The Red Knight

Chapter Thirteen

Thorn

Lissen Carak – Michael

The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Eleven

The captain took the watch to support our garrison in the Lower Town – a small fortified bastion at the base of the ridge. The Enemy has constructed siege engines – catapults and trebuchets – to attack. Because of the rage of our engines atop the fortress, and because we can launch sorties from the fortress through the streets of the Lower Town, the captain says that the Enemy must take the Lower Town first.

He made two attempts, but both resulted in heavy losses of creatures of the Wild. We lost not a single man or woman yesterday. The Abbess called on the Power of God and defeated the Enemy’s poison air. Many men felt lighter at heart after she prayed.

But the Enemy’s engines now throw heavy stones all the time. The air is full of smoke, and many of the farm folk have become angry and downcast.

During the night boglins assaulted Bridge Castle, but their surprise failed and they were driven off.

Michael put his quill down and shook his head at the ink stain on his forefinger.

Kaitlin had not come out to meet him last night, even though he was on his way to the Lower Town. The farmers were angry – he could feel it. Old Seth Lanthorn, an oily bastard in the early days of the siege, was now surly and silent. Farmers muttered when he walked by.

They resented their boys being taken to be archers. And perhaps resented-

I will marry her, he said to himself. But he couldn’t keep his eyes open . . .

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The curtain wall around the Lower Town was gradually pounded to rubble.

Before the sun rose, the stars were obscured, and clouds rolled in. The rain that started wasn’t hard, but it was soaking, and cold.

‘Attack coming,’ Toby said, rubbing his cheek. The boy’s breath was sweet with apple cider.

The captain rose blearily, feeling as if he’d been kicked repeatedly. It was an effort of will to run through his Hermetical exercises and it was torture to arm. Toby had to put his harness on him – Michael was down in the Lower Town. Every man and woman had to do their duty, now.

When he went out on the wall, the fields were moving again, lines of irks marching to form up opposite the northern flank of the town. Now they had shields – great pavises of heavy bark stripped from downed trees in the deep woods.

They formed in six deep columns, glistening in the light rain.

Bad Tom had twenty men-at-arms and as many squires and valets waiting for them, and twenty archers on the tower. The breaches in the town wall glittered damply with men in harness.

The enemy’s engines were silent.

Wilful Murder stepped up on the wall with his captain. ‘It’s done,’ he said. He pointed to the squat remnants of the former southern tower. Now it was an engine platform, two storeys tall, crowned with a trebuchet whose launching arm was as tall as the spire on the chapel.

The captain gave him a tired smile.

‘Let’s see if we can give Master Thorn another surprise,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

The first stone was loaded with some trepidation. The arm of the trebuchet would throw a man in armour five hundred paces. A war horse three hundred paces.

Wilful fussed like a mother sending her child to church the first time.

No Head, who was supposed to be off duty but whose love of engines outweighed his good sense, pushed the loader out of the way and muscled the stone into the great hemp-rope web.

‘Care to do the honours?’ Wilful asked the captain.

‘Everyone off the tower,’ the captain said.

Every one of the farmers was in the courtyard. They’d worked like draught animals to get the machine built and in place – to level the stump of the tower. Their grumbling was loud and aggressive, and the captain ignored them.

But he needed them to wind the arm into place. The trebuchet depended on farm women for its motive power.

When they were all clear, the captain pulled the lever.

The trebuchet’s arm moved slowly, at first, then rotating faster and faster until the great sling at the end was lifted clear of the deck – the arm and its massive weight passed the centre of rotation and the weight crashed down onto a massive pile of old hordles – thump – and the sling opened – crack, and a stone the weight of a man flew free – rising for what seemed an incredibly long time.

And of course, the heavy stone started three hundred feet above the fields below.

It rose and rose, passing over the irks, who had just started to move forward, clearly unsure of the efficacy of their new shields, and then it began to fall. It came down at a steep angle, it passed over the irks, over the deep trench the boglins had dug, over the enemy’s’ artillery platform, the mound on which his engines sat, and vanished into the trees of the woods at the western edge of the cleared ground.

It did no damage to anyone, or anything.

But the farmers cheered, and the archers cheered and the captain grinned to see it.

Wilful Murder ran back up the ladder and pounded his captain on the back.

The captain smiled. ‘Nice work.’ He turned to No Head. ‘Get the engines.’

No Head grinned.

The first assault was retreating by the time the great engine was wound again. Bad Tom’s men-at-arms had mangled it, and the great bark shields hadn’t done as much to stop the archer’s shafts as the irks might have wished.

The captain gathered a sortie under Ser Jehannes in the courtyard. ‘Tom’s going to be hard pressed,’ he said to Jehannes. ‘A dozen men ahorse will make short work of their next assault.’

Jehannes nodded. ‘Yes, ser,’ he said coldly. ‘I know my business.’

The captain noted that Francis Atcourt was in harness and mounted. He pressed the man’s gauntleted hand. ‘Good to see you about,’ he said.

‘Good to be here,’ Atcourt said. ‘Although, it seems to me another day abed-’ He laughed. ‘I’d be strong enough to swim a mountain or climb a river.’

The trebuchet released.

The captain wasn’t the only man who ran to the walls to watch the fall of the shot.

No Head’s first round landed out of sight beyond the enemy’s engines.

The captain watched the next assault. It was halfhearted. The irks stayed away from the worst of the archery by bunching up in the front of the central breach, and very few of them went forward all the way to the men-at-arms.

Then one of the enemy’s engines released.

The rock fell like a lightning bolt, into the breach, crushing men-at-arms and goblins alike.

‘Damn,’ the captain said. ‘I should have expected that.’

A creature gave a long, bone-chilling cry – like a trumpet, but louder and more hideous – and irks crept from houses and cellars in the Lower Town. They had crept in during the night, or made it past the archers in the first assaults, and now they struck the rear of Bad Tom’s line.

A great armoured troll sprinted from behind the engine platform and pointed its antlered head at the breaches in the curtain wall.

The irks got out of its way.

Another rock plunged from the heavens to strike in the central breach. The stone seemed to explode as it hit, spraying attackers and defenders alike with lethal stone chips.

The men on the walls watched the men in the breach like spectators at a joust.

Ser Philip le Beause died when a stone chip caved in the side of his helmet.

Robert Beele fell, stunned, and an irk got its dagger in his eye slit.

Ser John Poultney died trying to get his back to the wall, swinging his sword in wide arcs. He stumbled when a stone hit his backplate, and was on his knees; in a heartbeat, a wave of the little monsters were on him. He crushed one with his gauntleted left fist, swung his sword one handed through another pair, and then two were hauling his head back.

‘Release the sortie,’ the captain ordered.

No Head loosed the trebuchet. The stone flew high, and vanished into the forest of upright machine arms atop the enemy’s artillery mound.

Wood chips flew, visible even from the fortress.

A half-loaded trebuchet in the enemy’s battery was loosed by a panicked boglin and his loader was caught in the casting net and flung a hundred paces to fall wetly to earth.

Jehannes galloped down the road from the fortress followed by a dozen knights.

They flew down the switchbacks, and the troll raced for the breach, and a swarm of irks pushed the defenders of the breach into a knot.

‘Damn,’ the captain said.

He’d never cast power at this distance, but he had to try.

The Lower Town, Lissen Carak – Bad Tom

Bad Tom was a pebble in a crumbling sand castle.

He threw back his helmeted head and bellowed.

The irks quailed.

He killed them.

His sword was everywhere, and he was faster than they, taller, longer, stronger.

They went where he wasn’t, but the other men-at-arms knew what Tom was like, and they stuck to him like glue. Francis Atcourt stood at his shoulder, advancing when Tom advanced, retiring when the big man spun away. He had a short spear, and he used it sparingly. He let Tom kill the irks. He only killed those who could threaten Tom.

They began to retreat off the breach. They couldn’t hold it – too many of the men-at-arms were down.

Atcourt saw movement above him on the ridge. ‘Sortie,’ he called.

Tom was frozen.

‘Troll coming,’ he said. ‘Francis, clear what’s behind us and open a lane to the tower.’

Atcourt didn’t need to be urged. He tapped the captain’s squire and three other men on the helmet as he passes them. ‘On me!’ he called.

An irk appeared in his range of vision – paused, surprised, perhaps to find men in the town, and not on the wall, and died with Atcourt’s short spear in its forehead.

‘Michael!’ he called. ‘Get to the tower. Tell Cuddy and Long Paw to cover us.’

The squire had excellent armour, lighter and better than any of the professionals. Besides, he was the youngest.

The great troll ran through the irks. At the base of the rubble-strewn slope up into the breach, it paused, glaring around like some eyeless worm seeking daylight or warmth – or human blood. Then it picked its way to the top of the breach, clearly unwilling to move quickly in the bad footing. When it reached the top it paused again, caught sight of the men-at-arms and threw back its head and roared its challenge, its grotesque mouth, back-hooked fangs and black gullet on display as it sounded its challenge.

The sound rang through the woods, and echoed off the ridge and the walls of the fortress high above. The Abbess heard it at her prayers, and Amicia heard it in the hospital. Thorn heard it and clenched a mighty fist. The captain didn’t hear it at all. He was preparing to work.

Bad Tom stood his ground, threw back his head, and roared back.

The sound crashed back and forth – from the fortress walls to the woods, and back.

They charged each other.

A stride from contact, Tom side-stepped – the monster hesitated, and Tom’s sword swept through. The troll’s antlers caught him and slammed him to the ground.

The troll’s momentum carried it a dozen steps, and it turned.

Tom got a leg under him. He put the point into the ground and used his great sword as a lever to get to his feet.

The troll completed its turn, and put its armoured head down.

Tom laughed.

Cuddy leaned out over the tower wall. The troll turned, and he let it turn, reasoning that its arse couldn’t be as well armoured as its front. He raised a chisel point above the wall, leaned into his draw, and loosed.

The arrow struck with a sound like a butcher’s blade into a leg of mutton.

The troll stumbled. The arrow had struck from behind, between its shoulder blades, and sunk in all the way to the fletchings. The troll gave a moan and raised its head.

Tom stepped forward.

The monster flinched, and then punched for Tom’s throat with both stone-shod hands.

Tom cut.

Struck, and was struck to earth in turn.

Ser George Brewes leaped over Tom’s body to face the troll in his place. ‘Go!’ he roared at the rest of the men-at-arms. ‘Run!’

But Francis Atcourt came and joined him, and Robert Lyliard too.

The troll eyed them, pawed at the earth once, twice, and then slumped slowly to it and lay still.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Lyliard said. He stepped forward and slammed his hammer into the thing’s head.

‘Get Tom!’ Atcourt called. The irks had the breach, and the troll’s death didn’t seem to make any difference to them.

They all got a hand on him. He weighed as much as a war horse, or so they swore later.

And then they ran for the tower, the irks hard on their heels.

The archers shot right into them, Cuddy and Long Paw assuming that their armour would hold.

Mostly, it did.

The irks fell back – flooding the Lower Town, but letting the men have a path to the tower – and the postern opened. Long Paw loosed a shaft right down the line of men-at-arms and then drew his hanger and his buckler, flinging his bow through the door behind him. He stepped out, and the men-at-arms carried Tom past him.

There was a brief flood of irks. They were all armoured in scale mail and carrying round shields – warriors.

Long Paw’s sword and buckler swept up, bound as if they were one weapon – his buckler slammed into the face of one irk’s shield, and then, in the same tempo, his sword beheaded another. In the same flow, he swept his sword back into guard, fell back a step, and parried not one but two spear thrusts with a single sweep of his blade. He stepped in, passed his buckler under the spear-wielding irk’s arms, wrapped them, slammed his pommel into the irk’s unarmoured face, and used his advantage to throw the lighter creature into his mates.

Stepped back again, and the postern crashed shut.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

Ser Jehannes had halted the sortie two-thirds of the way down the ridge, when it became clear that the breach had fallen. Now the sortie turned and rode silently back up the road.

The captain was waiting in the gate.

‘Right,’ he said to Jehannes. ‘Good call.’

Jehannes dismounted, gave his reins to a farmer – the valets were all in harness – and started to turn away. ‘The Lower Town is lost,’ he said.

‘No,’ the captain said. ‘Not yet.’

Over their heads, the trebuchet lashed out again.

‘You are risking everything on the hope that we will be relieved. By the king.’ Jehannes was obviously restraining himself. The words were very carefully enunciated.

The captain put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Christ be with us,’ Jehannes said.

West of Albinkirk, South Bank of the Cohocton – Gaston

Gaston had done his exercises of arms, and had prayed. And now he had little to do. He’d had enough of his cousin, and enough of the army in every way.

He mounted his riding horse, left his valet at his tent door, and went for a ride.

The camp was enormous – a sprawling thing as big as a market fair or a small town, with more than two thousand tents, hundreds of wagons drawn up like a wall, and a ditch all the way around it, dug to the height of a man and with the upcast flung back to form a low rampart.

No man was allowed outside the ditch on pain of punishment. Gaston understood – better than his cousin – that he needed to set an example, so he rode slowly around the perimeter, nodding to the Alban knights he knew, and their lords.

He saw a pair of younger men with hawks on their wrists, and he was envious.

He thought of home. Of sun-drenched valleys. Of riding out with his sister’s friends, for a day of wit and wine and frolic, chasing birds, climbing trees, watching a well-formed body on a horse, or by a stream . . .

He shook his head, but the image of Constance d’Eveaux looking back over her naked shoulder before leaping into the lake haunted him.

There had been nothing between them. Until that moment, he hadn’t even noticed her except as a pretty face among his sister’s friends.

Why am I here? Gaston asked himself.

‘See something what you like?’ said a familiar voice.

Gaston reined in, his reverie exploded.

It was the old archer. Gaston was surprised to find that he was happy to see the low-born man.

‘You were going home,’ Gaston said.

The old man laughed. ‘Heh,’ he said. ‘Lord Edward asked me to stay. I’m a fool – I stayed. I sent my useless brother-in-law home.’ He shrugged. ‘Of the two of us, my daughter probably needs him the more.’

‘The Lord of Bain?’ Gaston asked.

‘The very same. I was his archer on the crusade, oh, ten years back.’ He shrugged. ‘Those were some hairy times.’

Gaston nodded. ‘I knew you were an man-at-arms.’

The old archer grinned. ‘Aye. Well. I meant what I said. It’s all foolishness. Why are we at war with the Wild? When I lie out at night hunting I love to have a chat with the faeries. I’ve traded with the irks more than once. They like a nice piece of cloth, and mirrors – hehe, they’d trade their mothers for a bit o’mirror.’ He nodded. ‘Admit I can’t stand boglins, but they probably feel the same about me.’

Gaston couldn’t imagine such a life. He covered his confusion by dismounting. He was surprised to find the archer holding his horse’s head.

‘Habit,’ the old man said.

Gaston held out his hand. ‘I’m Gaston d’Eu.’

‘I know,’ the old man said. ‘I’m called Killjoy. Make of it what you will. Harold Redmede, it says in the christening book.’

Gaston surprised himself by clasping the man’s arm, as if they were both knights.

‘Surely it is a crime against both the King and Church to trade mirrors to the irks.’

The old archer grinned. ‘It’s a crime to shoot Lord Edward’s deer. It’s a crime to take rabbits in his warrens. It’s a crime to leave my steading without his leave.’ The archer shrugged. ‘I live a life of crime, m’lord. Most low-born do.’

Gaston found himself smiling. The man was really very likeable. ‘But your immortal soul,’ he began softly.

The old man pursed his lips and blew out a puff of air. ‘You’re easy to talk to, foreigner. But I don’t need to debate my mortal soul with the likes of ye.’

‘But you are willing to speak with evil.’ Gaston shook his head.

The archer gave him a wry smile. ‘Are all the men you know so very good, m’lord?’

Gaston winced.

‘Stands to reason all the irks ain’t bad, don’t it?’ he went on. ‘What if none of ’em is bad? Eh? What if there’s no power on earth as bad as a bad lord?’

Gaston shook his head. ‘What bad lord? This is rebel talk.’

