The Red Knight by Miles Cameron Page B

inside his helmet. But there was wyvern blood on his spear, and more on his sword.
    Gelfred spanned his crossbow one more time, eyes fixed on the dead creature. Men were hugging, laughing, weeping, vomiting, or falling to their knees to pray, others merely gazed blank-eyed at
the creature. The wyvern.
    Already, it looked smaller.
    The captain stumbled away from it, caught himself, mentally and physically. His arming cote was soaked. He went instantly from fight-hot to cold. When he stooped to retrieve his dagger, he had a
moment’s vertigo, and the pain from his neck muscles was so intense he wondered if he would black out.
    Jehannes came up. He looked – old. ‘Six dead. Sweet William has his back broken and asks for you.’
    The captain walked the few feet to where Sweet William, an older squire in a battered harness, lay crumpled where the tail and hindquarters had smashed him flat and crushed his breastplate.
Somehow, he was alive.
    ‘We got it, aye?’ he said thickly. ‘Was bra’ly done? Aye?’
    The captain knelt in the mire by the dying man’s head. ‘Bravely done, William.’
    ‘God be praised,’ Sweet William said. ‘It all hurts. Get it done, eh? Captain?’
    The captain bent down to kiss his forehead, and put the blade of his rondel into an eye as he did, and held the man’s head until the last spasm passed, before laying his head slowly in the
mire.
    He was slow getting back to his feet.
    Jehannes was looking to where Hugo’s corpse lay under the beast’s head. He shook his head. Looked up, and met the captain’s eye. ‘But we got it.’
    Gelfred was intoning plainchant over the severed head. There was a brief flare of light. And then he turned, disgust written plain on his face. He spat. ‘Wrong one,’ he said.
    Jehannes spat. ‘Jesu shits,’ he said. ‘There’s another one?’
     
     
    North of Harndon – Ranald Lachlan
     
    Ranald rode north with three horses – a heavy horse not much smaller than a destrier and two hackneys, the smallest not much better than a pony. He needed to make good
time.
    Because he needed to make good time he went hard all day and slept wherever he ended. He passed the pleasant magnificence of Lorica and her three big inns with regret, but it was just after
midday and he had sun left in the sky.
    He didn’t have to camp, exactly. As the last rays of the sun slanted across the fields and the river to the west, he turned down a lane and rode over damp manured fields to a small stand
of trees on a ridge overlooking the road. As he approached in the last light, he smelled smoke, and then he saw the fire.
    He pulled up his horses well clear of the small camp, and called out, ‘Hullo!’
    He hadn’t seen anyone by the fire, and it was dark under the trees. But as soon as he called a man stepped from the shadows, almost by his horse’s head. Ranald put his hand on his
sword hilt.
    ‘Be easy, stranger,’ said a man. An old man.
    Ranald relaxed, and his horse calmed.
    ‘I’d share my food with a man who’d share his fire,’ Ranald said.
    The man grunted. ‘I’ve plenty of food. And I came up here to get away from men, not spend the night prattling.’ The old fellow laughed. ‘But bad cess on it – come
and share my fire.’
    Ranald dismounted. ‘Ranald Lachlan,’ he said.
    The old man grinned, his teeth white and surprisingly even in the last light. ‘Harold,’ he said. ‘Folk around here call me Harold the Forester, though its years since I was the
forester.’ He slipped into the trees, leading Ranald’s packhorse.
    They ate rabbit – the old man had three of them, and Ranald wasn’t so rude as to ask what warren they’d been born to. Ranald still had wine – good red wine from Galle,
and the old man drank a full cup.
    ‘Here’s to you, my good ser,’ he said in a fair mockery of a gentleman’s accent. ‘I had many a bellyful of this red stuff when I was younger.’
    Ranald lay back on his cloak. The world suddenly seemed very