• THE LEGEND OF SIGMAR •
Graham McNeill
BOOK ONE: Heldenhammer
BOOK TWO: Empire
BOOK THREE: God King

• THE RISE OF NAGASH •
Mike Lee
BOOK ONE: Nagash the Sorcerer
BOOK TWO: Nagash the Unbroken
BOOK THREE: Nagash Immortal

• VAMPIRE WARS: THE VON CARSTEIN TRILOGY •
Steven Savile
BOOK ONE: Inheritance
BOOK TWO: Dominion
BOOK THREE: Retribution

• THE SUNDERING •
Gav Thorpe
BOOK ONE: Malekith
BOOK TWO: Shadow King
BOOK THREE: Caledor

• CHAMPIONS OF CHAOS •
Darius Hinks, S P Cawkwell & Ben Counter
BOOK ONE: Sigvald
BOOK TWO: Valkia the Bloody
BOOK THREE: Van Horstmann

• THE WAR OF VENGEANCE •
Nick Kyme, Chris Wraight & C L Werner
BOOK ONE: The Great Betrayal
BOOK TWO: Master of Dragons
BOOK THREE: The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

• MATHIAS THULMANN: WITCH HUNTER •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Witch Hunter
BOOK TWO: Witch Finder
BOOK THREE: Witch Killer

• ULRIKA THE VAMPIRE •
Nathan Long
BOOK ONE: Bloodborn
BOOK TWO: Bloodforged
BOOK THREE: Bloodsworn

• MASTERS OF STONE AND STEEL •
Gav Thorpe and Nick Kyme
BOOK ONE: The Doom of Dragonback
BOOK TWO: Grudge Bearer
BOOK THREE: Oathbreaker
BOOK FOUR: Honourkeeper

• THE TYRION & TECLIS OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Blood of Aenarion
BOOK TWO: Sword of Caldor
BOOK THREE: Bane of Malekith

• WARRIORS OF THE CHAOS WASTES •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Wulfrik
BOOK TWO: Palace of the Plague Lord
BOOK THREE: Blood for the Blood God

• KNIGHTS OF THE EMPIRE •
Various Authors
BOOK ONE: Hammers of Ulric
BOOK TWO: Reiksguard
BOOK THREE: Knight of the Blazing Sun

• WARLORDS OF KARAK EIGHT PEAKS •
Guy Haley & David Guymer
BOOK ONE: Skarsnik
BOOK TWO: Headtaker
BOOK THREE: Thorgrim

• SKAVEN WARS: THE BLACK PLAGUE TRILOGY •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Dead Winter
BOOK TWO: Blighted Empire
BOOK THREE: Wolf of Sigmar

• THE ORION TRILOGY •
Darius Hinks
BOOK ONE: The Vaults of Winter
BOOK TWO: Tears of Isha
BOOK THREE: The Council of Beasts

• BRUNNER THE BOUNTY HUNTER •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Blood Money
BOOK TWO: Blood & Steel
BOOK THREE: Blood of the Dragon

• THANQUOL AND BONERIPPER •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Grey Seer
BOOK TWO: Temple of the Serpent
BOOK THREE: Thanquol’s Doom

• HEROES OF THE EMPIRE •
Chris Wraight
BOOK ONE: Sword of Justice
BOOK TWO: Sword of Vengeance
BOOK THREE: Luthor Huss

• ELVES: THE OMNIBUS •
Graham McNeill
Book One: DEFENDERS OF ULTHUAN
Book Two: SONS OF ELLYRION
Book Three: GUARDIANS OF THE FOREST

• UNDEATH ASCENDANT: A VAMPIRE COUNTS OMNIBUS •
C L Werner, Robert Earl & Steven Savile
Book One: THE RED DUKE
Book Two: ANCIENT BLOOD
Book Three: CURSE OF THE NECRARCH

• GOTREK & FELIX THE FIRST OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Trollslayer
BOOK TWO: Skavenslayer
BOOK THREE: Daemonslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE SECOND OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Dragonslayer
BOOK TWO: Beastslayer
BOOK THREE: Vampireslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE THIRD OMNIBUS •
William King & Nathan Long
BOOK ONE: Giantslayer
BOOK TWO: Orcslayer
BOOK THREE: Manslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE FOURTH OMNIBUS •
Nathan Long
BOOK ONE: Elfslayer
BOOK TWO: Shamanslayer
BOOK THREE: Zombieslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE FIFTH OMNIBUS •
Josh Reynolds
Book One: ROAD OF SKULLS
Book Two: THE SERPENT QUEEN
Book Three: LOST TALES

• GOTREK & FELIX THE SIXTH OMNIBUS •
David Guymer
Book One: CITY OF THE DAMNED
Book Two: KINSLAYER
Book Three: SLAYER

Collections

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1
An omnibus by various authors

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 2
An omnibus by various authors

LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR
Includes the novels Fyreslayers, Skaven Pestilens and Sylvaneth
Various authors

RULERS OF THE DEAD
Josh Reynolds & David Annandale

WARCRY
Various authors

CHAMPIONS OF THE MORTAL REALMS
Various authors
An anthology of novellas

GODS & MORTALS
Various authors

MYTHS & REVENANTS
Various authors

OATHS AND CONQUESTS
Various authors

SACROSANCT & OTHER STORIES
Various authors

DIRECHASM
Various authors
An anthology of short stories

Novels

• HALLOWED NIGHTS •
Josh Reynolds

Book One: PLAGUE GARDEN

Book Two: BLACK PYRAMID

• KHARADRON OVERLORDS •
C L Werner

Book One: OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON

Book Two: PROFIT’S RUIN

• GOTREK GURNISSON •
Darius Hinks

Book One: GHOULSLAYER

Book Two: GITSLAYER

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
Josh Reynolds

SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds

CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth

THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds

BLACKTALON: FIRST MARK
Andy Clark

HAMILCAR: CHAMPION OF THE GODS
David Guymer

SCOURGE OF FATE
Robbie MacNiven

THE RED FEAST
Gav Thorpe

GLOOMSPITE
Andy Clark

BEASTGRAVE
C L Werner

NEFERATA: THE DOMINION OF BONES
David Annandale

THE COURT OF THE BLIND KING
David Guymer

LADY OF SORROWS
C L Werner

REALM-LORDS
Dale Lucas

WARCRY: CATACOMBS: BLOOD OF THE EVERCHOSEN
Richard Strachan

COVENS OF BLOOD
Anna Stephens, Liane Merciel & Jamie Crisalli

STORMVAULT
Andy Clark

THE END OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Richard Strachan

CURSED CITY
C L Werner

A DYNASTY OF MONSTERS
David Annandale

~ AUDIO DRAMAS ~

• REALMSLAYER: A GOTREK GURNISSON SERIES •
David Guymer
Boxed Set One: REALMSLAYER
Boxed Set Two: BLOOD OF THE OLD WORLD

THE BEASTS OF CARTHA
David Guymer

FIST OF MORK, FIST OF GORK
David Guymer

GREAT RED
David Guymer

ONLY THE FAITHFUL
David Guymer

THE PRISONER OF THE BLACK SUN
Josh Reynolds

SANDS OF BLOOD
Josh Reynolds

THE LORDS OF HELSTONE
Josh Reynolds

THE BRIDGE OF SEVEN SORROWS
Josh Reynolds

WAR-CLAW
Josh Reynolds

SHADESPIRE: THE DARKNESS IN THE GLASS
Various authors

THE IMPRECATIONS OF DAEMONS
Nick Kyme

THE PALACE OF MEMORY AND OTHER STORIES
Various authors

SONS OF BEHEMAT
Graeme Lyon

HEIRS OF GRIMNIR
David Guymer

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer

Map

KNIGHT ERRANT

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

KNIGHT OF THE REALM

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Epilogue

REST ETERNAL

QUESTING KNIGHT

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

GRAIL KNIGHT

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

Epilogue

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Gotrek & Felix: The First Omnibus’

A Black Library Publication

This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

In the west of the Old World lies Bretonnia, a fabled land of magic and chivalry. It is also a land of honour and virtue, where noble knights of the realm keep their domains safe as their peasants till the fields, where knights errant strive to win their spurs in battle and where questing knights venture in search of the most holy of artefacts – the grail. For it is said to sup from this most holy chalice a knight will become more than just a hero, he will become a saint.

Upon his throne in the city of Couronne sits King Louen Leoncoeur, just ruler of Bretonnia and its greatest champion. By the will of the Lady of the Lake, beneficent deity of all Bretonnia, by lance and sword, are the lands of the king kept safe from greenskins and the mutant beastmen of the darkling forests, from malicious daemons and the walking dead.

As the time of battle draws ever nearer, Bretonnia will need its heroes like never before.

KNIGHT ERRANT

PROLOGUE

A clamour of rooks erupted from the branches, filling the air with raucous cries. Unnerved, the destrier tossed its head, snorting.

The knight calmed the warhorse with a word and guided it deeper into the forest. Twigs like talons scratched against his heavy plate armour, and an icy breeze made the skeletal limbs of the trees shiver.

A second horse whinnied, stamping its hooves. The knight turned in the saddle to regard his hooded companion. With a sharp jerk on the reins, the man brought his steed back under control.

‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ the hooded figure breathed.

Without a word, the knight turned and continued on. He cast his eyes heavenward, peering through the thick mass of branches overhead. Darkness was falling swiftly, and the first stars could be seen flickering in the deepening colour of the sky. There were scuffling noises in the undergrowth from unseen creatures, and a fox, startled, turned its sharp features towards the knight. It froze for a moment, its nose twitching, before it disappeared into a thick tangle of brambles. Wolves howled in the distance as, somewhere, a new hunt began.

The eyes of small, scurrying creatures glinted in the dim light as the riders guided their horses ever deeper into the forest. This was not a place where men were common, and the trees groaned and creaked as they leant over these intruders into their ancient realm. The knight stared resolutely forward, one gauntleted hand resting upon the pommel of his sword.

As the last colour in the obscured sky succumbed to darkness, the pair entered a small clearing. The rotting, swollen bole of a tree lay uprooted on the soil, exposed roots hanging heavy with dirt. The fallen tree had created a small glade, and an abundance of new plant life strained up towards the gap in the canopy.

‘This should be far enough, my lord,’ said the hooded figure, eyeing their back trail, ensuring that they had not been followed.

The knight nodded curtly, and lowered his armoured weight from the saddle. He crushed a tiny sapling underfoot as he stepped down onto the wet earth. The plaintive cry of a newborn came from the swaddled shape bundled against his breastplate.

His face grim, the knight stepped towards the bole of the fallen tree. Its bark was rotten, and clusters of mushrooms clung to its moist sides like limpets. Insects rustled through the rotting leaf-litter, and worms writhed in the rich soil.

As his hooded companion looked on from horseback, the knight unhooked the sling from around his shoulder and lifted the newborn away from his chest. His expression hard, he placed the swaddled babe upon the ground before the fallen tree. It was tightly wrapped in linen, its round face all that was exposed to the chill air.

In one swift motion, he drew his sword.

The newborn cried out once more, and the knight closed his eyes tightly against the sound.

‘Lady, give me strength,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse and strained. He lifted his sword before him, gripping the hilt with both hands, and placed a kiss against the cold metal blade.

Reversing his grip, he stepped towards the newborn. Holding the sword downwards like a dagger, he placed the tip of the blade against the babe’s swaddled breast. His armoured fingers flexed on the hilt, and he looked down into the face of his son.

The babe gurgled up at him, and he felt his heart wrench. Steeling himself, he lifted the blade up, ready to plunge it down in the killing blow. There the sword hung poised, trembling slightly. A tear ran down the knight’s cheek, and he clenched his teeth.

‘Do it,’ urged his hooded companion.

With a violent surge, the knight plunged the blade down.

He sank to his knees, shoulders slumped. The sword was embedded deep in the earth, the babe unharmed.

‘My lord, you must finish it,’ snapped his hooded companion. ‘It must die, you know this.’

Opening his eyes, the knight looked into the angelic face of his child.

‘No,’ said the knight forcefully.

‘But…’ began his companion, but the knight turned and silenced him with a glare.

‘Forgive me, lady,’ the knight whispered, standing and pulling his sword from the ground.

All semblance of purity was sloughed off as the babe’s face twisted into a sudden snarl. Its lips parted, exposing an array of tiny, barbed teeth, and it hissed up at its father like a feral wolf cub.

The knight turned away from the newborn, full of revulsion. Walking to his warhorse, he remounted. Without a backward glance, he rode away, his hooded companion behind him.

In the darkness of the trees, hateful eyes watched the departing figures. Only when they were long gone, leaving just a lingering scent on the air, did the eyes flick towards the tiny, abandoned newborn.

Then the beasts of the forests crept from the darkness and moved towards the infant.

CHAPTER ONE

Chlod blinked the sleep out of his eyes and sat up. He was beneath a rotting wagon, his companions sprawled around him, clustered together for warmth under the damp blanket they shared.

He looked around the small clearing, seeing it in daylight for the first time, for they had hauled the wagon here the previous evening. A low fog hugged the ground, and long stems of grass glistened with the heavy morning dew.

Chlod grinned as he pulled a small, squirming shape from within a deep pocket. Lifting it to his misshapen face, he smiled as the whiskers of the scrawny black rat twitched in the cold air.

Producing a small piece of stale biscuit from his pocket, Chlod took a bite before offering the crumbling remains to the rat. It eagerly grabbed the food in its paws, and began gnawing at it frantically. Chlod grinned again.

‘You feeding that damn rat again?’ said a muffled voice from beneath the blanket.

Chlod held the half-starved creature protectively to his chest.

‘He’s mine,’ he grunted, too loudly. ‘There is enough food.’

Muffled protests came from under the blankets as Chlod’s harsh voice disturbed the others’ slumber.

He made a face in the direction of the voices, and turned his attention back to the rat. It had finished its meal and its head was lifted high, nose twitching as it sought more sustenance, making Chlod grin once again. He twitched his own nose in imitation, puckering his lips and showing his crooked, yellow teeth. He extended one stubby, dirty finger to the animal, and it gripped his short-bitten nail, sniffing. Finding nothing edible, it wriggled free of Chlod’s grasp and leapt from his hands. He frowned, and snatched at it, but it was quick, and burrowed beneath the dank blanket. Chlod’s pink, slug-like tongue emerged from the corner of his mouth as he struggled to grab it.

There was an irritated groan at the sudden movement, and an elbow jabbed into Chlod’s ribs, making him scowl darkly. He balled his thick sausage-fingers into a fist and thudded a punch into the shape beside him in retaliation, which was met with more protests from the others as they woke. They shifted their positions, and pulled the blankets tightly around them against the cold.

Having regained his hold on the rat, Chlod shoved it roughly back into the deep pocket on his stained tunic front, and crawled awkwardly out from the tangle of bodies. Curses and groans emerged from under the blanket as he made his ungainly progress out from beneath the rotting wagon.

Blinking against the dull pre-dawn light, Chlod blew out a long breath that fogged the air in front of his face. He shoved a hand down the front of his patchwork trousers and scratched at the lice in his nether regions.

He stamped his feet against the icy cold. A thick mist surrounded him on all sides, so that he could see barely ten yards. Ghost-like trees loomed like wraiths through the wet fog, and Chlod limped over to check on Beatrice.

‘How are you this fine morning, my beauty?’ he grunted as he approached Beatrice. She lifted her heavy head in response, her beady eyes fixing on the approaching peasant. Seeing nothing that interested her, her head slumped back down into the wet earth.

Chlod bent down and scratched her between the ears. She endured his attention, studiously ignoring him. The swine wore the peasant group’s best blanket over her back, and Chlod gave her one final, solid pat before rising once more.

He limped towards the still-smouldering fire pit, over which was spitted the remains of the previous night’s feast. Chlod’s belly was fuller than he could ever remember, and he patted it contentedly. Life was good, he decided.

He opened up the flap of his trousers and sighed contentedly as he emptied his bladder onto the smouldering ash. Steam rose from the thick yellow stream, and the fire pit hissed. Chlod hummed tunelessly and passed wind loudly.

He froze, the tune dying on his lips as he heard the jangle of a horse’s bit behind him. He spun around, his uneven eyes bulging in their sockets as he focused on a pair of knights sitting astride massive warhorses. He swallowed heavily, his heart lurching, as his eyes flicked from one to the other, like a cornered animal.

Fully armoured in gleaming plate, the knights stared down at him disdainfully. Neither wore helmets, and a flash of envy and awe overcame him as he saw that their youthful faces were free of disfigurement and their shoulder-length hair was free of tangles or burrs. One, the taller of the pair, had hair the colour of dried wheat; the other had hair as dark as pitch, and wore a serious, grim expression. Neither looked as though they had seen more than twenty winters.

Both wore brightly coloured shields upon their left arms, proudly displaying their heraldry and colours. The caparisons of their steeds also bore their heraldic colours, and each of the knights held a lance upright in their gauntleted right hands.

Chlod saw that there was someone else with the pair of knights, a hunched peasant with a squint, who was trying to hide behind the nobles. Chlod focused on the man, who lowered his head, pulling his hood down low under the scrutiny. Chlod’s eyes narrowed.

‘Nastor, you squint-eyed bastard,’ spat Chlod. ‘You sold us out.’

‘Silence,’ snapped the fair-haired knight, who was bedecked in black and red. His voice was cultured and noble, each word clearly enunciated, and far from the crude accents of the lower classes. ‘And make yourself presentable!’

Chlod glanced down and realised that his trousers were still undone. Hurriedly, he did himself up again.

The fair-haired knight nudged his steed, and the warhorse stepped obediently forward. Chlod flicked a glance towards the wagon where the remainder of the peasant band slumbered, unaware of the danger they were all in.

The knight moved his warhorse towards Chlod, and he instinctively edged backwards. The beast was massive, powerful muscles rippling up its legs and chest, and he flinched as it snorted loudly. He had never been so close to a noble mount, and he kept his arms stiffly at his side. For a lowborn to touch a knight’s warhorse unbidden was a punishable offence, and he wanted to keep his hands.

‘Lower your gaze, wretch,’ snarled the knight. Chlod dropped his eyes, feeling the hot breath of the immense horse on his face. ‘Lower,’ said the knight, and Chlod prostrated himself on the ground, pushing his face into the mud. This was the end, he thought.

The other knight then spoke, his voice loud enough to carry across the clearing.

‘I am Calard of Garamont,’ he said. ‘First born son and heir of Lutheure of Garamont, Castellan of Bastonne.’

Chlod pushed his face deeper into the mud.

‘And you peasants are trespassing on Garamont land.’

Calard’s face was dark as he surveyed the effect of his words. Panicked voices rose from beneath the rotting wagon, accompanied by frantic scrabbling. A dull wooden thump was followed by a curse, as one of the peasants sat up too quickly and struck his head. A putrid, dank blanket was thrown aside, and Calard’s nose wrinkled in disgust as he watched the wretched peasant outlaws begin to crawl out from beneath their crude shelter, their eyes wide with fear.

His brother, Bertelis, gave a snort of disbelief.

‘By the Lady, look at the number of them,’ he said, ‘huddled together under there like vermin.’

Calard had to agree with his half-brother. The peasants must have been practically sleeping on top of each other to have all sheltered beneath the wagon. They stood up, glancing nervously at each other, scratching themselves.

They truly were a pathetic-looking bunch of individuals. Encrusted with filth, they were uniformly scrawny, malformed and wretched. Several had pronounced limps and twisted legs, while others had grotesque protruding foreheads, lazy eyes, and teeth that stuck out at all angles from lips blackened with dirt. As far as Calard could make out, at least one of their number was a woman, though she was no less filthy than the others. The peasants squinted around them with slack-jawed nervousness.

Calard’s gaze swept around the makeshift encampment, and fell on the blackened, skeletal carcass spitted over the fire-pit. It was clearly the remains of a young deer, which it was illegal for a peasant to hunt and kill, let alone eat. He sighed, and turned back towards the peasant rabble.

‘You are illegally encamped on Garamont lands, and are accused of poaching Castellan Garamont’s stock. The proof of this claim is there in front of me. More than this, you are accused of avoiding taxes levied by the Marquis Carlemont, a vassal of Lord Garamont. It is also claimed that one of your number killed a yeoman of the marquis in cold blood and stole his truffle swine. As such, you are outlawed, and will be accompanied to Castle Garamont, where you will face the penalty for such crimes.’

Several of the peasants broke into tears at the pronouncement, while others dropped to their knees. They all knew that the pronouncement was as good as a death sentence. Shouts of protest and despair erupted from coarse throats. A scuffle erupted, and two of the peasants fell on another, grabbing him forcefully.

‘It was Benno, here, milord what done the yeoman in! It was him! We done nothin’!’

Bertelis, who had circled around behind the wagon, gave a derisive snort, and answered before Calard could respond.

‘Did he force you to flee the service of your lord? Did he force you to poach, and eat of Lord Garamont’s venison? No, I think not. You will all hang.’

‘Have mercy, young lords!’ one of the peasants cried, before collapsing, sobbing, into the mud.

‘Warden! Take them into your custody,’ Calard ordered.

A small regiment of peasant men-at-arms walked out of the mist, carrying tall shields painted in the red and yellow of the Castellan of Garamont, his father. They carried simple staves, topped with curved blades and hooks. One of them held an old sword proudly in his hand, and nodded his head at the young knight’s command. The men-at-arms began trudging towards the peasants. Lowborn themselves, the men-at-arms were only a little less pathetic in appearance than the outlaws. They were peasants too, after all, thought Calard.

‘You there!’ shouted Bertelis, seeing movement beneath the wagon. His warhorse snorted and stamped its hooves, sensing the tension in its young rider. ‘Come out now!’

Calard stood in the stirrups, trying to see what was happening. There was a flash of movement, and Bertelis’s steed reared. A sharp crack resounded as the flailing hooves connected, and a body fell heavily to the ground. Shouting erupted anew from the peasants, and they broke into movement.

‘Hold!’ shouted Calard, his young voice full of authority. ‘Any man that runs will be assumed guilty and cut down! Warden! Take them!’

The men-at-arms tried to restore order, pushing several of the peasants roughly to their knees with the butts of their polearms.

‘They’ve killed Odulf!’ shouted one filthy man, who had clumps of hair missing from his head. He slammed his fist into the face of one of the Garamont soldiers, and Calard cursed. Others cried out, either in protest or fear, and Calard could hear Bertelis swearing.

‘Stupid whoreson!’ shouted Bertelis. ‘The vermin came at me!’ His voice sounded incredulous.

A peasant outlaw grabbed one of the men-at-arms’ weapons, struggling against him. At a barked order from their warden, the other soldiers began laying about them with impunity, knocking peasants down into the mud with fierce blows. Calard swore again, and muscled his massive warhorse into the fray. He slammed the butt of his lance onto the head of one struggling peasant, and the man collapsed unconscious into the mud. Benno, the man accused by his comrades of murdering the yeoman, broke free of the restraining grip on him and bolted for the trees.

Kicking his spurs into the side of his horse, Calard broke free of the scuffle in pursuit, forcing men to leap out of his way, lest they be trampled. Hooves pounded up the muddy ground as he closed quickly on Benno. Calard thundered past him and pulled his steed sharply into his path. Benno, breathing hard, halted, eyeing the knight warily, and holding his hands up in front of him.

‘I warned you not to run,’ Calard said, glowering with outrage, ‘but I wish to see no more blood spilt here today. Get back with the others before I change my mind,’ Calard said, indicating sharply with his beardless chin. The man’s shoulders slumped, and he turned back to where the men-at-arms were finally restoring order.

A flicker of movement attracted Calard’s attention, and he saw a roughly clothed shape clamber atop the rotting wagon, a bow in his hands.

‘’Ware the wagon!’ he shouted, even as the man drew back the bowstring, an arrow nocked. Calard could not believe what he was seeing; for a peasant to draw arms against a noble or one of his retainers was almost beyond comprehension.

Calard kicked his horse forward, shouting. The bowman spun around at Calard’s cry, his bow swinging in the young knight’s direction, and loosed his arrow.

It slammed into Calard’s shoulder, and he reeled in his saddle. It felt like he had been kicked by a stallion, but he did not fall. He felt no pain, merely the shock of the impact, and he looked down incredulously at the shaft of the arrow protruding from the hole it had punched in his armour.

The bowman lowered his weapon, his mouth gaping wide as he registered the foolish, hasty act that had certainly doomed him. There was a shout of outrage and disbelief from Bertelis and the men-at-arms. The bowman half-jumped, half-fell from his position on the wagon, and began racing away towards the mist shrouded trees, panic lending him speed.

Chlod lifted his face out of the mud, and his eyes widened as he saw the arrow protruding from the knight’s shoulder. They had done it now. A peasant attacking a knight! Now, they were certain to hang.

Slowly, so as not to draw attention to himself, he began to crawl away through the wet earth, elbow over elbow. He glanced behind him, expecting someone to see him escaping at any moment, and shout out.

Once at a distance he judged safe, he rose to his feet and began running low, as fast as his clubfoot would allow him, loping off into the trees, his heart pounding.

He shoved a hand into the deep pocket on his jerkin, hoping that he had not crushed his rat. It bit him hard, and he jerked his hand back out, wincing.

With a final glance behind him, Chlod disappeared into the mist.

Calard touched a hand to the arrow, still in shock at the peasant’s action. Bertelis pounded across the ground, quickly closing the gap with the fleeing bowman, his lance lowering expertly before him. Several men-at-arms also broke into a run in pursuit of the fleeing man. The lance took the peasant in the lower back, punching through his body, and he fell with a cry. Bertelis rode past him and pulled his steed around sharply.

The man’s piteous cries were ended as the men-at-arms reached him and slammed their polearms down onto his head, smashing his skull.

‘My lord, are you hurt?’ asked a voice at Calard’s side. He looked down into the concerned, coarse face of the warden at his side.

‘I have an arrow in my shoulder, Guido,’ he said dryly. The man reddened, but Calard waved him away. ‘I’m fine.’

Swinging his shield over his back, he gripped the shaft of the arrow tightly. It had punched under his pauldron, breaking several of the chainmail links beneath, before sinking into the thick padding he wore beneath his armour, though it had not reached his skin. Thankfully, the shot had been taken in haste; a fully-drawn Bretonnian longbow fired at such close range could easily have killed him. He pulled the arrow free, tossing it to the ground.

The other peasants had ceased their struggles, and knelt compliantly in the mud while the men-at-arms stood over them grimly. Several of them were whimpering, and all looked blankly around, their faces pale, shocked by the actions of their comrade.

Bertelis, his face thunderous, rode back to the peasants, his steed stamping and snorting. He reversed the grip on his lance, and thrust its point forcefully into the ground before sliding from the saddle. He drew his sword from its scabbard with a metallic hiss, and advanced on the closest of the kneeling peasants, who stared up at him in numb horror. The men-at-arms flicked glances between them, but none of them would dare to step in the path of the enraged young noble.

‘Brother,’ said Calard, a warning tone in his voice. The younger man ignored him, striding purposefully towards the group of peasants, the sword held firmly in his hand.

‘Bertelis!’ he said more forcefully, finally giving his brother pause. The younger knight swung his head towards Calard, his wavy fair hair flicking. ‘Hold your arm. I will not see these people killed in cold blood.’

Bertelis gaped at Calard in bewildered astonishment, as if he had suddenly sprouted horns.

‘Brother,’ he gasped, ‘you have been struck by a cowardly arrow fired by one of their number, you, a noble son of Bastonne! An example must be made of these wretches.’

‘Just punishment has been meted out to the offender. Sheath your sword.’

‘But–’ began Bertelis.

‘Sheath your sword, brother,’ said Calard forcefully, cutting him off. Reluctantly, Bertelis did so. He stormed away from the peasants, glaring at Calard, and remounted. He pulled his lance free from the earth.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, his scowl fading. ‘My heart skipped a beat when I saw the peasant loose that shaft.’

‘It is nothing,’ replied Calard. ‘It didn’t even scratch the skin.’ He smiled broadly and shook his head, exhaling slowly. The years slipped away as his strong face relaxed, and, for the first time that morning, he looked his twenty-one years of age. ‘The Lady was looking over me. I thought Morr was going to claim me, for a moment.’

Bertelis grinned back at him, his dark mood forgotten.

‘He wouldn’t want you. Too ugly by far.’

Calard snorted, and turned towards the peasant men-at-arms, a serious expression falling across his face like a mask.

‘Warden,’ he said, ‘we are done here. My brother and I will return to Castle Garamont.’

The peasant touched the brim of his helmet respectfully. ‘I will bind ’em, lord, just in case any of ’em try to make a run for it.’

‘Do as you must,’ Calard replied, waving a hand dismissively. He turned his steed away, his heart still racing.

A wretched, squinting peasant stood before him, clutching a cloth cap in his hands. It was the man who had guided Calard to the outlaws. He was a weasel, but at least he knew his place. The young knight raised an eyebrow.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Young lord,’ the peasant began, ‘since I led you here faithfully, I was hoping that, if it is not too much of an inconvenience, that perhaps I could… My family is poor, lord, and I have no food for my little ones. That is to say, I…’

The greed of the lower classes was without bounds, thought Calard. They tilled the lands of their lord faithfully, and in return were allowed to keep up to a tenth-share of their produce, and were protected from harm.

‘You will be recompensed for this duty, peasant,’ Calard cut in.

The man dropped to his knees in the mud, bowing and scraping.

‘You are too kind, young master,’ said the peasant, though Calard found it almost impossible to understand his words, spoken out of the side of the mouth and thickly accented.

‘Warden,’ said Calard, ‘see that this man is recompensed. I think a half-copper would be more than generous.’

‘Far more than generous,’ said Bertelis darkly.

‘Thank you, lord! Thank you,’ said the peasant, lowering his head to the ground once again.

‘I am sorry to detain you, my lord,’ said the warden, ‘but the truffle swine? Shall I have it returned to the marquis?’

‘Have it given to this man here,’ said Calard, feeling generous, ‘in lieu of his payment. If that suits you, peasant?’

‘Oh yes, lord! You are most generous indeed!’ said the kneeling man.

‘Fine. See it done,’ said the young knight, before wheeling his horse around and exchanging a glance with Bertelis.

‘Come now Gringolet,’ he whispered, leaning forward in the saddle and patting his steed’s dappled grey neck. ‘You can beat him this time.’

With one final grin towards his brother, he shouted and kicked his destrier into a gallop.

Giving their powerful steeds their heads, the pair of young knights raced through the mist-shrouded trees, rejoicing in the feeling of freedom and power. The icy wind pulled at their hair, and they urged their steeds on, faster.

They rode well, completely at ease in the saddle. Indeed, they had been placed in the saddle even before they had learnt to walk, and it was as natural to them as breathing, as if the horses were merely extensions of their own bodies. The brothers were evenly matched in horsemanship, and their steeds too were close in strength, power and endurance. Nevertheless, Bertelis’s chestnut steed was fierier in nature, and the tenacity of the beast would more often than not mean that he was the victor of their races.

Gringolet leapt a fallen stump, and Calard laughed out loud as he pulled briefly into the lead. He heard Bertelis urging his steed on, and he grinned. They pounded up the earth as they galloped towards the edge of the trees marking the northern extent of the grand forest of Chalons.

No steed of the Empire, nor of Estalia or Tilea, could match the strength and power of a pure-bred Bretonnian horse. None of them were the equal in sheer speed, and the Bretonnians were rightly proud of them. Protected in thick layers of plate barding beneath their flowing cloth caparisons, and carrying the weight of a fully armoured knight, the noble steeds could outpace any horse in the Old World.

Sighting the edge of the trees, Calard kicked Gringolet forward, riding hard. He flicked a glance sideways, and saw that Bertelis was alongside him, the two horses neck and neck. With a last burst of power, Bertelis pulled ahead, and he shouted in victory as they broke from the tree line.

Laughing, the pair reined their steeds in. Their warhorses were lathered in sweat, and their massive chests heaved in great gulps of air. Calard patted Gringolet’s neck fondly. He had raised the destrier from a foal, and he was a fine, strong and noble beast.

They were on a rise, overlooking verdant rolling hills of grassland. Sheep were clustered in fluffy white clumps across the hills, accompanied by hunched peasant shepherds, and the sun was just starting to break free of the clouds, making the whole region glow with early morning light.

A mess of small, rude hovels in the dip of a small valley marked a peasant settlement, and they could see dozens of dirty men and women shuffling about their duties. As far as they could see, from horizon to horizon, and beyond, was Garamont land, a fiefdom that had been in the family for nine generations, bequeathed from son to son. The Duke of Bastonne had gifted the land to Gundehar, the first lord of Garamont for acts of chivalry and honour on the field of battle.

Calard and Bertelis had grown up on the land, and they knew it as well as anybody could claim to. As boys, they had ridden and played from one end of their father’s lands to the other. It took almost a full day to ride from Castle Garamont to the eastern border of his lands and back, and as youngsters these lands had seemed impossibly vast and filled with adventure.

They would often purposefully lose their chaperones, much to the distress of those bidden to see them safe, and embark on quests and crusades against imaginary foes. How many fair damsels had been rescued from the maws of monstrous beasts, and evil knights bested in those childhood years? Certainly the number of punishments they suffered at the hands of the old chamberlain, Folcard, was legendary, as was the number of witless peasants who sported bruises and bumps when set upon by the wooden swords wielded by the pair.

Those days were long gone, however, and the lands of Garamont no longer seemed vast. The pair of young knights had insisted they would ride out to find the peasant outlaws, merely for something to do. Calard’s usual, serious expression fell back into place over his features as the thrill of the race wore off.

‘You know that the taxes levied on that peasant for becoming the owner of that hog will make him poorer than he is now,’ said Bertelis finally, breaking the silence.

‘I know, but he deserves no more. He’s a treacherous swine. He and the pig will be good together.’

Bertelis grinned in response. His skin was a healthy bronze from the sun, his body tall and strong from years of weapons practice and riding. His eyes were dark, his face lean and handsome, and his hair the colour of the sand that was said to lie upon the beaches on the coast. He looked every inch the epitome of Bretonnian knighthood.

‘Come, brother,’ said Calard. ‘Let us go home.’

CHAPTER TWO

The sun was shining brightly as the pair of knights rode towards Castle Garamont. Pennants flying, Castellan Lutheure’s colours whipped in the wind from atop the parapets. It was a fine, strong fortress, built in the time of the first ruler of Garamont, nine generations earlier. Constructed from locally-quarried pale stone, the castle glowed a warm rose colour in the rising, morning sun.

Perched atop a rocky bluff, the castle was the highest visible structure for miles around. The location of the fortress had been carefully chosen, both for its defensive value and for the dominating aspect it held over the surrounding countryside. The approach from the south was gently sloping, though the northern side of the castle dropped away sharply, falling hundreds of feet down to the sprawling village of peasant hovels clustered in the shadows beneath it. To those lowborn and living within the squalid abodes, the castle looming over them was an ever-present reminder of the strength and power of the lord of Garamont.

The walls of the castle were tall and thick, and scores of men-at-arms stood sentry upon the battlements, day and night. Seven tall towers were interspersed along the crenellated walls, three of them topped by sharply tapered spires. An eighth tower, grimly dubbed Morr’s Rest, had been part of the original construction, but its upper section had collapsed some five generations past. Though the repair of the tower had been started on separate occasions by two successive lords of Garamont, fatal accidents among the work crews had postponed the work indefinitely, and now it was part of the local superstitions of those too simple to know better. The fact that for five generations the ruined tower had been the roost of countless ravens merely added to the superstitions, and it was perhaps for these creatures that the tower was named.

The powerful gatehouse that led into the castle faced to the south, looking out towards the Forest of Chalons in the distance, and it was from this direction that Calard and Bertelis approached. Peasant militiamen doffed their caps and iron-rimmed helmets as the young nobles cantered past, ignoring them. Other peasants, bearing goods and produce on their hunched backs, scurried off the muddy roadway leading to the castle, bobbing their heads respectfully. Mangy dogs, emaciated and gaunt, trotted behind them, sniffing around the cuts of meat that were being delivered to the castle kitchens.

The brothers cantered across the thick wooden drawbridge spanning the deep ditch below. At the base of the ditch was a muddy mire of reeds, and pools of stagnant water. A decade earlier, Calard and Bertelis had played there, catching tadpoles and frogs, ambushing and challenging startled wayfarers attempting to cross the bridge and enter the castle.

Cantering beneath the mighty portcullis, they passed through the arched gateway and into the dimly-lit passage leading through the gatehouse. Murder holes and arrow slits eyed their progress. The gatehouse was probably the most defensible part of the castle, and it doubled as the barracks for those peasants given the honour of becoming Garamont’s men-at-arms.

Passing back into the light on the far side of the gatehouse, the knights errant angled their steeds across the muddy expanse towards the stables. The area was teeming with activity, hundreds of peasants rubbing shoulders with each other, and bustling about with livestock and carts piled high with freshly harvested crops. The air was filled with their crude shouts, mixing with the din of braying animals. The stink of the peasants and the animals was strong.

Men caked in mud and other more offensive substances pulled their donkeys and bovine charges out of the way of the young knights. Dirty children laughed and chased a group of piglets through the crowd, followed by a red-faced man who was swearing loudly. He apologised profusely when he saw Calard and his brother, bowing his head, before resuming the chase.

‘I loathe harvest-tide,’ said Bertelis, his noble face twisted in a grimace as the sounds and smells of the unwashed peasants surged over them. ‘Get out of the way, peasants!’ he shouted impatiently.

The pair entered the stables, and young stable hands rushed to take their reins. The lads were peasant-born, but their faces were at least marginally cleaner than those outside, and their backs were straight; only the best were chosen to tend to the horses of Garamont. The knights handed their lances to waiting servants and dismounted. Before the armoured horses were led away, Calard removed his right gauntlet and walked around the back of Gringolet, running his hand down the destrier’s right, hind leg. The horse obediently lifted the long limb, and Calard poked at its hoof.

‘Have the farrier come up and see to this shoe,’ he ordered, stepping away from the horse. One of the peasants nodded his head in response and sent a stable boy running out to the blacksmith’s with a curt command.

Calard found Bertelis smiling slightly when he turned around.

‘What?’ he asked. Bertelis shook his head.

‘You, dirtying your own hands. That’s what these are for,’ he said, indicating the stable hands with a wave. Calard slapped his brother across the shoulders.

‘A knight of Bretonnia must know how to take care of his steed,’ he said.

‘I know how to take care of a horse: tell a peasant to do it,’ countered Bertelis.

Calard’s face was serious as they stepped back into the sunshine, and looked up at the high walls of the eight-sided keep that functioned as the family living quarters.

‘Come. We must see how father fares.’

Lord Lutheure of Garamont, Castellan of Bastonne, coughed heavily. Fluid rattled deep in his chest, and his whole frame was rocked by the hacking cough, his expression pained. A serving maid held a silk handkerchief to his lips, and when it was removed there were flecks of blood upon it.

‘You should be in bed,’ scolded Lady Calisse gently, placing her hand upon her husband’s shoulders. ‘The drafts down here do you no good.’

Lutheure pushed away his breakfast plates, his meal unfinished. Hovering servants instantly cleared them away.

‘I am the lord of Garamont. I will not huddle under the covers in my bedchambers during the daylight hours being spoon-fed by servants,’ he said darkly.

His wife sat quietly, her delicate hands folded on her lap, but he could feel her eyes boring into him. A pretty young serving girl entered the room bearing a steaming goblet upon a silver tray, and Lutheure winced as an acrid, foul stench reached his nostrils.

Without a word, she placed the tray upon the table.

‘Thank you, Annabelle,’ said Lady Garamont, and the girl curtseyed in response before making her exit.

Lady Calisse stared at Lutheure frankly for a moment, her face immaculate and pale. She was a handsome woman, despite her years. ‘Drink your remedy,’ she said finally.

Lutheure sighed, eyeing the goblet with distaste and resignation. Under the stern, watchful gaze of his wife, he lifted it, staring at the swirling cluster of bark, herbs, and the Lady knew what else, within the muddy, stinking concoction. His wife raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow, and Lutheure sighed. He raised the goblet to his lips and gulped down a mouthful of the foul brew.

He choked it down, his eyes watering.

‘She is a good servant, that one,’ said Lady Calisse, rising from her plush seat.

‘Aye, a fine gift she was,’ said Lutheure. The girl had entered his service the previous summer, a gift from one of his vassals, the ageing Lord Carlemont.

‘If you will not rest, just promise me that you will do nothing to exert yourself today,’ said Lady Calisse.

‘For you, anything, my love,’ said Lutheure, closing his eyes in contentment as his wife began to toy with his hair.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and planted a kiss upon his sunken cheek.

Goblet in hand, Lutheure got up from the table and moved to the window. The last six months had seen a dramatic change in the castellan. Though he was still tall and broad shouldered, the sickness had robbed him of his muscle. His barrel chest had been reduced to a frail cage of ribs, and his arms and legs, once so strong from years of riding, sword practice and war, were wasted and thin.

It was in his face, however, that the most dramatic transformation had taken place. It was as if he had aged two decades in the space of two seasons. Last summer his face had been strong, broad and noble, and, though he was in his middling years, he had radiated a powerful aura of strength, virility and command. Now his face was pale, and his eyes flashed with a feverish light. His fair hair was streaked with silver, as was the long moustache that hung down past gaunt cheeks. His cheeks were sunken, his cheekbones protruding sharply, and his eyes were set deep in hollow sockets.

