The Red Knight (11 page)

Gelfred spanned his crossbow. He wasn’t wearing armour. Once he had a bolt on the stock, he stepped into line behind Michael.

The captain reached up and lowered his visor, and it fell across his face with a loud
snap.

And then his vision was narrowed to the two long slits in his faceplate, and the tiny breathing holes that also gave him his only warning of any motion coming from below. His own breath came
back into his mouth, warmer than the air. The inside of the helmet was close, and he could taste his own fear.

Through the slits, the woods went on and on, although they seemed darker and stiller than before.

Even the breeze had died.

Silence.

No bird song.

No insect noise.

Michael’s breathing inside his dog-faced Thuruvian helmet sounded like the bellows in a forge running full-out at a fair.
His first time,
the captain thought to himself.

The line was shuffling a little. Men changed their stances – the veterans all had heavy spears, or pole-axes, and they shifted their weight uneasily. The crossbowmen tried to aim. The
longbowmen waited for a target before they drew. No man could hold a hundred-pound weight bow for long at the full draw.

The captain could feel their fear. He was sweating into his armingcote. When he shifted, cold air came in under his arms and his groin, but the hot sweat ran down his back. His hands were
cold.

And he could feel the tension from his adversary.

Does it have nerves too? Fear? Does it think?

No birds sang.

Nothing moved.

The captain wondered if anyone was breathing.

‘Wyvern!’ shouted Bad Tom.

It exploded from the trees in front of the captain – taller than a war horse, the long, narrow head full of back-curved teeth, scales so dark that they appeared black, so polished they
seemed to be oiled.

It was fast. The damned things always were.

Its wave of terror was a palpable thing, expanding like a soap bubble around it – the full impact of it struck the captain and washed over him to freeze Michael where he stood.

Gelfred raised his crossbow and shot.

His bolt hit something and the creature opened its maw and screeched until the woods and their ears alike rang with its anger.

The captain had time to take his guard, spear high, hands crossed, weight back on his right hip. His hands were shaking, and the heavy spearhead seemed to vibrate like a living thing.

It was coming right for him.

They always do.

He had a long heartbeat to look into its golden-yellow eyes, flecked with brown – the slitted black pupil, the sense of its
alienness.

Other archers loosed. Most missed – taking panicked shots at ranges far closer than they had expected. But not all did.

It ran forward over the last few yards, its two powerful, taloned legs throwing up clods of earth as it charged the thin line of men, head low and forward, snout pointed at the captain’s
chest. Wings half open, beating the air for balance.

Gelfred was already spanning his crossbow, confident that his captain would keep him alive for another few heartbeats.

The captain shifted his weight and uncrossed his hands – launching the hardest, fastest swing in his repertoire. Cutting like an axe, the spearhead slammed into the wyvern’s neck,
into the soft skin just under the jaw, the cut timed so that the point stopped against the creature’s jawbone . . . and its charge rammed it onto the point, pushing it deeper and then through
the neck.

He had less than a heartbeat to savour the accuracy of his cut. Then the captain was knocked flat by a blow from its snout, his spear lodged deep in the thing’s throat. Blood sprayed, and
the fanged head forced itself down the shaft of his spear – past the cross guard, ripping itself open – to reach him. Its hate was palpable – it grew in his vision, its blood
lashed him like a rain of acid, and its eyes—

The captain was frozen, his hands still on the shaft, as the jaws came for him.

Afraid.

But his spearhead had wide lugs at the base, for just such moments as this and the wyvern’s head caught on them, just out of reach. He had a precious moment – recovered his wits, put
his head down, breaking the gaze—

—as in one last gout of blood, it broke the shaft, jaws open and lunged—

The hardened steel of his helmet took the bite. He was surrounded by the smell of the thing – carrion, cold damp earth, hot sulphur, all at once. It thrashed, hampered by the broken spear
in its gullet, trying to force its jaws wider and close on his head. He could hear its back-curved teeth scrape, ear-piercingly, over his helmet.

It gave a growl to make his helmet vibrate, tried to lift him and he could feel the muscles in his neck pull. He roared with pain and held hard to the projecting stump of the shaft as the only
support he had. He could hear the battle cries – loud, or shrill, depending on the man. He could hear the meaty sounds of strikes – he could
feel
them – as men’s
weapons rained on the wyvern.

