Miles Cameron - The Red Knight

The pain was so great that de Vrailly could barely register thoughts – and yet, he was in an ecstasy of relief to be atoning for sin with every waning beat of his heart. The massive damage to his side – the great puncture wounds that sucked air and spat blood and bile with every breath – were living penance, the very stuff of chivalric legend. He would go pure to his Saviour.

His only regret was that there was so much more he might have done – and in his darker moments of dying, he reviewed how he might have swayed his hips a little farther, evaded the wyvern’s blow, and carried on unhurt. So very close.

The archangel’s manifestation took him by surprise – first, because he had refused the angel’s orders, and second, because the archangel had always insisted on coming to him in private.

Now he appeared, glorious in armour, cap à pied in dazzling white plate, with the red cross emblazoned on a white surcote so utterly devoid of shadow as to seem to repel death.

All over the beaver meadow wounded men stopped screaming. Servants fell on their faces. Men rose on an elbow, despite the pain, or rolled themselves over despite trailing intestines or deep gouges – because this was the heaven come to life.

‘You fool,’ the archangel said softly – and with considerable affection. ‘Proud, vain, arrogant fool.’

Jean de Vrailly looked into that flawless face in the knowledge that his own had deep grooves of pain carved into it. And that he was going to his death. But he raised his head. ‘Yes!’ he said.

‘You were quite, perfectly brilliant.’ The archangel bent and touched his brow. ‘You were worthy,’ he said.

Just for a moment, Jean de Vrailly wondered if the archangel were a man. The touch was so tender.

The words cheered him. ‘Too proud to betray the King of Alba,’ he said.

‘There is a subtle philosophical difference between killing and letting die,’ the archangel said softly. ‘And thanks to you, all my plan is in ashes, and I must build a new edifice to make certain things come to pass.’ He smiled tenderly at the dying knight. ‘You will regret this. My way was better.’

Jean de Vrailly managed a smile. ‘Bah!’ he said. ‘I was a great knight, and I die in great pain. God will take me to his own.’

The archangel shook his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But I think you should live a while longer, and perhaps learn to listen to me next time.’ He bent low, and stripped the bright steel gauntlet off his hand – a slim, ungendered hand – and ran it along the knight’s body. That touch struck de Vrailly like the shock of taking his first wound – and lo, he was healed.

He took a deep and shuddering breath, and found no pain at the bottom of it.

‘You cannot just heal me,’ de Vrailly snapped. ‘It would be unchivalrous of me to walk away healed when my brave people lie at the edge of cruel death.’

The archangel turned his head, brushed the long hair back from his forehead, and he stood. ‘You are the most demanding mortal I have ever met,’ he said.

De Vrailly shrugged. ‘I will beg and pray, if that’s what you require, Taxiarch.’

The angel smiled. ‘I grant you their healing – those who have not already passed around the curve of life into death. And I grant to you great glory this day – for why would an angel of the Lord visit you except to bring you great power in battle? Go and conquer, arrogant little mortal. But I tell you that if you ever choose to match yourself against the greatest Power that the Wild has ever bred, he will defeat you. This is not my will, but Fate’s. Do you hear me?’

‘Craven fate would never keep me from a fight,’ de Vrailly said.

‘Ah,’ said the angel. ‘How I love you!’ The angel waved his spear over the beaver meadow.

A hundred knights and as many squires, men-at-arms, servants and valets were cured, their pain washed away, their bodies made whole. In many cases they were better than they had begun the battle. A peasant-born man-at-arms, a Galle, had the permanent injury to his lower left leg healed and made straight – a valet missing one eye had his sight returned.

All in the wave of a spear.

Several dozen wounded Jacks were cured, as well.

‘Go and save the king,’ the archangel said. ‘If that is your will.’

Every man in the meadow knelt and prayed until, in a puff of incense-laden displaced air, the armoured angel vanished.

Lissen Carak – Desiderata

Desiderata lay in a patch of bright sunlight. Her power was dimmed – she herself felt like a candle under a shade. Flickering.

So unjust! That single arrow, plummeting from heaven, and she was done. She had desired to be her husband’s support, perhaps to win herself a share of glory. And instead – this.

The strange young man had put the pain at a distance. That was a blessing. She could feel his worthiness like a bright flame. A knight and a healer – what a superb combination – and she longed to know him better.

Around her, her ladies were silent.

‘Someone sing,’ she said.

Lady Mary started, and the others slowly joined her.

Desiderata lay back on the cloaks of a dozen soldiers.

And then old Harmodius came. He came unannounced, walked into the castle courtyard and knelt beside her.

She was pleased to see the look in his eye. Even mortally wounded, he found her pleasing. ‘There you are, you old fool,’ she said happily.

‘Fool enough to leave the battle and save you, my dear,’ he said.

Carefully, painfully, with Lady Almspend and Lady Mary, he rolled her over and stripped the linen from her back. ‘It’s really quite a nice back,’ he said conversationally.

She breathed in and out, content at last.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain could see the king riding for the bridge at the head of his household, and he could see the king’s battles – each with more men-at-arms than he had ever commanded – coming down the ridge.

He rode along the trench – a trench currently occupied by two hundred archers and valets of his own company, and all the farmers from all the out-villages.

His sanguine surety that the Enemy had made a tactical error was gone, blown away on the wind, and now he watched an endless line of boglins crossing the open ground toward the trench with something akin to panic. It was hard to breathe.

The Prior was sitting on his destrier with Bad Tom, in the non-shade of a burned oak tree.

The captain rode his horse over to them, and then wasted his strength controlling his young war horse as the stallion sought to make trouble with the Prior’s stallion. Finally, he curbed the big horse mercilessly.

‘I miss Grendel,’ he said to Tom.

‘Bet Jacques doesn’t,’ Tom said. He looked back over the sunlit fields. ‘They’re coming.’

The captain nodded. Overhead, the trebuchet disgorged another load of small stones. Cast from a height, it smashed into the oncoming tide and ripped a hole in the enemy line.

The hole closed almost at once.

‘It’s so stupid , the captain said petulantly. ‘When he burned the farms, he did all the damage he needed to do.’ He turned his head to where the king’s Royal Guard was pouring into the trench, led by two hundred purple- and yellow-clad crossbowman from Lorica. ‘And his attack – whether it carries this trench or not – won’t take the fortress.’

The endless wave of boglins, and larger, worse things, swept across the burned plain towards the black line of his trench.

The reinforcements were not going to make the near end of the trench in time.

The farmers and the guildsmen were spread too thin, and they knew it. And the inexperienced purple and gold Loricans were halting, only a third of the way along the trench, and loosing bolts. Like militia.