‘Rest easy, m’lord, I’m no Jack.’ The old man sneered. ‘Boys playing at causes. And broken men and traitors.’ He nodded. ‘Some good archers, though.’

‘Let’s say I’m coming around a little to your way of thinking,’ he said carefully. ‘I would like to confess that I want to go home.’

‘Knew you was a man of sense.’ Redmede laughed. He looked under his hand and shook his head. Pointed at an archer, asleep. ‘Swarthy, you useless sack of shit, get off your arse and work.’

Gaston turned and saw the young archer trying to hide in the ditch. He was all huddled up, as if by being very small, he could avoid the old man’s wrath.

‘Now I’m the master-archer, and I wear myself out riding these boys.’ He laughed.

Gaston didn’t think he looked worn out.

Redmede stepped closer to the ditch and bellowed, ‘Swarthy!’ at the young man.

He paused and in a moment Gaston saw what he saw.

The boy was eviscerated. And very, very dead.

‘Damn,’ the old archer said.

West of Albinkirk – Galahad Acon

Galahad Acon had never been so cold for so long, and he lay as still as he could lie, watching . . .

Well, watching nothing at all. Watching the woods. A breath of breeze stirred, moving the new leaves, and the light rain fell and fell. Despite a wool jupon and a wool cote over it, with a heavy wool cloak over all, he was soaked to his linen shirt and colder than he was when riding through heavy snow in December.

The Prior had left him to watch at the first grey light of dawn. Had said he’d be back.

He’d taken Diccon with him.

As time went by, his fancies grew darker and darker. Why would they ride off and leave him?

He had a fire kit. But the Prior had been very forceful on the subject of fires.

I’m going to freeze to death.

For the thousandth time, a twig cracked in front of him.

Galahad wondered how twigs could just crack, in the woods.

A bird fluttered in the wet leaves, and made a low thrumming sound – and then burst out of the leaves and leaped into the air.

Something had just moved.

Galahad felt his blood still in his veins.

He scanned his eyes frantically back and forth.

Oh good sweet Virgin Mary now and in the hour of my death amen.

They were almost silent – filing along the streambed at the base of the low hill.

But there were hundreds of them.

Oh my god dear god ohmygod

In the lead was a willowy daemon, all black, which moved like an embodiment of shadow, flitting rather than walking. Behind him, came the hosts of hell, walking, strutting, shambling-

Galahad found he could neither watch nor turn his head away. That when he closed his eyes, he couldn’t picture exactly what they looked like.

He couldn’t make his mind work. Run? Stay? He was fear.

They moved along the watercourse, and they scarcely moved the leaves. They travelled quickly, passing from left to right before him.

Eventually, he realised they weren’t going to turn and rend him limb from limb. But that didn’t stop his breath from coming in low pants, nor the deep cold from settling into his bones.

And then they were gone, away to the north, towards the river.

It was a long time before his breathing returned to normal.

When the Prior found him, at sunset, still lying there, he burst into tears.

The Prior embraced him. ‘I’m sorry,’ the mailed knight said. ‘You did well.’

Galahad was ashamed of his tears, but he couldn’t stop them.

‘They got between us and you,’ the Prior went on. ‘I couldn’t risk my knights for you. That – that is how it is, out here.’ He patted Galahad. ‘You did very well.’

They moved camp, in the same silence that the knights did everything. They went north, and Galahad saw that the tracks made by the daemons had the shape of human feet. He looked very closely, and he couldn’t see anything but bare feet and soft shoes.

A young Thomasine nodded to him. He cleared his throat quietly and leaned close. ‘Sossag,’ he said.

Galahad knew enough to knew that the knight was honouring him by speaking.

‘I thought they were daemons.’ He looked at the knight.

The young man shook his head. Put a finger to his lips, and rode on.

That night, Diccon put an arm around him. ‘Sorry, lad. It should hae’ been me left with the baggage. I don’t even know why we’re here.’

The Prior came and offered each of them a cup of warm mead. He sat on his heels, still armed from head to toe in plate and chain.

‘You are here to take my news to the king – when I have news.’ He looked back and forth. ‘Tomorrow.’

Diccon drank his mead. ‘What did you learn today?’

‘The fortress still holds,’ the Prior said. ‘And holds the bridge, as well. The Abbess has done far better than I expected of her, and I owe her an apology.’ He smiled at Galahad. ‘The trouble with a vow of silence is that it leaves you vulnerable to talk,’ he said.

Diccon nodded. ‘I’ll ride at first light.’

The Prior shook his head. ‘The woods this side of the river are full of the enemy. Sossag, Abenacki, irks, boglins and worse.’ He shook his head. ‘Tomorrow night we’ll make a demonstration. A loud demonstration. We will draw every creature of darkness like-’ he smiled ‘-like moths to a flame.’ He nodded. ‘Then you’ll ride.’

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

Just a few leagues north of the hillock where the Prior camped, the captain stood in the castle gateway with the Abbess. Behind him were most of the men-at-arms, led by Jehannes, and twenty squires and valets led by Jacques. Every man wore a nun’s habit over his harness.

He gathered them in a circle.

‘What a very scary passel of nuns we make,’ he said. ‘The order of Saint Thomas will need to be a little more careful in their selection process.’

The Abbess laughed. The men going on the sortie managed a sort of nervous titter.

‘This needs to be fast, so listen up. It’s like taking a town in Galle. Sneak to the wall. Ladders up on the whistle. That’s all there is. When you are in, head for the towers at the gate. We get the lads there and back we come. Don’t leave your wounded behind. You know all this.’ He grinned. Turned to Ser Michael, the sergeant of the original garrison. ‘You must keep the gate open until the sortie returns. But don’t leave it open for a few men. You hear me? When the sortie is in, close the gate.’ He turned to No Head. ‘When you see my blue fire pound the town. Everything you have.’

No Head nodded. ‘The Bridge Castle has the word, too.’

Beside him, Harmodius crossed his arms. And winked.

The captain nodded. ‘You all know Tom would come to get you. Let’s go get Tom.’

A murmur.

He jumped down from his barrel, and led the way – not to the gate, but to the dispensary stairs, and the Abbess walked with him.

She led them through the lower dispensary, and then down steep steps to a basement, and then down another set to a well – a spring in the deep hillside, a cleft off to the right with lights burning.

The captain could feel an immense welling of power. Raw power. Neither gold nor green.

He reached into the well and filled himself.

You are much stronger, Prudentia said. But not as strong as he is.

I know.

You don’t. You are arrogant. You are outmatched.

Fine. Yes, I know.

Fool! she spat.

He dropped back into the cleft and came to a long storage room, packed to the rafters with wagon sides and barrels of pork.

It took long minutes for men to shift the wagon beds.

There was a door behind them.

The Abbess drew a key from her girdle. Their eyes met.

‘Now you know all my secrets,’ she whispered.

‘I doubt it,’ he said, and kissed her hand.

‘I am quite sure I should not give you this,’ she said. She smiled bitterly and handed him a small scrap of curled parchment, hard as an old leaf in his hand. Smooth as a woman’s skin.

‘I could disapprove, as her spiritual mother,’ the Abbess went on. ‘I could just be a jealous woman.’ She shrugged. ‘Sister Miram brought this note to me and confessed that she had passed another.’ She met his eyes. ‘Amicia is not for you, Captain. She is greater – far greater – than we.’

He smiled. ‘That is not what I expected you to say.’ He bowed. ‘I beg your indulgence.’ He turned aside, and held the scrap up to a torch on the wall in a clamp. He read, and he couldn’t control the smile that crossed his face.

Your gate is closed.

Meet me.

He turned back to the Abbess.

She shook her head. ‘You are glowing.’

‘How is she greater?’ the captain asked.

The column had begun to move. The door was open, and the lower door, too.

He kissed her hand again. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘You have brought me no peace, young man.’ She waved her hand. ‘Go – kill our enemies. Triumph.’ She sounded tired.

He turned and all but leaped down the steps. On his way he stopped to touch the favour he wore on his shoulder.

Amicia felt him, like a touch on her cheek.

She smiled, and went back to tearing linen into strips.

I’m a fool, she thought.

The company went down through the Abbess’s passage and entered a maze of stone corridors.

To those who knew what to look for, it was obvious that men had not made these curving corridors.

But they were empty, although, to the captain, every yard of them reeked of the power that had been used in storming them. More than a hundred years ago. More than two hundred years.

And still the power lingered, like the smell of smoke after a fire.

Eventually, the Abbess’s will-o-wisp led them to a double door of oak, bound with iron, copper, and silver. To the captain’s eye, it was covered in sigils – powerful wards drawn Hermetically.

He’d never seen anything like it.

She’d given him the key.

He held it with renewed respect.

Some of the lads were very much on edge. An hour in silent, haunted corridors deep under the earth isn’t the best preparation for combat. The sounds behind him were of men on the edge of panic.

He turned, and cast a soft light.

‘Ready, friends?’ he asked softly.

More and more men stumbled into the antechamber in front of the great doors.

‘We’ll come out into the chapel of the Lower Town,’ he said. ‘The roof is collapsed. Don’t run. Out here a rolled ankle is a death sentence and we’re not coming back this way. So don’t linger.’ He couldn’t explain why.

He was about to open the fortress’s Hermetic defences, for a moment.

He imbued his voice with calm. Humour. Normalcy.

‘Let’s go get Tom,’ he said. He smiled at Jehannes, who, praise be, smiled back.

And he turned the key.

North of Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn felt the change. He was busy resighting his battery, wishing again that he had a mathematician or an engineer – some reliable human calculator who could command the tedious business of putting the great rocks on target. Exrech had proven uninterested. And far too slow. Unwilling to build anything.

He watched the boglins dig, raising a new mound out of range of the new machine on the fortress. He knew this new battery represented a heavy defeat in time and effort.

He was trying not to acknowledge that he had to go into the debatable ground and destroy the fortress’ new machine with his own power. He had no other weapon available with the necessary reach. And he would have to squander power like an angry boy to breach the fortress’s millennium-old defences.

That would leave him weak.

And then he felt the shift. He tasted the air – wasted valuable time sending a raven stooping over the walls, and he saw the nimbus of fire on his former apprentice’s hands, saw the great engine cranked all the way back, saw-

– nothing.

His raven was struck by an arrow, and tumbled out of the air.

He cursed, disoriented by the loss of his connection. Reached for another-

The fortress’s defences were down.

He stepped out from behind his new siege mound. Raised an arm, and let fly a bolt of pure green lightning.

And he laughed.

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius threw a shield in front of the lightning, like a knight making a parry in the tiltyard, and the two castings extinguished each other with a flash of light.

Harmodius stumbled and had to reach for the well of power at his feet. ‘Sweet Lord have mercy,’ he mumbled.

One blow. Thorn could empty him of power in a single blow.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

The captain was first out the gate, and Jehannes was on his heels, leading his party of men-at-arms to the right and out of the chapel.

The nave was full of sleeping boglins.

The killing began.

He counted the armoured shapes coursing past him, lost count in the middle, and had to guess.

But Sauce was true to her promise. She was last.

‘Last out!’ she called, and danced off to the right around the gate.

The captain slammed the great doors shut, with the key inside.

As the two doors met, their power meshed, and the gate vanished, leaving a black stone wall behind the altar, only the shape of the two doors burned onto his retinas remaining.

Bent and the archers were clearing the nave.

Jehannes was already gone over the broken wall.

The captain began to cut his way to the front of the church.

Thorn cast his second levin bolt, and then, without pausing to gather power, he cast a third.

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius’s second defence was more refined than his first – a working of his own, weaker than Thorn’s but deflective rather than resisting. Thorn’s strike bent like a beam of light in a prism and blew a piece of slate the size of a small barn off the side of the ridge.

His third cover was not quite fast enough – he intended to cast a single line of power like a sword parry – but Thorn’s speed left him too late, and he tried to widen his cast, with too little power.

He still stopped most of it.

The rest fell on the curtain wall to his left. A section of wooden hoardings twenty paces long burned in a flash, and a section of the wall cracked and fell outward, killing two archers instantly and crushing the two older Lanthorn men to pulp.

Harmodius felt them die.

His failure made him angry, and anger made him lash out. His riposte was pitiful, small, weak, too late.

It was also entirely unexpected. Like a slow attack in a sword fight, his flare of anger sailed out into the dark and caught Thorn unprepared.

Pain enraged Thorn. It always had.

He struck back.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

The Lower Town square was carpeted in corpses. The captain passed in the chapel doorway looking for his men-at-arms. The archers were spreading out, right and left.

‘On me,’ he said. ‘Let’s go!’ He ran across the square, and they pounded along behind him.

Parties with ladders broke off and headed east, through the rubble.

He could hear fighting to this left, and more straight ahead. Angelo di Laternum materialized out of the darkness.

‘Ser Jehannes prays your aid,’ he said formally.

‘On me,’ the captain said, and followed the squire. The captain had no time to comment that Jehannes was off course.

A vast burst of light lit the sky, like all the summer lightning ever seen combined in one single burst. The levin flash showed the captain that Squire Angelo was bleeding from the shoulders of his harness; the archers were splashed in red and black and, ahead of him, Jehannes’s men-at-arms were caught in the flash, illuminated like a manuscript illustration of knights fighting monsters.

‘Ware!’ the captain shouted. ‘Daemons!’

The terror struck him like a heavy mall. He set his teeth and pushed himself forward through the terror, and one of the things turned on him with its supernatural speed.

The captain had supernatural speed, too.

The daemon’s blade met his, so hard that sparks flew from his blade, and he yielded before the creature’s awesome strength, rotated his blade around the fulcrum of his armoured wrist, stepped inside its terror and pushed his point into its brain.

It fell away off his sword, and he was on the next. It turned its head – its beautiful eyes catching his.

The daemon’s taloned hand came up, too fast to block.

His sword came down.

The daemon stumbled away, spraying fear the way a skunk sprays scent, and the captain found himself retching. There was blood in his eyes.

My faceplate is open.

It got me.

A different fear, colder and heavier, settled on his gut.

But the daemons were not immortal; their ichor was mixed with the blood of men on the ground and they were retreating. As they began to put distance between them and their foes, the fear abated.

The captain saw there were fewer than a dozen of the things.

The archers – frozen in place – suddenly burst into action. The last daemon – the one the captain had wounded – sprouted shafts like a field growing grass.

The thing turned, its fear welled, and it fell.

Jehannes was shouting for his men.

‘Stand!’ called the captain. It sounded like a squeal. But Wilful Murder roared it from behind him. ‘Stand!’ he called.

Jehannes paused.

‘The tower!’ the captain insisted.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn’s burst of rage fell like a hammer.

Harmodius watched the strike come in, helpless to stop it, a whole heartbeat to see his death wash at him in sickly green radiance.

He felt the fortress’s Hermetic defences go back up, and knew it would never be enough.

The great works that powered the defence were brilliantly designed – they funnelled what they could, channelled some more, reflected yet more. They were so well artificed that they almost seemed intelligent. New practitioners attempted to meet force with force – skilled practitioners knew to meet force with guile, deflecting the opponent’s energy like a skilled swordsman. Most static sigils were easily overcome, but this . . .

In the moment of his annihilation, Harmodius thought Who built this?

The wards caught, turned, and covered. But there was only so much the ancient sigils could do.

And the rest burst through the great wards like a river in flood bursting through a levy.

He raised a hand.

The Abbess reached past him, and stopped the overflow of the great spell of wrath just short of their place on the wall. She flung it back down the path of the casting.

She reached out and put her left hand on his shoulder.

I know nothing of this sort of war she said. Let me in.

Through her, he could feel her sisters, singing plainchant in the chapel. Their power did not fuel the Abbess directly. It was far subtler than that.

Despite the situation, he had to pause to admire the magnificence of the structure. The fortress. The sigils. The sisters, who could maintain the power of the sigils indefinitely, regardless of their individual weakness.

He wondered, yet again, who made this?

Then he gripped her spiritual hand in his own and led her through the great bronze doors of his palace, like a bridegroom leading a bride. ‘Welcome,’ he said.

