The Red Knight

An arrow rang from his breastplate, denting it deeply, and then he had an armoured fist on the king, and he pulled him straight out of the muddy pool in one long pull. By his side his squire, angered, threw his short spear across the stream and it struck – more by luck than skill – in the torso of a peasant, who folded over it and screamed. And the king got his feet under him and ran straight at the beaver dam – the only clear bridge over the stream.

Gaston followed him, and every man-at-arms nearby followed, too. The dam was half in and half out the water – far from solid, just an animal’s hasty assemblage of downed branches and rotten wood. But the king seemed to skim across it, even as Gaston’s right leg went into water as cold as ice – and he lost his balance, flailed, almost lost his sword and an arrow slammed into his helmet.

The king ran on, across the uneven top of the dam. The first half ran to a rocky island, and then the dam was even worse, the centre of its span under water, and yet the king ran across it, his feet kicking up spray in a brilliant display of balance – straight across the dam into the archers pouring shafts at him, and one got past his buckler to bury itself in his shoulder by the pauldron, and another rang off his helmet, and then he was among them, and his sword moved faster than a dragonfly on a summer’s evening. Gaston was struggling to catch him, breathing like a horse at the end of a long run, soaked, his left leg trapped in mud for a moment and then Gaston was with the king, through the line of archers, and the horns were playing the avaunt and the mort.

He followed the king up the rise to the ridge that dominated the meadow, and more and more men-at-arms crossed behind them – and far off to the left, more men-at-arms had crossed the narrow footbridge on the road, and now the whole line of peasant archers was compromised, and they ran again.

But even as they turned to run, the wyverns struck.

Gaston saw the first one – saw the flicker of its shadow, and looked up in stunned unbelief, even as the wave of its terror struck him and the Alban knights with him. The Albans flowed through the palpable fear – and he refused to let himself pause, although for a moment it was so intense he couldn’t breathe – they surged forward even as the carthorse-sized monster killed a dozen of their number in a single flurry of talons and beak.

There were three of the things.

That was all Gaston could comprehend – that, and that the king was like a fiend, leaping forward at the first wyvern, and his sword sliced a wing through at the root and his back cut flayed a sword’s length of scales from the thing’s neck, and it whirled to face him but he was gone, under the flailing neck and his blade went up into its belly – ripped the thing open from anus to breastbone, and was gone again as its intestines fell free.

Gaston followed him to the second one, where it crushed the Bishop of Lorica to the ground with one blow and ripped his squire’s head from his trunk with its beaked head. Gaston got his spear up, and spiked the head – lost his balance on the uneven ground, broken with the spiked branches the beavers had left – stumbled, and lost his spear, whirled and drew his sword as the head, trailing his spear, went for him.

He cut into its snout with every muscle in his body.

Its head knocked him flat.

The head reared above him, with his spear and his sword stuck in it, and the king straddled him. Blood leaked from the arrow in his left shoulder, and the man cut one handed at the monster’s neck and severed its head.

The surviving knights roared their approval and Gaston got slowly to his feet, drenched by the hot blood of the thing, and dug in its jaw for his sword – he had to kick it off his blade.

The third wyvern was already airborne, leaving a trail of broken knights behind it, but after leaping into the air, he pivoted and collapsed on the king, bearing him to the ground.

Every knight still alive in the meadow fell on the wyvern, and blows rained on it like a steel hail – pieces of meat flew free like dust rises from the first fall of rain.

The wyvern hunched and tried to rise again into the air, but Gaston slammed his spearhead into its neck, and a few feet away, Ser Alcaeus hit the thing with a maul and staggered it. The king struggled from beneath it, staggered to his feet, and rammed his sword to the hilt in its guts before falling to his knees.

The wyvern screamed.

The king fell to the ground, his golden armour all besmirched with the blood of three mighty foes.

Ser Alcaeus swung his maul up over his head, screamed his defiance, and slammed the lead head into the wyvern’s skull, and the beast crumpled atop the king.

A dozen gauntleted hands scrambled to pull the dead thing off the king, even as trumpets sounded behind them and the mounted chivalry emerged from the tree line.

Gaston ran to the king. He got the king’s head on his knee and opened his faceplate.

His mad cousin’s eyes met his.