The Red Knight

by Miles Cameron

  The captain leaned very close to the nun. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said.

  Miram put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Then tell us your name,’ she said.

  ‘I know his name,’ Amicia said. ‘He’s—’

  There was a sudden cheer from the courtyard, and then a roar of voices. The captain saw that Ser Jehannes was standing at the edge of the firelight, and behind him were three men in full plate, the fire lighting them like moving mirrors. They had black surcotes with white crosses.

  The Red Knight turned away from the two nuns. He waved to Ser Jehannes and leaned out into the courtyard. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Now someone’s come into the secret passage,’ Ser Jehannes said. ‘From outside. From the king.’ At the word king the courtyard burst into cheers again. Jehannes pointed to the trio of armoured figures standing in the ruin of the covered way. ‘Knights of the Order.’

  The music stopped.

  One of the three knights raised his visor. He was an old man, but his smile was quite young.

  The relief that flooded the captain was palpable, solid. He felt giddy. He felt weak. He said, ‘Splendid.’

  The captain clasped hands with the first man in the long black cloak that marked the Knights of the Order of Saint Thomas of Acon.

  ‘I’m the captain,’ he said. ‘The Red Knight.’

  ‘Mark, Prior of Pyrwrithe,’ said the man whose right hand was clasped in his own. ‘May we offer you our compliments on a brilliant defence? Although I understand from Ser Jehannes that the lady Abbess is dead.’

  ‘She died last night, my lords. In battle.’ Suddenly the captain was hesitant. He had no idea how the fighting orders felt about Hermeticism or any other form of phantasm.

  The Prior nodded. ‘She was a great lady,’ he said. ‘I will go and pay my respects. But first – the king is across the river, moving carefully. But he should be opposite the Bridge Castle by late tomorrow. The next day at the latest.’

  The captain grinned with pure joy. ‘That is welcome news.’ He looked at the three men, all in full armour. ‘You three must be tired.’

  The prior shrugged. ‘The armour of faith is such that we feel little fatigue, my son. But a glass of wine is never amiss.’

  ‘Let us go to chapel,’ murmured the central figure. He wore a black tabard with the eight pointed cross of the order.

  ‘If I may: I’d rather you stood where the people could see you just a little longer,’ said the captain. ‘There have been doubts.’

  The Prior shook his head. ‘We’re late and no mistake, Captain.’

  The captain raised his hand for silence. In the courtyard, they cheered and cheered. But after a a few resurgences of spirit, they fell quiet, with Mag shouting ‘Shut up, you fools’ and a titter of laughter.

  ‘Friends!’ the captain said. His voice carried. ‘Our prayers have been answered. The king is here, and these three knights of the order are the vanguard.’ There were cheers, but he went on. ‘We’ve had a sip or two and a dance tonight. But when the king comes, we’ll have to break this siege. The enemy is still out there. Let’s have some sleep while we can. Aye?’

  Men who had cursed him as Satan a few hours before raised wooden jacks now.

  ‘Red Knight!’ they shouted. And others shouted ‘St Thomas!’

  And then, as if by magic, they tottered off to bed. Sym and Long Paw put Cuddy over their shoulders and carried him to bed in the hospital. Ben Carter found himself carried by Wilful Murder and Fran Lanthorn to his pile of straw in the stable.

  Together the four men walked to the chapel.

  The Red Knight didn’t say anything. The Abbess lay on her bier, and the three knights knelt around her. After some time, they rose, in unison. The captain led them to his Commandry, which, as he expected, was empty, without a sign of Michael’s sleeping gear.

  ‘This is my office,’ the captain said. ‘If you wish to disarm, I can send you a couple of archers.

  Ser John smiled. ‘I’ve been sleeping in harness since I was fifteen,’ he said.

  ‘Are you three alone?’ the captain asked.

  The prior shook his head. ‘I have sixty knights in the woods east of the ford,’ he said. ‘Short of direct intervention by the enemy, they won’t be found.’

  The tallest knight nodded and pulled his helmet over his head. He gave a sigh of pure pleasure. ‘It’s what we do,’ he said. He pulled a cushion off one of the chairs, put it under his head, and went to sleep.

  Lissen Carak – Gerald Random

  The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Fourteen

  Yesterday the folk of the towns talked rebellion – but it was all shock at the death of the Abbess, and the captain restored order and none were injured. The priest, Henry, was taken into custody. The Enemy’s engines pounded the Bridge Castle, but the enemy was hesitant and careful in their movements, and we saw a large force crossing the river to the west. We had heavy rain in the afternoon, and at nightfall the captain (crossed out) the people celebrated the Feast of Saint George. After dark a party of Knights of St Thomas entered and told us we were to be relieved by the king.

  It was a lovely late-spring morning. There was a low fog, and Master Random looked out at it for a moment, enjoying his small beer. He waved to Gelfred, who was fussing with his falcons, and found young Adrian to get armed.

  While he was still getting his arm harnesses on, the alarm sounded.

  Before the bell had stopped ringing, he was on the curtain wall of the Bridge Castle with the master huntsman. The bridge was still down, and although the bridge gates were closed and heavily barred, it was still the hope of every merchant in the lower fortress that more survivors would stumble in from the Wild – despite all evidence to the contrary.