He knew how he looked, but steadfastly refused to accept his deteriorating health. To please his wife, he had allowed himself to be poked, prodded and bled by a stuttering chirurgeon with a strange penchant for leeches, after the rotund priestess of Shallya had thrown up her hands, unable to determine the cause of the sickness. The chirurgeon had consulted with the castle’s apothecary, and, together, they had concocted the foul remedy that he was to drink twice daily, morning and night. Nevertheless, his health continued to decline, much to the grief of his family and his loyal knights.

Lutheure stared out through the tall, north facing, arched window, revelling in the feeling of warmth as the sun touched his lined skin. For a moment, he felt like his old self, but a hacking cough suddenly rose in his chest, and he winced as he clutched his chest, the pain fierce. His wife’s cool hands took the goblet from him lest he spill it, and she looked up at him with eyes full of concern.

‘I’m fine,’ he wheezed, giving her a weak smile.

The doors to the private dining chamber were slammed open, and Lutheure turned to see his sons enter the room, the tall, smiling Bertelis in the lead.

‘Breakfast!’ declared the young, sandy-haired knight, sending servants scuttling out of the room.

Lady Calisse moved across the room, her long flowing dress trailing behind her.

‘My son,’ she said warmly. She drew him down to her height and kissed him on each cheek. Calard stood somewhat stiffly behind.

‘Mother,’ said Bertelis, before extricating himself from her grasp and moving to his father. He dropped to one knee before the lord of Garamont, bowing his head low. Lutheure smiled warmly at his son, who was the spitting image of himself, some twenty-five years earlier, and lifted him to his feet, a hand on each of his thickly armoured shoulders.

Calard bowed to Lady Calisse, who studiously ignored him, and the young knight moved to his father. He too lowered himself to one knee, and bowed his head. Lutheure slapped Bertelis on the shoulder, sending him towards the table as servants entered bearing fresh bread and wine. Lutheure turned to regard his firstborn son and heir, his eyes hardening.

‘Did you find them?’ he asked.

‘We did, my lord,’ said Calard, rising to his feet and standing to attention, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword. ‘They resisted, and two were killed before order was restored. The remainder are being led here for trial.’

Lutheure nodded his head, and turned away from his dark-haired son. Calard bowed again, and moved to join his brother at the table. Lutheure took his seat at the head of the table. His wife sat opposite him, doting on Bertelis, who was digging into the food with gusto.

Calard took his place opposite his brother, and broke a loaf in two. More food was brought in, game birds and venison, delivered by the pretty serving girl, Annabelle. She blushed as Bertelis gave her a solicitous wink. The young knight’s eyes followed the retreating figure of the girl as he sipped from his wine goblet, and Lutheure chuckled. Another serving girl deflowered by the lad, he thought.

‘How are you faring this day, my lord?’ asked Calard stiffly.

‘I am well,’ he replied, barely registering the question. ‘Bertelis,’ he said, smiling at his other son, ‘Gunthar tells me that you could be the best he has ever taught, if you dedicated yourself more to your training. You are missing too many of his classes.’

Bertelis sighed. ‘I would make more of an effort to attend the old man’s classes if he could make them more interesting, father,’ he said.

‘Old man,’ scoffed Lutheure. ‘Watch your tongue, Gunthar is not much older than I am.’

‘Calard is more suited to his classes than I, anyway’ said Bertelis. ‘He has a mind like a sponge. He learns much faster than I, and is far more dedicated.’

‘I have to train hard. I have not your natural talent,’ said Calard humbly.

‘Nonsense. You are clearly the better swordsman, though I am certainly far superior in the saddle,’ said Bertelis, flashing a smile at his brother.

‘And it is in the saddle where a knight is rightly judged,’ said Lutheure.

That night, as the castle slept, Calard dreamt. He had fallen asleep quickly, his body exhausted after spending much of the day in the saddle, practising his jousting technique under the watchful gaze of the weapon master, Gunthar. Time and again, he had kicked Gringolet into a gallop and struck the stationary training target, bracing himself for the impact as his lance-tip made contact. The heavy wooden target would teeter and fall to the ground only against the finest of knocks, whereupon peasant servants would scramble to right it, ready for his next pass.

For hour after hour he had charged the heavy target, until his shoulder and arm were bruised a dark purple from the lance. Over and over, he heard his father’s words as he slept.

And it is in the saddle where a knight is rightly judged.

In his dream, he was astride his powerful destrier once more, charging the practice target. He struck his lance against it, but it was as unyielding as stone, and his arm was jarred as his lance shattered against it. He turned his steed, another lance having appeared in his hands, and charged again. As he closed on the wooden target, he saw it change shape, turning into a towering, dark figure with massive horns curling from its shadowy head.

He struck a mighty blow, but again it was like striking stone, and his lance splintered and broke. The monstrous dark creature turned towards him, and he threw the broken lance to the ground in desperation, drawing his sword. As his hands closed on the hilt, however, his blade changed into a hissing serpent that turned and struck towards his face, fangs bared in its overextended mouth.

He felt the prick of its teeth against his cheek and cried out, pulling his head away sharply. Instantly, the snake was gone, and there was nothing in his hand but his sword.

His surroundings had changed again, and a child walked through the mist that now surrounded him.

‘Who goes there?’ he shouted, his voice muffled by the sudden fog.

He gasped as he made out the face of the child. He had not dreamt of his sister for many years, though she was often in his thoughts. As dark-haired as him, they had been inseparable as children, and it was as a child that she appeared to him now, for that is how he remembered her, before she was taken.

His twin looked at him with deep, soulful eyes that spoke of mysteries and secrets. She looked at him sadly, and he wanted to go to comfort her, but then she turned away. She began to fade, and he found that he could see through her body, as if she were as insubstantial as a spirit. He cried out, but in an instant she was gone, swallowed by the mist. He tried to follow her, kicking Gringolet forwards, and they plunged blindly into the fog. He found his way barred by branches and twigs that snagged at him, scratching his face, and he hacked wildly at them with his sword.

He heard a roar, a deep rumbling bestial sound that filled his ears and made his head spin with its power. Then something struck him solidly across the chest, and he was thrown from the saddle. He hit the ground hard, and came awake instantly, his heart pounding, and his bedclothes saturated with sweat.

Calard gritted his teeth as he attacked, his blade swinging in hard towards his opponent’s head. It was parried with ease, as he had expected, and he swiftly whipped a second attack lower, into the body. His blade was knocked aside, and he took the return blow on his shield. His riposte was quick and strong as he saw an opening, forcing the weapon master back a step.

‘Good,’ said Gunthar, putting up his sword. The ageing knight’s skill with blade and lance was unparalleled in all of Garamont, indeed, in all of eastern Bastonne.

The weapon master was armoured in simple, old-fashioned, functional armour. It was battered and dull with age, though it was meticulously cared for, and was as strong as it had ever been. Still, it looked ancient to Calard’s eyes, a relic from a time long past. Fashion changed quickly in Bretonnia, and he and his brother wore gleaming fluted armour.

‘Now you,’ said Gunthar, nodding his head towards Bertelis, who was reclining on a nearby bench. Bertelis lifted himself languidly to his feet, a bored look on his face, and drew his own blade.

The sandy-haired youth rolled his armoured shoulders, and advanced on the weapon master, who stood waiting for him. Calard moved to the side to watch.

The training session was taking place on one of the many terraces on the north face of the Garamont keep. It was ringed in low shrubs, and the sun was shining on them weakly.

He had spoken the truth the previous morning. Bertelis was more talented than him, as he was in most of their physical contests. He was taller and swifter, and he had a relaxed suppleness to his movements that Calard would never be able to emulate.

Gunthar and Bertelis raised their blades up to the sky in honour to the Lady, the protective goddess of Bretonnia. Then they bent their arms, bringing their swords down before their faces, and kissed the flats of the blades. Then, in one swift movement, they sliced the air before them, completing their salute, and took up a ready stance.

Calard watched with open admiration as his brother began to trade blows with Gunthar, his every movement balanced, poised and controlled. If he applied himself fully, Calard was of no doubt that Bertelis would become one of the finest swordsmen in Bastonne. He himself was good with the blade, better than Bertelis, but he had to work hard at it, and he found it both galling and irritating that his brother took to it with so little effort.

Nevertheless, as he watched his brother and the weapon master begin to spar, he could see that his brother’s technique had room for improvement. He relied on his natural ability too much, and though this alone made him superior to most, he would be undone against a more talented opponent, and he would certainly lose against a knight of similar ability who had a more rigorous attitude to his training.

Bertelis sliced left and right with powerful, swift blows, but Gunthar turned them aside with barely any effort. Getting frustrated, Bertelis began to attack more wildly, putting more strength than necessary into his attacks. He feinted high and whipped his sword down to strike low, but his effort was deftly turned aside, and he found himself with the weapon master’s blade at his throat.

Bertelis threw his sword down in frustration and disgust.

‘I’m not getting anywhere with this,’ he said. ‘Give me a horse and a lance any day. I am just more suited to them!’

‘No, you are not,’ said Gunthar evenly. ‘You are as gifted a swordsman as I have seen. How many hours have you spent practising your jousting technique this past week?’

Bertelis shrugged in response.

‘Take a guess,’ said Gunthar.

‘Maybe two hours a day?’

‘And with the sword?’

‘You know the answer,’ said Bertelis.

‘I do,’ agreed Gunthar. ‘An hour, perhaps, over the last week.’

‘A knight’s place is in the saddle! Why must I practise fighting on foot like a peasant? I do not plan on trudging through the mud to war like a commoner.’

‘A knight does not always have the luxury of choosing the circumstances he fights in. What happens if your horse is slain beneath you?’

Bertelis rolled his eyes in response. ‘I’ll get a new horse!’ he shot back, making Calard smirk.

‘What if the battle takes place upon a muddy mire, and your lord orders you to fight on foot?”

‘Then my lord would be a damn fool for choosing such a ridiculous battlefield!’ snapped Bertelis.

Gunthar stared at the young man with cold, humourless, grey eyes. His moustache twitched in irritation.

‘Pick up your sword,’ he ordered, his voice cold.

‘I am done with training today,’ said Bertelis arrogantly.

‘You are done with your training when I say you are done,’ growled the grizzled veteran.

‘I will not be ordered around like a servant,’ said Bertelis haughtily.

‘In my training area, I am lord and master,’ said Gunthar. ‘You may be the son of my lord castellan, but here you are nothing more than an arrogant, undisciplined child. Pick up your sword.’

‘I will not be spoken to like that,’ said Bertelis hotly, snatching up his blade once more.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ asked the weapon master. Calard saw Bertelis’s face darken.

With a snarl, Bertelis attacked, his blade a blur through the air. The clash of steel on steel rang out, and the pair moved around each other, blades flashing. They parried and blocked each other’s attacks, and Bertelis let his anger flow down his arm, powering each blow. He was clearly stronger than the ageing weapon master, and each of his blows was fuelled with rage, driving the older man back.

Bertelis overextended on one of his attacks, too eager to land a blow on the older knight, and he found himself off-balance. Gunthar stepped in close, slamming his shield into the taller youth. The young knight reeled backwards, losing his footing on the flagstones, and fell with a crash to the ground.

Gunthar sheathed his sword, and with a smile, offered his hand to Bertelis. With a dark look, Bertelis took the proffered hand, and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet.

‘Why did I win?’ asked the weapon master.

‘You are more skilled,’ Bertelis replied.

‘Yes, I am, but that is not why I won.’

‘You made him angry,’ said Calard. Gunthar nodded.

‘Exactly. I deliberately baited you, to explain this lesson.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Bertelis.

‘He made you angry,’ said Calard. ‘Your anger gave you strength, but it also made your attacks more wild, less controlled.’

‘A knight must always be in control of his actions,’ said the weapon master. ‘Once controlled, anger can be used to your benefit. It will give you strength, as Calard rightly points out, but if that anger is controlled, you do not lose your focus.’

Bertelis glowered, still angry. Gunthar smiled in response, and slapped the young knight on the shoulder.

‘It is not easy,’ he said, his voice softening. ‘It comes with age, and with practice. I was young too once, as impetuous and quick to anger as you.’

Bertelis grinned impishly, his foul mood evaporating.

‘I find it hard to imagine that you were ever a young man,’ he said. Gunthar snorted.

‘Now you are trying to make me angry. It’s not going to work.’

‘Are you never angry then, Gunthar?’

‘Of course I am, but I keep that anger controlled. I do not let it control me. Enough, today’s lesson is over. Now get away with you both.’

They heard a sudden blaring of horns, and Calard’s head shot up. He exchanged a look with Bertelis, and the pair were off and moving as one, racing from the training terrace, their armour clanking.

Gunthar chuckled, watching them go. On the cusp of manhood, they appeared so like the boys he had grown to love as his own at that moment, racing through the castle as they had done when they were children, terrorising the servants and disrupting the serene calm. The smile faded from his face.

They would not have the luxury of being boys for long, and they would have far harsher lessons to learn than he could teach.

Calard and Bertelis burst into their father’s audience chamber, slamming the door wide open before them. Folcard, the household’s fierce chamberlain, shot a look of dark reproach in their direction, and they instantly composed themselves. Standing tall and regal, they walked with stately calm to join him in awaiting the lord castellan.

Calard bristled with impatience. The grand double doors that were the main entrance into the audience chamber were sealed. The portal was guarded by a pair of men-at-arms, who stood motionless with their long pole arms crossed in front of the massive doors. They would not open until the lord of Garamont was seated in his tall throne carved of dark wood.

The seat had always fascinated Calard, and, as a child, he had occasionally sneaked into the room to test it, his legs dangling above the ground. It was a beautiful, ancient piece of furniture, its high back carved with miniature scenes that recreated the twelve great battles of the founder of Bretonnia, Gilles the Uniter. It was a source of pride that Gilles had been borne of Bastonne, just as his own family was, though his step-mother, Lady Calisse, held closer ties to his direct lineage than had Calard’s own mother. A feeling of melancholy descended on Calard as he looked at the throne, wondering how long it would be before he would sit there as the lord of Garamont. He knew he was not ready for such a heavy burden of responsibility, and he whispered a silent prayer to the Lady for his father’s good health.

Courtiers, advisors and knights were slowly filtering into the chamber through side doors and partitions. The chamberlain sent servants scurrying in all directions, and the room was filled with a gentle murmur of speculation.

‘Who do you think it is?’ whispered Bertelis. Calard shrugged in response. ‘Please let it be an emissary from the king announcing a new errant war,’ said Bertelis.

The room hushed, as the black and gold door in the back wall of the audience chamber was opened and a rotund, bearded man, dressed in the red and yellow of Lutheure’s livery stepped forth.

A blare of horns echoed deafeningly through the chamber, causing the doves roosting in the upper beams of the lofty expanse above to take flight.

‘The Lord and Lady Garamont,’ bellowed the rotund crier.

As one, the gathered knights and nobles dropped to one knee, their heads bowed, and the ladies of the court dipped low in delicate curtsies.

Lord Lutheure, resplendent in a fashionable tunic and robe that would have cost more than a peasant could hope to see in a lifetime, walked across the dais with his wife on his arm. Lutheure wore his coat of arms embroidered upon his chest, but he was far outshone by his wife, who wore a velvet dress of deepest crimson that trailed behind her. Her fair hair was hidden beneath her velvet headdress, over which she wore a glittering circlet of silver. Lutheure led his wife to her luxuriously padded chair, before taking his own seat upon his massive throne. He did well to hide his illness, though, to Calard’s eyes, it was obvious that his gaunt frame no longer filled the throne as once it had.

The lord of Garamont nodded regally to his chamberlain, who signalled the men-at-arms at the door. They stepped back, uncrossing their long ceremonial weapons, and the doors were thrown open.

Having hurried across the room to the doors, his face red with the exertion, the rotund court crier announced the newcomer.

‘Sigibold of Bordeleaux, Knight of the Realm and Equerry of Duke Alberic of Bordeleaux,’ he thundered.

‘Not from the king then,’ muttered Bertelis, for which he received a sharp glare from the chamberlain, Folcard.

There was muttering as the knight entered the court, striding purposefully towards the seated lord of Garamont. He was fully armoured, and his cloak was tattered and worn. He carried his helm beneath his left arm, and his hair was wet with sweat and plastered across his head. He tracked mud and dirt into the audience chamber, and there was tutting amongst the gathered nobles.

Reaching the dais, the knight dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

‘The Duke of Bordeleaux sends his warmest regards,’ replied the knight. Lutheure bowed his head, accepting the courtesy.

‘You honour my household with your presence, sir knight. Can I have a room readied for you? You have the look of one who has travelled far, and you may, if you wish, refresh yourself before we address the purpose of your visit.’

‘Alas no,’ replied the knight with a bow, ‘time does not permit me to accept your noble offer.’

‘No? Speak then,’ said Lutheure.

‘My lord, I bring grim news. The south-eastern lands of Bordeleaux are overrun. I come to seek your aid in its retaking.’

The court erupted in gasps and muttering. Calard flashed a glance at his brother, his eyes lighting up. A slight smile touched Bertelis’s lips. Lutheure lifted a hand for silence, his rings of office gleaming, and the hubbub died away.

‘This is grim news indeed,’ agreed Lutheure. ‘What enemy besieges his fair lands?’

‘Greenskins,’ replied the knight bitterly. This was met with curses and dark mutterings, which Lutheure allowed to continue for a moment before he lifted a hand again for silence. The castellan thought on this for a moment, a deep frown upon his face.

His eyes turned skywards, as if seeking divine communion, staring up towards the high arched windows replete with stained glass, where images of his ancestors stared down at him. The courtiers looked expectantly to their lord. There was no particular love between the people of Bastonne and Bordeleaux, but in times of strife they had always united against a mutual foe. At last, he lowered his gaze, and looked again at the knight awaiting his answer.

‘You have already sought the aid of other knights of Bastonne?’ he asked.

‘I have, my lord. I have received pledges of more than two thousand knights of your most esteemed land.’

‘You have already spoken to the lord of Sangasse, a day’s ride to the west?’ asked the castellan, his eyes glittering. At mention of the name, Calard stiffened. The Sangasses had been the mortal rivals of Garamont for nine generations.

‘I have, my lord,’ said the knight, oblivious to the tension in the room. ‘The noble lord of Sangasse has pledged his knights. They are to be led by Maloric, his son, the young Earl of Sangasse.’

Calard scowled.

The castellan’s expression was unreadable as he digested this information. At last, he turned his eyes in Calard’s direction, and there was a silent communication between them.

‘Bertelis, Calard,’ said the lord of Garamont, ‘come forward.’

Bertelis ascended the steps of the dais, his head held high. Calard followed, his heart hammering. They took up positions on either side of their father, standing alongside his throne.

‘Sir Sigibold, these are my sons and my rightful heirs. They will ride for Bordeleaux, to aid your duke’s knights against the hated enemy. The knights of my household will ride at their side.’

Calard could not help but let the joy he felt erupt in a broad smile that he saw was mirrored on Bertelis’s face.

‘The Duke of Bordeleaux will be honoured by their presence,’ replied the knight, ‘and I convey his thanks for your commitment to his cause.’

Lutheure rose from his throne, and Calard twitched as he saw his father wobble slightly. Still, he did not step forward to give his father support, knowing that to do so would be to emphasise his father’s weakness in front of his court. Recovering, the lord castellan steadied himself and addressed the gathered nobles.

‘Let the word be spread, that the sons of Garamont will ride for Bordeleaux on the morn. Tonight the lord of Garamont shall host a banquet, wishing them victory and glory on the fields of battle.’

A cheer rose from those gathered below the dais.

‘Sigibold, will you do us the honour of dining with us this evening?’ asked Lutheure.

‘Alas, I cannot, noble lord,’ replied the knight. ‘I must be on my way to secure more knights for the duke’s cause.’

Lutheure nodded.

‘My lords and ladies,’ he said, ‘we prepare for war.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘Let us drink to my sons! Let the Lady guide their lances, and let them return to my side in glory and triumph!’

There was a cheer around the assembled revellers, and Calard and Bertelis clinked their goblets heavily together. They each took a long swig of wine. Their cheeks were already glowing, and their bellies were full of food.

The detritus of the vanquished meal lay before the gathered nobles, strewn across the sprawling expanse of tables in the banquet hall. Bones were thrown onto the straw-covered floor, where they were fought over by Lutheure’s hunting dogs, and, when no one was looking, the peasant servers. Carcasses of roasted boar and deer, stuffed with herbs, garlic and sweetmeats lay stripped of flesh upon giant platters, and the bony remains of quail and hare lay discarded on plates of lead and silver, swimming in thick, creamy sauces of mushroom and cheese. Extravagant dishes, upon which had lain the grilled forms of the large carnivorous fish that swam the River Grismerie to the north, lay cast aside. Only the luminous white bones and massive gaping jaws of the creatures were left, with the remnants of white wine sauce swilling around them.

The wine was flowing freely, for the lord castellan had opened up his cellar, wishing to toast his sons off to war in style. The nobles supped at the exquisite fare of Bordeleaux and Aquitaine, extolling their various virtues as they swirled them around their goblets and sniffed at their aromas. Calard and his brother, knowing little of fine wine, swigged exorbitantly expensive, hundred-year-old vintages as if they were water.

Bertelis grinned, feeling content, full of food and well on the way to drunkenness. He looked across the tables to his father, who was smiling proudly at him, and he raised his goblet in response, smiling. Folcard stood behind Lutheure, looking for all the world like a fierce bird of prey. His thin shoulders were slightly hunched, though he stood taller than any knight present, and his hooked nose protruded sharply from his gaunt face. As if feeling Bertelis’s gaze, the chamberlain turned his cold, dark eyes towards his lord’s younger son. Even after all these years, the chamberlain still made him feel like a naughty child, and Bertelis quickly looked away.

His eyes darted to his mother, who sat deep in conversation with Tanebourc, a tall, ginger-haired knight who was one of his mother’s favourites. He saw the light touch that his mother laid upon the knight’s forearm, and frowned, but was instantly distracted as an army of servants descended on the banquet hall at a clap from the castle’s chamberlain. He leant politely out of the way as a serving girl bent over him to collect his plate, exposing a not inconsiderable amount of her bosom as she did so.

‘Sir Bertelis, I think you might be dribbling,’ someone teased, and he turned sheepishly to face Lady Elisabet of Carlemont. An attractive young noblewoman with a delightfully devilish gleam in her eye, she sat beside a doting Calard. She wore a stunning dress of deepest purple, and a shimmering, diaphanous shawl was wrapped around her pale shoulders. The eye was drawn to her cleavage by a large, star-shaped pendant that hung low around her neck. Calard was beaming at her side, no doubt at least partly due to that cleavage. They made a good couple, Bertelis thought, and he was certain that one day they would wed, for their affection for one another was well known and easy to see. His brother was distressingly loyal to her, refusing to lie with any of the servants, claiming that Elisabet was the only one for him. She was certainly a desirable woman, but sometimes he just did not understand his brother.

‘I fear you may be correct, my lady,’ he replied, theatrically wiping at his chin and flicking his hand towards the ground. ‘I am but a knight of weak morals, easily won over by a pretty face and a bounteous bosom. Not like noble Calard at your side. He is girded of firmer stuff.’

‘I should hope so,’ said Elisabet, turning her seductive dark eyes towards the older of the brothers, giving him a playful pout. Calard blushed, making both Elisabet and Bertelis laugh.

‘Brother,’ declared Bertelis, indicating to a servant for more wine, ‘a toast.’

With their goblets filled, the brothers raised them.

‘To glory and honour!’ said Bertelis.

‘To glory and honour,’ said Calard, and the pair clinked their goblets together once more.

‘And to conquests in the bedroom as well as on the field of battle!’ added Bertelis as Calard went to drink. The older sibling snorted, the ruby-coloured wine spilling from his nose and mouth.

Elisabet burst into very unseemly and unladylike laughter. The dour-faced wife of one of Lutheure’s knights shushed her, as the lord castellan lifted his goblet high. Calard held his hand to Elisabet’s mouth, as she looked fit to explode into further giggles.

‘To Bertelis,’ their father declared, ‘who I am sure is destined to become one of the finest knights of Bastonne.’ This was met with cheers, and the sound of Elisabet’s contagious giggling made Bertelis smile. The lord castellan’s face turned serious. ‘Bertelis, you are the finest son a knight could wish for. Come back alive.’

People were unsure if that was a toast or not, and continued to hold their glasses in the air.

‘Honour and glory!’ shouted Bertelis to break the unease, lifting his goblet high. His words were echoed around the room, and everyone drank and went back to their conversations. He noticed vaguely that Elisabet was no longer laughing, and that his brother’s face was dark.

Regardless, Bertelis clinked goblets with his brother, and again they drank, tension evaporating. Jesters came out to entertain the crowd, tall gangly jugglers and capering dwarfs, and Bertelis laughed loudly at their somersaults and antics.

Castellan Lutheure took his leave, retiring to his bedchamber with his wife and, with the official duties concluded, the real drinking began.

Chamberlain Folcard stood motionless in the shadows beneath the archway, hawk-like eyes glinting fiercely. He receded further back into the darkness as he spied a hooded figure turn into the corridor, a shuttered lantern in hand. The figure moved softly down the cold hallway, casting a conspiratorial glance behind it. In that moment, the light caught on the figure’s face, and Folcard saw the Lady Calisse’s proud features.

The lady slipped through the doorway opposite the chamberlain’s concealment, closing the door softly behind her. Folcard ignored the discomfort in his arthritic joints as he felt the cold seeping into his body. He did not have to wait long.

Less than two minutes after the lady of the household’s appearance, a second figure entered the hallway, striding purposefully down the corridor. He made no attempt to conceal his appearance, and Folcard felt his anger rise at the man’s arrogance.

Tanebourc smiled as he paused briefly outside the door through which Lady Calisse had entered, and then he knocked softly. A moment later, he pushed the door lightly open and slipped within.

Folcard shifted position, his anger simmering.

He loved Garamont fiercely, and he chafed at the shame being done to his noble lord.

He knew the castle better than anyone, and his eyes and his ears saw and heard all that occurred within its walls. He alone knew of all the secret passages that riddled the fastness, ones that even the Lord Garamont and his sons were unaware of.

He waited no more than five minutes before the door opened and the Lady Calisse slipped out into the corridor once more, pulling her hood up over her head. At least she had enough respect to conceal her appearance. After she had been gone for some minutes, the door opened again, and Tanebourc emerged. He was flushed, and Folcard saw frustration and impatience etched on his face. Good, he thought. His carnal urges had clearly been unsatisfied. That would work to his advantage.

‘Tanebourc,’ said the chamberlain, slipping out of the concealing darkness. He took perverse pleasure in the way the knight paled at his sudden appearance.

‘Lady above!’ gasped Tanebourc, his eyes wide and fearful. ‘I thought you were an apparition!’

‘I bear a message from the lady of the house,’ said the chamberlain, his voice deep and sepulchral.

Recovering, Tanebourc’s gaze flashed down the hallway, though Calisse was long gone. ‘Oh?’ he said, feigning disinterest.

‘She wants you to know that she would be best pleased if the boy did not return to Garamont from this endeavour. You know of whom I speak.’

Tanebourc’s eyes widened as he absorbed what the chamberlain was saying.

‘What? She never said–’

‘The lady would favour any who achieved this task. She would freely give him that which he desired, if he but did this small thing for her,’ said Folcard, his eyes boring into the ginger-haired knight.

‘It is no small thing–’ began Tanebourc, but Folcard interrupted him again.

‘Such are the lady’s terms,’ said the chamberlain. He saw the lust in the man’s eyes, and knew that he had him.

‘Think on it,’ he added, before turning away.

Calard woke with a groan. The pounding on the door of his chamber was incessant, and he rolled over, trying to ignore it. It felt like someone was smashing a hammer into his head, over and over, and his mouth felt like some foul creature had crawled in there and died while he slept. The pounding on his door continued unabated, giving him no peace.

‘I’m awake!’ he shouted. ‘Go away!’

He closed his eyes in relief as he heard whoever it was move away, though he heard the banging begin anew further down the corridor. His brother’s door, he realised.

With a moan, he rolled over on his pallet, and lifted himself to a sitting position. Swinging his legs to the flagstones, he realised that he was still wearing his high leather boots. Indeed, he was wearing the entire outfit he had worn the previous night. He had no memory of getting to bed, though he had a vague recollection of being helped up the twisting stone stairs to the eastern wing of the castle to his chambers. He groaned again and rose unsteadily to his feet, moving to the window. He poured a jug of ice cold water into the stone basin there, and washed his face. He drank deeply.

Looking out of the window, blinking against the painful light, it took him a moment to register that the sun was high in the sky. He swore colourfully, his language more fit for ribald commoners than for the son of a noble castellan. He tore his shirt from his muscled body and pulled on a freshly laundered tunic.

Swearing never to drink again, he pulled open his door and stepped into the corridor. He saw a flustered servant banging on Bertelis’s door. With another self-pitying groan, he began staggering down the hallway. The man tried to say something to him, but he waved him away as if he was an irritating insect.

Without ceremony, Calard pushed Bertelis’s door open. It caught on something on the floor, and he looked down. It was a woman’s dress, a simple piece of clothing with little ornamentation. He gave the door a more solid push and walked into the room. The stink of sweat, wine and sex assailed him, and he blinked in the dim light.

Bertelis was sprawled naked on the bed, the nubile form of a young woman nestled against his chest. She turned as the door opened, pulling the sheets up over her body, modestly, her eyes filled with the wild fear of a rabbit caught in the open.

‘Wake up,’ said Calard. ‘It’s late.’

Bertelis squinted up at him, opening and closing his mouth as if tasting something foul upon his tongue. He dropped his head back down onto the goose-feather-stuffed pillow.

‘Come on, get up,’ said Calard more insistently. Bertelis sighed in resignation, and stood, stretching, without a thought for modesty.

‘Get out,’ he said casually to the girl. She stared at him blankly for a second, and he turned towards her. ‘I said get out.’

The girl, the sheet wrapped around her, retrieved the clothing that was scattered all over the room, doing her best not to catch Calard’s eye. She fled the room, and Calard could hear her soft steps as she ran up the hallway.

‘Who was that?’ he asked.

‘Who?’ asked Bertelis as he took a long swig from a water jug.

‘That girl?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Just some…’ said Bertelis vaguely, one hand flapping as he sought the word. ‘Some… girl.’

Calard snorted, shaking his head, and immediately regretting it as his vision spun.

‘That was quite a night,’ said Bertelis, dressing quickly.

‘My memories of it are somewhat… vague,’ said Calard. Bertelis snorted.

‘After the speeches, the dining and the dancing, after father and mother had retired, you spent most of it declaring how you would slay a hundred orcs, and drooling into the cleavage of the young Lady Elisabet of Carlemont.’

Calard groaned and slapped a hand to his head. It was starting to come back to him.

‘Oh, Lady protector, tell me I did nothing to embarrass myself in front of her,’ he said.

‘Well, the last thing I saw was her and that young serving girl, Annabel, helping you to your room. What happened after that, I know not,’ said Bertelis with a lascivious grin. He dunked his head into a basin of water and flicked it back, spraying water across the room behind him. Wet, his golden hair seemed darker, and hung in long strands down his back.

‘Come on then, we’d better get going,’ said Bertelis brightly, stepping out into the corridor. Calard could have strangled his brother. Somehow, he always seemed to avoid the after-effects of overindulgence, which was perhaps why he indulged so often. In the light streaming through the arched windows, Bertelis looked over at him with a critical, pitying expression.

‘You look twice as bad as I feel,’ he said, eliciting another groan from Calard. ‘Let’s go armour up. Father will skin us alive if we keep him waiting.’

The knights of Bastonne sat astride their warhorses on the grassland beyond the towering walls of Castle Garamont, their armour shined to perfection and colourful banners whipping in the stiff breeze. Each proudly bore his colours and heraldry, and each carried his helm in the crook of his left arm, his lance held vertical in his right, and his shield thrown over his back. Their number had been carefully chosen so as to outdo the Sangasse contribution, and only a handful of knights would remain at Garamont.

Hundreds of men-at-arms stood in the mud behind them, straining to see and hear the goings on, wearing tabards of red and gold, the lord castellan’s colours, and holding polearms and tall shields in their muddy fists. A further contingent of peasants stood alongside the men-at-arms, a muster of bowmen drafted into service from amongst the populace, each holding a longbow of yew in his labourer’s hands.

Fully armoured and wearing flowing cloaks that mirrored the colours of their livery, Lutheure’s sons knelt before their father, the lord castellan of Garamont. Calard could still smell the delicate scent of Elisabet’s perfume in his nostrils, and he breathed in deeply. Moments before, he had shared a delicate farewell with her, and he had almost been overwhelmed by his love for her as he saw tears well in her soulful eyes.

‘I shall return in glory, and then we shall be wed.’ He realised that he had spoken without thought, and his face reddened. ‘If you will have me, I mean,’ he added.

Despite her tears, Elisabet had laughed, her pale cheeks blushing the delicate colour of roses. In answer, she had loosened a violet silk scarf from around her head and tied it around the steel rarebrace that protected his left upper arm. He had been speechless, drinking in the sight and scent of her closeness.

‘Be safe, Calard,’ she had said, and the young couple embraced. Too soon, she pulled away from him. Turning as her tears threatened to flow anew, she fled into the protective arms of her father, who was smiling broadly at Calard. He had watched her go, feeling exultantly happy, but sad at the same time. He dragged his mind forcefully back to the present.

His heart pounded with barely restrained excitement as he knelt before his father, though he felt a tinge of unease. On one hand, this was his chance, at last, to prove himself on the field of battle, and he was full of noble confidence in his own abilities and those of his brother. He could not deny, however, that his father’s health was worsening, despite the façade that he presented to the court. He knew that just to be standing outside, fully decked in his gleaming armour, wishing his knights well, would tax him dearly, and that he would most likely spend the rest of the day abed, exhausted. He prayed to the Lady to see his father safe, but he had a sickening feeling in his stomach that he would not see him again.

He pushed these morbid thoughts from his mind as he lowered his head to accept his father’s blessing.

‘Lady, may your wisdom and care protect these noble knights from harm, and inspire in them the strength and courage necessary to return home in triumph. Embolden them with your divine light, and in your name, let them cleanse the lands of Bordeleaux of its evil taint, and do Garamont and Bastonne proud. Lady, bless them that they may uphold your name with virtue. Honour is all. Chivalry is all.’

The two kneeling knights repeated these last two sentences, intoning them quietly.

‘Rise, my sons,’ Lutheure said, and the two young knights errant rose up to their full heights to look down upon their lord and father. Lady Calisse swept past the castellan in a wave of flowing silk and scented perfumes to embrace Bertelis, leaving Calard standing awkwardly before his father. The older knight’s expression was distant.

‘I will make you proud, my lord,’ he said softly.

‘Your mother was from Bordeleaux,’ said the castellan softly, ignoring his son’s words. Calard’s eyes widened. In all the long years since his mother’s death, his father had spoken of her perhaps twice. As if realising he had spoken aloud, the castellan frowned, and his usual, cold mask dropped over his face once more.

‘Keep your brother safe,’ Lutheure said brusquely. Calard swallowed, and bowed his head.

Lutheure embraced Bertelis, and Calard bowed graciously to his stepmother, though the Lady Calisse turned her head away from him, and spoke to a handmaiden. With a cheer, the two young knights mounted their massive destriers. Squires passed them their weapons and shields, and Calard felt trembling excitement at the prospect of war. They joined the ranks of knights, drawing their steeds alongside their grim weapon master, Gunthar, who was to accompany them to battle.

‘How are you feeling?’ Bertelis asked in a low voice, throwing his brother a sideways glance.

‘Like a horse is kicking me repeatedly in the head,’ said Calard, though he maintained his smile. His brother smirked.

The lord castellan’s ancient sword was brought forth, borne upon a cushion by his chamberlain, and Lutheure lifted it into his trembling hands. The sword of Garamont had been handed down to each of the successive rulers of Garamont, and it was an heirloom of priceless value, said to have been blessed by the kiss of the Lady of the Lake. Its scabbard was inlaid with spiralling designs picked out in gold, and the pommel of the sword was shining blue steel forged in the shape of a fleur-de-lys, the symbol of the blessed Lady. The lord castellan pulled the blade free, the sound of the blade ringing out over the gathered knights.

For a moment, as he lifted the sword high into the air, its blade shimmering with silver, fey light, Lutheure resembled the powerful knight that he had once been, strong, fearless and full of implacable courage.

‘To victory!’ he shouted, his voice deep and strong. This was met with another cheer, and the host of Garamont lifted their lances high in salute to their lord. Calard caught Elisabet’s tearful eyes through the crowd of well-wishers, and he kissed the silk scarf wound around his arm while he maintained eye contact. She blew him a kiss in return, her eyes welling with tears. Then his eyes flicked to his father once more, settling on the powerful, distant man that he knew not at all.

‘I will make you proud of me, father,’ promised Calard. Then he wheeled his horse and joined the column of knights as they turned to the west, towards the distant sea and the lands of Bordeleaux. Blushing ladies threw flowers before the resplendent knights, and peasant children and dogs ran alongside them. Trumpets blared as they rode away from Castle Garamont, and Calard gave the castle that had been his home these last decades a final look, before kicking his spurs into Gringolet’s flanks. Bertelis whooped in excitement, and Calard laughed at his brother’s exuberance as he felt his own excitement rise.

Chlod squinted as he surveyed the distant castle and the parade of knights that rode from it. He felt his pet, nestling against his scabrous neck, squirm and wriggle.

‘Do you see them, my beauty?’ he asked the mangy rat. It twitched its nose, unimpressed.

Chlod had laid low these last days, keeping to the forest. In the distance he could see the limp forms of his former comrades, hanging from the gallows erected alongside the approach to the castle, testament to the justice of the Bastonnian lord.

His stomach growled loudly, and he thought wistfully of the roasted venison that he had enjoyed some four days earlier. It had been so tender that it had almost melted on his tongue. Just thinking of it made his mouth begin to water, and he wiped a long string of drool from his chin with the back of his hand.

He was sure that there was abundant food all around him, but he was no huntsman, and had not the knowledge or means to catch any of the swift hares that he glimpsed sometimes at dawn and dusk. He had picked a handful of mushrooms from the base of a tree the day before, praying that they were not poisonous, but had not yet plucked up the courage to eat them.

No, foraging in the wilderness was not for him. A shepherd by birth, he had been kicked out of his home by his mother for his laziness, and had made his way in the world by scavenging on the outskirts of villages and towns, taking what he could lay his hands on when he could. He had received countless beatings from irate farmers over the years, but he never complained. Better to be beaten than to be hanged.

His small, piggy eyes watched the departing army intently. He knew that an army on the march would have countless hangers-on, and that there would be an abundance of food and game needed to supply the knights and their peasant militia. His stomach rumbled again, and his mind was made up.

‘We will have food aplenty soon enough, my beauty,’ he said, and he set off in the direction of the departing army, limping unsteadily through the fields.

CHAPTER FOUR

Calard’s early elation to be bound for glorious battle was soon replaced with mind-numbing boredom as the monotony of the journey ground home. He didn’t know why he had expected anything different, for Bordeleaux was hundreds of miles to the west, but this did nothing to improve his foul mood.

The first day had seemed like the dawn of some grand adventure, and as soon as he had thrown off the worst effects of his hangover, Calard had felt his spirits soar. The sun was shining, he was wearing a token of his love’s affection on his arm, he had his brother at his side and he was riding to war with a grand company of seasoned knights.

The lands of Bretonnia were not without peril, for, despite the rigour with which the realms were protected, it was well known that all manner of foul beasts dwelt within the great tracts of forest and within the high mountains. Outlaws preyed upon travellers, and even this far from the cursed lands of Mousillon, commoners barred their doors against the horrors of the night. Nevertheless, the knights of Garamont were unconcerned. Travelling in such force, few enemies would dare to strike against them.

The first night had been fine indeed, the knights swapping exaggerated stories of their heroics in battle as they ate, drank and made merry. Calard and Bertelis listened intently, hanging on every word spoken by the veterans. The night was glorious, unseasonably warm and clear as autumn deepened, and the brothers had felt a thrill to be encamped in the wilderness, their minds filled with tales of heroism and glory.

Even the next day, which was overcast, and with a sullen wind whipping at them, Calard’s spirits had been high. It was only that afternoon, as the rains had begun, that his elated mood began to evaporate. It seemed somehow appropriate that, as they passed into Sangasse lands, the weather was turning. Knights of Garamont had rarely entered these lands peacefully, and the gathering black clouds mirrored Calard’s darkening mood.

For generations, Garamont and the Sangasse had been fierce rivals, and though it had been nearly half a century since blood had been spilt between the families, Calard was uneasy travelling through their realm. He knew that his brother felt likewise, as did all the knights of Garamont, but it was necessary, for it would have taken them hundreds of miles out of their way to circumvent Sangasse’s borders.

The contingent from Garamont had linked with the knights and foot soldiers of neighbouring Montcadas, travelling to Bordeleaux beneath the shining white banner of Baron Montcadas, emblazoned with its fiery red heraldic sword. The baron led his knights, himself. He was a squat, broad-shouldered warrior with a booming voice and a massive beard. Calard had met the man on several occasions. Indeed, the baron had briefly hoped to marry his plain, big-boned daughter into the Garamont line, and for a few months the previous year Calard had been terrified that his father would accept the offer on his behalf. Thankfully, nothing had come of the pairing, and the girl was married off to some other unlucky noble’s son to the north.

As was the Bretonnian way, the knights of Garamont allowed Baron Montcadas command without question, for he was the most highly ranked noble present.

