‘I – will – cook – the – rabbits.’ Peter spoke slowly.
‘Gud.’ The larger boglin bobbed. ‘Go kill. Back to eat.’ He made a chittering noise, his partner joined him, and they bent forward and loped off into the gathering night.
Ota Qwan looked at Peter. ‘Do you have the power, laddy?’ he asked.
Peter shook his head.
Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘Among the Sossag people it is mostly shamans who can talk to the Wild,’ he said. ‘I would like to have boglins to follow me,’ he said. ‘If they offer to join us, accept.’
Peter swallowed. ‘You would have them in camp?’
Ota Qwan shook his head in mock anger. ‘Boglins are big medicine, you know that?’
‘Where do they come from?’ Peter asked. ‘I had never seen one before – I came here.’
Ota Qwan sat by the corpse of the gutted woman. He didn’t seem to notice her, or care. ‘I don’t know, but I can tell you what men say. The word is that they grow in great colonies like giant termite hills in the deep Wild – way out west. All the creatures of the Wild fear them. The great Powers of the Wild cultivate them, recruit whole colonies, and send them to their deaths.’ Ota Qwan sighed. ‘I’ve heard said they were made – they were created – by a great Power. To fight an ancient war.’
Peter shook his head. ‘That’s just a way of saying you don’t know.’
‘Don’t I?’ Ota Qwan laughed. ‘You have so much to learn about the Wild. Because the Powers pretend that they fear nothing, but they fear the little boglins. A thousand boglins are a fearful sight. A million boglins-’ He shrugged. ‘If they could be fed, they could conquer the world.’
Peter swallowed bile.
‘Maybe you could cook for them, eh?’ Ota Qwan said. ‘You know the matrons have given you a name?’
Peter nodded expectantly.
‘Nita Qwan.’ Ota Qwan nodded expectantly. ‘A very potent name. Well done.’
Peer sounded it out in his head. ‘Gives – something.’
‘He gives life,’ Ota Qwan said.
‘Like your name,’ Peter said.
‘Yes. They see us together. I like that.’ He nodded.
‘What is Ota?’ Peter asked.
‘Take. Like ota nere!’ he paused.
‘Take water. When we are on the march.’ Peter nodded. And then turned. ‘You are Take Life and I am Give Life.’
Ota Qwan laughed. ‘Got it in one. You were Grundag. Now you are Nita Qwan. My brother. And my symbolic opposite.’ He nodded again. ‘Now – recruit me those boglins. This siege is almost over; we’ll go home as soon as the dead are eaten.’
Peter shook his head. ‘I lack your experience of war,’ he said. ‘But the Alban Royal Army is just coming up the Vale of the Cohocton.’
Ota Qwan rubbed his chin. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a very good point. But Thorn says we will triumph tonight.’
‘How?’ Nita Qwan asked.
‘Pick up your bow and spear and come with me,’ Ota Qwan said.
Nita Qwan put the rabbits on green stick spits and left his woman to turn them. He took up his bow and his new spear, tipped with the fine blued-steel head that had come to him as a share of his spoils from the Fight at the Ford. He had many new things, and his woman was impressed.
And it had only cost him a year of his life. But he spat and followed Ota Qwan, because it was easier to follow than to think. He ran, and caught Ota Qwan by the elbow. The war leader stopped.
‘One thing,’ Nita Qwan said.
‘Be quick, laddy,’ Ota Qwan said.
‘I’m not anyone’s lad. Not yours, not anyone’s. Got me?’ Nita Qwan’s eyes bored straight into the war leader’s.
He didn’t flinch. But after several breaths, his nostrils flared, and he smiled. ‘I hear you, Nita Qwan.’
He turned and ran, and Nita Qwan followed, better satisfied.
At the edge of the woods, many of the surviving Sossag warriors were waiting – almost five hundred of them. Beyond them, painted fiery red in the sun were Abenacki, and even a few Mohak, in their characteristic skeleton paint.
The Abenacki war chief, Akra Crom, walked to the centre, between the groups. He raised an axe from his belt and held it over his head.
