw them – three men crossing the bridge at a fast canter.
‘Sound the rally,’ the king said.
More and more of his Royal Huntsmen were merging from the west, moving warily.
The Count of the Borders rode up and saluted. ‘The flower of our chivalry is half an hour behind me with the main battle,’ he reported. The man slumped. ‘By Saint George, my lord, that was the hardest fighting I ever need to see.’
‘The guardsmen say there are boglins across the river,’ the king noted.
‘Boglins?’ The count shook his head. ‘I struck a blow at a wyvern this morning, sire. This is the Wild, my lord, fighting for its life.’
‘I thought the Wild was beaten,’ said the king.
The Count of the Borders shook his head. ‘Where is Murien? What has happened to the Wall Castles?’
The king’s master huntsman, Febus de Lorn, bowed respectfully. ‘This isn’t from north, my lords. This is from west. I see Gwyllch – boglins – across the river, and Bothere has huntsmen who claim to have faced trolls in the low ground west of the road. Dhag’s come from the west, my lords.’
The king looked back at the approaching messengers. They weren’t messengers – all three in were armour, two cap a pied on war horses, and the third-
‘Par Dieu, gentlemen – that’s Ranald Lachlan, or I’m a minstrel’s son.’ The king turned his horse and rode towards the approaching trio.
Lachlan waved. The king had eyes only for him, and they rode together and embraced.
‘By all the saints, Ranald – I never expected to greet you on a stricken field!’ The king laughed. ‘How fares your fortune?’
Ranald looked away. ‘Aweel,’ he said, and a shadow touched his face. ‘I’ll tell ye, when we’ve time, my lord. These gentlemen, now, they seek to parley with you. This is the captain of the company yonder, that holds Lissen Carack for the nuns. And his squire, Michael.’
The king extended a hand to the knight – a man of middling height with a black beard and blacker circles under his eyes – absurdly young to be any kind of commander, but wearing superb armour.
‘Messire?’ he said.
The man was staring at him. Then, as if remembering his manners, the man touched his hand and bowed in the saddle. ‘My lord,’ he said.
‘You hold the fortress?’ the king asked eagerly.
‘The fortress and the Bridge Castle,’ the captain replied.
The king thought there was something familiar about the young man’s face, but he couldn’t quite place it. Something-
‘My lord, if you would bring your forces across I believe we can relieve the fortress and evacuate the villagers – and leave the Enemy facing a newly victualled and garrisoned fortress they cannot hope to take, without the loss of another man.’ The captain was speaking quickly, and his eyes were on the far wood line. ‘The Enemy – your father’s magus, or so they say – has made a number of errors. Not the least of which has been his consistent underestimation of our side’s intelligence. I believe he intends one more all-out attack, to attempt to restore his fortunes through the heroic exertions of his allies.’ The young man smiled crookedly. ‘I built a trench line twenty days ago for just this moment, my lord. If you would place your archers in that trench, and gather your chivalry behind the Bridge Castle, I believe we can hand this arrogant Magus a heavy defeat.’
‘Might I have your name and style, messire?’ the king asked. The plan was solid – the lad had a head on his shoulders, and his pure Alban speech made him one of the king’s subjects, mercenary or no.
The dark-headed man drew himself up straight in his saddle. ‘Men call me the Red Knight,’ he said.
‘I thought you to be a Galle, and a good deal older,’ the king said. He turned to the Count of the Borders. ‘My lord – will you take the constable’s place? Command the Royal Guard? And where is the Count d’Eu? He must have the command of the vanguard now, eh?’
The Count of the Borders turned to the young knight. His banner bore a dozen lacs d’amour. ‘How many lances do you have, my lord?’
‘Twenty-six, my lord Count – and the Knights of Saint Thomas. And several hundred very able militiamen, in the form of a contingent of Harndonner merchants. And I have the pleasure of having the aid of the king’s own Magus – Harmodius.’ The young fellow bowed in his saddle again.
