The Red Knight

South and East of Lissen Carrack – The Red Knight

There is a great deal of luck involved in catching an enemy, especially a victorious enemy who outnumbers you twenty to one, flat footed, glutted with spoil, unable to either fight or flee.

There’s even more luck involved when you catch your enemy glutted with spoil and pinned against a roaring torrent of a stream, with only one ford, and that ford held by a desperate madman.

Because he was in command, and because he feared a trap, the captain was among the last men onto the field, leading half a dozen archers and two men-at-arms and Jacques with all the valets as a reserve. He came forward still full of doubt at his own decision, which seemed rash, and yet full of a sort of certainty – almost like religious faith – that he could feel the enemy’s failure.

He came on the heels of the main battle’s charge to cover Bad Tom’s headlong rush, and Jacques was less than twenty horse lengths behind the last man of the main battle, and still, by the time he rode under the big oak trees, the fighting was over by the abandoned wagons. He rode by what he assumed had been the convoy’s a last stand – a dozen guildsmen face down, some of them looking half eaten or worse.

He rode past the carcasses of not one, but three, dead dhags. He had only ever seen one, before today.

He passed down a line of carts, their draught animals dead and partially butchered in their traces. Other wagons had their oxen or their horses untouched, panicked in the traces but alive. There were human bodies among the dead boglins and other things – one corpse looked like a golden bear, cleanly beheaded.

He shook his head in disbelief.

He couldn’t have planned it this way. Couldn’t have coordinated such a victory, not with a pair of magi to handle communications and twice the number of men.

Farther on, they were still fighting. He could hear Tom’s warcry.

He came up to two men holding a dozen fretting war horses and Jacques sent four valets to take their reins. The two men-at-arms grinned, loosened swords in their scabbards, and headed off down the trail toward the sound of belling. The captain took a breath, thinking of the kind of men and women he employed. The kind who smiled and hastened down the trail to battle. He led them. They made him happy.

He dismounted, handed his horse to Jacques, who gave him his spear. And dismounted himself.

‘Not without me, you loon,’ Jacques said.

‘I have to,’ the captain said. ‘You don’t.’

Jacques spat. ‘Can we get this over with?’ He gestured, and Toby appeared, somehow taller and more dangerous looking in a breast and back and a pot helm.

They ran forward. There was fighting off to their left – the humdrum sound of blade on blade. And ahead, heavy movement and grunting, like a huge boar in a deep thicket.

‘Don’t let it fucking cross the river!’ Tom roared, almost at his elbow.

The captain came around the great bole of an old elm, and there was the beast – twenty-five hands at the shoulder, with curling tusks.

A behemoth.

It turned.

Like every creature of the Wild, its eyes met the captain’s, and it roared a challenge.

‘Here we go,’ said Tom, with relish. ‘Captain’s here. Now we can dance!’

Jacques hip-checked the captain. ‘Mind?’ he said, and shot the thing, a clean shaft that leapt from his bowstring at full draw and plunged through its hide, vanishing to the fletchings. His war-bow was as long and heavy as Wilful Murder’s, and most men couldn’t draw it.

Somebody behind it plunged a sword deep into its side, and then a man-at-arms was sawing at its neck, and it was roaring in anger. But the flurry of blows let up, and suddenly it got its feet under it, tossed the man-at-arms free, and put its head down.

‘Oh fuck,’ Jacques said.

A solid lance of fire crossed the stream and struck the behemoth in the head, splintering a tusk and setting fire to the stump. Despite the fear, every man turned to look. Most of them had never seen a phantasm used in combat.

The captain charged it, because that seemed better than it charging him. His horse had done all the work until now, and his legs were fresh, despite the weight of steel greaves and sabatons.

The fire was a nice distraction and he slammed his heavy spear into its face, near an eye. It was collapsing back – Jacques, also unaffected by the pyrotechnics, was walking forward, putting arrow after arrow into its unguarded belly.