The Red Knight (79 page)

Ser George backed away. ‘You’re mad as a hatter.’

The captain shrugged. ‘I am going to hold this fortress to the bitter end,’ he said. ‘I’m going to hold it if I have to do it by myself. When we march away from Lissen
Carak – and by my power, Ser George, we
will
march away – we won’t be a nameless company of broken men on the edge of banditry. We will be the most famous company of
soldiers in the North Country, and men will bid to have us.’

Ser George rubbed his shoulder. ‘We’re going to die her, and that’s not what we do, boy. We live. Let the other bastard do the dying.’ He looked at the captain.
‘You have a very persuasive way with an arm lock.’

Two rocks struck close together.
Slam – slam
, and plaster rained down on their heads.

The Lower Town, Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

An hour later, as the light began to grow outside, the off-going watch started up the path with two heavy beams – the rooftrees from collapsed cots – carried high on
their shoulders.

The enemy’s machines launched a flurry of stones but the off-going watch was already out of range. They scurried up the ridge, and men came out of the fortress’s main gate to
help.

And then there was silence.

Hours passed.

The captain had been sleeping in his armour, his head down on the table in the donjon. He woke to the silence, and he was up the ladder in a twinkling, his sabatons ringing, his hip armour
scraping on the hatch to the first floor of the tower.

No Head was already on the battlements. He pointed to the enemy machines – just three hundred paces further west. Close enough to touch, or so it seemed.

‘Cuddy could reach ’em with an arrow. Or Wilful Murder.’ No Head grinned. ‘I’m tempted to try, myself.’

‘Even if you caught one or two,’ the captain said, ‘there are many, many more of them.’ He was much more exposed here – his Hermetic defences weren’t
buttressed by the power of the fortress. He could feel Thorn.

He looked around.

The Lower Town’s curtain wall was breached in four places.

Harmodius
he called.

He felt the old man stir.

Well sent. I understand you.

The captain concentrated.
There will be an attack on the Lower Town. I need men. Please tell Ser Thomas.

You are stronger.

I am practising
sent the captain.

He went back to watching.

Sauce watched the beams come through the gate. Skant came over to her – hollow eyed, rubbing his arms – and handed her a note.

She looked it over and nodded. She had the day watch formed in the courtyard for inspection, and she found Wilful Murder easily. ‘Wilful,’ she said. ‘On me.’

He stepped out of the ranks.

‘Find Bent. And any artificers you can rustle up. Master Random’s man is in the dormitory – I think that the pargeter boy is in the Great Hall. These beams are to form the
pivot arm of a trebuchet – mounted where the onager was.’

Wilful Murder digested this. Nodded. Chewed on his moustache.

While he was looking at the tower and Cuddy was inspecting the duty archers, Bad Tom appeared in his armour. He didn’t look like a man who’d been up all night.

‘Captain needs the quarter guard. At the double.’ He nodded.

Ser Jehannes came along the wall and down the curtain steps. ‘Hold hard, Tom.’

Tom’s eyes met Sauce’s. ‘Now,’ he said.

He turned to face Ser Jehannes.

The quarter guard was the watch reserve – half the able men, usually the very best men, but today simply half the available troops. Sauce had more than a dozen men-at-arms in the day watch
– most of the rest were kept ready for the sortie – led by Ser John Ansley, a big, cheerful, ruddy-faced young man. ‘Ser John, you have the watch,’ she said.
‘I’m taking the quarter guard. On me!’ she called, and the quarter guard came; sixteen archers and eight men-at-arms. Most of the archers were guildsmen she didn’t know
– with all five of the new recruits – the local boys. Ben should have been her master archer, but he was already standing with Wilful Murder.

‘Cuddy – you’re the senior,’ she said.

‘Like enough,’ he said.

Jehannes raised his voice. ‘You are insane!’ he roared at Tom.

Tom laughed.

Her senior man-at-arms was Chrys Foliak – one of her own tent-mates. He had the others ready to move.