Ota Qwan smiled. ‘If he falls today,’ Ota Qwan said, ‘I will be war chief of the Sossag, and perhaps the Abenacki, too.’
Nita Qwan felt as if he’d been punched in the gut.
‘Don’t be so naive,’ the older man said. ‘This is the Wild.’
Nita Qwan took a deep breath. ‘What does he say?’
‘He says that if we ever want to get home, we must fight well tonight for Thorn, and kill the armoured horsemen as we have so many times. We have a thousand warriors. We have bows, and axes. La di da.’ Ota Qwan looked around. ‘In truth, this Thorn doesn’t seem to have a serious plan for us – as if he thinks that by ordering us out of the woods and into the fields, we will kill all the knights.’ He shrugged.
Nita Qwan shuddered.
Ota Qwan put an arm around him. ‘We will go and lie in ambush by the enemy back gate,’ he said. He barely waited for the Abenacki man to stop his oration before he rose to his feet, shook his spear, and the Sossag gave a scream of power and followed Ota Qwan into the green of the woods.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The horses were all tired, and many of them bore light wounds, muscle strains, scars – and so did their riders.
There were twenty-five men-at-arms – a pitiful number against a sea of foes.
And at the base of the ridge, a perfect circle of cooling glass marked the best efforts of their foe.
The captain was operating in a haze of fatigue and minor pains that all but subsumed emotion. He knew – at a remove – that the Abbess was gone. That Grendel, almost a friend, was dead and probably eaten down on the plain. That his beloved tutor was cold marble – no longer even a simulacrum of life.
But at another level, he walled all that away.
Can you fight every day?
He knew he could. Every day, until the sun died.
The place in his head where his friends were dying was like a bad tooth, and by an effort of will, he didn’t run his tongue over it.
Nor did he think, If we win today, we’re saved.
He didn’t think that, because he didn’t really think much beyond his next stratagem, and he was now pretty much out of tricks.
All of this went through his head between one leap of his new mount and the next.
He hurt.
They all did.
And then the sortie was down onto the plain, and forming their wedge.
Random was more tired than he had ever been, and had he not been wearing first-rate armour, he’d long since have been dead. As it was, blows slammed into him more and more often as the monsters in the courtyard crawled over their own dead to reach him.
Twice, shouts behind him told him that more of the cursed things had made it onto the tower or the wall – apparently using their vestigial wings, or perhaps they were a new and horrible breed – but the spearmen at his back held their ground.
Twice he had a respite from the attacks on the door, but he had no idea why the white things stopped coming. He would pant, someone would hand him water, and then they’d come again. The white boglins were bad. The big irks were worse.
A farmer tried to help him in the doorway – braver or stupider than the rest – and died almost as soon as he took his place, while one of his mates begged him not to go.
‘Ye have no armour!’ a bigger, Harndon accented man called.
He didn’t have armour on his arms and legs, and the wicked scythes on their limbs sliced him to pieces, dragged him down and carved him up. And they ate him – even the dying ones took a bite.
Random couldn’t lift the buckler high any more. He knew it was just a matter of time before he was struck in the visor or the groin – only luck and the efforts of the spearmen kept him at it.
More irks came. They took their time coming over the low mound of dead, and they all came at him together. A shield caught his outstretched arm – the vambrace held the blow, but he was unbalanced, and the boglins dragged him to his knees – a blow struck the back of his helmet and he was down.
He could feel a sharp pain across his instep – something was hacking at his armoured shin – and then, to his horror, he began to be dragged out of the doorway, into the pile of corpses.
He couldn’t help it. He screamed.
And then he wasn’t being dragged, and a heavy weight crushed him. Only the strength of his breastplate and his backplate and their hinges kept the crushing weight from taking the breath out of him.
There was a sharper pain in his right foot.
He tried to call out, and suddenly his helmet was full of liquid – he spat. It was hell – dark – bitter. He choked and spat and realised that he was drowning.
In boglin blood.
He tried to scream.
