The Red Knight

It was worse when they made camp. He had to explain how to raise a shelter. He had to stop them from cutting their twine, and teach them how to make a fire. A small fire. How to be warm, how to be dry. Where to take a piss.

Two of them sang while they worked, until he walked up and knocked one to the ground with a blow of his fist.

‘If the king catches you because you are singing, you will hang on a gibbet until the crows pick your bones clean and then the king’s fucking sorcerer will grind your bones to make the colours for his paints,’ Bill said.

The angry silence of wronged young men struck him from all sides.

‘If you fail, you will die,’ he said. ‘This is not a summer lark.’

‘I want to go home,’ said the biggest man. ‘You’re worse than an aristo.’ He looked around. ‘And you can’t stop all of us.’

The irk materialised out of the dusk. He looked curiously at the big man. Then he turned to Bill. ‘Come,’ he said in his odd voice.

Bill nodded to them, the debate now unimportant. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said, and followed the irk.

They crossed a marsh, over a low ridge, and then down to a dense copse of spruce.

The irk turned and made a motion with its head. ‘Bear,’ it said. ‘A friend. Be kind, Man.’

Near the centre of the spruce was a great golden bear. It lay with its head in its paws, as if it was resting. A beautiful cub stood licking its face.

As Bill come up, the bear stirred. It raised its head and hissed.

Bill stepped back, but the irk steadied him, and spoke in a sibilant whisper.

The bear rolled a little, and Bill could see it had a deep wound in its side, full of pus – pus was dryed on either side of the wound, and it stank.

The irk squatted down in a way a man could not have done. Its ear drooped – this was sadness, which Bill had never seen in an irk.

‘The bear dies,’ the irk said.

Bill knew the irk was right.

‘The bear asks – can we save her cub?’ The irk turned and Bill realised how seldom the elfin creature had met his eyes, because in that moment, the irk’s gaze locked with his, and he all but fell into the forest man’s regard. His eyes were huge, and deep like pools-

‘I don’t know a thing about bears,’ Bill said. He squatted by the big mother bear. ‘But I’m a friend of any creature of the Wild, and I give you my word that if I can get your cub to other golden bears, I will.’

The bear spat something, in obvious pain.

The irk spoke – or rather, sang. The line became a stanza, full of liquid rhymes.

The bear coughed.

The irk turned. ‘The cub – her mother named her for the yellow flower.’

‘Daisy?’

The irk made a face.

‘Daffodil? Crocus? I don’t know my flowers.’

‘In water.’ The irk was frustrated.

‘Lily?’

The irk nodded.

So he reached out a hand to the cub, and the cub bit him.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain was so tired and so drained by the fear that it was all he could do to push one boot in front of the other as the trail became a track and the track became a road.

Nothing troubled them but the coming darkness, their exhaustion, and the cold. It was late in the day and increasingly clear that they would have to camp in the woods. The same woods which had produced a daemon and a wyvern.

‘Why didn’t it kill us?’ the captain asked. Two daemons.

Gelfred shook his head. ‘You killed that first one. Pretty. Damn. Fast.’ His eyes were always moving. They had reached the main road, and Gelfred pulled up on his horse’s reins. ‘We could ride double,’ he said.

‘You’ll lame that horse,’ the captain snapped.

‘You cast a spell.’ Gelfred wasn’t accusatory. He sounded more as if he was in pain.

‘Yes,’ the captain admitted. ‘I do, from time to time.’

Gelfred shook his head. He prayed aloud, and they rode on until a drizzle began and the light began to fade.

‘We’ll have to stand watches,’ the captain said. ‘We are very vulnerable.’ He could barely think. While Gelfred curried the poor beast, he gathered firewood and started a fire. He did everything wrong. He gathered bigger wood and had no axe to cut it; then he gathered kindling and broke it into ever smaller and better sorted piles. He knelt in his shallow fire-pit and used his flint and steel, shaving sparks onto charred cloth until he had an ember.

Then he realised that he hadn’t built a nest of tow and bark to catch the ember.

He had to start again.

We’re a pair of fools.

He could feel that the woods were full of enemies. Or allies. It was the curse of his youth.

What exactly have I stumbled into? he asked himself.

He made a little bird’s nest of dry tow and birchbark shreds, and made sparks again, his right hand holding the steel and moving precisely to strike the flint in his left hand. He got a spark, lit the char-

Dropped it into the tow and bark-

And blew.

The fire caught.