The Red Knight

‘Like this,’ he said. ‘But it will be more efficient if you pass me power and I cast.’

In a heartbeat – in no time at all, because in the Aethereal, time had so little meaning – they stood on a balcony of his great palace, looking out over the world of solidity.

In his vision, Thorn stood out like a beacon tagged in green. Harmodius pointed her hand at the thing that had been her lover.

She flooded Harmodius with power.

He made fire.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

For the first time, Thorn paused to raise a shield. His burst of temper was over, and Harmodius’s response had been respectable. No more, but no less.

And the fortress’s defences were back. He had landed some good blows. But now he was risking himself for nothing. He raised a second shield.

Harmodius’ mighty blow rolled away like a child’s stick on a knight’s armour.

Thorn grunted.

It might have been a laugh.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

Tom’s unconscious body took six men to carry and the captain was unwilling to lose the horses that had been left for the Lower Town garrison, so a party of archers cleared the town’s upper gate and opened it. The garrison escaped behind the horses, and the sortie went over the walls via ladders.

It was all going very well, until the daemons struck back.

His rearguard was slow in forming – understandable, in the conditions – and suddenly three of them were down, dead, and a gleaming monster stood over them with a pair of wickedly curved axes gleaming in the soft spring moonlight. Marcus – Jehannes’s valet – and Ser Willem Greville, his armour opened as if he was wearing leather. A third man was face down beside them.

The fear was like a waft of foul air.

There were more daemons behind it – fluid and horrible, arresting and beautiful in their movements. And below them, a legion of boglins, irks and men poured into the town they were leaving.

Just like that, the captain was alone.

‘Run, little man,’ the daemon whispered.

The captain reached inside and found Prudentia.

The working was already aligned.

He opened the door before she could protest – he was so much faster than he had been.

The green whistled through the crack, a tempest-

‘He can reach you!’

‘He’s otherwise engaged,’ the captain told his tutor.

‘I need to tell you so many things,’ she said.

He smiled and was back in the dark.

His sword arm was bathed in silver.

The daemon rotated its two axes, one over each wrist and golden-green light joined the two.

‘You!’ said the daemon. ‘Ahh, how I have longed to meet you.’

The captain got his blade up into guard, and cast.

The beam of silver-white light rose into the night like a beacon. And then fell to earth in the centre of the town.

‘Missed,’ hissed the daemon.

The captain backed away, rapidly.

Above him on the trail, a crossbow loosed with a snap.

The daemon grunted as the bolt struck.

Let loose his own spell.

The captain caught it – marvelling at the ease with which he fielded the blow. In the Aethereal, his adversary’s blow was like the cut of a sword, and he caught it and parried it with a sword of his own power, flicking it away. And he was back in the solid, because the daemon followed his phantasm immediately with a heavy cut from his right axe.

He could remember the first time he’d stopped such an attack by Hywel. Had been hit in the next instant because of the sheer pleasure of having accomplished it. Now, as then, he almost died through admiring his own cleverness.

He passed forward into the attack, his sword at eye level, the Guard of the Window, and the axe fell away harmlessly like rain off a roof.

He began to cut overhand, his left foot powering forward, and he caught the growth of his opponent’s power and he turned the blow even as it was rising from his adversary’s talons.

In the solid the attack came in, and he drove the power into the stones of the road between them.

The road exploded, knocking him flat.

With a high scream the daemon leaped the crater and swung both axes at once.