The Red Knight

The angel smiled. ‘I grant you their healing – those who have not already passed around the curve of life into death. And I grant to you great glory this day – for why would an angel of the Lord visit you except to bring you great power in battle? Go and conquer, arrogant little mortal. But I tell you that if you ever choose to match yourself against the greatest Power that the Wild has ever bred, he will defeat you. This is not my will, but Fate’s. Do you hear me?’

‘Craven fate would never keep me from a fight,’ de Vrailly said.

‘Ah,’ said the angel. ‘How I love you!’ The angel waved his spear over the beaver meadow.

A hundred knights and as many squires, men-at-arms, servants and valets were cured, their pain washed away, their bodies made whole. In many cases they were better than they had begun the battle. A peasant-born man-at-arms, a Galle, had the permanent injury to his lower left leg healed and made straight – a valet missing one eye had his sight returned.

All in the wave of a spear.

Several dozen wounded Jacks were cured, as well.

‘Go and save the king,’ the archangel said. ‘If that is your will.’

Every man in the meadow knelt and prayed until, in a puff of incense-laden displaced air, the armoured angel vanished.

Lissen Carak – Desiderata

Desiderata lay in a patch of bright sunlight. Her power was dimmed – she herself felt like a candle under a shade. Flickering.

So unjust! That single arrow, plummeting from heaven, and she was done. She had desired to be her husband’s support, perhaps to win herself a share of glory. And instead – this.

The strange young man had put the pain at a distance. That was a blessing. She could feel his worthiness like a bright flame. A knight and a healer – what a superb combination – and she longed to know him better.

Around her, her ladies were silent.

‘Someone sing,’ she said.

Lady Mary started, and the others slowly joined her.

Desiderata lay back on the cloaks of a dozen soldiers.

And then old Harmodius came. He came unannounced, walked into the castle courtyard and knelt beside her.

She was pleased to see the look in his eye. Even mortally wounded, he found her pleasing. ‘There you are, you old fool,’ she said happily.

‘Fool enough to leave the battle and save you, my dear,’ he said.

Carefully, painfully, with Lady Almspend and Lady Mary, he rolled her over and stripped the linen from her back. ‘It’s really quite a nice back,’ he said conversationally.

She breathed in and out, content at last.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain could see the king riding for the bridge at the head of his household, and he could see the king’s battles – each with more men-at-arms than he had ever commanded – coming down the ridge.

He rode along the trench – a trench currently occupied by two hundred archers and valets of his own company, and all the farmers from all the out-villages.

His sanguine surety that the Enemy had made a tactical error was gone, blown away on the wind, and now he watched an endless line of boglins crossing the open ground toward the trench with something akin to panic. It was hard to breathe.

The Prior was sitting on his destrier with Bad Tom, in the non-shade of a burned oak tree.

The captain rode his horse over to them, and then wasted his strength controlling his young war horse as the stallion sought to make trouble with the Prior’s stallion. Finally, he curbed the big horse mercilessly.

‘I miss Grendel,’ he said to Tom.

‘Bet Jacques doesn’t,’ Tom said. He looked back over the sunlit fields. ‘They’re coming.’

The captain nodded. Overhead, the trebuchet disgorged another load of small stones. Cast from a height, it smashed into the oncoming tide and ripped a hole in the enemy line.

The hole closed almost at once.

‘It’s so stupid, the captain said petulantly. ‘When he burned the farms, he did all the damage he needed to do.’ He turned his head to where the king’s Royal Guard was pouring into the trench, led by two hundred purple- and yellow-clad crossbowman from Lorica. ‘And his attack – whether it carries this trench or not – won’t take the fortress.’

The endless wave of boglins, and larger, worse things, swept across the burned plain towards the black line of his trench.

The reinforcements were not going to make the near end of the trench in time.

The farmers and the guildsmen were spread too thin, and they knew it. And the inexperienced purple and gold Loricans were halting, only a third of the way along the trench, and loosing bolts. Like militia.

Of course, they were militia.

‘The farmers will hold,’ Tom said. He was chewing on the stem of a flower. It was an oddly disconcerting sight. ‘The guildsmen will break. They’ve broken before.’

The captain looked at the Prior. ‘Messire, you are so much my senior – in years, in experience, and in this place – guide me. Or command me.’