The Red Knight

His people going to get buried.

He had no sense of time – no one did, in a hand-to-hand fight. But at his back, the purple and yellow tabards had flowed all the way down the trench to Master Random’s guildsmen, and a sturdy line of scarlet was filling in behind them. And beyond them, just crossing the bridge, was solid green. Archers of the Royal Hunt.

‘Jacques!’ he roared.

His valet was two horse lengths away, fighting for his life.

‘Carlus!’ he roared.

The trumpeter didn’t even look around.

‘Damn,’ the captain said. It was a game of seconds and hard-fought inches, and he was losing time. They needed to ride clear.

He gave George his head and sent the war horse crashing into one of Jacques’ adversaries. A ton of war horse versus a hundred pounds of irk was no contest at all.

His sword took another, and then Jacques went down as his horse fell – killed by one of the dozen creatures under its hooves. That quickly, Jacques was gone. The captain turned, cut at the irk under George’s feet and watched a spear catch Carlus under the jaw, killing him instantly. Down he went, with his trumpet, and with it, their chance to cut their way free. The captain cut down, his sword beheading a boglin even as the hideous thing bit into Jacques’ throat – and he roared and looked for help, but there was none.

Lissen Carak – Desiderata

Guarded by Ser Driant and five knights, the Queen’s litter started up the long and twisting road to the great gate of the fortress.

The king had ordered his knights to form a compact company behind him.

‘Once more, my lord,’ Ser Alan said, ‘I’d like to remind the king that if Lord Glendower were alive, he would never allow this.’

At the word allow all sense left the king’s head. ‘I’m the king,’ he said. ‘Follow me!’

Most of the mercenary knights and their retainers had formed in a thick knot, almost dead centre in the field. The king aimed his horse’s spiked head at the banner with the lacs d’amour. ‘Follow me!’

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius spat with rage, turned his horse, and followed the king, who was throwing himself into the arms of his enemy when almost any other action would have saved him.

The Queen would die. And he, Harmodius, loved her in a way the king never could – she was the perfect child of Hermeticism. An angel, come to earth.

But like an artist with a favourite painting, Harmodius could not bear to see the king die either. Not here – not so close to triumph, or at least to survival.

We are all making the wrong decisions, Harmodius thought. And he realised that if he died here, his new-found knowledge would die with him.

It was like some ancient tragedy, in which man is granted knowledge only to be destroyed.

But he didn’t have to waste much more time on such thoughts.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn watched, almost unbelieving, as the target of his campaign threw himself forward, unprotected. He couldn’t have manipulated the king into such a foolish move.

The king.

He had made a dash for the fortress and Thorn had suddenly seen his defeat – for in the fortress the king would be unassailable.

But no.

The fool was now leading his knights forward into the very maw of Thorn’s monsters.

And his boglins were in the fortress.

Just for a moment, he was balanced on an exquisite knife-blade of doubt as to whether to kill the king himself, by means of power, or to send his choicest creatures to do his work.

But in that moment, he decided that, regardless of the campaign, if he killed the king, he had won. No matter which power was using him, killing the King of Alba would place him in the front rank. It would cause civil war. Would weaken the human hold on Alba.

He gathered power to him.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The company was dying around him.

The anonymity of armour kept him from knowing who – he could never spare more than a glance – but as the boglins surrounded them and hemmed them tighter and tighter, armoured figures went down – either hamstrung horses, spear thrusts, or lucky arrows.

Tom continued to be like a hammer at his side, Sauce was like an avenging angel, and the military order knights fought like the legions of Heaven.

Even as he raised and lowered his sword yet again, he would have chuckled at the pointlessness of it all, if he had not been occupied. They had bought the time, and the battle should now be safely won. And the bitterness – had Carlus not gone down with the trumpet, had Jacques lived fifty more heartbeats-

He slew two more boglins before he saw the troll.

It reared, its blank stone face smooth and black, and it belled, it’s shrill trumpet ringing out above the ring of weapons and the silent intensity of the boglins.

Not just one of them.

Six of them.

And the wave front of their fear made the boglins beneath his horse’s hooves quail and void their attacks. George rose, kicked out, and then plunged forward.

The wave of terror passed over them.