The priest had the secret doors open, and he stood back and watched the boglins flood through the great opening, squirming in a very inhuman way, to vanish onto the steps which ran up and up into the ridge. He watched for a moment, and then something slammed into his head.
He started to fall. Out of the corner of his eye he could see some sort of spike.
In a moment of vertigo, he realised it had to be through his head.
He tried to move, and couldn’t.
Something hurt more than his back.
Slowly, like a tree falling, he went to the ground. He tried to pray, but he could not, because they pressed all around him and he screamed, trying-
Trying to die before they began to eat him.
Lissen Carak – Ser Gawin
Ser Gawin had risen with the dawn and managed to get himself to the chapel to pray. He remained on his knees for a long time in the morning light, unaware of anything except the pain in his side and the crushing sense of his own failure.
But, eventually, he roused himself when he heard the soldiers bellowing for every man-at-arms to get mounted. He rose and crossed himself, and then walked as steadily as he could manage out the door of the chapel, and hauled himself in front of Ser Jehannes.
‘I can ride,’ he said.
Jehannes shook his head. ‘He didn’t say the wounded,’ Jehannes said. ‘I’m not riding, myself, lad. Stay here.’
Gawin was minded to disobey. The longer he was on his feet, the better he felt. ‘I can ride,’ he said again.
‘Ride tomorrow, then,’ Jehannes said. ‘Tom’s got all the men-at-arms already. If you want to be a help, arm yourself as much as you can and walk around looking confident. It’s bad out there.’ Ser Jehannes pointed into the courtyard of the fortress, where the farmwomen and the nuns stood in knots, silent. Most of them were watching the plains below. ‘We’ve perhaps forty men to hold the fortress, and yon ladies feel they’ve been abandoned.’
‘Sweet and gentle Jesu,’ Gawin swore. ‘Forty men?’
‘Captain’s trying to win the day,’ Jehannes said. ‘Stupid bastard. All we had to do was sit tight in the fortress and let the king do as he would. But the little bourc always has to be the fucking hero.’
Gawin gave the older man a lopsided smile. ‘Family affliction,’ he said, and went to do his share.
It took him long minutes to find his armour, left unpolished in a heap and not in the hospital but in a closet off the apothecary.
But he couldn’t seem to get into it.
He managed, in the end, to get into his arming cote, and to get his breast and back closed by lying full length on the floor and closing it around him like a clamshell. But then the pain in his side kept him from buckling it.
‘I’ll do your buckles, if you’ll let me,’ said a voice.
It was the novice. The one whose appearance made his brother squirm. The one who had used power to heal him.
‘You are-’
‘Amicia,’ she said. She nodded at an archer, who stood quietly across the room. He looked tired and unhappy. ‘He was left to guard me, but he’s bored, and I haven’t turned into a boglin or a dragon yet. Stop moving.’
Her hands were curiously confident. And strong.
‘You are using power,’ he said.
‘I’m giving you some strength,’ she said. ‘Something evil is coming – I can feel it. Something of the Wild. We’re going to go and stop it.’ She sounded fey, terrified, and overly bright. Brittle.
Gawin took her assertion at face value. He looked at the archer. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
The boy wouldn’t meet his eye. ‘Sym, my lord,’ he said sullenly.
‘Sym, can you fight?’ Gawin asked.
‘Anything,’ Sym said assertively. Looked away. ‘Only thing I’m any good at, and look at me – left to guard the captain’s nun.’
The fingers on Gawin’s shoulder harness stiffened.
Sym looked at the two of them from under his eyebrows. ‘Sorry. Know you ain’t. But I’d rather be with my mates.’ He shrugged. ‘This is the big fight. I never been in one. All the oldsters talk big about this fight and that fight, but this is the biggest the company was ever in, and I want my part of it by fucking God.’ He looked away. ‘Want to be a hero.’
Gawin laughed. He surprised himself with the purity, the unforcedness, of his laugh. ‘Me, too,’ he said. He slapped his shoulders. He couldn’t bear the weight of his arm harness, but he had a breast and back, and she put the gauntlets on his hands, and then, with Sym’s help, they put his bascinet on his head, slipping the aventail over his hair.
He considered saying something flirtatious – Best looking squire I’ve ever had. But at the thought of squire he choked.
While Sym pulled his aventail down over his back plate, she did something – something that started as a word, and rose in pale yellow fire, and ended like the pop of a soap bubble.
‘Mater Mary,’ she said, and crossed herself. ‘They are here. Right here. In the fortress. Follow me!’ she called and ran for the door.
Sym followed her, leaving Gawin to find his long sword resting in a corner, pick up Sym’s buckler, and follow.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
Whatever his other failings, the captain’s borrowed young destrier had a great heart, and he loved to fight.
The horse swung back and forth – pivoted on his forefeet and kicked with his iron-shod back hooves, half-reared and pivoted on his back feet, punching with his front, keeping the captain in the centre of a carefully cleared circle devoid of standing foes. Boglins who tried to get under the horse to hamstring him or worse were trampled to sticky ruin or simply kicked clear.
