The Red Knight

Damn them all, the useless daemons most of all. It was their fortress, and they were all busy watching him to see if they could bring him down, instead of helping.

And Thurkan had failed to take the dark sun.

Thorn was not without doubt. In fact, he was full of doubt, and again, for the hundredth time since the siege began, he considered taking his great staff and walking off into the Wild.

But without him the Wild might fail. And that would be catastrophic. At best it would be fatal for his long term plans.

He extended his hands, and power flowed smoothly. A cloud of faeries began to gather, so great was the power concentrated in a few yards of air.

He tried to imagine what it would be like when she was dead. He would miss her. She had once been the standard by which he measured himself. But that self was largely gone, and it was time he did without her.

And the apprentice. It is a weakness, to miss the company of men.

The Wild had to win. Men were like lice, undermining the health of the Wild.

It was time to act, and he could imagine all of his actions, a fugue of them extending back to his earliest conscious thoughts, culminating here.

He surfaced from the tide of his thoughts and looked around, unhampered by the darkness. He looked at Exrech. ‘Your people must storm the trench,’ he said. ‘And hold it. By holding it, we separate the fortress from the Bridge Castle.’

‘And then we dig,’ Exrech said.

Thorn bowed assent. To Thurkan he said, ‘The dark sun will come for me.’

‘We will lay in ambush for him,’ the daemon promised.

Thorn looked at the trolls – mighty creatures which he suspected had been created in the distant past by magi. As bodyguards. He had now acquired two dozen of them, as was the way when one became a power. He was like a beacon, and so they came. He no longer saw them as horrible. Instead, he saw them as beautiful, the way a craftsman views his perfect chisel, the one that fits his hand as if made for it.

Thorn tapped his great staff on the ground. ‘Go,’ he told his captains.

Lissen Carak – The Abbess

The Abbess felt the spells he cast. She had lain down to rest, but it was happening sooner that she expected and she sat up, her mind reaching for the threads of power that bound her to her stone.

She felt him, in the darkness out there, planning the ruin of her home, and she narrowed her eyes and reached down the link they would always share.

Traitor! she said. She flung the word with a woman’s contempt.

Sophia! He cried into the Aether.

She hurled her defiance at him and she felt her venom strike home, and in the moment of his startlement she read him, and saw that he had a trap prepared – that she had a traitor in her midst, as she had long suspected.

Then she was running, her bare feet slapping the stone floor, her unbound hair trailing behind her like the tail of a comet, running for the courtyard.

She felt him respond, and she had her defences up. She felt his come up – slowly, but when raised, as strong as a wall of iron. She couldn’t even sense him through them, merely that he must be behind that veil. She prayed as she ran – prayed for his ruin.

The young captain was standing by his destrier in the courtyard, with twenty knights behind him.

‘You cannot go out there!’ she screamed. ‘He is waiting for you! It is a trap!’

The captain gave her an odd smile, and waved to Michael, who had his bascinet. ‘He’s coming already, is he?’ he said to her. He turned to his knights. ‘Mount!’ he shouted.

She grabbed his bridle, and his great war horse – quick as lightning – bit at her hand, and only his instant reaction saved her. The Red Knight slapped his hand at Grendel’s neck, and the war horse took one step, and tossed his head, as if to say ‘could have, if I really wanted.’

‘He is coming now-’

His squire placed his helmet on his head, and pulled the chain of his aventail down over his cote armour. The captain flexed his shoulders and arms – left, right. All through the courtyard, squires held up gauntlets – slid them onto their master’s hands, and then reached for the great lances, as tall as small trees and as thick, tipped in long heads of steel.

His face appeared from under the brow of the helmet. He was smiling. ‘Yes,’ the captain said. ‘I feel him. Through you.’ He laughed. ‘What did you do?’

‘I told him what I think of him,’ she said. ‘A woman scorned – for power?’ She threw back her head and laughed. It sounded mad.

‘I imagine,’ the captain said, even as Michael moved the helmet back and forth, seating it securely on his brow, ‘that must have been a shrewd blow.’

She shook her head. ‘His amour propre will shed it soon enough. But I saw into him. He has a traitor in the fortress.’