She was a much younger and less spiritual woman, in the Aethereal. Suddenly he had a frisson of memory. Of this same woman dressed for hunting, standing in his master’s chamber, tapping her whip on her hand. Trying to get his master to go out riding.

He dismissed the memory, although here it took on a visible aspect, so that she saw it and smiled. ‘He was the worst lover imaginable,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘He didn’t hunt, didn’t ride, wouldn’t dance. He was always late, and made many promises he couldn’t keep.’ She shrugged. ‘I wanted him. And look at the consequences. Some sins do not wash away.’ She spread her arms. ‘It is very nice here.’

He flushed with her praise, as if he was a much younger man. Time in the Aethereal had virtually no meaning so he had no sense of urgency. ‘Did you ever suspect? ‘ he asked carefully. ‘When he turned?’

The Abbess sat in one of his great leather armchairs. She had riding boots under her voluminous riding skirts, which she crossed over the arm of the chair. ‘You know, don’t you, that in old age, one doesn’t easily adopt positions like this,’ she said happily. ‘Ah, to be young.’ She leaned back. ‘You must have asked yourself, many times.’

‘I’ve been largely trapped in his phantasm for many years,’ Harmodius said. ‘But yes. I think of it now. All the time.’

‘I only know that in the months before Chevin he discovered something. Something terrible. I badgered him to tell me, and he would smile and tell me that I wasn’t ready to understand it.’

Harmodius grimaced. ‘He never said as much to me.’

The Abbess nodded. ‘But now you know what he knew. I know it too, now.’

There aren’t many secrets in the Aethereal.

‘Yes,’ he said.

The Abbess shook her head. ‘Any servant of the Order of Saint Thomas knows that the green and the gold are the same,’ she said. ‘Richard was a fool who saw the world entirely in shades of black and white. He still is. A staggering intellect, a tower of puissance, and no common sense whatsoever.’ She shrugged. ‘Enough chatter. My home is being blown to bits. Show me how to use our power to stop him.’

‘Like this,’ he said. ‘But it will be more efficient if you pass me power and I cast.’

In a heartbeat – in no time at all, because in the Aethereal, time had so little meaning – they stood on a balcony of his great palace, looking out over the world of solidity.

In his vision, Thorn stood out like a beacon tagged in green. Harmodius pointed her hand at the thing that had been her lover.

She flooded Harmodius with power.

He made fire.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

For the first time, Thorn paused to raise a shield. His burst of temper was over, and Harmodius’s response had been respectable. No more, but no less.

And the fortress’s defences were back. He had landed some good blows. But now he was risking himself for nothing. He raised a second shield.

Harmodius’ mighty blow rolled away like a child’s stick on a knight’s armour.

Thorn grunted.

It might have been a laugh.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

Tom’s unconscious body took six men to carry and the captain was unwilling to lose the horses that had been left for the Lower Town garrison, so a party of archers cleared the town’s upper gate and opened it. The garrison escaped behind the horses, and the sortie went over the walls via ladders.

It was all going very well, until the daemons struck back.

His rearguard was slow in forming – understandable, in the conditions – and suddenly three of them were down, dead, and a gleaming monster stood over them with a pair of wickedly curved axes gleaming in the soft spring moonlight. Marcus – Jehannes’s valet – and Ser Willem Greville, his armour opened as if he was wearing leather. A third man was face down beside them.

The fear was like a waft of foul air.

There were more daemons behind it – fluid and horrible, arresting and beautiful in their movements. And below them, a legion of boglins, irks and men poured into the town they were leaving.

Just like that, the captain was alone.

‘Run, little man,’ the daemon whispered.

The captain reached inside and found Prudentia.

The working was already aligned.

He opened the door before she could protest – he was so much faster than he had been.

The green whistled through the crack, a tempest-

‘He can reach you!’

‘He’s otherwise engaged,’ the captain told his tutor.

‘I need to tell you so many things,’ she said.

He smiled and was back in the dark.

His sword arm was bathed in silver.

The daemon rotated its two axes, one over each wrist and golden-green light joined the two.

‘You!’ said the daemon. ‘Ahh, how I have longed to meet you.’

The captain got his blade up into guard, and cast.

The beam of silver-white light rose into the night like a beacon. And then fell to earth in the centre of the town.

‘Missed,’ hissed the daemon.

The captain backed away, rapidly.

Above him on the trail, a crossbow loosed with a snap.

The daemon grunted as the bolt struck.

Let loose his own spell.

The captain caught it – marvelling at the ease with which he fielded the blow. In the Aethereal, his adversary’s blow was like the cut of a sword, and he caught it and parried it with a sword of his own power, flicking it away. And he was back in the solid, because the daemon followed his phantasm immediately with a heavy cut from his right axe.

He could remember the first time he’d stopped such an attack by Hywel. Had been hit in the next instant because of the sheer pleasure of having accomplished it. Now, as then, he almost died through admiring his own cleverness.

He passed forward into the attack, his sword at eye level, the Guard of the Window, and the axe fell away harmlessly like rain off a roof.

He began to cut overhand, his left foot powering forward, and he caught the growth of his opponent’s power and he turned the blow even as it was rising from his adversary’s talons.

In the solid the attack came in, and he drove the power into the stones of the road between them.

The road exploded, knocking him flat.

With a high scream the daemon leaped the crater and swung both axes at once.

He saw Michael step over him and he caught both blows – one on his buckler, one on his long sword. The squire staggered, but the blows fell away.

The captain was backpedalling from between his squire’s knees; using his elbows, steel sabatons scraping the road, he got himself back.

He rolled to the left, almost falling off the elevated road. The daemon captain was pounding Michael with blow after blow, and the lad was standing his ground, pushing his sword and his buckler up into the blows, deflecting them, using the daemon’s strength against it as best he could.

The other daemons were trying to get around the fight.

The captain got his feet under him and he cut at the daemon from the side – but the thing parried his blow high with an axe blade – a horrifying display of skill – and flicked his weapon forward. It was all the captain could do to bat the blow aside.

Both men fell back as the daemon hammered blow after blow, one axe then the other, in an endless rhythm. It might have been predictable, except that it was so fast.

And then, during the moment that the captain had one axe turned on his long sword, and Michael had the other – just for a heartbeat – safely on his buckler-

Jehannes punched his pole-axe between them.

The daemon fell away, folding over the blow. But its armour – or its eldritch skin, or its sigils of power – held.

The captain stumbled back, and he felt Michael at his shoulder.

‘Let me in,’ Jehannes shouted.

Michael slumped and Jehannes stepped past him.

Two daemons leaped past their leader, who was just gaining his feet.

Far above them on the fortress, the trebuchet loosed.

Thump-snack

The ballista on the north tower loosed.

Whack.

The war engines on the towers of the Bridge Castle loosed.

Crack!

Crack!

High above them, Harmodius leaned out over the wall, hand in hand with the Abbess like lovers, and spread his fingers.

‘Fiat lux,’ he said.

The Lower Town seemed to explode as a hail of fire fell, a hand of fate that struck buildings flat.

The daemons were silhouetted in fire. At the back of their company, daemons turned to see what had happened.

The captain had to fight the vainglorious urge to charge them. He backed another step.

The two things came at them, and their fear . . .

Wasn’t as strong as it had been. Somewhere deep inside, or perhaps above, the fight, the captain had time to smile at the irony. He had lived his entire childhood in fear. He was afraid of so many things.

Familiarity breeds contempt. He was used to acting while he was afraid.

The terror projected by the daemons wasn’t having any effect on him.

Despite which, it was all he could do to stand his ground, because they remained big, fast and dangerous.

Jehannes had a pole-axe. He cut two handed into a blade attack, and his axe-hammer broke the daemon’s sword arm. It stumbled back, and he got his haft between the other’s legs, and as it stumbled, the captain had all the time he needed to step forward and cut overhand from the garde of the long tail, the sword flashing up, powered by his hips, his arms, his shoulders as he levelled the blow, right to left.

His blow went under its weapon. Beheaded it.

Beside him Jehannes stepped forward again and rammed pole-axe’s spike into the supine daemon, so that it screamed.

There was a sound very like applause.

The captain wondered who was watching.

They were most of the way up the ridge, under the main gate. And still bathed in the silver-white light of his casting. He was breathing hard. His helmet was like a trap over his face, constricting him, the visor was like a hand over his mouth, and he was bathed in sweat.

The daemons came on again. There were boglins trying to get around them on the left and right, and his archers were shooting with methodical regularity, but he couldn’t stop to think about that. They were on him.

The daemon in front of him swung its axe two handed, and he cut at its hands – its blow turned to a defence, and it’s left claw shot out and slammed into his shoulder and he stumbled back in a flash of pain.

He’d been hit.

Again.

Jehannes threw three fast jabs with his spear point, reversed his pole-arm to bat his opponent’s axe out of the way and planted his spike in the daemon – it screamed and fell back, taking the haft with it, planted in its breastbone. Jehannes struggled too long to keep it.

The captain’s adversary swung on Jehannes from the side, catching the knight in the side of the helmet and Jehannes fell.

He came back for me, the captain thought.

He lunged, his long sword held only by its pommel in his right hand, and raked the point across his opponent’s beaked face – an attack of desperation. But the blow landed, and the daemon stumbled off balance. He recovered forward, grabbing the blade near the point, which he rammed into the daemon’s scaled thigh, and with that as leverage, he hurled it from the road. It fell away into the darkness.

He stepped forward again, past Jehannes.

The one that had spoken jumped forward, shouldering past two of its own kind.

‘I am Thurkan of the Qwethenog,’ it said.

She hadn’t intended to come out onto the wall.

Her place was in the infirmary and wounded men were coming through the gate.

She told herself that she would only look. Only a moment. People were cheering.

She ran barefoot through the infirmary’s second floor balcony doors, and leaped lightly from the stone balustrade, between a pair of gargoyles that decorated the lower gable ends, and skinned her thigh on the slates as she slid down to the curtain wall. She’d taken this path a thousand times to go out after the nuns blew out the last lights.

She was a level above the gatehouse. She skidded to a stop when she saw that a section of curtain wall was simply gone, and her left foot hovered over empty space.

Below her the hillside was bathed in a cruel white light.

When she was young, her Outwaller family had called them guardians and worshipped them. North of the wall she had thought they were angels.

Now a mighty one stood on the cobbled road, facing the Red Knight.

How she hated that substitute for a name. The Red Knight.

He looked tired. And heroic.

She couldn’t watch.

She couldn’t look away.

The guardian struck with two axes, cutting with both at the same time – something a mere man could never hope to do.

He stepped forward and to the right, and smashed an axe to the ground; the guardian stepped back. She saw it draw power. Guardians were not like men in any way except for their love of beauty. It took in power as if breathing – a natural movement – and then it snapped its working at the knight.

Who turned it. Then he stepped forward, and raised his sword slowly, an elaborate gesture like a salute.

Achieved his guard.

And froze.

The guardian raised its axes.

And froze.

Time stopped.

She couldn’t breathe.

When one of them moved, it would be over.

The Ings of the Albin – Ranald Lachlan

Donald came and sat on a rock by Ranald’s tiny fire. Half their force was out on picket – the men cooking breakfast spoke in low tones.

‘I’ve a notion,’ Donald said.

Ranald ate a piece of bacon, and raised an eyebrow. He was feeling better. More alive. Ian the Old had made him angry, pissing in the stream where they got drinking water.

Yesterday nothing had made him angry, so he savoured that anger as a sign he was alive.

All those thoughts flitted through his head while he chewed, and then he nodded. ‘I thought I smelled smoke,’ he said, and managed a smile – another triumph.

Donald leaned back. ‘None of yer sass, now. And you half my age.’ He grinned. ‘I think we should push the herd for Albinkirk. It is only twelve leagues, or like enough as makes no difference.’

Ranald was alive enough, and enough of a hillman, to be taken with the boldness of it. ‘Right over the same terrain where we fought the Sossag?’ he said. He shrugged.

‘They’re gone, Ranald. Nobody’s seen dick of them for three days. Not a feather, not a scout, not a bare buttock. It’s their way. They don’t hold ground.’ Donald leaned forward. ‘What’s the herd worth at the Inn? A silver penny a head or less? And it’s a far longer walk to the Inn than it is to Albinkirk.’

Ranald stared into the flames of his small birch bark fire. He added leaves from a pouch at his belt to his copper cup full of water, stirred honey in, drank it, and gave a quiet thanks to God. His belief in God had suffered – or maybe not. He wasn’t entirely sure.

I was dead.

Hard to take. Better not to think of it. Except that, in some horrible way, he could remember the deadness. He didn’t want to be dead again.

He sighed. ‘Daring,’ he said. But from Albinkirk he could send a messenger to the king. He owed the king that much. More. He sighed.

Donald’s eyes sparkled. ‘Let’s do it.’

Ranald knew that the older man needed to perform a deed of arms if only to justify the fact that he had lived and Hector had died.

But deep inside, he shared the feeling. And if they could get the herd through – why, then Sarah Lachlan would be rich, and all the little crofters and herders in the Hills would get their shares, and the Death of Hector Lachlan would be a song with a happy ending.

He drank off the last of his scalding tea, and watched the stream. ‘We’re loons. And some of the boys may “decline to accompany us”.’ He gave the last words a distinctive Alban accent.

Donald chortled. ‘Good to see you coming back to yourself. Faeries brought my Godmother back from dead – did you know that? Took her months to laugh again, but then she was dead a whole day.’ He shrugged.

Ranald gave a little shudder. ‘Ouch,’ he muttered.

‘Oh, no. She said that having been dead, life was always sweet.’ He nodded.

Ranald was still thinking of that when the herd lumbered into motion, headed west. The boys had muttered about it but none of them turned for home.

Four hours they moved west, down the old drove road through increasingly wooded country. The west slope of the Morean Mountains had been farmed once – grape vines still grew over the new trees, and they passed a dozen farmsteads standing open-roofed and abandoned. None were burned. Men had simply left, one day, and not returned.

Ranald had seen it all before. But now he noticed it more.

That evening, they made camp under the Ings of the Albin. They’d pressed the herd hard and come twenty leagues or better, and the young men were exhausted enough that Donald made up a new duty list, writing slowly and carefully on his wax tablet, making signs for some men and writing the names of others in the old way.

Kenneth Holiot was not a bard, but they all knew the boy could play, and that night he sang a few lines to his father’s old lyre, and shook his head, and laid down a few more. He was writing the song of the Death of Hector. He knew the death of another Hector, in Archaic, and he had the bit in his teeth – he was going to write the song.

After an hour he cursed and went off into the darkness.

Ranald cried.

The other men just let him cry, and when he was cried out, Donald came and put a hand on his shoulder, and then he rolled up in his cloak and went to sleep.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

He watched his adversary, and waited to die.

His shoulder was bleeding. His face was bleeding. Jehannes was somewhere half a pace behind him, he didn’t dare try to retreat, and for some reason his people seemed to think he wanted this to be a single combat.

Warm blood ran down his side.

The effort of holding his sword above his head in the Guard of the Window would eventually be too much. He would have to strike, and that would be the end.

It was faster and stronger than he was. He’d tried attacking, tried thrusting, tried most of his tricks. They all required some advantage – reach, perhaps – that he just didn’t have.

The daemon just stood there, two axes above its head.

And then, as sudden as its attack had come, its eyes slipped past him and with a shrug it was gone. The air popped as it displaced itself.

He was damned if he was going to fall over. He stood there looking at an empty road down the hill, and the fires of hell raging in the Lower Town.

He turned around, and Michael had Jehannes under the armpits and was dragging the knight up the path.

Cuddy stood just behind him, with his bow at full draw. Very slowly, the archer let the tension out of the limbs, and the great bow returned to shape. He dropped the arrow back into the quiver at his belt.

‘Sorry, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘You wasn’t going to win that one.’

The captain laughed. He laughed and laughed as they pulled him through the gate and slammed it shut, ands Ser Michael lowered the great iron portcullis.

He slapped Cuddy weakly on the backplate. ‘Nor was I,’ he said.