‘Harmodius is here?’ the king asked. Suddenly, his day looked considerably brighter.
The young man looked away. ‘He has been a pillar of our defence,’ he said. ‘With my lord’s leave, I must prepare to receive you.’
The king smiled – such an odd young man. ‘We’re right behind you. Go!’
The man bowed, as did his squire, and together they rode back across the bridge.
The king turned to the Count of the Borders. ‘He seems odd but able. Wouldn’t you say?’
The count shrugged. ‘He’s held this place for twenty days against Richard Plangere and his legions of Hell. Do you really care if he’s odd?’
‘He reminded me of someone,’ the king said. He glanced at Lachlan, who had stayed with the command group. ‘You have something to say about our young sell-sword?’
Lachlan shrugged. ‘No, my lord. About the Queen. She was struck – in the back – by an arrow. She is resting and doing well, in part thanks to the young fellow there. He used power. I saw it.’
‘The Queen? The Queen is hurt!?’ asked the king.
‘She’s now resting quietly – in the Bridge Castle. The young captain sent for healers.’
The king rose in his stirrups. ‘Attend me, guards. Let’s go!’
The Count of the Borders was left with the Royal Staff, sitting on their horses in the dust stirred by the king’s rapid departure.
He shook his head. ‘A great knight,’ he said, watching his king. He sighed. ‘Very well – messires, attend me. The Royal Guards will cross the river first, followed by the Huntsmen and the Household. In the second line of battle, the Chivalry-’
Near Lissen Carak – Gaston
Gaston, Count D’Eu, was as tired as he had ever been, and something was wrong with his left hip – it didn’t seem to move as freely as it ought – but he managed to get his leg over his destrier’s broad back and he rode forward under his own banner, with his cousin’s men arrayed behind them – two hundred knights and men-at-arms. Fully a hundred gentlemen lay dead or wounded in the woods and meadows along the road – an absurdly steep price for his cousin’s reckless desire to be the man who broke the ambush his angel had told him awaited the king’s army.
His cousin, who lay in the arms of death. Who only wanted to be the greatest knight in the world.
Gaston wanted to go home to Galle, sit in the chair of judgment of his castle, and pontificate on which wine was the best at harvest time. He thought back to the peasants under the bridge, his heart now full of understanding. He vowed – would God accept such a vow? – to go home and beg Constance for her hand in marriage.
At the top of the last ridge, the king’s friend, the Count of the Borders, was sitting with a number of other gentlemen under the flapping folds of the Royal Banner. The Count d’Eu rose in his stirrups – damn it, that left hip hurt – and looked down to the river where the red-surcoted Royal Guard were just marching for the great three span bridge. On the other side, two companies of men-at-arms were formed in neat wedges at the base of the great ridge on which the fortress sat – half a league north of the river. From the Fortress of Lissen Carack to the bridge ran a trench, black, as if it had been burned.
At the western edge of the meadows and burned-out farms that had marked the demesne of the Abbess, thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – of creatures swarmed like ants from a recently kicked hive.
As he watched, the long arm of a trebuchet mounted high in the fortress swung. It appeared to swing slowly, but its payload – invisible
at this distance – flew at the sudden whip-crack release of the counterweight. The count looked for the fall of the shot, but he couldn’t see it.
The Count of the Borders waved. ‘My lord,’ he said. ‘You command the vanguard?’
‘I do. My cousin is wounded,’ Gaston said. ‘I have fewer than two hundred lances, and many of my younger knights are spent.’
‘Despite which, the king begs that you will use every effort to get your men across the river – dismount and occupy the line of works prepared for you.’ The count pointed at the black slash that ran from the fortress’s ridge to the bridge.
‘I see it,’ Gaston said. ‘But I lack the force to occupy that length.’
‘You shall be with the Royal Guard and all our archers,’ the Count of the Borders added. ‘All dispatch, my lord!’
Gaston could see creatures from the swarm now venturing farther and farther into the fields beyond the wood’s edge.
