The Red Knight

Gawin Murien settled the lance in its rest. The boglin chief was standing on the dead troll’s chest, the one the crossbowmen had killed, and the knight’s heavy lance passed through him so quickly that for a heartbeat Random thought the knight had missed, until the small monster was lifted from its feet, all limbs writhing in a horrible parody of an impaled insect, and a thin scream lifting from its throat, and then it was crushed against the stone wall of the remaining troll’s head with a wet sound like a melon breaking, and the stone troll staggered under the imapact.

It roared – a long belling sound that made the woods ring.

Gawin thundered away to the right. He kept his lance, passed through a thicket and emerged to the far right of the wagons. His horse was moving at a slow canter.

Guildsmen and soldiers began to gather again, their rout forgotten, and the boglins began to reach them in ones and twos, their desultory chase become a desperate melee in the turn of a card. A dozen guildsmen were cut down, but instead of spurring the others to run, the deaths of their comrades pulled more and more of the townsmen back to their duty.

Or perhaps it was Gawin’s repeated war cry that did it, ringing as loud as the monsters roar. ‘God and Saint George!’ he shouted, and even the wagons trembled.

The troll dipped its antlers, and spat something. Great clods of moss flew up, and a smell filled the air – a bitter reek of musk. Then it lifted its armoured head and charged, shoulders bunched from its first massive leap forward.

Random swung his sword, his right arm seeming to function independently of his mind, and smashed a boglin with the blow. He backed a step, suddenly aware of a dozen of the things around him, and he got his sword up, point in line, left hand gripping it halfway down the blade.

He charged them. He had the example of the knight before his eyes, and he only had faint a notion that there was more to a charge than bluster. He felt the pain of the first wound and the pressure of the blows on his shoulders and backplate, he also had the time to kill one boglin with the point, break a second with his pommel so that it seemed to burst, and then sweep the legs from a third in as many heartbeats. They had armour – whether it was their own chitinous skin or something made of leather and bone, he had no time to tell – but his heavy sword penetrated it with every thrust, and when it did, they died.

Light flashed, as if lightning had pulsed from the sky.

In a single heartbeat all of his opponents fell, and as they fell they turned to sand. His sword actually passed through one, and beyond his suddenly evaporated opponents, Ser Gawin rode directly at the troll. A horse length from collision his destrier danced to the right – and Ser Gawin’s lance passed under its stone visor to strike it hard in the fanged mouth, plunging his lance the length of a man’s arm into the thing’s throat and crossing the massive monster’s centre-line so that it snapped the lance and tripped the beast, which fell, unbalanced, its armoured head digging a massive furrow in the earth as Ser Gawin and his destrier danced clear.

Lightning pulsed again, and two dozen more boglins spattered to the ground.

‘Rally!’ Guilbert demanded.

The guildsmen were winning.

And every boglin they broke, skewered, or sliced reinforced their growing belief that they might win this battle.

Men were still falling.

But they were going to hold.

. . . until the horses and the oxen panicked, and shredded their column in ten breaths of a terrified man. A wagon plunged through the largest block of guildsmen, scattering them, and the boglins who had stopped, or slowed their charge, or simply balked at entering weapons range, suddenly surged forward. A dozen more guildsmen died at their hands, and the wall of wagons protecting the right of the column was gone.

Random got his back to Guilbert’s. ‘Stand fast!’ he yelled. ‘Stand fast!’

A few feet away, Harmodius pulled a riding whip from his belt.

‘Fiat lux!’ he commanded, and fire raged over the boglins. A guildsman in the process of having his throat ripped out was incinerated in the strike, but the sweet horns were sounding all around them.

Random estimated that the little knot he was with had perhaps twenty men, and at least one of them was on his knees, begging for mercy.

Harmodius drew his sword. He raised an eyebrow.

‘Damn,’ Random said.

Harmodius nodded.

Guilbert shook his head. ‘Wagons punched us a hole,’ he said. ‘The mounted men are that way.’ He pointed back along the track. Back the way they’d come.

Random spat. I’m going to lose everything, he thought.

Harmodius nodded. ‘Might as well try,’ he said. ‘Ready to run, everyone?’ Random felt he ought to contribute something, but it was all happening too damned fast.