  Gelfred had a trio of big hawks with him, and from time to time he flew one away into the morning light. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist – mostly he spoke to the hawks, murmuring to them in much the same language that Random’s daughters spoke to their dolls.

  Two archers assisted him.

  Random watched the open ground out to the line of trees. Plenty of movement this morning – boglins crawling through the deep grass. They continued to believe that they were invisible in the grass, and Random, for one, hoped they continued to believe it.

  He motioned to one of the small boys who had survived the caravans. ‘Tell Ser Milus that there is a boglin attack coming on the curtain wall,’ he said. And was proud that his voice remained steady and professional. He refused to let his mind dwell on how he had seen a line of boglin take his men apart.

  The boy ran along the wall.

  The bell rang again. The new company formed. It was a hodge-podge of men; a dozen goldsmiths with crossbows, with a dozen spearmen, all farmers sons or young merchants in borrowed armour; but the front rank was all men-at-arms, and Ser Milus led them in person.

  When they were well-formed and he’d inspected their armour, he led them up the ladders onto the curtain wall.

  ‘Good morning, Master Random,’ he said, as he got to the top of his ladder.

  ‘Good morning, Ser Milus,’ Random answered. ‘Nice of them to announce themselves.’

  ‘I’ve doubled the watch in the towers,’ Ser Milus said. ‘Look sharp!’ he said, loud and clear, and the men on the wall stopped their conversations and looked through the crenellations. ‘You – Lusty Luke, or whatever you name is. Where’s your gorget? Get it fastened.’

  Out in the deep grass, irks and boglins began to loose arrows.

  One, lucky or perfectly aimed, struck one of the third rank spearmen and killed him instantly, and he fell bonelessly from the wall into the courtyard behind them.

  The other farmer-spearmen shuffled nervously.

  ‘And did he have his gorget properly fastened?’ Ser Milus roared. ‘And did I just speak to him about it?’ he bellowed.

  Gelfred finished lashing his birds to their perches and putting on their jesses and hoods. He went into the north tower followed by h
is two archers. His calm, unhurried movements contrasted with the spearmen.

  Their shuffling stopped.

  The boglins made their run at the wall. There were enough of them that they covered the ground – it was like a charge by a nest of ants. The grass seemed to come alive, and there they were – hundreds of them, scurrying to the wall, the elfin irks bounding ahead in great leaps.

  Like most fortress walls at the edge of the Wild, this one had a slope at the base and then rose sheer for the last few metres. The design had an immediate function beyond stability – as Random had seen in the last four attacks. Boglins misjudged the wall because of the initial slope and attempted to run straight up it – over and over. Apparently, they couldn’t help themselves, and they ran at the wall, harder and harder, and very few ever made it to the top.

  Random had come to believe that this, too, was by design, as the success of a few egged the rest on to continue their mostly-fruitless runs.

  The men-at-arms with pole-axes and heavy swords began the slaughter of the soft-bodied things.

  The crossbowmen cleared any that managed to alight on the crenellations, their heavy bolts plucking the creatures off the wall to a body-crushing fall.

  The spearmen were there to catch any who got through the defence.

  Random appointed himself to the third rank. He was much better armoured than the farm kids, and yet – he was more one of them than he was a knight. Or a man-at-arms.

  The fight went very well for two long minutes. The armoured professionals massacred the boglins, and the crossbowmen covered their backs, and one big, fast boglin who knocked Ser Stefan to the ground got a farmer’s spear between his limbs and writhed – literally like a bug pinned to paper – until a half-dozen axes finished it. Ser Stefan got back to his feet, unharmed.

  Random was unengaged – almost bored, despite the tide of monsters lapping at the wall. But his boredom saved them, because he was the one who heard the screams of the sentries in the north tower.

  Random whirled and saw boglins on the tower top.

  He turned and went into the tower through the open curtain wall door, drawing his heavy sword as he ran. He had a buckler on his hip and he got that into his left hand.

  ‘Boglins on the tower!’ he shouted at a huddle of men – Gelfred and his huntsmen.

  Then he ran up the ladder to the tower top.

  ‘Ring the alarm,’ shouted Gelfred – a better response than Random’s one-man fire brigade.

  Random threw back the roof-trap and immediately received a blow to his head. It fell on his bassinet and glanced away and he was up another step, buckler over his head – two fast blows to the small shield, and he was atop the ladder and cutting low with his sword, and he felt it cut into the firewood-hard flesh of a boglin’s leg and then he pushed with his legs and got clear of the trap door.

  A blow to his back plate.

  Random punched with his buckler, the steel rim cracking a boglin’s head with the same feeling of a lobster’s shell giving under a hard blow, and then he pivoted on his hips – a new move, learned from Ser Milus – and cut with his sword – one, two. The second blow was wasted – his first went home, splitting a head, and the back cut plucked the head off the body and blood spewed from the thing.

