The Red Knight

‘Holy Saint Maurice, stand with me and these two young men,’ he said. And then, to the boys, ‘Walk right behind me. When I say to loose, kill the creatures closest to me.’ He began to walk around the edge of the square.

Off to the right a pack of irks were fighting over bales of furs. He ignored them.

A daemon loped into an alley, chasing a screaming, naked man, and he ignored it, too. He kept walking, hoarding his strength, sabatons making a grim metallic sound on the bloody stones.

He didn’t look back. He just kept going, under a tree hanging over a house wall, and then along a stone bench on which, in happier days, drunks had no doubt passed out.

When he was ten paces from the back of the enemy mob, he shrugged. He wanted to pray, but nothing came to his mind but the sight of a beautiful courtesan in Thrake.

‘Loose,’ he said.

Two bolts snapped into the mass of Wild flesh, and he followed them in, his sword and dagger flashing.

The lowest caste of boglins had no armour, but just their soft leather carapaces, and he cut them open, slammed them to earth, and crushed them with his fists. One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He had no more to give-

– but he struck blindly, and something caught his dagger hand and threw him to the ground.

He rolled to his feet, because he was a knight, as an irk – one of the deadly ones – slammed a spear into his midriff. He went backwards and suddenly there were men all around him-

Men!

He was in among the spearmen. It put power into his limbs, and he got up again, his sword rising and falling.

He could see the thin crossbowman, James, still standing. The boy had flattened some of the things with his crossbow, and now had his side sword in his hand.

The creatures, panicked by even this very small attack from their rear, were flinching away from them both.

Ser Alcaeus gathered himself. One more time.

He tottered forward, and swung – one.

Two.

Three times. In those swings two boglins went down. The big irk flinched, turned, and hopped back.

The two hellish things feeding on the older boy died on James’ sword, and then abruptly the square cleared.

Behind them huddled two hundred shocked survivors.

The men on the castle walls finally opened the gate. Or perhaps were ordered to, now it was safer, and people flooded through, utterly panicked. More died, trampled by others, than at the Wild’s hands – the crush of women panicked beyond the capacity for anything but herd animal flight.

The spearmen backed up after them, step by step.

Step.

By.

Step.

In the shadowed streets beyond the square a pair of daemons rallied their own panicked forces, and added irk archers – good ones. Using the light of the burning town, the irks began to loose long shots across the square. Their elfin bows were light but deadly.

Ser Alcaeus couldn’t cover them all. He was almost immune to their hits but the shafts hurt when they struck his helmet or his greaves, and he was already beyond normal pain, beyond normal fatigue. He looked to the right and left and found that he had reached the gate. The guards were trying to close it; he was trying to back in. But the crush of injured men and trampled corpses underfoot was jamming them open as the enemy made their charge.

He was able to get his sword arm up in time; he managed to cover himself against a daemon’s heavy sword, and then old Ser John was there. He had a mace. It had a five-foot handle.

He used it well.

He stepped out past Ser Alcaeus, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if eager for the contest, and his mace moved like a piston. The daemons flinched back from his strike. A boglin died. Another daemon took a blow in the torso and staggered and the mace hit its foot, shattering the bone. It screamed as it went down.

It wasn’t glorious work but Alcaeus bent and grabbed the corpse of a trampled woman and threw it out into the darkness.

The gate moved.

He got his hands under a dead boglin’s skull and threw the corpse into its fellows.

The gate moved another hand’s breath.

‘Ser John!’ he shrieked. His voice was hoarse and cracked.

The old knight bounced, cut, and suddenly bounded back.

Alcaeus stumbled after him.

The gates slammed shut. Terrified sergeants slammed the timbers home into the sockets that held them, and blows rained on the outside surface of the gate from the creatures outside. One irk, braver or craftier than the rest, ran up the gate and got a leg over before one of Ser John’s archer’s spiked it to the wooden hoardings with a clothyard shaft. The professionals on the wall held – the wave failed, and died.

Ser John fell to his knees. ‘Too gods-damned old for this,’ he said, staring at the courtyard full of refugees.

But the gate held. The wall held.

Alcaeus tottered to a pillar in the colonnade and tried to open his faceplate, but he couldn’t raise his arms. He hit his head on the colonnade. He couldn’t breathe.