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.