A strange figure accompanied the Baron of Montcadas, a man dressed outlandishly in the strange fashion of the Empire, far across the Grey Mountains that marked the border of the two mighty lands. He wore silk stockings beneath his knee-high riding boots, and bizarre slashed, puffy sleeves billowed around his arms. A black lacquered breastplate protected his body, in the centre of which was the gold emblem of a twin-tailed comet. Calard dimly recalled from his schooling that the insignia represented the barbarian Sigmar, who had founded the Empire, and who had, in time, been deified by his followers. The Cult of Sigmar was apparently the official religion of the lands of the Empire, which Calard found unfathomable. Sigmar had certainly been a mighty warrior, but to worship him, a mere mortal, as a god seemed ridiculous.

A black lacquered sallet helmet sat upon the man’s head, a long red feather bobbing from its rim, and he rode a horse of Empire stock, neither as powerful nor as regal as one of the pure Bretonnian bloodline. Calard was intrigued by this strange man and the strange land he hailed from, and he stared in fascination at him as he was introduced.

The Empire soldier, for it was clear that he was a soldier, despite his bizarre and faintly ridiculous dress, was young, perhaps no more than five years Calard’s senior. His cheeks were shaved smooth, as was his chin, but upon his upper lip he sported a prodigious moustache, the points of which were tweaked and waxed into tight curls. The effect was humorous to Bretonnian eyes, though it was clear that the man took his appearance very seriously. Indeed, he seemed to be fastidious to a fault, brushing off any speck of dust from his clothes, and ensuring that his every buckle and bootstrap was shined and untwisted, and that everything was placed correctly about his person.

His name was Dieter Weschler, and Calard had spoken the name awkwardly, trying and failing to pronounce it correctly. The man had corrected his attempt, his voice guttural and clipped to Calard’s ears. He spoke Breton better than Calard had expected, though his accent was strange. He had strength in him, Calard had decided as he had gripped forearms with the man and looked into his eyes.

Bertelis had appraised the Empire man with a critical eye, sizing him up, and he was clearly unimpressed. There was no doubting that he was wealthy, for his outlandish clothes were richly made, and he wore rings and earrings of gold, but, to a Bretonnian eye, he appeared more like a lowborn peasant merchant that had come into money than one born to it through noble bloodline.

He had a sword strapped at his side, but it was his other weapons that were making Bertelis wrinkle his nose in disgust. A long-barrelled handgun was strapped over Dieter’s shoulder, and a brace of three pistols hung loosely at his side. In Bretonnia, weapons that caused death from afar were regarded as cowardly, and no knight would dream of sullying himself by making use of a bow or crossbow, outside of the hunt. To use such missile weapons on the field of battle marked one as a peasant, for there was no glory to be had in defeating one’s enemy from a distance. A noble warrior’s weapons were the lance and the sword, the mace and the morning star. It was only those who lacked honour, bravery and self-respect that resorted to the use of such weapons as the bow.

Black powder weapons were all but unheard of in Bretonnia, but Dieter explained with dignified pride that they were commonplace in the wealthier Empire states, apparently oblivious to the less than enthusiastic response of his audience.

It was with some shock that Calard learned that Dieter was a blood relative of the ruler of the Empire, and thus of the noblest stock of the land. He could tell that Bertelis too was stunned by this revelation. The Baron of Montcadas said that Dieter was a guest in his household, come to Bastonne to learn more of Bretonnia and strengthen the bonds between the two great lands. His own son, he proclaimed proudly, was currently a guest of the Empire, living in a far off city called Altdorf, housed within the Emperor’s palace.

‘I don’t like him,’ declared Bertelis when they were out of earshot. ‘The people of the Empire must be weak indeed if their nobles dress in the manner of merchants and carry peasant weapons to war.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Calard noncommittally. ‘I would like to speak to him more though,’ he added after a moment of silence. His brother raised an eyebrow.

‘Why?’ he asked.

Calard shrugged.

‘To learn of his lands, their customs, their way of doing things. It interests me.’

Bertelis snorted, shaking his head.

The rains had increased in intensity, turning the trail into a quagmire of clinging mud. Water ran uncomfortably down the inside of Calard’s armour. The horses plodded on through the worsening weather until a halt was finally called. The knights sat astride their horses in silence as peasants scrambled through the mud to erect their tents and get cooking fires burning.

Sitting beneath a canvas awning, Calard and Bertelis watched as the rains redoubled in strength, and it was not long before booming peals of thunder echoed across the heavens, making the picketed horses whinny in fear. A table had been set up before the pair of young knights, and upon it were scattered the remains of their meal. Calard fingered his goblet thoughtfully, watching the peasants scurrying back and forth through the downpour on errands and duties.

Lightning flashed across the sky in a stunning display, followed seconds later by thunderous crashes that resounded across the bleak landscape. Bertelis wore a sour expression on his noble face as he watched the rain come down. He was gnawing on a bone, and hurled it out into the downpour in frustration at being held up.

Calard watched dispassionately as a pair of peasants scrambled through the mud towards the discarded bone. One of them was hunchbacked, and had a pronounced limp, while the other was smaller and weasel-like.

‘A gold crown says the small one gets it,’ said Bertelis.

‘You’re on,’ replied Calard. The hunchback was closer, but he stumbled, and fell heavily in the mud as he closed on the prize. Bertelis laughed in victory as the smaller peasant swooped in and grabbed the scrap of food, and he held out his hand to receive his gold crown from his brother.

‘Wait,’ said Calard, as the hunchback picked himself up off the ground and dived on the smaller figure, tackling him into the mud. Bertelis guffawed and yelled encouragement as the pair rolled over and over in the mud, fighting for possession of the food scrap. He threw his hands up into the air in disappointment, as the hunchback rolled on top of the smaller figure and began pounding his fists into its face. At last, he stepped away from the body, picking up his prize.

‘You there! Peasant!’ shouted Bertelis, standing up. The hunchback froze. ‘Yes, you!’ Bertelis hollered over the downpour, ‘Come here!’

The hunchback glanced around furtively, shoving his prize into a deep pocket on his tunic. For a moment, it looked like he was going to run, but he clearly thought better of it, and began to approach the knights errant. He limped heavily towards them, pulling his hood down low over his face. Behind him, the beaten figure of his rival pushed itself groggily to its feet and staggered off though the rain. With shock, Calard realised that it was a woman, and he shook his head in disbelief.

The hunchback stopped just outside the canvas awning that protected the knights, standing in the rain, his head low.

‘Yes, my lord?’ said the man humbly.

‘Take off your hood,’ ordered Bertelis. Somewhat reluctantly, the man did so. He was an ugly brute, thought Calard, thick jawed and caked in mud, and his lowered eyes were uneven.

‘You just lost me a gold crown, peasant,’ said Bertelis imperiously. The man glanced up fearfully at the young knight towering above him, before his gaze flicked down to the ground once more.

‘I’m sorry, lord,’ he mumbled, clearly having no idea what was going on.

‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’

‘Um,’ stuttered the man, shifting his weight nervously. ‘I… ah.’

Calard narrowed his eyes as he looked at the man. There was something familiar about him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

‘I’ll tell you what you can do. My brother and I are in need of entertainment, and you certainly have the look of a clown about you. Dance.’

The man blanched, opening and closing his mouth soundlessly. He threw a glance towards Calard, who was still regarding him closely, and quickly turned his gaze away.

‘I… I don’t know how, my lord,’ he stammered.

‘Well, just give it a try, hmm? Dance for us.’

‘Oh, leave him alone,’ said Calard.

‘No, brother,’ replied Bertelis. ‘I would have him dance for us. Well, come on then! Dance!’

The hunchback began to hop from foot to foot, and Bertelis howled in laughter, clapping his hands. Apparently encouraged by this, the man began to hop more energetically from foot to foot, and began to lift his arms up and down.

‘That’s the way! You’ve got it now!’ laughed Bertelis, and Calard found himself snorting in pitying amusement. The wretched peasant grinned stupidly, and turned an ungainly pirouette on the spot, which was greeted with more laughter. Calard was well used to the tortures his brother inflicted on the lowborn at every opportunity, but he had to admit that the sight of this wretched creature capering in the pouring rain was funny. A rat poked its black furred head out of the peasant’s tunic, which elicited further laughter from the brothers.

Tears streaming from his eyes, Bertelis waved for the peasant to stop, his body still shuddering with amusement. He picked up another discarded bone from his plate, and held it out to the peasant. The man eagerly reached for it, his crooked eyes lighting up, but Bertelis retracted it just before the peasant could close his grubby hand on it. He extended it once more, again pulling it back just before the peasant could grasp it. The peasant grinned stupidly at Bertelis’s jest, and the third time the young knight offered it and retracted it, he slapped his leg and laughed out loud.

Finally, Bertelis hurled the bone away from him. The man followed its arc carefully, but did not chase after it immediately.

‘Well, go,’ said Bertelis finally.

‘Thank you, young lord,’ said the man, turning away from them. The stupid grin dropped from his face, replaced with a scowl of anger and humiliation, and he loped towards the discarded tidbit, shouting and waving his arms as other peasants moved towards it.

Still chuckling, Bertelis watched him go.

‘Did you recognise that man from somewhere?’ asked Calard, still troubled that he could not place the man.

‘Who, the hunchback? I don’t know. Maybe. They all look the same to me.’ Calard grunted and pushed the thought from his mind.

‘How far is it to Bordeleaux?’ asked Bertelis.

‘A week’s ride, Gunthar says,’ replied Calard.

‘We had better pray to the Lady that the battle is not over before we get there,’ said Bertelis. A flutter of concern passed through Calard at the thought.

That night, with the rain lashing down on the tent he shared with his brother, Calard lit fourteen candles, each one representing one of the Dukedoms of Bretonnia. He carefully unfolded the hinged wooden triptych that served as his shrine to the Lady. Humbly, he touched his fingertips to the centre of his forehead, his lips and his heart in turn, before kneeling.

The central, arched panel held a portrait of the Lady painted in oils and protected with thick lacquer. It was a delicate image that seemed to glow from within, showing the Lady holding her holy, golden grail before her.

In the left-hand panel was a finely detailed painting of Gilles the Uniter, the founder of Bretonnia. He knelt humbly with his head bowed, his famous dragon-skin cloak thrown over his shoulders. Gilles had slain the malevolent great wyrm, Smearghus, when he was little more than a boy, and had cut the cloak from its flesh. The revered artefact hung in the duke of Bastonne’s castle, and every year thousands of knights made the pilgrimage to stand beneath it in awe.

The right-hand panel showed the fabled Green Knight, the unearthly guardian of Bretonnia’s sacred places. Pictured as a fey spirit of awesome power and majesty, the Green Knight wore ancient armour, and was surrounded by coiling mist and ivy.

It was the central image, that of the Lady of Lake, that Calard focused on. Her deep eyes that the unknown artist had captured so skilfully, full of motherly love, but also with profound strength and mystery, captivated him, and he stared longingly at the golden chalice clasped in her delicate hands.

To be visited by the image of the Lady, and to sup from the grail was the ultimate aim of every knight of Bretonnia, and only the most determined, pure and worthy knights would ever achieve this goal. It was said that only the truly pure of heart survived drinking from this hallowed chalice, and any that had even the smallest hint of corruption or flaw would be instantly killed. Calard longed for the day when he would be able to take up the quest and go out into the world in search of the Lady. She would only appear to one who had travelled far, embarking on a great journey, and who had fought against all manner of beast and injustice. Such an event was many years off, and Calard sighed in impatience, longing for that time when he attained the honour and glory needed to take up the questing vow.

Pushing such thoughts from his mind, he focused on the image of the Lady before him. She wore a garland of flowers and ivy around her head, and her long hair flowed freely around her. She was the very epitome of noble beauty and chastity.

In a soft, humble voice, he prayed firstly for the king, Louen Leoncouer, the Lionhearted, that he may reign long and true. Then he prayed for the health of his father, and for his sister, Anara, long lost, asking that the Lady look over her wherever she might be. He prayed for his brother Bertelis, that he might gain much honour and renown in the battles to come, and that he would live a long, fulfilling life. Lastly, he prayed for himself, though he felt a twinge of guilt to pray for selfish means. Still, he pushed these thoughts aside, and prayed fervently.

‘Lady of Chivalry let the battles in Bordeleaux be glorious and noble, and let the forces of the king prove victorious against the evil that defiles your realm. Lend me strength, Lady, and let my faith in you be the armour of my soul. Let me prove my honour before all on the field of battle, and let me return to Garamont victorious. Lady of the Fair Isle, I swear it, I shall not rest until I have proven myself worthy in your eyes,’ said Calard, taking a deep breath before he continued. ‘And I shall not rest until I have proven myself worthy in the eyes of my father.’

In the darkness, Bertelis lay awake in the darkness, listening to his brother’s solemn and puritanical words.

At last, the fourteen candles were snuffed out, and the tent was plunged into darkness.

CHAPTER FIVE

Calard rode at the head of the column of knights snaking across the verdant landscape, savouring the feeling of the sun on his back. It had seemed that the entire host had been galvanised by the same concern that plagued Calard: that they would arrive in Bordeleaux too late to make a meaningful contribution in the war against the greenskins, and so the nobles had pushed on with renewed vigour. They awoke before dawn, peasants quickly striking the tents, and the entire force was moving before the first rays of the sun speared over the horizon from the east.

They pushed on at a formidable pace, eating up the miles as they crossed farmland, keeping the forest of Chalons always within eyesight to the south, following the curve of the great expanse of trees. They passed through countless peasant villages and by a dozen fortified stately homes and castles, and, at last, the plains of southern Bastonne rose into the undulating hills of Bordeleaux.

They maintained their relentless pace into the night, leaving the footslogging men-at-arms and the rabble of bowmen commoners far behind, before camp was made. The colourful tents of the nobles were hastily erected by yeomen, and the knights’ horses were brushed down, fed and watered. It was long after midnight, after all but a handful of nobles had eaten their fill and retired for the night, when the peasant soldiers arrived in camp. They collapsed to the ground exhausted, choosing to cluster together under filthy blankets rather than expend the energy needed to erect the crude mass awnings that served as their shelters.

They kept up the mile-eating pace for five days. The rains had passed, but the days remained dull and grey. Miserable, cold peasants in the fields leant on their hoes, wiping hands across their brows as they watched the parade of knights pass. Some of them waved, but not a single knight so much as acknowledged their existence. Only the taciturn Empire noble, Dieter, gave the workers a response, nodding curtly to them as they stared at him in curiosity.

‘What crops are being tended?’ Dieter asked, gesturing to the endless rows of tall, gangly plants, his voice clipped and heavily accented. Stakes connected with twine had been driven into the ground along the perfectly straight lines of cultivated plants to keep them upright, and fruit hung in dense bunches from the spindly limbs.

Calard laughed out loud, looking at the Empire envoy to see if he was making some joke that did not translate. Seeing nothing that would suggest humour in the man’s serious face, he shook his head slightly at Dieter’s ignorance. He seemed so learned in some areas, but, in others, his lack of knowledge was astounding.

‘This area is renowned throughout the Old World for its vineyards,’ said Calard. ‘These are grape vines you see stretched out before you.’

‘Ah!’ said Dieter, wagging a finger in the air in pleasure and excitement, as if he had uncovered some great hidden knowledge. ‘This is where your wine is made!’

‘Well, it is where the grapes that make wine are cultivated, yes,’ said Calard, amused at the usually reserved man’s obvious excitement. ‘Do you not have vineyards within the Empire?”

‘Oh yes, some, but not in Reikland.’

Calard frowned. ‘So, what do you drink?’

‘Beer, predominantly, strong, full-flavoured and invigorating. Some of the wealthy drink wine, but it is not common.’

‘In Bretonnia, even the lowliest peasant drinks wine,’ said Calard proudly, ‘and none more so than those of Bordeleaux, hence the expression, “the sober man of Bordeleaux”.’

Dieter frowned. ‘I do not understand,’ he said.

‘If something is unusual, or unexpected, it is said to be as rare as the sober man of Bordeleaux.’

Dieter repeated the phrase quietly, committing it to memory as if it were of great import.

‘It’s a jest,’ prompted Calard. ‘In Bordeleaux, there is such an abundance of readily accessible and cheap wine that the inhabitants are jokingly regarded to be constantly inebriated.’

‘Yes, I understand the humour. It is most amusing,’ said Dieter seriously. Calard rolled his eyes as the Imperial envoy turned away. If all the people of the Empire were as humourless as Dieter, it must be a grim place indeed.

There was a shout of alarm, and Calard turned in the direction that some of the knights were pointing, seeing wafts of dark smoke rising into the sky in the distance.

‘It’s probably just peasants burning off refuse,’ said a knight, but there was little conviction in his voice.

‘Men are riding towards us,’ said Dieter suddenly. His accent made his pronunciation amusing to the ears of the Bretonnians, and Bertelis, riding just behind the pair, sniggered.

‘Zey are peasant scouts,’ said Bertelis, imitating Dieter’s accent. Calard smirked, and flicked a sidelong glance at the Imperial noble. His face was impassive. If he realised that he was being made fun of, he made no acknowledgement of the fact.

Four outriders rode towards the column of knights, crude spears in their hands. They rode draught horses more generally used to pull hoes and wagons. It was a rare honour for any peasant to be allowed to ride a horse, and a great sign of status among the unruly commoners, though the heavy steeds were utterly outshone by the noble warhorses ridden by the nobility.

Gunthar pulled his steed up alongside Calard, and addressed the dirty peasants as they drew their horses to a halt alongside the column.

‘What news, yeoman?’

The leader of the motley horsemen, a stinking man with a vicious scar running across his face, nodded his head in deference to Gunthar. He wore a tabard of iron-studded leather over his body, and, bizarrely, had a dead pigeon strapped to his steel-rimmed helmet. His luncheon meal, most probably, thought Calard in disgust.

‘A village, m’lord, under attack up ahead.’

‘Under attack? Greenskins?’ asked Gunthar curtly.

‘Aye, m’lord.’ Calard and Bertelis exchanged excited glances.

‘How far?’ cut in Calard eagerly.

‘Not far, m’lord, maybe five miles? Up yonder, in the dip past that hill,’ said the scarred yeoman, gesturing with his spear towards a rise up ahead.

Calard and Bertelis instantly kicked their steeds forward, though they wheeled them sharply around when they realised that the other knights were not following their lead.

‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ asked Bertelis.

‘Have some patience, young lord,’ said Gunthar darkly. ‘It is foolish indeed to rush off to battle without knowing first what one faces.’

‘What one faces?’ asked Bertelis. ‘The peasant said it himself: greenskins.’

‘But how many, and from which direction? These are questions that a knight must ask before he charges off to battle.’

Calard huffed in impatience. His steed, sensing its rider’s excitement, was snorting and stamping its hooves as it turned on the spot.

‘Ah, the lads are just eager to whet their blades,’ said the deep booming voice of the Baron of Montcadas as he rode to the front of the column. ‘I can’t say I blame them, either,’ he added. ‘The last week has been a drain on my patience.’ Calard gave the broad shouldered knight a grin.

The baron’s bushy beard parted in a broad, toothy smile, and he pulled his morning star from his side, the heavy spiked ball falling to hang alongside his horse as the chain was released from its leather binding.

‘Let’s go get ’em, eh lads?’ said the baron, winking towards Calard.

The young knights errant whooped in anticipation, and the baron swung his bulk around in the saddle to address the knights behind him.

‘Knights of Bastonne!’ he roared with the thunder of an angry bear. ‘We ride to battle! Form up!’

With that, the baron kicked his steed forward into a trot.

‘Stay close to me lads,’ he rumbled to Calard and Bertelis, and they fell in alongside the stocky knight of Montcadas. Gunthar pulled his steed alongside them, his moustache twitching in irritation.

‘Don’t tense up, and don’t break formation when the charge is launched,’ he said. ‘Keep tight, and don’t lose your momentum.’

‘We know how to fight, old man,’ retorted Bertelis, but the veteran knight ignored him.

‘Follow the lead of the baron. He will be the point of the lance, and you must ride close. We must be as one, for if we become splintered we will lose our advantage.’

Bertelis groaned in exasperation, and Calard too felt his frustration and embarrassment rise.

‘We are not children,’ Calard snapped, feeling a blush on his cheeks to be spoken to in this manner within earshot of the more senior knights.

‘That will be determined shortly,’ said Gunthar. ‘Just remember what I have taught you.’

Calard’s hands were sweating within his gauntlets and his throat was dry, as the knights crested the hill.

The buildings of the village were crude dwellings, constructed from a latticework of sticks, and covered in a thick gruel of straw, mud and manure. Such wattle and daub lodgings were common in Bretonnia, for it was illegal for a peasant to make use of stone in the construction of their own dwellings. The streets were filled with screaming peasants, who ran in all directions.

Several of the hovels were ablaze, and black smoke rose, in billowing clouds above them.

Calard’s eyes, however, were drawn to the enemy. He had never seen a live greenskin before, though he had stared for hours on end at the massive stuffed head of one of the brutes, mounted in the castle banquet hall, marvelling at its savage, thick features and gaping, tusk-filled maw. That severed orc head had always made him shiver, but it was as nothing compared to witnessing the brutal creatures in the flesh.

Each of them was as tall as a man, though they were hulking monsters of muscle, far broader and heavier than the peasants they were slaughtering. The air was filled with their savage roars, and they hacked around them with heavy cleavers and cudgels, butchering everything in their path.

The ground reverberated with the pounding of hooves as the knights of Bastonne galloped towards the beleaguered villagers, and Calard felt his breath catch in his throat. He saw one roaring greenskin slam its crude weapon into the shoulder of a screaming peasant, blood spurting from the mortal blow as it drove deep into the man’s body. An axe slammed into the neck of another, nigh on severing the peasant’s head, and the greenskin monster roared its pleasure as hot blood sprayed into its face.

Scores of peasants had already been massacred, and the few that tried to fight their attackers with pitchforks and hoes were cut down mercilessly. Calard saw a man’s head rupture as it was slammed violently into the doorframe of a barn, and heard the cries of peasants that had chosen to die in the flames consuming their homes rather than be torn apart by the animal ferocity of the greenskins.

The village was a scene of nightmarish brutality and horror, with screaming peasants running in every direction, seeking escape, and dozens of hulking, green-skinned creatures revelling in the panic and slaughter. Calard saw a child impaled upon a spear hurled through the maelstrom of battle, and, as he watched, he saw a woman hurl herself from the upper storey of a barn, desperate to escape the flames threatening to burn her alive, only to be leapt upon and ripped apart by a pair of massive green-fleshed brutes.

‘For Bastonne and the king!’ bellowed Baron Montcadas, swinging his spiked morning star over his head, and the knights kicked their steeds into a gallop. The baron formed the apex of the charge, pulling ahead of the line of knights, and the other nobles of Bastonne formed a tight wedge behind him. Calard guided his steed expertly with his thighs and spurs, and lowered his lance before him as he had been trained, and the knights of Bretonnia thundered into the main street of the village.

A greenskin raised its thick head from the struggling peasant it had just clubbed to the ground, its small eyes glinting with savagery. The spiked metal ball of the baron’s morning star swung into its head with brutal force, and the creature was sent flying backwards, its skull a shattered ruin, before it was trampled beneath the hooves of the knights’ steeds.

Everything was happening in a blur. The riot of noise was overwhelming, as screams of pain and anger mingled with animalistic roars and bellows above the pounding of horses’ hooves and the clanking of plate armour. The heat of the flames washed over Calard like a wave, the hot air scalding his lungs with each breath. Burning buildings flashed past as the knights pounded into the village, and peasants dived out of the way, frantic to escape being trampled to death. The stink of blood, death and burning human flesh filled Calard’s nostrils. His heart was pounding and his breath was coming in short, sharp gasps.

‘Keep tight!’ shouted Gunthar, and Calard snapped back into focus. His whole existence seemed to become suddenly centred on the tip of his lance, and he levelled it at the barrelling chest of a greenskin brute that roared its defiance as he bore down upon it.

The creature leapt forward to meet the knights head-on, and Calard followed its every move with the tip of his lance. He took in every detail of the barbarous creature: its foul hide, which was the colour of rotting vegetation; the assortment of rusted armour plates that covered its broad shoulders; its malicious red eyes filled with bloodlust and bestial hatred. Gore dripped from the heavy bladed cleavers clasped in its massive fists, and thick tusks extended from its lower jaw. Its heavily scarred arms were immense, easily as thick as his thighs.

The lance tip smashed into the orc’s chest with a shuddering impact, and Calard tensed his muscles as he drove the lance through the creature’s ribcage, as he had been taught on the practice fields of Garamont. The power of the blow shuddered up Calard’s arm and into his body, as the vamplate of his lance was driven back into his breastplate, and his body rocked backwards in the saddle. The lance drove clear through the creature’s body, impaling it, and the weapon was ripped from Calard’s hands.

The fallen orc was trampled beneath Gringolet’s hooves, its bones crushed as it was kicked and stamped by the knights close behind. Then Calard was past the orc, his sword hissing from his scabbard in a flash of silver. In what seemed like a fraction of a second, he had been blooded in battle, and had made his first kill with the lance.

Calard’s blade flashed out, glancing off the skull of an orc as he surged past, and other greenskins were lifted into the air as they were impaled on the lances of the other knights.

Calard’s earlier nervousness was replaced by an empowering surge of adrenaline, and he whooped savagely, voicing his enthusiasm and excitement as the formation of knights thundered through the village, running down and slaughtering the greenskins. Nothing could stand against them, and the feeling of power and speed was intoxicating.

Calard’s hands were shaking as he dismounted, and he took a deep racking breath, exhausted and exhilarated. His body was tense, and it felt like he had been fighting for hours rather than the scant minutes that had actually passed.

Kneeling, he wiped the dark blood from his sword on the tunic of a peasant lying face down and unmoving in the mud. The image of the orc as his lance had impaled it kept flashing into his mind, and he clenched his fist, feeling again the killing blow.

Bertelis whooped as he dropped from the saddle alongside him, and Calard beamed at him as the brothers clasped forearms.

‘Our first battle a noble victory!’ said Bertelis. ‘I saw your strike, brother, a fine blow it was.’

‘As was yours,’ said Calard. Bertelis’s lance had taken an orc in the throat, ripping its jugular free in a spurt of blood.

‘And the baron!’ exclaimed Bertelis. ‘He was like the spirit of Gilles reborn! He must have killed, what, five of them?’

‘It was truly a sight to behold,’ he said, nodding in agreement, awed by the prowess of the knight.

‘You did well, young lords,’ said Gunthar gruffly, pulling his horse alongside the pair of knights errant. ‘You remembered your training in the chaos of battle. More than a few knights have stumbled in their first engagement, freezing up or becoming overwhelmed by their fear. I am proud of you both.’

Calard beamed up at Gunthar, feeling a surge of pride at the rare praise.

Peasant women wailed over the mutilated corpses of fathers, husbands and sons, while others struggled to contain the fires that still raged, but Calard was oblivious to their suffering, focused completely on his own victory. He had been tested in the forge of battle and had proven himself worthy.

‘This was but a skirmish,’ said Gunthar. ‘The enemy was unprepared for our attack, intent on the slaughter of the defenceless, but it is good that your blades have been whetted in blood. Remember this day, for things will never be the same again. Today, you have become men.’

With a curt nod, the weapon master wheeled his horse around, and began barking orders at the men-at-arms bearing the colours of Garamont, who were just now arriving in the village, organising them into work teams. A pit was dug on the outskirts of the village, and the corpses of slain peasants were hurled unceremoniously into the shallow grave. The bodies of the greenskins were dragged onto the smouldering remnants of a hovel gutted by fire, and the air was soon filled with a nauseating stink as their flesh was consumed in the flames. More than half the village had been levelled by fire, and peasants poked through the ruins to salvage anything of value.

‘Knights of Bastonne! The armies of Bordeleaux are near!’ bellowed Baron Montcadas. ‘We push on!’

Calard pulled himself into the saddle once more, feeling older and more self-assured than he had only an hour earlier. He accepted a new lance offered to him by a soldier, bearing the colours of his father, and at the sound of a horn blown by one of the knights the nobles of Bastonne rode from the devastated village. The men-at-arms and bowmen trudged along in their wake, stomping and slipping through the mud.

The peasant villagers watched them go, their faces pale, and streaked with blood and filth as they stood despondent amid the scene of destruction all around them.

The warriors of Bastonne did not look back.

Calard’s jaw dropped as he drew to a halt atop the rise and looked down upon the seething battle underway below.

They had ridden for half a day before encountering the scouts of Bordeleaux.

Clarion horns sounded, and thousands of knights churned up the earth as they thundered across the field, lances lowering as they smashed into the massed ranks of the enemy. The greenskins surged like an overwhelming tide, their numbers inconceivable. Dim roars and screams carried up to the knights of Bordeleaux, and barbarous drums echoed across the battlefield. The greenskins pounded weapons against their shields, creating a resounding din, like the beating heart of some infernal god of war.

The earth was littered with the dead and dying, hundreds of broken figures that twitched and moaned in pain. Horses with legs broken beneath them screamed in agony. Dark clouds of arrows descended through the air, killing hundreds with each volley.

‘Ah, what I would give to have a handful of cannons from Nuln here, now,’ said Dieter, to no one in particular. Bertelis flashed a look of disgust at the Empire soldier.

Thousands of men-at-arms and greenskins were locked in brutal combat, and Calard could see the line of the Bretonnian forces begin to buckle against the strength and ferocity of the foe. Even as he watched, he saw a heraldic black and white banner fall amidst the mayhem, and a few men-at-arms broke ranks, fleeing away from the foe. These men were like the first rocks that started an avalanche, and soon hundreds of men-at-arms were streaming back towards their own battle lines. Scores of them were cut down by the enemy that surged forwards as they fled, and hundreds more would have been slaughtered were it not for the knights that powered into the greenskins, stemming the gap in the line. They ploughed through the undisciplined enemy ranks, felling dozens with lance and sword, and scattering the survivors before them.

The greenskin lines parted, and rattling chariots of crude design were dragged through the breach by giant war boars, murderous scythes spinning from their axles. Calard cried out as he saw a trio of these machines of war smash into a phalanx of knights. Nobles fell heavily as their steed’s legs were cut from beneath them, while other knights were lifted from their saddles by the thick spears thrust by the orcs riding upon the backs of these wheeled constructs. The gigantic war boars, bristling with blood lust, gored and ripped with thick tusks capped with iron, and noble warriors of Bordeleaux were crushed beneath the metal studded rims of chariot wheels.

The carnage was breathtaking. This was war, with thousands of men and beasts clashing in mortal combat.

A formation of knights, its momentum lost, became mired in combat, deep within an enemy formation. Their horn blower sounded his instrument frantically, as the greenskins surrounded them on all sides and began dragging them from the saddle, cleavers hacking at the knights savagely.

A lance of knights, hearing the distress call, wheeled their steeds around to aid their comrades, and it was then that Calard saw a fresh line of orcs erupt from the tree line, riding upon the backs of hulking boars. The powerful beasts hurtled across the ground, angling towards the flank of the knights who were oblivious to the threat. The knights of Bordeleaux overlooked the field from a vantage point, and only they could see the danger. The boar riders would slam into the flank of the knights, and more proud Bretonnians would be slaughtered.

‘Ride!’ shouted Baron Montcadas, kicking his steed onwards, and the knights of Bastonne powered down the grassy hill to intercept the threat. Calard, his face flushed with anger, shouted a wordless cry, which was lost amongst the cacophony of war, as he urged Gringolet on, willing the stallion to gallop faster.

Too late, the boar riders realised this new danger, and tried to haul their bulky steeds around to face the knights’ charge. The creatures were stubborn, obstinate beasts, and they snarled and slavered as their riders pulled brutally at them. Several of them threw their riders, bucking and spinning, and the massive tuskers gored each other in the confusion. The scent of blood drove them to madness, and they ripped at each other, as their riders tried frantically to control the wild beasts. Then the knights of Bastonne slammed into them.

Calard’s lance glanced off the armoured shoulder of an orc, throwing it off balance, and Gringolet’s armoured bulk smashed the creature aside. It lost its precarious balance upon the ridged back of its mount, and fell beneath the flashing hooves of the warhorses, even as the boar was impaled upon the lance of another knight, spitting and snarling as it fell.

There was a sharp crack from nearby, followed by an unfamiliar, acrid smell, and an orc was felled as a lead shot punched through its thick, bony forehead. Calard glanced to his side to see the Empire soldier, Dieter, with one of his long, ornate pistols extended, smoke spilling from the barrel.

A knight alongside Calard was thrown from the saddle as a spear struck his breastplate, and he saw his brother’s lance break as it sank deep into the body of another boar. Tucking his own lance tightly under his arm, he drove its point into the face of a savagely painted greenskin, feeling the satisfying impact as the long weapon drove through its eye socket and brain, before punching through the back of its skull.

Then the knights were free, having smashed through the flank of the boar riders, splitting them.

‘Wheel right!’ roared Baron Montcadas, swinging his gore splattered morning star above his head, spraying blood all around him. In perfect unison, the knights of Bastonne pulled their steeds around to the right in a wide arc, wheeling to face the remnants of the boar riders.

‘For the glory of Bastonne!’ roared the baron, echoed by the shouts of the knights riding behind him, and charged into the confused enemy.

Calard screamed in savage fury as he killed. His lance was wrenched from his hand, so he drew his glittering sword and split the helmet and head of another greenskin.

Within the hour, the field had been won, and the remnants of the greenskin army were fleeing back into the trees, pursued by small regiments of knights and mounted yeomen.

Calard reined his steed in, breathing heavily. His immaculate blue and red tabard was splattered with blood and ripped where a cowardly arrow, fired by the enemy, had glanced across his chest. His shield, bearing his white dragon rampant upon a blue and red field, was battered and scratched.

In one hand, he held the delicate material of the scarf given to him by Elisabet, and he lifted it to his nose, inhaling the perfume that clung to it, feeling comfort in the familiar scent. He tucked the silk cloth beneath his breastplate, and bent forwards in the saddle to pat Gringolet heavily on the shoulder, whispering to the powerful destrier.

‘You did well, boy. You did well.’

CHAPTER SIX

The blaring of horns and the roar of cheering greeted the victorious knights as they rode into Duke Alberic of Bordeleaux’s camp. The smell of roasting meat all but concealed the stink of bodies, sweat, horses and the open pit latrines. Heralds shouted the names and deeds of nobles as they approached, and groups of young knights, flushed with victory, were already celebrating loudly, toasting their success and boasting of their exploits.

The camp was like a grand city, with thousands of tents arrayed in orderly rows upon the grass, each one proudly displaying the colours of its owner, and flying pennants and banners. Deer and pigs were roasting on spits, over cooking fires tended by peasants, and the heady scents of herbs and garlic rose tantalisingly from heavy pots stirred by dutiful servants.

A mock duel was underway, performed by gaudily costumed players, and a rowdy crowd cheered as a black-clad knight, bearing the heraldry of cursed Mousillon, was cut down, bladders of pigs’ blood spilling from the ‘mortal’ wound inflicted by the dashing hero. This noble knight grabbed a comely wench around the waist and delivered a dramatic kiss upon her lips, dipping her backwards theatrically, as jesters capered around, waving rats and frogs on sticks and making obscene gestures behind the couple, accompanied by laughter from those gathered around them.

Livestock screamed as they were slaughtered, and peasants led carts laden with fresh produce through the crowd. Wagons piled high with wooden casks of wine bearing the stamp of Bordeleaux were pushed through the mass of people.

The duke’s massive blue pavilion took pride of place in the centre of the camp, positioned atop a knoll that dominated the area. It was rimmed with gold, and each of its sprawling wings was topped with sky-blue streamers and pennants, edged in gold thread. The duke’s standard was held aloft atop the hill, proudly showing the golden trident upon a field of blue that was his personal heraldry.

The tents of those nobles and knights closest to the duke through birth and favour were positioned around this massive pavilion, and it was clearly a show of status: the closer one’s tent was to the duke’s, the more respect one was due.

Calard smarted that, due to their late arrival, his peasants were forced to erect his tent on the lee side of the hill, towards its base. Positioned lower still, in the muddy dip that fell away into marshland, was the vast peasant camp, where the nobles’ militias and men-at-arms conglomerated. Here too, a form of hierarchy was displayed, for the peasant soldiers of the duke had taken the highest ground, furthest from the mud and reeds.

Scanning the thousands of heraldic designs and colours on display, Calard saw that knights had gathered here from all across Bretonnia. He saw a silver unicorn upon a field of black that must have been the heraldry of a knight from Quenelles, and the black image of a squat fortress upon a halved field of white and yellow that was clearly the heraldry of a knight from distant Montfort.

By far the majority of the knights were from Bordeleaux, as was to be expected, and the vast majority of these sported variations of the duke’s heraldry. Everywhere was the tri-forked image of Manann’s trident, and Calard was amazed at the sheer amount of variety in that simple image. Here was a pair of crossed, long-hafted white tridents upon a quartered field of blue and black, there an image of three trident heads, the tips of each resembling the fleur-de-lys, upon a field of red. Other shield designs were more unique, representing long held family traditions and honours. Calard saw a silver stylised bull’s head upon a black background, and a sinuous golden beast that must have been a cockatrice upon a shield divided into countless diamonds of blue and red.

‘Every knight bears heraldry that is utterly unique to him, yes?’ asked Dieter, staring around him in what Calard took as awe.

‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘The image may relate to some heroic deed done by an ancestor or the knight himself, or it might be passed down to him through family tradition. The colours used are generally taken from one’s parents.’

Calard gestured to his own shield.

‘The dragon is a traditional emblem of Bastonne,’ he said, pointing to the white image of the fire-breathing dragon rampant. ‘Many knights of Bastonne bear such an image, for it harks back to the time of Gilles the Uniter, who hailed from Bastonne. It was he who first took the dragon as his symbol, after he slew the great wyrm Smearghus that had plagued the realm for centuries.’

‘And the colours?’ asked Dieter. He seemed fascinated by details, and this was a subject that Calard warmed to.

‘The red,’ he said, indicating the field on the left of his shield, ‘is taken from my father’s shield, in honour of him. The blue is taken from my mother.’

Dieter frowned.

‘Bertelis is your brother, yes?’ asked the Empire noble, indicating the other knight errant riding ahead. Calard nodded in response.

‘His colours are red and black. Why are his colours not red and blue, as yours are?’

‘Bertelis and I are born of the same father, but my mother died when I was young, and our father remarried. Bertelis bears the black from his mother’s side. He is my half-brother.’

‘Ah!’ said Dieter in triumph. ‘Now I see! And he has a yellow dragon’s head upon his shield, which marks him as coming from Bastonne.’

‘Correct, more or less. Not all knights who bear the symbol of a dragon are from Bastonne, but the vast majority are.’

‘The other knights,’ said Dieter, gesturing towards the hundreds of pennants all around them, ‘are from Bordeleaux, for they bear a trident?’ Calard nodded. ‘Why do they bear this symbol?’

‘Duke Alberic’s realm is bordered to the west by the sea, and his lands have long maintained a close link with the god of the ocean depths, Manann. You know this deity?’

‘I do. He is worshipped within my Empire as well.’

‘It is said that the first duke of Bordeleaux, the great Lord Marcus, who fought alongside Gilles, had a special bond with Manann. In the Canticles of Battle, it is said that Manann and Marcus fought side by side against their enemies, and that Marcus took his heraldry in honour of this relationship.’

‘I see,’ said Dieter. He frowned. ‘Why is it that there is no green on any of the heraldry?’

‘Green?’ asked Calard, incredulous. ‘The colour has two connotations, neither of which a knight would choose to associate himself with.’

‘Oh,’ said Dieter, ‘I am quite partial to the hue.’ Calard realised that the soldier wore a sash of green around his waist, but he ploughed on regardless.

‘For one, green is a simple colour to achieve. Green dye is common, easily affordable, cheap. Green is a peasant colour, and as such, no knight would deign to wear it.’

‘I see,’ said Dieter, fingering his sash, ‘and the other reason?’

‘Green is also the colour of the fey.’

‘The fey? I do not recognise this word.’

‘The fey are the spirits of the woods; unpredictable and capricious, they are as likely to aid a knight lost in their realm as they are to lead him to his doom.’

‘They sound dangerous.’

Calard smiled. ‘Well, yes, they are dangerous for the unwary and anyone who knows not the charms spoken to divert their attentions. Do you not have similar creatures in your Empire?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Dieter vaguely. ‘Many strange and dangerous beings dwell within the mighty Drakwald, and the east of our realm was once plagued by vengeful creatures that roamed the night.’ He smiled. ‘Ghosts and night terrors, perhaps, nothing more than stories told to frighten children.’

‘The fey are very real,’ said Calard seriously. His eyes widened as they passed a knight in deep conversation with another man. The noble’s cheeks were unshaven, and his battle gear was worn and bloodied, his cloak and tabard tattered. A massive two-handed sword was strapped across his back, and his steed was laden with rolls of blankets and equipment. Scraps of parchment, holy writings and prayers, hung from the horse’s caparison. The knight felt Calard’s eyes upon him, and inclined his head in acknowledgement of the young warrior, though he did not break from his conversation.

When they had passed, Bertelis drew alongside his brother.

‘Did you see?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘I did,’ exclaimed Calard. ‘That was Gundehar of Raisol, was it not?’

‘He is a famous knight?’ ventured Dieter. Bertelis scoffed, throwing a scathing glance at the Empire soldier.

‘He is the victor of Albermale Fields, and the slayer of the Beast of Rachard!’ Bertelis said. Dieter looked blank. Bertelis turned away in disgust.

