The Red Knight

The bitch was using arcane powers on him. And he found himself unable to speak. It was as if his tongue had gone to sleep. He couldn’t even form a word in his mind.

He staggered back, scarred hands over his mouth, all of his suspicions confirmed and all of his petty errors transformed into acts of courage. She had used witchcraft against him. She was a witch – an ally of Satan. Whereas he-

She turned to him. ‘This is an emergency, Father, and you were warned. Return to your chapel and do penance for your disobedience.’

He fled.

North of Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn strode east as fast as his long legs would carry him, a swarm of faeries around his head like insects, feeding on the power that clung to him like moss to stone. ‘We continue,’ he said to the daemon at his side.

The daemon surveyed the wreckage of tents and the scatter of corpses. ‘How many did you lose?’ he asked. His crest moved with agitation.

‘Lose? Only a handful. The boglins are young and unprepared for war.’ The great figure shook like a tree in the wind.

‘You took a wound yourself,’ Thurkan said.

Thorn stopped. ‘Is this one of your dominance games? One of them distracted me. He had a little magic and I was slow to respond. It will not happen again. Their attack had no real affect on us.’

The great figure turned and shambled east. Around him, irks and boglins and men packed their belongings and prepared to march.

Thurkan loped alongside, easily keeping pace with the giant sorcerer. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why Albinkirk?’

Thorn stopped. He despised being questioned, especially by a troublemaker like Thurkan, who saw himself – a mere daemon – as his peer. He longed to say, ‘Because I will it so.’

But this was not the moment.

‘Power summons power,’ he said.

Thurkan’s head-crest trembled in agreement. ‘So?’ he asked.

‘The irks and boglin hordes are restless. They have come here – was that at your bidding, daemon?’ Thorn leaned at the waist. ‘Well?’

‘Violence summons violence,’ Thurkan said. ‘Men killed creatures of the Wild. A golden bear was enslaved by men. It cannot be borne. My cousin was murdered; so was a wyvern. We are the guardians. We must act.’

Thorn paused, and pointed his staff. They were passing to the north of the great fortress; it was just visible from here, high on its ridge to the south.

‘We will never take the Rock with the force we have,’ Thorn said. ‘I might act to destroy it, or I might not. This is not my fight. But we are allies, and I will help you.’

‘By leading us away from that which we wish to reclaim?’ snapped the daemon.

‘By unleashing the Wild against a worthy goal. An attainable goal. We will strike a blow that will rock the kingdoms of man, and that will send a signal throughout the Wild. Many, many more will come to us. Is this not so?’

Thurkan nodded slow agreement. ‘If we burn Albinkirk, many will know it and many will come.’

‘And then,’ said Thorn, ‘we will have the force and the time to act against the Rock, while the men worry over smoking ruins.’

‘And you will be many times more powerful than you are now,’ Thurkan said suspiciously.

‘When you and yours can again drink from the spring of the Rock, and mate in the tunnels beneath the Rock, you will thank me,’ Thorn said.

Together, they began to walk east.

Chapter Six

Harmodius Magis

Prynwrithe – Ser Mark Wishart

Two hundred leagues and more south of the Cohocton, well west of Harndon, the Priory of Pynwrithe was a beautiful castle rising from a spur of solid rock, a hundred years old, with high battlements, four slim towers with arched windows, topped in copper-gilt roofs, and a high arched gate that made some visitors exclaim that the whole must have been built by the Faery.

Ser Mark Wishart, the Prior, knew better. It had been built by a rich thug, who had given it to the church to save his soul.

It was a very comfortable place to live. A dream for a soldier who had lived most of his life having to sleep on the cold hard ground. The Prior was standing in his shirt, in front of a roaring fire, with a piece of bark in his hand – a small piece of birch bark, which had just turned almost perfectly black. He turned it over and over in his hands, and winced at the pain in his shoulder. The she-bear had hurt him badly.

It was a chilly morning, and from the glazed glass window, he could see that there had been a frost – but a mild one. Spring was in the air. Flowers, crops, new life.

He sighed.

Dean – his new servant boy – appeared with a cup of small beer and his clean mantle. ‘My lord?’ he said, an evocative question, for two words.

The boy was far too intelligent to spend his life pouring hippocras for old men.

‘Hose, braes, double, and a cote, lad,’ the Prior said. ‘Summon the marshal and my squire.’