The daemon’s taloned hand came up, too fast to block.
His sword came down.
The daemon stumbled away, spraying fear the way a skunk sprays scent, and the captain found himself retching. There was blood in his eyes.
My faceplate is open.
It got me.
A different fear, colder and heavier, settled on his gut.
But the daemons were not immortal; their ichor was mixed with the blood of men on the ground and they were retreating. As they began to put distance between them and their foes, the fear abated.
The captain saw there were fewer than a dozen of the things.
The archers – frozen in place – suddenly burst into action. The last daemon – the one the captain had wounded – sprouted shafts like a field growing grass.
The thing turned, its fear welled, and it fell.
Jehannes was shouting for his men.
‘Stand!’ called the captain. It sounded like a squeal. But Wilful Murder roared it from behind him. ‘Stand!’ he called.
Jehannes paused.
‘The tower!’ the captain insisted.
Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn’s burst of rage fell like a hammer.
Harmodius watched the strike come in, helpless to stop it, a whole heartbeat to see his death wash at him in sickly green radiance.
He felt the fortress’s Hermetic defences go back up, and knew it would never be enough.
The great works that powered the defence were brilliantly designed – they funnelled what they could, channelled some more, reflected yet more. They were so well artificed that they almost seemed intelligent. New practitioners attempted to meet force with force – skilled practitioners knew to meet force with guile, deflecting the opponent’s energy like a skilled swordsman. Most static sigils were easily overcome, but this . . .
In the moment of his annihilation, Harmodius thought Who built this?
The wards caught, turned, and covered. But there was only so much the ancient sigils could do.
And the rest burst through the great wards like a river in flood bursting through a levy.
He raised a hand.
The Abbess reached past him, and stopped the overflow of the great spell of wrath just short of their place on the wall. She flung it back down the path of the casting.
She reached out and put her left hand on his shoulder.
I know nothing of this sort of war she said. Let me in.
Through her, he could feel her sisters, singing plainchant in the chapel. Their power did not fuel the Abbess directly. It was far subtler than that.
Despite the situation, he had to pause to admire the magnificence of the structure. The fortress. The sigils. The sisters, who could maintain the power of the sigils indefinitely, regardless of their individual weakness.
He wondered, yet again, who made this?
Then he gripped her spiritual hand in his own and led her through the great bronze doors of his palace, like a bridegroom leading a bride. ‘Welcome,’ he said.
She was a much younger and less spiritual woman, in the Aethereal. Suddenly he had a frisson of memory. Of this same woman dressed for hunting, standing in his master’s chamber, tapping her whip on her hand. Trying to get his master to go out riding.
He dismissed the memory, although here it took on a visible aspect, so that she saw it and smiled. ‘He was the worst lover imaginable,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘He didn’t hunt, didn’t ride, wouldn’t dance. He was always late, and made many promises he couldn’t keep.’ She shrugged. ‘I wanted him. And look at the consequences. Some sins do not wash away.’ She spread her arms. ‘It is very nice here.’
He flushed with her praise, as if he was a much younger man. Time in the Aethereal had virtually no meaning so he had no sense of urgency. ‘Did you ever suspect? ‘ he asked carefully. ‘When he turned?’
The Abbess sat in one of his great leather armchairs. She had riding boots under her voluminous riding skirts, which she crossed over the arm of the chair. ‘You know, don’t you, that in old age, one doesn’t easily adopt positions like this,’ she said happily. ‘Ah, to be young.’ She leaned back. ‘You must have asked yourself, many times.’
‘I’ve been largely trapped in his phantasm for many years,’ Harmodius said. ‘But yes. I think of it now. All the time.’
‘I only know that in the months before Chevin he discovered something. Something terrible. I badgered him to tell me, and he would smile and tell me that I wasn’t ready to understand it.’
Harmodius grimaced. ‘He never said as much to me.’
The Abbess nodded. ‘But now you know what he knew. I know it too, now.’
There aren’t many secrets in the Aethereal.
‘Yes,’ he said.
The Abbess shook her head. ‘Any servant of the Order of Saint Thomas knows that the green and the gold are the same,’ she said. ‘Richard was a fool who saw the world entirely in shades of black and white. He still is. A staggering intellect, a tower of puissance, and no common sense whatsoever.’ She shrugged. ‘Enough chatter. My home is being blown to bits. Show me how to use our power to stop him.’
‘Like this,’ he said. ‘But it will be more efficient if you pass me power and I cast.’
In a heartbeat – in no time at all, because in the Aethereal, time had so little meaning – they stood on a balcony of his great palace, looking out over the world of solidity.
In his vision, Thorn stood out like a beacon tagged in green. Harmodius pointed her hand at the thing that had been her lover.
She flooded Harmodius with power.
He made fire.
Lissen Carak – Thorn
For the first time, Thorn paused to raise a shield. His burst of temper was over, and Harmodius’s response had been respectable. No more, but no less.
And the fortress’s defences were back. He had landed some good blows. But now he was risking himself for nothing. He raised a second shield.
Harmodius’ mighty blow rolled away like a child’s stick on a knight’s armour.