More pain.
Christ, I am being eaten alive.
Christ, save me in my hour of need.
The Wild – Peter
Nita Qwan loped through the woods. The circle of the sun was high overhead. It was a poor time to set a trap, and he wanted to wait for night, but it was late spring, and darkness – true darkness – was still a long way away.
A brilliant emerald flash lit the sky to the south. A titanic concussion rocked the earth.
Ota Qwan grinned. ‘Our signal. He is mighty, our chief. Let’s go! Gots onah!’ The acting war chief ran ahead of the band, and they began to sprint over the grass, angling east, and the summer light threw shadows under them.
They had almost a mile to go. Nita Qwan was a strong man, and had lived with the Sossag for weeks, but running a mile to fight was the most exhausting work – especially after a morning of food gathering and cooking. He put his head down and tried to seal off his mind from his thighs and his lungs, and he ran.
It took many long minutes to run all the way to the east of the great ridge, but finally, Ota Qwan raised a hand. ‘Down!’ he called, and the People fell to the earth in the tall grass. He turned to Skahas Gaho and another warrior and sent them off farther to the east, and then he lay down by Nita Qwan.
‘Not long now,’ he said. ‘We are in the right place. Now we see if Thorn knows what he is doing.’
Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn watched the action develop from the utter safety of the western edge of the woods. He was not strong enough to risk himself today – because he’d thrown too much in a single casting. It rankled. But he had thousands of servants to aid him, and today he was spending them like water, his usual caution forgotten.
Many of his servants would have been disturbed to note that he had already decided to use them all, if he had to. He knew where more creatures of the Wild could be raised. He himself was irreplaceable.
And she was dead.
He had made mistakes, but the end game was going to play out with the inevitability of one of those ancient plays he had once so enjoyed, and now could no longer remember.
The king would come, and be defeated. That trap was already laid.
And then it would all be his.
Albinkirk – de Vrailly
He could no longer set his tent away from the army. Tonight, the army was camped hard by a small stream that ran down to the Cohocton; the carcass of a great beast of the Wild lay in sodden and hideous majesty, the bones picked redly clean in mid-stream. A litter of corpses and the screams and quarrels of the animals that fed on the recent dead marked the scene of a recent battle.
The king ordered the wagons pulled in, trace to axle tree, a fortress of tall, wheeled carts chained at the hubs, and even de Vrailly couldn’t fault him for his caution. They were in the very midst of the Wild, and the enemy was palpable, all around them. Many of the footsoldiers and not a few of the knights were afraid – scared, or even terrified. De Vrailly could hear their womanish laughter in the firelit dark, but he himself knew nothing but a fierce joy that at last – at last – he would be tested, and found worthy. The much-discussed fortress of Lissen Carak was three leagues away to the north, the Queen’s flotilla was, by all reports, already lying in mid-stream, ready to support their attack in the morning. Even the cautious old women of the king’s council were forced to admit that there would be a battle.
He was kneeling before his prie-dieu when the angel came. He came with a small thunderclap and a burst of myrrh.
De Vrailly cried out.
The angel hovered, and then sank to the earth, his great spear touching the cross-beam of the great tent.
‘My lord de Vrailly,’ the angel said. ‘The greatest knight in the world.’
‘You mock me,’ de Vrailly said.
‘Tomorrow will see you acknowledged as such by every man,’ said the angel.
Jean de Vrailly was struggling with his doubt. He felt as a man does who knows he should not mention a certain fact to his wife, but does so, anyway – precipitating an avoidable argument. ‘You said we would fight a battle,’ he said, hating the whine of doubt in his voice. ‘At Albinkirk.’
The angel nodded. ‘I am not God,’ he said. ‘I am merely a servant. The battle will be here. It should have been at Albinkirk, but forces – circumstances – forced my hand.’
The angel’s hesitation froze de Vrailly.
‘What forces, my lord?’ asked Jean de Vrailly.
‘Mind your own role, and leave me to mine,’ said the angel. His voice sounded like a whip-crack. Like de Vrailly’s own. Beautiful and terrible. Imbued with power.