Cuddy made a motion with his hand and Long Paw stepped out of the ranks and joined him.

They went out the postern. It was obvious to them all that Ser Jehannes disagreed with the order to send them. But then the courtyard was behind them, and they were out in the light.

Below, on the fields, hundreds – perhaps thousands – of creatures were moving toward the Lower Town. The fields themselves seemed to be moving.

‘Good Christ!’ Chrys Foliack muttered. ‘Good Christ.’

Long Paw spat thoughtfully.

He paused in the postern, leaned back, and shouted ‘Toby! Michael!’

He couldn’t see the captain’s valet or his squire. ‘JACQUES!’ he roared.

A nun – tall and pretty despite her hollow eyes – came to the postern. ‘May I help?’ she asked.

‘Captain’s in trouble. Tell Bad – tell Ser Thomas we’ll need relays of arrows and all the men in harness.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll tell him.’

‘See you do, lass,’ Long Paw spat carefully to one side, flashed her his best smile, turned, and ran down the long path to catch up with the others.

Lissen Carak – Harmodious

Harmodius watched the bustle in the courtyard as he climbed past the two men-at-arms arguing – reached the wall—

It was worse than he had thought.

He ran, barefoot, along the wall to the apple tree.

Summoned power, and raised his staff . . .

Lissen Carak – The Abbess

The Abbess watched the day watch form under her window. There was something particularly well-ordered about the company. Their scarlet jupons, their bright polished armour. They
made her feel safe even when she knew that she was anything but.

Even as she watched – looking for the captain, and missing him, and assigning herself a penance for looking, all in one thought – the woman who wore men’s armour shouted an
order, and all of the men on the right of the formation turned and followed her.

There was suddenly an air of crisis – men moved in many directions.

She reached out—

He was preparing an attack.

She felt well-slept and immensely strong. She walked across her solar to the windows on the outer wall, three hundred feet above the fields below, and looked out.

Her fields seethed as if covered in maggots.

Her feeling of revulsion was more than physical.

A pair of her novices, alerted by her movements, appeared with a cup of warm wine and a fur-lined robe. She drank the one and shrugged on the other while the older novice brushed her hair.

‘Hurry,’ she said.

She put light shoes on her feet, pulled the mantle of her profession over her fur robe and was off while the creatures in the fields below were still merely a tide lapping at the foundations,
and not a mighty wave.

She collected the crozier – the crooked staff that the Abbess bore by tradition, with a curious green stone head.

And then she ran, like a much younger woman, for her bower – her apple tree.

She was shocked to find another there. Not just there, but swimming in her power.

‘Master Magus,’ she said, coming to a stop.

‘Lady Abbess,’ he said. ‘I’m working.’

Even as she paused, he raised his staff. His power was visible. His whole form gave off tendrils of power.

The Lower Town, Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain watched the enemy’s creatures gather. They were well within bowshot, and No Head and his fellows began to pink them. The two youngest archers carried sheaves
of fresh shafts from the second floor, and the older men began to loose.

The captain had seen archers in action before, had watched his men practise at the butts, but he’d never watched a dozen professionals at full stretch.

He’d fussed at No Head while the older man felt the breeze, and carefully arranged his sheaves in brackets for the purpose set into the wall – little iron buckets.

The two senior men – No Head and Kanny – raised their bows, loosed, discussed their aiming points, and watched the fall of their shafts.

‘Over,’ said Kanny. It was a different tone of voice from his usual hectoring, barracks-lawyer voice.

‘Over,’ No Head said. ‘Ready, lads?’

He raised his bow, and every man on the tower raised his in emulation, and they all loosed together. Their arrows rose and rose, and before they had begun to fall the next flight was on its
way.

Down on the plain, the distant irks screamed their defiance, showed their hooked teeth, patted their backsides and hefted their spears.

There were a thousand of them – more, most likely. In their homespun greens and their leathers and brown skin, they looked as if they’d been grown from the earth under their
feet.

