The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  One of the Morean knights—Ser Giannis—had a spear with a long blade, and he was untouched in the centre of a whirl of death, his weapon passing back and forth, back and forth, stabbing and cutting. Farther along, one of the company knights, Ser Dagon la Forêt, used a poleaxe with equal artistry. Ser Aneas fought with a weapon in each hand, like a dancing master, except that he seemed to clear more space than most. One of the Jarsay knights was down and messily dead, and another had a dozen of the things on him like limpets because he wasn’t wearing proper maille.

  Ser John went and cleared the imps off him like a father getting leeches off a child. The imps were thinning.

  Behind them were boglins. Despite eight knights and a dozen archers, the boglins kept coming. Ser John was so full of combat spirit, fear and elation at being alive that he didn’t understand what was happening. He took a moment after the last imp was killed—Ser Dagon stepped on its head—to retrieve his pole-hammer.

  Sixty boglins were no match for eight knights. But they still came on.

  “Shoot them!” Ser John panted.

  “No more arrows, Cap’n,” said a voice above his head. “Sorry, boss.”

  Indeed, the whole area of the fight with the imps was like a field of stubble, except that the stubble was heavy war arrows shot almost straight down and standing in clumps where the fighting had been fiercest. A dozen men had loosed more than four hundred arrows in three minutes. Their entire load—almost forty a man.

  The boglins were wallowing through the mud. Behind them, something bigger broke through the hedgerow. There was a flash of green fire, an explosion of mud, and a hole as long as a horse opened. Boglins poured through—as did daemons.

  Ser John shook his helmeted head and tasted the sour air inside his bascinet. “Fuck,” he said.

  The boglins were so hampered by the mud that they’d have all been killed by the archers—had there been any arrows.

  “Fuck it,” the older man said and dropped over the wall. He began to pluck arrows from the ground—in a moment all the archers were there.

  “Never get up the fuckin’ wall again, mark my words,” muttered the older archer.

  The shorter Morean knight had a bottle of wine, of all things. He handed it to Ser John, who had a pull and then gave it to the old archer.

  “Now that’s right decent o’ you, Ser John.” He took a drink and handed it on.

  He had a dozen muddy arrows in his belt.

  The boglins were seventy yards away and looked exhausted, their wing cases half open and their vestigial wings hanging loose.

  The archers began climbing back up the wall. Only one man could make it—their arms were tired—and he had to rig a rope.

  The older archer loosed his dozen arrows into the boglins as they plodded on through the mud. So did the other archers as they waited their turn to climb.

  The boglins lay down. Behind them, the mass of creatures—boglins and daemons—did not come forward. They began to move west, sliding along the hedgerow. At the burning hole, something big, like a cave troll, only darker, emerged. But its entire attention was focused down the hill, or across the valley.

  Only then did Ser John understand.

  “There’s someone else behind them, harrying them!” he shouted. “Saint George and Alba! Christ and all his saints, lads! Ser Ricar must be behind them!”

  Indeed, only now did he hear the roar—the waterfall-like rush of sound of combat. Ser John reckoned that the whole of the far hedgerow must be engulfed in fighting. He looked left and right.

  The enemy force below him in the muddy field was now all moving west, many of the creatures crouching low to the ground. They were leaving a trail of stolen objects behind—a quilt, a blanket, shoes, a girl’s doll and an apple basket. Somewhere they had struck a human settlement and left nothing but death behind, and now…

  The shapeless black thing in the hedgerow gap whirled and cast. Ser John saw it—saw the casting—and then he was flat on his back again.

  But he was mostly unharmed. He got up heavily, head throbbing and his neck feeling as if it would never be right again. The sigil he wore on his chest—the gift of Prior Wishart of the Order—burned as if heated on a stove. But he was alive.

  He thought that the creatures—stripped of their imps—were near panic. But the hammer-like charge of his knights would slow to nothing in the same mud that had mired the imps.

  He looked up. “What’s your name, Master Archer?” he called.