The captain had long since lost track of how many of the creatures he’d killed. His arm was tired – but then, he’d started the action almost too tired to lift his weapon.
But, as they had practised, the companions were drawing together – horse to horse, man to man.
The captain swung from the shoulder, nipped both arms off an enemy on the foreswing like a farmer pruning vines, leaned well forward using his stirrups for balance, and cut back into another creature’s head, clearing his front, and George – somewhere in the combat, the captain had named his horse George – backed a few paces.
And tucked in behind Bad Tom, who was like a millwheel of destruction.
He let Tom do it. Thumbed his visor, and raised his face plate, and drank in great gouts of fresh air.
George wanted to be back at it.
The captain stood in his stirrups and looked over the battle line. His people had formed up well and althought there were gaps, there were not many.
His people going to get buried.
He had no sense of time – no one did, in a hand-to-hand fight. But at his back, the purple and yellow tabards had flowed all the way down the trench to Master Random’s guildsmen, and a sturdy line of scarlet was filling in behind them. And beyond them, just crossing the bridge, was solid green. Archers of the Royal Hunt.
‘Jacques!’ he roared.
His valet was two horse lengths away, fighting for his life.
‘Carlus!’ he roared.
The trumpeter didn’t even look around.
‘Damn,’ the captain said. It was a game of seconds and hard-fought inches, and he was losing time. They needed to ride clear.
He gave George his head and sent the war horse crashing into one of Jacques’ adversaries. A ton of war horse versus a hundred pounds of irk was no contest at all.
His sword took another, and then Jacques went down as his horse fell – killed by one of the dozen creatures under its hooves. That quickly, Jacques was gone. The captain turned, cut at the irk under George’s feet and watched a spear catch Carlus under the jaw, killing him instantly. Down he went, with his trumpet, and with it, their chance to cut their way free. The captain cut down, his sword beheading a boglin even as the hideous thing bit into Jacques’ throat – and he roared and looked for help, but there was none
.
Lissen Carak – Desiderata
Guarded by Ser Driant and five knights, the Queen’s litter started up the long and twisting road to the great gate of the fortress.
The king had ordered his knights to form a compact company behind him.
‘Once more, my lord,’ Ser Alan said, ‘I’d like to remind the king that if Lord Glendower were alive, he would never allow this.’
At the word allow all sense left the king’s head. ‘I’m the king,’ he said. ‘Follow me!’
Most of the mercenary knights and their retainers had formed in a thick knot, almost dead centre in the field. The king aimed his horse’s spiked head at the banner with the lacs d’amour. ‘Follow me!’
Lissen Carak – Harmodius
Harmodius spat with rage, turned his horse, and followed the king, who was throwing himself into the arms of his enemy when almost any other action would have saved him.
The Queen would die. And he, Harmodius, loved her in a way the king never could – she was the perfect child of Hermeticism. An angel, come to earth.
But like an artist with a favourite painting, Harmodius could not bear to see the king die either. Not here – not so close to triumph, or at least to survival.
We are all making the wrong decisions, Harmodius thought. And he realised that if he died here, his new-found knowledge would die with him.
It was like some ancient tragedy, in which man is granted knowledge only to be destroyed.
But he didn’t have to waste much more time on such thoughts.
Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn watched, almost unbelieving, as the target of his campaign threw himself forward, unprotected. He couldn’t have manipulated the king into such a foolish move.
The king.
He had made a dash for the fortress and Thorn had suddenly seen his defeat – for in the fortress the king would be unassailable.
But no.
The fool was now leading his knights forward into the very maw of Thorn’s monsters.
And his boglins were in the fortress.
Just for a moment, he was balanced on an exquisite knife-blade of doubt as to whether to kill the king himself, by means of power, or to send his choicest creatures to do his work.
But in that moment, he decided that, regardless of the campaign, if he killed the king, he had won. No matter which power was using him, killing the King of Alba would place him in the front rank. It would cause civil war. Would weaken the human hold on Alba.
He gathered power to him.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The company was dying around him.
The anonymity of armour kept him from knowing who – he could never spare more than a glance – but as the boglins surrounded them and hemmed them tighter and tighter, armoured figures went down – either hamstrung horses, spear thrusts, or lucky arrows.
Tom continued to be like a hammer at his side, Sauce was like an avenging angel, and the military order knights fought like the legions of Heaven.
Even as he raised and lowered his sword yet again, he would have chuckled at the pointlessness of it all, if he had not been occupied. They had bought the time, and the battle should now be safely won. And the bitterness – had Carlus not gone down with the trumpet, had Jacques lived fifty more heartbeats-
He slew two more boglins before he saw the troll.
It reared, its blank stone face smooth and black, and it belled, it’s shrill trumpet ringing out above the ring of weapons and the silent intensity of the boglins.
Not just one of them.
Six of them.
And the wave front of their fear made the boglins beneath his horse’s hooves quail and void their attacks. George rose, kicked out, and then plunged forward.
The wave of terror passed over them.
The captain got his sword in a good two-handed grip, and George leaped for the nearest troll as he brought it up high above his head on the left. You are supposed to use a lance on these things, he thought.
