The captain looked right and left. ‘Yes,’ he said. He motioned to Michael, who gave one whistle blast.
The pages were lightly armed. They weren’t woodsmen, but they slipped up the hill like ghosts, at a pace that left the captain breathless. The hill steepened and steepened as they climbed, until the very top was almost sheer, and the pages hauled themselves up from tree to tree.
There was a scream, a wicked hiss of arrows, a boy of no more than sixteen roared, ‘For God and Saint George!’ and there was the unmistakable sound of steel on steel.
An arrow, nearly spent, rang off the captain’s helmet.
Suddenly, he had the spirit to run to the crest of the hill. The trees were dense, and branches reached for him, but a man in armour can run through a thicket of thorns and not take a scratch. He grabbed a slim oak, pulled with all his strength, and found himself at the top.
There was a small hollow, with a fire hidden by the bulk of the hill, and a dozen men.
Not men.
Irks.
Like men, but thinner and faster, with brown-green skin like bark, almond eyes and pointed teeth like wolves. Even as the captain stopped in surprise, an arrow rang off his breastplate and a dozen pages burst from the trees to the right of the irks around the fire and charged.
The captain lowered his head and ran at the irks, too.
They loosed arrows and fled away north, and the pages gave chase.
The captain stopped and opened his visor. Michael appeared at his side, sword out, buckler on his left hand. He could smell woodsmoke, lots of woodsmoke.
‘We’ve found them!’ Michael said.
‘No. A dozen irks is not an army of darkness,’ said the captain. He looked at the sky.
Tom came up behind him.
‘Tom? We have an hour of good light. The pages are running down their sentries.’ He looked at the veteran man-at-arms. He shrugged. ‘I don’t really know all that much about fighting the Wild,’ he admitted. ‘My instinct is to keep going forward.’
Tom nodded. ‘It’s the Wild,’ he said. ‘They never have a reserve. Yon won’t have anything like a quarter guard.’ He shrugged.
The captain knew the decision they made now was pivotal. Any losses out here didn’t bear thinking about. Caution would dictate-
He thought of her touch on his hand. Her admiration.
He turned to Michael. ‘Tell the archers to prepare an ambush half a league back. men-at-arms to guard the horses at the base of the ridge. This is the pages only. Understand?’
Michael nodded. ‘I want to come with you.’
‘No. Give me your whistle. Now move! Tom, with me.’
They ran down the northern side of the ridge, toward the sound of screams and fighting.
Later, the captain admitted that he’d let the pages get too far ahead of him. The deep woods and fading light made it almost impossible to maintain communications.
He ran down the ridge with Tom beside him, crashing recklessly through thickets. He all but fell into a steep-sided vale; a small stream that cut deeply into the side of the ridge. It was easier to go east, so he followed it, passing three corpses – all irks.
At the base of the ridge, with his breath coming in great shuddering gasps, there was a shallow stream and, on the far side, a path. And along the path-
Tents. But no pages.
There were fifty men, most of them stringing bows.
The captain stopped. He’d made enough noise coming down the ridge to catch their attention but with the sun at his back, despite his armour, they were easier for him to see than he was for them.
Tom and Jacques and a dozen pages who had followed them down the hill slipped in behind old trees. There were screams off to the west – screams and something else.
‘Fucking Jacks,’ Jacques said.
The men across the stream turned, almost as one. A small horde of boglins and irks bolted down the path from the west. It was odd to see the monsters of myth running.
The Jacks began to shuffle.
Several of them drew their great bows and shot west.
The captain looked around. ‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘Make a lot of noise.’
They all looked at him.
‘One. Two. Three.’ He broke cover, and bellowed ‘THE RED KNIGHT!’ The effect was electric. The captain was south of and slightly behind the line of Jacks, and they had to look over their shoulders to see him. Immediately, men began to flee with the boglins and the irks.
The pages behind him roared his battlecry, and Bad Tom roared his – ‘Lachlan for Aa!’
There are different types of soldier. Some men are trained to stand under fire, waiting for their turn to inflict death. Others are like hunters, slipping from cover to cover.
The Jacks were not of a mind to stand and fight. It wasn’t their way. One arrow, launched from a mighty bow, slammed into the captain’s scarlet surcote, punched through it, and left a dent a finger deep and bruised him like a kick from a mule. And then the Jacks were gone.
The captain grabbed Bad Tom by the shoulder. ‘Stop!’ he roared.
Tom’s eyes were wild. ‘I have nae’ wet my sword!’ he shouted.
The captain kept a hand on him, like a man calming a favourite dog. He blew the recall on the whistle – three long blasts, and then three more, and then three more.
The pages stopped. Many wiped their swords on dead things, and all of them drank from their water bottles.
From the east came a long scream. It was an alien sound, and it sobered them.
‘Up and over the ridge. Straight back the way we came, tight and orderly. Now.’ The captain pointed his sword up the ridge. ‘Stay by the stream!’ he called.
Now there was a baying and roaring in the woods to the east. Roaring, infernal screams, and something else, something that was huge and terrible and fell, and as tall as the trees.
He turned to run up the ridge.
Tom was still at his shoulder. ‘I have nae killed a one!’ he said. ‘Just let me kill one!’
Suiting action to word, Tom turned as a gout of green fire smashed into the ground, not two horselengths from Tom’s outstretched sword. It exploded with a roar and suddenly the very stones seemed to be on fire.
Tom smiled and raised his sword.
‘Tom!’ the captain screamed. ‘This is not the time!’
Boglins and irks were crossing the stream at the foot of the ridge, led by a golden bear, as tall as a war horse and shining gold like the sun. When it roared, its voice filled the woods like a storm wind.
‘What the fuck is that?’ asked Tom. ‘By god, I want a cut at that!’
The captain pulled hard at the hillman’s arm. ‘With me!’ he ordered, and ran.
Grudgingly, Tom turned and followed him.
They made the top of the ridge. The bear was not charging them, it seemed content to lead the boglins and the irks. But behind them came something far worse. And much larger.
The pages had waited for the captain a little way down the ridge, in itself an act of fine discipline and bravery. But as soon as he caught them up, they turned and ran for the base and their horses.
The captain could barely move his steel clad feet, and never had leg armour seemed so pointless, so heavy, as it did when the first of the enemy began to crest the hill behind him. They were close.
West of Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn’s initial reaction to the assault on his camp was panic. It took him long minutes to recover from the shock and when he did, the sheer effrontery of it filled him with an irrational rage. As he reached out through his creatures, he was shocked to find how pitiful and few were his human attackers. A few dozen of them, and they had sent his Jacks running down the path, broken fifty irks, and killed an outpost of boglins who were caught napping after a feed.
He stopped the rout by killing the first irk to pass him, in spectacular style. The creature exploded in green fire, raining burning flesh on the others, and the Magus raised his hoary arms and the rout stopped.
‘You fools!’ he roared at them. ‘There are fewer than fifty of them!’ He wished he had his daemons but they were already scouting Albinkirk. His wyverns were close, but not close enough. He poured his will into two of the golden bears and sent his forces up the ridge after the raiders. His Wild creatures would be far more nimble in the woods then mere men. The bears were faster than horses on their home ground.