A flash of metal in the gap in the hedge. Flash, flash.
Three long, deep blasts from the huge horn.
Again, there was an explosion of purple-red light, this time at the corner of the field. Fire licked at the hedgerow.
Three green balls of fire materialized in the air at half-heartbeat intervals and struck.
There was an explosion-another-then another. Like spring trees full of sap and struck by lightning, each sharp crack deafened the men at the top of the hill and blew new rings of blood and bone into the sunny sky.
Ser John found he was down on one knee, his ears ringing despite a fully enclosed helmet and heavy wool-stuffed helmet liner. There was a dazzle of spots in front of his eyes.
There were a lot of dead boglins at the base of the field. Even as he watched, the arm of a daemon, torn from its body, fell back to the earth.
The black thing now moved as if it was four legged and not two legged. It vanished through a new gap in the hedge.
Another flash of steel, and Ser John was fairly sure he was looking at Lord Wimarc, dismounted, about three hundred yards away. The boy had superb armour and something, even at that range, suggested him and his slim, upright posture.
Not for the last time, Ser John watched, wondering what in hell was happening.
“I think we’re out of the fight,” Ser Dagon muttered.
Ser John got back to his feet. His lower back burned with fatigue and he was soaked through with sweat-and cold.
“Master Archer!” he called.
“Which I’m right here, your honour,” Wilful Murder muttered. “And not deaf, neither.”
“Send an archer for the pages and the horses,” Ser John said, unaware that he was shouting.
Jamie the Hoek coughed. “I’ll go, Ser John,” he said. “My horse is just around the wall-if Rory left it where he said he would.”
“If the imps didn’t get him,” spat one of the knights. Ser Blaise was dead-and partly eaten. The young Jarsay knight, Ser Guy, had six wounds, all where the imps had gotten into his groin and armpits. He was fading fast.
The poor boy was weeping with pain. His arms were barely attached to his body. His legs-his entire lower torso was ruined. Shock could not do enough to protect him from what had happened to his body.
Ser John knelt by him and put a hand on his cheek.
The boy screamed. Something in him had changed, or the full realization of his fate had come to him, and his weeping sobs gave way to bitter screams.
Three hundred yards of mud away, Lord Wimarc waved. And began to trudge, not towards them but along the edge of the hedgerow. He was clearly following the defeated warband of enemy raiders.
“He’s clean mad,” muttered Ser Dagon, who was doing his best to ignore the young knight dying horribly at his feet.
The other squires began to appear-Tomas Craik and his brother Alan and all the rest of them, trudging wearily in good harness.
“Achilles and Hector together couldn’t ha’ driven all they off that land,” said Ser Dagon.
The boy was shouting his screams now.
“I think our squires have the most honour in this fight,” Ser John agreed. He wished he could get up. He wished the boy would die. He wished that there was something-anything-he could do.
He made himself pray, which was hard with the accusations of the boy’s screams so close to his head.
There was another roar-the horn sounded again, one long wind, and suddenly the air was full of ops. Workings flew past, balls of fire of various colours flying back and forth.
“Christ and his phalanx of angels,” muttered Ser Giannis.
“Haaaaarrrrrhhhhh!” screamed the mass of pain and fear that had once been a knight of Jarsay.
Ser John picked him up, intending to crush him in an embrace. But Wilful Murder was there first. He leaned down as if tying his shoe and casually drew his ballock dagger across the young knight’s throat.
“Go fast, boy,” he said.
Ser John let the boy’s blood flow down the front of his breastplate. He met the archer’s eyes, and the man shrugged.
“Someone had to,” Wilful Murder said.
And then Rory was back with the war horses.
Ser John looked around, wondering if he looked as tired and haggard as Ser Giannis or Ser Dagon did.
“I’m of a mind to find out what happened, and mayhap play a role before the sun sets,” Ser John said. “But every man here has earned the right to say he has done enough.”
The other seven knights looked at him-covered in their comrade’s blood-and shook their heads.
“Let’s go kill them,” said Ser Dagon.
The road ran parallel to the fight for another half mile. Below them, as the spring sun began to set, they could see shapes moving across the cleared ground. Some of the hedged fields were quite small and Ser John didn’t know the area well enough to guess which lane would get him a view of the fight-if any.
But as the sun’s rays turned from gold to red, one of the huntsmen galloped up and pointed his crossbow south across the fields. “Past the farm gate,” he said, and they rode. An hour of picking their way along the road and stopping frequently to watch or listen had allowed all the archers to catch them up, mounted on their smaller horses. The pages brought up the rear.
Ser John was the first through the gate. It was a fine farm with a good stone house like Helewise’s, only smaller, and it had been spared by the last incursion of the Wild. Draper or Skinner-he knew the folk here.
Old Man Skinner stepped out of his door, a heavy arbalest cocked in his hand. “There’s boglins in my lower orchard,” he said. “I’ve been potting ’em for an hour. Took you lot long enough-Christ on the cross, you look rough, Ser John!” he said in sudden wonder. “Just my mouth a flappin’. I mean no harm. Water your horses-I’ll get water in the trough.”
And indeed, the horses needed water and a rest from men on their backs, and Goodwife Skinner, a big heavy woman with beautiful eyes and a no-nonsense face doled out sweet buns and tart cider. Men drank it without removing their blood-soaked gauntlets or gloves. Ser John looked about him, and they were all blue-red-black with ichor and blood and mud.
The horn-that horn would haunt his dreams-sounded very close.
“Get inside and bar your doors,” Ser John snapped, pushing Goodwife Skinner into her kitchen door.
“An’ don’t we wish we could come in wi’ you?” muttered Wilful Murder.
“To horse!” Ser John shouted.
His great war horse-the best he’d ever owned-seemed to give a human groan as he mounted. He trotted the horse past the barnyard and the farmer met him there at the corner, his heavy weapon spanned and ready. The farmer ran to the next gate and paused, looked around carefully and then opened the gate. He stepped through.
Ser John rode right by him. He wasn’t sure why he did it, except perhaps the sense that it was his job to protect the farmer, not the farmer’s job to protect him.
He felt the enemy through his horse before ever he saw them. They were in the next field, near the base of the valley. They’d come miles north and west, now-Lissen Carak would be only a dozen more miles that way. The edge of the woods was only a mile or two to the north, if that. That’s where the raiders were headed.
Ser John went through the gate, past the farmer, and then trotted up the muddy field. He could see his enemy through the next gate.
The closed field in which he was riding was unploughed, or his horse would have sunk to the fetlocks. But there were only two gates-the one he’d passed through, and the one ahead.
He rode up to the gate. A gout of black fire struck it just as he reached it and it blew clean off its hinges and collapsed.
The four-footed black thing was loping towards him over an unploughed hayfield. Ser John didn’t think. He just slammed down his visor and touched his spurs to Iskander, who responded with all the noble heart any knight could ask from a horse, exploding forward despite the soft, treacherous ground.