  “Wilful Murder. Sir.” The man shrugged, as if acknowledging that it wasn’t a typical name.

  “Can you hit them from here?” he asked.

  Wilful Murder grunted. As if against his better judgment, he jumped down from the wall—again.

  “Long shot,” he said. He drew to his ear, his right leg sinking as if under great weight, his whole body rocking as his heavy back muscles engaged. He loosed high, his body bent forward into the bow.

  His arrow fell into the mob at the base of the field like a thunderbolt.

  Heads turned.

  “If you can reach out and touch yon then do!” Wilful called. “Otherwise, stay the fuck up on the wall.”

  Three men jumped down. They looked scared. A fourth man looked down the field for some heartbeats, shrugged, and dropped off the wall in turn. He began to prowl the ground for arrows.

  “I need a lighter shaft,” he said as he pushed past Ser John.

  The handful of arrows had no obvious effect. The archers had to make too much effort to loose fast—each shaft took long seconds to pull and aim, and all of them flexed their right arms between pulls.

  Then the heavy arrows were plunging, one every few heartbeats, into the mass of boglins at the base of the field.

  Ser Giannis came over and opened his faceplate. “I have never faced this—this…” His face did an odd thing.

  “The Wild,” Ser John said as kindly as he could.

  “Yes,” Ser Giannis said. “Yes. But I think…”

  Ser John was trying to get a sense of what was going on beyond the next hedge.

  “I think that if the archers kill enough of them, the rest will charge us. Yes?” Ser Giannis pointed his elegant, ichor-caked spear down the field.

  Ser Aneas laughed mirthlessly. “Many things my master-at-arms told me make sense now,” he said.

  A long bowshot away, one of Wilful Murder’s arrows struck a daemon in the head, plummeting almost straight down. It went into the skull and struck the great creature to the mud, full length, like a blow from an angel.

  The growling, roaring, crashing sound was closer.

  The great horn spoke again—three long blasts.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Ser Dagon.

  A flash of metal in the gap in the hedge. Flash, flash.

  Three long, deep blasts from the huge horn.

  Again, there was an explosion of purple-red light, this time at the corner of the field. Fire licked at the hedgerow.

  Three green balls of fire materialized in the air at half-heartbeat intervals and struck.

  There was an explosion—another—then another. Like spring trees full of sap and struck by lightning, each sharp crack deafened the men at the top of the hill and blew new rings of blood and bone into the sunny sky.

  Ser John found he was down on one knee, his ears ringing despite a fully enclosed helmet and heavy wool-stuffed helmet liner. There was a dazzle of spots in front of his eyes.

  There were a lot of dead boglins at the base of the field. Even as he watched, the arm of a daemon, torn from its body, fell back to the earth.

  The black thing now moved as if it was four legged and not two legged. It vanished through a new gap in the hedge.

  Another flash of steel, and Ser John was fairly sure he was looking at Lord Wimarc, dismounted, about three hundred yards away. The boy had superb armour and something, even at that range, suggested him and his slim, upright posture.

  Not for the last time, Ser John watched, wondering
what in hell was happening.

  “I think we’re out of the fight,” Ser Dagon muttered.

  Ser John got back to his feet. His lower back burned with fatigue and he was soaked through with sweat—and cold.

  “Master Archer!” he called.

  “Which I’m right here, your honour,” Wilful Murder muttered. “And not deaf, neither.”

  “Send an archer for the pages and the horses,” Ser John said, unaware that he was shouting.

  Jamie the Hoek coughed. “I’ll go, Ser John,” he said. “My horse is just around the wall—if Rory left it where he said he would.”

  “If the imps didn’t get him,” spat one of the knights. Ser Blaise was dead—and partly eaten. The young Jarsay knight, Ser Guy, had six wounds, all where the imps had gotten into his groin and armpits. He was fading fast.

  The poor boy was weeping with pain. His arms were barely attached to his body. His legs—his entire lower torso was ruined. Shock could not do enough to protect him from what had happened to his body.

  Ser John knelt by him and put a hand on his cheek.