The troll saw him, turned, and put its antlered head down, low, so its antlers covered its neck, and charged, seeking to get its antlers under the Red Knight’s sword and unhorse him.
George turned mid-stride.
Faster than human thought, the animals struck.
Like a cat, George pivoted his weight and one hoof licked out and caught the monster a staggering blow in the centre of the forehead, so hard that cracked its stone face.
The troll screamed, turned its head, whipping its antlers through a spray of motion and leaped, turning, caught the armoured horse in the right rear haunch. George got his back feet off the ground with a caper and the blow slewed the horse around on his forefeet-
The line of attack opened like a curtain as the two creatures turned into each other. The captain felt as if he had all the time in the world – as if this moment had been predicted since the dawn of the world. The troll’s turn – his destrier’s turn – the open line at the back of the monster’s neck . . .
His sword struck, two handed, like the fall of the shooting star to earth, and cut along the line where two great plates of hardened flesh met; sliced through the troll’s spine, and in, down, out and free in a gout of ichor-
George leapt free, stumbled, and the captain was thrown from the saddle.
He got a shoulder down, landed on something squishy and rolled, the plates of his shoulder harness clanking like a tinker’s wagon and the muscles in his neck, injured and re-injured since early spring, wrenched again.
But he ended his shoulder roll on his knees, and pushed immediately to his feet.
Off to the right, Tom and Sauce were pouring blows into another troll, but behind them the thick knot of companions had begun to dissolve as the remaining trolls ripped into their horses. Armour crumpled; men died.
Lissen Carak – Ser Gawin
Gawin followed Sym as the archer followed the novice – down the stairs, across the courtyard to the entrance to the cellars where the stores were kept.
There were two archers guarding the heavy oak door to the cellars.
‘The Wild is coming up the escape!’ Amicia yelled, fear and frustration powering her words.
Every farm wife and nun in the courtyard heard her.
The two archers looked at each other.
Sym came up next to her. ‘Captain’s orders!’ he yelled, his thin voice shrill and not very heroic.
The bigger of the two archers fumbled with his keys.
Gawin ran across the yard to join them.
The women were frozen, and he had a moment to consider the looks on their faces – panic, determination, and a sullen kind of anger that it should come to this when they had already lost so much.
Yes, he understood those looks of loss. Of failure.
‘Arm yourselves!’ he called to them.
The bigger archer opened the iron-bound oak door and Sym ran down the steps into the darkness.
Gawin pushed past the novice.
The first cellar was gloomy but well-enough lit. A stack of spears leaned against one of the company’s great wagons. Gawin caught one up as he went by.
There was another door, ahead, which was just opening.
Sym was too late to stop it, so he spitted the creature that opened it – ripped his sword out of the boglin’s armoured thorax and kicked it so hard that it folded backwards-
Gawin caught a glimpse of steps going down and a seething knot of the creatures filling the stairwell.
‘Hold the door!’ Gawin called. He thrust with his spear, and felt the steel head crunch through the soft hide around the boglin’s neck and head – just like digging a knife into a lobster. Something popped, it fell off his spear, and he pushed.
Sym cut, and cut again, and again, desperation and terror lending wings to his sword arm.
The stairwell was crawling with them.
He killed another one.
And another one.
And the novice turned, raised her han
ds, and spoke a single word in Archaic, and golden-green light filled the cellar.
Lissen Carak – Desiderata
Desiderata could scarcely breathe for the immanence of power. And the pain, which was returning. But she could feel the enemy – the centre of the power of the Wild, its emerald intensity shot full of black – gathering force. She could feel it as surely as she could feel the power of the sun on her arms.
‘What’s happening here?’ Ser Alan asked. He bent to carefully place her litter on the doorsill of the chapel.
The woman was older – dressed plainly, like a servant or a farmwife. She had a spear in her hands. ‘If it please you, Ser Knight – there’s boglins got into the cellars, and all the garrison is trying to hold the doors.’
‘Good Christ!’ Ser Alan cursed. The other knights of the escort drew their swords.
Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn watched as the king and his knights obligingly fought their way into the centre of his range.
Sometimes plans did work out.
His trolls – the magnificent dhags – were cutting the knights to pieces. They were also dying, but he had more. Or he could obtain more. The Wild was fecund beyond human imagining.
He let the king fight on – on and on – until his reckless charge broke through the ring of bone and hide around the mercenaries. Around the dark sun.
The king and the dark sun together.
He took his gathered power, summoning every tendril that he could muster – the might that had been Thurkan, the souls of the fair folk, the convoluted essence of the Sossag shamans-
He savoured it, for a moment.
There was nothing to interrupt him, no distractions as he placed his power almost lovingly on a spot just between his two foes.
The edifice of his memory was no palace but a twisted yarn of ropes and webs, and he braided them in his mind with the mastery of an aeon.
Laid his hand to the completed cord, and cast.
Harmodius felt it, saw it, and cast his counter: a mirror. Even his counter had tails and vestiges – traps within traps. As he had learned.
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