‘Gundehar of Raisol,’ said Calard, ‘is a knight of Bordeleaux, who is engaged upon the noble quest. He seeks the grail of the Lady, and until he achieves his goal, he may not rest. His deeds are renowned all across Bretonnia.’

Dieter raised an eyebrow.

‘Does he think your goddess is to be found here?’

‘She is everywhere,’ said Calard, ‘but she will only appear to one who has proven his devotion to her, who has defeated many enemies of Bretonnia in his quest to find her.’

‘He did not look as… impressive as many of the other knights.’

‘A knight engaged on the holy quest must forsake earthly comforts,’ said Calard, ‘and he must never spend two nights under the same roof, for to do so displays a lack of conviction to his cause, which the Lady would frown upon.’

‘But for us, tonight, earthly comforts are what we seek!’ declared Bertelis loudly. ‘For we have been victorious in battle, and we will drink to our success! Wine and women, we shall have our fill of both!’

The twin moons were high in the sky, just beginning their descent towards the horizon, and the night was still filled with the sounds of celebration. Flaming torches and lanterns lit the encampment, and the sounds of revelry were all around.

Duke Alberic had given a speech earlier in the evening, but Calard could only dimly remember what he had said. It was something about the war not being over, that they had achieved a great victory, but that the war was not yet won. He pushed the thoughts from his mind, as his brother raised his goblet for another toast.

‘To our glorious victory!’ shouted Bertelis, and the brothers drank. Calard spilled his wine as he tried to set it down, and it spread out across the table before him, much to the hilarity of those lounging around it.

‘My dress!’ screeched a young woman, rising unsteadily from the table as the wine splashed over her lap. She overbalanced, and fell backwards, tripping over her stool.

Calard stood up unsteadily, chivalrously going to the woman’s aid. Wine stained her front, and Calard thought she might be about to break out in tears at the sight of her ruined clothes. Instead, she erupted into throaty laughter, and the others joined in, pounding the table in their mirth, sending plates of discarded food and goblets jumping.

Calard helped the girl to her feet, and she leant against him as she fought for balance.

‘You’re handsome,’ she slurred at him as he set her atop her righted stool, and he grinned foolishly at her. He dabbed at her bosom with a cloth, his eyes goggling at the impressive display, while his brother reclined, smiling, and was fed sweetmeats from the hand of a woman languidly stretched upon a lounge, like a cat.

‘The lady that gave you this is very lucky,’ said the girl, touching the silk scarf wrapped around his arm.

‘I am the lucky one, in truth,’ said Calard, gazing numbly at the girl’s soft, pale hand upon his arm. She lifted her head, staring up at him with unfocused eyes, her pupils dilated.

‘She is far away though, is she not?’ asked the girl in a husky voice, moving closer. He saw the thick layer of make-up that the girl had applied to her face, and the scent of cheap, cloying fragrance enveloped him.

Calard blinked and pulled back, reaching for his goblet.

‘She is with me always,’ he said, his voice wistful. ‘She is my muse, a paragon of earthly beauty and sweetness, and I dedicate my victory today to her.’

The girl pouted, flicking her blonde hair. She turned unsteadily, and practically fell into the arms of another young and clearly intoxicated knight.

‘Such a romantic, brother,’ said Bertelis, sipping from his goblet as the pair of girls on either side of him cast venomous glances at each other, both clearly vying for his attention. One had a hand draped over Bertelis’s shoulder, playing with his sandy-coloured hair, while the other was stroking his thigh.

Only a lowborn peasant woman would behave so, thought Calard. Women of class were far more refined than any of these desperate hangers on.

Calard unwrapped the pale scarf from his arm, closing his eyes as he held it to his face, breathing in deeply. Tucking it back into his tunic, he drained the last of the bottle of Bordeleaux wine. He stared blankly at the empty bottle before tossing it over his shoulder.

‘More drink!’ he declared, lifting himself to his feet.

‘Let us take a moment of fresh air,’ said Bertelis, untangling himself from the arms of the two women who flashed each other dark looks, as if it were the other’s fault that the handsome young knight was leaving. He swung around and took the hand of the first, and she fluttered her eyelashes at him as he kissed it delicately. Breaking away, he leant over the other girl and kissed her lingeringly on her neck, her eyes closing in pleasure.

‘Adieu, adieu, fair ladies,’ said Bertelis theatrically as he rose to his feet. ‘We shall return anon, and every moment not in your presence shall pain us greatly.’ Bowing to them both, he backed away and joined his brother. Together, they walked out into the warm night air, their balance unsteady.

‘Wenches,’ said Bertelis disparagingly.

‘I thought you liked them,’ said Calard.

‘Too clinging,’ said Bertelis, dismissing the girls with a wave of the hand. ‘This is our night, my brother. Let us drink and be merry!’ Bertelis raised his arms into the air dramatically, but stumbled as his foot slipped in the mud. He fell against a tent, almost pulling it to the ground.

Calard laughed, as his brother righted himself with some difficulty. Bertelis gave the tent a dark look, pointing an accusing finger at it.

‘I think we might already be rather merry, brother,’ Calard remarked.

‘You might be right,’ admitted Bertelis, and the pair began staggering along the line of tents, arms thrown over each other’s shoulders.

‘Do you have any idea where we are?’ asked Bertelis.

‘I was hoping that you did,’ Calard said, laughing, and they stopped, swaying from side to side. They turned left and right, brows lined in drunken thought, and broke into laughter once more.

‘Well, look at this, my friends,’ said a snide voice, ‘a pair of young lovers, arm in arm. How touching.’

The brothers straightened, pulling their arms from around each other’s shoulders, and Calard’s face flushed an angry red. It took him a moment to focus on the speaker, a slim man slightly older than Calard, standing with his hands on his hips. His finely cut clothes were spotless white and edged in silver, and a red dragon in flight was emblazoned on his chest.

‘Maloric,’ he snarled as he glared into the face of the youngest member of the Sangasse family. ‘I thought I smelt something foul upon the air.’

Maloric was a rakishly handsome man, some three years older than Calard, and were it not for the long-standing feud between their houses they might have been friends. However, the bitter enmity between the two noble families ensured that they would never be anything but rivals. Both came from renowned noble bloodlines, and though Garamont had won more accolades from past battlefield victories, the Sangasses held a stronger political position within Bastonne, due largely to their close marital ties to the royal households of Bretonnia.

‘Ouch,’ said Maloric, feigning hurt as he stepped closer to the Garamont brothers, touching a hand to his breast. ‘You wound me, dear neighbour.’

One of the heavyset men behind Maloric smirked.

‘So you finally made it to Bordeleaux, did you, Garamont? I thought you were cowering at home, too scared to take to the field. Or were you hoping to arrive once the battle was done?’

‘Sangasse dog,’ snapped Bertelis, and he spat into the ground. The men behind Maloric bristled, and the slim young knight turned towards Bertelis.

‘What’s this? Is it Bertelis, Garamont’s brat? You two look nothing alike, you know,’ he said, his finger passing back and forth between the brothers. ‘But then you were born from different mothers, weren’t you. How old must you be, Bertelis? Eighteen summers? But wait!’ he said putting a hand to his cheek in mock outrage. ‘That would mean that you were born well within a year of your mother dying,’ Maloric continued, pointing a finger at Calard, his voice mocking. ‘Scandalous! Dear me, that raises all kinds of questions, does it not?’

Bertelis took a step towards Maloric, his hands clenching into fists. Calard stepped in front of him, turning his back on Maloric, and placed a hand upon Bertelis’s chest. The younger brother paused at the touch, his chest rising and falling heavily as he stared hatefully at the Sangasse noble.

‘This is not the time, brother,’ said Calard through clenched teeth. His brother gave a slight nod of the head, and Calard turned to face Maloric once more. The slim noble stared at Bertelis with cold, dangerous eyes, the hint of a mocking smile playing on his lips.

Calard saw that Maloric wore a silk scarf wrapped around his upper arm, clearly a token of affection.

‘What sort of poisonous viper would see fit to give you her token?’ he snapped, seeing a satisfying anger in Maloric’s eyes. It was there for less than a second, and was replaced with mocking humour.

‘Poisonous viper? A bit harsh, methinks. This was given to me by none other than the fair Lady Elisabet of Carlemont. Her family was the guest of Sangasse for the equinox. I believe you know her?’

Calard felt the colour drain from his face.

‘You lie,’ he said.

‘Why would I bother? The truth is much more amusing,’ said Maloric, and now it was Calard’s hands that clenched into fists.

‘Not the time, remember? He speaks naught but poison,’ said Bertelis in his ear, and Calard glared at Maloric before answering.

‘You are right brother. Let’s leave this place. It reeks of offal and filth, all of a sudden.’

‘That’s right, dogs, run. I think you will find that your tents are down the hill, away from your betters.’

Calard turned away from the smirking Maloric, chuckling humourlessly. Then he swung around violently and slammed his fist into the slim noble’s face. There was a satisfying crack, and blood spurted from the knight’s nose. He fell to his back in the mud, as Bertelis guffawed in shocked amusement.

He stepped forward and delivered a brutal punch to the jaw of the first of Maloric’s men to react, knocking him senseless.

Then the area was suddenly filled with drunken revellers, who threw aside a tent flap and emerged into the thoroughfare, laughing and singing.

Calard saw Bertelis double over as a fist slammed into his midsection, and he pushed people out of the way to get to his brother. He slammed into the heavyset thug standing over his brother, knocking him into a tent that collapsed as his weight brought down its uprights. There was an angry shout from within and a woman’s scream. Heart pounding, Calard pulled his brother upright, and the two of them pushed their way through the crowd away from the fracas.

‘What I wouldn’t give to see that punch of yours again,’ said Bertelis. He laughed, and then winced in pain. ‘It certainly wiped that smug look off the bastard’s face.’

Calard grinned. It certainly had felt satisfying.

Their heads still buzzing with adrenaline and alcohol, the pair wended their way through the tents, having no clear idea of the direction of their tent lay in.

‘Well, would you look at this!’ said Bertelis as they stopped to paused for a moment to get their bearings.

‘What?’

Bertelis gestured, and Calard laughed out loud as he saw that they were standing next to a tent of pure white with a red dragon emblazoned on its tent flaps.

‘I was just thinking I needed to relieve myself,’ remarked Calard, loosening his trousers.

‘My thoughts exactly,’ said his brother, and the two of them stood side by side as they pissed on Maloric’s tent.

‘We are over here,’ said Calard as he retied his belt, catching a glimpse of familiar heraldry in the distance. Bertelis grunted in response, and the pair made their way towards their tents.

‘A good night!’ declared Bertelis. ‘Booze, women and seeing you break Maloric of Sangasse’s nose! What more could a man want?’

Calard laughed, and when his head hit his pallet, he was asleep instantly, dreaming of Elisabet and victory. He thought he heard his sister’s voice calling to him, but he could not find her, and soon it faded, replaced with darkness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Calard awoke with a start as he felt a hand on his shoulder. His dagger was in his hand instantly, and the young squire backed away, his face paling, before he fled the tent.

‘Calard of Garamont,’ someone shouted, and he recognised the voice as Gunthar’s. Calard winced as he felt the throbbing pain in his fist, and he looked down at his bloodied knuckles, remembering dimly the events of the previous night. The weapon master shouted again, and Calard rose to his feet, his head pounding. Bordeleaux wine was indeed fine, but it was no less painful the next day than any other.

‘What?’ he grunted irritably as he stepped out into the overcast morning light. He squinted up at Gunthar, who was fully armoured and astride his warhorse, glaring down at him.

‘Get your armour on,’ said the weapon master, his voice icy. ‘Battle awaits. I will see you in ten minutes in the field west of here. Your brother is there already.’

Gunthar kicked his steed into a trot, leaving Calard standing alone in his bedraggled clothes from the night before. The words of the veteran knight made him come fully awake in an instant, and he curtly ordered for his horse to be brought to him. Swinging around, he re-entered his tent, shouting for his servants.

He ripped off his clothes and hurriedly pulled on the thick padding that protected him from the bruises, cuts and chafing that the joints and edges of his armour would otherwise inflict. He bent forwards and lifted his arms as his chain mail hauberk was pulled over his head, and he stood up, letting the long-sleeved chain shirt settle.

‘Quickly now,’ Calard snapped, and with practised ease his breastplate was fitted in place, its leather ties fastened. The rest of his armour was fitted gradually into position, the heavy plates overlapping each other and tightened. While the squire affixed his greaves and cuisses to his legs, Calard pulled on his soft leather gloves, and strapped his rarebraces and vambraces to his arms, before his cowters and pauldrons were fitted over the top. As the last buckles and ties were fastened, Calard pulled on his steel gauntlets, and his sword was strapped at his waist. His red and blue tabard was pulled over his armour and, fully garbed for war, he knelt before the small triptych shrine of the Lady. Bowing his head, he spoke a quick prayer, asking for strength and valour, before he stood and strode from his tent.

The sun was vainly trying to break through the clouds overhead, and his hangover was forgotten as his heart raced in expectation of the coming battle. He did not stop to consider why no other knights were rushing to make themselves ready for the forthcoming engagement.

Gringolet was led towards him, the mighty dappled grey steed saddled and bedecked in its fine red and blue caparison. The destrier’s head was protected by its spiked, steel chanfron, and the warhorse stamped its hooves eagerly.

Lifting one armoured foot into the stirrup, Calard pulled himself into the saddle smoothly. He accepted his shield and lance as they were handed to him, and urged Gringolet on. Why had his brother gone without him, he wondered angrily?

He pushed through the crowd, the massive destrier muscling peasants out of the way, and cursed at his slow progress. At last, he broke free from the press of bodies and tents, and kicked Gringolet into a gallop, heading away from the duke’s camp. He turned his steed to the west, and rose in the saddle as the destrier leapt a dry-stone wall, and thundered towards the group of knights and mounted peasants in the field beyond.

He slowed as he approached the gathering of mounted warriors, his brow furrowing. He saw Bertelis with a foul expression on his face, and brought Gringolet to a halt before Gunthar, who was glowering at him.

‘You took your time,’ the veteran said.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Calard. He saw that all the knights, apart from Gunthar, around twenty in total, were young, and yet to earn their full knighthood. The peasants were yeomen, mounted upon unarmoured workhorses, and armed with spears and bows. The Empire envoy, Dieter, was there too, though Calard noted that he no longer wore his green sash. The Empire soldier looked bright and cheerful, which irritated Calard, whose headache was returning with a vengeance.

‘We are on scouting duty,’ said Bertelis sourly.

‘What?’ asked Calard.

‘Ducal orders,’ snapped Gunthar. ‘There are still a large number of greenskins within the western fold of the forest, and such are their numbers that they remain a considerable threat. Along with dozens of other parties, we are to scour the forests and drive them into the open. ’

‘So, no battle then?’ asked Calard darkly.

‘Not just yet. It got you ready quickly though, didn’t it?’ said Gunthar, giving him a humourless smile.

‘Isn’t this duty more fit for peasants? Where is the honour to be earned in chasing shadows?’

‘The peasants have enough trouble scaring pigs from the trees, let alone an army,’ said Gunthar lightly, and several of the young knights laughed. ‘No, this duty requires strong, brave young knights. What enemy would not flee before such noble warriors?’

‘There is no honour in it,’ snapped Calard.

The smile slipped from Gunthar’s face.

‘This is a necessary duty,’ he said, ‘and the order comes from the Duke of Bordeleaux, or did you think that a knight’s duty was merely to sleep, drink and womanise inbetween battles?’

Calard bit back an angry retort, and Gunthar drew closer to him, out of earshot of the other young knights.

‘You are not ingratiating yourself in front of your peers, Calard,’ hissed the knight. ‘You sound like a spoilt noble’s son, unwilling to sully his hands with duties he sees as beneath him.’

‘This duty is beneath me. And how dare–’ began Calard but his words were cut short.

‘How dare I speak to you like a child? Act like a knight and I shall treat you as one. Even your libertine brother managed to rouse himself and make it here on time. I expected much more of you, Calard.’

Calard felt the colour in his cheeks rise in shame and anger.

‘You are not the lord of Garamont yet, Calard, and I am responsible for you while we are engaged in Bordeleaux. You will do as I order, or I will have you shamed in front of all these knights.’

Calard clenched his teeth, and looked down, quivering with rage.

‘Do your father proud, Calard,’ said Gunthar, more softly, and Calard nodded his head. Satisfied, Gunthar pulled his steed around sharply.

‘We ride! Now!’ he shouted, and kicked his steed forwards, angling it towards the south. The other knights fell in behind him, and the peasant yeoman kicked their steeds hard, ranging out in front.

‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ asked Calard darkly, pulling alongside Bertelis.

‘Sorry,’ his brother replied casually. ‘I was up early. I thought you would wake in time. I didn’t think–’

‘No, you didn’t,’ said Calard.

Bordeleaux, it seemed to Calard, was a land blessed by the Lady. Its soil was rich, and he could imagine what it would be like in the height of spring. The rolling hills would be awash with life, and the air would be rich with the promise of summer.

The dukedom was a coastal one, and even this far inland there was a freshness to the air that carried hints of the wide blue seas. Calard longed to travel to the coast, to see the mighty cliffs and witness with his own eyes the crashing of the waves. One day, he said to himself.

Less than a mile from the duke’s camp, there came a shout from one of the yeoman outriders.

Bertelis stood in the stirrups, straining to see further ahead.

‘What is it?’ snapped Calard, not bothering to look.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Bertelis. ‘Wait... there is a big group of peasants, fifty or more, I’d say… and I can see a banner,’ he said, straining. ‘It is blue, and is emblazoned with… with a silver horse, standing side on, with a foreleg raised. No, not a horse, a unicorn.’

That got Calard’s attention.

‘Anything else?’

‘I think so… Yes!’ said Bertelis in rising excitement. ‘Beneath the unicorn is a silver grail, with a blue fleur-de-lys upon it!’

‘Reolus!’ breathed Calard, standing in the stirrups to see with his own eyes. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes! It is him!’

The other young knights around them were exclaiming in wonder and amazement as they too strained to catch a glimpse of the famous knight.

‘Is this another knight who quests for your Lady’s grail?’ asked Dieter.

‘No,’ said Calard in awe, ‘this is one who has drunk from it.’

Three peasants were running ahead of the entourage. One of them blew several long tuneless notes on a rusted horn as he ran, his cheeks puffing out like inflated bladders. The peasant in the lead was a portly, balding individual, who held aloft a shield, cloven in two by some mighty blow. Despite the damage done to it, the heraldry upon its face was clear: a silver unicorn upon a field of blue, above an image of the holy grail.

‘The shattered shield of Reolus,’ remarked Bertelis in amazement, staring at the holy artefact. There was not a man in all of Bretonnia who did not know the names, deeds and heraldry of every hallowed grail knight, for they were veritable avatars of holy power, and their every action was recorded and spread the length and breadth of the land. Fathers regaled their sons with tales of these mighty paladins, and noble courts listened attentively as the actions of the most famous grail knights were portrayed in verse, song and performance. The arrival of a grail knight at the fortified gates of a town or city resulted in parades and feasts, and a day of rest for all workers as the streets quickly filled with those hoping to catch a glance of the holy warrior.

Gunthar called the knights errant to a halt, urging their horses off the muddy road so as to allow the grail knight Reolus free progress. They dismounted, to show proper respect, and Calard saw that even Gunthar seemed agitated and nervous, straightening his tabard and smoothing his flowing moustache. The heroic figure could still not be seen, surrounded as he was by a surging mass of pilgrims.

‘Hearken ye! Hearken ye!’ bellowed the balding peasant as he reached the knights, panting and sweating from the exertion. He hefted the shattered shield high above his head. ‘Witness the coming of a living saint, beloved of Quenelles, one who has supped from the grail! Bear witness to his holy shield, shattered by the mighty devil troll of Carcassonne, before he spitted the foul beast upon his lance and did cleave its head from its shoulders with one mighty blow!’

‘You are blessed, sons of Bretonnia!’ yelled one of the peasant’s companions, draped in what must once have been a cloak discarded by the grail knight, though it was now tattered and ripped. ‘You are blessed for you shall bear testament to the coming of Lord Reolus of Quenelles, favoured of the Lady, as he answers the Duke of Bordeleaux’s call to war!’ This pilgrim had clearly seen battle himself, for he had a brutal scar across his face and wore a rusted sword upon his hip. ‘Enemies will wither beneath his shining gaze, and friends will become emboldened by his presence,’ he yelled, spittle flying from his toothless mouth.

‘See the ruin that comes to those who face his holy wrath!’ bellowed the third of the pilgrims, an ugly brute with a lopsided face and the crown of his head shaved bare of hair. He pulled a severed head from a bloody sack, holding the grisly trophy up in the air before him, his face a mask of feverish devotion. The head was rotting and flyblown, and the stink was atrocious, making the knights grimace in revulsion. ‘This was the cursed necromancer Merogant of Mousillon, cut down by Saint Reolus on the fields of Bodkin Moor!’

Several of the knights errant hissed, and spoke silent prayers of protection to the Lady, and Calard saw Dieter touch a hand to the twin-tailed comet emblem on his chest.

‘Blessed are ye!’ shouted the third pilgrim, moving his hands in the air in some form of awkward benediction, before the three peasants continued on their way, clumping awkwardly through the mud towards the duke’s camp in the distance.

Then the main troupe of pilgrims arrived, the bizarre panoply of the procession dizzying in its strangeness and fervour. There were lowborn men and women of all ages in the motley entourage, and they held aloft pieces of rusted armour, broken shoes, shreds of blue cloth and chunks of half-eaten food: all items discarded or cast aside by the grail knight. These pilgrims, who worshipped the knight as a living saint, saw each of the cast-offs as an artefact of holy significance, and they treasured them as if they might impart a small fraction of the holy knight’s favour.

Most were armed for war, with cudgels, daggers and maces hanging from rope belts, though more than a few sported rusted or shattered swords that they had scavenged from fallen warriors. One wore a dented, ill-fitting knight’s helmet on his head, while another proudly wore a breastplate with several crossbow holes through it, the bolts having, most likely, slain its previous owner. Many carried wooden shields that had been daubed with blue paint, and onto these had been nailed all manner of further devotional items: arrows, scraps of vellum torn from holy texts and the bones of those slain by their unwilling benefactor.

‘There he is!’ breathed one of the knights in awe, and Calard stood tall as the revered grail knight approached.

He seemed like an immortal, divine paladin, a faultless living legend, and strength, majesty and faith radiated from him like the heat from an inferno. Calard’s breath was taken away, his mouth gaping open as he was overcome by awe. Grail knights were the epitome of knightly perfection, the ideal that every knight of Bretonnia aspired to, and to merely be in the presence of one of these esteemed paragons was overwhelming.

Riding upon the back of the biggest warhorse that Calard had ever seen, the grail knight towered above his pilgrims, and the young knight errant felt suddenly like a child. The midnight-black stallion must have been nigh on twenty hands tall at the shoulder, and it was bedecked in a regal blue caparison, its edges stitched with shimmering silver thread. The venerated grail knight rode tall and proud, his presence awesome and terrifying in equal measures.

Whether it was coincidence or divine favour, the clouds parted as the grail knight drew near, bathing him in warm, golden beams of light. His armour shone like the sun, and Calard squinted against its brightness. The knight’s armour was a work of inspired artistry, every inch of it covered in intricate detailing, engravings, and inlaid with finely worked silver. A shimmering cloak of blue, lined with soft mink fur, fluttered behind him, held in place by a heavy golden brooch in the shape of the Lady’s grail. The knight was adorned with countless devotional tokens and sacred icons, from holy beads to miniature pendants carved from the finger bones of saints into the likeness of the Lady.

He rode slowly along the muddy roadway, stoically ignoring the pilgrims that capered and proclaimed his noble deeds in loud voices. His shield was a masterpiece of craftsmanship, clearly made by the same genius who had forged his armour, and his lance was the finest example of its kind that Calard had ever borne witness to. Its silver vamplate was worked into the visage of a snarling dragon, and Calard thought he saw, for a brief second, a shimmering light coruscate up the length of the lance. It was named Arandyal, and it was one of the most hallowed artefacts of Quenelles. Blessed by the Lady, Reolus had wielded it against innumerable foes, and it was the weapon that the grail knight was said to have used to slay the dragon Grelmalarch, a beast that had terrorised the people of Carcassonne for centuries.

The grail knight’s full-faced helm was topped by a majestic heraldic unicorn of silver, which was surrounded by a host of candles. The Lady’s fleur-de-lys was cut into the right side of the helmet as a breathing grill, and Calard felt his heart lurch as the grail knight turned his head in his direction.

The grail knight’s eyes glinted from within the darkness of his helmet, and Calard felt a surge of primal terror beneath the gaze, as if his soul was stripped bare. As one, the knights errant dropped to one knee before the grail knight Reolus, lowering their heads, and Calard, sweating profusely, was glad to no longer be locking eyes with the awesome knight. Never in his life had he encountered anything with such a powerful presence.

Raising his gaze and standing once more, Calard felt exhilaration fill him, as the grail knight dipped his lance in salute to the knights, bowing his head ever so slightly. Then he was past them, and the world seemed to grow a little dimmer. The clouds closed ranks once more overhead, and the radiant brilliance that had bathed the grail knight faded.

‘The grail knight Reolus,’ whispered Bertelis, shaking his head in wonder. ‘Did you see the size of him? I had thought that the legends of his exploits may have been exaggerated, but seeing him here, I doubt them not at all.’

‘We have been blessed indeed to have stood in the presence of such greatness,’ said Gunthar as he pulled himself back into the saddle. Minutes later, distant cheering and the blaring of trumpets announced Reolus’s entrance into the duke’s camp. ‘Remember this moment, knights of Bretonnia. Through courage, devotion and duty, you too may one day achieve such lofty heights.’

Calard’s eyes misted over as he imagined people cheering his name, proclaiming his deeds and being awed in his presence. Gunthar’s voice cut through his daydream.

‘That isn’t going to happen standing around like a bunch of dullards. To become a grail knight, one must display utter devotion to one’s lord and the Lady, and perform all one’s duties, however mundane, with pride and honour. Right now, our duty is to enter the forest and scare out the enemy. So let’s not linger here any longer.’

Calard swung into the saddle, still amazed and honoured by having been so close to a grail knight: the mighty Reolus, no less. Faced against such a warrior, the enemy had no chance. The mere possibility of seeing the knight riding into battle was a thrilling thought.

The forest loomed like a malevolent beast in the distance. He shivered, scanning the tree line for movement. Gringolet snorted uneasily, and Calard gave the destrier a comforting pat, staring darkly towards the looming trees. It felt as though hateful eyes watched their progress.

Pushing such childish thoughts from his mind, he concentrated on envisaging his triumphant elevation to the heady ranks of the grail knights, and smiled.

Calard’s unease returned as they pushed into the forest of Chalons. The outskirts had been open and filled with light, the coppiced trees young and widely spread, allowing the knight easy progress. Late-blooming bluebells spread beneath the shadows of the trees, creating an otherworldly vision of remarkable beauty. Bones and the occasional grinning skull, the remains of some long-forgotten battle, peeked from beneath the softly lilting, purple-blue flowers.

Sparse woodland had slowly given way to denser, darker tracts, where the trees were older and more tightly clumped, and the knights’ progress slowed. The ground was thick with fallen, rotting leaves. The light that pierced the thick canopy of twisted branches diminished, and the shadows deepened, becoming more menacing.

After hours of travel, they were pushing into the dark, old forest, untouched by human hand. Thick oaks, gnarled like twisted old men, leant over the knights as they progressed, creaking and groaning. Moss and lichen clung to the trunks, and toadstools and fungus grew in abundance. Mighty trees of ash and beech grew thick and tall, and small creatures rustled through the leaf litter and danced through the branches overhead. Leaves and sticks fell upon the knights, and they eyed their surroundings warily. The paths worn through the trees by boars or deer were twisting and convoluting, and the branches of trees pressed in on all sides, making the knights duck and shield their eyes against twigs that clawed at their exposed faces.

This was not a place for a knight of Bretonnia, and Calard imagined that the ancient forest was resisting their presence, resentful of the intrusion into its dark heart. Again, he felt eyes boring into him, and he swung in the saddle, casting his gaze around, trying to pierce the gloom, but seeing nothing untoward.

There were dozens of other groups pushing into the wilds, spread wide like a net, scouring for signs of the enemy, and driving the greenskins ever closer to the forest’s edge. Most were young knights errant, like Calard, but he still chafed at what he saw as a task better suited to peasants.

A shout from up ahead pulled him from his morose thoughts, and, as he pushed through a mass of twisted bracken, he saw one of the yeoman scouts kneeling over several corpses sprawled upon the dark earth.

‘There are more of them over there,’ said the yeoman to Gunthar, gesturing vaguely to the east.

The knights errant crowded in, and Calard caught a glimpse of green flesh. The dead creatures were small, no more than four feet in height, and their skin was covered in barbaric piercings, raven feathers and black tattoos.

‘More goblins,’ said Gunthar. The veteran had dismounted, and pushed one of the corpses onto its back with his foot. The creature’s face was frozen in a leering rictus that might have been terror, though it was hard to discern. The goblin’s lips were drawn back, exposing an array of sharp, yellow teeth, and its beady eyes were wide and surrounded by smudges of coal. A large black tattoo dominated the creature’s face, a barbaric and crude depiction of a spider, its barbed legs spreading out over each side of the goblin’s face, and its bulbous body on his forehead. The image had been tattooed in such a way that the goblin’s eyes filled in for the eyes of the arachnid, and its oversized fangs framed the greenskin’s mouth. Bones and fraying, black feathers had been pushed through the flesh of its drooping ears. It was a feral, loathsome creature, and Calard found it morbidly fascinating and repulsive at the same time.

Dark blood leaked from a large gash in its head, where the skull had been caved in. The other diminutive, vicious creatures had been just as brutally slain, and bore deep wounds caused by strong, savage blows.

This was the second group of slaughtered greenskins that they had encountered in the last few hours.

‘Infighting?’ Calard had suggested when they had come across the first corpses. Gunthar had shrugged.

‘Possibly. Perhaps a power struggle between rival tribes in the aftermath of battle. Who knows.’

‘Gunthar,’ said Calard. The weapon master grunted in response, probing at the goblin’s wound with the tip of his sword. ‘If this wasn’t the result of infighting, then what killed these things? A scouting party like ours?’

‘No, these are not blows caused by Bretonnian hands,’ said Gunthar. ‘None of these creatures was slain by lance or arrow, and, as far as I can determine, no other scouting party has come this way.’

Occasional distant blasts from horns sounded through the trees as other scouting groups sighted the enemy.

‘At least we know we are behind them,’ said Gunthar. ‘They are moving before us towards the edge of the forest, as we had hoped. Either they keep moving and break from the forest, or they turn to face us.’

‘Or whatever else it is that hunts them,’ said Dieter thoughtfully. ‘Could we perhaps be between two enemies?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Bertelis dismissively. ‘The greenskins are little more than animals. Their pack leader was probably killed in battle, and they are now fighting each other to claim dominance. They hear us closing in on them, and run like deer before us.’

Gunthar shrugged his shoulders.

‘You could be right,’ he said.

‘Listen,’ said Calard, and the knights fell silent. The only sound was the dry wind rustling through the trees and the occasional whinny from a horse.

‘I don’t hear anything,’ said Bertelis.

‘Exactly,’ said Calard, ‘not even the cry of a bird, or the scuffling of a wood mouse.’

‘You’re right,’ said Gunthar. ‘There is something unnatural in the air. Come, let us push on. The sooner we are out of this forest, the better. It feels like we are being watched.’

The other knights muttered in agreement, staring around with wide eyes. Only Bertelis seemed unconcerned.

Calard started as he heard a shout from deeper in, his heart lurching. Bertelis smirked, and Calard reddened.

‘Lord Gunthar, you’d better come and see this,’ called a yeoman.

The tree was immense, an ancient and contorted oak that must have been old when Gilles the Uniter walked the earth over a thousand years earlier. It would have measured more than fifty feet around its massive trunk, and twisted roots spread around it. The thick roots had grown over a stand of giant boulders, and, in places, had cracked the stone after centuries of relentless pressure.

Immense branches like the powerful arms of a wrestler reached up into the air, and from these ancient limbs hung dozens of bodies.

‘Lady, lend me strength,’ whispered Calard as he gaped in horror up into the canopy overhead.

The corpses swung gently from the boughs, hanging from ropes and chains. Others had been nailed into the trunk of the tree, their blood mingling with the sap that leaked from the wounds. Heads impaled on wooden stakes protruded from the ground, and dozens of corpses, many little more than crumbling skeletons, were piled up around the base of the mighty oak, along with rusting weapons, scraps of armour and shields. Calard was shocked to see more than one Bretonnian helmet and shield amongst the pile, and many of the skeletons were clearly of human origin.

The bodies of recently slain goblins and orcs hung alongside withered skeletons, and fresh blood dripped from the horrendous wounds that many of them bore.

Hundreds of black carrion birds were perched in the branches of the horrendous, deathly oak tree, and they stared accusingly down upon the intruders. Many of them paused mid-feast to glare at the knights, while others continued to gulp down eyes, like peeled grapes that had been plucked from sockets, and tear strips of flesh from bones with wickedly sharp beaks.

A yeoman hurled a rock at one of the bloated birds, and it fluttered its heavy black wings, issuing a harsh, hateful, accusatory cry.

Bertelis dismounted and began approaching the base of the tree warily, drawing his sword.

‘Bertelis,’ hissed Calard, eyes darting around nervously. His brother ignored him, advancing slowly forward.

‘Let us not tarry here,’ said Gunthar, his voice strained.

Still, the younger Garamont brother walked towards the grisly oak tree. He pushed aside a goblin corpse with his foot, and bent down, peering at shapes almost completely hidden beneath the tangle of roots.

‘Bertelis,’ hissed Calard again.

The sandy-haired knight flashed an irritated look at his brother, and reached a hand between the dark roots of the tree, biting his lip. He couldn’t quite reach whatever it was that glinted in the darkness, and he bent lower, straining, and groping deeper beneath. It looked like the tree would come to life and swallow the young knight at any moment. Calard knew such a notion was foolish, but he felt anxious and uneasy nonetheless.

‘Come on, brother!’ he snapped.

He saw Bertelis stand, hefting something from beneath the twisted roots. He turned it over in his hands, and Calard saw that it was a helmet, old and rusted. A skull slipped from within it, falling at Bertelis’s feet, and the young knight jumped, and then laughed out loud at his own foolishness.

‘This helm bears the heraldry of Walden of Lyonesse,’ Bertelis called out. Walden had been a knight engaged on the holy quest for the grail, and rumour had it that he had suffered a mortal blow from a dark knight of cursed Mousillon. His retainers had claimed that the Lady had appeared upon a ghostly ship, powered by neither sail nor oar, and had borne him to her immortal realm. ‘It would appear that he did not join the Lady on her misty isle after all.’

Bertelis shook his head sadly and dropped the helmet to the ground. Somewhat reluctantly it seemed to Calard, he walked away from the tree and mounted his horse.

‘Let us be away from this cursed place,’ said Gunthar.

Dieter stared long at the grisly tree, his brow furrowed, his expression serious. He had heard of such things before, deep in the darkest reaches of the sprawling Drakwald forest, in the realm of his homeland. He shook his head, dismissing the notion. No, it was surely as the young knight had said: the greenskins were probably leaderless and barbarically preying on each other. He could not, however, fully shake the notion that there was something else within the forest, something hateful and jealous, something that watched them even now.

He glanced around once more, swallowing heavily, his mouth suddenly dry.

CHAPTER EIGHT

With the sound of straining timbers and the sharp snap of leather and rope, the massive trebuchets fired. Leather slings, filled with great chunks of masonry, were whipped through the air behind the long rotating arms, as the massive counterweights descended. As the groaning long arms were flung past the vertical position, the masonry was hurled high into the air, spinning end over end.

The massive blocks of stone and mortar seemed to hang in the sky for a moment of weightlessness as they reached the apex of their trajectory, before plummeting towards the ground.

With pounding thuds that rocked the earth, the colossal missiles slammed down into the massed ranks of the greenskins, embedding themselves deep into the ground and crushing scores of the enemy. Other blocks skidded and bounced before coming to rest, crushing and killing dozens more.

The Bretonnians had scoured Chalons for two weeks, driving the greenskins before them. Hundreds of knights and peasants had worked in concert to push the greenskins out into the open, so that a decisive battle could be won against them.

This was that battle. The sheer number of greenskins that Chalons had harboured was staggering. A victory would be had, here, that would clear the area of the greenskin menace for decades, or the armies of Bordeleaux would fail, and the dukedom would burn.

At a shouted command, hundreds of bows were raised to the heavens, arrows nocked to strings. At another command, the bowmen loosed, and the air was filled with a dense cloud of deadly arrows that hissed as they sliced through the air. High into the sky they arced, and, as they began to fall towards the earth, a second volley was fired.

It was ducal law that every able Bretonnian peasant boy learnt to fire the longbow, though in truth the law was rarely upheld. Few peasants had the means or skill to purchase or craft a bow, and fewer still had the strength needed to draw one. Still, those peasant families that were blessed enough to own a longbow, which was often passed down from father to son, pushed their sons to practise with it, building their strength, for the coin earned through going to war, though so miniscule as to be nigh-on ridiculous, was, to most peasant families, a princely wage.

Calard hissed in frustration and shook his head, bristling with impatience as he watched the enemy being mercilessly cut down by the missile weapons of the duke’s peasant militias. Scores of peasants strained as they rotated the powerful winches that lowered the arms of the trebuchets, readying the powerful weapons for another shot. Further volleys of arrows descended into the enemy massing on the field before them, and Calard swore as hundreds were cut down.

‘Where is the honour in this?’ he snarled from his position within the massed line of knights arrayed against the foe. The nobles of Bastonne were gathered together, and knights who owed fealty to his father surrounded him. The intimidating bulk of Baron Montcadas and his knights were nearby, the bearded baron toying with his spiked morning star as he glared at the enemy.

A little way off, Calard could see Maloric and those warriors sworn to Sangasse. He was pleased to see the ugly bruising that marred the young knight’s face, and, as if sensing Calard’s gaze upon him, Maloric turned and glared hatefully across the line in his direction.

‘I’d say you’ve improved his looks drastically,’ said Bertelis. Calard chuckled as his brother made an obscene gesture at Maloric, who bristled in anger.

Casting his gaze further along the line of Bretonnians, Calard could see more than three thousand knights arrayed for battle. Banners and pennants, proudly displaying the heraldry of the most powerful nobles, whipped in the wind, and his eye was drawn to the duke’s banner, held aloft in the centre of the knights. He could make out the vague figure of the grail knight Reolus in the distance, sitting tall in the saddle among the duke’s entourage.

Some ten thousand men at arms stood in ragged lines behind the resplendent ranks of the nobility. They were arranged in deep blocks of troops, bearing shields and pennants in the colours of their lords. Their number was prodigious, but Calard had little faith in their strength. The battle would be won or lost in the charge of the knights.

‘How can we hope to prove ourselves when the enemy is cut down by mere peasants?’ asked Bertelis.

‘Compose yourself,’ snapped Gunthar, his eyes alert and piercing. ‘Your time will come. The duke wishes their lines to be thinned before we engage.’

‘There will be nothing left alive for us to engage,’ replied Calard sourly. ‘This is not how battle is fought, to stand idly by while the enemy is slaughtered by bow and war machines.’

‘Quiet, both of you!’ snapped Gunthar. ‘Have some patience, and learn from the duke’s strategy. This battle will still be won by knightly charges, but the duke wishes to ensure a complete, resounding victory, with minimal losses. See how he has sent the knights of southern Bordeleaux out to the north to flank the enemy? He wants the enemy to charge straight towards his bowmen. When they are nearing, we will charge into their front, while the flanking knights charge their exposed side. At the same time, a force of some fifteen hundred men-at-arms is encircling the enemy through the forest to the south, cutting off their escape. If we charge ahead now, the duke’s plan would be ruined.’

‘Charging straight into the foe would be more honourable than hiding behind peasants with bows,’ said Bertelis sourly. Gunthar sighed and gave him a long look.

‘In the pages of legend? Yes, you are right, but this is reality, and the duke’s strategy has merit. He will win a great victory here today, and that is what will be remembered. Have patience, young lords of Garamont. You will be in the thick of the fighting soon enough. There will be plenty of time for you to earn your honour this day.’

The knights had harried the enemy within the woods, engaging them in running battles and skirmishes, driving them always towards the west, towards the edge of the forest. Regiments of yeomen peppered their ranks with bow fire, galloping away from them when the enraged greenskins sought to engage them, drawing them slowly out into the open. Sorties and attacks from lances of knights had killed hundreds of the greenskins, retreating once more when the enemy gathered in strength. Like sheep being herded by dogs, the greenskins were bunched together in a mass, and driven beyond the reaches of the forest, out into the open fields, where the thunderous charge of the Bretonnian knights would dominate.

The enemy was a seething, roiling mass of bodies, and they roared as they surged across the open ground, uncaring of the terrible toll that was being inflicted upon them by wave after wave of arrows and hurled stones. Poles hung with skulls, bones and feathers were waved above heads, and the brutal creatures bellowed like animals as they ran, cleavers and axes in their crude hands.

Calard saw a miniscule goblin clamber atop a chunk of rock, embedded in the earth, that had been fired by one of the trebuchets, climbing above the surging sea of greenskins that broke around the chunk of masonry. Despite the distance, Calard could see that this creature had a crown of black feathers embedded in its scalp, and that it carried a staff that looked like a fused spine.