  The boy screamed. Something in him had changed, or the full realization of his fate had come to him, and his weeping sobs gave way to bitter screams.

  Three hundred yards of mud away, Lord Wimarc waved. And began to trudge, not towards them but along the edge of the hedgerow. He was clearly following the defeated warband of enemy raiders.

  “He’s clean mad,” muttered Ser Dagon, who was doing his best to ignore the young knight dying horribly at his feet.

  The other squires began to appear—Tomas Craik and his brother Alan and all the rest of them, trudging wearily in good harness.

  “Achilles and Hector together couldn’t ha’ driven all they off that land,” said Ser Dagon.

  The boy was shouting his screams now.

  “I think our squires have the most honour in this fight,” Ser John agreed. He wished he could get up. He wished the boy would die. He wished that there was something—anything—he could do.

  He made himself pray, which was hard with the accusations of the boy’s screams so close to his head.

  There was another roar—the horn sounded again, one long wind, and suddenly the air was full of ops. Workings flew past, balls of fire of various colours flying back and forth.

  “Christ and his phalanx of angels,” muttered Ser Giannis.

  “Haaaaarrrrrhhhhh!” screamed the mass of pain and fear that had once been a knight of Jarsay.

  Ser John picked him up, intending to crush him in an embrace. But Wilful Murder was there first. He leaned down as if tying his shoe and casually drew his ballock dagger across the young knight’s throat.

  “Go fast, boy,” he said.

  Ser John let the boy’s blood flow down the front of his breastplate. He met the archer’s eyes, and the man shrugged.

  “Someone had to,” Wilful Murder said.

  And then Rory was back with the war horses.

  Ser John looked around, wondering if he looked as tired and haggard as Ser Giannis or Ser Dagon did.

  “I’m of a mind to find out what happened, and mayhap play a role before the sun sets,” Ser John said. “But every man here has earned the right to say he has done enough.”

  The other seven knights looked at him—covered in their comrade’s blood—and shook their heads.

  “Let’s go kill them,” said Ser Dagon.

  The road ran parallel to the fight for another half mile. Below them, as the spring sun began to set, they could see shapes moving across the cleared ground. Some of the hedged fields were quite small and Ser John didn’t know the area well enough to guess which lane would get him a view of the fight—if any.

  But as the sun’s rays turned from gold to red, one of the huntsmen galloped up and pointed his crossbow south across the fields. “Past the farm gate,” he said, and they rode. An hour of picking their way along the road and stopping frequently to watch or listen had allowed all the archers to catch them up, mounted on their smaller horses. The pages brought up the rear.

  Ser John was the first through the gate. It was a fine farm with a good stone house like Helewise’s, only smaller, and it had been spared by the last incursion of the Wild. Draper or Skinner—he knew the folk here.

  Old Man Skinner stepped out of his door, a heavy arbalest cocked in his hand. “There’s boglins in my lower orchard,” he said. “I’ve been potting ’em for an hour. Took you lot long enough—Christ on the cross, you look rough, Ser John!” he said in sudden wonder. “Just my mouth a flappin’. I mean no harm. Water your horses—I’ll get water in the trough.”

  And indeed, the horses needed water and a rest from men on their backs, and Goodwife Skinner, a big heavy woman with beautiful eyes and a no-nonsense face doled out sweet buns and tart cider. Men drank it without removing their blood-soaked gauntlets or gloves. Ser John looked about him, and they were all blue-red-black with ichor and blood and mud.

  The horn—that horn would haunt his dreams—sounded very close.

  “Get inside and bar your doors,” Ser John snapped, pushing Goodwife Skinner into her kitchen door.

  “An’ don’t we wish we could come in wi’ you?” muttered Wilful Murder.

  “To horse!” Ser John shouted.

  His great war horse—the best he’d ever owned—seemed to give a human groan as he mounted. He trotted the horse past the barnyard and the farmer met him there at the corner, his heavy weapon spanned and ready. The farmer ran to the next gate and paused, looked around carefully and then opened the gate. He stepped through.

