The Red Knight

But the sight of Albinkirk, five leagues or so distant, oppressed him. It was, after all, the place they’d been taking him to be sold. So he turned up the first decent path leading north, into the mountains, and he followed it even though setting his feet to it required an act of courage and marked his first decision.

He was not going back.

He’d rid himself of his yoke. It was easier than he’d expected – given time and some large rocks, he’d simply bashed it to flinders.

Like all slaves, and many other men, he had heard that there were people who lived at peace with the Wild. Even at home, there were those who did more-

Best not to think of those people. Those who sold their souls.

He didn’t want to think about it. But he went north, the axe over his shoulder, and he walked until darkness fell, passing a dozen abandoned farmsteads and stealing enough food that he couldn’t easily carry more. He found a good bow, although it had no arrows and no quiver. It was odd, going into the abandoned cabins along the trail – in some, the steaders had carefully folded everything away; chests full of blankets, plate rails full of green glazed plates from over the eastern mountains, Morean plates and cups and a little pewter. He didn’t bother to steal any of these, except a good horn cup he found on a chimney mantel.

In other houses, there was still food on the table, the meat rotting, the bread stale. The first time he found a meal on the table he ate it, and later he burped and burped until he threw it up.

By the twelfth cabin, he’d stopped being careful.

He went into the barn, and there was a sow. She’d been left because she was heavy, gravid, and the farmer was too soft hearted – or just too pragmatic – to try and drive her to Albinkirk in her condition.

He was wondering if he was hard-hearted enough to butcher her when he heard the barn’s main door give a squeak.

He saw the Wild creature enter. It was naked, bright red, its parody of hair a shocking tongue of flame. It had an arrow on its bow, the iron tip winked with steel malevolence, and it was pointed at Peter’s chest.

Peter nodded. His throat had closed. He fought down his gorge, and the shaking of his arms, and managed to say, ‘Hello.’

The red thing wrinkled its lips as if he smelled something bad and Peter’s perspective shifted. It was actually a man in red paint, with his hair full of some sort of red mud.

Peter turned slightly to face the man. He held up his empty hands. ‘I will not be a slave,’ he said.

The red man raised his head and literally looked down his nose at Peter, who shivered. The arrow, at full draw, didn’t waver.

‘Ti natack onah!’ the red man said in a tone full of authority. A human voice.

‘I don’t understand,’ Peter said. His voice trembled. The red man was obviously a war-leader of some sort, which meant that there were others around. Whatever kind of men they were, they were not what Peter had expected. They raised his hopes, and dashed them.

‘Ti natack onah!’ the man said again, with increasing insistence. ‘TI NATACK ONAH.’

Peter put his hands up in the air. ‘I surrender!’ he said.

The red man loosed his arrow.

It passed Peter, missing him by the width of his arm, and Peter felt his bowels flip over. He crouched, his knees going out from under him, and he put his arms around himself, cursing his own weakness. And so quickly I am a slave again.

Behind him there was a scream.

The red man had put an arrow into the sow’s head, and she twitched a few times and was dead.

Suddenly the barn was full of painted men – red, red and black, black with white handprints, black with a skull face. They were terrifying and they moved with a liquid, muscular grace that was worse than all his imaginings of the creatures of the Wild. As he watched, they butchered the sow and her unborn piglets, and he was pulled from the barn – roughly, but without malice – and the red man lit a torch from a very ordinary looking fire-kit and set fire to the shingles of the barn.

It lit off like an alchemical display, despite weeks of rain.

More of the warriors came, and then more – perhaps fifty arrived within the hour. They passed through the cabin, and when the roof fell into the raging inferno of the barn, they gathered half-burned boards into a smaller fire, and then another and another, until they had a fire that ran the length of the small cabin, and then staked the unborn piglets on green alder and some iron stakes they found in the cabin and roasted them. Other men found the underground storage cellar, and pushed dried corn into the coals, and apples – hundred of apples.