Then Michael had his helmet off his head, and he was sucking in great gouts of fresh, cool air. A dozen men were pulling at his armour.

He saw the Abbess. Saw Harmodius, who grinned at him.

Red Knight! Red Knight! Red Knight! Red Knight!

He drank it all in for a moment, and then, as his breast and backplate came off, he got to his feet. The men stripping him grinned and backed away, but their grins faltered when they saw how much blood was running down his side.

He nodded, waved, and ran, unarmed, unaware of his wounds, into the crowd and seemed to vanish. He didn’t see Amicia. But he’d felt her there.

He went to find her.

She was waiting for him under the apple tree.

She bit her lip.

‘I won’t talk,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I-’

She pushed him down on the bench with a strong arm, and bent – he hoped, to kiss him. But his hope was cheated. He felt her breath, hot, moist, fraught with magic, on his face and felt his wound heel. She raised her hands like a priest invoking the deity and he saw the power all around her, the well below the tree, the tendrils that connected her to her sisters in the choir and to the Abbess.

She reached a hand under his arming doublet and her touch was cold as ice. Her hand passed over his chest and his back arched in agony as she touched the edge of his wound – one he hadn’t felt.

‘Silly,’ she said. He felt the power go out of her, into his shoulder. For a moment, briefer than a single heartbeat, the pain was infinite. And for that moment, he was her. She was him.

He lay back. To his shame, a whimper escaped his lips.

She leaned over him, her hair covering his face. Her lips brushed his. ‘Men will die if I stay with you,’ she said.

And she was gone.

Lissen Carak – Michael

The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Twelve

Last night the watch came and relieved the garrison of the Lower Town. The Red Knight led the watch in person. All the garrison were rescued, but brave knights and men-at-arms were killed and wounded, and the Lower Town, in the end, was lost. The Enemy has limitless creatures.

Michael looked at the parchment and tried to think what he could write. Shook his head, and went to find Kaitlin, who’s father had died when the curtain wall fell.

In the first light, three wyverns came out of the rising sun carrying rocks the size of a man’s head in their claws.

They came in high, and dived almost straight on the trebuchet.

The watch was just changing and the soldiers were completely unready. The ongoing watch was already tired, the offgoing watch was exhausted, and no one reacted in time.

Before No Head could even rotate the ballista the first monster’s claws opened, and his rock fell – struck the stump of the tower a few paces from the engine, and bounced away with a crack like lightning to fall harmlessly to the hillside below.

The second wyvern dropped lower, wings folded against his back, but he opened his wings too early, bobbed, and his rock went sailing away to kill one of the hundreds of sheep who were still penned on the ridge.

The third wyvern was the oldest and the canniest. It swooped off the target Thorn had intended and laid its rock almost gently on the ballista, smashing the engine and throwing No Head off the tower.

The archer shrieked and grabbed at the gargoyles of the hospital balcony as he fell.

The wyverns swept away.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

An hour later the wyverns were back. This time all three imitated the eldest, coming lower along the ridge and rising on the last thermal before the walls of the fortress to unleash their missiles at point blank range.

This time they were met by a hail of darts, bolts and arrows, loosed from every corner of the courtyard, the towers, and even the hospital balcony.

All three were hit, and flew away, angry and unsuccessful.

Their stones knocked a hole in the captain’s Commandery, killed two nuns in the hospital, and crushed a war horse and a squire in the stable.

The captain slept through it.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

He didn’t wake until late afternoon. He awoke in the comfort of his own room, although it felt odd. Air was moving around him.

Someone had fixed blankets and an old tapestry over a hole the size of a cart. A hole in the wall that went right through to the outside air.

His little porch was gone, too.

He got his feet on the floor, and Toby Pardieu had his clothes laid out on the press, and long leather boots over his arm, clean and black.

His knight’s belt was polished, shining like something hermetical.

‘Which the Abbess has invited ye ta’ dinner,’ Toby said. ‘Master Michael is at his exercises.’

The captain groaned as his weight came on his thighs and hips, and just for a moment he had a flash of what old age might be like.

‘Ta semptress ha gi’in me these linens,’ Toby said. He pointed to a basket. ‘New, clean, an’ pressed. Shirts. Caps. Braes. Two pair black cloth hose.’ Toby pointed at the basket.

The captain ran his hands over a shirt. The stitches were neat, very small, almost perfectly even but not quite, almost a pattern. The seamstress had used an undyed thread on the glorious new white of the linen – so confident in her skills that the very slight contrast was itself a decoration. A very subtle declaration of skill. Subtle, like the power with which she’d imbued the garments.

He picked up the shirt. The power was golden – a bright, white gold, the colour of purity. The Sun.

The shirt didn’t burn him, nor did he expect it to. He’d found that out, years ago.

Toby interrupted his reverie. ‘Wine? Hot cider?’ he asked. He looked at the floor. ‘Cider is good,’ he mumbled.

‘Cider. And I’ll wear these new things, but with my scarlet cote, Toby. Black is for-’ He sighed. ‘Black is for other occasions.’

‘Sorry, my lord.’ Toby blushed.

‘How could you know? Any word on the wounded? How’s Bad Tom?’ He felt the crisp cleanness of the new white shirt. ‘I’ll have a bath before I dress, if you can arrange it.’

Toby nodded at the challenge. ‘Twa shakes of a lamb’s tail.’ He vanished. Reappeared. ‘Ser Thomas is up and about. An’ Ser Jehannes, as well.’

The captain heard the boy’s footsteps, running. The boy made him smile. Made him feel old.

He stripped out of his arming clothes. He had had them on for – hmm. Two days now, without rest?

The shirt was damp and warm and smelled bad. Not like sweat, but like old blood. There was a lot of blood in it. It had a tear, too, all the way down one side.

He had a mirror, somewhere in his kit. Michael had unpacked his malle and his scrip and the portmanteau he stored in the wagons – he rooted around, vaguely aware that evening was coming, and he wasn’t armed.

He found his bronze mirror in its travelling case, found his razor, and unfolded it from its fancy bronze handle. Looked in the mirror.

He’d forgotten the wound he’d taken last night. He had a long crease down the left side of his face which was still sweating a little blood. As soon as he looked at it, it started to hurt. It didn’t look bad. It merely hurt.

He shook his head. Felt fuzzy with post-combat shock, and the shock of what he’d just seen in the mirror.

He tried to look at the wound in his right shoulder. It was a dull ache, and he couldn’t locate it, despite the fact that his arming clothes were soaked in blood.

A bit more of a shock, that.

Stiff with blood would be more accurate.

He peeled his braes off. They were stuck to his crotch with blood and sweat, and where his leg met his groin, he had sweat sores. He stank.

Toby reappeared. ‘Which the bath is on its way, m’lord. I told Master Michael and Master Jacques you was awake.’

Jacques came through the door and sniffed.

Even naked, the captain still had authority. ‘Toby, take my arming cote out and air it. Give my linens to the laundress and ask her respectfully if they can be saved.’

Jacques was holding one of the new arming caps. ‘This is fine work. As good as court.’ He looked at Toby.

‘The tire woman. Mag.’ Toby shrugged. ‘She tol’ me what the captain had ordered of her. Did I do aught wrong?’

The captain shook his head. Jacques smiled. ‘I’ll go and pay her. And order my own,’ he said. ‘You are commanded to dinner with the Abbess,’ Jacques went on. ‘As are a number of other worthies. Best dress well and try to behave yourself.’

The captain rolled his eyes. After a pause, he said, ‘How bad is the wound on my back?’

Jacques looked at the back of his shoulder. ‘Healed,’ he said with professional finality.

Toby had the arming jacket over his arm.

The captain snatched at it and held it up.

The right arm had a slash that ran from just above the underarm voider of chain all the way down to the top of the underarm seam.

Jacques gave a sharp noise like a dog’s bark.

‘One of the daemons tagged me.’ The captain shrugged. ‘I slept . . . what a sleep!’ Suddenly he picked up the goblet by his bedside.

‘The pretty novice gave me a cordial I was to give you,’ Toby said. He cowered a little.

The captain found his wallet, a small miracle all by itself, and extracted a silver leopard. He snapped it across the room to young Toby, who scooped it out of the air.

‘I think I owe you a debt of thanks, young Toby,’ he said. ‘Now – bath.’ He scratched himself.

Out in the yard he could see that there were men with swords and bucklers, practising. He walked across the room, and peeled back a corner of the tapestry to gaze out over the fields, the sheepfolds, and the smoking ruin of Lower Town.

‘Wyverns?’ he asked. He was still unbelievably tired.

‘Been pounding us with rocks all day,’ Jacques said cheerfully. ‘Gave No Head the fright of his life. Ballista is gone.’

‘He’s moving his engines again,’ the captain said. ‘No – he’s having boglins dig a new mound, but the engines are still safely out of range.’ The captain found he was scratching things that could not publicly be scratched, not even in front of servants.

‘I need to see Tom, if he’s up to it. With the day’s reports.’

Then he squeaked and ripped the coverlet off the bed as two farm girls appeared in the doorway with a tub of steaming water.

‘Coo!’ said the dark-haired one. ‘Nothing I ain’t seen before.’ She giggled, though, and the other girl blushed, and then they were gone.

But the water wasn’t gone.

‘I’ll wash myself, if you don’t mind,’ he told Jacques.

Jacques nodded. ‘You’re too old to be bathed.’ He counted the linens in the basket. ‘I’ll just go pay the lady, eh? And fetch Tom.’

‘Thanks, Jacques,’ said the captain. The water was hot – nearly boiling hot.

He got in anyway, hoping to scald some of the dirt and worse away. The captain was sure there was something crawling over him.

He had just immersed his torso – slowly – when there was a stir behind him.

‘Tom?’ he called.

‘No,’ replied Harmodius.

The captain wriggled. The water seemed to burn where he had abrasions, and where he had cuts, and where he had sores.

So pretty much everywhere.

He realised that his soap – his lovely almond scented soap from Galle – was in his leather portmanteau.

Harmodius came across the room. ‘You are stronger,’ he said without preamble. ‘I saw you last night. Fast and strong.’

‘I do your exercises every day,’ the captain admitted. ‘And as you said – I try to do everything I can by the arts.’ He shrugged, and the water was delicious. ‘When he lets me.’

‘Our adversary?’ Harmodius nodded.

‘He’s camped outside my place of power.’ The captain reached all the way to the well, a long way for him. Thirty paces through rock. But he could feel the power there, now. He reached out, touched it, took a sip, and cast.

The soap rose, crossed the room, and fell into the bath with a splash.

‘Damn,’ said the captain. Not his soap. The sharpening hones for his razor.

Harmodius grinned. ‘Soap? Is it pink?’

‘Yes,’ said the captain.

‘Still, you are much improved. I know you were well trained, you just have to be less secretive.’ He shrugged. ‘An easy thing for me to say.’ He picked up the soap and then held it out of reach.

‘I’d be able to do more if he weren’t right outside my door, waiting to come in and rip my soul out,’ said the captain, scratching. ‘Soap please?’

Harmodius looked out from the tapestry. ‘Nice new window,’ he said. ‘Get your power elsewhere. You know how.’

‘From the well?’ the captain asked.

‘How about the sun?’ Harmodius asked.

‘I’m a child of the Wild,’ the captain said. ‘My mother made me that way.’

Harmodius wasn’t looking at him. He was looking out over the fields. ‘Do you trust me, boy?’

The captain looked at the tall, proud figure. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Not to give me my soap, anyway.’

Harmodius barked a laugh. ‘Fair enough. Fair enough. Do you trust me as a mentor in Hermeticism?’

The captain thought for a long few heartbeats. ‘I think so,’ he said.

The old Magus nodded and ripped the tapestry off its hooks, so that the afternoon sun fell right on the tub. ‘Take the soap. With the sun. Do it.’ He held the soap where it could be seen.

The captain felt the sun against his bare skin like a faint weight. He held up a wet hand, and let the sun lick it.

He had always liked the sun. Especially in spring.

. . . scent of flowers . . .

For a fraction of a heartbeat he’d had it, and then revulsion set in. It was like a gag reflex.

The soap didn’t move.

‘Try harder,’ Harmodius said.

‘You could just give me the soap, and we could do this when I’m dressed.’ The captain felt very much at a disadvantage, naked, wet, hurt and vulnerable.

Harmodius narrowed his eyes. ‘Cast.’

The captain tried again. He let the sun kiss him. He drank in-

And spat up, narrowly avoiding his bath. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Better,’ Harmodius said. ‘Very good indeed. May I tell you what I admire in you, Captain?’

‘You’re going to try flattery now?’ asked the captain.

‘It’s not that you are not afraid of anything, because, as far as I can see, you are afraid of everything.’ Harmodius crossed his arms. ‘It’s that you overcome that fear every time.’ He nodded. ‘Now seize the power of the sun and cast.’

He let the sun caress him. He felt the power of it, which was rich, like good cheese – thicker than the power of the Wild, and more intense.

And then something in his mind slammed shut.

‘Damn it,’ Harmodius said. ‘Again.’

The captain took a deep breath, and tried again. He could feel the power. And he wanted it. To touch the sun-

To touch the sun was to be clean.

I am the child of incest and hate. I was made to be the destroyer. I can never harness the power of the sun.

The bathwater was warm, and the sun was warm. He pushed his revulsion down, and he reached for it. He thought of riding in the sun. Of horses in the sun. Of Amicia standing in the sun-

Just for a moment, he connected again. The sun falling on his hand was a conductor, and his skin drank in raw power like a sponge.

And then he gagged on it again. He coughed, physically, and the soap, halfway across the room, fell to the floor.

‘Ah-HA!’ roared the Magus.

‘I can’t do it,’ said the captain.

‘You just did it,’ Harmodius said. He picked up the soap and handed it to the man in the bath. ‘There is no limit, boy. There are no rules. You can tap the sun. For a long time, you will resist it – something in you will resist. But by God, boy, you just reached out and tapped the sun in its purist form. I know men who take the sun from water, from the air. Damn few take power straight from the source.’

His water was cooling, and the captain began to soap himself.

It grew cooler, too fast.

‘You bastard,’ the captain said to the Magus.

‘Best do something about it,’ Harmodius said.

The captain reached out to the well.

Harmodius was there, a tower of blue fire.

He went into his palace.

Don’t, said Prudentia. He’s waiting.

‘So he is, said the captain after touching the key hole.

He could feel the bath getting colder. ‘You bastard,’ he repeated.

The sun was all around him, and he reached for it.

And nothing much happened.

He thought of a summer day. But he thought too much and all he saw was sweat and bugs.

Autumn. The colour of pumpkins and standing corn and wheat ready for harvest – so many things golden and orange and ruddy in the setting sun-

Prudentia laughed aloud. ‘Well done, young master!’ she cried.

‘Pru!’ he said. He was alight with a ruddy gold.

Without intending it, the windows – the stained glass windows, in the clerestory above the rotating panels – flared to brilliant life. Coloured light fell across the floor.

‘Son of a bitch’ he said.

He pointed to a statue, a panel, a symbol. ‘Saint Mary, Herikleitus, Cancer,’ he said.

The wheels turned. And stopped, with a click.

Prudentia smiled a solid marble smile. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Watch.’

She held up a prism. It took the coloured light, bent it, and sent it as one coherent beam to strike the central panel of cancer.

Ah!

The water was warm. Then warmer. Verging on hot.

Harmodius laughed aloud. ‘Well done!’ he said.

The captain lay back in the bath, tired. Amazed. ‘I had help,’ he said, to cover his confusion. ‘Magus, that shouldn’t have been possible. How is it possible?’

Harmodius shook his head. ‘I have theories. No proof.’ He rubbed his neck. ‘I didn’t plan to ride out on errantry, two weeks ago. I planned to find some quiet, far from a trap Thorn had set for me. I wanted to perform some experiments.’

‘Instead, you got the siege.’ The captain was soaping himself shamelessly.

‘I managed a few of my experiments,’ Harmodius said.

‘Like what?’ asked the captain.

‘I got a Wild caster to use sunlight instead,’ Harmodius said smugly. ‘I knew you could do it.’