  Ser John rode right by him. He wasn’t sure why he did it, except perhaps the sense that it was his job to protect the farmer, not the farmer’s job to protect him.

  He felt the enemy through his horse before ever he saw them. They were in the next field, near the base of the valley. They’d come miles north and west, now—Lissen Carak would be only a dozen more miles that way. The edge of the woods was only a mile or two to the north, if that. That’s where the raiders were headed.

  Ser John went through the gate, past the farmer, and then trotted up the muddy field. He could see his enemy through the next gate.

  The closed field in which he was riding was unploughed, or his horse would have sunk to the fetlocks. But there were only two gates—the one he’d passed through, and the one ahead.

  He rode up to the gate. A gout of black fire struck it just as he reached it and it blew clean off its hinges and collapsed.

  The four-footed black thing was loping towards him over an unploughed hayfield. Ser John didn’t think. He just slammed down his visor and touched his spurs to Iskander, who responded with all the noble heart any knight could ask from a horse, exploding forward despite the soft, treacherous ground.

  The huge black creature—it was almost amorphous, it moved so fast—reared up.

  It was a troll.

  It cast.

  The sigil on his chest felt as if it was melting and running over his skin, and he shrieked, but he and his horse rode through a cloud of black-blue fire and he dropped his lance point a hand’s breadth—

  His lance caught it in the centre of the head. Even a ten-foot-high stone statue would be damaged by a war horse and rider powering a heavy lance. His strike was so sure, so exact, that his lance tip caught on its brow ridge and bent—and broke.

  But the black troll went crashing down.

  Ser John never had to give his horse a lead—he was turning as soon as it felt his weight change. He was naked, his back to his enemy—he saw a dozen daemons, streaked with mud and blood, running at him and, behind them, boglins and behind them, at the far edge of the field…

  A flash of bright gold in the last of the sun.

  He shook his head and drew his sword, prepared to sell his life dearly.

  The great black stone troll was sitting, legs splayed, like a ten-foot child who had hurt itself.

  It shook its head—paused, shook again…

  Ser John
smiled grimly. Iskander couldn’t manage more than a stiff trot, but he powered by, put a fore-hoof into the troll with the ringing sound of iron-shod hooves on stone and then Ser John’s war hammer fell with all the power of his shoulders on the thing’s fractured head.

  Instead of dying, it reached out, almost casually, and slammed Ser John out of the saddle, breaking his left arm and dropping him behind his horse. Ser John had time to see that his left vambrace was crushed.

  He lay in the mud and waited to die. He couldn’t raise his head.

  Over his head, sorcery flew. He caught a piece of something and was showered in mud, then a wave of incredible heat passed over and he tried not to breathe.

  Heavy arrows began to fall. He saw two come down, but he had trouble moving his head—some muscles in his back were damaged, or perhaps he was gutted and dying. It was hard to tell. There was no pain, even from his arm, so he knew that he had no way to tell.

  And then, silence. He could hear very little inside his helmet. But he could feel the ground move as something big came up the field. His uninjured right hand went for his dagger.

  It was heading for him.

  Deep in Ser John’s throat was a whimper, and he knew if he let that whimper out, it would be the way he died. So instead, he tried to see Helewise—see her wonderful naked body, see the cheerfulness of her, the fullness—

  Helewise’s breasts were a better thought with which to die than brother Christ, whatever the priests said.

  The thing was coming. The ground shook.

  He couldn’t do it. His eyes opened.

  Over him was a great furry creature covered in mud. It looked like a giant rat, but in a flicker of thought he knew it for a very dirty Golden Bear.

  He exhaled.

  The bear leaned over him. “You—again?” it asked, its voice deep and raspy and majestic.

  Ser John thought he might laugh forever. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said.

  The day was not yet over, but it had ended for Ser John. The pages and archers had to fight off a pair of bargests that came—too late to turn the tide of the rout—out of the setting sun. They caught the pages on horseback and killed two, but their interest in feeding on the horses gave the archers time to drive them off.