‘A moi!’ he ordered. ‘En avant!’
Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn watched the Royal Army begin to deploy across the river. His blow was ready – a single hammer strike to win Alba.
The Royal Army appeared singularly unharmed by a morning-long ambush. That was unexpected. The Qwethenethogs alone should have done great damage amongst their ranks.
He felt a ripple of power – identified it, and cursed again. Both the dark sun and his former apprentice had survived. He acknowledged his own hubris in imagining them dealt with. It was the very curse of his existence. Why did he constantly think things would go his way?
Because they should.
He felt another use of power – closer to him, and it smelled like Qwethnethog. Like Thurkan.
He nodded and drew power to himself. The Qwethenethogs’ presence on this side of the river was very revealing.
The great daemon was coming for a trial of power. Thorn rocked his stone head.
Idiot. Traitor. I undertook this for you.
Turquoise fire began to play along the edges of his stick-like tree limbs and his beard of grey-green moss oozed power, and the faeries flitting through the clearing, excited by the overflow of his vast resources, he now drained of power in a single sip, leaving their fragile bodies to flutter to the ground.
The magnificent daemon entered the clearing from the south. His hide was still wet from swimming the river, but green and brown lightning played along the sides of his head, down to his long, scythed arms and over his richly inlaid beak and armour.
Thorn let him come.
When they were a few horse lengths apart, Thorn raised one hoary arm. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘If you mean me harm, save it for the defeat of our enemies.’
Thurkan stopped but he shook his mighty head. ‘Greater Powers than you or I contend here today,’ he said. ‘You are a pawn in the plans of a greater Power.’
Those were not the words Thorn expected, and they stung – stung with the peculiar power of words that carry their own truth.
‘It cannot be,’ Thorn said.
‘Why else do the humans have every advantage when we have none? That thing you call fortune; we have none. Every turn we make favours the enemy. Let us withdraw from this field.’ Thurkan held up an axe. ‘Or we must be rid of you.’
Thorn needed time to test the hypothesis that he had been used. He was the one who used others – the enmity of the Outwallers for the Albans, the needs of the boglins for new ground to live, the hunting instincts of the wyverns and the trolls.
He was not, in turn, used.
‘We have been used!’ Thurkan insisted. ‘Order the retreat, and we will fight another day!’
Thorn considered it.
And he considered the great mass of his infantry – the wights in their magnificent armour, the five thousand irk archers, the squadrons of trolls ready to engage the enemy’s knights. The Outwallers and the wyverns and the other daemons.
‘Even if what you say is true,’ Thorn said, ‘we are about to win a great victory. We will scour the kingdom of Alba from the face of the continent. We will rule here.’
Thurkan shook his great head. ‘You delude yourself,’ he said. ‘There is no number of boglins who can match this number of armoured men in combat. And Thorn – I call you by name – I call you three times to attend my words. A battle, says my grandsire, is the result of a situation wherein both sides imagine they can win a conclusive fight with one throw of the knucklebones. And only one side is right. Today, the King of Alba believes he can defeat us. You believe that you can defeat him, despite everything. I say we will lose on this field. Withdraw and I am your loyal ally. Order this attack and I will fall on you with fire and talon.’
Thorn chewed on Thurkan’s words for many heartbeats, and not a breeze stirred the torpid late spring heat in the woods. Insect noises stopped. Not a gwyllch chattered, as if all of nature waited on Thorn’s decisions.
‘Not for nothing do men call you The Orator, Thurkan,’ Thorn allowed. ‘You speak brilliantly. But I doubt your motives. You want this army for your own. The only good you know is the good of the Qwethnethog.’ He took a breath and let it out slowly, to still his rage. And then he threw a single phantasm, a long prepared blow, like a single punch.
The daemon reacted instantly, raising all of its not-inconsiderable power in a wall of walls to stop the blow.
Quick as a mountain lion Thorn cast again.