Its eyes rolled back in its head as the creature began to shudder and leap, froth bubbling from its mouth. Its bizarre capering seemed to fill the surging greenskins with fervour, for they began chanting a grunting, repetitive mantra, striking their weapons and shields against each other in time to it.

‘Sorcery,’ spat Bertelis.

Calard whispered a prayer to the Lady as the shaman continued to caper and scream.

Whatever foul magicks the diminutive creature was attempting to unleash were, however, forestalled. It paused midstream in its summoning of power, looking up into the sky. A massive block of masonry was hurtling towards it, spinning end over end as it dropped through the air.

It slammed into the shaman, crushing it to pulp. The chunk of masonry split in two as it slammed into the rocky outcrop the goblin had been perched upon, and the two halves bounced into the press of green-skinned bodies, crushing limbs and flattening bodies.

Bertelis gave a barking, short laugh in surprise.

The enemy was less than two hundred paces from the Bretonnian line, and closing fast. Calard could make out individual, savage faces, covered in black tattoos depicting spiders, skulls and geometric shapes. They were big brutes, the smaller greenskins being thrust out of the way and trampled underfoot, as the largest and strongest pushed their way to the front, roaring and bellowing.

‘Hold!’ roared Gunthar fiercely, eyeing the line of young knights, sensing their impatience and tense eagerness. He flicked a glance up the line of Bretonnians, watching for the duke’s signal.

Calard licked his lips, and gripped his lance tightly, as the wall of greenskins surged towards them. A bugle sounded, and the first line of peasant bowmen turned and fled, running lightly back through the ranks of the knights, slipping between the formations, their arrows spent. Upon the slopes behind the knights other peasants continued to launch their deadly missiles, clouds of black arrows arcing overhead and falling amongst the packed enemy ranks.

Calard tensed, tightening his grip on his lance, as the horde of greenskins streamed forwards. He felt Gringolet’s muscles bunching, the destrier’s ears flat against its skull, eager to charge forwards.

Gunthar raised his lance high into the air, and Calard’s heart was beating wildly in anticipation.

Finally, all along the line, trumpets and horns sounded.

‘Charge!’ roared Gunthar. As one, the knights errant rammed spurred stirrups into the flanks of their warhorses, and charged, forming a thick wedge behind the weapon master.

Hundreds of knights kicked their steeds forward, and the entire line surged into motion. They started slowly, and the ground began to thunder as their momentum picked up. The field was churned to mud in their wake, and lances began to lower as the pace of the warhorses increased. Less than fifty paces out from the enemy, the knights kicked their steeds into the charge.

Thousands of peasant men-at-arms took up the cry of battle, and they too surged forward like a living tide, running at full pace towards the foe in the wake of their mounted lords and masters.

‘For Garamont!’ roared Calard. The ground was a blur beneath him as Gringolet leapt forwards, and he shouted into the wind as the knights errant thundered across the field towards the enemy. Bertelis was at his side, a look of exhilaration on his face as he echoed Calard’s battle cry.

The sound of three thousand charging knights was unlike anything that Calard had ever experienced. The rumble of crashing hooves was deafening, and the ground reverberated as if shook by an earthquake.

Three thousand couched lances were lowered, and it seemed to take an age to cross the open space between the two forces, though it must have only been mere seconds. Then the forces collided with a colossal impact, their lines blurring together as flesh smashed against metal with bone-crushing force.

Calard’s lance took a snarling orc in the throat, the tip exploding through the back of the creature’s neck, and impaling another close behind, taking it in the face. Others were smashed aside by the sheer weight and power of the knights, limbs shattered and skulls crushed beneath flashing hooves.

His lance gone, Calard’s sword was instantly in his hand, and he hacked at the blur of enemies as the knights errant surged forwards.

The screams of pain and anger were deafening, but the knights maintained their momentum, ploughing deep into the enemy formation. Calard’s blade cleaved down, carving through flesh and bone. A spear glanced off his breastplate, and he thrust the point of his sword into the gaping mouth of another orc, sending blood gurgling from the fatal wound.

Kicking Gringolet fiercely, urging the powerful beast to continue its charge and not slow, Calard saw Bertelis deflect a blow on his shield, the force of the attack nearly knocking his brother from the saddle.

A hulking orc roared, and hacked the forelegs from beneath a warhorse nearby, and the steed screamed as it was felled, ploughing a furrow in the earth. The knight was hurled from the saddle, smashing into the rabble of orcs in front, and metal was bashed out of shape as spiked clubs and cleavers hammered into the fallen warrior. Then both the knight and his murderers were overrun and crushed into the mud, to be left bloody and broken in their wake.

Gringolet stumbled, and Calard struggled to keep his balance. A blade was thrust towards his chest, and he reeled back from it, deflecting it with a desperate sweep of his sword. Then his attacker was smashed to the ground by the bulk of Bertelis’s warhorse, disappearing from view.

From the saddle, Calard had a good view over the sea of enemy warriors, and he could see formations of knights to the east charging across the ground, crushing enemies beneath them, before they too ploughed into the flanks of the main enemy battle line. All across the battlefield, the knights were riding through the enemy ranks, smashing aside all resistance.

‘Pull to the east!’ roared Gunthar, driving his warhorse with his thighs, and the knights errant maintained their formation close behind him, cutting and slicing with their swords. Calard winced as a blade struck his thigh, denting his armour, and sent a return blow that shattered the cheek of the snarling orc.

Then they were free of the engagement, breaking from the side of the enemy formation. Calard was shocked to see that less than half their number still rode at their side, and he could see pockets of the knights all across the battlefield still engaged in frantic combat, mired deep in the heart of the enemy formation. With a barked order, Gunthar had the knights wheel sharply, and they thundered back into the heavy press.

Before long, their momentum had been lost, and they found themselves surrounded on all sides. Men cried out as they were dragged to the ground and slaughtered, and all order to the battle became lost. Horses reared, screaming in pain as they were pierced by dozens of spears and blades.

A blow glanced off Calard’s shield and grazed his temple, and he was thrown from the saddle. There was a moment of weightlessness as his arms and legs flailed uselessly in the air. The ground seemed to rise towards him with shocking speed, and he slammed into the muddy earth with jarring force.

He felt impossibly heavy, and blood was pumping from his head wound, flowing down his face, though he felt no pain. He lifted his head, and saw a knight no more than a metre away rising to his knees. Calard tried to shout a warning, but the din of battle swallowed his cry, and he watched in anguish as an orc smashed a heavy blade down into the knight’s head, splitting it from crown to jaw.

Calard pushed groggily to his feet, and he thought he heard someone call his name. He barely had time to raise his shield as he saw a flash of movement coming at him, and he was driven to his knees by the force of an attack delivered by another orc.

Pain shot up his left arm and shoulder, and he struggled to find the strength to stand. The creature towered above him, a mountain of muscle and brutish strength, and it roared in bloodlust, spraying spittle from its gaping, tusked maw.

A sword sliced down and hacked into its neck, and dark blood pumped from the wound. The orc’s head lolled to one side, hanging loosely by muscles and tendons, all but decapitated, and the creature slumped into the mire.

‘Calard!’ someone shouted again, and he looked up to see Gunthar looming above him, blood dripping from his sword. Calard nodded his head, and swung around to find Gringolet, praying that the noble steed had not fallen.

A blade flashed towards him, and he ducked beneath the blow, letting it slide off his shield. Then he lunged forward, driving the point of his sword into green, tattooed flesh. He stumbled as he lunged, and fell atop the orc, his armoured weight driving the blade home.

Even in death, the creature refused to back down, and it roared in his face and clubbed him aside with a meaty fist that was almost the size of his head. His vision swam, and he staggered to his feet to deliver the killing blow, but flashing hooves caved the creature’s head in. Gringolet stood there, nostrils flared and chest heaving, and the destrier shook its head, stamping.

‘Get in the saddle!’ hissed Gunthar, as he and another knight moved their steeds to intercept a pair of greenskins that launched themselves towards Calard. Needing no prompting, Calard put his foot in the stirrups and hauled himself, with some difficulty, up onto the destrier’s back.

The enemy was crushing in against them from all sides, and, every second, more knights were falling, dragged down into the mud and butchered. He saw a flash of white, and his anger rose as he saw the figure of Maloric through the press of bodies, cutting around him, his blade streaming with blood as he killed.

Refusing to be outdone by the Sangasse noble, Calard kicked Gringolet forward again, pushing into the enemy, his blade singing through the air.

How long the battle lasted, he could not later recall, but his arm was leaden, and he was splattered with blood when he heard trumpets blaring. He looked around to see fresh lances of knights smashing into the foe, their weight and momentum splintering the orc ranks and driving through their midst.

A wave of panic surged through the enemy ranks like a raging wildfire. Where, moments before, there was nothing but savagery and a lust for battle, now there was the shadow of doubt, and, as the first greenskins turned and fled, the enemy resolve was shattered.

With a shout, Calard felt his limbs invigorated with renewed strength, and he fell upon the panicked foe ruthlessly. The enemy retreat soon turned to a rout, and they streamed towards the forest. Contingents of knights and peasants that had been sent by the duke to outflank the enemy were already blocking the retreat, and thousands of greenskins were cut down as they became caught between the Bretonnian forces.

Calard felt a wild euphoria descend over him as he ran down the fleeing enemy. His sword hacked into the neck of one creature as it fled, and he saw Bertelis kill another with a powerful downward swing.

Pockets of resistance still held out, where the biggest and darkest-hued greenskins refused to abandon the field, and the men-at-arms were directed against them, while the knights ran down those fleeing towards the safety of the trees. Five or more peasants were hacked apart for each of the brutish creatures that fell, but slowly the enemy was enveloped and brought down, and the duke’s banner was planted in the middle of the battlefield amid a great pile of the dead.

From somewhere behind, Calard heard Gunthar barking for the knights of Garamont to reform their ranks, but he ignored the weapon master, intent on cutting down the panicked enemy. He saw Maloric ahead of him, butchering the greenskins, and he kicked Gringolet forward to overtake him.

The field was strewn with the dead and dying, and men-at-arms moved across it, dispatching those not yet dead, and dragging back the bodies of injured knights. Horses with broken legs and shattered spines screamed as their throats were cut, and fallen banners were lifted free of the mud and blood, recovered to be reunited with their owners or sent back to their castles in mourning.

Knights thundered through the mud in front of the forest, running down fleeing greenskins, and splintered groups of the enemy cut left and right as they sought the safety of the trees. Calard smashed his sword onto the head of another enemy, and swung Gringolet around, seeking more enemies to kill.

The knights guarding the retreat of the foe were too few to contain the sheer number of the greenskins, and hundreds were swarming back into the safety of the trees.

Scores of knights, mostly young knights errant like himself, streamed towards the trees in pursuit, and he urged Gringolet on, eager not to miss out on the slaughter. Bertelis was at his side, and he saw Maloric kick his black charger forward, casting a hateful glance at the brothers.

‘For Garamont!’ yelled Bertelis, and the brothers thundered through the trees as they entered the forest of Chalons. Bodies of orcs and goblins lay sprawled on the ground.

Bertelis kicked his steed hard as he sighted a fleeing goblin, and Calard swung his sword around as he closed on a wounded orc that was clutching at its bleeding, limp arm as it tried to escape. The greenskin turned as the sound of pounding hooves drew near, and swung its cleaver blindly up at him.

Gringolet shied away from the attack, and Calard met the blow with one of his own, the two weapons clashing with the ring of steel. Then a sword sliced into the greenskins back, dropping it to the ground, and Calard swore as Maloric swept past. He kicked Gringolet into pursuit.

They pursued the last of the enemy deeper into the forest, ducking their heads beneath whipping branches, and leaping over fallen logs. Almost a hundred knights thundered down into a shallow natural gorge, galloping through the low ferns and passing swiftly by moss covered rocks.

There, they came upon a scene of slaughter.

Knights, horses and greenskins lay sprawled together, scores of them lying bloody and broken, their lifeblood leaking out onto the forest floor. Calard and the other knights dragged their horses to a halt, staring around with horrified, wide eyes, their hearts pounding.

Calard wheeled Gringolet in a tight circle, eyeing the surrounding trees fearfully. The destrier snorted, and its ears flattened against its head, nostrils flaring. Rocks covered in moss and fern ringed the gulley, and, as he scanned the undergrowth, Calard once again felt as if someone, or something, were watching.

There was no sound beneath the dark canopy far overhead, except for the clank of armour, and the whinny and stamp of horses.

‘I don’t like this,’ hissed Calard softly. The silence beat down on him like a hammer, unnatural and oppressive.

Every pure-bred Bretonnian steed was reared to be accustomed to the din and chaos of battle, of weapons clashing and the screams of the dying. They were trained to be inured to the scent of blood, and to respond instantly to the directions of their rider. They were strong-willed and aggressive beasts, for a horse too sedate in nature would not have the necessary spirit in the heat of battle, and Bretonnian steeds were trained to kick and bite the enemy. Through long and extensive training regimes, Bretonnian warhorses were not easily panicked.

When the gentle wind changed direction, however, gusting into the gulley from the south-west, suddenly every horse went wild, rearing and whinnying in fear. Several knights were thrown to the ground, and Calard clung tightly to Gringolet’s saddle as the destrier bucked and kicked, his panicked eyes showing as his orbs rolled in the sockets in abject terror.

The sudden blare of crude hunting horns echoed deafeningly close, and dark-furred shapes appeared atop the gorge, bursting from the undergrowth in a violent explosion of movement, roaring and braying for blood.

Calard caught a glimpse of bestial faces, mockeries of humanity twisted by hate, before the beasts hurled themselves from the moss-covered rocks, smashing into dozens of the knights, and tackling them from their saddles.

Most had curving horns spiralling from their foreheads and temples, and their heavily muscled flesh was covered in fur. The fur was short upon their massive, naked chests and stomachs, though it was thick, long and matted on their backs and shoulders, and down the backs of their powerful arms. Their legs were like those of a stag’s, or a goat’s, with powerful bunched muscles around the thighs and an additional joint that gave them an odd, backwards-jointed leg, ending in cloven hooves.

The attack was so sudden and so swift that the knights were able to form little defence against it, and they fought not only this deadly foe, but for control of their steeds, which were terrified by the sudden appearance of the predators.

There was a bestial roar to Calard’s side, and he swung around to see one of the beastmen kick off from a rock towards him. Its strongly muscled arms were thrown back over its head, and it swung a massive double-handed axe back for the killing blow as it hurtled through the air towards him, eyes filled with hate locked to his own.

Calard recoiled from the beast, lifting his shield before him, and the axe slammed into it, splitting it down to his arm. The blade wrenched his vambrace out of shape, and he was hurled from the saddle by the powerful blow, falling heavily.

Gringolet bolted, hooves flailing as he raced free of the gulley, and Calard dimly watched him go. His kite-shaped shield was useless, and he ripped it from his arm as he struggled to his feet, dazed from the fall.

The beast that had struck him was crouched low to the ground, and it snarled at him. It stank like rancid meat, rotting vegetation and faecal matter, and launched itself towards him, swinging its heavy axe in a lethal arc.

Calard stepped forwards quickly with a shout, and, with both hands, he rammed the point of his sword into the beast’s gut before the blow could fall. The blade sank deep, and hot blood washed over Calard’s gauntlets, even as the axe dropped from the creature’s fingers. With a backhanded blow, it sent Calard sprawling backwards, his head ringing, and sank to ground.

The beasts were butchering the knights, ripping into them with terrifying savagery. One knight was killed as his head was rammed repeatedly into a sharp rocky outcrop, and others were literally hacked apart by axes as they lay prostrate on the earth, having been tackled from their saddles.

From the ground, Calard saw his brother Bertelis struggling against a pair of beasts, the flashing hooves of his steed keeping them at bay. Calard lurched to his feet, and staggered forward to pull his sword from the body of the dead beastman.

‘Bertelis!’ he roared. ‘Ride!’

One of the beastmen landed on the ground in front of him suddenly, having leapt from the rocks above. It rose up to its full height, muscles tensed, its thick chest rising and falling rhythmically. It towered over him, standing some six and a half feet in height, and its lips drew back to reveal the mass of yellowed, savage teeth of a predator. Its massive arms were ringed with twisted bronze torcs, and thick rings of dull metal pierced the flesh of its nipples and cheeks. A brand had been burnt into the centre of its broad head, the mark having seared away fur and skin. It was a crude, eight-pointed star, and the flesh around it was red and sore.

It surged towards him, a curved scimitar cutting though the air. Calard lifted his blade to defend himself, meeting the blow with a clash of steel. The strength of the attack drove him backwards, jarring his arm. The creature realised his weakness, and its eyes, like those of a goat, glinted with feral amusement. Behind the beast stalking towards him, Calard saw more knights being butchered, ruthlessly cut down and murdered. He glimpsed the white tabard of Maloric, who was battling with a pair of the powerful creatures. He prayed that the Lady would spare the young noble of Sangasse, so that he could cut the bastard whoreson down, in the future.

The beast attacked again, striking high for Calard’s head, and the young knight lifted his sword to protect himself. The blow drove him to his knees, and the beast, seeing him vulnerable, leapt forwards and slammed its knee into Calard’s face.

He fell back against the rock face, struggling to get to his feet, lifting his sword weakly in his hand.

Another beast ran at him from the left. The creature was smaller and more sinewy than the first, and its face was perhaps more human, which made it seem all the more horrific. Its horns were short, stubby nubs that protruded from its brow, and it jabbed a spear towards him, but its progress was halted by a bark from the larger beast. The smaller creature turned away with a snarl to find another victim.

With a contemptuous kick, the powerful beast that had claimed him as its own sent Calard’s blade flying from his hand, and placed the tip of its scimitar against his throat. He weakly pushed it away, but the creature merely placed it there again. Once more he pushed it away, but again it returned the sharp weapon tip to his throat, and a trickle of blood ran down the inside of his breastplate.

The creature was toying with him, and Calard felt rage swelling up within. He screamed in anger and pain, and swatted the blade away from his throat with the flat of his hand, before launching himself at the beast, hands clutching for its throat.

It seemed to give a braying laugh, and made no move to step away. Rather, it moved into Calard’s path and slammed its wide forehead into his face, felling him instantly.

His vision swimming before him, Calard was kicked onto his back, and he felt a cloven hoof press down upon his chest. He dimly registered the figure of the beast above him, and saw it draw back its scimitar for the killing blow.

Calard prayed that his brother had escaped the ambush as he waited for the blow to fall, but it never came.

There was the pounding of hooves, and Calard thought he felt warm light upon his skin. Then the beastman was sent spinning away from him, falling heavily to the ground. Calard stared numbly at the headless corpse as its hot lifeblood gushed out onto the forest floor, and then the head of the creature hit the ground, rolling end over end.

Calard tried to rise to his feet as the armoured shapes of knights charged by, but his strength abandoned him, and he slumped back to the ground. He saw a knight bedecked in blue and silver carve his way through the fray, surrounded by a hazy shimmering light.

Then Calard’s vision swam before him, and he fell face down onto the ground.

Reolus tore through the fern gulley, smiting the enemy like the avenging paladin of the Lady he was. In his right hand, he wielded the silver lance, Arandyal, shining in the dimness of the forest with a glimmering light, and in his left, he held the lance’s mate, the glowing sword Durendyal. Both holy weapons were said to have been blessed by tears shed by the Lady, and only one of pure heart was able to hold them. Blood slipped off the weapons like oil, and they struck with the speed and potency of enraged serpents.

Reolus tore through the beastmen, impaling them on Arandyal’s length and cutting heads from shoulders with each swing of Durendyal. He lifted one struggling beastman high into the air, watching dispassionately as it slid down his lance, before he hurled the creature away from him with the flick of his wrist. It slammed into the rock face, broken and dying.

Fey light shone in the grail knight’s eyes as he killed. Nothing could stand against this avatar of the Lady’s fury. Horns blared, and the beastmen slipped like ghosts back into the deep forest, leaving a scene of destruction and violence in their wake. Defiant and burning with holy passion, Reolus watched them flee.

The grail knight lifted his gaze, and scanned the trees. His eyes locked onto a distant, motionless figure overlooking the carnage.

He sensed the burning hatred within the creature, and felt his pride and anger rise as he registered the power it wielded. Tall and filled with incredible strength, it held a twisted staff of gnarled heartwood, and three pairs of horns rose from its head. It bared countless sharp teeth at him as he began to advance cautiously towards it, guiding his pure white steed with his knees.

Pale eyes the colour of a frozen lake stared back at the advancing grail knight. Set within a different face, those eyes might have been considered noble, but in this inhuman, bestial face they were horrific and disturbing.

Its face was criss-crossed with stitches and scars, a mask of flesh that was pulled tight across its features. Thick ropes of matted hair and fur hung down its back, and it hissed a taunt as the knight approached.

The horrific beast slammed the base of its staff into the ground with a snarl. Tendrils of roots unfurled from the twisted wood, probing the earth like skeletal fingers. They burrowed into the ground, and Reolus felt a wrench within him as they began drawing power from the land. Ferns withered and turned black, all moisture drained from their leaves, and worms and beetles in the earth writhed and contorted as the life was sucked from them. The beast quivered ecstatically as black, pulsing veins appeared upon the surface of the staff.

With a movement both elegant and menacing, the creature lifted its other long arm, and planted its spider-like, taloned hand upon the trunk of the twisted oak tree.

A knot on the bole of the tree split open with a painful tearing sound, and dark fluid that stank of rotting meat ran from the wound. The rent gaped wider and wider, opening like a dripping, foul orifice, and the beast stepped within. Reolus urged his steed forwards, asking the Lady for strength, but the rent was instantly sealed. He stared at the tree before him and swore.

Thirty miles away, a tree was ripped open, and the beast stepped forth.

CHAPTER NINE

Annabelle poured the boiling water into the goblet, wincing at the acrid stench that rose with the steam. Pieces of bark and herb floated around in circles within the steaming liquid. The serving girl looked around, ensuring that none of the kitchen staff of Castle Garamont were nearby. Then she drew a small pouch from within a fold in her dress, and carefully loosened its ties.

She withdrew a heaped amount of powder from within with a small wooden spoon, careful not to breathe in any of the potent mixture. The powder was the colour of congealed blood, and she tipped it into the steaming brew. It dissolved into the mix instantly, and she slipped the wooden spoon back into the pouch, fastened the ties and concealed it once more within the folds of her dress.

She lifted a wooden pot from a shelf, and opened its lid, breathing in deeply of the sweet scent within. Stealing a glance around her, she dipped her finger into the thick syrup, and closed her eyes in contentment as she sucked the honey from her fingertip.

As a pair of haggard old servants shuffled into the kitchens, carrying cane baskets filled with dirt-covered vegetables, Annabelle busied herself, spooning out a generous portion of the fresh honey and mixing it into the steaming goblet, before putting the pot back on the shelf.

Moving to the basin, she washed her hands thoroughly and wiped them dry on her apron front. Then she removed the apron, and hung it from a wooden peg. With the flat of her hands, she smoothed back the simple cloth shawl that covered her head and straightened her clothing.

Satisfied with her appearance, she lifted the silver tray on which the steaming goblet stood, and began to make her way swiftly through the castle, heading towards the lord of Garamont’s chambers.

Annabelle did not know what the powder was that she mixed into her lord’s draught each day. The lady was insistent that she not be observed adding it to the hot water, which had made her uneasy and reluctant, but the lady had made her swear on her life that she would do as she was bidden and speak not a word of it to anyone.

In recompense for her silence and duty, the lady gave her a copper coin with each turning of the moon.

For Annabelle, who had two young children to care for in the hovel-town at the base of the castle, that coin meant the difference between them eating or going hungry, and the unspoken threat in the lady’s eyes made her fear to refuse.

The side door reserved for servants was pushed open by a guard stationed there, and Annabelle nodded her thanks. The entrance room was stuffy and dim, the drapes drawn across the windows.

Lady Calisse of Garamont was there, bedecked in a flowing dress of deep purple, her hair held up in two coils inside her veiled, rich headdress. She talked in a hushed voice with a black-clad, elderly physician, who was a frequent visitor of late. They spoke out of earshot of the lord of Garamont, who was dozing in his bedchamber beyond, and, as Annabelle drew near, intending to scurry past them and leave the steaming goblet upon the side table beside her lord, she overheard their words.

‘I fear Morr is calling him,’ said Lady Calisse, her face drawn and pale, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with sorrow. ‘Please, in the name of the blessed Lady, you must be able to do something.’

‘I cannot understand it,’ said the bent, elderly physician, shaking his head woefully. ‘We should have seen improvements by now. This… this is beyond my skill, I regret to say, my lady. It is as if some unholy malady is eating away at him from within, and I am at a loss as to its cause.’

‘He is drinking the draught you ordered to be prepared for him, every day,’ said lady Calisse, her face drawn, pale and full of lamentation and despair. Annabelle lowered her head and made to scurry past the pair.

‘You girl,’ said the physician, and Annabelle froze, raising her eyes like a startled rabbit. ‘Come here.’

Bending her knees in a slight curtsey, careful not to spill the steaming goblet, Annabelle approached the physician. The elderly man lifted the goblet from the silver tray with withered hands covered in liver spots, and held it under his nose. His sharp eyes seemed intense and cruel to Annabelle.

‘What are you adding to this draught?’ he asked, his voice tense. The lady Garamont looked at her sharply, her immaculate face and plucked eyebrows making her appear cold and unforgiving. Annabelle cringed beneath their withering gaze.

‘My lord?’ she stammered.

‘It is a simple question, girl. What are you adding to this draught? You are putting something else in it.’

The lady Garamont leant forward and sniffed.

‘Honey,’ she said.

‘Yes, my lady,’ said Annabelle in a rush. ‘I have been adding a spoon of honey to my lord’s draught each morning. I had hoped that it might make it more palatable for my lord.’ Her worried eyes flicked to the glowering physician. ‘I hope that I have not done wrong.’

The physician’s harsh glare softened, and he smiled, placing the goblet back upon the silver tray.

‘No, you have not done wrong, girl. Lord Garamont is blessed indeed to have servants that clearly love him.’

Avoiding their gaze, Annabelle blushed deeply and curtseyed once more. She hastily backed away from the nobles, and entered the lord of Garamont’s bedchamber.

Luc sighed into the darkness. He was unable to sleep. His mind was restless, thoughts of the wearisome duties and tasks of the day ahead intruding on him. Tomorrow was the start of the annual maintenance of the dry-stone walls of the southern hill, a dreary task that would take the better part of two weeks to complete. The southern hill, a mile from the village, yielded the sweetest grapes in the area, and it was of paramount importance that the fields were tended with diligent care. Though the hill had the best drainage and sunlight in the area, relentless winds battered the slopes, and so hundreds of low, curving walls were constructed around the precious plants, to protect them from having their soil stripped from their roots by the winds.

Those walls had been in existence for dozens of generations, yet after harvest time each year the entire village gathered to rebuild walls that had fallen, and to extend them further up the slopes. It had been this way for hundreds of years, and now the vineyard sprawled as far as the eye could see. It was a source of constant pride to the villagers that the grapes that made the region’s finest wines were grown here, though of course none of them had ever been allowed to sample the fine vintages.

Their work had been deemed of such importance that the village had been exempt from sending any of its men to join Lord Sagremor’s gathering army. Luc did not know why an army had been mustered, but word had come of a great victory in the north. There had been other mutterings since then, though, of villages burnt to the ground, their inhabitants slaughtered.

Such rumours made the villagers nervous, and some had even spoken of fleeing to the west. Luc had poured scorn on those who repeated such gossip. The lord of Sagremor had long been good to them, and he would certainly protect them if there were any threat. Luc’s family had tilled the soil here for five generations, and he would not bring shame upon their memory by fleeing his responsibilities. The gossipmongers were most probably speaking falsehoods anyway, he had assured his frightened wife.

With another sigh, Luc carefully slipped from the rough pallet, careful not to disturb his wife. She moaned in her sleep and rolled over but did not wake, and, in a moment, her breathing had become deep and regular once more. Luc moved across the cramped, simple room that was his home, stepping over the sleeping forms of his wife’s sister and husband, huddled together under a blanket. He crouched down beside the cot where his two children slept, curled up with their cousins. He listened to the sounds of their rhythmic breathing and smiled. I am truly blessed, he thought. I have a wonderful wife, a pair of beautiful children, and shelter over my head. He prayed to Shallya, goddess of mercy, that the twins would survive the coming winter, and brushed the yellow hair from his daughter’s forehead.

Luc had fathered five children in his twenty years, but the twins were the only ones to have survived longer than three summers. His first child had been stillborn, and its mother had died during the difficult birth. Luc had remarried, and his new wife had borne him a daughter, who was sickly and had not lasted a week. Then, she had borne him a son. He had seemed strong and healthy, despite his malformed arm, but he had succumbed to the wasting cough, and died just days before his third birthday.

These two, his twins, were his pride and joy. With hair the colour of corn and eyes that sparkled with mischief, they were the sunshine of his life.

Standing carefully, so as not to disturb anyone, Luc moved to the single window in his home, and drew the wet-smelling blanket that served as a curtain aside. Peering out in the night, he glanced up at the moons. They were low in the sky. It was three hours until dawn.

Knowing that he had only an hour before he had to rise for the day’s work, Luc was about to move away from the window back to bed, but a movement in the corner of his eye drew his attention. A shape was moving in the darkness, and he paused, waiting for the sliver of the white moon to come out from behind a cloud to light the figure.

He heard the clomp of hooves, and, as the clouds parted, he saw the shape of a man slumped in the saddle of a horse. As he watched, the man fell forwards, sliding from the saddle, and dropped heavily into the mud of the main thoroughfare through the village.

Luc dropped the blanket curtain back over the window with quiet movements, and left his home, closing the swollen wooden door behind him. The air was chill, and he walked warily towards the horse and its fallen rider. One of the man’s legs was caught in the stirrups, and he was being dragged through the mud. It was a commoner’s draught horse, not a pure-bred, and yet to be allowed to ride a horse at all spoke of this man’s exalted position. He was a yeoman, the highest status that a commoner could attain, and, as such, he was a wealthy and esteemed individual in Luc’s eyes.

Raising his hand, Luc spoke soothingly to the horse, and it halted. It was lathered in sweat, and its eyes were wide with fright. Moving carefully, ensuring he made no swift movements, Luc drew closer, his eyes flicking down to the fallen rider.

The yeoman wore a tabard of yellow and red, and had a shield strapped to his arm. He had carved a furrow through the mud where he had been dragged, and his face was obscured. He wore a pot-helmet on his head, and Luc saw quivers of arrows and a bow strapped to the horse’s saddle.

‘Bertrand!’ called Luc, shouting out for his brother-in-law, asleep in the family home. He stepped cautiously to the side of the large horse and unhooked the yeoman’s foot from the stirrup. Kneeling, Luc rolled the man over. His tabard was awash with blood, and he saw a broken spear shaft imbedded in the yeoman’s stomach.

‘Bertrand!’ he shouted again, more urgently, and he saw the glow of pig-fat fuelled lanterns being lit in nearby hovels as the village awoke to his cry. Pressing his thick, calloused fingers to the man’s neck, he felt a weak pulse.

The yeoman’s eyes flicked open, and he cried out in pain and fear.

‘They are coming!’ he whispered hoarsely.

‘Hush,’ said Luc, trying to calm the man as he struggled weakly to rise to his feet.

Villagers, woken from their slumber, crowded around, their voices fearful and questioning.

‘Help me get him inside,’ ordered Luc, and the yeoman was carried into his home and laid upon his pallet. His wife’s face was full of concern and fear, and the twins began to cry.

‘No!’ cried the man, fighting against them. ‘They will eat our flesh and grind our bones!’

The yeoman fell unconscious, suddenly going limp, his eyes rolling back in his head. The words he had spoken were lifted straight from a common children’s tale of the terrible creatures dwelling in the dark depths of the wild woods, but to hear a soldier speak them with such conviction made the villagers whimper in fear.

‘I told you we should have fled,’ wailed a voice, and others voiced their agreement.

‘Be silent!’ thundered Luc. A well-respected man in the village, his commanding voice cut through the hysteria. ‘He is delirious. We must tend his wounds.’

Luc was well aware that if the man died in his home he would be held accountable, and he had no intention of letting such a thing come to pass. He pulled the man’s shield from his arm, and laid it to one side. His eyes lingered on the red and yellow design upon it, of a rearing dragon with flames spewing from its maw. He did not recognise the heraldry, and it was forgotten in an instant as his brother-in-law, Bertrand, cut open the man’s tabard with a knife to expose the horrible wound.

The spearhead was embedded deep in the man’s stomach, and blood covered the area. Even if he somehow survived the deadly injuring, a secondary infection would probably claim him.

That was when he heard the first horn.

Within minutes, every villager was dead.

The wargor knelt over the bodies, its nostrils twitching. Gore dripped from its scimitar, and it licked the blood from the fur around its mouth.

The slaughter had been brief and frenzied. None had escaped the wrath of the beastmen.

Rising up, the wargor was forced to duck its horned head to keep from hitting the ceiling of the hovel, which made a growl of anger rise from its chest. It hated such unnatural structures created by the hands of men, and its desire to destroy flared powerfully. The stink of humanity was strong, further fanning the fires of hatred.

It kicked out at a small wooden table, smashing one of the legs and sending it crashing to the hay-strewn floor. It stamped a cloven hoof down upon the wreckage, splintering the wood and smashing it to pieces. It moved around the room with sharp movements, smashing clay pots with its blade, spilling seed and grain, and it slashed at the pallets strewn across the floor. Steam rose in the cold air as it urinated on the blankets that were thick with the stench of humanity.

Discovering a leather flagon tucked in a corner, the wargor ripped the lid off it, sniffing. Lifting the flagon over its head, it poured the alcohol into its mouth, the fiery liquid sloshing over the fur of its chin and down its chest. Draining the flagon, the beastman hurled it away.

Feral black eyes spied a shield leaning against the wall, and it snarled, thick fingers tightening around the hilt of its scimitar. It stalked across the room, and lifted the shield up, gazing intently at the red and yellow design.

The wargor snarled again and defecated, its foul-smelling spoor thudding to the floor, before it stalked out of the hovel, roaring to its kin. Many of the buildings were ablaze, and the heat of the flames made the beast’s heart race. The herd was busy slaughtering the last of the villagers and smashing down the hovels in which they lived, trampling them into the ground. They lived to tear down civilisation, and nothing fired their blood like wanton destruction and butchery. Nevertheless, in its brutal, violent mind, the wargor knew that the shield was important, and that the Gave would be pleased with its discovery. It roared again, and raised its bloody scimitar high in the air.

Within minutes, the bray herd was on the move once more, the beastmen running swiftly as a pack through the night towards the welcoming darkness of the forest.

The knights rode in silence. They passed knocked-down, ancient dry-stone walls, and fields of dead sheep and cattle. Most of the butchered animals were clustered in the corners of their paddocks, where they had huddled in panic and been viciously hacked apart. Many had broken their legs in futile efforts to leap the fences, and countless others had been trampled beneath the hooves of the terrified flock, before brutal blows to skulls and through necks had killed them.

The cold light of predawn was grey and lifeless, and mournful trails of smoke rose from the burnt-out cottages in the dip below. Bodies lay strewn around the crude buildings. The carrion birds were already at work upon them, and their calls were harsh as they squabbled and burrowed their heads into the carcasses.

The stench of burnt flesh reached Calard’s nostrils as the patrol entered the ravaged village. Men and women lay sprawled in the mud alongside children, dogs and livestock, all killed by savage blows, their flesh hacked apart and heads caved in.

It was the same all across the east of Bordeleaux: villagers and towns sacked, their occupants butchered. It was clear now that the greenskins had been driven out of Chalons by the beasts of the wild woods, and though the knights had yet to sight the full force of the enemy, much less face it in open battle, an enemy that could force the brutish orcs and goblins from the forests was one surely to be respected.

It was only an hour past dawn, and the ground was still covered in dew. A low mist hugged the dips in the landscape, and there was an icy chill to the air.

The knights were all tired, having been out on patrol since midnight. They had just been returning to camp near the grail chapel of Theudric, the night having passed without major incident, when they had seen smoke rising in the distance.

‘Dismount and look for survivors,’ ordered Gunthar, his voice impassive.

‘Survivors?’ baulked Bertelis. ‘They don’t leave survivors.’

Gunthar gave the knight errant a hard look. With an exasperated sigh, Bertelis swung his leg over his saddle and slid to the ground. Calard and the other knights of Bastonne did likewise, and they began to search through the ruination wrought only hours earlier.

Two weeks had passed since the destruction of the greenskins and the night of butchery that had followed.

As if the ambush against the knights by the creatures of the forest had been a signal heralding the commencement of slaughter, thousands of corrupted beasts burst from the forest of Chalons, descending upon Bordeleaux with hatred and savagery.

As darkness fell across the hills and fields of Bordeleaux, hundreds of scattered bands and raiding war parties had emerged, intent on bloodshed and mayhem. They fell upon unprotected villages, towns and isolated castles, killing and burning. They slaughtered men, women and children, livestock and dogs. Those who were not butchered were dragged screaming and kicking back into the forest to face whatever vile fate awaited them before they too were killed.

They smashed down hovels and tore down the walls of inns and homesteads. They had rampaged through the night in a fury of destruction, butchering and tearing down any vestige of civilisation they came upon. Windmills were toppled and crops trodden into the earth, sheep and cows slaughtered, and bales of hay and homes were put to the flame.

Terrified peasants blockaded doors and windows, but such meagre defences were useless against their hateful murderers. With violence almost beyond comprehension, the beasts smashed their way into homes and food-stores, and though the lowborn inhabitants defended themselves with pitchforks and hoes, they were hacked down and butchered in front of their children and wives. Babes were slain without mercy, their heads dashed against walls, and the elderly and crippled were ripped apart in an orgy of death.

Hearing the blare of horns from all around, and seeing the flames of burning villages in every direction, the duke had ordered his knights and their indentured men-at-arms out into the night. Hundreds were killed as the beasts ambushed them en route to the beleaguered villages, and a desperate night of bloodshed had ensued.

The beasts displayed a low cunning, avoiding the strength of Bordeleaux and striking only against the weak and vulnerable. When they did strike at the forces gathered by Duke Alberic, they targeted isolated groups of knights, setting on them from all sides. Nothing but corpses remained, testament to the sudden violence done to them.

Howls and braying roars had echoed through the night. The beasts had chosen the time of their attack well, for the silver moon of Mannslieb was new in the sky and cast little light through the massed clouds. The baleful eye of Morrslieb was fuller, an insidious half crescent of glowing green, but it did little to light the fields, even when the clouds parted and it peered malevolently down upon the horror being wrought.

When the sun at last rose, and the night of blood was ended, Duke Alberic’s knights found the countryside in ruin. Black smoke rose in the distance to the north, west and south.

Word had filtered into the camp of scores of other massacres further afield, leagues to the north and south. Outriders and yeoman rode in, bearing the grim news, having seen with their own eyes the butchery meted out across the fair land.

As the tally of destruction grew, the duke reluctantly ordered his forces to be split, to protect a wider area from attack. With no knowledge of where the beasts would strike next, he spread his forces wide in preparation for further incursions.

Calard and the other knights of Bastonne had ridden to the south. They were some thirty leagues from Duke Alberic’s camp, and only half a day’s ride from the broad river of Chalons, which formed the natural border between the lands of Bordeleaux and the dukedom of Aquitaine.

They had been patrolling the area for two weeks, and, in that time, they had seen more than a dozen villages razed to the ground, every inhabitant slaughtered or dragged into the wild woods. These, thought Calard darkly, looking at the dead peasants lying in the mud, had most probably been the lucky ones.

The knights fanned out and began to enter the burnt out peasant homes, sifting through the rubble and detritus, seeking any sign of life. The thatched roofs of many of the hovels were still smouldering.

‘Why did these people not flee?’ asked Dieter Weschler, his foreign accent clipped as he stared around at the brutality of the carnage. As ever, the Empire soldier’s appearance was immaculate, his black breastplate highly glossed, and his moustache carefully oiled and upturned.

‘And become outlaw?’ asked Calard. He looked down in distaste at the corpse of a man lying face first in the mud, a sickle clutched in his pale, lifeless hand. The back of the man’s head had been smashed open like a nut, and he sported a horrible wound in his back that had severed his spine. He had probably been trying to run, which would account for his wounds being on his back.

They do not understand honour, he thought in disdain and pity. He could not expect anything else of the lower classes, but he still found it galling that a man would rather flee in dishonour than face his enemies. Not that there is anything honourable about the enemy, he reminded himself.

‘I do not understand,’ said Dieter, frowning. He looked at his host, Baron Montcadas in confusion.

‘The life of a commoner is forfeit if he leaves the lands he is bonded to work upon without the express permission of his lord,’ said the baron, his broad, bearded face serious.

‘I see,’ said Dieter. ‘A sad day this is. The Emperor would be grieved to hear of this tragedy. As an envoy of the Empire, I express my heartfelt condolences to the people of Bretonnia,’ he said, bowing stiffly.

‘Bretonnia thanks you for your gracious words,’ the baron replied, inclining his head, ‘and I am sorry that you have chosen such an ill time to journey to our fair lands. Now, please excuse me, Dieter.’

‘They are only peasants, Empire,’ said Bertelis scornfully, as the baron walked to speak with Gunthar, looking like a bear decked in armour.

‘They are people, like you or I,’ observed Dieter. He was a diplomat, and though his face was expressionless and his words carefully chosen so as not raise the ire of his hosts, Calard observed that he was irritated by Bertelis’s words.