The captain shook his head. He ought to be angry. But he felt-

He felt very powerful, indeed. ‘What if you were wrong?’

Harmodius shrugged. ‘It was unlikely. I had reason for my theory in the first place. Besides, I no sooner got here than I found a woman who cast in both colours. Wild and sun. Every time I watch her heal, it is like a miracle.’ He rubbed his hands together in glee. ‘Last night I linked with the Abbess,’ he said.

‘You sound like a boy bragging about his first kiss,’ the captain said.

Harmodius laughed. ‘You are quick. She used to come around to our rooms – oh, in those days she was the very embodiment of what a woman should be.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s funny, how you are never too old to be young. But I’m not here to bandy tales of lust and love, lad. The lady has proven what I already suspected. This is going to change the world.’

‘I like the world fine as it is,’ Tom said from the doorway. ‘When you two man-witches are done having your bloody rites, sacrificing babes and eating them or whatever heathen thing you do, I’m ready with the day’s muster.’

The captain was still lying in the hot water, unmoving. ‘Did you come to find me just to experiment on me? Or did you have another motive, Magus?’

‘Thorn is planning to attack us. Directly.’ The Magus was trying to put the tapestry back over the opening. For a man of such power, he was curiously inept at the task. ‘Last night he learned he could overcome our defences. Now he’ll come.’

Tom came over, shkk’d him out of the way, and reached the corners out to tug them over heavy iron spikes driven into the end beams of the floor above.

‘Really?’ The captain asked. ‘How do you know?’

Harmodius shrugged and poured himself some wine. ‘We are linked to each other, for good or ill. I can feel his fear. And his anger, and his gloating. As can the Abbess.’

‘Fear?’ Tom asked. ‘Fear? Yon mighty godling is afraid o’ we?’ He laughed.

But the captain understood. ‘He must be afraid,’ he said. ‘I would be.’

‘He has a great deal to lose,’ Harmodius said. ‘But he knows he can destroy our trebuchet with one shot if he gets close enough. Of course, he has to risk himself on the plain to get it, hence his attempt to get it done with the wyverns. But they’ve failed.’

Tom shook his head. ‘You make him sound like he’s but an engine himself.’

Harmodius bobbed his head. ‘Not bad, Tom. In a way, the magi aren’t much more than siege engines, on a battlefield. Except we move much faster and we are much deadlier. But I agree, the effect is the same.’

The captain made a face. ‘Why must he get the trebuchet? So he can move his engines against the Bridge Castle?’

Harmodius nodded. ‘I suppose so. That’s not my department.’ He put his wine cup down. ‘I’ll leave you to get ready. The Abbess asked us for sunset.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘Don’t stop practising, young man. We need you.’

Tom watched him go. ‘He’s an odd one and no mistake.’

The captain smiled. ‘This from you?’ He summoned a linen towel from the door. It flew to his hand. He grinned and rose, dripping.

Tom rocked back in his seat. ‘Don’t do that again,’ he said. He had his heavy knife half out of its sheath. ‘I’ll thank ye to keep that sort o’ thing private, where it belongs.’

The captain felt himself blush. ‘I can cast magic, Tom,’ he said. ‘You know I can.’

Tom grunted. ‘Knowing and watching is different beasts.’ He shrugged and looked uncomfortable. ‘We lost five men-at-arms yesterday and three archers.’ He looked at a wax tablet. ‘Nine men-at-arms and nineteen archers since the siege began. ‘Twenty-eight, and two valets is thirty.’ He shrugged. ‘One man in four.’

The captain got his shirt over his head.

‘I’m not saying we should quit,’ Tom said. ‘But it may be time to see if we can make a deal.’

‘You, too, Tom?’ The captain got into his braes. They felt clean and crisp. He felt clean and crisp too. And very tired.

‘We’re losing ’em faster every day,’ Tom said. ‘Listen. I’m your man. You’re a fine captain, and even Jehannes is coming around to that.’ He shrugged. ‘But this ain’t what we do, lad. One monster; sure. An army of of them?’ He frowned.

The captain sat on his cot and reached for his new hose. They were rich black wool – a trifle coarse and itchy, but heavy, warm, and stretchy. He took one and pulled it carefully up his right leg.

‘We’re not losing,’ he said.

‘As to that . . .’ Tom said.

‘We’re going to hold here until the king comes.’ He grabbed the second leg.

‘What if he’s not coming?’ Tom leaned forward. ‘What if your messengers didn’t get through?’

‘What if pigs fly?’ the captain said. ‘I know the owners of this fortress were notified. I saw it, Tom. The Knights of Saint Thomas will not let this convent – the base of their wealth, the sacred trust of the old king – they will not let it fall. Nor will the king.’

Tom shrugged. ‘We could all die here.’

The captain started rooting through his clothes for a clean doublet, or at least one without a noticeable smell.

The one he found was made of fustian and two layers of heavy linen, rumpled but completely clean. He began to lace his hose to it.

‘We may all die here,’ the captain admitted. ‘But damn it, Tom, this is worth doing. This isn’t some petty border squabble in Galle. This is the North Land of Alba. You’re from the Hills. I’m from the Adnacrags.’ He raised his arms. ‘These people need us.’

Tom nodded, obviously unmoved by the needs of the peoples of the north. ‘You really think the king will come, eh?’

‘One day’s time. Perhaps two,’ the captain said.

Tom chewed his moustache. ‘Can I tell the lads that? It will help their morale . . . only once I tell them, that’s all the time you get. M’lord.’

‘Is this an ultimatum, Ser Thomas?’ the captain stood up straight, as if that would make it better. ‘Are you telling me that in two days, my troops will demand that I look for another solution?’

Bad Tom sneered. ‘Like enough there’s some as would. And more every day after that. Yes.’ He stood. Six feet and six inches of muscle. ‘Don’t you go and mistake me, Captain. I like a fight. I don’t really care who brings it. I could fight here forever.’ He shrugged. ‘But there’s some as can’t.’

‘And they might want to quit,’ the captain said, with a feeling of relief.

‘They might,’ Tom said. He grinned. ‘I swear, there’s something in the air, like a poison today. Lads are touchy. Every comment has an edge.’

The Red Knight took his scarlet cote off the stool and began to lace it. ‘I’ve felt it.’

Tom shook his head. ‘I hate your magery. Takes all the sport out of a fight.’ He shrugged his great shoulders. ‘I don’t so much mind dying, so long as I go down my way. I like a good fight. An’ if it’s to be my last, well, all I ask is it be good.’ He nodded. ‘Good enough for a song.’

The captain nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

‘I’ll tell the lads,’ Tom said.

As soon as he passed the door, Michael and Toby came back. His scarlet jupon was brushed, and he saw that the embroidered lacs d’or on the front were repaired.

Michael helped him into it. They each laced a wrist while he stood, thinking.

He thought more while he pulled on his long boots. Toby did his garters and Michael held his cote.

Toby brushed his hair and got the water out of his beard. Michael brought out his riding sword.

‘War sword,’ said the captain. ‘Just in case.’

Michael shortened the belt and buckled it at his waist, and then stood back while the captain drew it three times, testing the hang of the belt. Toby buckled his spurs on. Michael held the heavy gold belt with a questioning air.

The Red Knight smiled. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

Michael buckled it around his waist, handed him his hat, gloves, and baton. ‘You’ll be early,’ he said, ‘but not by much.’

The captain walked down the steps to the courtyard. Men and women looked at him – clean, and, although he couldn’t see it, glowing.

He walked across the yard, nodding to all. He stopped to compliment young Daniel on his swordplay; to share a jibe with Ben Carter, and to tell the younger Lanthorn girl that he was sorry for her loss, as both of her parents had died in the night. She rose to give him a curtsy, and he smiled when he saw her eyes slide off him to Michael, who was following him.

He heard the tale of No Head’s near death experience told by a circle of archers who slapped their booted thighs in merriment, and he listened to a complaint that someone was stealing grain from Ser Adrian, who also handed him a piece of parchment rolled very tight.

‘As you asked,’ the clerk said. ‘I’ve spoken to a dozen sisters and some of the farmers.’ He shrugged. ‘If you want my opinion, Captain-’ He let the words trail off.

The captain shook his head. ‘I don’t,’ he said. He smiled to take the sting out. Tucked the scroll into his cote sleeve and bowed. ‘I have an appointment with a lady,’ he said.

Ser Adrian returned his bow. ‘Count your fingers after you eat,’ he said softly.

There was a long table, set for thirteen. In the centre was the Abbess’s throne, and he sat on her right hand. The table was empty as he was the first to arrive. He went and exchanged glares with Parcival, on his perch and was suffered, with incredible grumpiness, to stroke the bird’s head.

A sister came in, saw him, and gave an undignified squeak. He turned, bowed, and smiled. ‘Your pardon, sister. A glass of wine, if I might?’

She departed.

He walked over to the Lives of the Saints. Now that he knew its secret, he was far more interested and only lack of time had kept him from it. It was so obvious now – a Hermetical Grimmoire. He turned the pages, deciphering them roughly. Know this one. Know this one. Hmm. Never even heard of this one.

It was, quite literally, an awe-inspiring tome. Which was sitting in the open, under a window, in a fortress.

He scratched under his beard.

Say that every woman here is like Amicia, he thought. And the Order sends them here. To be safe? And to keep them out of common knowledge. Why else-

She was standing at his side. He could smell her – her warmth. And he could feel the golden power on her skin.

‘You,’ she said.

He turned. He wanted to take her in his arms. It was like hunger.

‘You have come to God!’ she said.

He felt a flare of anger. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing like.’

‘I can feel it!’ she said. ‘Why would you deny it? You have felt the power of the sun!’

‘I tell you again, Amicia,’ he insisted. ‘I don’t deny God. I merely defy Him.’

‘Must we argue?’ she asked. She looked at his face. ‘Did I heal you?’

‘You did,’ he said, far more rudely than he meant.

‘You were bleeding out,’ she said, finally moved to anger. ‘You scared me. I didn’t have time to think about it.’

Oh. He raised a hand. ‘I thank you, mistress. Why must we always spar? Of course. Is it the cut on my face you worry about? I scarcely feel it.’

She licked her thumb, like a mother removing dirt from her child. ‘Don’t flinch,’ she said, and wiped her thumb down the wound. There was a flare of intense pain, and then-

‘You should pray when you cast, Amicia,’ said the Abbess from the doorway.

The captain took a step back from the novice. They had been very close indeed.

‘We are none of us without sin, without need of guidance. A prayer concentrates the mind and spirit. And sometimes His hand is on our shoulders, and His breath stirs our hearts.’ The Abbess advanced on them.

‘Although, in the main, God seems to help those who help themselves,’ said the Red Knight.

‘So easy to mock, Captain. I gather you have tasted the sun. And yet you feel nothing?’ The Abbess tapped the floor with her staff, and two novices helped her onto her throne.

‘It is, after all, just power,’ Harmodius said from the doorway.

The Abbess nodded at the Magus in greeting. ‘There are more things on heaven and earth, Magus.’

‘So easy to mock,’ Harmodius said. ‘And yet – as a seeker after sophia, I confess that when I look inside you, lady, I see something greater than myself. In you and in the Queen.’ He nodded. ‘Perhaps, in this novice too.’ He shrugged. ‘And in Thorn.’

‘Name him not!’ said the Abbess, striking the floor.

Ser Jehannes came in. With him came Ser Thomas, and the Bailli, Johne, and Mag the seamstress, of all people.

Sister Miram sat quietly and with immense dignity, next to Ser Thomas. He grinned at her. Father Henry sat the far right of the table.

Ser Milus arrived late, with Master Random and Gelfred from the Bridge Castle.

‘You took a risk,’ the captain said, looking at the Abbess.

She met his gaze mildly enough. ‘They came through your trench, Captain, and through the tunnels. This hill has many rooms and many doors.’

‘Like your father’s house?’ asked the captain.

The Abbess’s look suggested that he wasn’t as witty as he wanted to be.

‘And many secrets,’ Harmodius said. ‘We are thirteen.’

‘The number of Hermeticism,’ said the Abbess.

‘Jesus and his disciples,’ Harmodius added.

The captain gave a lopsided smile. ‘Which of us, I wonder, is Judas?’

The men at the table gave a nervous laugh. None of the women laughed at all.

The Abbess looked up and down the table, and they fell silent. ‘We are here for a council of war,’ she said. ‘Captain?’

He rose and stretched a little, still feeling strong. A curious feeling, for him. ‘I didn’t summon a council of war,’ he said. ‘So what do you wish of me?’

‘A report,’ she snapped. ‘How are we doing?’

He was being told to mind his manners. Amicia was glaring at him, and Jehannes, too. He thought of Jacques’ admonition to be on his best behaviour. Jacques seldom said such things by chance.

‘We’re not losing.’ He shrugged. ‘In this case, that constitutes winning.’

Jehannes looked away and looked back.

‘Your own men disagree with you, Captain,’ the Abbess said.

‘That’s an internal matter,’ the captain said.

‘No, Captain. It is not.’ The Abbess tapped the floor with her staff.

The captain took a deep breath, looking around to pick up social cues from the audience as he had been taught.

Amicia was very tense. The Abbess gave nothing away, nor did Harmodius, although their blankness contrasted – his a studied indifference, hers an apparently angry attentiveness. Father Henry was nervous and upset. Mag was willing him to do well. To deliver good news. Johne the Bailli was too tired to listen well.

Tom was trying to look down Amicia’s dress; Jehannes was on the edge of his seat; Master Random was sitting back with his arms crossed, but his whole attention was on the captain.

Ser Milus was trying not to go to sleep.

The captain nodded.

‘Very well, lady. Here it is.’ He took a steadying breath. ‘This fortress is ancient, and contains a powerful Hermetic source that is of equal value to magisters of all species. This fortress and the people in it are an affront to the Wild. Events – a slow progression of events that recently reached a crescendo, and include the advent of this company – forced the hand of certain powers of the Wild. And now, the Wild has come to take the fortress.’ He paused.

‘Take it back,’ he said, slowly, for dramatic effect.

Even the Abbess was startled.

‘It was theirs,’ the captain said, in a quiet, reasonable voice. ‘They built the well. They carved the tunnels.’ He looked around. ‘We took it in a night of fire and sorcery,’ he picked up his wine cup, ‘two hundred years ago, I’ll guess. And now the Wild is back, because the lines are shifting and things fall apart, and now we’re weaker than we were.’

‘Alba?’ asked Jehannes.

‘Humanity,’ the captain said. ‘That’s all just background. But it is important, because I have puzzled again and again over why the enemy is taking casualties and engaging us here. It is costing them. Jehannes, how many of the enemy have we killed?’

Jehannes shook his head. ‘Many,’ he said.

‘So many that I can only wish I’d signed the Abbess to a per-creature contract,’ the captain said. ‘In fact, I was suckered into this contract. My youth was taken advantage of.’ He smiled. ‘But never mind that. The enemy has lost several dozen irreplaceable minor powers, as well as hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of the small inhabitants of the High Wilderness. We have lost twenty-seven local people, seven sisters, three novices, and thirty of my soldiers. We have lost all the farms, and all of the animals not penned within the fortress. We have lost the Lower Town.’ He spread his hands and leaned onto the table. ‘But we have not lost the fortress. Nor the bridge. Most important of all, we have not lost.’

‘Lost what?’ asked the Abbess.

The captain shrugged. ‘It’s spiritual. A matter of faith, if you like. Our enemy depends on success as much as on displays of power to hold his place. It is the way of the Wild. Red in tooth and claw. Wolf eat wolf. Every tiny defeat we hand him, every bee sting, causes his allies to wonder – is he as strong as he seems?’

The Abbess nodded. ‘Can we win?’ she asked.

He nodded decisively. ‘We can.’

‘How?’ she asked.

The captain crossed his arms and leaned against the mantelpiece. ‘By hurting him so badly that his allies think he is weak.’

Harmodius shook his head. ‘None of us can take him, lad.’

‘He’s not that bright,’ the captain said. ‘I think that all of us, working together, can take him.’

