The Red Knight

He saw Michael step over him and he caught both blows – one on his buckler, one on his long sword. The squire staggered, but the blows fell away.

The captain was backpedalling from between his squire’s knees; using his elbows, steel sabatons scraping the road, he got himself back.

He rolled to the left, almost falling off the elevated road. The daemon captain was pounding Michael with blow after blow, and the lad was standing his ground, pushing his sword and his buckler up into the blows, deflecting them, using the daemon’s strength against it as best he could.

The other daemons were trying to get around the fight.

The captain got his feet under him and he cut at the daemon from the side – but the thing parried his blow high with an axe blade – a horrifying display of skill – and flicked his weapon forward. It was all the captain could do to bat the blow aside.

Both men fell back as the daemon hammered blow after blow, one axe then the other, in an endless rhythm. It might have been predictable, except that it was so fast.

And then, during the moment that the captain had one axe turned on his long sword, and Michael had the other – just for a heartbeat – safely on his buckler-

Jehannes punched his pole-axe between them.

The daemon fell away, folding over the blow. But its armour – or its eldritch skin, or its sigils of power – held.

The captain stumbled back, and he felt Michael at his shoulder.

‘Let me in,’ Jehannes shouted.

Michael slumped and Jehannes stepped past him.

Two daemons leaped past their leader, who was just gaining his feet.

Far above them on the fortress, the trebuchet loosed.

Thump-snack

The ballista on the north tower loosed.

Whack.

The war engines on the towers of the Bridge Castle loosed.

Crack!

Crack!

High above them, Harmodius leaned out over the wall, hand in hand with the Abbess like lovers, and spread his fingers.

‘Fiat lux,’ he said.

The Lower Town seemed to explode as a hail of fire fell, a hand of fate that struck buildings flat.

The daemons were silhouetted in fire. At the back of their company, daemons turned to see what had happened.

The captain had to fight the vainglorious urge to charge them. He backed another step.

The two things came at them, and their fear . . .

Wasn’t as strong as it had been. Somewhere deep inside, or perhaps above, the fight, the captain had time to smile at the irony. He had lived his entire childhood in fear. He was afraid of so many things.

Familiarity breeds contempt. He was used to acting while he was afraid.

The terror projected by the daemons wasn’t having any effect on him.

Despite which, it was all he could do to stand his ground, because they remained big, fast and dangerous.

Jehannes had a pole-axe. He cut two handed into a blade attack, and his axe-hammer broke the daemon’s sword arm. It stumbled back, and he got his haft between the other’s legs, and as it stumbled, the captain had all the time he needed to step forward and cut overhand from the garde of the long tail, the sword flashing up, powered by his hips, his arms, his shoulders as he levelled the blow, right to left.

His blow went under its weapon. Beheaded it.

Beside him Jehannes stepped forward again and rammed pole-axe’s spike into the supine daemon, so that it screamed.

There was a sound very like applause.

The captain wondered who was watching.

They were most of the way up the ridge, under the main gate. And still bathed in the silver-white light of his casting. He was breathing hard. His helmet was like a trap over his face, constricting him, the visor was like a hand over his mouth, and he was bathed in sweat.

The daemons came on again. There were boglins trying to get around them on the left and right, and his archers were shooting with methodical regularity, but he couldn’t stop to think about that. They were on him.

The daemon in front of him swung its axe two handed, and he cut at its hands – its blow turned to a defence, and it’s left claw shot out and slammed into his shoulder and he stumbled back in a flash of pain.

He’d been hit.

Again.

Jehannes threw three fast jabs with his spear point, reversed his pole-arm to bat his opponent’s axe out of the way and planted his spike in the daemon – it screamed and fell back, taking the haft with it, planted in its breastbone. Jehannes struggled too long to keep it.

The captain’s adversary swung on Jehannes from the side, catching the knight in the side of the helmet and Jehannes fell.

He came back for me, the captain thought.

He lunged, his long sword held only by its pommel in his right hand, and raked the point across his opponent’s beaked face – an attack of desperation. But the blow landed, and the daemon stumbled off balance. He recovered forward, grabbing the blade near the point, which he rammed into the daemon’s scaled thigh, and with that as leverage, he hurled it from the road. It fell away into the darkness.

He stepped forward again, past Jehannes.