But the creature still had him. It tried to twist his head to break his neck, but its bite couldn’t penetrate the helmet for a firmer grip. Its breath was all around him, suffocating
him.

He got his feet beneath him and tried to control his panic as the wyvern lifted him clean from the ground. He got his right hand on his heavy rondel dagger – a spike of steel with a grip.
With a scream of fear and rage, he slammed it blindly into the thing’s head.

It spat him free and he dropped like a stone to the frozen ground. His dagger spun away, but he rolled, and got to his feet.

Drew his sword.

Cut. All before the wave of pain could strike him – he cut low to high off the draw, left to right across his body and into the joint behind the beast’s leg.

It whirled and before he could react, the tusked snout punched him off his feet. Too fast to dodge. Then threw back its head and screamed.

Bad Tom buried his pole-axe in its other shoulder.

It reared away. A mistake. With two wounded limbs, it stumbled.

The captain got his feet under him, ignored the fire in his neck and back, and stood, powering straight forward, coming at it from the side this time. It turned to flatten Bad Tom, and Jehannes,
suddenly in front of it, hit it on the breastbone with a war hammer. Its face was feathered with barbs and arrows. There were more in the sinuous neck. Even as it turned and took another wound, in
the moment that the head was motionless it lost an eye to a long shaft, and its body thrashed – a squire was crushed by a flick of the wyvern’s tail, his back breaking and armour
folding under the weight of the blow.

Hugo crushed its ribs with a mighty, two-handed overhead blow. George Brewes stabbed it with a spear in the side and left the weapon there while he drew his sword. Lyliard cut overhand into the
back of its other leg; Foliack hammered it with repeated strokes.

But it remained focused on the captain. It swatted at him with a leg, lost its balance, roared, and turned on Hugo who had just hit it again. It closed its jaws on the marshal’s head, and
his helmet didn’t hold, The bite crushed his skull, killing him instantly. Sauce stepped over his headless corpse and planted her spear in its jaw, but it flung her away with a flick of the
neck.

The captain leaped forward again and his sword licked out. This time, his cut took one of the thing’s wings clean off its body, as easy as a practice cut on a sapling. As the head turned
and struck at him the captain stood his ground, ready to thrust for the remaining eye – but the head collapsed to the earth a yard from him, almost like a giant dog laying his head down at
his master’s feet, and the baleful eye tracked him.

He thrust.

It whipped its head up, away from the point of the sword, reared, remaining wing spread wide and thrashing the men under it, a ragged banner of the Wild—

—and died, a dozen bolts and arrows catching it all together.

It fell across Hugo’s corpse.

The men-at-arms didn’t stop hacking at it for a long time. Jehannes severed the head, Bad Tom took one leg off at the haunch, and two squires got the other leg at the knee. Sauce rammed
her long rondel into every joint, over and over. Archers continued to loose bolts and arrows into the prone mound of its corpse.

They were all covered in blood – thick, brown-green blood like the slime from the entrails of a butchered animal, hot to the touch, so corrosive that it could damage good armour if not
cleaned off immediately.

‘Michael?’ the captain said. His head
felt
as if it had been pulled from his body.

The young man struggled to get his maille aventail over his head, failed, and threw up inside his helmet. But there was wyvern blood on his spear, and more on his sword.

Gelfred spanned his crossbow one more time, eyes fixed on the dead creature. Men were hugging, laughing, weeping, vomiting, or falling to their knees to pray, others merely gazed blank-eyed at
the creature. The wyvern.

Already, it looked smaller.

The captain stumbled away from it, caught himself, mentally and physically. His arming cote was soaked. He went instantly from fight-hot to cold. When he stooped to retrieve his dagger, he had a
moment’s vertigo, and the pain from his neck muscles was so intense he wondered if he would black out.

Jehannes came up. He looked – old. ‘Six dead. Sweet William has his back broken and asks for you.’

The captain walked the few feet to where Sweet William, an older squire in a battered harness, lay crumpled where the tail and hindquarters had smashed him flat and crushed his breastplate.
Somehow, he was alive.

