The Red Knight

Thurkan looked at his nest-mate’s corpse and shook his great head. ‘Barbarians,’ he spat.

Mogan rubbed her shoulder against his. ‘One man killed him. I chose not to try him. He killed our cousin so easily.’

Thurkan nodded. ‘Some of their warriors are terrifying, little sister. And you had no weapon to open his armour.’

‘He had no armour,’ Mogan said. ‘But he had Power. Our Power.’

Thurkan paused, sniffing the air. Then he walked to the edge of the stream, and back, several times, while his nestmates stood perfectly still.

‘Powerful,’ Thurkan said. He paused and licked his shoulder where a mosquito had penetrated his armoured flesh. Insects. How he hated them. He batted helplessly with a taloned forefoot at the cloud that was gathering around his head. Then he bent over his cousin’s form, raised his talons, and turned his cousin’s corpse to ash in a flash of emerald light.

Later, as they ran through the forest, Thurkan mused to his sister. ‘This is not as Thorn thinks it to be,’ he said.

Mogan raised her talons to indicate her complete lack of interest in Thorn. ‘You seek to dominate him, and he seeks to dominate you, but as he is not of our kind your efforts are wasted,’ she said scathingly.

Thurkan took a hundred running steps before he answered. ‘I don’t think so, little sister. I think he is the rising power of the Wild, and we must cleave to him. For now. But in this matter he is blind. This fortress. The Rock. Here we are, masters of the woods from the mountains to the river – and he would have us leave our winnings to assault this one place. And now the Rock has a defender – one who is also a power of the Wild.’ Thurkan ran on. ‘I think Thorn is making an error.’

‘You seek his throat, and his power,’ Mogan said. ‘And it is we who wish to return to the Rock.’

‘Not if the cost is too high. I am not Tunxis.’ Thurkan leapt a log.

‘How can the Rock have a defender who is one of us? And we not know him?’ Mogan asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Thurkan admitted. ‘But I will find out.’

Chapter Four

The Captain ,The Abbess

South of Lorica – Ser Gawin

Gawin Murien of Strathnith, known to his peers as Hard Hands, rode north along the Albin River in his armour, a knight bent upon errantry. And the further north he rode, the deeper his anger grew. Adam, the elder of his two squires, whistled, bowed from his saddle to every passing woman, and looked at the world with whole-hearted approval. He was not sorry to be leaving the court of Harndon. Far from it. Far from the great hall, far from the rounds of dancing and cards and hunts and flirtation, squires lived in barracks under the absolute domination of the oldest and toughest. Younger men got little food and much work, and no chance of glory. Adam was the squire of a named and belted knight, and on errantry, he expected to have a chance to win his own place in song. At Harndon, all he got was black eyes and bad food.

Toma, the younger squire, rode with his head down. Adam could make nothing of him, beyond his mumbled answers and his clumsy work. He seemed young for his age and deeper in misery than a boy should be.

Gawin wanted to do something for him, but he was having a hard time seeing through his own anger.

It wasn’t fair.

The words were meaningless. His oaf of a father had beaten any notion of fairness from him from birth. Gawin knew that the world gave you nothing but struggle. That you had to make your own luck. And a thousand more such aphorisms all with the same general message, but, by God and all the saints, Gawin had done his time, faced his monster and killed the literally damned thing in single combat with his gauntlets after his sword broke. He remembered it vividly, just as he remembered going to fight the damned thing out of sheer guilt.

I killed my brother.

It still made him sick.

He didn’t want to have to face the foe again, not for all the pretty ladies in court and not for all the lands he stood to inherit. He was no coward. He’d done it. In front of his father and fifty other men. There probably weren’t fifty knights in all Alba – from one end of the Demesne to the other – who had bested a daemon in single combat. He certainly hadn’t wanted to.

But he had. And that should have been that.

But of course, the king hated him, as he hated all his brothers, hated his mother, loathed his father.

Fuck the king. I’ll ride home to Pater.

Strathnith was one of the greatest fortresses in the Demesne. It was a citadel of the Wall, and the Muriens had held it for generations. The Nith was a mighty river – almost an inland sea – that defined the ultimate border between the Demesne and the Wild. His father ruled the fortress and the thousands of men and women who paid their taxes and depended on it for protection. He thought about the great hall; the ancient rooms, some built by the Archaics. The sounds of the Wild carrying across the broad river.