‘They are not,’ said Bertelis hotly. ‘They are a breed apart, vermin born to serve.’

‘Only by chance of birth are men like you and I born into privilege,’ said Dieter.

‘Bah!’ snorted Bertelis. ‘Sometimes I envy the simple lives of the peasants. They do not realise how good they have it.’

‘Oh?’ asked Dieter coldly. ‘How so?’

‘They have homes to live in and food on their tables. They can marry whomever they want without the concern of politics, and they live under the protection of their lord. They have not a worry in the world, and no responsibilities. They work, they eat, they sleep and they rut. It doesn’t sound like a bad life to me.’

Dieter glanced down at the corpses around them. As one, they were gaunt to the point of starvation, and stunted by malnutrition and inbreeding.

‘Indeed. They seem very lucky indeed.’

Calard snorted, and ducked his head to enter a hovel. Its door had been smashed down, and he blanched as the stink from inside assailed him. It smelt like the lair of some foetid, wet animal.

There were several corpses here, all very dead. He felt a twinge of remorse as he looked upon the bodies of two children that were so similar in appearance that they must have been twins.

He thought then of his own twin, Anara. He had not been much older than these two butchered children when last he had seen her.

Sickened, he moved back into the fresh air, and breathed deeply. A shout drew his attention. A ginger-haired knight of Garamont, whom Calard recognised as Tanebourc, waved to him. The man was good company. Quick to smile, witty, and always with a ribald tale to tell, he was popular amongst the knights of Garamont. Nevertheless, his face was uncharacteristically grim as he stood over a corpse. Looking down, Calard saw that the corpse was a man-at-arms, bearing the red and gold livery of Garamont.

‘Who is he?’ he asked, not that he knew any of the men-at-arms by name.

‘He was assigned to a scouting party that never returned last night.’

‘A deserter?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Tanebourc, ‘but I wouldn’t think so. A deserter would have discarded his tabard, but he might have been too stupid to think of that,’ said Tanebourc with a grim smile. Then the smile dropped from his face. ‘I would expect that we will find the rest of his scouting party somewhere around here, butchered by the beasts.’

Tanebourc had been correct in his evaluation. Fifteen Garamont yeomen were found some two miles distant, slaughtered along with their steeds. Calard sighed.

‘Build a pyre,’ he ordered his men-at-arms.

The Gave felt the tentative approach of the wargor as it picked its way past the moss-covered rocks and skulls. He could feel the creature’s animalistic, destructive urges, the primal savagery of its nature. Its heart burned hot with hatred, but it was cowed and fearful as it drew near the holy gibbet tree. Though it hated the Gave with all its being, as the Gave hated himself, it knew who was the master, and slunk forwards full of respect and fawning submission. He could sense the wargor’s fear as its eyes flicked warily between the immense, sleeping forms of the giants, the twins of one flesh. Had they been awake, the wargor would already have been dead.

The Gave’s blue eyes flicked open. All was darkness around him, and he felt the warm, rotting heart of the tree against his body, clutching him like a child to its bosom. Grubs and worms burrowed through the soft flesh of the tree, and they crawled over him as he breathed deeply the musty scent of rotting wood. He felt the blood of the sacrifices offered to the tree upon his skin.

The gibbet tree opened with a sickly, wet tearing sound like muscle being ripped apart. Like a ribcage being torn open, the rotting wood of the tree parted and the Gave stepped from within. His twisted staff was held in long, spider-like hands, the roots of the staff imbedding themselves into the earth every time the Gave slammed it into the ground.

He moved with a gangly intensity, each movement sharp and stilted. He looked upon the twins of Chaos, their titanic, fifty-foot frames reclining amongst the roots of the great tree. The bones of countless meals were piled around them, and their immense chests rose and fell in unison as they slumbered.

The wargor cowered before him, an object clasped to its chest. It inclined its neck, exposing its jugular in an act of utter subservience.

The Gave towered a full head and a half taller than the powerfully built beastman. He gazed with icy blue eyes at the wargor, and there was more than a hint of madness lurking within their pale, liquid veneer. They stared from within a grotesque mask of stitched-together human skin. Only the Gave’s mouth and chin could be seen beneath this mask of flesh. That mouth looked almost human, until the pink lips parted, exposing hundreds of tiny, razor-sharp teeth embedded in rows within blood-red gums. An eight-pointed star was cut into the skin-mask of the creature’s forehead, and dark blood oozed from the incisions.

Matted clumps of dark hair hung in thick ropes from the Gave’s head and shoulders, and three pairs of horns rose from his skull. One pair jutted from his forehead and was tall, straight and spiralling, rising several feet above its head; the second pair was thick and tightly curled like those of a mountain-ram, and protruded from the Gave’s temples. The third pair emerged from the centre of the curled horns and swept down, jutting like tusks to either side of his chin.

The Gave was unclothed, and thick fur covered much of his body, though his chest and inner arms were bare. This exposed skin was smooth and translucent, as pale as the moonlight of Morrslieb, and the muscles were lean and taut. Runes of the dark gods pulsed beneath the flesh like angry welts, and veins and arteries could be seen pumping blood through the Gave’s body in rhythmic surges.

Why do you disturb my sleep of ages, whelp? roared the Gave, though no sound issued from its throat.

The wargor staggered beneath the mental onslaught, and blood began to seep from its ears. Reeling, it fell to its knees, and threw off the fur that covered the shield clasped to its chest. As blood dribbled from its nostrils, the beastman pushed the red and yellow shield towards the cloven hooves of the Gave.

His pale blue eyes widened, and a hiss issued from his throat. He slammed his staff into the earth, and its roots burrowed into the moist soil. Then he knelt down and lifted the shield. Running his hand over the design on the shield, fingers lingering on the dragon heraldry, the Gave licked at his human lips and gave a barking laugh of triumph.

The wargor began to go into convulsions at its feet. It would be devoured as soon as the giants awoke.

The Gave placed the shield upon a twisted, bleeding root, and lifted his piercing eyes to the twisted branches of the great tree. Black carrion birds regarded him with hungry eyes.

Barking a savage word in the Dark Tongue, the birds erupted into flight, as one. Skeletal branches unfurled from the tip of the Gave’s staff, sprouting outwards like the petals of a deathly flower, and the black birds landed among them, filling the air with their harsh, piercing cries.

Amid the raucous din, the Gave extended one hand and uncurled his long, spindly fingers, holding his palm upwards. With his other hand, he drew a long, cracked talon across the pale palm of his hand. Dark blood pumped from the wound, and he closed his hand into a fist.

The Gave plucked the first of the black birds from the branches grown from the staff, holding it in a crushing grip.

The bird cried out and struggled, clawing and biting, but it was held fast. Turning it on its side, the Gave lifted his wounded hand over the creature’s face, and let a single drop of its dark blood fall into the raven’s eye.

The effect was instantaneous. The bird’s beady black eye blinked and turned blood red. A black sliver appeared in the orb, like the pupil of a serpent. The flesh around the eye began to throb and peel away, and the bird thrashed and struggled in agony, while the other ravens looked on impassively. The bird’s orb swelled, wider and wider, weeping pus and foulness, until fully half the bird’s head was nothing more than a pulsing, bulging red daemonic eye. It blinked, and as the Gave’s eyes narrowed, so too the bulging red eye narrowed.

The bird was thrown into the air, and it flapped its way clumsily through the tangle of branches overhead, seeking the open sky. The Gave snatched another bird from its perch.

As the first red rays of dawn rose across the land, a dozen black birds were flying to the west. Once they cleared the forest they spread out in different directions, scouring the land below.

The Gave saw all that they saw, and licked his lips in anticipation.

Weary and grim, and with the stink of burning human flesh in his nostrils, Calard looked towards the dark shadow of the forest on the horizon. It crouched like a malignant beast, making ready to pounce. Chalons had become a looming spectre of dread in the Bretonnian camp: an impenetrable bosom from which the enemy erupted and wreaked havoc in the dark hours, before retreating as dawn surfaced. More, the forest itself was the enemy.

Each night it encroached further into Bordeleaux, creeping forwards like a giant, leafy beast, overtaking fields and swallowing villages close to its borders.

After that first night when the beastmen had revealed themselves, the duke’s camp had awoken to find that the tree line had advanced some two hundred yards in the dark hours of night. Twisted briars and thorns had clawed across the earth in advance of the trees, which loomed dark and foreboding.

It was almost as if the trees had uprooted themselves in the night and crept across the ground. Like the questing tendrils of some monstrous, blind beast, the trees had pushed forth in uneven spurts, reaching out and reclaiming fields that had been tilled for generations, and though they were now once again inert, riding near them was eerie and disquieting. Ancient dry-stone walls had been engulfed by the trees, torn down by powerful roots and branches, as if a hundred years of wild growth had occurred overnight.

Nor were the trees in their prime of health; they were twisted, as if in pain, their roots contorted. Sap ran like blood from their limbs, and their branches were malformed, locked in crooked positions, reaching up to the sky as if in silent agony.

Corpses of greenskins, slain only the day before, were crushed beneath the thick roots of trees that should have taken decades to grow. Broken lances and shields had been swallowed by the grasping roots, and they stuck up between contorted limbs, like relics of ancient times, like tombstones marking the burial places of ancient warriors, not the debris of battle from the day before.

Even the fields of grass that had not yet been claimed by the forest were covered in tiny, twisted saplings, the smallest sticking no more than an inch from the churned up earth, but many reaching the height of a horse’s shoulder. Twisted briars and thorns had clawed their way across the open ground, and hedges, dutifully trimmed and pruned for decades, had erupted in uncontrolled life.

The armaments and bodies of knights that had fallen in the night were pulled from this tangle of growth, as best they could, and prepared for return to their ancestral lands, though many were never recovered. Peasants strained to retrieve the bodies of their lords from beneath the strangling roots and limbs of trees that had taken root over them, but many had to content themselves with bearing merely a battered shield or helmet back to their lord’s estates, the bodies of their masters forever trapped beneath the deathly grip of the trees.

No one could comprehend the sudden advance of the wild wood. On the duke’s order, brush fires had been lit, and teams of loggers were brought in to force the woodland back to its earlier boundary. This, however, proved to be folly. The fires failed to take, and the loggers made laughably slow inroads. If anything, their shows of defiance merely seemed to encourage the forest, and at night it burst forth in wild growth wherever an axe had felled a tree. Halting the relentless advance of the forest was quickly deemed to be a hopeless endeavour, and the efforts were abandoned.

As the sun dipped below the horizon each night, branches and leaves began to rustle and shiver, even on nights when there was no wind. It was as if the forest was waking from slumber and stretching. Wary and tense, knights were posted to stand vigil against the forest each night, and men-at-arms whispered prayers and made signs to ward off evil spirits. As darkness, cold and hostile, descended, the forest sprouted forth, an unholy cancerous growth that pushed ever deeper into Bordeleaux lands.

Where would it end? thought Calard, staring with horror at the dark shape on the horizon. Each night it advanced a hundred, two hundred yards. How long would it take to claim all of Bretonnia? A few scant years? The thought was horrifying.

He saw a lone black bird circling high overhead.

Somewhere, wolves began to howl.

CHAPTER TEN

Calard rolled over with an angry grunt. He pushed one ear into the stuffed, goose feather pillow, and threw an arm over the other, trying vainly to block out the sound of his brother’s enthusiastic lovemaking. He didn’t know who it was that Bertelis was coupling with, nor did he care. All he knew was that he was exhausted, and that sleep was eluding him.

Whoever the girl was, she seemed to be enjoying herself, for her gasps and moans were getting louder, joining Bertelis’s animal grunting and the repetitive thumping of his pallet.

Unable to stand it any longer, Calard threw off the covers and got up. Quickly and with angry, sharp movements he dressed, throwing his blue and red tabard on over his underclothes. Hearing the movement, Bertelis, covered in a sheen of sweat, looked up from atop the panting form of a naked, dark-haired girl.

‘What?’ he said, pausing his action as Calard threw him a thunderous look. The girl was moaning like a banshee beneath Bertelis, and Calard swore under his breath, shaking his head, and stormed out of the tent.

The pair of men-at-arms stationed outside swiftly rose to attention from their bored slouches as Calard swept past them. He stamped away from his tent, not caring where he was going, just wanting to be away. His hands were clasped into fists at his sides, and peasants scurried out of his way as they saw the look on his face.

It was perhaps three hours past dawn, and he had only returned, tired and weary, from the patrol half an hour earlier. The revolting stink of burning human flesh still clung to him, but he had gone straight to bed, exhaustion driving him. Haunting images had rushed through his weary mind whenever sleep came close, and he was jerked back awake. He saw circling black birds and the menacing forest. The pale face of his long-lost twin sister emerged from the mists that encircled the trees, appearing as the child he remembered, though she would have been twenty years old by now. She spoke to him, though her lips did not move, and he could not understand her words. It was if she was whispering, just too faintly for him to hear, and he awoke, feeling frustrated and irritated. In truth he doubted that he would have been able to sleep even if Bertelis had not been rutting within earshot.

His brother could not understand why he had not taken any woman to his bed since he had begun courting Elisabet.

‘You truly love her, then?’ Bertelis had asked, somewhat bewildered.

‘With every fibre of my being,’ he had answered.

‘I still don’t see why that changes anything. It’s not as if you are already wedded to the girl. Enjoy yourself while you still can!’

‘That would bring dishonour on her, and me!’ said Calard hotly.

Bertelis had shaken his head in bewilderment and wonder. Calard kicked at a scabby camp dog, and the creature yelped and ran from him, its crooked tail between its legs.

Gunthar sighed. He was not as fast with the blade as he used to be, and he found himself exhausted when a decade ago he would have felt nothing. Of course, there were still few who could match his blade-work, but within a few years, perhaps half a decade at most, they too would fade.

Without a son to carry his name, he would be forgotten. For a moment, he regretted having never wed, and this brought back painful memories. He was haunted by the question of what might have come to pass if he had met her first, but she had already been betrothed to the dashing young Lutheure, Gunthar’s closest brother-in-arms.

He had never spoken a word of his love for Yvette of Bordeleaux to any living soul, and it was a secret he would carry to his dying day. He would never have dishonoured himself, or them, by voicing his feelings. Instead, he had pushed them deep inside. It was a source of much rumour and gossip as to why he had never wedded, but only Gunthar knew the true reason.

He had been distraught when Yvette had died, no more than fifty miles from where Gunthar now stood. He had wept for her, and it was out of love for her that he had stayed within the Garamont household to oversee Calard’s training.

He pushed these thoughts away, as he saw Calard storm from his tent and stalk off through the camp, his every movement tense and angry.

He had tried to get the boy to talk through what it was that was frustrating him so much, about the raging anger that burnt within him, but it had ended badly. He realised that it was always going to. He had cursed himself for a fool afterwards. Young men always believed that they saw things so clearly. It was one of the quirks of being young. They always felt that the things they experienced had never been experienced by anyone before them, that the emotions they felt were more intense than those any other person had ever experienced.

Why was it, Gunthar mused, that it was only when the body began to ache and fail you, as old age began to creep up, that one started to gain some wisdom, some understanding of the world? He chuckled to himself. You really are getting old, he thought.

The boy had lost his mother at a tender age, and within the year his twin sister, his constant companion and shadow, was taken by the Enchantress. Thinking of her, Gunthar made a sign to ward off the fey. Gunthar loved Lutheure of Garamont like a brother, and knew that, in his heart, he was a good man, but when Yvette had died, something within him had died as well. All warmth towards the young Calard had been sucked away, and Lutheure had said barely a civil word to him in all the years since. Gunthar could understand it. Calard was the spitting image of his mother, and it must have caused Lutheure pain to look upon the boy.

Gunthar loathed the new lady of Garamont with a silent passion, seeing her as a cold, jealous woman. He was honest enough with himself to know that part of his dislike stemmed from the fact that she was, in his eyes, replacing Yvette in the household, but he believed that he would have disliked the woman even if circumstances had been different. She was cruel to servants and peasants to the point of maliciousness, a trait she seemed to have sadly passed on to her son Bertelis, and she had made life for Calard growing up in the castle a misery.

With a father who was cold and distant, and who had eyes only for his second son, and a vicious stepmother who derided him at every chance, it was no wonder that Calard struggled with issues of anger and self-doubt. He just wished that he could help somehow.

Trumpet horns sounded, and Gunthar craned his neck to see a troop of knights riding up the hill into camp, just back from a further patrol. Beastman heads were impaled on lances, and there was cheering as the knights rode through the camp displaying the grisly trophies proudly. They were the knights of Sangasse, he noticed.

At least someone had been successful in their hunt, thought Gunthar.

Angry and tired, Calard walked blindly through the camp that the knights of Bastonne were using as a base for their patrols. It was a good defensive position, for the tents had been erected on a wide, flat-topped hill named Adhalind’s Seat, and the land was clear for miles around. A small patch of verdant woodland hugged the base of the hill to the west, fed by a bubbling natural spring, and it was towards this patch of serenity that he now walked.

Hearing the blare of trumpets, he turned to see the victorious knights return. Jealousy stabbed at him.

His mood darkened as he saw Maloric riding with the group, holding a massive shaggy head aloft in one hand. Swearing, he swung around and stormed away from the victorious Sangasse knights. He knew that it was not honourable to give in to his anger, but at the moment, he just wanted to break something.

The camp was far less grand than the duke’s in the north, consisting of no more than three hundred tents, and it took only a minute to reach its perimeter. Standing at the edge of the table-topped hill, he stared down at the small copse of woodland that hid the revered grail chapel. There were countless numbers of these holy shrines dotted around Bretonnia, and each was a site of pilgrimage and holy significance. This particular shrine was said to heal wounds of the heart, and hundreds of jilted and spurned lovers made the long journey to it each year to pray and make offerings.

It is said that Theudric, a questing knight from Carcassonne, was visited by a vision of the Lady here, and that it was in this location that he supped from her chalice and became a noble grail knight. In honour of this holy visitation, he had funded the construction of the small shrine built within the copse.

As he descended the hill and entered the trees, Calard felt his anger subside. The air was cool and fresh, and he passed his hand through the soft fern fronds that blanketed the earth. The trees were sparse and thin, far from the twisted, oppressive trees of Chalons. Breathing deeply, Calard wound his way through the ferns, the soft sunlight dappling the undergrowth.

The mausoleum that housed the body of Theudric was small and humble, made of pristine white marble that had been overgrown with ferns. Its sides were arched and open, and creepers had begun to claim the small structure.

Theudric had, if the stories were to be believed, been in love with a renowned beauty, Adhalind, a woman of unsurpassed grace and virtue. However, a hag, jealous of her beauty, had cursed Adhalind, so that if she were ever kissed, both she and the object of her affection would perish instantly. Fearing not for herself, but for the noble Theudric, she spurned his advances, but he was vociferous in his pursuit of her hand, for he knew that she loved him too. Determined to free her, Theudric set out to break the curse. Every day that he was away, Adhalind came to the shrine that he had built, seated atop the hilltop, watching and waiting for her love to return to her. For forty long years she waited for his return, and it was during this time that the hill was named Adhalind’s Seat.

At long last, Theudric returned, kissing his love for the first time, now that the curse had been lifted from her. His life had been prolonged by the mystical properties of the Lady’s grail, and he appeared as he had when he had left, but the years had been harsh to Adhalind, and she was an old woman, her face lined and her hair grey. Nevertheless, the couple were wed, and lived in joyous happiness until Adhalind passed away, a smile of contentment upon her face, a year later.

Theudric lived out the rest of his years as a hermit, tending the shrine, and only leaving it when the call to war came. He lived to one hundred and ninety years, and when he passed from the world, he was interred alongside his beloved Adhalind.

Calard stepped lightly up the mausoleum steps, looking in awe upon the stone sarcophagus that housed the body of the revered grail knight and his lady. It had been carved in the likeness of the knight and his beloved, lying side by side with their hands held clasped over their chests, as if in prayer. A marble sword lay by Theudric’s side, and a carved marble shield acted as the couple’s pillow. Theudric’s feet rested upon a coiled dragon, while beneath Adhalind’s carved feet was a resting unicorn. The white marble carving was perfect in every detail, even down to individual strands of hair, and Calard marvelled at the skill of the workmanship. The knight’s face was strong and noble; his lady’s young and virtuous. Calard stared into the carved likeness of Theudric’s face, trying to perceive what it was that had made the man great.

Stepping down the steps on the other side of the mausoleum, Calard’s breath caught in his throat as he glimpsed the glowing pale shape of a lady standing looking at him from the other side of a small pond. It took him a moment to realise that this was not a vision, but a statue, carved of the same clean marble as the mausoleum, and that the glowing intensity of the ghostly image was created by the sunlight dappling upon the stone.

He stepped towards it in awe, and dropped to his knees before the lily covered pond, gazing upon the pristine face of the Lady of the Lake. Divine hands must surely have guided the sculptor, for the representation was breathtaking in its detail and the incredible impression of life that had been attained.

The Lady was tall, slender and full of grace. One leg was slightly bent and her arms were held before her, as if she were stepping forward to embrace Calard. Her dress seemed diaphanous, flowing and almost translucent, as if it were delicate, impossibly fine silk, wafting in a slight breeze, rather than solid, cold stone. A jewelled grail hung from her waist upon a string of beads and entwined vines, and her flowing hair was filled with tiny, delicate flowers and leaves.

It was the Lady’s facial expression, however, that was the sculptor’s true work of artistic genius, and Calard felt tears on his cheeks as he gazed upon it. With beautifully carved, high cheekbones and lips that looked as soft as velvet, the Lady stared down at him with an expression of infinite compassion. The feeling of love and motherly devotion that exuded from the statue was almost palpable, and Calard swallowed heavily, enraptured by the divine vision that the sculptor had created.

Calard had only dim memories of his mother, for she had died when he was a young boy, but seeing this expression on the statue of the Lady brought those vague memories back into sharp focus.

Calard lowered his eyes, and looked down into the pond. Catfish with long, wafting whiskers swam to and fro beneath the mirror surface of the water, sifting through the leaves that had settled upon the bottom. The reflection of the Lady shimmered like a holy apparition upon the pond, and Calard closed his eyes in prayer, feeling a great sense of calm and serenity descend over him.

He did not know how long he knelt before the statue, but when he at last opened his eyes, the sun had shifted. It was almost overhead, and no longer made the statue glow. He felt refreshed and cleansed, as if his act of prayer had washed away his ill mood.

He stood, whispered one final prayer, and made his way back into the camp, climbing the grassy slope of Adhalind’s Seat. He felt calmer than he had done for weeks.

With some shame, he recalled the heated conversation he had had with Gunthar on the ride back to camp just hours earlier.

‘You seem angry, frustrated,’ the weapon master had said softly. ‘Is it something that you would like to speak of?’

Calard had glared at the older knight. ‘I’m not angry,’ he said hotly. Gunthar raised an eyebrow.

‘If you say so,’ he said. They rode alongside each other in silence for a moment, each lost in his own thoughts.

‘Are you still thinking of how you were unhorsed when ambushed by the beasts?’ Gunthar asked at last.

Calard’s face darkened. ‘It was shaming,’ he said, keeping his voice low so that none of the other knights heard his words. ‘The beast could have killed me, but it was enjoying toying with me. I could see it in its hateful eyes. I would rather have been killed in battle than suffer being at the mercy of that creature.’

‘And never see your fair Elisabet again?’ asked Gunthar softly.

‘I do not deserve her affection,’ said Calard bitterly.

Gunthar laughed out loud, and Calard glared at him in outrage.

‘Ah, the foolishness of youth,’ said the weapon master. ‘Do you have any idea the number of times that I have been unhorsed in battle? How many times I would have been slain, but for the intervention of another, or a lucky twist of fate? Don’t dwell on it. You are alive, and your honour is untarnished.’

Calard had glared at the weapon master, and pulled his horse away from him. He had ridden the remainder of the journey back to camp in silent brooding. Only now did he see that he had been foolish. True, the shame of having been at the mercy of the creature stung him still, but far better men than him had died that day in battle. He felt like a foolish child.

Feeling calm and humbled, Calard walked back into the camp, smiling to himself as he thought of Elisabet, his earlier dark mood shaken off.

‘Ah, Garamont!’ said a snide voice. Calard looked up, the smile slipping from his face as he saw Maloric standing with his hands on his hips before his tent. The young knight was still armoured, and his white tabard was splashed with blood. Behind him, a peasant rammed a beastman’s head onto a spear embedded in the ground, alongside half a dozen others. ‘What do you think of my latest adornment?’

‘It’s quite charming,’ said Calard mildly. ‘A relative of yours?’

Maloric chortled, and smiled at him. ‘Ah, so witty. I heard that you had another unsuccessful night’s hunt. It’s almost as if you are trying to avoid the beasts. Is that it, Garamont? Have you found a local stable in which to cower each night, while real men go out to fight? Perhaps with a warm young stable boy to hold you tight?’

Calard felt the peace he had achieved in the grail shrine shred away. Other Sangasse knights stopped what they were doing, smirking, to see the young noble of Garamont’s response. He saw one particular man, a slim young knight of the realm, perhaps in his mid-twenties, step close to Maloric, a hand resting lightly on his sword hilt, a half smile on his lips.

Calard sensed that this situation could rapidly deteriorate, but his pride was flaring. He thought of the cool, pale face of the Lady, and his anger subsided somewhat. He forced himself to smile.

‘I congratulate you on your successful hunt. I shall take my leave of your presence now, for I would not wish to have to break your nose again. I fear your mother would be most displeased if your noble profile was permanently damaged,’ said Calard amiably. He turned away, and under his breath he muttered, ‘And I hear the wrath of the whore is impressive indeed.’

‘What did you say?’ asked Maloric.

‘I said your mother is a fine woman,’ said Calard loudly over his shoulder.

‘And yours is dead and rotting in the ground,’ snarled Maloric. ‘Best place for her, mind. I heard tell that she was a witch.’

Calard froze in his tracks, the colour draining from his face.

‘Wasn’t your bitch twin sister a witch too?’ continued Maloric. ‘That was why she was taken away, wasn’t it?’

Calard spun around and stormed towards the Sangasse noble, his face thunderous. Maloric smirked at him, and flashed a smile at the slim knight at his side.

Without ceremony, Calard slammed his fist into the noble’s face, breaking his nose once more. He stood over him, his breathing heavy.

‘Don’t you ever speak of my mother or sister again, you whoreson,’ spat Calard.

From the ground, Maloric held one hand to his bleeding nose, but he looked up at Calard, his eyes blazing in triumph.

‘I accept,’ he snarled.

‘What?’ snapped Calard.

‘You have struck me down in front of all the knights gathered here. I accept your challenge, and I nominate Sir Ganelon here as my champion.’

The slim knight bowed his head, his half-smile mocking.

Calard swore.

He recognised the knight, now: Ganelon, champion of Sangasse; Ganelon the butcher.

A slim man of below average height, he looked more like a boyish libertine than the deadly warrior he was said to be. His hair was scented and brushed, and hung past his shoulders, and his fluted armour was ornate and highly shined. He wore a half-smile permanently affixed to his face, but his eyes were cold and dead, like those of a fish.

Ganelon was the victor of a score of duels, and it was said that he was more than a little unhinged in the head. If the rumours were true, he had a particular fondness for inflicting pain, be it on his opponent in a duel, or on a woman in the bedchamber.

‘Fine,’ he said at last. ‘Name the time and place.’

‘Noon,’ said Ganelon, looking up into Calard’s eyes. ‘The west field beyond the camp.’

‘I shall be there,’ said Calard.

‘I look forward to it,’ said Ganelon. Beside him, Maloric did not even attempt to conceal his pleasure.

‘No! I can fight my own battles!’ said Calard.

‘You cannot match him!’ said Gunthar hotly, rounding on the young knight. Calard was being armoured by a servant, arms outstretched as the last pieces of his armour were fastened. ‘The man is a cold-hearted murderer,’ continued Gunthar, ‘and his skill is beyond your own.’

‘I will not let you fight for me!’ protested Calard.

‘I made a promise to see you safe,’ the middle-aged knight said. Calard snorted in derision.

‘To my father? He would not have asked to see me safe. The man hates me.’

‘He does not hate you, Calard,’ said Gunthar with a sigh, ‘but it was not to him that I made the promise.’

‘Oh? Then who was it to?’

‘The Lady Yvette, your mother.’

Calard blinked in shock, the angry words he was about to speak frozen on his tongue. He dropped his arms to his sides, and ordered the servants to leave the tent.

‘She made me promise that I would see you and your sister safe,’ said Gunthar when the servants had departed, his voice soft and his eyes hazy as he recalled the conversation. ‘She feared for you both. It was only a day before she… died. She was heavily pregnant, and wracked with pain, but her concern was only for you and your sister.’

‘Pregnant?’ asked Calard in confusion, his anger forgotten.

Gunthar realised he had said too much.

‘Yes,’ he said with resignation. ‘The birth was difficult. It claimed both mother and child.’

Calard stared blankly into space.

‘I never knew,’ he said at last. ‘No one ever told me how she had died.’

‘I am sorry to have spoken of it. It was not my place to do so. Anyway,’ said Gunthar, clearing his throat, ‘within the year Anara was taken. I could do nothing, despite the promise I had made, but here and now, I can. To fail her with both her children… I could not live with that dishonour.’

‘I do not wish to see you die on my account,’ said Calard.

‘I have no intention of dying, my boy,’ said Gunthar. ‘Let me do this. Let me honour your mother’s wish.’

At that moment Bertelis entered the tent, his face grim. He looked upset and worried, biting his lip.

‘It is time,’ he said.

Word had spread, and all the knights in the camp were gathered to watch the contest. Men-at-arms and other peasants crowded around the roped off open area of the field, jockying for position.

A murmur ran through the crowd as Calard approached, flanked by Bertelis and Gunthar, and a path was cleared for them.

The knights and peasants of Garamont cheered as he marched into the open area in the centre of the gathering, though there were shouts and jeers from the Sangasse camp. Maloric and Ganelon stood side by side in front of the Baron of Montcadas, who was to act as the official judge for the contest. Calard’s face darkened as he saw them. He marched towards them, and halted a few steps away. Ganelon was still smiling his cold half-smile.

‘I thought you might not have shown,’ said Maloric. ‘I am glad. At least you will die with some honour remaining.’

‘I shall be fighting on behalf of Calard of Garamont,’ said Gunthar firmly, before Calard could speak.

Maloric raised an eyebrow, smirking. Ganelon shifted his cold dead eyes to Gunthar, looking him up and down appraisingly.

‘You would have an old man fight for you?’ laughed Maloric. ‘Ah, this is too good.’

‘Calard of Garamont has named a champion!’ boomed Baron Montcadas, his powerful baritone voice sounding out across the gathered crowd.

‘Long have I yearned to cross blades with you,’ said Ganelon mildly, locking eyes with Gunthar. ‘It will be an honour to be the one to kill you.’

‘In your dreams, boy,’ said Gunthar.

‘May the Lady bless you both,’ said the baron.

‘Oh, she does,’ said Ganelon. Gunthar was silent.

The Baron Montcadas lifted up an ornate hourglass for all to see. ‘The contest shall begin when the last grain of sand falls!’ roared Baron Montcadas, turning on the spot as he spoke so all could hear his words. He turned the timer over and slammed it down onto a table draped with silk.

The two combatants turned away from each other, and strode to opposite ends of the roped out arena. A peasant brought Gunthar’s horse forward, and others appeared bearing his shield and weapons.

‘You do not have to do this,’ Calard said, his voice thick with emotion.

‘I do,’ said Gunthar, ‘if I am to honour the pledge that I made to your mother.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘Have courage, boy. I will not be killed by some Sangasse whelp.’

‘Try to finish it from the saddle,’ said Bertelis. ‘He is better on foot than he is on horseback.’

Calard felt sick to his stomach, but he could not find the words to express his feelings. Bertelis was at his side, his face pale and tense. Gunthar knelt, bowing his head in prayer to the Lady.

Standing, he embraced both Calard and Bertelis, before pulling himself into the saddle of his powerful, armoured destrier. It snorted and tossed its head, and Gunthar slipped his shield over his arm. Lastly, he reached for his lance. Calard handed it to him.

‘Fight well,’ said Calard. Gunthar smiled in response. Then he lowered his visor, and turned towards the figure of Ganelon. The wait for the remaining sand in the hourglass to fall seemed to Calard to take an age, and he jumped when the horn was finally blown.

Without ceremony, the two knights kicked their steeds into a gallop, and thundered towards each other across the grassy field. This was no fancy tournament ground. There was no fence dividing the jousters, little fanfare and a distinct lack of the panoply that generally surrounded such an event: just two knights who would fight until one yielded, or one was unable to continue.

They thundered across the turf towards each other, and Calard found himself holding his breath. They came together with bone crushing force. Both knights took the blows on their shields, and they reeled in their saddles from the force of the impact. Neither man fell.

‘Gunthar made the better strike,’ said Bertelis. ‘That will have weakened Ganelon. He can win this.’ Calard did not answer. He felt ill.

The two knights trotted their steeds to opposite ends, shaken by the blows they had taken. They wheeled around sharply for another pass.

Spurring their warhorses on, the two slammed together once more. This time, Gunthar moved his lance tip just before it impacted with Ganelon’s shield, and it took the younger man in the shoulder. A great cheer rose from the knights of Garamont, and Calard punched the air. Ganelon’s lance shattered on Gunthar’s shield.

Gunthar rode past his opponent, and wheeled his horse around for another pass. Ganelon hurled his shattered lance to the ground angrily and drew his sword. Seeing this, Gunthar dropped his lance to the grass, and slid his blade from its scabbard.

Then the pair were charging at each other once more. They came together hard, and the ringing of steel sounded as their swords clashed. They made another pass, this one slower, and traded blows at close quarters, guiding their steeds expertly with their knees. Ganelon’s blade was fast, his sword darting in and out with astonishing swiftness. Gunthar defended himself with great skill, and his sword flashed back in deadly ripostes that the younger man turned away at the last second.

Ganelon slashed towards the older knight’s chest, but at the last moment he pulled the blow, feinting, and the blade sliced towards Gunthar’s head. The older knight anticipated the strike, and took it on his shield. His own sword stabbed out towards Ganelon’s breast.

The younger knight swayed in the saddle and lifted his left arm slightly, opening his shield guard. The point of Gunthar’s sword blade scraped across his breastplate before passing under the younger man’s armpit. Clamping his arm down sharply, Ganelon trapped Gunthar’s blade. Feeling his weapon trapped and useless, Gunthar slammed his shield hard into the smaller man, knocking him from the saddle.

Ganelon fell hard, but came swiftly to his feet. Gunthar’s steed tossed its head, and the older knight stared down at his opponent. Then he swung one leg over his saddle, and dropped to the ground. He sent his horse running clear with a smack on its rump, and peasants ran forward to lead both horses away.

Ganelon lifted his helmet away from his head, and tossed it arrogantly to the side, confident in his abilities. ‘A fine, if somewhat unconventional move,’ he remarked.

Gunthar was silent as he circled, his sword and shield raised. Ganelon’s stance was relaxed to the point of cockiness, his arms hanging loose at his sides. He jumped lightly from foot to foot, taunting his opponent.

‘The arrogant bastard,’ hissed Bertelis, at Calard’s side.

Gunthar swung in with a powerful blow to the neck. Ganelon’s blade flashed up from his side, sweeping the attack aside, before slicing back with a vicious riposte that Gunthar was hard pressed to deflect with his shield. Ganelon did not follow up the attack, but merely waited for Gunthar to attack again.

The weapon master stepped forwards and struck, a strong overhead slash that was taken on the shield. Ganelon’s blade darted forward, but it was pushed away harmlessly by Gunthar’s blade, and he stepped in close and bashed the smaller man with his shield. His sword followed the attack, and Ganelon was forced to back away from his opponent’s blade as it slashed in, left and right. His cocky showmanship evaporated as he saw his opponent’s skill, and what followed was the most dazzling display of swordsmanship that Calard had ever witnessed.

The two men fought toe to toe, each blow snapped with astonishing swiftness, each displaying remarkable skill. The swords crashed together time and time again, and the dance of blades as they thrust, struck, parried and riposted was dizzying to watch. The entire crowd was silent, enthralled by the contest playing out before them, aware that they were in the presence of two masters.

After minutes of frantic swordplay, the pair stepped away from each other, breathing heavily. Gunthar’s helmet was dented in two places, and he had suffered a powerful blow upon his left rarebrace, which had sheared through the plate metal and the chain links beneath, and bitten into his arm. Ganelon’s shield was bent out of shape from the heavy blows he had taken, and he bore a cut across his cheek that was bleeding profusely, though it was not deep.

Gunthar was the larger and stronger of the pair, and arguably more skilled, but Calard had never seen a man as fast with the blade as Ganelon. Added to this, the man was more than three decades younger than the ageing weapon master, and, as the fight wore on, Calard could see that Gunthar was tiring. His heart began to sink.

‘He needs to end this quickly,’ said Bertelis.

Ganelon too could see that his opponent was tiring, and his cocky strut was returning. Gunthar’s attacks grew slower, until it was clear that exhaustion was getting the better of him.

With pained, helpless expressions on their faces, Calard and Bertelis watched as Ganelon stepped around their weapon master, leaping forward to strike a flurry of lightning blows, before leaping back once more. More blows struck Gunthar, denting his breastplate and helmet, and his left pauldron was hanging uselessly from his shoulder. Ganelon pulled the battered shield from his arm and hurled it away. Gunthar followed his every move with his shield held before him, his sword poised.

Calard had seen a similar battle played out once before. As a boy, he had watched from a distance as an ageing stag, still strong but past its prime, was harried by a pack of wolves. The wolves were respectful of the power of the stag, knowing they could be impaled on its antlers or crushed by its hooves, but they were also confident in their speed. Their jaws snapped each time they darted in, causing dozens of wounds on the noble beast, and it gradually began to tire. Growing bolder, the wolves darted in with growing confidence, until the stag was dead on its feet, exhausted beyond its ability to defend itself any longer. Then the wolves had leapt in, tearing out its throat, and the proud beast had died.

Another flurry of attacks, and Gunthar suffered a fierce blow to his head that wrenched his helmet half off. He pulled it free and dropped it to his side, blood flowing from his temple.

Darting forward again, his blade flashing dangerously, Gunthar defended himself with deft skill, despite his exhaustion. His sword flashed towards Ganelon’s neck, but there was little power behind the blow, and it was swatted aside easily, leaving his body and throat horribly exposed. Calard held his breath, waiting for the fatal blow to fall.

Ganelon could have easily killed Gunthar then, but he did not. He stabbed his blade into Gunthar’s thigh, the blade punching through his armour and sinking deep into the muscle. Gunthar roared in agony as the tip of the sword scraped his thighbone, and the leg collapsed beneath him.

The younger knight twisted the blade, before withdrawing it and stepping back, the half-smile still frozen on his face. He was toying with Gunthar now, drawing out his death before the gathered knights of Bastonne.

‘Dear Lady above,’ said Calard hoarsely. ‘Let him die with dignity, you bastard.’

Somehow, Gunthar pushed himself back to his feet to face his opponent, grimacing in pain. His shield slipped from his arm, and he clutched his blade in both hands.

‘I salute you,’ said Ganelon. ‘Never have I faced such a skilled opponent.’

‘And you never will again,’ said Gunthar, spitting blood.

‘I think it is time for you to die, now. I am getting hungry,’ said Ganelon demurely. ‘Killing always gives me such an appetite.’ He stepped towards Gunthar, his sword held poised.

Gunthar stumbled suddenly, and Ganelon surged forwards, his sword lancing for his enemy’s throat. He realised, too late, that the slip was nothing more than a convincing feint, and he tried desperately to reverse his movement, but he was already committed, his whole body moving forwards. As his blade was turned aside by Gunthar’s armoured forearm, the tip of the older knight’s sword drove low into his body, slipping through the weak joints in his armour around his groin. The force of his momentum drove him further onto the blade, and he gasped in pain as the major artery in his groin was severed, and the blade sank deep into his flesh.

Ganelon stumbled backwards, and the blade slipped from his body. Blood spurted like a fountain from his fatal wound, the colour bright and vivid against the gleaming silver of his armour. He stared in disbelief at the gushing blood, and fell to the ground.

There was not a sound from the gathered onlookers. Ganelon looked around numbly, his expression one of shock, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish stranded on land. The colour drained from his features as his lifeblood pumped from his body, pooling around him and soaking into the earth. In moments, he was dead, falling back against the ground, his eyes staring blankly at the grey sky.

Maloric turned away with a snarl, and began pushing his way through the frozen crowd. Gunthar fell face first to the ground, blood running freely from the deep wound in his thigh.

Shouting for aid, Calard ran to the wounded weapon master.

Chlod’s eyes lit up as he saw the coins. Half a copper crown! It was more money than he had seen for many moons, and far more than could be earned through honest work.

He reached across the table greedily, and snatched at the proffered coin. The solidly built warden pulled the coin back before he could grab it, and Chlod scowled darkly at him.

The last month had been tough. Twice he had been beaten: once by drunk, young knights merely for sport, and once by men-at-arms, who had caught him stealing from a knight’s tent. He was lucky in the latter case that a beating had been all that he had received.

Just minutes ago, he had been sleeping, but had woken instantly as the first kicks slammed into his body. He guessed that at least one rib was broken.

Dragged through the mud like a swine being led to the slaughter, he had been brought before the warden, who was now leering at him. He knew the man by reputation: a black-hearted murderer and thief. He was clever, though. In front of the nobility he was all sunshine and roses, obliging and dutifully subservient. It was only amongst the peasantry that his brutality came to the fore.

