Miles Cameron - The Fell Sword

He lay still for a long time, watching, and the sun’s angle steepened. Then he rose and began to stride rapidly along the trail. Every stream like this one had a trail along its bank – men made them, and so did the Wild. They shared the trails.

When he was just a bowshot from his horse, he climbed a tree to have a look. There were no carrion birds but there was a persistent rustling away to the south, and twice he heard the distant crash of a large animal moving too quickly for stealth. And darkness was just an hour away.

He swung down from the tree, cursing his shoulder muscles, his age, and how much all this was going to hurt the following day – but he paused to pluck his bag of fish from the ground by the tree.

To his immense relief – he hadn’t even known how worried he had been – his horse was merely nervous, not boggle-food. He saddled the big riding horse – a failed warhorse – and fetched his heavy spear from the crotch of a forked tree where he’d left it at sunrise.

‘I’m an idiot,’ he said aloud. Calm again.

The Wild’s army was beaten, but the woods were still full of danger. He had been very foolish to leave his horse. He stood with it, calming it.

He got one foot in the stirrup, powered into the saddle, and turned for home.

Two hundred feet in front of him, a young doe bolted from the trees into the meadow. She was too young to be cautious, and she turned towards him, never seeing the man or the horse.

Behind her, a dozen boggles burst from the wood line. One stride into the clearing, the lead creature paused – a slim dark figure against the light, and it took Ser John a moment to register what he was seeing. The boggle had a throw-stick.

The spear left the throw-stick as fast as an arrow and the missile took the little doe in her hindquarters. She tumbled, fell, and blood sprayed. But terror and wild determination fuelled her, and she rose and drove forward – right at the knight.

Between his knees he could feel his horse’s nerves. Old Jack had failed as a warhorse because he shied at the tilt – and had done so over and over.

‘Always another chance to excel,’ muttered Ser John, and he lowered the spear point.

The doe saw the horse and tried to turn, but her limbs failed her and she fell sprawling, and the boggles were on her.

Ser John put the spurs to his horse, and the gelding leaped out from beneath the old tree.

The doe screamed. One of the boggles already had her open and was dragging her guts out while another sank his four-way hinged mouth into her haunch. But the boggle with the throw-stick had a long knife. The thing made a keening noise, and wrenched his throwing spear from the dying deer.

Ser John didn’t have time to ride him down, and he didn’t fancy facing the throwing spear without armour, so he rose in his stirrups and threw his own spear – a cloth yard of steel at the end of six feet of ash. It wasn’t a clean throw but it caught the boggle in the head as it pin-wheeled through the air, and the thing shrieked.

Ser John drew his sword.

His horse put its head down as he rode straight at the doe’s carcass.

I’m avenging a dead deer, for Christ’s sake , he thought and then he was reining in, and four of them were dead. The one he’d knocked down with his hastily thrown spear was bubbling as the little things did when they were broken, their liquid innards emerging throught rents in the carapace as if under pressure.

There was one missing.

The horse shied. It all but threw him with a sidestep and a kick – he whirled his head and saw the creature, covered in ordure, emerge from within the doe’s guts, exploding up in a spray of blood and muscle tissue. But its claws went for the man.

The horse kicked it – rear left, rear right. Ser John managed to keep his seat as the terrified horse then trampled the boggle which had been kicked clear of the carcass and lay in the dust of the old road.

Ser John let the horse kick. It made both of them feel better.

Then he checked his fish.

Afternoon was tending to evening and the nun was in the kitchen with Phillippa’s mother. Phillippa went there to help – as darkness fell, the cleanliness of the manor house chimney and the kitchen chimney had taken on paramount importance, and Helewise and the nun agreed between them to delay dinner a little longer.

There were birds’ nests in the chimneys, and raccoons in the chimney pots. Phillippa thought the task was better than finding more corpses, and she pitched in with a will, climbing the roof slates in the last light with Jenny Rose and shooing the raccoons out with a broom. They didn’t want to go – they looked at her over their shoulders as if to say ‘We just want a nice bit of chicken, and can’t we all be friends?’

She caught the flicker of movement away off to the north, and held out a filthy hand to Jenny Rose. ‘Shush!’ she said.

‘Shush yourself!’ Jenny said, but then she saw Phillippa’s face and froze.

‘Hoof beats,’ they both said together.

‘Can I light the fire, dear?’ called her mother.

‘Yes, and there’s someone coming!’ she shouted back, her voice a little higher pitched than it needed to be.

The nun was out the kitchen door in a moment, standing with her hands on her hips in the last real light. She turned all the way around, very slowly. Then she looked up at the roof. ‘What do you see, Phillippa?’ she asked.

Phillippa made herself do just what the nun had done. She turned slowly, balanced on the peak of the roof.

Jenny said, ‘Oh!’ and pointed. By the stream to the west of them, there was a flicker of light – beautiful pink light, and then another.

‘Faeries!’ said Jenny.

‘Blessed Virgin Mary,’ said Phillippa, who crossed herself.

‘Faeries!’ she shouted down to the nun. ‘By the creek!’

The nun raised her arms and made a sign.

The sound of hoof beats grew closer.

The faeries moved gracefully along the streambed. Phillippa had seen faeries before, but she loved them, even though they were a sign of the dominance of the Wild and it was supposedly a sin to admire them. But combined with the sound of galloping hooves, they seemed more sinister.

The sun passed behind the ridge to the west.

Almost instantly the temperature fell, and darkness was close. Phillippa shivered in nothing but her shift and kirtle.

Steel glittered on the road, and the hoof beats were close now. The horse was tired, but the man rode well. He was very old, and had wild grey hair flowing out behind him, but his back was straight and his seat was solid. He was dressed like a peasant, yet he wore a long sword. She had spent the summer among men who went armed. He had a spear in his hand, too.

He reined up for a moment at the ruins of their gatehouse, stood in his stirrups, and then said something to his mount. The horse responded with a last effort, and the man passed out of sight only to reappear walking under the two old oaks on the drive.

The nun held up a hand. ‘The sele of the day to you, messire,’ she said in a clear voice.

The old man reined up at the edge of what had once been the yard. ‘Greetings, fair sister. I had no thought that the resettlement had come this far. Indeed, I passed this way this morning and I’d wager there was no one here.’

The nun smiled. ‘Neither there was, good knight.’

‘ Ma belle , you speak most courteously. Is there a bed here for an old man with an old horse?’ He bowed to her from horseback. It was fun to watch them from the roof, unobserved. Phillippa gave them both high marks for courtesy – they spoke like the people in the songs of chivalry that she loved. And not like the stupid boys in Lorica, who were all sullen swearwords.