Harmodius rose. ‘You’re out of your depth,’ he said. ‘He’s more powerful than you can imagine. And even if you hurt him-’ He paused, obviously a man on the verge of saying too much.

The captain sipped wine. ‘I’ve seen him retreat twice now.’

Harmodius spread his arms. ‘I admit he’s cautious.’

‘If his people see him run from us, surely that’s enough.’ The captain looked at the Magus. ‘Isn’t it?’

The Abbess slammed her stick on the floor. ‘Captain. Magus. Surely you don’t believe that we have to raise the siege ourselves?’ She looked at the captain. ‘Don’t you believe that the Prior is coming? The king?’

Harmodius didn’t turn to face her. ‘The king-’ he said. He shrugged.

The captain smiled at her. ‘Lady, I believe the king is a day or two away. But I believe that the essence of a good defence – whether my opponent is a tribe of barbarians, a feudal lord, or a legendary mage, is a good offence planned to keep my opponent off balance. Let me tell you of the next two days.’ He grimaced – for the first time, the others saw the fatigue under his banter. ‘Let me guess at the next two days,’ he said.

‘Tonight, the enemy will cross the fields in force, and endeavour to cut us off from Bridge Castle in two ways. He’ll try to occupy the trench we built, and he’ll seek to destroy our engines.’ He looked at Harmodius. ‘He’ll try it directly. With powerful workings overloading the Hermetical defences of the walls.’

Harmodius nodded emphatically.’

‘His purpose is so that he can storm Bridge Castle. He is only interested in taking it now because the king is on the south bank of the Cohocton. As long as we hold the Bridge, we have the ability to end the siege in an afternoon.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Jehannes said.

‘Sometimes,’ the captain said, looking at the Magus, ‘You know a thing to be true, whatever the evidence. Our enemy is not that good at war. In fact, he’s learning to lay a siege from us, as we hurt him. He learned, perhaps three days ago, that the king was coming along the south bank. I’m guessing based on the tempo of his attacks.’ He shrugged.

Jehannes shook his head. ‘If you are wrong-’

The captain slammed his fist on the table. ‘When, exactly, have I been wrong? I’ve done a pretty damn good job here, and we’ve gone from victory to victory – even when we stumble. We’re still standing, at odds of twenty to one.’ He looked around. ‘Our magazines are full. Our casualties are acceptable. At this rate, if the worst happens,’ he realised he was growing too angry to sway them but his words were tumbling out, ‘then we’ll lose the siege engines tonight, but it will be four more days before he storms the Bridge Castle, it will cost him a thousand creatures to take it. And he still won’t have a chance to take this fortress!’

Ser Milus snorted. ‘I think you just condemned my garrison to death.’

The captain shrugged. ‘I’ll go and command the Bridge Castle and you can command here. This is war. We are not losing. Why are any of you considering surrender?’

Jehannes swallowed heavily.

‘Speak!’ the captain insisted. ‘Why are you all so silent?’

Amicia said quietly, ‘Your eyes are glowing red.’

The Abbess snorted. ‘Every young man would have glowing red eyes, if they only could.’ She got up. ‘But I agree with you, wholeheartedly, Captain. We will have no more talk of truce, surrender, or accommodation. The Wild will kill us if they penetrate these walls.’ She raised her staff. She appeared to grow. Not taller, nor more beautiful, nor younger, and yet, in that moment, she was greater than any of them.

‘Do not be weak, my friends.’ She smiled, and her smile had the warmth of the sun. ‘We are strongest, we mere humans, when we unite. Together we can resist. As individuals – we are no stronger than our weakest.’

She diminished, and sat.

Harmodius sat silent.

Ser Milus leaned forward. ‘Captain,’ he said.

‘Aye, messire?’

‘I agree. He’ll go for us next. Bolster the garrison. Give me fresh troops and more men-at-arms and I’ll hold it a week.’ He nodded.

The captain subsided into his seat. ‘Excellent thought. Take them tonight, when you go back – as soon as ever you can.’

Harmodius shook his head. ‘I still think he is too intelligent for all of us, even if we could all cast in concert.’ He rolled his shoulders like a North Country wrestler preparing for a match. ‘But I’m game. And I admit that the captain has a point. We don’t have to defeat him, only make it look as if he can be beaten.’

The Abbess smiled. ‘Well said. This is the kind of company I love. Let dinner be served.’

The dinner was not rich. There was no roast swan, no peacocks with gilded beaks, no larks tongues. Duels between torsion engines had killed a dozen sheep on the ridge so every mess in the fortress was eating mutton, and they were no exception.

The venison sausage was superb, though, and the wines were as ancient as human possession of the fortress.

The conversation was slow to start but by the second cup of wine, Mag was amused by Tom’s ribald story, and Johne the Bailli roared with laughter at the tale of the student and the hornsmith’s wife. He told one of his own, about a bad priest who disgraced his vows, and Father Henry glared.

The Abbess passed wine. She had the captain on her right, and Amicia on her left. When the talk had become general, she turned to the captain. ‘You have my permission to engage her in conversation,’ she said.

The captain tried to smile. ‘I’m not sure my eyes aren’t still glowing,’ he said.

‘Anger and lust are different sins,’ said the Abbess. ‘Amicia is going to take holy orders, Captain. You should congratulate her.’

‘She has my fullest congratulations. She will make a remarkable nun, and in time, I expect she will make a remarkable Abbess.’ He sipped his wine.

‘She is not for you,’ the Abbess said, but without rancour.

‘So you keep telling me, while dangling her like a tourney prize.’ He took a bite of meat. His tension was only visible in the force he used to cut the mutton.

‘I’m right here,’ Amicia said.

He smiled at her.

‘Once again, you bite her with your eyes.’ The Abbess shook her head.

After dinner, the Abbess held the magi back. Mag was surprised to be invited. ‘My working is very slow,’ she said. ‘I never even know-’ She shrugged.

Amicia put a hand on the seamstress’s shoulder. ‘I can feel every stitch you sew,’ she said.

Harmodius snorted. ‘You share a mixing of gold and green,’ he said. ‘I should have come to this place years ago to have all my notions of Hermetics shattered.

The Abbess said, ‘It is my will that we should stand in a circle, and link.’

Harmodius winced. ‘I’m granting my secrets to every woman in the room!’

‘You have little time for mere women,’ Amicia snapped at him. ‘We’re too patient in our castings, are we not?’

‘Women are all very well for healing,’ Harmodius said.

Amicia raised her head, and a sphere of golden green sat in it. She projected it to a point roughly halfway between herself and Harmodius.

‘Try me,’ she said.

The captain was surprised by her vehemence.

The Abbess, on the other hand, merely smiled a cat’s smile.

Harmodius shrugged and slapped at the sphere with a fist of phantasm.

It moved the width of a finger.

Then it shot across the room at Harmodius. He caught it, struggled with it, and it began to move – slowly, but without pause – back.

‘Of course he is stronger than you,’ the Abbess said, and she extinguished the globe with a snap of her fingers. ‘But not as much stronger as he would have expected. Eh, Magus?’

Harmodius took a deep breath. ‘You are most powerful, sister.’

The captain grinned. ‘Let us link. I reserve some memories. But my tutor taught me to hold some walls while opening other doors.’

‘I give a great deal for very little gain,’ Harmodius said. ‘Bah – and yet, the Abbess is right. I am not an island.’ He extended his hand to Amicia.

She took it graciously. They took hands around the circle, like children in a game.

‘Captain, I intend to pray. Try not to vanish in a puff of smoke,’ said the Abbess.

She began the Lord’s Prayer.

Prudentia was standing at the door. ‘If you were having guests, you might have asked me to sweep up,’ she said.

The Abbess appeared in his hall. She was young, voluptuous in a tall, thin way, with an earthy power to her face that belied her spirit.

Amicia was elfin and green.

Harmodius was young and strong, hale – a knight on errantry, with a halo of gold.

Miram was shining like a statue of polished bronze.

Mag looked just like herself.

He was at once in his place of power, and simultaneously in Amicia’s, standing on her beautiful bridge. He sat in a comfortable leather armchair in a great tiled room – that had to be Harmodius – surrounded by chess boards and wheels with wheels. He stood in a chapel surrounded by statues of knights and their ladies – or, as he realised, ladies and their knights, each with a golden chain attaching them. A chapel of courtly love – surely the lady’s place of power. He knelt before a plain stone altar with a cup of red blood on it. Miram’s place of power.

He stood in the Abbess’s hall, and there was a needle in his hand. Mag’s place of power was external – in that moment, he understood how very powerful her making was, because where the rest of them worked the aether, she worked the solid.

There was a glow or health, of vitality, of goodness, of power. And no time at all.

He knew many things, and many things of his were learned.

They made their plan.

And then, like the end of a kiss, he was himself.

He sagged away from them, tired from the length of the link. Other perspectives were haunting, exhausting – he could see, as quickly as Harmodius had, how a sisterhood of dedicated nuns was the ideal basis for a choir of Hermeticists, because they learned and practised discipline – together.

Harmodius was stroking his beard. ‘You are taking all the risk, lad,’ he said aloud.

The captain gave them all a lop-sided grin. ‘A single, perfect sacrifice,’ he said.

The Abbess rolled her eyes. ‘Sometimes your blasphemy is just banal,’ she said. ‘Try not to die. We’re all quite fond of you.’

Amicia met his eye and smiled at him, and he returned her smile.

‘I have many things to prepare,’ he said. He bowed to the company, and went out into the night.

First he walked to the northern tower and climbed the steps to the second floor. He climbed softly, his black leather boots and smooth leather soles giving nothing away. The card players were attuned to the sound of sabatons.

Bad Tom was playing piquet.

‘A word,’ he said.

Tom raised his head, pursed his lips, and put his cards face down with a start. ‘I can leave cards like this any time,’ he said, a little too carefully.

Bent was hiding something under his hand.

Given the circumstances, the captain didn’t think he needed to care.

Bent shrugged. ‘They’ll be the same when you come back,’ he said.

‘Better be,’ Tom said. He followed the captain out onto the garrison room’s balcony over the courtyard. ‘My lord?’ the big man asked, formally.

‘I’m going for a ride tonight, Tom,’ the captain said quietly. ‘Out into the enemy. I’d like you to come.’

‘I’m your man,’ Tom said cheerfully.

‘We’re going to try and take him,’ the captain said. He made a sign with his fingers, like antlers or branches growing from his head.

Tom eyes widened – just a hair. Then he laughed. ‘That’s a mad jest,’ he said. ‘Oh, the pleasure of it!’

‘Forget the watch bill. I want the best. Pick me twenty men-at-arms,’ the captain said.

‘’Bout all we have on their feet,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll get it done.’

‘Full dark. You will have to cover me when I- Tom, you know that I will have to use power?’ the captain said.

Tom grinned. ‘I guess.’ He turned his head away. ‘Everyone says you used power against the daemons.’

The captain nodded. ‘True. If I have to cast, I need you to cover me. I can’t fight and cast.’ Then he grinned. ‘Well. I can’t fight and cast well.’

Tom nodded. ‘I’m your man. But – in the dark? After yon horned loon? We need to bring a minstrel.’

The captain was lost by the change of subject. ‘A minstrel?’

‘Someone to record it all, Captain.’ Bad Tom looked off into the dark. ‘Because we’re going to make a song.’

The captain didn’t quite know what to make of that. So he slapped the big man on the shoulder.

Tom caught his arm. ‘You can’t be thinkin’ we can take him with steel.’

The captain lowered his voice. ‘No, Tom. I don’t think so, but I’m going to try, anyway.’

Tom nodded. ‘So we’re the bait, then?’

The captain looked grim. ‘You are a little too quick, my friend.’

Tom nodded. ‘When there’s death in the air, I can see through a brick wall.’

Near Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn had everything he needed to proceed. He’d built his two most powerful phantasms in advance, storing them carefully in living things he’d designed just to store such things – pale limpets that clung like naked slugs to his mossy stone carapace.

He didn’t bother to curse the wyverns who had failed him. It had been, at best, a long shot.

But now it was down to him, and he didn’t want to do it.

He didn’t want to weaken himself by taking on the fortress directly.

He didn’t want to expose himself to direct assaults from his apprentice and the dark sun. However puny, they were not unskilled or incapable.

He didn’t want to fight with her. Although his reason told him that when he killed her, he would be much stronger for it. His link to her was a link to his past life. A weakness.

He didn’t want to do this at all. Because win or lose, he’d engaged forces that forced his hand. Made him grow in power. In visibility.

Damn them all, the useless daemons most of all. It was their fortress, and they were all busy watching him to see if they could bring him down, instead of helping.

And Thurkan had failed to take the dark sun.

Thorn was not without doubt. In fact, he was full of doubt, and again, for the hundredth time since the siege began, he considered taking his great staff and walking off into the Wild.

But without him the Wild might fail. And that would be catastrophic. At best it would be fatal for his long term plans.

He extended his hands, and power flowed smoothly. A cloud of faeries began to gather, so great was the power concentrated in a few yards of air.

He tried to imagine what it would be like when she was dead. He would miss her. She had once been the standard by which he measured himself. But that self was largely gone, and it was time he did without her.

And the apprentice. It is a weakness, to miss the company of men.

The Wild had to win. Men were like lice, undermining the health of the Wild.

It was time to act, and he could imagine all of his actions, a fugue of them extending back to his earliest conscious thoughts, culminating here.

He surfaced from the tide of his thoughts and looked around, unhampered by the darkness. He looked at Exrech. ‘Your people must storm the trench,’ he said. ‘And hold it. By holding it, we separate the fortress from the Bridge Castle.’

‘And then we dig,’ Exrech said.

Thorn bowed assent. To Thurkan he said, ‘The dark sun will come for me.’

‘We will lay in ambush for him,’ the daemon promised.

Thorn looked at the trolls – mighty creatures which he suspected had been created in the distant past by magi. As bodyguards. He had now acquired two dozen of them, as was the way when one became a power. He was like a beacon, and so they came. He no longer saw them as horrible. Instead, he saw them as beautiful, the way a craftsman views his perfect chisel, the one that fits his hand as if made for it.

Thorn tapped his great staff on the ground. ‘Go,’ he told his captains.

Lissen Carak – The Abbess

The Abbess felt the spells he cast. She had lain down to rest, but it was happening sooner that she expected and she sat up, her mind reaching for the threads of power that bound her to her stone.

She felt him, in the darkness out there, planning the ruin of her home, and she narrowed her eyes and reached down the link they would always share.

Traitor! she said. She flung the word with a woman’s contempt.

Sophia! He cried into the Aether.

She hurled her defiance at him and she felt her venom strike home, and in the moment of his startlement she read him, and saw that he had a trap prepared – that she had a traitor in her midst, as she had long suspected.

Then she was running, her bare feet slapping the stone floor, her unbound hair trailing behind her like the tail of a comet, running for the courtyard.

She felt him respond, and she had her defences up. She felt his come up – slowly, but when raised, as strong as a wall of iron. She couldn’t even sense him through them, merely that he must be behind that veil. She prayed as she ran – prayed for his ruin.

The young captain was standing by his destrier in the courtyard, with twenty knights behind him.

‘You cannot go out there!’ she screamed. ‘He is waiting for you! It is a trap!’

The captain gave her an odd smile, and waved to Michael, who had his bascinet. ‘He’s coming already, is he?’ he said to her. He turned to his knights. ‘Mount!’ he shouted.

She grabbed his bridle, and his great war horse – quick as lightning – bit at her hand, and only his instant reaction saved her. The Red Knight slapped his hand at Grendel’s neck, and the war horse took one step, and tossed his head, as if to say ‘could have, if I really wanted.’

‘He is coming now-’

His squire placed his helmet on his head, and pulled the chain of his aventail down over his cote armour. The captain flexed his shoulders and arms – left, right. All through the courtyard, squires held up gauntlets – slid them onto their master’s hands, and then reached for the great lances, as tall as small trees and as thick, tipped in long heads of steel.

