The Red Knight

The company went down through the Abbess’s passage and entered a maze of stone corridors.

To those who knew what to look for, it was obvious that men had not made these curving corridors.

But they were empty, although, to the captain, every yard of them reeked of the power that had been used in storming them. More than a hundred years ago. More than two hundred years.

And still the power lingered, like the smell of smoke after a fire.

Eventually, the Abbess’s will-o-wisp led them to a double door of oak, bound with iron, copper, and silver. To the captain’s eye, it was covered in sigils – powerful wards drawn Hermetically.

He’d never seen anything like it.

She’d given him the key.

He held it with renewed respect.

Some of the lads were very much on edge. An hour in silent, haunted corridors deep under the earth isn’t the best preparation for combat. The sounds behind him were of men on the edge of panic.

He turned, and cast a soft light.

‘Ready, friends?’ he asked softly.

More and more men stumbled into the antechamber in front of the great doors.

‘We’ll come out into the chapel of the Lower Town,’ he said. ‘The roof is collapsed. Don’t run. Out here a rolled ankle is a death sentence and we’re not coming back this way. So don’t linger.’ He couldn’t explain why.

He was about to open the fortress’s Hermetic defences, for a moment.

He imbued his voice with calm. Humour. Normalcy.

‘Let’s go get Tom,’ he said. He smiled at Jehannes, who, praise be, smiled back.

And he turned the key.

North of Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn felt the change. He was busy resighting his battery, wishing again that he had a mathematician or an engineer – some reliable human calculator who could command the tedious business of putting the great rocks on target. Exrech had proven uninterested. And far too slow. Unwilling to build anything.

He watched the boglins dig, raising a new mound out of range of the new machine on the fortress. He knew this new battery represented a heavy defeat in time and effort.

He was trying not to acknowledge that he had to go into the debatable ground and destroy the fortress’ new machine with his own power. He had no other weapon available with the necessary reach. And he would have to squander power like an angry boy to breach the fortress’s millennium-old defences.

That would leave him weak.

And then he felt the shift. He tasted the air – wasted valuable time sending a raven stooping over the walls, and he saw the nimbus of fire on his former apprentice’s hands, saw the great engine cranked all the way back, saw-

– nothing.

His raven was struck by an arrow, and tumbled out of the air.

He cursed, disoriented by the loss of his connection. Reached for another-

The fortress’s defences were down.

He stepped out from behind his new siege mound. Raised an arm, and let fly a bolt of pure green lightning.

And he laughed.

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius threw a shield in front of the lightning, like a knight making a parry in the tiltyard, and the two castings extinguished each other with a flash of light.

Harmodius stumbled and had to reach for the well of power at his feet. ‘Sweet Lord have mercy,’ he mumbled.

One blow. Thorn could empty him of power in a single blow.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

The captain was first out the gate, and Jehannes was on his heels, leading his party of men-at-arms to the right and out of the chapel.

The nave was full of sleeping boglins.

The killing began.

He counted the armoured shapes coursing past him, lost count in the middle, and had to guess.

But Sauce was true to her promise. She was last.

‘Last out!’ she called, and danced off to the right around the gate.

The captain slammed the great doors shut, with the key inside.

As the two doors met, their power meshed, and the gate vanished, leaving a black stone wall behind the altar, only the shape of the two doors burned onto his retinas remaining.

Bent and the archers were clearing the nave.

Jehannes was already gone over the broken wall.

The captain began to cut his way to the front of the church.

Thorn cast his second levin bolt, and then, without pausing to gather power, he cast a third.

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius’s second defence was more refined than his first – a working of his own, weaker than Thorn’s but deflective rather than resisting. Thorn’s strike bent like a beam of light in a prism and blew a piece of slate the size of a small barn off the side of the ridge.

His third cover was not quite fast enough – he intended to cast a single line of power like a sword parry – but Thorn’s speed left him too late, and he tried to widen his cast, with too little power.

He still stopped most of it.