Thorn grunted.
It might have been a laugh.
Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight
Tom’s unconscious body took six men to carry and the captain was unwilling to lose the horses that had been left for the Lower Town garrison, so a party of archers cleared the town’s upper gate and opened it. The garrison escaped behind the horses, and the sortie went over the walls via ladders.
It was all going very well, until the daemons struck back.
His rearguard was slow in forming – understandable, in the conditions – and suddenly three of them were down, dead, and a gleaming monster stood over them with a pair of wickedly curved axes gleaming in the soft spring moonlight. Marcus – Jehannes’s valet – and Ser Willem Greville, his armour opened as if he was wearing leather. A third man was face down beside them.
The fear was like a waft of foul air.
There were more daemons behind it – fluid and horrible, arresting and beautiful in their movements. And below them, a legion of boglins, irks and men poured into the town they were leaving.
Just like that, the captain was alone.
‘Run, little man,’ the daemon whispered.
The captain reached inside and found Prudentia.
The working was already aligned.
He opened the door before she could protest – he was so much faster than he had been.
The green whistled through the crack, a tempest-
‘He can reach you!’
‘He’s otherwise engaged,’ the captain told his tutor.
‘I need to tell you so many things,’ she said.
He smiled and was back in the dark.
His sword arm was bathed in silver.
The daemon rotated its two axes, one over each wrist and golden-green light joined the two.
‘You!’ said the daemon. ‘Ahh, how I have longed to meet you.’
The captain got hi
s blade up into guard, and cast.
The beam of silver-white light rose into the night like a beacon. And then fell to earth in the centre of the town.
‘Missed,’ hissed the daemon.
The captain backed away, rapidly.
Above him on the trail, a crossbow loosed with a snap.
The daemon grunted as the bolt struck.
Let loose his own spell.
The captain caught it – marvelling at the ease with which he fielded the blow. In the Aethereal, his adversary’s blow was like the cut of a sword, and he caught it and parried it with a sword of his own power, flicking it away. And he was back in the solid, because the daemon followed his phantasm immediately with a heavy cut from his right axe.
He could remember the first time he’d stopped such an attack by Hywel. Had been hit in the next instant because of the sheer pleasure of having accomplished it. Now, as then, he almost died through admiring his own cleverness.
He passed forward into the attack, his sword at eye level, the Guard of the Window, and the axe fell away harmlessly like rain off a roof.
He began to cut overhand, his left foot powering forward, and he caught the growth of his opponent’s power and he turned the blow even as it was rising from his adversary’s talons.
In the solid the attack came in, and he drove the power into the stones of the road between them.
The road exploded, knocking him flat.
With a high scream the daemon leaped the crater and swung both axes at once.
He saw Michael step over him and he caught both blows – one on his buckler, one on his long sword. The squire staggered, but the blows fell away.
The captain was backpedalling from between his squire’s knees; using his elbows, steel sabatons scraping the road, he got himself back.
He rolled to the left, almost falling off the elevated road. The daemon captain was pounding Michael with blow after blow, and the lad was standing his ground, pushing his sword and his buckler up into the blows, deflecting them, using the daemon’s strength against it as best he could.
The other daemons were trying to get around the fight.
The captain got his feet under him and he cut at the daemon from the side – but the thing parried his blow high with an axe blade – a horrifying display of skill – and flicked his weapon forward. It was all the captain could do to bat the blow aside.
Both men fell back as the daemon hammered blow after blow, one axe then the other, in an endless rhythm. It might have been predictable, except that it was so fast.
And then, during the moment that the captain had one axe turned on his long sword, and Michael had the other – just for a heartbeat – safely on his buckler-
Jehannes punched his pole-axe between them.
The daemon fell away, folding over the blow. But its armour – or its eldritch skin, or its sigils of power – held.
The captain stumbled back, and he felt Michael at his shoulder.
‘Let me in,’ Jehannes shouted.
Michael slumped and Jehannes stepped past him.
Two daemons leaped past their leader, who was just gaining his feet.
Far above them on the fortress, the trebuchet loosed.
Thump-snack
The ballista on the north tower loosed.
Whack.
The war engines on the towers of the Bridge Castle loosed.
Crack!
Crack!
High above them, Harmodius leaned out over the wall, hand in hand with the Abbess like lovers, and spread his fingers.
‘Fiat lux,’ he said.
The Lower Town seemed to explode as a hail of fire fell, a hand of fate that struck buildings flat.
The daemons were silhouetted in fire. At the back of their company, daemons turned to see what had happened.
The captain had to fight the vainglorious urge to charge them. He backed another step.
The two things came at them, and their fear . . .
Wasn’t as strong as it had been. Somewhere deep inside, or perhaps above, the fight, the captain had time to smile at the irony. He had lived his entire childhood in fear. He was afraid of so many things.
Familiarity breeds contempt. He was used to acting while he was afraid.
The terror projected by the daemons wasn’t having any effect on him.
Despite which, it was all he could do to stand his ground, because they remained big, fast and dangerous.