  But they were all around him, stabbing with spears. One spear skidded across his back plate and went in under his buckler arm, stopped only by his chain voiders, and another spear-blow hit the side of his head hard enough to make him see stars. He stumbled forward and tangled with yet another of the things, who tried to pin him by wrapping all four limbs around his legs, but he put the pommel of his sword into the centre of the boglin’s face and – it’s nose seemed to open into a horrible parody of a gullet, lined in spikes – it shrieked in pain, and all four limbs began to scrabble at a tremendous rate.

  Random swept his buckler in a desperate arc, let go his sword, and whipped his dagger from his belt. He rammed it into the leathery parts of the boglin’s six-segmented chest, stabbing more times than he cared to count, and the thing almost literally fell to pieces under his hands.

  Then he saw a flash of dark green, and Gelfred was there, swinging a short-hafted boar spear with practised efficiency – cut, thrust, cut, thrust, like a weapon’s master demonstrating for a class.

  And then they were done.

  Random was covered in blood – but he felt like a god.

  He leaned over the wall to call down to Ser Milus and saw that the courtyard was full of boglins.

  White boglins. In armour. Wights.

  ‘Gelfred!’ he screamed.

  Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

  The Red Knight woke from a dream of Amicia with a smile on his face and Bad Tom’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You look like hell,’ the captain said.

  ‘Bridge Castle is under assault,’ Tom said. ‘It looks bad, and they’ve stopped signalling.’

  ‘Right,’ said the captain. He took a deep breath. Of course the Enemy knew the king was a half-day’s march away. Hence their assault. An all-or-nothing assault. And the trebuchet was gone. But – Bent had spent yesterday with the farmers erecting a trebuchet that filled the stump of the old tower. The captain rolled off his bed. He was fully dressed.

  ‘Bent!’ he called.

  The senior archer came from under the scaffolding. ‘My lord?’

  ‘Start laying buckets of gravel across the trenchline,’ he said. ‘Commence as soon as you can get loaded.’

  Bent saluted.

  The captain turned to Tom. ‘Tell the archers to start loosing into the field between here and the Bridge Castle. Everything we have. Don’t spare shafts now. Someone heat rocks for the trebuchet. Michael! Get me Harmodius.’

  His squire had, apparently, spent the night in his room.

  ‘And then armour, helmet and gauntlets,’ he called out.

  Tom licked his lips.

  ‘Sortie?’ he asked.

  ‘Not much choice. Tom, the three gentlemen in my Commandery are knights of the order – see to it they get a cup of wine—’

  ‘And horses,’ said the Prior, appearing in the doorway. ‘If you will allow me, my lord, I will have my knights meet us in the field below. Which may be a dolorous surprise to our foes, by the grace of God.’

  He raised a hand and made a sign and spoke a word – a single word that the captain did not know – in Archaic.

  Something definitely happened. But the captain didn’t know what it was.

  It did become clear, though, that the military orders used Hermeticism.

  ‘Wine and war horses, then,’ the captain said. The king is coming. Let’s not get rash.

  Overhead, the trebuchet slammed into its supports, and the whole scaffolding creaked.

  Several hundredweight of gravel flew out into the early morning.

  Above him, on the remnants of the south tower, the heavy arbalests began to thwack away at the creatures in the fields below.

  ‘You called?’ asked Harmodius.

  ‘I need to save the Bridge Castle. He’s throwing everything at it – and he’s waiting for us to respond. I’m hoping that we can pound his attack flat with artillery but I can’t count on it. The Prior, here, has offered us another trick up our sleeves, but I need more. What can you do?’

  ‘It’s the King’s Magus!’ The Prior said. ‘The king has never ceased to look for you.’

  Harmodius shrugged. ‘I was never lost.’ He fingered his beard. ‘I think this is a case for misdirection,’ he said. He smiled, and it was particularly nasty smile. ‘He thinks I’m dead.’

  Lissen Carak – Gerald Random

  Random led the valets and the spearmen against the wights. There were fifty of them, and they were bigger and far better armoured than the boglins who had climbed the tower walls.

  By the time Gelfred reached the courtyard many of the merchants who had come in the first convoys were dead. They were no match for the boglins, who were faster and better armoured and who
se every limb had a killing scythe or a spike. The merchants did not live in their armour like the mercenaries; they fought unarmoured, and they died.

  But in the light of the sun Gelfred and his archers, high above in the tower, began to slaughter them like rats in a trap.

  The heavy longbow arrows went through their iron armour with a wet slapping sound, and the big boglins shrieked as they died and tried to crawl over each other to reach the tower steps. They were already flowing up the ladders to the curtain wall – up the top and the underside of the ladders. They jammed the open doorway of the tower, and Gerald Random set his feet and fought to hold the door.

  ‘Fortress is signalling!’ called Nick Draper. ‘On the way.’

  Random set his teeth, and slammed his visor shut.

  The arrows flying from the towers were answered by flights of arrows from the ground outside, from the courtyard – the hole there was a yawning maw vomiting monsters.

  There were massive irks, nothing like the slim elfin creatures he’d seen before, but as big as a big man, armoured in ring mail with shields and long swords. There were more boglins as white as the moon, with hooked spears and iron plate. They came at him in one gout.

  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.