Most of the southerners had learned to ride with their steel gauntlets on their hands, but very few men liked to ride about wearing their helmets.
The squires and pages handed out lances-fifteen-foot spears tipped in hard steel.
“Let’s go!” Ser John said, fatigue temporarily forgotten. He led the column along the edge of the road, single file-an invitation to ambush except that he’d seen his own scouts work the apple orchard on the other side of the lane’s wall.
He met the huntsman at the corner of the old wall.
“Boglins,” the huntsman panted.
“Where away?” Ser John asked. “In broad daylight?”
The huntsman shrugged. “Saw ’em mysel’,” he said. “Away over past the Granges.”
Ser John looked under his hand.
“Big band-fifty or more. Running flat out-you know, so their wing-cases stand up.”
“On me!” Ser John roared. He turned in the saddle and caught Lord Wimarc. “Take the squires and sweep the hillside,” he said. “All the way down to the creek past the Grange. You know the ground?”
Lord Wimarc nodded. Since the death of his knight, he had withdrawn on himself, and his eyes were sunken and he had dark smudges under his eyes, but he was alert enough. “Aye, Captain,” he said.
“If you catch them, dismount and hold them. Don’t let them get at your horses.” Ser John waved to the other squires. “Jamie, stay with me. The rest of you-follow Lord Wimarc.”
As he turned his horse on the muddy ground, the scent of new grass and mud gave him a flash of Helewise, above him, her breast…
He flushed and focused on the reality of a warm day and a tired horse.
Off to his left he saw Lord Wimarc stand in his stirrups. The man’s lance tip moved.
There was something on the hillside.
An explosion, like lightning-a ball of lightning…
Then the crack of a distant whip and one of the squires and his horse were a butcher’s nightmare in an ugly instant.
“Blessed Saint George,” muttered the knight behind him.
Ser John balanced on a sword’s edge of indecision-he didn’t know what he was going into, but he knew as sure as he was a sinful man that halting to figure it out would cost him men and horses.
He thought about his lady love, and laughed aloud as the thought stiffened his spine as if he was fifteen years old and had just seen breasts for the first time.
“Forward,” he roared.
His ten lances, shorn of their squires, rode single file around the corner of the tall stone wall and the whole of the hillside came into view-a patchwork of green and brown fields stretching away for more than a mile, and a thick fringe of trees at the top of the next ridge, like hair on top of a balding man’s head.
As soon as he took in the terrain, he knew that the enemy was beyond his own forces.
Almost at his feet, a mere bowshot away, was a pack of the new imps. Ser John had never seen them, but one of the Red Knight’s squires-Adrian Goldsmith-had a talent for drawing, and had rendered the lithe creatures, like greyhounds from hell, in livid detail. All the company men said they were as fast as anything in the Wild, and that they went for horses.
Even as he watched, the dread creatures turned like a flock of birds and started across a newly turned field towards him. At his back were ten knights, ten archers and ten pages.
The field was muddy, the earth heavy with melted snow and spring rain, black and shiny.
There was a narrow ditch by the verge of the road. Behind them was the high stone wall of some farmer’s apple orchard. It was too high for a mounted man to get over.
He gave the order before he knew what he’d committed to.
“Dismount!” he called, pulling up. “Horses to the rear-all the way back to the last farmyard, Rory!” he called to the oldest page, who was as white as a sheet.
He slid out of his saddle as the imps came on at the speed of an arrow from a heavy bow.
Even as his feet touched the ground and he seized his fighting hammer from his saddle bow, he wondered if he had made a poor decision. If they would be in among his horses before-
“On me!” he called. “On me! Archers in the second rank!”
It was all glacially slow.
But God was merciful. The imps-even the horrifying imps-were slowed in all that mud.
They seemed to flow over the field, though, and there were more of them-and more still flowing out of the far hedgerow.
“Let us ha’ three arrows in front o’ ye,” said the archer at his back.
Rory had just taken Iskander’s reins and was taking him to the rear, the war horse rolling his eyes and looking for something to kill. Ser John gave him a parting slap on the rump and stepped back.
“Three shafts!” roared the master archer-one of the company men.
The imps were a hundred yards away. They covered the earth like a pale green carpet of teeth and sinew. There had to be five hundred of them.
“Loose!” called the company man.
“Loose!” he said again.
“Loose!” he said again.
Three arrows in as many breaths. The imps were still far distant.
“Keep shooting,” Ser John said. “Rory-get to the farmyard and send for help.”
Rory, now mounted on Iskander, saluted.
Send someone to bury us.
Behind the wave of imps was a group of boglins, all pushing through and under the hedgerow. His tactic had worked beautifully-they had cut the enemy off.
He wanted to choke the huntsman. This wasn’t a raiding force, but a small army. The sparkle of magic on the far hillside told him that the enemy had a sorcerer of some sort, too.
The company archers were a blur of speed, their arrows leaving their bows as fast as their arms could move, their grunts rhythmic and almost obscene, like the rhythm of the old bed the night before.
“Loose!” grunted the old bastard in front of him.
“Loose!” he said again.
“Exchange ranks!” Ser John roared.
The archers dived for the rear, putting a wall of flesh and steel between them and the imps.
“Over the wall!” called the old man.
Most of the archers had no harness beyond elbows and knees and bascinets. The imps would flay them alive.
An incredible number of the imps were already down. Worse, the ones pinned to the ground by the heavy shafts were dragging themselves towards the fight.
Ser John set his weight without conscious thought, pole-hammer across his thighs, in the bastard guard.
The imps had to leap the ditch to reach them.
He killed two or three before one knocked him flat by momentum. But they were small and his faceplate and aventail kept him safe in the panicked seconds he was flat on his back. He drove his dagger into one-where had that come from?-got to his knees, and punched another with his steel fist. Something had his ankle, but that ankle was fully encased in steel.
He drew his sword, stabbed down into the thing on his ankle, cut roundhouse to clear a space.
An arrow clanged off his helmet. In the fall, his head had moved inside the padding and his vision was imperfect. He swung again, re-set his feet and got a hand up to push his helmet back on his head. There were two of them on his legs and one going for his balls, which had no armour. He shortened his grip, one hand on the hilt, one on the middle of the blade, and stabbed down, and down, and down, backing as he did, until he cut the creatures off his legs and killed them with blows to their spines.
The archers were now sitting atop the apple orchard wall, shooting light arrows straight down into the fight and killing many. Their arrows decimated the imps, but the dog-like reptiles still came on over their dead, like carrion crows on a corpse.
Ser John knew he had men down. There was too much room to swing his sword.
He cut-left, right, controlled swings into guards to clear the ground around him, but the monsters were not like human opponents who would give ground. They merely came on. The result of his swings was the three of them got under his guard, one hanging from his left wrist. He dropped the sword, broke the back of the one on his armoured wrist and then kicked his steel feet clear of them, thanking God for his sabatons.