Jehannes had a pole-axe. He cut two handed into a blade attack, and his axe-hammer broke the daemon’s sword arm. It stumbled back, and he got his haft between the other’s legs, and as it stumbled, the captain had all the time he needed to step forward and cut overhand from the garde of the long tail, the sword flashing up, powered by his hips, his arms, his shoulders as he levelled the blow, right to left.
His blow went under its weapon. Beheaded it.
Beside him Jehannes stepped forward again and rammed pole-axe’s spike into the supine daemon, so that it screamed.
There was a sound very like applause.
The captain wondered who was watching.
They were most of the way up the ridge, under the main gate. And still bathed in the silver-white light of his casting. He was breathing hard. His helmet was like a trap over his face, constricting him, the visor was like a hand over his mouth, and he was bathed in sweat.
The daemons came on again. There were boglins trying to get around them on the left and right, and his archers were shooting with methodical regularity, but he couldn’t stop to think about that. They were on him.
The daemon in front of him swung its axe two handed, and he cut at its hands – its blow turned to a defence, and it’s left claw shot out and slammed into his shoulder and he stumbled back in a flash of pain.
He’d been hit.
Again.
Jehannes threw three fast jabs with his spear point, reversed his pole-arm to bat his opponent’s axe out of the way and planted his spike in the daemon – it screamed and fell back, taking the haft with it, planted in its breastbone. Jehannes struggled too long to keep it.
The captain’s adversary swung on Jehannes from the side, catching the knight in the side of the helmet and Jehannes fell.
He came back for me, the captain thought.
He lunged, his long sword held only by its pommel in his right hand, and raked the point across his opponent’s beaked face – an attack of desperation. But the blow landed, and the daemon stumbled off balance. He recovered forward, grabbing the blade near the point, which he rammed into the daemon’s scaled thigh, and with that as leverage, he hurled it from the road. It fell away into the darkness.
He stepped forward again, past Jehannes.
The one that had spoken jumped forward, shouldering past two of its own kind.
‘I am Thurkan of the Qwethenog,’ it said.
She hadn’t intended to come out onto the wall.
Her place was in the infirmary and wounded men were coming through the gate.
She told herself that she would only look. Only a moment. People were cheering.
She ran barefoot through the infirmary’s second floor balcony doors, and leaped lightly from the stone balustrade, between a pair of gargoyles that decorated the lower gable ends, and skinned her thigh on the slates as she slid down to the curtain wall. She’d taken this path a thousand times to go out after the nuns blew out the last lights.
She was a level above the gatehouse. She skidded to a stop when she saw that a section of curtain wall was simply gone, and her left foot hovered over empty space.
Below her the hillside was bathed in a cruel white light.
When she was young, her Outwaller family had called them guardians and worshipped them. North of the wall she had thought they were angels.
Now a mighty one stood on the cobbled road, facing the Red Knight.
How she hated that substitute for a name. The Red Knight.
He looked tired. And heroic.
She couldn’
t watch.
She couldn’t look away.
The guardian struck with two axes, cutting with both at the same time – something a mere man could never hope to do.
He stepped forward and to the right, and smashed an axe to the ground; the guardian stepped back. She saw it draw power. Guardians were not like men in any way except for their love of beauty. It took in power as if breathing – a natural movement – and then it snapped its working at the knight.
Who turned it. Then he stepped forward, and raised his sword slowly, an elaborate gesture like a salute.
Achieved his guard.
And froze.
The guardian raised its axes.
And froze.
Time stopped.
She couldn’t breathe.
When one of them moved, it would be over.
The Ings of the Albin – Ranald Lachlan
Donald came and sat on a rock by Ranald’s tiny fire. Half their force was out on picket – the men cooking breakfast spoke in low tones.
‘I’ve a notion,’ Donald said.
Ranald ate a piece of bacon, and raised an eyebrow. He was feeling better. More alive. Ian the Old had made him angry, pissing in the stream where they got drinking water.
Yesterday nothing had made him angry, so he savoured that anger as a sign he was alive.
All those thoughts flitted through his head while he chewed, and then he nodded. ‘I thought I smelled smoke,’ he said, and managed a smile – another triumph.
Donald leaned back. ‘None of yer sass, now. And you half my age.’ He grinned. ‘I think we should push the herd for Albinkirk. It is only twelve leagues, or like enough as makes no difference.’
Ranald was alive enough, and enough of a hillman, to be taken with the boldness of it. ‘Right over the same terrain where we fought the Sossag?’ he said. He shrugged.
‘They’re gone, Ranald. Nobody’s seen dick of them for three days. Not a feather, not a scout, not a bare buttock. It’s their way. They don’t hold ground.’ Donald leaned forward. ‘What’s the herd worth at the Inn? A silver penny a head or less? And it’s a far longer walk to the Inn than it is to Albinkirk.’
Ranald stared into the flames of his small birch bark fire. He added leaves from a pouch at his belt to his copper cup full of water, stirred honey in, drank it, and gave a quiet thanks to God. His belief in God had suffered – or maybe not. He wasn’t entirely sure.
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