The Red Knight

‘Is this our killer?’ the captain asked. He was quite proud of his conversational tone. If he was going down, he would die like a gentleman. That pleased him.

Gelfred was also a brave man. ‘The one upslope is the killer,’ he said. ‘By the wounds of Christ, Captain – what are they?’

‘Stick close,’ the captain said. ‘You’re the huntsman, Gelfred. What are they?’

He began to ride forward, down the trail to the west. He passed Gelfred, who came in so tight behind him that the captain could feel the warmth of his horse. Down the steep slope to the stream, and he could no longer see the boulders, but he could hear movement – crashing movement.

Across the stream in a single leap of his horse. He could feel her terror.

He could feel his own.

He rode five yards, holding his mount down to a trot by sheer force of will and knee. She wanted to bolt. Ten yards. He heard Gelfred splash across the stream instead of leaping it and he turned his horse. She didn’t want to turn.

He put his spur into her right side.

She turned.

Gelfred’s eyes were as wide as his horse’s.

‘Behind me,’ the captain said.

He was facing their back trail. He backed his horse again, judging the distance.

‘I’m dismounting,’ Gelfred said.

‘Shut up.’ The captain fought for enough mental control to enter the room in his head. Closed his eyes – forced them closed against the crashing sound from the top of the ridge to the east.

Prudentia?

She stood in the centre of the room, her eyes wide, and he ran to her, took her outstretched hand and pointed it over his shoulder.

‘Katherine, Ares, Socrates!’ he called. He ran to the door, grasped the handle, and turned the key while the room spun around him.

The lock clicked open and the door crashed back against his leg, throwing him from his feet so that he fell heavily on the marble floor. The breeze was an icy green wind, and on the other side of the door-

It was caught on his shoulder where he had fallen, and the gale was sliding him along the floor as it forced the door open.

He wondered what would happen if the door crashed back against its hinges.

He wondered whether he could die in the small, round room.

Had to assume he could.

I rule here! he said aloud. He put a knee under himself, as he would if he was wrestling with a big man. Used the key for leverage. Pushed the door with his shoulder.

For a long set of heartbeats, it was like pushing a cart in mud. And then he felt the shift – minute – but the tiny victory lit his power like a mountebank’s flare and he slammed the door closed as his net of power wove itself like a giant spider’s web across the stream.

The horse was fighting him, and the thing was halfway down the hill, coming straight down the track, its bulk breaking branches on either side of the trail while its taloned feet gouged clods of earth out of the ground.

His mind shied away from looking at its head.

He couched his lance, timing his charge.

Horses are complex animals, delicate, fractious and sometimes very difficult. His fine riding horse was spirited and nervous on the best of days, and was now terrified, wanting only to flee.

Gelfred’s crossbow loosed with a flat crack and the bolt caught the thing under its long snout and it shrieked. It slowed.

Thirty yards. The length of the tiltyard in his father’s castle. Because this had to be just right.

The adversarius – the captain had never seen one, but had to assume that this was the fabled enemy of man – lengthened its loping stride to leap the brook.

A daemon.

The captain rammed his spurs into his mount. Sometimes, horses are simple. His riding horse exploded forward.

The adversarius leaped again at the edge of the stream, its hooked beak already reaching for his face, arms spread wide.