The Red Knight

West of Albinkirk – Gerald Random

Master Random’s convoy shook out early despite the adventures of the night, or perhaps because of them.

He was quite proud of them. Men were singing in the dawn – some shaved at mirrors hung from wagon sides, and other men sharpened blades, sharpened arrow heads and crossbow quarrels. Men were rolling their blankets tight against the damp. Others boiled water in copper pots, or heated up a cupful of last night’s porridge. At his own fire, the old Magus was heating ale in a copper shoe.

‘You seem content to help yourself,’ Random said.

Harmodius didn’t even raise an eyebrow. ‘I pay you the compliment of assuming that you are a generous man. And I made some for you.’

Random laughed. He was camping with a legend, who was heating him ale on a chilly spring morning.

Birds sang, and men sang, and Random could see young Adrian from the goldsmiths sitting on a wagon box and sketching.

Adrian was a pargeter – an artist in gold leaf. He was a likely lad, just about to leave apprenticeship for journeyman status, which would be a brief stop for him. His father was both talented and rich – one of the goldsmith’s coming men. Adrian was medium height, thin and fit, in expensive arming clothes made by professionals. He was wearing his breast- and backplate, his arming hood, and his armoured gloves lay across his lap. More and more of the young men were starting to ape the manners of the sell-swords – wearing their harnesses all day, carefully tending to their weapons.

Random couldn’t see what young Adrian was sketching – it was on the other side of one of the goldsmith’s wagons. Warm ale in hand, he went to look.

He smelled the thing long before he saw it. It had a horrible, sulphurous smell, overlaid with a sickly sweet-shop smell, like sugared liver.

He smelled the smell, but it didn’t warn him.

The dead thing had been a daemon.

Young Adrian looked up from his sketch. ‘Henry found it in the bush.’ The other goldsmith apprentice stood by the corpse with determined possessiveness, despite the horror of it.

Close up and dead, the daemon was deeply disconcerting. The size of a small horse, it had finely scaled skin, like a river bass or a blue-gill; and the scales varied from white to pale gray with veins of blue and black like fine marble – all surmounted by an opalescent sheen with all the colours of the rainbow. Its eyes were empty pits, the lids collapsed on them as if its death had robbed it of its eyes. It had a heavy, raptor-like head with a snout or a beak, and a crest like the plumage a man might wear on a tournament helm. It lay limp in death, like wilted flowers. It had two arms on its long trunk that were disturbingly like heavy human arms – the muscled arms of a blacksmith, perhaps – and heavy, powerful legs that seemed twice the size of the arms. Upright it must have stood as high as a man on a wagon.

The legs and torso were balanced by a heavy tail covered in sharp spines.

It was no animal. The beak and spines were inlaid in lead and gold in fantastic patterns; the bony ridge above the eyes held more inlay, and the dead daemon wore a cote of scarlet leather lined in fur – beautiful work. Random couldn’t help himself – he knelt, despite the stink, and fingered the material. Deerskin – dyed brighter and better than any dye he knew of, and tightly sewn in sinew.

There wasn’t a mark on the monster, and the most disconcerting part of it was that its alien face was strangely beautiful, and wore a look of terror.

The old Magus wandered over, drinking ale. He stopped and looked at the daemon.

‘Ah,’ he said.

Random didn’t know how to broach his thought. ‘I’d like the cote,’ he said.

Harmodius looked at him as if he was mad.

‘You killed it. It’s yours.’ Random shrugged. ‘Or that’s how we did things when I was in the king’s army.’

Harmodius shook his head. ‘Heh,’ he said. ‘Take it then. My gift. For your hospitality.’

Three more of the goldsmith apprentices helped him roll it over. It took him five minutes to get the cote off. It was the size of a horse blanket, or perhaps slightly smaller and was untouched by whatever wound had killed the monster, and clean. Random rolled it tightly, wrapped it in sacking, and put it in his own wagon.

The apprentices were eyeing the gold inlay.

‘Leave it,’ Harmodius said. ‘Their bodies generally fade rather than rot. I wonder-’ He bent over the corpse. Prodded it with a stick, and despite having just rolled it over, the apprentices stepped back, and Henry hurried to get a quarrel in his crossbow.

The Magus drew a short stick from his cote. It was like a twig – a crazy twig that looked like a lightning bolt – but it was beautifully maintained with an oil finish that most twigs couldn’t hold. The ends had minute silver caps.

Harmodius ran it over the corpse – back and forth. Back and forth.