‘Where are the villagers?’ Kaspar wondered.
‘Perhaps they’d already fled.’
Kaspar pointed to the dark stains on the carpet of flour. ‘Someone hadn’t.’
One of the riders trotted over. Twilight hid his face under the brim of his helmet, but his voice was grim. ‘We must leave.’
‘Leave?’ Even in that awful place, the fat priest sounded outraged. ‘It is almost dark. Who knows where the men who did this are? If we take to the road now, we may blunder into them in the dark and all will be lost.’
‘The ashes are still warm. They cannot have gone far – and they may come back. We found three mules tethered behind a stable.’
‘I would rather-’
A shriek shrilled through the village. The priest cried out and fell to his knees; the pilgrims clutched each other and stared around wildly. But it was a lament, not a war cry. It came from the church. The woman who had gone to investigate it stood in the doorway. The skirts of her dress were spattered with blood, her face a mask of anguish.
‘Do not come here,’ she cried. ‘Do not look on this.’
Ignoring her warning, several pilgrims rushed towards the church. Kaspar tugged my arm. ‘How much money is in your purse?’
‘Enough to make me worth killing.’
‘Perhaps we can bribe the guards to take us to Strassburg. If they carried one of us each…’
The knot of pilgrims had begun to drift apart: some to gaze at the horror in the church; some to the empty houses; some sidling towards the barn, perhaps thinking they might commandeer the mules for themselves. Above all this confusion, the two riders sat on their horses and talked urgently.
They broke off their conversation as they saw us approach.
‘What do you want?’
‘To help,’ said Drach.
‘Do you have a sword?’
‘A plan. This rabble cannot defend itself with pilgrim staffs and clasp knives. Our only hope is to ride for help.’
The guards exchanged impenetrable looks.
‘Happily, my friend here has a purse full of gold. If you brought us to the nearest town, we could hire a company of men-at-arms and bring them back. But we would have to hurry, before the Armagnaken get wind that we are here.’
‘A sound plan,’ said one of the riders. ‘Shall we explain it to the priest?’
‘There’s no time.’
‘Then let’s go. We- Christ in Hell!’
Without warning, his horse reared up with a terrible scream. Blood streamed down its breast, black in the twilight. A crossbow bolt jutted out below the neck. Kaspar and I leaped back, just avoiding the flailing hooves as it crashed to the ground. Its screams mingled with its rider’s as it crushed him.
From out of the forest, we heard the screech of devils as the Armagnaken burst into the village.
The horse spat another burst of fire down over them. The shield dome dimmed and flickered – but held. As soon as the flames stopped, Nick charged. Smoke from the charred landscape obscured his approach. He saw the giant hooves in front of him and jumped. The horse reared up to protect itself; hooves flailed, but it hadn’t yet recharged its fire-breathing ability.
Nick hung in the air. He raised the broadsword over his head, then brought it down in a hammer blow on the black knight’s helm. The force of the impact threw Nick back up, giving him time for another hacking swing at the knight’s neck before he dropped to the ground. The knight reeled.
Nick’s eyes flicked to the bottom corner of the screen where a colour-coded bar displayed his enemy’s life force. He swore. He’d barely scratched him.
‘Watch out for the horse!’ Urthred shouted.
Nick sprang to his left and rolled away, just in time. A curtain of fire pursued him along the ground, so vivid he could almost feel the heat on his cheek. It raced up behind him; in a second he would be swallowed.
With a flash of blue light, he rolled inside the umbrella of Urthred’s shield. The flames beat against it like waves but could not get through.
‘You need to get him away from here,’ said Randall. ‘I can’t hold the shield much longer. It’s draining my power.’
‘I can’t get to him while he’s on that horse.’
‘Remember the dragonsteed at the Tower of Charn?’
‘Uh, kind of.’ With all that was happening, Nick found he could still feel embarrassed at having this sort of conversation in front of Emily. It was almost impossible to reconcile the stark room, the strip lighting and metal chairs, with the desperate fantasy battle on screen. But each was real enough in its way.
The Wanderer scrambled to his feet. He reached into the folds of his cloak and pulled out an iron shield almost as large as he was. He raised it and crouched to spring. Urthred staggered and swayed behind him, jerked like a puppet on the end of the beam of light flowing from his staff. He was losing control, exhausted by the effort. The black knight saw his weakness and wheeled around to charge again. Smoke flared from the horse’s nostrils; sparks drooled from its mouth.
Urthred spun around, lost control and fell. His staff clattered to the ground beside him. The knight charged. All that stood in his way was Nick. Dust flew up under the horse’s iron-clad hooves. The earth seemed to shake. In seconds he’d be trampled, or impaled on the end of the knight’s black lance.
He raised his sword towards the onrushing horse. The knight saw him; Nick could have sworn he heard him laugh. Against the bulk of the horse and the length of the lance, his blade was little better than a needle.
Tingling, Nick’s fingers danced over the keyboard, tapping out an intricate pattern. The sword in the Wanderer’s hand began to glow molten red, then white hot. A shaft of light sprang from the tip of the blade; it pulsed, then hardened to steel in an instant. The sword had become a spear. The Wanderer dug the butt into the ground and angled it up.
It impaled the onrushing horse, sinking deep in its chest. The constraints of the game made it an incongruously bloodless wound. The horse’s momentum carried it into the Wanderer’s shield and bowled him over; he flew back across the ground.
With a ghastly scream, the horse sank to its knees. The black knight leaped down from the saddle. He’d dropped his lance in the collision; in its place he now wielded an enormous mace.
The Wanderer had been thrown so far back he was now beyond Urthred, who still lay in a heap. The black knight advanced; the mace made eerie noises as he whirled it over his head. Nick reached for his spear, but it was still embedded in the horse.
And suddenly Urthred was on his feet, lightning crackling from his fingertips. The knight leaped back, but too slow. Urthred’s spell caught him clean on the chest and blasted him away, almost to the edge of the clearing.
Urthred took a step after him as Nick got up and ran to retrieve his sword-spear. ‘He’s not so tough.’
The bar in the corner of Nick’s screen had dropped by about half, and now showed orange. The black knight had taken a hit, but he wasn’t beaten.
‘How much more time do you need?’ Randall asked.
Nick didn’t answer. A sound was rising out of the forest, like a swarm of insects accelerated to a blood-curdling scream. The woods quivered with movement within.
The Wanderer picked up his sword and rolled it in his wrists. He knew that sound. He dropped into a crouch, as the vanguard of a goblin army poured out of the trees.
The Armagnaken rushed out of the forest like a battlefield giving up its dead. Half naked, streaked with mud, clad in an outlandish array of mismatched armour and carrying stolen swords, spears, bows and rusting farm implements. They fell upon the pilgrims with howls of glee. The fat priest died pinned to a barn wall with a spear through his belly. One of his companions tried to defend himself with his staff but was beaten down. The Armagnak chopped of his head like a chicken’s, held it aloft by the hair, then kicked it down the street after a group of fleeing women. It struck one on the back of the leg. She stumbled, tripped and fell. Before she could get up the Armagnaken were ripping into her.