His face appeared from under the brow of the helmet. He was smiling. ‘Yes,’ the captain said. ‘I feel him. Through you.’ He laughed. ‘What did you do?’

‘I told him what I think of him,’ she said. ‘A woman scorned – for power?’ She threw back her head and laughed. It sounded mad.

‘I imagine,’ the captain said, even as Michael moved the helmet back and forth, seating it securely on his brow, ‘that must have been a shrewd blow.’

She shook her head. ‘His amour propre will shed it soon enough. But I saw into him. He has a traitor in the fortress.’

‘I know,’ said the captain. ‘I told you,’ he gave a nasty smile, ‘and that traitor has been giving our foe a somewhat incorrect version of events for some time now. It is now or never. He can lay all the traps he likes. Sometimes, it all comes down to speed, and audacity. He is cautious. He is sure.’ The captain seemed to glow with the power he’d prepared. ‘He wants this fight,’ the captain said. ‘So do I. One of us is wrong. We can only try our best, so guard yourself, my lady.’

The main gate slid open.

‘Follow me!’ ordered the captain.

She stood out of the way, and watched him ride out. The hooves rattled with finality, and the knights began to move. Knights reached out to her – Francis Atcourt accepted her blessing and she reached up to pray for Robert Lyliard, who accepted her benison with a salute. Tomas Durrem bowed to her from the saddle and swept by.

The Red Knight paused in the gateway.

Above her, on the balcony of the hospital, she saw Amicia. She saw him touch the favour on his shoulder, saw her bow her head.

Grendel reared a little, and plunged through the gate, and he was gone.

She turned to Bent, who was standing by her. ‘Everyone is to go to the basements and lie down,’ she said. ‘Everyone!’

She ran into the courtyard, shouting orders.

The alarm bell was ringing, and the archers were pouring out of their barracks, to their battle positions. All of them were in armour. They knew the score.

The Abbess stopped in the courtyard, and looked around once – the last doors were slamming closed. She nodded in satisfaction, wished she had time to hunt for Father Henry, and ran for the chapel.

Lissen Carak – Father Henry

Father Henry saw the Abbess talk to her boy – his revulsion showed raw on his face. They were all creatures of Satan – the Abbess, the mercenary, the sisters. He was surrounded with witches and man-witches. It was like hell.

He was done with inaction. He had the power to destroy them. He had all the tools a normal man had to use against evil.

He knew he would not survive it – but all his life, he had endured pain and mistreatment for what he knew was right. His only regret was that he could not act directly against the mercenary. That man was like Satan incarnate.

Father Henry went into the chapel, where a dozen sisters were already gathered – not real sisters, he knew it now, but a coven of witches. All gathered to sing their damnable mockery of praise to God.

He made himself smile at Miram. She was too busy to pay him any heed. Just for a moment, he considered striking with his knife – right here. Taking Miram and a dozen witches-

He hid his eyes lest they read his mind, and slipped past them to the altar. He reached behind it. Seized the long staff of heavy wood, and his hand unerringly found the one arrow he needed.

Black as her heart.

It was a most remarkable arrow. Behind the head and the first three fingers of the shaft, all white bone, the rest of the arrow was of Witch Bane.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

In a plan dependent on preparation and planning and Hermetic mastery, it was ironic that the first part required twenty brave men and one middle-aged woman to risk their lives to sweep the road clean. And he didn’t even know if they’d succeeded.

But Thorn couldn’t possibly expect him to come on horseback, through the Lower Town. In fact, the captain had seen to it that Thorn would expect him on the covered footpath instead.

Out in the darkness, where the Lower Town had been, a line of lights sprang up. It was a small casting – hardly a ripple on a sea full of heavy waves.

But when the blue lights sprang up, the captain gave Grendel his head. They marked a sure way through the rubble of the Lower Town.

He found that the lights heartened him. He wouldn’t fail because of a detail. Now, it was a fight.

He grinned inside the raven-face of his visor, and reached for

Prudentia. He was in the room, and he didn’t want anything to do with the door. He merely touched his tutor, and she smiled.

‘Find me Harmodius,’ he said. ‘Open the link.’

She frowned. ‘But I have things I must say to you-’

He grinned. ‘Later,’ he said.

He drew power – just a trickle – stored from the sun and placed it in a ring given him by the Abbess. It had come with power; now he used it in the Aether to ignite his darksight.

Back in reality, and his sense of the the night altered. The outline of the trap was clear now, and he smiled like a wolf when the prey begins to tire.

Thorn had sent creatures into the ditch beyond the remnants of the Lower Town wall – the ditch his own men had dug to communicate with the Bridge Castle. It was now full of boglins, which suited him just fine.

Off to the south, at the entry to the defended path which the archers had taken and retaken every day of the siege, waited a company of daemons. At least forty of them, enough to exterminate his company of knights.

He grinned. I didn’t go that way, he thought, smugly. The creatures of the Wild were not as clever as men at hiding themselves in the Aether. It occurred to him as he cantered down the steep road that they didn’t think of hiding in what – to them – was their natural element. Or something.

And out on the plain, moving steadily forward towards the town, was Thorn.

The great figure towered over his allies. Even at this distance he stood head and shoulders above the trolls who surrounded him, at least twenty feet tall with antlers like a great hart’s spreading away on either side of his stone-slab face. He towered, but he was not particularly fearsome from five hundred paces. He was a beacon in darksight, though, and his power wound away in a hundred threads – to the skies, to the creatures around him, to the woods behind him-

Two-dozen trolls guarded the horned figure, reflecting his power.

Even as the Red Knight watched the horned man he raised his staff.

Thorn raised his staff. He could see the dark sun. For a moment he was tempted to lay his great working on the mysterious, twisted creature, but a plan is, after all, a plan. He reached into the slug on his left shoulder, and green fire washed up his right arm, pulsed once on his staff – and it was like joy; like the ultimate release of love.

The light was like that of the deep woods on a perfect summer day. It was not a pinpoint, a line, a bolt, a ball. It was everywhere.

The Abbess was in her choir, and she felt the assault on the wards – felt them stumble. She raised her voice with those of her sisters. She could hear them, feel them in the Aethereal, feel Harmodius and Amicia.

The light was everywhere. It’s green radiance was seductive, the siren call of summer to the young, to run away from work and play, instead. The Abbess remembered summer – summer days by the river, her body wet from a swim, her horse cropping grass . . .

Far, far away, the sigils that defended her house were-

Harmodius read the working, and its immense subtlety, and just as he was about to throw his counter, he saw the trap.

Thorn wanted him to swat the working aside.

The summer light was an insidious working that struck directly at the sigils from all sides and drained their strength into the Wild itself. The craftsmanship was magnificent.

The power involved was majestic.

And any counter – any reinforcement – would drain away with the sigils themselves, into the hungry maw that awaited.

If I survive this, I’m going to learn that working, Harmodius thought.

He took his narrow sword of bright blue power, and severed the Abbess’s connection to the fortress sigils.

The fortress sigils fell. Thorn gave a grunt of satisfaction, tempered by knowing that Harmodius had done the only thing he could have to avoid being sucked down with them.

The faerie folk danced around Thorn’s head, in the sudden accession of power – this ancient power, the very life-blood of wards that had stood for centuries. It was bleeding into the ground at his feet, and they bathed in it, their winged forms like tiny angels flitting in a rainbow of light.

The final collapse was like the opening of a window. There – and then nothing.

He didn’t pause. His staff swept up, and he released his second wor king – a simple hammer.

One Leg and Three Legs and the trebuchet and the top third of the great North Tower vanished in a flash of light. The explosion that followed destroyed every window in the fortress – the stained glass of the saints became a hurricane of coloured shrapnel.

Father Henry, head down behind the altar below the great window, had his back flayed bloody. His robes were all but ripped from his body although his head and arms were covered. He screamed.

The captain reached into his palace and drew power through the ring.

He had the charred cloth in his gauntlet, where he couldn’t lose it in the dark, and he funnelled the power through it.

Four feet beneath the duck boards at the base of his trench, beneath the boglin horde, ten fuses sprang alight.

Above him, in the fortress, a single massive pulse of power ripped through the night air – the concatenation almost cost him his seat on Grendel.

But the fuses were lit, and now-

Now it was a hundred long heartbeats to Armageddon.

He had reached the base of the slope and now he followed the path between the first of the blue lights across the rubble to the town’s back gate. Grendel couldn’t move quickly here, and this was the weakest part of the whole plan. If he could see Thorn then Thorn would see him. Indeed, the whole point was that Thorn should see him. And yet even now, the daemons were starting to shift. They must already know that their trap was in the wrong place. And the huge shapes around the enemy were new.

Thorn had already struck the trebuchet, and destroyed it.

We’re too late.

He was halfway across the town, Grendel was moving at a trot, and one bad step on rubble and he would be down. The risk was insane.

Fifty heartbeats.

He turned in the saddle and looked back. Tom was right behind him, and the sound of the column of knights filled the darkness robbed of other sound by the force of the explosion.

He rose in his stirrups as Grendel stepped over a downed roof beam – the blue lights seemed to ripple – and then he was over the outer wall and in the field. Bad Tom passed the wall right behind him, and they reined in together.

He turned Grendel and pointed his muzzle at the horned figure, now at eye level, just two hundred paces away across the plain. Behind him, his sortie shook out into a wedge as they got free of the tumble of rocks and roof tiles that had been a town. In the dark.

The captain thought, Damn, we’re good.

He raised his right arm, lance and all. He used a little power to light the tip of his lancehead – not just light it, but make it burn like a star.

He swept his lance down.

Grendel gave a little start, and went from a stand to a gallop in three strides, as if they were in a tiltyard.

Thirty heartbeats.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn watched the dark sun come at him, and he waited with a curious mixture of elation and loathing for the misshapen thing. It was like a man, but it was not like a man. He was some odd fusion of man and Wild. He might have pitied it, but he hated it, as well – because its fusion was different from his.

It was coming, just as his secret friend said it would. But not by the path it had said it would take. That meant the secret friend was compromised.

And that meant . . .

The dark sun held a power that shouted itself to every Wild creature on the battlefield.

This was his first clear look at the thing, and Thorn felt a tingle – not of fear, precisely. But in that creature was something that bellowed a challenge to him. Like a vast predator roaring defiance across the swamps of the Wild. And every Wild creature felt that call. Some flinched from it. Some were attracted to it.

That was the Way of the Wild.

. . . and so the dark sun must be a creature of the Wild, and that meant-

It was too fast. Thorn’s discovery came very, very late. He had allowed himself to ponder the thing’s creation for long thuds of his great, slow heart, and in that time the man had crossed the ruins of the Lower Town like a dhag – so fast that even as his hidden ambush of daemons sprang from their concealment and raced to save him they were already too late to strike a blow. The wedge of knights was past them.

Something was slowing him!

Bitch he roared in his head. She was working her will on him-

He shook himself free of her enchantment, even as-

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

He put his spurs to Grendel – just a pressure of the pricks to the sides, so that the great horse knew not to stint. This was the great effort.

Thorn was standing facing the fortress, and his bodyguard of misshapen horrors were shoulder to shoulder holding massive bill hooks and spiked clubs, wearing armour of wood and leather. They glowed, not with the healthy summer green of Thorn’s workings but with a sickly putrescent colour.

The captain had hoped to save his lance for Thorn with a tiltyard trick, so he gave Grendel the sign to put its head down. He flicked his lance down, and the troll followed the lance tip, cutting up-

Grendel struck the troll as it parried the lance, so that the spike on his great horse’s head drove into the monster’s stone-armoured chest. It was six inches long, sharp as a needle on its tip and as broad as a man’s hand at the base, and the horse weighed more than the troll by several times. The horn broke the stone plate in two and punched through its hide, to shatter the bones of its chest. Grendel crushed the troll flat, and planted a great steel-shod hoof precisely on its hips, the horse’s charge virtually unimpeded by the collision.

With the practise of a hundred jousts, the captain let his lance come down again. Thorn was ten paces beyond his bodyguard, just turning to ward himself.

He leaned forward, adding the power of his body and hips to the weight of the horse. By luck, or a last second intuition, his lance struck home within a hand’s span of where the ballista bolt had struck Thorn hours before and he rocked his enemy back. Thorn tottered, reached out with his staff-

Fell backwards and crashed to earth.

The captain struggled after the impact – it felt much like slamming a lance into a castle, but he kept his seat and swept on, leaving his lance, and the next two men in the wedge – Bad Tom and Ser Tancred – each put their lances into the thing after him; or so he had to hope, because he was riding past, and the rest of the bodyguard were on him. The trolls were as tall as he was, and one blow from one of their weapons would crush his armour and kill him. But he rode as if inspired – he leaned, Grendel danced, and no blow fell fully on him.

Grendel put his spiked head into the next one. The unicorn’s horn of twisted steel bit deep again, and again the captain almost lost his seat in the shock – the great horse went from a gallop to a stand, screamed his anger and struck the thing with his hooves – one, two, each landing with greater force than ten belted knights could muster, yet precise as a boxer.

The Wild monster’s sickly green glow was extinguished between the first and second blow to its great stone head, and the horse reared in triumph.

The captain drew his great sword.

Another troll screamed from his left, rose to its full height, and was struck in the chest by a lance that knocked it flat.

Bad Tom roared, ‘Eat me, you son of a bitch!’ at his side and was gone into the green-tinged darkness. Tom was a legend for temper, for ill manners, for lechery and crime. But to see him on a fire-lit battlefield was to see war brought to earth in a single avatar, and as his knights swept past him, the captain watched as Tom’s lance, unshivered, swept through the trolls.

‘Lachlan for Aa!’ he roared.

When his lance broke in his third victim, he ripped his five-foot blade from its scabbard and the blade rose and fell, catching the fires of the plain on its burnished blade at the top of every cut so that it seemed to be a living line of fire – rose and fell with the smooth and ruthless precision of a farmer scything grain at the turn of autumn.

By himself, Bad Tom cut a hole through the company of monsters.

The captain nudged Grendel back into motion. On his sword side, a smooth stone head rose out of the darkness and he swung down with all his might, rising in the stirrups to get the most out of his cut – the sword rebounded from the stone, but the head cracked and dropped away, it’s roar changed to the caw of a giant crow as it fell.

And then he was through the enemy line. His sword was wet and green with acrid blood, and behind him, the trolls who survived the charge were already gathering to cut him off from the fortress. The crisp spring air was suddenly full of arrows, announced only by their whickering flight – almost unnoticed against the ringing of his ears – but then they began to strike him. And Grendel.

Whang!

Ting-whang WHANG.

There were irks behind the trolls, and they were loosing into the melee – unconcerned about their own, or perhaps Thorn was too fully armoured to fear an irk arrow.

More creatures charged at his knot of knights from either side, and he rode for the long trench he had ordered dug. A trench full of boglins.

Ready? he asked into the Aether, and looked back.

Bad Tom had already made his turn. At least a dozen knights were with him.

They all knew the score, and the plan. He’d lost count of the time. But it had to be close.

He rode right for the trench, wondering if – hoping that – he had put Thorn down. He had to hope. It had been a mighty blow.

The trench was only a few strides away. A handful of darts rose to greet him, but the boglins were as stunned as their master by the speed of it, and then Grendel rose, and for a moment, they flew.

He landed with a thunderclap of strained armour straps and saddlery, a clank and a rattle, his teeth rattled, his jaw hurt, and his helmet slammed into his forehead despite arming cap and padding, and he was blind for a critical moment-

– and Grendel shuddered and stumbled, and all around the two of them, his knights were jumping the trench and the boglins were turning – too slowly.

The last knight – Tom – cleared the trench. Landed, and passed Grendel, who was slowing under his master’s hand.

The boglins, fooled for a moment by the speed of their passage, came over the lip of the trench in a flood.

The captain just had time to think Now would be good.

The naphtha charge buried under the boards in the trench ignited. It didn’t explode. It went with a great whoosh as if God himself had willed it, and then there was only a wall of fire behind them.

The captain might have laughed in his triumph, but in that moment Grendel died under him. The horse had given his life to get his master over the trench with a dozen well-thrown javelins in him, and he crashed to the earth, and all the lights went out.

