The Red Knight

But at the edge of the firelight, he could see a company of soldiers with spears still holding one street, a crowd of panicked refugees behind them pressing on the castle gates.

Unbeckoned, a thought whispered into his head.

Time to earn your spurs.

‘Let me go first,’ he said to his crossbowmen. ‘I will charge. You will follow me and kill anything that gets past me. You understand?’

He longed, just for a second, for wine and his lyre, and for the feeling of a woman’s breast under his hand.

He raised his pole-axe.

‘Kyrie Eleison!’ he sang, and charged.

There were perhaps sixty boglins on the wall. It was too dark to count, and he wasn’t that interested.

He smashed into them, taking them by surprise. The first one died, and after that nothing went right. His pole-axe fouled in the boglin; his blow had caught the thing in an armpit, and it fell off the wall taking his precious weapon with it.

He was instantly surrounded.

He got a dagger unsheathed with a practised flick - because a bastard cousin of the Emperor does not survive long at court without being able to use a dagger expertly, in or out of armour – and then they piled on him and he was all but buried standing up.

His right arm began stabbing largely of its own accord.

A tremendous blow knocked him forward, and he stumbled a few steps smashing pieces of boglin beneath his feet – suddenly panicked that he would fall off the wall. Panic powered his limbs, he spun and felt his steel-clad back slam into the crenellations. Suddenly his arms were free, and the thing trying to open his visor was the top priority, and then it was gone too and he was clear.

His right arm was slick with green-brown blood. He took up the low guard – All Gates are Iron – with his dagger back over his right hip, left fist by his left hip, looking over his left shoulder.

A boglin threw a spear at him.

He blocked it with his left hand, and stumbled forward into them. His breath was coming in great bursts, but his brain was clear, and he rammed the point of his heavy dagger into the first one, right through its head, and ripped it out again. His armoured fist snapped out in a punch and smashed the noseless face of a second.

The next two boglins were folded over their midriffs, shot with bolts. He stepped past them, his dagger switching hands with a dexterity his uncle’s master of arms would have approved of, he was drawing his sword right-handed as he advanced.

The boglins began to back away.

He charged them.

They had their own gallantry. One creature gave its life to trip him, and died on his dagger as he fell. He rolled on a shoulder, but then there was nothing under his feet-

He hit a tiled roof, slid, hit a stone lintel with his armoured shoulder, flipped . . .

And landed in the street, on his feet. He still had both sword and dagger and took the time to thank God for it.

Above him, on the wall, the boglins were staring at him. ‘Follow me!’ he shouted to his men. He hadn’t meant to come down to the street – but from here he could see irks coming along the wall from behind his archers.

Two made the jump. The rest froze, and died where they stood.

The three of them ran for the castle, which was lit up as if it was a royal palace ready for a great event. Albinkirk was ablaze, and the streets were carpeted with dead citizens and their servants and slaves.

It was a massacre.

He ran as well as he could in sabatons. His two surviving archers ran at his heels, and they killed the only two enemies they found, and then they were in the open street in front of the castle’s main gate.

The spearmen were still holding the street.

The gate was still shut.

And the three of them were on the wrong side of the fighting.

He flipped up his visor. He no longer cared that he might die; he had to breathe. He stood there for as long as it took for his breathing to slow – bent double, he was easy meat for any boglin or irk who wanted him.

‘Messire!’ shouted the panicked crossbowmen.

He ignored them.

It seemed like eternity, but he got his head back up after he vomited on the cobbles. There was a half-eaten young boy at his feet, his body cast aside after his legs had been gnawed to the bone.

Across the square, the spearmen were barely holding. There were fifteen of them, or perhaps fewer, and they were holding back a hundred irks and boglins. The Wild creatures weren’t particularly enthusiastic – they wanted to loot, not fight. But they kept pressing in.

Alcaeus pointed across the small square. ‘I’m going into that,’ he said to the crossbowmen. ‘I intend to cut my way through to the spearmen. Die here or die with me – it’s all one to me.’ He looked at the two scared boys. ‘What are your names?’ he asked.

‘James,’ said the thin one.

‘Mat,’ said the better accoutered one. He had a breastplate.

‘Span, then. And let’s do this thing,’ he said.

He knew that he didn’t want to do it – and he knew that if he didn’t make himself go then he’d die right here, probably still trying to catch his breath.