The bastard charged a tax of his own, though of course the nobility were unaware of it. Safety tax, he called it. As in, if you pay it, you are safe, and if you do not, then you are beaten and punished for some fabricated crime. Being a yeoman warden, at the top of the pecking order of the peasantry, the bastard could torture and punish men and women as he saw fit without any intervention from the nobility. In fact, in Chlod’s experience the nobility were pleased to see such acts, for it made them feel as if order were being kept.

He had seen men around the camp missing their hands, and he had learnt that this was the warning for failing to pay your safety tax. Your hand was hacked off with an axe and the stump shoved into burning coals to cauterise the wound. A second warning was never given, since few people asked questions about peasants that disappeared.

Chlod had heard that those who had in the past tried to bring his corruption to the awareness of the nobility were brutally murdered, along with every member of their family.

Not having had the coin with which to pay the warden the tax he demanded, Chlod had been beaten with sticks, and kicked till he pissed blood before being dragged here.

Happily, though, things had not gone the way he had expected, and he still had both of his hands.

‘You understand what it is I am telling you to do?’ snarled the big warden.

‘Yes,’ said Chlod. ‘You want me to help kill some knight.’

For a peasant, even to utter words of dissent against a noble was a punishable offence, usually resulting in the loss of fingers and ears, or a week in the stocks. For a peasant to lay hands on a noble, or even on his horse, accidental or not, was a far more serious offence, which often resulted in hanging. If a peasant physically harmed a noble, something that few would even comprehend, let alone premeditate, the punishments were of the utmost severity. On the rare occasion that such a thing came to pass, a peasant could expect agonising torture and slow dismemberment. His family would suffer a similar fate, and his friends and associates would be tortured and maimed. Such was the severity of the crime that the nobles made a brutal example of any who dared to assail them.

Chlod, however, had no family or friends. He had killed before, and had no qualms about doing so again, and the coin was enough to outweigh the dangers. He was no fool, and would do all that he could to make sure that no retribution would come his way, but he was well aware that things often turned out in ways that could not be foreseen. Plus, he was desperate.

‘Kill some knight, that’s the gist of it yeah,’ said the warden, leering at him with his gapped teeth spread wide in a predatory smile. ‘Two hours before dawn. The noble’s on the early patrol, and is due back at midnight. Don’t even think about making a run for it. My men will be watching over you from the moment you leave this tent. If you make any move to speak to anyone or leave the camp, you are dead, but not before you experience the most exquisite pain imaginable.’

Chlod believed he had a fairly vivid imagination, but he nodded and reached again for the coin. This time the warden allowed him to take it, and it disappeared instantly into a hidden pocket in Chlod’s stinking clothes. He felt his scrawny, black-furred pet squirm against his skin, and he patted it roughly through his jerkin.

‘Who’s the knight, anyway?’ he asked as he stood and made to leave.

‘What?’ asked the warden.

‘The knight, who is he?’

‘Why? Does it matter?’ asked the warden.

‘No,’ said Chlod. The warden grunted.

‘Garamont,’ the warden said. ‘Red and blue shield with a white dragon on it.’

Chlod’s one good eye widened, and he grinned stupidly.

‘Shame he didn’t fight Ganelon today,’ said the hunchbacked peasant. ‘You could have saved yourself some coin.’

‘Remember,’ growled the warden, levelling a meaty finger at Chlod, ‘the brother ain’t to be hurt. Touch so much as a hair on his head, and we are all dead men. Now, piss off.’ He inclined his head to a pair of brutes standing in the shadows, and Chlod was physically lifted and tossed into the mud outside.

Still grinning, he picked himself up and wiped the worst of the mud from his face. Then he moved off, a spring in his ungainly step.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The camp was sleeping, and there was no movement within it. The hour was late. The last patrol had come in hours earlier, and the next one was not due to return for some time.

On the outskirts of the camp, men-at-arms patrolled in groups of three. They fought off their tiredness, talking softly among themselves. The hours before dawn were the worst time, the time when sleep beckoned most strongly, but they knew that they would be whipped till their backs were bloody strips if they were caught resting while on guard. For men like them, such a beating was often a death sentence. The open wounds would likely fester and become infected, which was a slow and painful way to die.

There were fewer guards inside the camp, and they were less vigilant. No one expected an enemy within the camp, and their presence was more a reassurance than anything else. Most slept at their posts, enjoying what rest they could steal.

One guard, dressed in the red and yellow tabard of Garamont, walked between the dark, silent tents. He yawned and looked up at the silver moon. One more hour, and he would wake one of the others to take over, he thought.

His yawn was cut short as he spied a dark, hunched shape limping through the mud. Peering through the darkness, he tightened his grip on his polearm, and moved to intercept the figure. He stepped in front of it, and relaxed a little as he saw it was just some hunchbacked peasant, one of the scores of menial hangers-on that cooked and cleaned for the nobles.

‘Cold night,’ whispered the man, grinning inanely up at him. His eyes were uneven and he had clearly suffered a recent beating. He had probably failed to clean a spot of grease from his master’s cloak, or some such minor offence.

‘It is,’ said the guard, his voice quiet. ‘What’s your business here?’

‘Been sent by one of yer men,’ whispered the hunchback. ‘He said you might like a drink.’ He held up a half-empty wineskin.

The sentry’s eyes widened, and he hurriedly leant his polearm against a wooden crate and took a long draught. He sighed in appreciation. The wine was bad, tasting like vinegar, but it was greatly welcome. His eyes flicked back to the hunchback.

‘Who sent you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know his name, sir.’

‘Was he a blond-haired young man? On the eastern perimeter?’

‘Yeah, that was him.’

‘My brother,’ said the sentry. ‘I owe him one.’

‘Generous of him to think of you,’ said the hunchback, his eyes flicking over the sentry’s shoulder. A dark shape was moving through the shadows between the tents.

The sentry reached into his pocket and rummaged around. ‘Here,’ he said, producing half a small bread roll from which weevils and moth-maggots hung. ‘Have this for your troubles.’

‘You are most generous, good sir,’ said the hunchback, pocketing the bread in an instant and bobbing his head in gratitude.

The sentry lifted the wineskin over his head to drain it, and Chlod motioned with one hand. Shadowy forms slid out from between the tents, moving unseen past the distracted sentry.

‘What’s that over there?’ asked Chlod suddenly, his voice low but filled with alarm. The sentry dropped the wineskin to the ground, and spun in the direction that Chlod was gesturing towards, turning his back on the hunchbacked peasant.

Chlod clamped one thick, hairy hand over the man’s mouth and dragged his blade across the sentry’s neck, severing the jugular. The man twitched in his arms, and Chlod felt hot blood gushing over his hands. He dragged him awkwardly back into the darkness, and pushed the man to the ground in the shadow of a tent. He held his hand clamped over his mouth until his twitching stopped, and then stood upright.

He grinned as he saw more shapes moving stealthily through the night. With sudden inspiration, Chlod bent down and roughly pulled the red and yellow tabard from the dead sentry’s body. With awkward movements, he pulled it over his hunched frame, and planted the fallen man’s iron-rimmed hat on his head. Lastly, he lifted the polearm from where it leant, and then he began to nonchalantly walk towards the tent that bore the red and yellow of the lord of Garamont.

This was going to be too easy, he thought.

Calard was dreaming of Elisabet, and he smiled in his sleep as he breathed in her intoxicating scent. They were lying together in the long grass overlooking Castle Garamont, enjoying the heat of summer, the sound of insects, and each other’s body.

This was paradise, he thought, and Elisabet kissed his naked chest, nuzzling against him.

A voice was trying to intrude, but he pushed it away, not wishing the vision to break. It became more insistent, and in his dream he sat up, staring around him in confusion. Bees heavy with pollen flew ponderously from flower to flower, and tiny crickets clicked and leapt away from the sudden movement.

‘What is it, my love?’ asked Elisabet sleepily.

The voice was getting louder, more insistent.

‘Anara?’ he said, looking around in confusion.

Wake, said the voice, jolting him with its power.

He came awake instantly, and saw a flash of movement above him.

Throwing himself to the side, the knife stabbed down into his pillow, and Calard rolled from the pallet.

‘Take him!’ hissed an urgent voice, and dark shapes loomed towards him. His eyes flashed across the tent, and he saw his thrashing brother pinned down on his pallet by other shapes, a rough sack over his head.

A knife stabbed towards him, and he turned the blow aside as Gunthar had taught him, using his forearm to force the attacker’s arm away. He thundered his elbow into the man’s hooded face, and the attacker reeled backwards, falling heavily over the small chest that housed Calard’s clothes.

Calard threw himself to his side as he sensed movement behind him, and he hissed as a blade that had been aimed at his neck slashed across his shoulder. Another attacker came at him, blade flashing, and Calard launched himself forwards, his hands reaching for the man’s wrist.

His momentum made him slam into the attacker, who tripped backwards over the pallet with a curse. Going with him, Calard fell on the man heavily with his knee, driving the air from him. Sweeping up the attacker’s knife, Calard rose swiftly to his feet, slashing around to keep the assassins at bay.

Three of them circled warily. He stole a quick glance towards his brother, who was still struggling against the men pinning him down. One of the men flicked a glance behind him, to see what was transpiring, and he swore. His accent was crude; a peasant’s accent. Even had he not spoken, the stench of the assassins betrayed their lowborn status.

‘Garamont!’ roared Calard at the top of his lungs, and his brother began to fight anew, throwing off the men pinning him down.

The three attackers moved in on Calard. He swung to the right and grabbed one man’s arm as it slashed towards him, knife gleaming. He pulled the attacker off balance and hurled him into one of the others, but cried out in pain as the third man’s knife plunged into his side.

Dropping to one knee, he punched up, ramming his knife into the man’s throat.

He stood upright, wincing at the pain in his side. Then he heard the hiss of a sword being drawn, followed by a horrible, pained scream, and Calard felt the presence of his brother at his back.

Faced with the two brothers, one armed with a sword, the assassins faltered.

‘Garamont!’ Calard bellowed once more.

Chlod, standing watch outside the tent, flicked his glance left and right, biting his fleshy lip. Things were going horribly wrong, and the image of himself hanging from the gallows flashed through his mind.

With a quick glance through the tent flaps, he saw the two nobles standing back to back, and he made up his mind. He could hear the approach of running men, and he stepped out into the thoroughfare.

‘Over here! Our lord is attacked!’ he shouted, as he saw several men-at-arms wearing the red and yellow of Garamont. ‘Get in there!’ he shouted as they raced past him. More people were appearing, knights emerging from tents in their bedclothes, roused from their slumber by the noise.

Glancing down, Chlod realised that the front of his stolen Garamont tabard was covered in blood from the murder of the sentry. Swearing, he ducked his head and shuffled quickly through the growing crowd.

There was more shouting inside the tent, and the sound of weapons clashing, but Chlod did not look back. There was a crash that sounded like a suit of armour being knocked over, and he heard one voice shout: ‘Take them alive!’

He swore again. None of the others in the murderous group knew his name, but they could certainly describe him.

His misshapen face was covered in a sheen of sweat as he pushed his way frantically through the growing press of people gathering around. Pushing free of them, he broke into an awkward, loping run. He still clung to the polearm, and he almost tripped over it as he ducked between a pair of tents. He kicked something and tripped over it, falling to his hands and knees. The metal-brimmed helmet on his head fell forward to the ground and he dropped the awkward weight of the polearm. He struggled to push himself upright, and found his hands on a body.

He looked down into the face of the murdered sentry. He had not realised he had retraced his steps in his panic.

‘You there! What are you doing?’ someone shouted, and Chlod froze. He fought his instinct to run, and turned to face the speaker. It was a knight, standing half-dressed, a sword in his hand. Chlod licked his lips.

‘Why were you running?’ asked the man, stepping forwards and peering at him closely. Chlod gaped at him stupidly, his mind blank.

‘Is that blood on you?’ asked the knight.

Chlod nodded slowly. The knight furrowed his brow. ‘Are you injured?’

‘No,’ stammered Chlod. Drawing closer, the knight’s eyes widened as he saw the body on the ground. The peasant slipped a hand inside the tabard he wore, fingers closing on the knife at his hip.

‘Did you kill this man?’

Chlod tensed, making ready to draw the knife. He nodded slowly, keeping his eyes locked on the knight.

‘One of the assassins, was he?’

That gave Chlod pause, and he almost laughed out loud. Then he gave a demented, lopsided grin.

‘Yes, my lord,’ he said. ‘I saw him run from the tent. I gave chase.’

‘I see. Bring the body,’ he ordered. ‘It will need to be identified.’

With a nod, marvelling at his good fortune, Chlod bent down and began to drag the dead body out into the open.

‘Sangasse,’ spat Bertelis. ‘It had to have been.’

Calard nodded, and then winced as the alcohol was poured onto the wound on his side. He screwed his eyes shut against the lancing pain.

‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ said the aged servant. Baron Montcadas had sent him to the Garamont tent.

‘Glad to see you still alive, lad,’ the baron had boomed, giving Calard a hefty pat on the shoulder that made him gasp in pain.

‘The man might be a peasant, but he is the best damned healer of battle-wounds I’ve met.’

Calard waved away the old servant’s apology.

The wound was dabbed dry, and Calard looked over his shoulder at the injury. It didn’t look like much, but blood was leaking from the puncture wound, and it hurt like hell.

‘Any more stitches, brother, and you will look like a scarecrow,’ remarked Bertelis. Calard snorted. It was true, his body was criss-crossed with wounds and stitches.

The servant pressed a swaddling of cloth to the wound, and with the aid of another man, wrapped bindings of cloth around Calard’s chest.

The man produced a clay jar, and placed it on the pallet next to Calard.

‘This is honey, my lord,’ said the man. ‘Have a servant smear it on the wound twice a day, morning and night. As far as I can tell, the knife did no serious internal damage, though you will be sore for some time. The biggest risk is from infection, and the honey will help fight that. The wound must be dressed and cleaned daily. I will check on you tomorrow, my lord.’

Calard nodded, and the elderly man stood to leave, his knees creaking alarmingly.

‘Give my thanks to the lord baron for your services,’ said Calard. He turned to his brother as the servant left the tent, and he waved the other hovering servants to leave. They scooted out through the servants flap in the rear of the tent, passing through the press of men-at-arms stationed outside.

‘Peasants!’ spat Bertelis as he paced back and forth. ‘Whoreson peasants sent to kill us! I wouldn’t have thought even Maloric would stoop so low!’

‘The man is a snake,’ said Calard. ‘It seems that nothing is beneath him.’

‘I say we head to the Sangasse’s now, and finish this once and for all.’

‘No,’ said Calard firmly. ‘We need proof first.’

A serving boy pulled aside the main tent flap and stepped lightly inside, standing motionless and head bowed as was proper.

‘What is it?’ snapped Bertelis.

‘Noble lords, Baron Montcadas and Lord Tanebourc wish to speak with you,’ said the boy.

‘Then don’t leave them waiting outside like paupers!’ snapped Bertelis. ‘Stupid boy!’

The servant ducked back outside, and the broad figure of Montcadas entered, a deep frown on his bearded face. Such was his size that the interior of the tent seemed to shrink in his presence. Tanebourc was at his side, tall and lean, his face a mask of concern and controlled rage.

‘You all right, Garamont?’ asked Montcadas.

‘I am,’ said Calard.

‘I thank the Lady that your injuries were not more serious,’ said Tanebourc.

‘Had I not woken, my throat would have been cut.’

‘Then it must have been the Lady that stirred you,’ murmured Tanebourc, and Calard thought again of the voice in his dream, his sister’s voice.

‘Two of the men were taken alive, yes?’ asked Bertelis.

‘They were,’ replied Montcadas. ‘Tanebourc here has offered to oversee their… questioning.’

‘Good,’ said Bertelis. ‘Make sure they do not die easily.’

Tanebourc bowed his head to the younger of the brothers.

‘Find out who sent them, Tanebourc,’ ordered Calard, his words burning with anger.

‘It will be done,’ said the knight, giving a gracious bow, ‘and, once again, may I say how relieved I am to see neither of you more seriously harmed from this despicable attempt on your lives.’

The tall ginger-haired knight bowed once more, and turned to leave.

‘It was Maloric,’ said Bertelis to Montcadas, his eyes burning with anger.

‘I do not believe so,’ said the baron softly.

‘What?’ asked Calard. ‘Who else would it have been? Regardless, Maloric is cunning. Doubtless the attackers will not be traced back to him.’

‘I have already spoken with him,’ said the baron. ‘He denies he had any involvement.’

‘Well, of course he would deny it!’ said Bertelis, outraged.

‘Be quiet!’ stormed Montcadas, his voice booming. Silence followed, and when the baron spoke again, his voice was softer. ‘Maloric denied any involvement, and I believe him.’

Bertelis scoffed, but Calard was silent, thinking. ‘One of his knights, then?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Montcadas noncommittally.

‘I will challenge him,’ said Bertelis suddenly.

‘No,’ said Calard firmly, thinking of Gunthar, lying wounded in his tent, half dead. ‘Never again will I allow any man to fight my battles, never.’

‘I was attacked as well, Calard! I would be within my rights to call him out!’

‘I was the target,’ said Calard. ‘They had you pinned down. They could have killed you, but they did not. No, it was me they wanted dead. I shall challenge him myself.’

‘No, you will not,’ said the baron, his face stern. ‘I will not allow it, and, as the most senior knight in the camp, my word is final.’

Calard gaped at the baron, and Bertelis’s jaw dropped.

‘This is outrageous!’ the younger brother stormed.

‘There will be no challenge!’ bellowed the baron, his eyes glowering with anger. ‘We are assailed by a devious foe that threatens the land, and this petty rivalry you have with the Sangasse family has gone far enough! One noble is already dead, and Gunthar, a finer knight than any us, is fighting for his life. Even if he survives, he may never ride again. No, there will be no more of your petty squabbles! Once this war is over, and you have returned to your lands, then you may do as you wish, but there are more important concerns here than a centuries-old feud.’

There was silence in the tent. Both Calard and Bertelis were looking at the floor, while Montcadas’s furious gaze flicked from one to the other.

‘I have spoken to Maloric of this as well, and I have made him swear on his honour that neither he nor any of knights will continue the feud until this war is over. I will have your word as well, brothers of Garamont.’

Calard glared at the floor and shook his head slightly. How had it come to this? he thought.

‘Fine,’ he said at last. ‘On my honour, I swear it.’ Bertelis mumbled his own oath.

‘Good,’ said Montcadas. ‘Your attackers will be questioned, and if it comes to light that they were paid to carry out the deed, and they name their employer, then action will be taken. Now,’ he said, ‘get some rest. We have a long day tomorrow. There have been reports of the enemy moving in the daylight hours, some twenty miles to the south, and we are riding out to scour the area. I wish you good night, and may the Lady look over you.’

Unseen, Tanebourc stood in the shadows, having overheard the exchange. His face was thunderous.

As the first rays of dawn rose, another struggling peasant was wrenched into the air, his legs kicking uselessly beneath him as the rope tightened around his neck. Fourteen other bodies hung limply from the boughs of the trees.

Bertelis glared at the dying man, watching as he turned a deep shade of purple. With his hands tied behind his back, the would-be murderer kicked and struggled vainly, eyes bulging. A stink rose into the air as the man lost control of his bodily functions, and Bertelis shook his head in disgust.

The five surviving assassins had been questioned for hours. They had suffered all manner of pain before they had been brought here and strung up. Bertelis thought it too lenient. In his opinion, they should have been kept alive, to experience far more suffering before they journeyed on to Morr’s eternal halls.

Tanebourc had been thorough, though. The man had extracted confessions and accusations from the men, hence the other bodies that were swinging in the breeze from the boughs. Bertelis stared at one of the corpses: a heavy set man, a yeoman warden no less. This was the man that the accusations had led back to. Tanebourc had interrogated the man; of course he had not sullied his own hands with the grisly task, for such a thing was beneath a knight of honour, but if the warden had been employed by one of the nobility, he had died with the secret.

He shook his head. You give peasants some responsibility, put some trust in them, and this is how they repay you, with treachery and attempted murder.

The warden gave a last shuddering kick of his legs, and hung limply, swaying slightly from the branch overhead.

The ride to the south was long and sombre. Calard rode much of the time in silence, lost in thought, thinking of the attack, and of Gunthar. He had spoken to Baron Montcadas’s surgeon before they had left.

‘He will live,’ the small man had said, ‘and he may yet keep the leg. But even if he does, he will never ride again. His days of fighting in the saddle are over.’

Calard shook his head, guilt weighing heavily upon him. He should not have allowed Gunthar to fight for him. Had he not, said a voice inside him, you would be dead. He pushed away the voice, and scowled up at the heavy clouds. A single black bird circled overhead.

The attack in the night had left all the knights in the camp feeling sour and uneasy, and there was little talk as the column rode through the south of Bordeleaux. There were twenty-five knights, led by the Baron Montcadas, and ten peasant outriders wearing the yellow and red of Garamont.

The baron was watching over Calard and his brother like a hawk. Whether he was concerned about a further attempt on their lives, or was merely ensuring that the brothers did nothing rash, Calard knew not.

The Forest of Chalons crouched on the hills to the east, everpresent and threatening. He could see evidence that the forest was expanding here as elsewhere. A peasant village in the distance seemed in the process of being swallowed whole, half the buildings already hidden by the trees, and Calard could see a twisted, disease-ridden oak that had somehow sprung up within one of the hovels, ripping its sodden turf roof off.

The dark shape of a modest castle loomed on a hilltop a mile away. To Calard, it seemed like a brave knight standing alone and defiant against the monstrous forest drawing forward to besiege it. How long before the trees overran it? A week? Perhaps a month?

Something about the castle seemed oddly familiar, and he frowned at the sense of déjà vu. It was an unsettling sensation, but he could not shake it.

A horse of purest white ran on the slopes beyond the castle, tossing its head, and Calard felt rejuvenated just watching the majestic beast. It seemed so free and full of life, running across the grass without saddle or bridle.

As they drew nearer, they saw that the castle was lifeless, abandoned perhaps a decade earlier. A tattered flag blew in the wind from atop its highest parapet, but the design upon it was impossible to discern. Ivy had crept up the walls of the small castle, which were blackened with fire. Perhaps that had been what had forced its occupants to abandon it?

‘We will stop there for half an hour to feed and water the horses,’ said Baron Montcadas. The yeomen of Garamont rode ahead to prepare for the arrival of the knights. Calard watched them gallop across the grassy slopes towards the blackened castle, a slight frown on his face. He could not shake the idea that he had been here before.

They reined their warhorses in on the grassy flat before the modest gatehouse to the castle. There must have been a wooden bridge that crossed to the gate once, but it had evidently rotted and fallen onto the rocks below. The gatehouse was open, the heavy wooden doors hanging loose from their hinges.

Calard felt drawn to the abandoned, eerie castle, as if something were calling to him. Handing his reins to one of the Garamont peasants, he walked towards it, a frown on his face. He had been here before, he was certain of it. Perhaps as a child?

He looked down into the rocky dip that must once have served as a moat, trying to see a clear way across to the castle gate. There were patches of stagnant water there, but it would not be difficult to cross.

‘Calard?’ called Bertelis, but he waved him back.

Stepping carefully, steadying himself with one hand, he descended the steep slope. Avoiding the stagnant pools of water, he crossed the rocky moat, and pulled himself up the incline on the other side, wincing at the pain that flared in his side. Another wave of déjà vu washed over him as he paused at the shattered gate, gazing through to the small courtyard within the castle walls.

He shivered as a cold wind howled through the gateway. I should go back, he thought, but he walked forward, his brow furrowing in confusion. Half-remembered images flickered through his mind: running through the gateway past bemused guards, giggling, chasing his sister.

His sister…

He was drawn further into the courtyard. Stables and barracks, long abandoned, lay in disrepair along the inside of the southern walls, but it was towards the main keep that he found himself walking. He looked down at the water lilies that clogged the circular fountain in the centre of the courtyard. Water overflowed down the sides of a stone grail carved atop a pedestal in the centre of the pool. It clearly tapped into a natural spring beneath the ground, but the effect was magical nonetheless.

Climbing a set of wide stone steps, he entered the lonely, lifeless keep. He walked, like a ghost, through halls filled with cobwebs and dust. The interior had been gutted by fire, and no evidence of furniture or paintings hanging upon the walls remained. Drawn on inexorably, he climbed up a grand, spiralling staircase to the top floor, and then he walked down a long passageway, passing countless empty, dim rooms and lifeless, cold bedchambers.

At last, he came to an archway, and there, he halted. He was sweating, though the air was chill. The door set into the archway was intact, and was drawn almost fully shut. Not knowing what to expect beyond the doorway, and his heart beating wildly, Calard pushed the door open. It creaked loudly on rusted hinges, and swung wide. Ducking his head, he entered the room.

It was dark, but he could see that the fires that had ravaged the rest of the castle had barely touched this room. Arched windows covered the north wall, wooden shutters rattling in the howling wind. A large bed was set in the middle of the room, its mattress sunken and its pillows moth-eaten and covered in mildew. A chamber pot sat in the corner of the room, and a small chest sat against the wall.

Turning around, his heart lurched as he saw movement in the shadows. His sword hissed from its scabbard, and he saw a flash of metal in the gloom.

‘Who goes?’ he asked, his voice sounding too loud in his ears as it broke the silence. There was no response. The wind howled through the castle, sounding like the moaning of a tortured spirit. Stepping forward, he saw movement in the gloom once again. A bead of sweat ran down his back, and he swallowed heavily.

Did restless spirits of the dead haunt the place? He took another step forwards, and then stopped short.

Against the far wall, hidden in shadow, was a tall mirror. It had a long crack running down its surface, but it had been his own reflection that he had seen. He let a deep breath that he did not realise he had been holding. You fool, he thought.

Beneath the mirror was a vanity chest and a small, three-legged stool topped with a moth-eaten velvet cushion. Perhaps the room had belonged to a daughter of the lord of the castle.

Calard, someone whispered in his ear, making his hackles rise. He swung around, his sword raised. There was nothing there. The room was empty.

Calard, said the voice again, and he spun once more, eyes flicking around the room. The only movement came from the single loose shutter that was rattling in the wind.

There is nothing here, Calard thought. You are imagining things. He moved towards the window to close the banging shutter, for it was unnerving him. Sheathing his sword, he leant out of the window, reaching for the shutter. It caught the wind just as his fingers touched it, and whipped open out of reach, slamming noisily against the stone outer wall. He cursed and glanced down.

This is where she fell, said the voice in his mind.

A wave of vertigo washed over him, and his breath caught in his throat. He pulled himself away from the window quickly. Was he losing his mind? He shook his head, as if trying to shake it free of some enchantment. He would ride away from this place and forget it.

‘Calard,’ said a voice behind him, and he froze. This was no whisper of the wind, but a voice spoken from a living, human throat.

He spun around, ripping his sword from his scabbard once more.

The pale figure of a woman surrounded in shimmering white light was standing in the doorway. It is a restless spirit, he thought, reeling backwards.

‘I am no spirit,’ said the woman as she glided forwards into the room. The voice was hauntingly familiar, yet not. The halo of light surrounding her seemed to flicker and disappear, and he saw that she was flesh and blood. Had the halo merely been a trick of the light?

She was as delicate as a flower, little larger than a child, and wore a white flowing dress made of a material that shimmered like water. It was held tight around her petite body, billowing below her tightly corseted waist in flowing waves that trailed behind her. The sleeves of the dress were long and tapered to points that were fixed to a pair of silver rings that the woman wore, one around each of her slender index fingers.

Her face was obscured by the gloom, but he could see that her hair was long and dark, and that she wore a tiara of silver. A silver necklace in the shape of a fleur-de-lys shimmered against her skin, and Calard’s breath caught in his chest.

‘A damsel of the Lady,’ he breathed in awe, dropping to his knees in respect. Never had he encountered one of the esteemed handmaidens of the Lady. They were priestesses and protectors, blessed by the Lady herself. Seers and augurs of great power, many of them had been granted the gift of future sight, and were among the most respected of the king’s advisors. Mistresses of fey, mystical powers, they commanded the forces of nature, and were the devout protectors of the sacred places of Bretonnia.

‘That window is where she fell to her death,’ said the damsel, her voice fey and distant. With her long dress trailing across the flagstones of the floor, she seemed to glide forwards like an apparition.

Calard could see her face now, and he stared at her in confused awe. Her face was heart-shaped and youthful, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin, and her eyes were large and striking. Her skin was smooth and pale, and make-up had been applied sparingly and artfully around her eyes. Those eyes were wide, and seemed to float around the room, as if the damsel were following the movements of things that Calard could not see.

‘She stood at the window. Blood. There was so much blood,’ breathed the damsel. She was looking at her hands in horror, as if she could see blood on them too, though they were pale and clean. ‘She was ashamed, so ashamed. She threw herself from the window.’ The damsel smiled suddenly, her face lighting up with childlike pleasure. ‘For a moment, it felt like she was flying.’ Then the smile dropped from her face, and she looked sad, so infinitely sad that Calard wanted to stand up and go to her, to hold her and give her comfort. ‘And then… she died. Like a whisper in the wind, she was gone.’

Calard stared at her in confusion. Had she not been a damsel of the Lady, he would have assumed she was touched in the head. She was so familiar, too, that it felt like he knew her, just as he felt that he knew this place.

‘Who?’ he asked at last, his voice a hoarse whisper.

The damsel looked at him, and he was jolted by the sheer depths of power he saw in her grey-blue eyes.

‘Our mother,’ breathed his twin sister, the damsel Anara.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Bertelis glanced sideways at Anara, his eyes guarded. That she was Calard’s twin was obvious, for the similarities between them were striking; they shared the same eyes and the same colouring. She was short and petite where Calard was broad and strong, but even small gestures betrayed the kinship between them: the way she unconsciously brushed a lock of hair from her eyes, and the way they seemed to mirror each other’s movements.

This was his sister, too, he reminded himself, his half-sister, as closely related to him as Calard was. Of course he had heard his brother speak of Anara much when they were children, and though he had spoken of her less as the years passed, he knew that she had never been far from his mind. He heard him call out her name in his sleep, and though in the last few years he would not be drawn into conversation regarding his mysterious twin, he knew that Calard thought of her often, and had long dreamed of finding her.

She is not dead, he remembered Calard saying once. Anara had been missing for years, but he would fiercely rebuke anyone that suggested he let her go. I would know it if she had been claimed by Morr, Calard had said, bristling in anger. Bertelis had long believed that it was a forlorn hope that Calard clung to, to be reunited with Anara, but here she was in the flesh.

This, however, was not the carefree child that Calard had wistfully spoken of. She was clearly touched by the fey, and everything about her resonated with otherworldliness. She spoke in a soft, distant voice, and her eyes often grew unfocused. Her movements were calm and full of grace, as if time slowed in her presence.

Bertelis was certain that she was mad, but he had no doubt of her power.

She seemed to radiate an elemental strength that Bertelis found unnerving. Strangely, it reminded him of a journey he had made once as a boy, to the famed port-city of L’Anguille in the north. He had stood upon a high cliff and stared out across the endless, glittering ocean depths. There had been no wind that day, and the deep green of the sea was sublimely beautiful, calm and tranquil. The following day a storm had blown in, and the ocean had turned into a raging tyrant, destructive and awesome in its strength. Although it had been serene and comforting the day before, now it smashed against the cliffs with such power that it made Bertelis feel insignificant and small.

It had frightened him then, and this was the sense that he got from Anara. She was like the sea becalmed, serene, beautiful and peaceful, but beneath the surface, deep within, Bertelis sensed that there lay a similar power to that of the sea: destructive, dangerous, and somehow ageless.

As if sensing his eyes upon her, the damsel turned towards him. It felt as though her gaze pierced his soul, seeing every shameful act and hidden secret, and he quickly dropped his gaze, his face paling.

Clearing his throat, he moved stiffly away. That she was devoted to Bretonnia and the Lady was without doubt. She was a damsel of the Lady, and hence was one of Bretonnia’s most fervent servants, but she made him feel uneasy and more than a little fearful.

A shiver ran down his spine, and he moved away from the others. In the distance he watched a pair of yeoman attempting to catch the white horse they had seen earlier, running on the field beyond the castle. They were not having any success; indeed, the horse seemed to be toying with them, riding close to their ropes before darting just out of reach as they tried to throw the loops over its broad neck.

Other yeomen were laughing at them, shouting jibes and taunts towards the men who were getting increasingly frustrated. Bertelis rebuked them harshly, and they fell silent.

Anara felt a twinge of sadness as she recognised Bertelis’s discomfort, but she repressed it instantly. She had come, as her increasingly vivid dream-visions had urged her. It had taken her three weeks to journey here, and for an hour she had paced the halls of the burnt out castle, remembering, before her twin had arrived. She had known that he would. In the scheme of things to come, the unease she caused in the others mattered not at all.

She felt the emotions and thoughts of the knights swell around her like a rising tide. She had no wish to intrude upon their privacy, and she gently allowed herself to rise above the unfocused sea of thoughts.

When this talent had first manifested in her as a child, she had been unable to control it, and had been terrified by the endless barrage of thoughts that had intruded into her mind. She had learnt things that a child should never know, having inadvertently eavesdropped on the darkest thoughts of everyone she had come into contact with. It had been maddening.

One day she had begun to cry, for she could hear the thoughts of the young maid that delivered her meal.

‘I am sorry that your baby died,’ Anara had said, and the maid had stared at her in horror. Witch, she heard the maid think, which had confused her.

Around that time, she had first begun to see glimpses of events that had not yet come to pass. They had scared and confused her.

‘Don’t ride the big grey horse tomorrow,’ she had begged one of her father’s knights at a banquet feast on the night before a tournament. ‘You will fall off it and you will die.’

The knight had laughed at her fear, as had the gathered host of courtiers, but Anara would not be consoled.

‘Have no fear, little one,’ the knight had said, propping her on his knee and looking into her serious face. ‘I have ridden Proudheart a thousand times, and he has always borne me well. I will not fall from him, I promise.’

It was not, however, a promise that he could keep. The powerful grey had been spooked by a sudden movement in the crowd, and had reared. The knight had fallen backwards and struck his head against a rock. He had died instantly. Anara’s father had turned fearful eyes towards her when he learnt of the incident.

Freak.

The thought had stung her, and she had begun to cry. Calard had hugged her tight. She endured his embrace, for she knew that it gave him comfort.

Her father had been relieved when the Enchantress had come for her. She had felt the fear emanating from her father and his knights as the Enchantress strode into his hall unannounced and unchallenged, and she had secretly revelled in seeing the men cowed so.

That first meeting was forever ingrained in her mind’s eye. Ethereally tall and as slender as a branch of willow, yet radiating such power that the breath was stolen from Anara’s lungs, the Enchantress was at once the most beautiful and the most terrifying creature she had ever seen. She was the highest authority in all of Bretonnia, greater even than the king, for she spoke with the voice of the goddess.

Their eyes had met across the hall and in that instant the Enchantress had known her: everything that she was and everything that she could be. Anara’s fear had dissipated like a fog in the rising sun. It was replaced by joy and yearning, for in those moments she realised that she was no freak and no witch, and that her powers were not a curse; far from it, they were gifts from the Lady. It seemed as though she stared into the Enchantress’s almond-shaped eyes for an eternity, sharing a silent communication, before the silence had been broken.

‘I am taking the girl,’ she had said, turning her ageless gaze towards the lord of Garamont. ‘From this day forth she is no longer your daughter. She is a child of the Lady. It may be that you will never see her again.’

Lutheure had nodded his head, unable to form words, as if stricken mute. Then the Enchantress had extended one graceful hand to Anara, and she had heard her voice, though her lips did not move.

Come with me, Anara. Become that which you are destined to be. You are not alone any more.

Anara heard Calard speaking to her, and she focused on him, drawing her mind back from the past. They seemed like memories that belonged to someone else, for she was no longer the same little girl she had been.

‘…you doing here alone?’ he was saying. She did not need to be able to read his thoughts to recognise the awe, and the fear, in his eyes as he looked upon her.

She ignored his question, eyes narrowing, as she felt… something. Her gaze drifted up into the sky, searching. Something was watching them. She could feel its rage, its need for vengeance. At last, her roving gaze focused on a single black bird that circled low above them.

Calard stared at his sister blankly, and then followed her gaze. He saw the carrion bird circling overhead.

‘What is it?’ he asked, seeing a look of horror come over his sister’s delicate features.

‘The beast watches. It hungers,’ she breathed, her voice fey and distant. Calard’s brow creased in confusion. What was she speaking of?

‘The bird?’ he asked slowly, not understanding.

‘It must be brought down!’ she said, more urgently. Her voice was strained, and something in it made Calard feel suddenly fearful. He swung around, shouting to the yeoman nearby.

‘Half a copper-crown to the man that brings down that bird!’ he hollered. The men stared at him blankly for a second as his words sunk in, and then they scrambled to retrieve their bows.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Baron Montcadas, throwing a quick glance towards the damsel Anara.

‘I don’t know,’ said Calard. Anara was staring intently up at the carrion bird.

The first arrows sliced through the air, missing their target. The bird continued to circle, oblivious to the threat, and one peasant gave a shout as his arrow clipped the raven’s wing. It dropped in the air, and black feathers began to spiral towards the ground, but it did not fall. At last, an arrow slammed into the creature’s body, and it plummeted towards the ground like a stone.

Whooping and yelling, the yeoman ran to where it fell, and the bewildered knights followed after Anara, who hurried across the field in the wake of the bowman. The man’s triumphant cries stopped short, and he froze as he stood over the dying bird.

The arrowhead had passed clean through the raven, which was impaled upon the shaft of the arrow. It was not dead, and was trying to right itself, flapping its wings uselessly, its cries piercing.

The bird’s head was cocked to one side and dominated by a bulbous, pulsing, bloodshot eye that was far too large for its head. The pupil was like that of a cat’s or a serpent’s, and the flesh around the orb was blistered and bare of feathers. It was a loathsome mutated thing, and Calard felt his gorge rising. The repulsive eye flicked around, rolling in its fleshy socket, focusing on each of the figures surrounding it in turn.

‘Kill it,’ ordered Baron Montcadas. Nobody moved. ‘Now!’

The yeoman, his face a mask of revulsion, brought his foot down heavily on the dying raven, cutting its cries off abruptly. Delicate bones crunched under his foot, leaving a bloody smear on the ground.

‘What was it?’ Calard breathed, horrified.

‘The eye of the beast,’ said Anara. ‘It has been here before, long ago.’

‘What?’ asked Montcadas. ‘The beasts of the forest?’

‘It comes for us now!’ said Anara, her voice suddenly urgent. ‘We must away!’

‘Away?’ asked Montcadas. ‘If the beasts come, then we shall fight them, lady.’

‘Too many,’ she breathed. ‘It is drawn here like a moth to a flame. Hatred burns within its breast, and it has turned the full force of its herd here. They are approaching even now.’

Montcadas swore, and the knights glanced around uneasily. None doubted the word of the damsel.

The baron turned towards the yeoman, who was trying to wipe the filth of the dead bird from his foot.

‘Ride for the camp,’ he ordered. ‘Take two of the others, and go at once. Darkness is falling, so be swift.’ The Garamont yeoman looked to Calard, who nodded. ‘Kegan!’ called Montcadas.

‘Yes, my lord,’ answered a knight wearing a yellow tabard that bore a black cockatrice upon it.

‘Ride with them. Ensure that the camp is ready for an attack. Allow no more patrols to leave, and send riders to gather those already out.’

‘It will be as you wish, my lord.’

‘May the Lady be with you, Kegan.’ Then the baron swung towards Anara. ‘You will honour us by riding at our side, lady?’ She nodded absently, her head cocked to one side as if listening to a faint voice. ‘I shall ensure there is a steed readied for you.’

‘That is not necessary,’ she replied. Turning, she let out a high-pitched, ululating cry. In the distance, the white mare pricked up its elongated ears and began to gallop towards her.

She was a beautiful, powerful creature. Her coat gleamed like silver, and her limbs were long and slender, though filled with vigour, speed and power. The horse nuzzled at Anara’s outstretched hand, and the damsel leant forward and whispered into the animal’s ear. It was tall, perhaps seventeen hands at the shoulder, and standing next to it, Anara looked like a child. Calard shook his head. Everything was happening so fast.

‘Do you know how close the enemy is, sister?’ asked Calard.

‘I cannot see,’ she said, not looking at him, focused as she was on her steed. Her voice was tense, instilling a sense of urgency in the knights. ‘They are closing fast.’

Calard swore. Montcadas roared for the patrol to mount up, and a frenzy of activity erupted, as the knights made ready to leave. The trio of yeomen and the knight Kegan galloped away, thundering off to the north.

Calard licked his lips, wondering where her sister’s tack and saddle was... probably in the stable at the deserted castle; the castle of his mother’s family, he reminded himself. It was all too much to take in. He was about to ask her where her saddle was located, but the words died in his mouth.

The proud, pure white horse was kneeling down in the grass, lowering its massive shoulders and bowing its head. Standing on tiptoe, Anara reached up and grabbed a handful of the mare’s spotless mane. With a deft leap, she threw one leg over the mare’s broad back, and the horse stood upright.

An old and unenforced law within Bretonnia stated that ladies must ride side-saddle on the occasion that they ride at all, and, even had it not been the law, no noble woman would dream of riding like a man, for one who did so would be deemed a harlot. However, the damsels of the Lady existed outside traditional laws and values, and there was not a man in all of Bretonnia, not even the king, who would dare to invoke their ire by reproaching one of them.

