The Red Knight

Thorn chewed on Thurkan’s words for many heartbeats, and not a breeze stirred the torpid late spring heat in the woods. Insect noises stopped. Not a gwyllch chattered, as if all of nature waited on Thorn’s decisions.

‘Not for nothing do men call you The Orator, Thurkan,’ Thorn allowed. ‘You speak brilliantly. But I doubt your motives. You want this army for your own. The only good you know is the good of the Qwethnethog.’ He took a breath and let it out slowly, to still his rage. And then he threw a single phantasm, a long prepared blow, like a single punch.

The daemon reacted instantly, raising all of its not-inconsiderable power in a wall of walls to stop the blow.

Quick as a mountain lion Thorn cast again.

The single gout of green lightning blasted through his walls like a siege ram through the walls of the wattle and daub house, and the tall daemon crumpled to the ground without a sound. He lay still but for the thumping of his left leg under the command of his hindbrain, still battering the ground in rage and frustration at his own death.

‘Attack,’ Thorn ordered his other captains. To the corpse, he said, ‘One of us was wrong, Thurkan.’ He reached out and subsumed the daemon’s power. And rose from it more powerful than he had ever been.

I should have done that a year ago, he thought, and smiled. And walked out onto the field at the head of his armies.

Near Lissen Carak – de Vrailly

Jean de Vrailly lay dying, content in knowing that he had performed a marvellous feat of arms – one of which men would speak for hundreds of years. His cousin had left him; a correct action, as the battle continued and the king’s standard was advancing, and he lay pillowed on the legs of his squire, Jehan, who had also taken a terrible wound.

The pain was so great that de Vrailly could barely register thoughts – and yet, he was in an ecstasy of relief to be atoning for sin with every waning beat of his heart. The massive damage to his side – the great puncture wounds that sucked air and spat blood and bile with every breath – were living penance, the very stuff of chivalric legend. He would go pure to his Saviour.

His only regret was that there was so much more he might have done – and in his darker moments of dying, he reviewed how he might have swayed his hips a little farther, evaded the wyvern’s blow, and carried on unhurt. So very close.

The archangel’s manifestation took him by surprise – first, because he had refused the angel’s orders, and second, because the archangel had always insisted on coming to him in private.

Now he appeared, glorious in armour, cap à pied in dazzling white plate, with the red cross emblazoned on a white surcote so utterly devoid of shadow as to seem to repel death.

All over the beaver meadow wounded men stopped screaming. Servants fell on their faces. Men rose on an elbow, despite the pain, or rolled themselves over despite trailing intestines or deep gouges – because this was the heaven come to life.

‘You fool,’ the archangel said softly – and with considerable affection. ‘Proud, vain, arrogant fool.’

Jean de Vrailly looked into that flawless face in the knowledge that his own had deep grooves of pain carved into it. And that he was going to his death. But he raised his head. ‘Yes!’ he said.

‘You were quite, perfectly brilliant.’ The archangel bent and touched his brow. ‘You were worthy,’ he said.

Just for a moment, Jean de Vrailly wondered if the archangel were a man. The touch was so tender.

The words cheered him. ‘Too proud to betray the King of Alba,’ he said.

‘There is a subtle philosophical difference between killing and letting die,’ the archangel said softly. ‘And thanks to you, all my plan is in ashes, and I must build a new edifice to make certain things come to pass.’ He smiled tenderly at the dying knight. ‘You will regret this. My way was better.’

Jean de Vrailly managed a smile. ‘Bah!’ he said. ‘I was a great knight, and I die in great pain. God will take me to his own.’

The archangel shook his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But I think you should live a while longer, and perhaps learn to listen to me next time.’ He bent low, and stripped the bright steel gauntlet off his hand – a slim, ungendered hand – and ran it along the knight’s body. That touch struck de Vrailly like the shock of taking his first wound – and lo, he was healed.

He took a deep and shuddering breath, and found no pain at the bottom of it.

‘You cannot just heal me,’ de Vrailly snapped. ‘It would be unchivalrous of me to walk away healed when my brave people lie at the edge of cruel death.’

The archangel turned his head, brushed the long hair back from his forehead, and he stood. ‘You are the most demanding mortal I have ever met,’ he said.

De Vrailly shrugged. ‘I will beg and pray, if that’s what you require, Taxiarch.’