De Vrailly sighed. ‘I await your orders,’ he said.
The angel nodded. ‘Tomorrow, at dawn, the king will attack. The Enemy has a blocking force on the road between here and the bridge. Let the king lead the attack on that force, and when he falls-’ The angel paused.
De Vrailly felt his heart stop.
‘When he falls, seize command. Cut your way free, save the king’s army, and you will save the day.’ The angel’s voice was pure and precise. ‘His day is done. He has failed. But he will die well, and you, my lord, will take the woman and be king. She is the kingdom. Her father was the greatest lord of Alba next to the king. With the woman, you will rule. Without her – you will not. Am I making myself clear to you?’
De Vrailly’s eyes narrowed. ‘And what of the north?’ he asked. ‘If I am to save the army, am I to let this mighty fortress fall?’
‘You can retake it,’ the angel said reasonably. ‘When you bring an army from Galle.’
De Vrailly bent his proud head, shading his eyes from the brightness of the angel. ‘Pardon me, my lord,’ he said aloud. ‘I have doubted, and been misled by false images.’
The angel touched his head. ‘God forgives you, my son. Remember – when the king falls, take command, and cut your way clear.’
De Vrailly nodded, eyes downcast. ‘I understand very well. My lord.’
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The captain pointed his wedge south and raised his hand. He could feel the heat coming off the hot glass circle to their right – it went right through his steel gauntlet and his glove.
Ouch, he thought. And thanked Harmodius with a silent nod.
‘Let’s ride,’ he called, and they trotted forward, formed tightly. A perfect target for another burst of power.
His back tingled as he rode away from where he felt his enemy to be, towards the near corner of the Bridge Castle, just two hundred horse-lengths away or less.
The wedge negotiated the trench – last night it had been an inferno – crossing it carefully and wasting precious time. Some men had to dismount.
It was still better than riding the other way around the walls.
Some men jumped it, but most men were less flashy and more cautious.
They reformed on the far side, unopposed.
The captain rose in his stirrups. He pointed across the darkening grass towa
rd the near corner of the Bridge Castle.
‘It’s a trap. If it wasn’t, those boglins-’ the captain pointed at a hundred or more boglins who were watching them from a hastily erected earthen assault ramp that rose to the top of the wall of the Bridge Castle ‘-those boglins would have tried to hold the trench against us. Instead of watching like spectators.’
‘Has the Bridge Castle fallen?’ Sauce asked.
The captain watched it for ten heartbeats. ‘No,’ he said.
The Prior of Harndon came up on his left side. ‘If you let me send my signal, my knights will ride to meet us,’ he said. ‘They are just there, in the woods closest to the river.’
The captain looked a little longer. ‘Catching their ambush between two hammers,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ He turned to his valet. ‘Sound – single rank, full interval.’
Lissen Carak – Peter
Ota Qwan was on his knees in the high grass. The enemy – a small party of knights in highly polished armour – had hesitated at the edge of the Trench of Fire, as the Sossag called it now, though it was black and cold in the sun.
‘That lordling knows his business,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘I don’t know him – lacs d’amour? Whose banner is that?’ He spat. ‘He’s spreading his knights.’
‘So?’ Nika Qwan asked.
‘So in a tight bunch, his men kill a few unlucky warriors and we massacre them from all sides. In a long line, every one of them kills a warrior – or maybe five. It is a lucky warrior who gets an arrow into one of them.’
The knights began to come forward in the strong light, and the blue sky was mirrored in their harness. They looked like monsters from the Aether – like mythical beasts. The overhead sun sparkled from their harness and stung men’s eyes.
Skahas Gaho appeared as if by magic from the grass. ‘More tin-men behind us,’ he said. ‘Forming by the woods closest to the river.’ He shrugged. ‘Their horses are wet. They swam the river.’
Ota Qwan made a grunt. Nita Qwan could see he’d made his decision, just in that moment. The war leader stood, put a horn to his lips, and sounded a long call.
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