The whole town was falling. It was the only place to make a stand.
When he paused to breathe, Albinkirk was afire from south to north, and a sea of Wild creatures were running through the streets. He knew the difference between the irks – elfin and gnarled and satanic in the firelight – and the boglins, with their leather midsections and their oddlyjointed arms. He’d studied pictures. He’d trained for this, but it was like a nightmare. He was running again with the half dozen of his crossbowmen who stuck with him. The rest ran off into the town despite his admonitions. One died at their feet, ripped to pieces by boglins and consumed by something worse.
He could see the river, and the castle, but the next section of wall was crowded with enemies. The streets below were worse.
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.
‘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.
&n
bsp; 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.
Strange hands flipped the catches of his visor and lifted it. Air flooded him. Sweet, wonderful air, tainted only with the harsh screams of people too maddened by fear to do anything else.
It was James the crossbowman. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said. ‘Just stand still.’ The boy hauled the helmet right off his head.
He pulled off the gauntlets. And Alcaeus slumped to the ground, his back against the colonnade.
Ser John appeared in front of him. ‘I need you on the walls.’
Alcaeus groaned.
The boy stood in front of him. ‘Let him breathe! He saved everyone!’
Ser John snorted. ‘They ain’t saved until they’s saved, boy. Ser knight? To the walls.’
Alcaeus reached out a hand.
Ser John caught it, and pulled him to his feet.
Harndon City – Edward
Master Pyel’s first commission for him was the dullest project he could imagine. It was something he could have done when he was fourteen.
He was to take twenty iron bars and make staves like barrel staves, then forge-weld them into a single column with bands to keep the staves together. Bands every handspan. Inside diameter to be a constant diameter of one inch.
Dull.
Still, he was smart enough to know that Master Pyle wouldn’t have given him the work if it didn’t matter. He was careful with his measurements, and he decided to construct a mandrel to keep the insides of the staves equidistant while he forge-welded them. That took time, too. He planished the mandrel and then polished it endlessly.
He had a moment of deep satisfaction when another journeyman, Lionel, grinned. ‘You know,’ he drawled, obviously relishing the moment. ‘You can order an apprentice to do that.’
I’m a fool, he thought, happily. He left Ben the shoemaker’s boy to use pumice on his lovely mandrel while he went out into the evening to fence with his mates and show Anne his ring. Better, to show Anne’s parents. Apprentices didn’t marry – but a journeyman was a person of consequence. He was a man.
The next morning, he had the mandrel ready, thanked the apprentice like a good master, and then whipped the forge welds into shape, smoothing both inside and outside. It turned out to be more finicky than he had expected, and took him all day.
Master Pyle looked at the result and slammed it against the oak tree in the yard. The welds held. He smiled. ‘You made a mandrel,’ he said.
‘Had to,’ replied Edward.
Master Pyle made a face. ‘My design is flawed,’ he said. ‘How’re your casting skills?’
Edward shrugged. ‘Not that good, Master,’ he admitted.
The next morning when the sun rose, he was down by the river, casting bells with the Foibles – rivals, but friends.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
Hundreds of leagues to the north, the same sun rose on a fortress which was complete in every warlike respect – high wooden hoardings crowned the turrets and curtain walls, and a major engine of war stood atop every tower: the donjon tower bore the weight of a trebuchet, and smaller mangonels and ballistae decorated the smaller towers.
Aside from a dozen men on duty, the garrison, who had laboured two days and nights by torchlight, lay asleep in heaps of straw. The dormitory was full of local people and so was the hall and the stable.
Sauce awakened the captain because there was movement down by the river. He had placed a garrison of ten archers, three men-at-arms and a pair of knights in the tower at the bridge under Ser Milus’ command the evening before. They had their own food and a mirror with which to signal, and this morning they were apparently flashing away merrily.
Ser Jehannes had gone with them, as a mere man-at-arms. He had gone without comment and left no note. The captain awoke to find it still on his mind.
‘Damn him,’ he said, staring at the newly whitewashed plaster over his head. Jehannes had always disliked him because he was young and well-born.
As far as the captain saw it, Messire Jehannes could have both his birth and his youth. He lay on his bed, his breath steaming in the air, and found himself growing angrier and angrier.
‘Damn who?’ asked Sauce. She flashed him a smile that was probably meant to be winsome. She was an attractive woman, but the missing front teeth and the scar on her face tended to made her winsome look slightly savage.
Sauce and the captain went backaways. The captain considered confiding in her – but he was the captain, now. Everyone’s captain.
He got his feet on the cold stone instead. ‘Never mind. Call Toby for me, will you?’
She leered. ‘I’m sure I could dress you, mesself.’
‘Maybe you could and maybe you can’t, but neither will get me moving fast enough.’ He stood up, naked and she swatted at him with her gloves and went out calling for Toby.
Toby and Michael arrived together, Toby with clothes,
Michael, sleepy to the point of clumsiness, with a cup of steaming wine.
The captain armed himself in the ruddy light of the new sun, Michael fumbling with buckles and laces so that it seemed to take twice as long as arming usually did and he almost regretted sending Sauce away. But he ran lightly down the steps to the great courtyard and patted Grendel’s nose when he was led out. He took the tall bassinet on his head, pulled steel gauntlets over his hands, and vaulted into Grendel’s war-saddle. He was giving his men a good example – he was also riding out of a fortress into the unknown.
It occurred to him as he ducked his head to pass through the narrow postern – he had ordered that the main gate be shut for the duration – that if nothing attacked them, he was going to look a ripe fool. Followed by the image of a taloned foot ripping the guts out of his riding horse, which made his stomach lurch and his throat go cold.
He rode down the steep road, leaning well back into the comforting buttress of his war-saddle, with Wilful Murder, Sauce, Michael Rankin and Gelfred all fully armed at his back. At the base of the hill he turned away from the bridge and rode west – not onto the narrow track he’d followed and fought the daemon, but around the base of the fortress.
He rode slowly around it, looking up so hard that his neck hurt, examining his hoardings from their attackers’ perspective. The fortress was a hundred feet above him, huge, imposing and very, very far away.
After he passed the donjon the first trebuchet released. He heard the crack of the wood base of the counter-weight striking its restraint and saw the rock pause at the height of its arc. Then it fell with a crash well to the west.
The captain turned to Wilful Murder. ‘Go and put an orange stake on it, Will. They won’t loose again.’
‘It’s always me,’ Wilful grumbled and did as he was told.
The rest continued to ride around the base of the fortress. Two other engines released, and both times the captain sent Wilful off to mark the fall of shot.
‘Tough nut,’ Sauce said, suddenly.
‘Some of our enemy have wings,’ the captain replied and he nodded heavily, because he was in full harness and couldn’t really shrug well. ‘But yes. With our company on the walls and all the defences up we should be able to hold until we starve.’ He looked beyond her. ‘We’ll lose the Lower Town first, then Bridge Castle.’ He shrugged. ‘But the – the king will come first.’