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

A third of the choir was dead.

Harmodius found the Abbess, and got a hand under her elbow, but she levered herself to her feet with dancer’s muscles and reached in the Aether -

He was wounded. The boy had hurt him.

Harmodius had Miram steady on her feet, and the chorus began again – shaky, trembling, but lifting once again. Amicia’s voice was clear above them all – for a long minute, she had carried the choir by herself.

The power was still there – the immense power of the well, wrapped in the working of the choir.

Harmodius spread his arms, and raised his staff, and began to cast.

Lissen Carak – Father Henry

Father Henry lay in a pool of his own blood, ears ringing.

The pain on his back and shoulders was incredible.

He shrieked.

But Christ had born pain. Pain was like the Enemy – it could be vanquished.

Father Henry rose to his knees.

By a miracle, his bowstring had not been cut by the glass that was all around him.

He nocked his arrow with shaking hands.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn felt the pain of his wounds, but not as much as he felt the mockery of the attack. The dark sun was taunting him – had ridden through his trap with deliberate mockery.

Hatred suffused him.

He rose to his feet. Tested his strength and grunted.

He was struck by a crossbow bolt, which didn’t even distract him. He spread his fingers, flame crackled and a dome of green power sprang over his head, another flashed into being on his left hand like a verdant buckler, and in his right hand he raised his staff.

He took a stride toward the trench, and his guards followed him.

Look, I am an epic hero, he thought with bitter irony. And I have to do everything myself.

He didn’t run. He took long strides to his boglins, surging out of the trench the men had cut like an obscene wound on the earth.

And then alchemical fire exploded in front of him. It wasn’t a manifestation of power, or he’d have sensed and quenched it. In fact, he tried. It took him wasted seconds to realise that his enemy had filled the ground under the trench with naphtha – they had poured poison into the very veins of earth.

Men must die.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

He never quite lost consciousness, although he hit the ground very hard. But he rose before the pain could fill him, and nothing was broken. His sword was lying under Grendel’s body, but he got a hand on the pommel and dragged it clear.

He looked around but the hoofbeats said that it had all worked better than he might have hoped. He hadn’t wanted Tom to stay and die. On the other hand, somehow he hadn’t ever thought he would lose Grendel.

He didn’t take up his sword because he expected to live, so much as because it seemed appropriate.

For the first time since the sortie began he had time to breathe. Beyond the confines of his faceplate it was a big, dark, violent night. Many of the boglins in the trench had made it out, and some had started to follow the knights before the naphtha charge went off, and of course he was an infernal beacon to creatures of the Wild. They were coming for him.

So was Thorn.

The captain couldn’t manage a smile inside his Raven’s beak. But he wasn’t shaking too badly, and he had control of his head.

His job now was to hold Thorn’s attention as long as ever he could.

Best do a proper job of it.

He reached out, and summoned the nearest creatures of the Wild to serve him, the way his witch of a mother had taught him to. He’d sworn never to do it. But this was his last stand. Now, for everything, the oaths of an angry boy were thrust aside . . .

Lissen Carak – Thorn

The dark sun’s challenge was contemptuous.

He was forcing the boglins to his will, on the other side of the trench.

Thorn shrieked with rage, as if he’d been struck. He threw caution to the wind, and leaped the trench of fire.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain was surrounded by boglins – a crush of them, and their acrid scent filled his helmet.

He had never been so close to the creatures, and despite his revulsion for them, he found it impossible not to notice things about them – how their soft shells seemed to be formed like armour, their human arms emerging from breastplates.

He waited for the coup de grace . . . But he was holding them, and all their thoughts were his.

This was what he had been made to do. Created. Honed. Polished for it.

And he began to work on them.

He was in the room of his palace, and Prudentia was off her pedestal, standing by the iron-bound door. She had her stone arms locked against it, and it trembled on its hinges despite her efforts.

‘He is coming for you,’ Prudentia said.

‘Open the door,’ he said, trying to master his terror.

‘He wants you to face him in the Aetherial! He will eat your power, you arrogant child!’

Prudentia said. ‘Can’t you hear him?’

The captain could hear his bellows of victory, all through the Aether. ‘I could use some advice here,’ he said.

‘Don’t stand against the powers of the world until you are much, much more powerful,’ Prudentia said in a matter of fact tone. She shrugged. ‘But when brute force will not suffice, consider artifice. Recall, dear boy, that he will not know the limits of your power. He calls you the dark sun.’

Good advice. But he couldn’t think of anything he could do with it. He reached for Harmodius and opened the door.

Thorn was there.

He had crossed the trench of fire, and now he stood, smouldering, the acrid smoke of his wounds rising in wisps, and he was backlit by the fire in the trench.

The captain coughed.

Thorn towered over him and even from a horse length away, the captain could see that the sudden shock of lances had hurt him. Something dark and watery oozed form a deep pit in his breast.

You thought yourself my peer, you little thing.

The captain was fighting the wave of nausea that came with the fear. Whatever Thorn was, his coming brought terror, revulsion, a deep, sick feeling of oppression and violation. The captain struggled with it. For a long, long moment, all he saw was his mother, promising him-

You dared to oppose me. Do you know who I am?

Deep in the grip of the horror, the captain writhed. His conscious, rational mind registered that only the most unstable beings asked such questions.

And he had a lifetime’s experience of pretending courage when all he wanted to do was roll in a ball and weep. It was like arguing with his mother.

He cast – not an attack, but a subtle reinforcement of his armour.

He raised his sword. ‘Well,’ he said. His attempt at a drawl actually sounded somewhat hysterical. ‘Well,’ he said again, and his voice was better. He used to goad his mother this way. ‘I understand you used to be the King’s Magus.’

Thorn leaned down and one giant, hot hand slapped the captain to the ground. He saw the blow coming, his wrists answered his will, his sword swept up, and the blade shattered as it touched the sorcerer’s skeletal hand. The power of Thorn’s blow hurt the captain right through the steel harness he wore. Even through the power supporting it.

I am infinitely greater than the mere man who was the King’s Magus.

The captain couldn’t muster a laugh, or even a cackle. But he got back to his feet, as he had when his brothers beat him.

Thorn raised his hand.

One finger fell away.

The captain felt a wild, foolish joy. He tossed the shards of his sword away and drew his rondel dagger instead. ‘You are just one of the many Powers of the Wild, Thorn.’ He took a deep breath against the pain in his ribs. ‘Don’t get above yourself, or someone will eat you.’

Good shot, muttered Harmodius, inside his memory palace. Almost ready.

There was a pause, as if the earth stood still. The captain tried to see Amicia’s face – to think any worthy, noble, or merely human last thought that was not born of fear and would not leave him to die the slave of this creature.

But he couldn’t.

Hold on, said Harmodius.

You are challenging me?!

The Red Knight stiffened his spine, stood as tall as he could, and said, ‘My mother made me to be the greatest Power of the Wild,’ He managed another breath. And delivered his sentence, like a sword cut. He said, ‘You are just some parvenu merchant’s son trying to ape the manners of his betters.’

He ordered the boglins to Kill Thorn and the crowd of boglins turned their weapons on their former master.

Stung – even though none of them could penetrate his glowing green armour – he clenched one gnarled fist.

Boglins died.

The sorcerer’s rage was automatic rage, unthinking rage at being challenged, at insult piled on insult. Thorn bellowed. You are nothing! Faster than the captain could parry, strike – react at all – Thorn’s fist slammed into him and knocked him to the ground again, except this time he felt bones break. Collarbone? Ribs, for sure.

Suddenly he was in his palace, and Prudentia stood with a handsome young man in black velvet embroidered with stars. So great was his fear and his confusion that he took long heartbeats to see that the stranger was Harmodius.

But he couldn’t hold the palace in his mind. He was too afraid, and even as Harmodius opened his mouth he was on his back and the pain was remarkable. His armour had probably saved him from death. But not from pain.

That was a laugh.

He used his stomach muscles to roll over, to get to his feet.

There was Thorn.

Why are you not dead? Thorn asked.

‘Good armour,’ the Red Knight said.

Aah! I can see your power. I will take it for my own. It is wasted on you. Who are you? You are no different from me.

‘I made different choices,’ the captain answered. He had trouble breathing but, just there, he started to be proud. He was holding his own.

Thorn threw a working; bright as a summer day, fast as a levin bolt.

The Red Knight parried it to the ground with a flash of silver white.

I see, now. You were made. You were constructed. Bred. Ahh. Fascinating. You are not an ugly mockery after all, dark sun. You are a clever hybrid.

‘Cursed by God. Hated by all right thinking men.’ The captain was gaining strength from sheer despair. With nothing left, he was going to beat his fear, the way he’d beaten it a thousand other times.

The time of men is over. Can you not see it? Men have failed. The Wild is going to crush men, and before ten thousand suns set, the young fawn and the bear cub will ask their mothers who wrought the stone roads, and the faerie will weep for their lost playthings. Even now, men are but a pale shadow of what they once were.

But then, you are scarcely a man. Why do you cleave to them?

Breathing was difficult, but he was achieving calm. Calm meant mastery of the Aethereal.

Hope gave rise only to more fear. But fear was the ocean in which he swam, and he reached through the fear – he used the fear.

He was in the palace of memory. He reached out to Amicia, who took his hand and Harmodius’, and the Abbess’, and Miram’s. And Mag’s. And that of every surviving nun singing in the chapel.

He mastered his thoughts.

Cast his very favourite phantasm.

‘Holy Saint Barbara, Despoina Athena, Herakleitus,’ he said, pointing at each statue as he spoke the name, and the great room began to spin.

Prudentia reached down from the plinth and put a hand on his shoulder. She smiled at him. It was a sad smile. And she reached out and took his hand free hand. ‘Goodbye, my lovely boy. I had so many things to say. O Philae pais-’

He was flooded with power – power like pain, when it rises beyond any possible point of pleasure – like victory. Like defeat, like hopelessness and hope. And he stayed there, for an eternity, balanced between all and nothing.

Like love when love is too much to bear.

What did she mean, goodbye?

He was back in the acrid night air.

He wondered if the calm that suffused him was artificial.

Thorn leaned over him, blocking the stars.

You are ours. Not theirs.

The captain laughed, a laugh he treasured. ‘There is no us, Thorn. In the Wild, there is only the law of the forest and the rule of the strongest. And if I join you, I will subsume you to my needs.’

Just to make his point, the captain projected, as his mother had taught him, the imperative. Kneel.

More than two thirds of the surviving boglins feel immediately to their knees.

He was deeply gratified to see Thorn twitch so that his singed branches shook as if a strong wind had passed through a forest.

And even as he exchanged words with the Enemy, buying precious heartbeats, an agony of power rose inside him – the greatest power he had ever felt, as if love personified drove his phantasm. Between two heartbeats, the captain knew what she had done.

Prudentia had not opened the door, which would have invited Thorn to take him from inside.

She had ended herself, and as a phantasmal construct, she had poured her own power and the power of her making into his work. It explained the love.

Oh, the love.

I make fire, he said in the purest High Archaic.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn felt the swelling of power – such a sweet power, with a taste he had forgotten. He lost a thousandth of a heartbeat trying to identify it. Only then did he reach for his shield of adamantine will.

You don’t remember that taste, my sweet? That taste is love, and once, you were capable of it.

The lady was in his head – in his place of power – naked, exposed, and rendering him the same.

Confused – a storm of rage and hate – he struck at her.

In striking, he did not raise his shield.

Lissen Carak – The Abbess

The Abbess took her stand in the ruined chapel, in near darkness, her hair unbound, her feet bare in the shattered glass. Her nuns stood in close array behind her, and their voices rose in sacred music.

Harmodius stood beside her, his staff in his hand, riding the song of power into the darkness, into the labyrinthine mind of the young man on the field below, facing a monster-

She, too, faced a monster. A variety of monsters, many of them of her own making. That she had loved this thing which now sought the ruin of all she loved-

She hit him with her frustration and her love, her years of loss. She poured her love of her God into his wounds, and she added her contempt – that he had abandoned her to turn traitor to humanity. That he had taken her gift and made this depravity with it.

She hurt him.

And he struck back. But he was hampered, and still – still - he hesitated to hurt her.

She hit him again. She’d had years to expunge her hesitations.

Lissen Carak – Mag the Seamstress

Mag, standing in the former street of the Lower Town, nonetheless felt the old Abbess struggle with the Enemy. It was terrifying, but she felt the Abbess’s power and she raised her own hands in sympathy. Unknowing, untrained, the seamstress nonetheless poured her carefully hoarded power into the Abbess.

The Abbess smiled in triumph.

Father Henry rose from behind the altar, and drew his arrow to his mouth, and loosed.

And from the darkness, a cry of rage.

The Abbess screamed like a soul in torment, and was knocked flat on her face – dead before her head hit the stone floor.

Blood welled from her eyes and she lay still, a vicious black arrow in her back.

Fire – a pure fire of crystalline blue – Prudentia’s favourite colour – enveloped Thorn’s mortal shell. The heat of it was stupendous.

And from the fire, smoke – a rich, bright smoke, luminescent and alive, more than white, more than smoke, and the captain could feel Harmodius sending the smoke through him, through his place of power and down his arm and into the air about him. A subtle working – insidious, clever, a fog of a million mirrors.

She had hurt him – hurt him so much. And the dark sun had hurt him, and now he was screaming in agony. A moment’s remorse – and the cost had been cataclysmic.

But he was saved – she was dead, her light extinguished, and not by him. Some other power had struck her down and he was innocent of that crime, and he turned – strong enough to finish this pretender.

But he writhed inwardly in the knowledge that she was dead.

It had to be done.

It should not have been done.

And then – too late! He felt his apprentice’s working, the complex, layered phantasm that was that boy’s trademark – a coloured smoke, so quiet, so harmless, so complex-

He lunged back up the line of Harmodius’ casting, as he had attacked along the line of his lover’s.

Harmodius felt his former master’s power coming.

His counter-strike was so tiny, so very subtle, that it cost him almost no power. It relied on his enemy’s hubris and his sense of his own power.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn killed the apprentice effortlessly, although he couldn’t, for some reason, take the man’s not inconsiderable power for his own. Typical of the man – to squander his power rather than let his master have it. His former apprentice fell back amidst a choir of nuns. If he’d had time, Thorn might have exterminated the nest, but the dark sun was still pounding him with his strange blue fire.

If Thorn had been a man he might have laughed. Or cried.

Instead, his consciousness raced back to the plain below, where his shell faced being consumed by fire.

Another slow heartbeat while he poured power into the problem and extinguished the blue fire.

He was surprised – and concerned – to see how badly hurt he was. Again – yet again, he would appear weak.

He had no time to take stock. Even now he was so badly hurt that any of the lesser powers could take him.

He raised his staff and was gone.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

Run, boy! cried Harmodius.

The captain tried to run.

He crawled through the prostrate boglins. He forced himself to his feet, and he ran, a broken, stumbling run while waiting for the levin bolt in the back that would end him. He stood in the palace, and the plinth was empty, and Prudentia’s statue lay cold and still on the ground.

Damn.

Time to mourn later, if he lived.

He leapt onto the plinth, and called his names.

Honorius! Hermes! Demosthenes!

Desperation, luck, and a strong will.

Goodbye, Prudentia! You deserved better than I ever gave you!

He ran to the door, and pulled it open.

The flicker of a casting – Thorn reached out, trying to find its source. The dark sun was still on the battlefield. Still casting?

I am badly hurt, he conceded. He summoned his guards to withdraw.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

– powered his phantasm and slammed the door shut again.

His body rose in a leap, sailed through the heated air, and fell to earth again – a hand’s breadth clear of the wall of the trench.

The captain turned away from the fire, and saw a wedge of knights, their mirror-bright harnesses like liquid fire in the smoky darkness. Off to the north, boglins hovered, uncertain.

A daemon raised his axes in challenge.

But the knights did not pause to fight. Even as the captain ran, strong arms grabbed him, an arm under each shoulder, and he was swept away as cleanly as if he’d been snatched by a great bird.