‘We got it, aye?’ he said thickly. ‘Was bra’ly done? Aye?’

The captain knelt in the mire by the dying man’s head. ‘Bravely done, William.’

‘God be praised,’ Sweet William said. ‘It all hurts. Get it done, eh? Captain?’

The captain bent down to kiss his forehead, and put the blade of his rondel into an eye as he did, and held the man’s head until the last spasm passed, before laying his head slowly in the
mire.

He was slow getting back to his feet.

Jehannes was looking to where Hugo’s corpse lay under the beast’s head. He shook his head. Looked up, and met the captain’s eye. ‘But we got it.’

Gelfred was intoning plainchant over the severed head. There was a brief flare of light. And then he turned, disgust written plain on his face. He spat. ‘Wrong one,’ he said.

Jehannes spat. ‘Jesu shits,’ he said. ‘There’s another one?’

North of Harndon – Ranald Lachlan

Ranald rode north with three horses – a heavy horse not much smaller than a destrier and two hackneys, the smallest not much better than a pony. He needed to make good
time.

Because he needed to make good time he went hard all day and slept wherever he ended. He passed the pleasant magnificence of Lorica and her three big inns with regret, but it was just after
midday and he had sun left in the sky.

He didn’t have to camp, exactly. As the last rays of the sun slanted across the fields and the river to the west, he turned down a lane and rode over damp manured fields to a small stand
of trees on a ridge overlooking the road. As he approached in the last light, he smelled smoke, and then he saw the fire.

He pulled up his horses well clear of the small camp, and called out, ‘Hullo!’

He hadn’t seen anyone by the fire, and it was dark under the trees. But as soon as he called a man stepped from the shadows, almost by his horse’s head. Ranald put his hand on his
sword hilt.

‘Be easy, stranger,’ said a man. An old man.

Ranald relaxed, and his horse calmed.

‘I’d share my food with a man who’d share his fire,’ Ranald said.

The man grunted. ‘I’ve plenty of food. And I came up here to get away from men, not spend the night prattling.’ The old fellow laughed. ‘But bad cess on it – come
and share my fire.’

Ranald dismounted. ‘Ranald Lachlan,’ he said.

The old man grinned, his teeth white and surprisingly even in the last light. ‘Harold,’ he said. ‘Folk around here call me Harold the Forester, though its years since I was the
forester.’ He slipped into the trees, leading Ranald’s packhorse.

They ate rabbit – the old man had three of them, and Ranald wasn’t so rude as to ask what warren they’d been born to. Ranald still had wine – good red wine from Galle,
and the old man drank a full cup.

‘Here’s to you, my good ser,’ he said in a fair mockery of a gentleman’s accent. ‘I had many a bellyful of this red stuff when I was younger.’

Ranald lay back on his cloak. The world suddenly seemed very good to him, but he remained troubled that there were leaves piled up for two men to sleep, and that there were two blanket rolls on
the edge of the fire circle, for one man. ‘You were a soldier, I suspect,’ he said.

‘Chevin year, we was all soldiers, young hillman,’ Harold said. He shrugged. ‘But aye. I was an archer, and then a master archer. And then forester, and now – just
old.’ He sat back against a tree. ‘It’s cold for old bones. If you gave me your flask, I’d add my cider and heat it.’

Ranald handed over his flask without demur.

The man had a small copper pot. Like many older veterans Ranald had known, his equipment was beautifully kept, and he found it without effort, even in the dark – each thing was where it
belonged. He stirred his fire, a small thing now the rabbit was cooked, made from pine cones and twigs, and yet he had the drink hot in no time.

Ranald had one hand on his knife. He took the horn cup that was offered him, and while he could see the man’s hands, he said ‘There was another man here.’

Harold didn’t flinch. ‘Aye,’ he said.

‘On the run?’ Ranald asked.

‘Mayhap,’ said Harold. ‘Or just a serf who oughtn’t to be out in the greenwood. And you with your Royal Guardsman’s badge.’

Ranald was ready to move. ‘I want no trouble. And I offer none,’ he said.

Harold relaxed visibly. ‘Well, he won’t come back. But I’ll see to it that the feeling is mutual. Have some more.’