The Red Knight

The conflict at the Rock had now forced a gathering of resources and allies that involved risks and challenges he had not anticipated. If he continued gathering, he would soon reach a level that would at least appear to challenge his peers – already the mighty Wyrm of the Green Hills was awake to him, raising, as it were, a scaled green eyebrow at his speedy accumulation of power and lesser creatures, men and resources. The old bear in the mountains did not love him either. And at some future point the trolls, scarcely people and more like cruel animals as they were – would come to resent his chains and find a way to throw them off.

So might one feudal lord be alarmed – or at least deeply curious – when a neighbour called in his vassals and raised an army.

The allegory occurred to the fourth self, because the fourth self had once been a man – a man capable of raising armies.

Before he’d learned the truth.

And at another level, the fortress was obviously not going to crumple at his command. Albinkirk’s outer wall had fallen so easily that he’d allowed himself to be seduced by the easy victory – but the citadel itself, full of terrified humans, was not yet under his claws and the easy conquests were over.

And whatever the dark sun was, it was powerful and dangerous, and the men of violence who surrounded it were deadly enemies who he would not underestimate again. Neither could he accept their pollution of his land, attack of his camp, or the preceeding endless cycle of challenge and counter challenge that had led him to grant a favour and confront the fortress more directly.

And where, exactly, was his professed friend in the Rock?

Enough.

He had made his choices, and they led to making war. Now he had to marshal his assets without affronting his peers, rip the fortress from the face of the world – a warning and a tale for all his foes – and grant the Rock to the Wild.

And all the while he contemplated this next move, that part of him which was enjoying the cool of night continued to avoid the golden light cast by the Abbess, as if the mere admission of her existence would be a defeat.

Twenty leagues to the south a hundred of his creatures stirred and rumbled and slept in the cold darkness, and two hundred men huddled close to their fires and posted too many sentries, and over the mountain to the north, hundreds of Sossag warriors woke and made their fires and prepared to come to his cause. And west, and north, creatures woke in their burrows, their caves, their holes and hides and homes – more irks, more boglins, and mightier creatures – a clan of daemons, a moiety of golden bears. And because power called to power, they were coming to him.

The trolls would counter the knights. The Sossag would give him more reliable scouts. The irks and boglins were his foot soldiers. By morning, he would have a force to deal with anything that humankind could offer. Then he would close his claws around the fortress.

Of course, there was irony in his trust of men, rather than creatures of the Wild, to fight other men.

With this decision his selves collapsed, one by one, back into the body under the tree, and that body stretched, sighed, and was almost like a man’s.

Almost.

Lissen Carak – Kaitlin Lanthorn

Kaitlin sighed, and half rolled against the figure beside her. She sighed again, and wondered why her sister had to take up so much of the bed . . . and then she suddenly knew where she was, and she made a noise in her throat. The man next to her turned and put a hand on her breast, and she smiled. And then moaned a little.

He licked her under her chin and kissed her, his tongue dabbing away at the corner of her mouth like a questing thing, and she laughed and threw her arms around him. She was not a slut like her sisters, and she’d never had a man in her bed before in her life, but she was not going to be bound by their sordid plans or their poor taste. She was in love.

Her lover ran his tongue across the base of her ear lobe while one lazy finger traced the line of her nipple. She laughed, and he laughed.

‘I love you,’ Kaitlin Lanthorn said into the darkness. She had never said the words before, not even when he’d first had her maidenhead.

‘And I love you, Kaitlin,’ Michael said, and put his mouth over hers.

Chapter Eight

Master Random

North of Albinkirk – Peter

Peter the cook’s first thought was I am still a free man.

He had walked for two days along the road east, and he hadn’t seen another man. Yesterday noon he’d smelt smoke, and seen the fortress rising to the south – a fortress he had to assume was the town of Albinkirk, although his appreciation of the landscape of western Alba was virtually non-existent and he had only the comments of his captors and the mercenaries to go by.

The two traders must have travelled some way to the east, then. And he was virtually back where he’d begun.

Or he was walking in circles.