The Red Knight

The troll charged them, racing like a mad dog straight at the wagons. The horses panicked but his men did not, and quarrels flew thick as snow, and the troll screamed and slowed, seemed for a moment to be swimming through steel, and then suddenly fell with a crash.

The boglins vanished.

Random, standing on the wagon seat, took an arrow in the breastplate. It didn’t bite, but it knocked him off the seat and it hurt when he got to his feet – his shoulder hurt and his neck hurt like fire.

Just ahead, the vanguard was abruptly locked up with more boglins.

Old Bob was racing for the melee.

Random watched as his soldiers crushed the smaller creatures with weight of horse and better weapons, better skill, and the boglins, as was inevitable, broke and ran.

Old Bob shouted something, but his words were lost in the triumph of the moment, and the troopers turned as one to harry the fleeing boglins . . . and suddenly the trolls were on them – a pair, smashing in from either flank. Blood came off the melee like smoke as they struck, and horses died faster than they could fall to the ground.

Random had never seen a troll before, but the Wild name for them – dhag – stuck in his mind, as did a picture in a Book of Hours he’d purchased in Harndon for the market – taller than a peasant’s house, as black as night or expensive velvet, with plates of black stone like armour and no face, topped with antlers like clubs. A troll could crush an armoured man’s breastplate in one blow and behead him in another, could move as fast as a horse and as quiet as a bear.

The vanguard was dead before Random could close his mouth. Six men gone in a breath.

Old Bob had a light lance, and he lowered the point – one of the monsters turned, almost falling as it skidded to a stop, feeling the vibration of the charging horse. It braced itself, head low, horn-clad feet still churning at the earth, and Random could see the great plate of stone that protected its skull.

And then Old Bob’s horse was by and his lance, thrown, not couched, went into the beast’s side – struck deep between two stone plates, and the meaty sound of the heavy spearhead going home in the flesh carried across the distance.

A dozen bolts hit the creature.

Gawin had the rearguard up, forming to the right and left, with companies of guildsmen coming up next to the wagons on either side – not the smoothest, and their faces were as white as snow, and their hands shook, but they were coming.

‘Halt!’ Gawin shouted, and Guilbert came from the other side of the wagons with another five of the wagon guards.

Guilbert took command with one glance. ‘Pick a target!’ he called.

The woods were surprisingly silent.

Old Bob had his horse around, but he never saw the dozen boglins coming. One of them put a spear into his horse effortlessly, like a dancer, the squat thing pirouetting as its spear skewered the beast, and the horse stopped its turn and gave a shrill scream as the wounded troll attacked. Its first blow ripped Old Bob’s lower jaw off his face under the brim of his open-faced helmet – then it crushed his breastplate so that a fountain of blood blew out of his open throat.

The wounded troll slumped. The second one stopped and bent down to feed off both of them, its visor opening and a set of fangs showing sharp against the black of its mouth.

The wave of boglins charged the line of bowmen and soldiers, and this time his men broke and ran.

Random watched them with complete understanding, terrified and virtually unable to move his limbs too, and the sight of the old knight being ripped asunder by the troll seemed to have numbed his mind. He tried to speak. He watched as the guildsmen shuffled, cursed, and turned too. The guards had horses, and they put their spurs to their mounts.

‘Stand!’ Guilbert shouted. ‘Stand or you are all dead men!’

They ignored him.

And then Ser Gawin laughed.

The sound of his laughter didn’t stop the horrified men from running. It didn’t stop the mounted men from raking their spurs into their panicked mounts . . . but it did make many men turn their heads.

His visor fell over his face with a click.

His destrier took its first steps, already moving quickly, as any horse trained to the joust knows to do.

His lance, erect in his hand, dipped, the pennon fluttering, and then he was moving like a streak of steel lightning across the ground between the wagons and the boglins. They, in turn, froze like animals hearing a hunter’s call.

The feeding troll raised its head.

The chief of the boglins raised a horn and it blew a long, sweet note. Other horns echoed, and Random was suddenly freed from the vice of fear that ground against his heart. He got his sword clear of its scabbard.

‘Hear me, Saint Christopher,’ he vowed,’ if I live through this, I will build a church to you.’