The first flight of arrows struck. They all struck together, and tore a small whole in the great patchwork of brown-green irks.

The phalanx of spears moved a step closer.

The second flight struck.

And the third.

And the fourth.

The regiment of irks started to look like a piece of leather on a shoemaker’s bench punched with an awl. And again, and again. The punches only made small holes. But it made a great many
of them.

The irks screamed, their handsome elfin faces contorted into masks of rage, and they charged.

‘Fast as you can, boys,’ No Head called.

His arms became a blur of motion. He drew and loosed, took a shaft from his bracket, nocked, drew, and loosed so quickly that the captain had difficulty sorting his actions.

Brat, the youngest archer, opened a linen sack and dumped the shafts, points first, into No Head’s bracket, and ran to load the next archer.

Kanny was grunting with every draw. The sound was so frequent and rhythmic it was obscene.

The irks had little or no armour, and no shields. As they crossed the three hundred paces to the breaches in the northern wall, they left a trail of wounded and dead creatures behind them. It
was as if the whole phalanx was a wounded animal, bleeding little corpses.

They reached the first breach.

Kanny ran dry of arrows, and had to pause to get his own bundle. Brat couldn’t keep up. One by one, the bows stopped twanging.

‘They’re not going anywhere,’ No Head said calmly. ‘Don’t rush. Everyone get their quivers full again. Brat, you get one more load up here and join us on the
wall.’

The captain felt superfluous.

Lissen Carak – Sauce

Cuddy watched the first charge out of the slits of one of the covered ways halfway up the ridge. Then he ran down the steps to Sauce.

‘They’re going to need help,’ he said.

She glared at him.

‘We can hit them from down there,’ he said, pointing to the lower path. ‘With arrows.’ He continued. The men-at-arms tended to forget the power of the bows.

Sauce paused. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s go!’

They pounded down the track – over a streambed, down steep steps, around a long curve, and then they were right above the Lower Town. The wall had a fine low parapet, and the Gate Tower
was just a hundred paces away and almost at eye level.

Cuddy admired No Head’s archery for three long breaths. The shooting was continuous, now, and the flow of shafts like a waterfall crashing down on the irks in the field. The creatures died
and died.

It was clear to Cuddy that the irks were defeated. Archery combat had a ruthless logic of its own. Cuddy was an expert in it.

‘Five shafts,’ he said to the men around him. ‘Right in the midst of them. Fast as you can.’ Two of his guildsmen had crossbows – not really worth a thing in a
fight like this.

Oh, well.

‘Ready?’ he called. Every longbowman had five arrows in the ground, ready to hand, and another on the bow. Long Paw had one on his bow, one in his bow hand, and four in the
ground.

Cuddy raised his bow.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The irks broke.

The new arrows came from behind, plunging down and killing them. In a minute a tenth of their numbers were pinned to the ground, screaming their thin screams.

Lissen Carak – Sauce

‘Save your shafts,’ Cuddy said. He had only fifteen more. High above, on the ridge, he could see valets starting down with bundles of arrows, but it would be ten
minutes before those arrows reached them.

He pointed to the town. ‘Some of them got in,’ he called to Sauce.

‘Are you happy to stay here?’ she asked.

Cuddy nodded.

‘Men-at-arms – on me.’ She waved to Cuddy and started for the postern gate.

Long Paw winked at Cuddy as he followed her.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

The captain went to open the tower’s lower door himself. He and Ser George were the only men without bows.

Sauce was outside, with a crowd of armoured men. ‘Town’s full of irks,’ she said. Her sword was in her hand, and behind her, men were cleaning the dark blood from their
blades.

He nodded. ‘We have to keep the street clear for sorties,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘That’s going to suck,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice. And took her party to move stones and fallen roof tiles.

The captain went with them.

It was brutal work. As the spring sun rose it burned, distant and orange, through the smoke-filled air. It was growing warm, and inside forty pounds of chain and plate, and a heavy quilted
arming cote, it was hot.