The single gout of green lightning blasted through his walls like a siege ram through the walls of the wattle and daub house, and the tall daemon crumpled to the ground without a sound. He lay still but for the thumping of his left leg under the command of his hindbrain, still battering the ground in rage and frustration at his own death.
‘Attack,’ Thorn ordered his other captains. To the corpse, he said, ‘One of us was wrong, Thurkan.’ He reached out and subsumed the daemon’s power. And rose from it more powerful than he had ever been.
I should have done that a year ago, he thought, and smiled. And walked out onto the field at the head of his armies.
Near Lissen Carak – de Vrailly
Jean de Vrailly lay dying, content in knowing that he had performed a marvellous feat of arms – one of which men would speak for hundreds of years. His cousin had left him; a correct action, as the battle continued and the king’s standard was advancing, and he lay pillowed on the legs of his squire, Jehan, who had also taken a terrible wound.
The pain was so great that de Vrailly could barely register thoughts – and yet, he was in an ecstasy of relief to be atoning for sin with every waning beat of his heart. The massive damage to his side – the great puncture wounds that sucked air and spat blood and bile with every breath – were living penance, the very stuff of chivalric legend. He would go pure to his Saviour.
His only regret was that there was so much more he might have done – and in his darker moments of dying, he reviewed how he might have swayed his hips a little farther, evaded the wyvern’s blow, and carried on unhurt. So very close.
The archangel’s manifestation took him by surprise – first, because he had refused the angel’s orders, and second, because the archangel had always insisted on coming to him in private.
Now he appeared, glorious in armour, cap a pied in dazzling white plate, with the red cross emblazoned on a white surcote so utterly devoid of shadow as to seem to repel death.
All over the beaver meadow wounded men stopped screaming. Servants fell on their faces. Men rose on an elbow, despite the pain, or rolled themselves over despite trailing intestines or deep gouges – because this was the heaven come to life.
‘You fool,’ the archangel said softly – and with considerable affection. ‘Proud, vain, arrogant fool.’
Jean de Vrailly looked into that flawless face in the knowledge that his own had deep grooves of pain carved into it. And that he was going to his death. But he raised his head. ‘Yes!’ he said.
‘You were quite, perfectly brilliant.’ The archangel bent and touched his brow
. ‘You were worthy,’ he said.
Just for a moment, Jean de Vrailly wondered if the archangel were a man. The touch was so tender.
The words cheered him. ‘Too proud to betray the King of Alba,’ he said.
‘There is a subtle philosophical difference between killing and letting die,’ the archangel said softly. ‘And thanks to you, all my plan is in ashes, and I must build a new edifice to make certain things come to pass.’ He smiled tenderly at the dying knight. ‘You will regret this. My way was better.’
Jean de Vrailly managed a smile. ‘Bah!’ he said. ‘I was a great knight, and I die in great pain. God will take me to his own.’
The archangel shook his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But I think you should live a while longer, and perhaps learn to listen to me next time.’ He bent low, and stripped the bright steel gauntlet off his hand – a slim, ungendered hand – and ran it along the knight’s body. That touch struck de Vrailly like the shock of taking his first wound – and lo, he was healed.
He took a deep and shuddering breath, and found no pain at the bottom of it.
‘You cannot just heal me,’ de Vrailly snapped. ‘It would be unchivalrous of me to walk away healed when my brave people lie at the edge of cruel death.’
The archangel turned his head, brushed the long hair back from his forehead, and he stood. ‘You are the most demanding mortal I have ever met,’ he said.
De Vrailly shrugged. ‘I will beg and pray, if that’s what you require, Taxiarch.’
The angel smiled. ‘I grant you their healing – those who have not already passed around the curve of life into death. And I grant to you great glory this day – for why would an angel of the Lord visit you except to bring you great power in battle? Go and conquer, arrogant little mortal. But I tell you that if you ever choose to match yourself against the greatest Power that the Wild has ever bred, he will defeat you. This is not my will, but Fate’s. Do you hear me?’
‘Craven fate would never keep me from a fight,’ de Vrailly said.
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