The Red Knight by Miles Cameron

noise.
    Michael’s breathing inside his dog-faced Thuruvian helmet sounded like the bellows in a forge running full-out at a fair.
His first time,
the captain thought to himself.
    The line was shuffling a little. Men changed their stances – the veterans all had heavy spears, or pole-axes, and they shifted their weight uneasily. The crossbowmen tried to aim. The
longbowmen waited for a target before they drew. No man could hold a hundred-pound weight bow for long at the full draw.
    The captain could feel their fear. He was sweating into his armingcote. When he shifted, cold air came in under his arms and his groin, but the hot sweat ran down his back. His hands were
cold.
    And he could feel the tension from his adversary.
    Does it have nerves too? Fear? Does it think?
    No birds sang.
    Nothing moved.
    The captain wondered if anyone was breathing.
    ‘Wyvern!’ shouted Bad Tom.
    It exploded from the trees in front of the captain – taller than a war horse, the long, narrow head full of back-curved teeth, scales so dark that they appeared black, so polished they
seemed to be oiled.
    It was fast. The damned things always were.
    Its wave of terror was a palpable thing, expanding like a soap bubble around it – the full impact of it struck the captain and washed over him to freeze Michael where he stood.
    Gelfred raised his crossbow and shot.
    His bolt hit something and the creature opened its maw and screeched until the woods and their ears alike rang with its anger.
    The captain had time to take his guard, spear high, hands crossed, weight back on his right hip. His hands were shaking, and the heavy spearhead seemed to vibrate like a living thing.
    It was coming right for him.
    They always do.
    He had a long heartbeat to look into its golden-yellow eyes, flecked with brown – the slitted black pupil, the sense of its
alienness.
    Other archers loosed. Most missed – taking panicked shots at ranges far closer than they had expected. But not all did.
    It ran forward over the last few yards, its two powerful, taloned legs throwing up clods of earth as it charged the thin line of men, head low and forward, snout pointed at the captain’s
chest. Wings half open, beating the air for balance.
    Gelfred was already spanning his crossbow, confident that his captain would keep him alive for another few heartbeats.
    The captain shifted his weight and uncrossed his hands – launching the hardest, fastest swing in his repertoire. Cutting like an axe, the spearhead slammed into the wyvern’s neck,
into the soft skin just under the jaw, the cut timed so that the point stopped against the creature’s jawbone . . . and its charge rammed it onto the point, pushing it deeper and then through
the neck.
    He had less than a heartbeat to savour the accuracy of his cut. Then the captain was knocked flat by a blow from its snout, his spear lodged deep in the thing’s throat. Blood sprayed, and
the fanged head forced itself down the shaft of his spear – past the cross guard, ripping itself open – to reach him. Its hate was palpable – it grew in his vision, its blood
lashed him like a rain of acid, and its eyes—
    The captain was frozen, his hands still on the shaft, as the jaws came for him.
    Afraid.
    But his spearhead had wide lugs at the base, for just such moments as this and the wyvern’s head caught on them, just out of reach. He had a precious moment – recovered his wits, put
his head down, breaking the gaze—
    —as in one last gout of blood, it broke the shaft, jaws open and lunged—
    The hardened steel of his helmet took the bite. He was surrounded by the smell of the thing – carrion, cold damp earth, hot sulphur, all at once. It thrashed, hampered by the broken spear
in its gullet, trying to force its jaws wider and close on his head. He could hear its back-curved teeth scrape, ear-piercingly, over his helmet.
    It gave a growl to make his helmet vibrate, tried to lift him and he could feel the muscles in his neck