Anara smiled down at Calard like the little girl he remembered. Her elegant dress was certainly not made for riding a horse bareback, and many of the knights averted their eyes from the exposed flesh of the damsel’s toned lower leg. Calard found himself smiling back at his sister, and Montcadas gave a deep belly laugh at the unconventional sight.

The damsel’s youthful smile faded, her face turning grim.

‘They are here!’ she wailed.

Ghastly, blaring horns sounded in the distance, and Calard ran for his mount. More horns sounded, and he hauled himself into the saddle, and accepted his lance and shield from a nervous-looking peasant.

‘Get to your horse, now!’ Calard ordered, nodding his thanks to the man.

The knights formed up protectively around Anara. A pair of yeomen rode ahead of them as scouts, and the remainder rode to either side of the knightly formation. Giving the signal, the baron ordered the men forward and as one they began to canter away from the castle, eyes scanning the area for any sign of the foe.

They did not have to wait long.

One of the yeomen shouted out, and Calard swung his gaze to the east, towards the forest in the distance. A group of fur-clad riders had emerged from the tree line, and was galloping across the fields towards the Bretonnians. They leapt dry-stone walls, and another piercing horn sounded.

For a moment, Calard thought they were reinforcements coming to their aid, but the riders carried no pennants or standards, and did not appear to be armoured. Peasant outriders? He dismissed the idea almost instantly, for they wore no tabards displaying the colours of their lords.

‘The enemy is swift,’ said Anara, and Calard squinted at the riders.

As they drew closer, he saw that they were around thirty in number, and hounds ran alongside them. Sighting the knights, the dogs erupted into a frenzy of barking and deep-throated growls that carried across the undulating hills. Then the riders split abruptly into two groups. One group continued riding directly towards the knights, while the other peeled off to the north, clearly intending to cut them off. He saw a handful, perhaps five riders, split away from this group, and they took off in the direction that Kegan and the yeomen had ridden.

Horns blared once more, and Calard glanced in concern at his twin, as Montcadas picked up the pace. His worry was unfounded, for despite lacking a saddle and stirrups, Anara rode upon the back of her white mare easily, her slight body crouched over the horse’s neck.

‘Lady above,’ said Bertelis. ‘What manner of beast are they?’

As the enemy drew nearer, Calard could see that he had been wrong. These were not riders at all. They were twisted creatures of Chaos. Their lower bodies were like those of shaggy oxen, though their legs ended in taloned claws that tore up the turf, rather than cloven hooves. Where the creatures’ heads ought to have been there were instead muscled torsos, complete with thick, human-like arms, topped by heavy, horned, bestial heads.

They were like the beastmen of the forest that Calard had fought before, but melded, somehow, with a massive quadruped to create this bastard hybrid. Long, matted braids of hair and fur streamed behind them, and they hefted crude spears and axes in their hands. One lifted a horn to its bestial mouth as it ran, blowing a long note that was echoed by a blare from the other group.

Nor were the hounds running at their side natural beasts. As large as ponies, they were slavering creatures covered in thick fur, and spines ran down their backbones. Their jaws were heavy, and filled with teeth and tusks, and their tongues lolled from their mouths as their red-rimmed eyes locked onto their prey.

The group riding directly at the Bretonnians was drawing close, and the roars and braying cries of the pack could be heard, along with the growls and barks of the massive war hounds. Up ahead, the other group was angling into their path to block their progress to the north.

The mounted yeomen, riding alongside the knights, nocked arrows to their bows and, rising in the saddle, they began to fire into the enemy. Calard saw an arrow slam into the heavily muscled chest of one of the enemy centaur-creatures. It threw it off balance, and it stumbled. With a snarl, it snapped the arrow-shaft off, leaving the point embedded in its flesh, and continued its wild charge across the grassland. Another arrow took one of them in the throat, and it fell with a gargled scream. It struck the ground hard, and rolled, legs snapping beneath it. Its companions ignored it, trampling it into the earth in their eagerness to close with their enemy.

Two of the massive hounds, driven mad by the scent of blood in the air, leapt on the fallen creature. They tore it apart in a gory feast, clamping their vice-like jaws onto its body, and shaking their heavy heads wildly from side to side, ripping flesh and muscle.

With perfect discipline, the knights formed into a tight fighting wedge, with the Baron Montcadas at its tip. Anara rode in the middle of the lance formation, protected on all sides by the armoured bulk of knights.

When the enemy to their flank was no more than a hundred yards distant, Baron Montcadas abruptly swung to the right. The knights followed his move closely, and the formation wheeled around to face the enemy head-on. Baron Montcadas lifted his morning star high, and began to swing it above his head. The knights kicked their steeds into a charge in perfect unison.

‘For Bastonne and the Lady!’ roared Montcadas, and Calard and the other knights echoed the war cry.

The enemy roared and leapt forwards to meet them, unflinching, the massive war hounds running hard at their sides. They lifted crude spears up high; they did not couch them like the Bretonnians did with their lances. The lead creature hurled its spear like a javelin, the full weight of its body behind the throw. The spear lanced through the air, and a knight was ripped from the saddle as the weapon punched through his breastplate. Other spears were hurled, but they were battered aside by shields.

There was a deafening crack, as Dieter Weschler, riding within the formation, fired one of his wheel-lock pistols. A cloud of acrid smoke rose from the long barrel of the weapon, and Calard saw one of the beasts stumble and fall, the shot blasting out through the back of its head with a spray of blood.

The knights lowered their lances, and the two forces struck. The impact was immense, and the lead creature fell beneath the spiked ball of Montcadas’s morning star, its skull smashed asunder. A spear thrust skidded off Calard’s shield, and he plunged his lance tip into the neck of one of the beasts, using the full force of his momentum to drive it through the enemy’s flesh. It sheared through the creature’s body like a hot knife through a wad of butter, and the beast fell, blood spurting from the fatal wound.

War hounds snarled and growled, and jaws snapped at Gringolet’s neck, but the powerful destrier trampled the beasts beneath its hooves. An axe slammed into the head of the knight at Calard’s right, shearing through the metal of the man’s helmet and shattering bone. The man swayed in the saddle for a moment before falling beneath the thunder of hooves.

The wedge of knights drove through the middle of the enemy, smashing them aside, and striking out with lances and swords. The bellows and roars of the enemy were deafening, but the knights fought ferociously. A serrated blade struck Calard’s breastplate, and he winced from the force of the impact, though it could not penetrate his thick armour. He lashed out with the butt of his lance, smashing it into the snarling, bestial face of his attacker, before Bertelis sliced open its throat with a deft sweep of his blade.

With a roar, a massive, tusked hound with four eyes leapt, its weight dragging one of the proud Bretonnian warhorses down. The steed screamed horribly as it fell, and jaws closed around its neck. The knight borne by the destrier fell with a curse, but there was no time to aid him, as the Bretonnians thundered clear of the melee.

Ranging out on the flanks of the knights, Garamont yeomen fired their bows smoothly, sinking arrow after arrow into those beasts that had survived the knightly charge. Three arrows pierced a centaur-beast, and it collapsed to the ground, its legs giving way beneath it. A war hound dropped with a yelp as a shaft drove between its vertebrae.

The knights wheeled around sharply. They had lost five of their number, and had killed perhaps twelve of the enemy, and a half dozen or so hounds. They charged back into the reeling enemy, slaughtering the remainder.

The second group was closing on them from the north, and Montcadas shouted for order, wheeling the lance formation around towards the threat. Pain flared in Calard’s wounded side, and he could feel blood running down his torso. He had clearly ripped open the assassin’s wound during the fight, though at the time he had felt nothing.

He knew that the next charge would prove more costly, but he felt a fierce sense of pride within him. He would not allow anything to harm his sister now that he had found her after so many years.

‘Hold,’ called Anara, her voice full of authority, all hint of otherworldliness gone. ‘Do not charge them.’

Obediently, the knights reined in their steeds, and the damsel pushed between them to gain a clear view of the closing enemy. They were no more than eighty paces away, and closing fast, and Calard’s anxious gaze flickered between Anara and the enemy.

Apparently defying logic, Anara slipped from the back of her mare.

‘Sister, what are–’ began Calard, but he was silenced by a raised hand.

The knights shuffled in unease as the damsel bent down and removed the soft slippers from her feet. She wiggled her toes, and cold, wet mud oozed between them. Calard looked uneasily towards the closing enemy. They were less than forty paces away.

Anara began to chant, her voice low, moving to rhythms that were alien to the ears of the gathered knights. The warhorses of the knights, perhaps sensing the tension in their riders, began to stamp their hooves into the wet earth, and shake their heads. Calard patted Gringolet heavily on the neck, whispering calming words to the destrier, though his eyes were locked on the enemy that was so close that he could pick out individual details. He could see the jangle of bones and infernal bronze icons looped through holes in the beasts’ horns, and the hellish symbols carved into their flesh and hides.

Calard licked his lips, and clenched his fist around his weapon. The enemy were closing fast, and the knights would be slaughtered if they were caught motionless.

Their charge began to falter, however. Though they fought wildly to maintain their momentum, they were slowly sinking into the water-soaked earth.

In amazement, Calard looked at Anara, who was continuing her incantation unabated. The ground around her feet had dried up, the mud hardening to a rock-like crust.

Slavering war hounds snapped and growled as they clambered over each other, frantic to escape the sinking mire. The beast-centaurs roared and bellowed in rage and frustration, thrashing frantically as they tried to free themselves from the marsh. With each violent movement, they sank further into the clinging mire. One of them roared and hurled its spear towards the knights, but it fell ten yards short.

Several of the Garamont yeomen rode in close to the edge of the swampy area, and fired into the helpless creatures. They killed several, before Montcadas ordered them to stop in order to conserve arrows. The baron stared in wonder at the diminutive damsel, who was continuing her incantation, her eyes having rolled up into the back of her head.

Her lips were turning blue, and she began to sway slightly. Calard dropped from his saddle and went to her, but was unwilling to lay hands upon her, for fear of what might happen if he interrupted her spell.

Within minutes, the creatures of Chaos had disappeared, bellowing defiance as they were swallowed by the mire.

Anara finished chanting, and swooned, falling forwards. Calard caught her in his arms.

Her eyes flicked open, blazing with sudden anger. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she hissed, her eyes flashing with fey light. She pulled free of Calard’s arms, and he gaped at her. She quickly recovered her composure, and colour began to return to her face. With an imperious glance at Calard, she mounted her white steed.

‘Come, brother,’ she said, her voice soft and distant once more, the sudden anger of a moment before forgotten. ‘We must be away. The beast is drawing near.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The ride back to camp was like a hellish nightmare. Horns pursued the knights, and as the last of the sun’s rays dropped over the horizon, they saw dark shapes emerging from the forest of Chalons. Howls and roars echoed around them, and the Bretonnians held flaming brands high to hold back the darkness that threatened to close around them like a death shroud.

Twice they were attacked, set upon by packs of beastmen that erupted from the darkness, leaping from ambush and setting about them with axes and curved swords. Five knights and a pair of yeomen were dragged from their saddles and butchered in the first attack before the knights rode free, speaking prayers to the Lady for those that had fallen.

There was no warning of the second attack, and it had been led by a monstrous creature that stood some ten feet tall, a behemoth of flesh and muscle. The massive head of a raging bull topped its powerful, hunched frame, supported by a neck thicker than the body of a horse, and its wide horns spanned almost six feet from bronze-encased tip to tip.

It pounded out of the darkness with its head lowered, and slammed into the knights, sending several of their steeds flying. It lifted a warhorse on its horns, flicking it over its shoulder as if it weighed nothing at all, sending the knight in the saddle of the horse crashing to the ground ten yards away. It wielded a massive spiked club in each hand, and rusted chains locked the weapons to its arms, so that it was unable to discard them. It smashed the skull of another horse with a blow that fell with the force of an avalanche, and roared, spittle flying from its bovine lips.

Smaller beastmen swarmed in its wake, and a frantic combat had erupted. Seven knights were killed before the massive bull-headed beastman slumped to the ground, pierced by more than a dozen swords and lances. Its lesser minions, seeing the great creature topple, took flight, and the weary Bretonnians pushed on, leaving the dead where they lay.

Sounds of pursuit dogged them, and unnatural roars and cries echoed through the darkness.

They found their path blocked by twisted branches and briars, and there were raised voices as a tense argument erupted. The yeoman scouts were accused of leading them astray, but Calard defended them, spying a small roadside shrine that he had noticed earlier that day when they had passed this way. The forest was interposing itself in their path, seeking to slow and block their passage, and Calard had been surprised to see tears glistening on Anara’s cheeks.

‘They are in pain,’ she said mournfully, laying a slender hand upon the trunk of one contorted tree, its boughs dripping with red sap. Branches creaked and groaned alarmingly, and leafless limbs shivered and strained. Eyes filled with malice glinted in the orange light of the torches, and Calard shivered.

No man had any wish to pass beneath the twisted branches of the unnatural trees, and so they set off to the west, seeking to circumvent the disturbing woodland that blocked their way.

The ride took them hours longer than it ought to have, for they were forced far to the west by the sudden growth of the forest, though thankfully the sounds of the pursuit had faded. It was nearing midnight when they finally rode towards the camp, on the flat-topped hill of Adhalind’s Seat. The night was eerily silent as peasants ran to greet them, and they slid wearily from their saddles. Looking around, Calard saw that, of the knights who had set out that day, less than half had returned. Still, for all that, he knew that they had been lucky. Had it not been for Anara’s warning, he was certain that none of them would have returned.

Kegan had clearly arrived back at the camp some time earlier, and preparations for an attack were under way. Braziers had been lit around the perimeter of Adhalind’s Seat, and men-at-arms and peasant bowmen stood ready. Sentries patrolled the lowlands around the flat-topped hill, wary for any sign of the enemy. The majority of the knights in the camp were fully armed and armoured, and sat in their saddles, ready for battle. The remainder were also fully armoured, and their horses were tethered nearby. It would take but a shout from a sentry for them to be ready to face the hated foe.

Calard’s wounded side pained him, and he knew that his dressing needed changing, but he followed Baron Montcadas to his war tent, leading Anara gently by her arm. She seemed in no way adverse to the contact now, and Calard walked with his chin held high, hearing the awed whispers of the gathered knights as they saw the revered damsel of the Lady on his arm.

Montcadas called the senior knights of Bastonne to him, and Calard felt a flush of pride that he was included in their mix, though he knew that this was more to do with his kinship with Anara than anything else.

Calard glanced around the ostentatious tent, looking upon the faces of the powerful nobles. There were ten men gathered, all nobles of Bastonne, except for the empire envoy, Dieter Weschler, who had graciously been allowed to attend this war-meeting, and the awe-inspiring figure of the questing knight, Gundehar of Raisol, who stood leaning upon the pommel of his massive two-handed sword. Two of the knights were vassals of his father, and three were sworn to Sangasse. The remainder were vassal lords of Montcadas. With a stab of guilt, he realised that Gunthar should have been present, being one of the more respected knights in the camp.

‘First, let me introduce and welcome the lady Anara of Garamont, damsel of the Lady,’ said the baron. The knights bowed to her respectfully, and Calard smiled inwardly at the look the Sangasse lords shared between them. ‘I give thanks to the Lady that she has come.’

Anara accepted the bows of the knights without expression. ‘Of Garamont no longer,’ she said. ‘I am a handmaiden of the Lady, and to her alone am I tied.’ Calard looked at her, aggrieved, but she ignored him.

‘My apologies,’ said the baron. His broad face was serious as he stared around at the gathered knights, looking at each man in turn. ‘The Lady Anara has seen that a great force marches against us. Even now, it gathers in the darkness, readying to descend upon us.’

‘Good!’ said one man forcefully, echoing the thoughts of all the knights. ‘The enemy has avoided pitched battle for too long.’

‘Indeed,’ boomed Montcadas. ‘However, the force that marshals against us is powerful, and it is not an honourable foe. We will be heavily outnumbered, and they are certain to attack under the cover of darkness.’

‘Bah!’ said one knight. ‘We have nothing to fear from the darkness! We are knights of Bretonnia! Each knight is more than a match for five of the enemy.’ Murmurs of agreement met this statement, and Calard felt his chest swell.

‘They are a cunning enemy,’ said the questing knight, Gundehar. They were the first words that Calard had heard the lean, unshaven knight speak, and his voice was deep and strong. ‘They are not to be underestimated.’

‘With respect, Lord Gundehar, are they not merely beasts?’ asked one of the Sangasse knights. ‘They will not attack a powerfully defended position in a pitched battle, surely?’

‘If there are enough of them, and they are confident of victory, they will, Beldane,’ said Gundehar, ‘and we know not what they seek to achieve here.’

‘Achieve?’ laughed the knight, Beldane. ‘They do not think like you or I. They are driven to kill and destroy, nothing deeper than that.’

‘In my experience, they are not an unthinking enemy,’ said Gundehar coolly. ‘They are more subtle than the greenskins, who I agree, seek nothing more than bloodshed and battle. No, there is something at work here, though I am not wise enough to see what it is.’

Montcadas frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘The enemy has been attacking, apparently at random, all across the eastern edge of Bordeleaux. In doing so, they forced the duke’s hand, making him split his forces to cover a wide area. Their attacks have been unfocused and chaotic. No pattern could be read in their movements, but now, their entire attention has been drawn here. For what? It seems to me that their previous attacks have not been random. It is more like they have been searching for something, and they have found it, here.’

‘Searching for what?’ asked Calard, speaking before he could stop himself. All eyes in the tent turned towards him, and he reddened, dropping his gaze to the floor. He felt Anara’s eyes burning into him.

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Gundehar.

‘It matters not at all to me what they are doing here,’ growled Montcadas. ‘All that matters is that they are coming. We are faced with a deadly foe, and I have gathered you here to plan how to fight it.’

‘How do we know they are massing against us?’ asked Haydon, one of the Garamont knights, a broad-shouldered, balding noble. ‘Could this not just be another feint?’

‘The beast is watching us, even now,’ said Anara suddenly, her voice vague and distant, her eyes misted. Calard felt the temperature within the tent drop sharply, and he could see his breath in the air before him. It continued to drop, and he saw beads of condensation form upon the sides of a goblet of water that sat upon the circular table that dominated the tent.

‘The forest is alive with movement,’ said Anara in a ghostly, unnerving voice. Ice was forming on the surface water within the goblet. ‘I see children of Chaos beyond number. Their lust for violence is great, but the beast holds them in check, restraining their urges. Sacrifices are being prepared. The beast is calling more of its dark kin to its side.’

Anara blinked, as if waking from a deep slumber, and the temperature in the room began to return to normal. Her eyes came back into focus, and she looked Montcadas squarely in the eyes. ‘The attack will not come this night. It will come tomorrow, at dusk.’

The silence in the tent was stifling, and the knights shuffled their feet, their faces pale.

Montcadas cleared his throat. ‘Thank you, lady,’ he said graciously, bowing his head to Anara.

‘We know that they are many, and we know when the attack will come. All we can do is make ready for it. Kegan, what preparations have you made?’

Clearly still discomforted by Anara’s display of power, the knight swallowed thickly.

‘The men-at-arms and peasants of Garamont, Sangasse and Montcadas are all standing at the ready. They are posted around the perimeter of the camp, and I have ordered braziers lit. Sentries patrol the fields below Adhalind’s Seat, to forewarn us of an attack, though it seems that tonight they are unnecessary,’ he said, with a nod towards Anara. ‘There is one patrol still out there, accompanied by the young Earl of Sangasse, Maloric. Outriders are seeking them. They are due back by midnight. I have also sent a request for aid to the duke’s forces in the north: five men, riding the camp’s swiftest steeds.’

‘They are already dead,’ said Anara. ‘The message will not be received.’

‘We can expect no aid in this battle, then,’ said Montcadas.

‘That is not quite correct,’ said Anara.

‘No?’

‘I visited the grail knight Reolus as his body slumbered. Even now, he is leading a force to us. They will arrive before sunset tomorrow.’

‘Reolus? He comes here?’ asked Calard.

‘He does, brother,’ said Anara.

‘Well, that is welcome news,’ said Montcadas. He turned his broad, bearded face towards Kegan. ‘You have done well. Go now, and relieve the foot soldiers from their state of readiness, and pass the word for the knights to stand down. Let them get some rest. By the sounds of it, we shall be in for a long night tomorrow.’

The knight took his leave, and Montcadas cleared the circular table in the centre of the tent. He produced a scroll of rolled, faded parchment and spread it out across the table. The gathered knights closed around it, and Calard saw that it was an intricate map. Villages, woodland and castles were painted in minute detail, and illustrations of dragons and other beasts decorated the edges of the parchment. Its colour had long since faded, but the details were mostly clear. Calard could see Adhalind’s Seat marked upon it, and a small grail icon marked the position of the nearby shrine.

‘The Forest of Chalons, marked here,’ said Montcadas, indicating the area of faded green on the eastern edge of the map, ‘is obviously now inaccurate. However, the remaining details are accurate as far as I can make out, and the scale is true.’

He turned and called for a servant. ‘Bring us food and wine,’ he ordered, before turning back to pore over the map.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘we must discuss our strategy.’

Calard yawned heavily. The night had been long, and the discussions of strategy and tactics had raged back and forth for hours. Anara had excused herself and retired to the Baron of Montcadas’s personal tent, for he had graciously given it over to her use. Much of the discussion had gone over Calard’s head, and he found his thoughts drifting to his sister, and to Gunthar. Gundehar’s words haunted him, and he turned them over in his mind again and again. The beasts were searching for something, the questing knight had said.

At last, a plan of action had been agreed, and the meeting concluded. Glancing up at the sky, he saw that Mannslieb was sinking towards the horizon, and he estimated that it was around two hours past midnight. He yawned again, but did not move towards his tent, though his pallet was calling to him.

Instead, he made his way through the quiet camp. Knights, unable or unwilling to sleep, nodded to him as he passed by their fires.

Word had come to the baron’s war tent that Maloric and his knights had returned from their patrol, though they were bloodied and more than half their number had been lost in an ambush by the beasts of the forest. Calard was glad that the young Sangasse nobleman had not fallen. They would need every man capable of wielding a sword in the battle the next night, and besides, he would have felt cheated if Maloric had been slain.

Picking his way between the tents, Calard came to the one he sought, and slipped inside quietly.

Strong smelling herbs were burning in a small brazier in the corner of the tent, but they could not fully mask the foul scent of sickness that assailed Calard as he entered.

A single candle burned within, and it took a moment for Calard’s eyes to adjust to the gloom. Moving as quietly as he was able, he moved to the bedside and looked down upon the sleeping form of Gunthar.

The weapon master had aged dramatically in the days since his injury. His face was gaunt and pale, etched with heavy wrinkles and lines, and his eyes were sunken and hollow. A sheen of sweat covered his brow, and his breathing was almost imperceptible.

Several basins of bloody water stood beside the pallet, and rags were soaking within them.

Gently, so as not to wake the injured knight, Calard lifted the blankets covering Gunthar to look at the wound, wrinkling his nose against the foul smell. Ganelon’s sword had stabbed deep into his thigh, and it was clear that it was not healing well. It was open, weeping pus and blood, and the flesh around it was a bruised, angry colour. Calard placed the blankets back down gently, his heart heavy.

His own wound was healing well, but it had been far less serious than Gunthar’s.

‘You are a young man, strong and healthy,’ the diminutive surgeon had said. ‘Your body will heal quickly.’ Gunthar, however, was not a young man.

Wringing out a cloth, Calard dabbed the sweat from Gunthar’s forehead. The weapon master’s skin felt hot and feverish to the touch. The injured knight stirred, and opened his eyes. He looked up at Calard, standing over him, and he smiled.

‘Well met, Calard,’ he breathed.

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Calard.

‘Good,’ replied the ageing knight, his voice weak. ‘Give me a day, and I will be back in the saddle, as strong as ever.’

Calard smiled sadly, but did not refute the weapon master.

‘I hear tell that you found your sister,’ said Gunthar.

Calard nodded, smiling. He pulled up a chair, and turned it around before sitting himself down. ‘She is a damsel of the Lady now.’

Gunthar smiled sleepily. ‘Your mother would have been proud, proud of you both.’

Calard looked down. ‘I do not feel proud of myself,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be lying here.’

‘I will be fine. I’ve suffered worse wounds.’

‘They say that you will not… not ride again, Gunthar,’ said Calard, his voice full of sadness. Gunthar scoffed at his words.

‘I will ride again. What sort of knight would I be if I could not ride into battle for my lord? Or for my lord’s son? I will be fine, Calard. You will see.’

Calard smiled at the weapon master’s certainty.

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ said Gunthar. ‘You are young, and all young men are eager and rash. It is their nature to act in such a manner, convinced of their own immortality. I was young too once.’

‘Never!’ said Calard, gently mocking. Then his face grew more serious. ‘There will be a great battle tomorrow. The enemy is gathering against us.’

‘So I hear,’ said Gunthar, ‘but the Lady is with us. We will be victorious, or we will not.’ He shrugged. ‘In the big scheme of things, it matters little. The mountains will still exist long after we are forgotten by history. Ah, listen to me, I am old, and getting morbid in my dotage.’

‘You are not so old, Gunthar.’

The weapon master smiled. ‘And you are a bad liar, for which I am pleased.’

Calard stared into the candle flame, and the silence deepened between them. ‘It is strange to see Anara again,’ he said at last.

‘Oh? How so?’

‘For almost fifteen years I have prayed to the Lady to bring her back into my life, and now that she has, I find that she has… changed. She is not the girl I remembered.’

‘And you are no longer the boy that you were.’

‘I know, but she is… different. There is a distance between us that I do not think can be bridged. I do not understand the powers that she wields. She… she frightens me.’

‘I would call any man a liar that claimed not to be afraid of such a one.’

‘She said some strange things,’ said Calard after a time, staring vacantly into the candle, watching the perfect tapering flame flicker ever so slightly. He sighed and looked down, his thoughts confused and jumbled. ‘I visited a castle today. I do not even know its name. I visited it once when I was a very small child. I remember it faintly now. Mother was heavy with child, though it is only now that I realise it. That was why we travelled there, I suppose, so that my mother was close to her family and in familiar surrounds when the baby’s time came. Perhaps they already knew that it was going to be a difficult birth. I remember she travelled in a grand carriage, pulled by four white horses. Anara travelled in the carriage with her, and I did too for some of the way, when I was not sitting in my father’s saddle, his arm around me.’

Calard gave a dry, humourless laugh. ‘I think that may have been the last time my father embraced me, on that journey. I remember now, running through the castle of my mother’s family, and I remember being terrified as my mother screamed in agony. “They are hurting her!” I cried, but Anara quietened me. “A baby is coming out of her,” she said to me. She was so calm, and matter-of-fact. Anara! The fey child that lived in a fantasy world that only she could perceive, whom the servants were afraid of, and she was speaking to me like an adult!’ He smiled wistfully at the recollection that, until today, had been lost to him, but it faded quickly.

‘I never saw my mother again. I guess the babe died in the birth. You said so yourself, although I can now remember its birth screams.’ He shuddered. ‘They were horrific. Anara and I were ushered away by servants. We left the castle the next day. Mother was not with us, and I did not know where she was. It was only years later that I learnt she had died, in childbirth, as you had said. Today, though, Anara said some things… things I cannot explain. She said that my mother did not die in childbirth at all, but rather threw herself from a window, and was dashed upon the rocks below. I don’t understand. I don’t know what this all means.’

Looking up, his eyes haunted, he saw that Gunthar was asleep. He didn’t know how much the weapon master had heard, and he snorted without humour. Gathering his thoughts, he stood up.

‘Lady, please protect him,’ he whispered, and silently left the tent.

Calard woke to the sound of tense voices. Stumbling out into the cold half-light of predawn, he saw peasants running through the camp, their faces worried and pale, and he could hear knights talking together in strained voices. Walking through the milling crowd standing on the edge of Adhalind’s Seat, he gazed out over the surrounding fields to the east.

The day before, the forest of Chalons had been a distant shadow on the horizon. It had already broken its former borders, and extended far beyond its natural range. Its arms had spread out to the north and south like a crescent, arcing around Adhalind’s Seat, where it had been at least five miles away at its closest point.

Now, the forest was no more than a mile in the distance.

‘Lady above,’ breathed Calard, his eyes wide in horror.

Calard pushed his way through the press of gawking onlookers, and ran through the camp, heading towards the other side of the table-topped hill. He dreaded what he would see there. Gaining a clear view across the fields to the west, he sighed in horror.

The forests of Chalons were only a mile away. It was the same to the north, and to the south.

The forest had completely surrounded them. They were in the belly of the beast, trapped deep within its heart of darkness, and it was surely only a matter of time before they were completely engulfed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dread and nervous anxiety churned within Calard’s stomach. Black birds, the eyes of the enemy, circled high overhead, out of bow range.

‘I will be glad when night comes, just so we won’t have to see those hateful things any longer,’ said Bertelis.

The glare of the sun was harsh, burning an intense, blazing orange. The sky was red, fading to purple and dark blue in the east. It was less than an hour until dusk. According to Anara, the beasts would begin their onslaught an hour after sundown.

‘Not long now,’ said Calard. He too wished the time would pass quickly. He hated the hours before battle was met.

The day had been one of frantic activity as the camp prepared for attack. Orders were given, and men-at-arms formed into fighting echelons that were spread around the hill, facing out in all directions.

Fletchers and blacksmiths worked hard through the day, and hundreds of new arrows were made and distributed amongst the five hundred peasant archers and bow-armed yeomen of Garamont, Sangasse and Montcadas. Iron braziers were positioned around the perimeter, and peasants gathered additional firewood to ensure that none of them would burn low throughout the long night ahead.

A team of some three hundred men had marched out before dawn, under the watchful gaze of Baron Montcadas, heading towards an isolated copse of beech trees half a mile from Adhalind’s Seat. Nervously eyeing the unnatural, tortured forest of Chalons, which had completely surrounded the camp in the night, the peasants set about lopping these tall, straight, grey trees. The branches and twigs were shorn from the trunks, and they were hauled back to the camp, where they were hewn into lengths around ten feet long. The tips were sharpened with axes, and hardened with fire. Over the course of the day, several thousand stakes were cut, and these were set into the ground around the base of Adhalind’s Seat, forming a ring of spikes facing outwards. The overlapping lines of stakes allowed for sorties of knights to charge through them, while ensuring that an enemy trying to storm them would have to fight hard for every inch of ground they took.

The archers stood on the hillsides behind the stakes, each man with dozens of arrows stuck into the soft earth in front of him, and carrying a pair of quivers. Calard did not, of course, approve of the use of missile weapons, but he respected the tactical use of the peasants. Besides, the peasants had no concept of honour, too ignorant to understand that it was shaming to kill from a distance.

More sharpened stakes had been sunk into the earth around the sacred copse that butted up against the north-west hillside, and hundreds of archers stood behind them, supported by large blocks of men-at-arms.

The archers were under orders to fire upon the foe until they were within a hundred paces, at which point they were to pull back onto the slopes of Adhalind’s Seat, joining the bulk of the archers there, and allowing the men-at-arms to step forward and hold the line. It was here that the men of Garamont were stationed, here that they would face the enemy.

Half a dozen knights, all vassals of Calard’s father, had nobly volunteered to fight on foot and lead the peasant rabble. They knew that holding the line against the enemy was of paramount importance. If the line broke, and the beasts were allowed to despoil the sacred shrine, then the good name of their lord would be sullied, for it was Garamont’s responsibility to see it protected. With their line bolstered by the presence of the stern knights, Calard was more confident that the men-at-arms would hold.

There were gaps in the wooden stakes to either side of the shrine’s edges, through which the Garamont knights could sally forth to attack the enemy directly, if they managed to weather the storm of arrows. Many of the nobles were confident that the unruly rabble of the enemy would not be able to advance beneath the clouds of arrows that would descend among them, but Baron Montcadas was not convinced. Indeed, many of the nobles in the war tent on the previous evening had argued long and hard for the knights of Bastonne to ride out and meet the enemy head-on, on the flat fields around the hill, for they were unhappy with the idea of hiding behind walls of stakes and relying on peasant archers. Where was the honour in that they questioned?

Montcadas had not entertained these considerations, dismissing them too quickly in Calard’s eyes, but he had held his tongue, letting the more experienced knights argue their cases.

To his surprise, Montcadas had even drawn Dieter Weschler into the discussion, asking him how an Empire army would mount a defence against this enemy. The other knights had murmured their discontent, but Montcadas had silenced them with a fiery glare.

‘In my land, we would hold the high ground with our heavy infantry battalions,’ started Dieter. ‘We would pound the enemy with cannon and mortar, and lines of arquebuses would fire as the enemy came into range. These handguns have not the range or rate of fire of your long bows, but within two hundred yards they are devastating. We would funnel the enemy towards our strongest positions, towards the true strength of our armies, its infantry.’

Several of the gathered knights scoffed at this, laughing under their breath at the foolishness of their neighbours. Ignoring their snide remarks, Dieter had continued with dignity.

‘Our knightly orders would be held back to counterattack against enemy cavalry, or wherever the line began to falter. Regiments of halberdiers and spears would be held in reserve under the command of a senior captain, who would order them forwards into any breaches. Victory would come as the enemy broke against our infantry battalions, for there is not a more disciplined force in the Old World.’ The small captain stood proudly, his chest puffed out like a cockerel’s as he went into further detail about the disposition of the armies of the Empire, and their tactics. He quoted from tactical manuals that Calard had never read, and spoke of battles that he had never heard of. At last, Montcadas thanked the Empire captain, who nodded curtly in response, clearly pleased at having been given the opportunity to speak of his homeland.

‘Our knights,’ Montcadas had said, ‘are our most potent weapon. No better knights can be found in the Old World or beyond, and they are rightly feared by all who oppose us. Given more knights, this battle would be won easily, for nothing can stand against our charge. However, as the noble damsel has foretold, we will be facing an enemy “beyond number”. I fear that if we ride forth from Adhalind’s Seat and engage the enemy on even ground, we will be surrounded and slaughtered to a man. Our charge will falter, and, as soon as we have lost our momentum, our advantage will be lost.’

‘We will not be able to make use of our greatest advantage if we hide behind walls of stakes and peasants,’ countered Kegan, spitting out the last word as if it tasted bad in his mouth.

‘Quite true,’ replied Montcadas. ‘The enemy will break against Adhalind’s Seat, and we shall charge forth and drive through the enemy where it threatens us most, before pulling back. This will not be the glorious battle that many of you noble knights wish it to be. It will not be the glorious battle that I would wish it to be. But there will be no glory if every man here is slaughtered, and I will be damned if I let such a thing come to pass under my leadership.’

At the end of the discussion, as the knights moved off to begin preparations and steal a few hours rest, Calard had seen Montcadas sit down heavily, looking tired and strained. This shocked Calard more than anything else he had seen or heard that night, for he had believed that the massive baron was utterly indefatigable, an elemental force of battle that never tired, nor ever even considered losing.

‘I wish that Lord Gunthar was with us, lad,’ he had said, and Calard had hung his head in shame. ‘I am a leader of men, and I like to think a fine one, but I prefer to lead from the front. I am no master of strategy. I prefer to leave that to more learned men. I suppose that the Lady tests us all, and one can only hope to live up to the challenges she sets.’

‘I think the strategy is sound, baron,’ said Calard.

‘Good,’ said Montcadas with a smile. ‘I’ve never lost a battle in my life, and I don’t intend to start now.’

The tents in the camp had been mostly dismantled so that reinforcements could cross the hilltop unimpeded, and so that messages could more easily be passed with flags and banners. A few tents remained, connected by awnings of canvas, to act as a field surgery, and hundreds of pallets were laid out. Water was collected from the spring that fed the grail shrine’s serene glade, and peasants were organised into small groups to transport the wounded from the main battle lines.

No peasant was spared a duty, and non-combatants were organised into teams to aid the battle, either as aides to the few surgeons in the camp, as labourers to bear arrows, water and fresh lances, or organised into lightly armoured skirmish echelons to support the men-at-arms and dispatch injured enemies with knives and cudgels.

Calard took a deep breath, trying to calm his frayed nerves. The sun was sinking ever nearer to the horizon. The attack would come at any minute. Even the knowledge that the holy paladin Reolus would fight at their side did little to curb the feeling of dread rising within him.

The grail knight had arrived at the camp hours earlier, emerging from the unnatural forest to a great cheer. Knights and peasants had stopped their work to witness the arrival of the grail knight and his entourage. The knight’s self-appointed heralds ran before the resplendent knight, exhorting his exploits in loud voices, and blowing long notes on trumpets and horns.

The revered knight rode his massive midnight black stallion at the head of some fifty knights, but they seemed to pale beside him, and all eyes were locked on the renowned champion of the Lady.

He had looked like a hero of legend, plucked straight from the illuminated pages that chronicled the exploits of Gilles the Uniter. He could have been one of the companions, one of the near-mythical paladins that rode at the side of the Uniter and freed the lands of the Bretonni from darkness.

In the dull, overcast afternoon light, the holy knight seemed to glow like a beacon. The visor of his full-faced helm was lowered, and he rode with his head held high. Candles surrounded the silver heraldic unicorn atop his helmet, and the light they created shone a halo around the knight and gleamed off his highly polished and ornate armour. The lance Arandyal was held vertical in one hand, and his shield was slung over his back. His deep blue cloak fluttered in the breeze behind him.

To his right, a knight bore the grail knight’s personal standard: a majestic rearing unicorn of shimmering silver upon a field of blue. The bearer’s face shone with pride at the honoured duty.

‘Hark ye, knights of Bastonne!’ hollered one of the pilgrim heralds. ‘Witness the approach of Saint Reolus the Wise, beloved of the Lady! Saint Reolus the Bold, paladin of Quenelles! Saint Reolus the Valiant, who slew the blood-beast of the Orcals!

‘Blessed are ye to look upon his holiness! Give praise, for he has come to fight the beasts! Victory is certain, for the Lady will not allow any harm to befall her favourite, and never shall his standard fall while he doth take breath!’

Two hundred pilgrims had marched behind the hallowed knight, shouting of his deeds in loud voices, and holding aloft scraps of armour, food and clothing that had been cast off by the object of their devotion. The ragtag bunch of peasants wore a motley collection of armour scavenged from battlefields, over which monkish robes were pulled. Many wore high gorgets of stiffened leather to protect their necks, and most had shaved the tops of their heads as a mark of their devotion. They carried wooden shields, upon which were nailed parchments and scraps of beautifully illuminated holy works, and in their rough, calloused hands they carried rusted blades, clubs and daggers.

As the holy entourage came closer, Calard noted the heraldry of the knights accompanying Reolus. They hailed from all four corners of Bretonnia, and it was obvious that they had recently seen battle. The knights’ shields were chipped and battle worn, and their cloaks were bloodied and tattered. Their armour was dented, and many bore injuries. Some of the pilgrim zealots were limping, leaning heavily on wooden crutches, while others had arms in splints and were wrapped in bloodied bandages. Nevertheless, they bore their wounds proudly, not wishing to show any form of weakness in front of the grail knight.

Calard had felt the spirit among the knights of Bastonne soar as the grail knight drew near. Truly they were favoured, knights whispered. Calard almost laughed out loud. They were surrounded on all sides by a hateful, cunning and unnatural foe, but with the presence of a grail knight and a sacred damsel of the Lady, how could they possibly lose?

Black birds circled overhead, higher than an arrow could reach, and, despite the arrival of Reolus, the sense of foreboding and dread would not leave Calard.

Chlod’s stomach growled noisily. When had he last eaten? He couldn’t remember. He had not dared to go looking for food, fearing capture. His rat companion squirmed and climbed up his arm. It nuzzled at his ear, its mangy whiskers tickling him.

‘Food is coming, precious,’ he whispered.

Chlod sat among the pilgrims, grinning like a simpleton and licking his lips as he watched the stale loaves being dealt out amongst them.

‘Break bread with us, brother!’ said one of the devout followers of the grail knight. ‘You have been blessed!’

‘I have,’ agreed Chlod. The itinerant vagrants had embraced him into their fold, fooled by his act, and now they would feed him as one of their own. His own cleverness astounded him. He took the proffered food, gratefully, and began stuffing it into his mouth with gusto. He held a crumb to his rat, which snatched it from his fingers eagerly.

He had been hiding out for three days and two nights. He’d seen the bodies of the others, hanging from the trees, their faces purple, their eyes plucked from their sockets by carrion birds. He didn’t know if any of them had spoken before they had died. They might not have known his name, but they knew his face. Were the yeoman wardens looking for him even now? Did they know that he was one of those who had tried to kill the Garamont noble?

When the order had come to dismantle the camp, he had been almost paralysed with fear. There would be nowhere to hide once all the billets and tents were pulled down, and he thought he would surely be identified when all the camp followers had been rounded up and gathered into groups.

Keeping his head down low, he had stood with a group of other bedraggled peasants, labourers all. He did not know what lord they were in the service of. He tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, as the yeoman assigning the various peasants to work groups stalked past. The labourers had been assigned to chop down trees, and Chlod had tried to hide among their number, moving off with them as they shuffled away.

If they thought there was anything strange about the extra number in their group, they said nothing, and a flicker of hope sparked inside him. If he moved off with them to collect lumber, then surely he would be able to slink off without anyone noticing. Then he could get as far away from the camp as possible, and he would never be incriminated in the attempt on the life of the young Garamont lord. He would travel to the west, perhaps, towards the great port city of Bordeleaux. There, he was certain that he could lose himself in the warrens around the docklands.

He had even grinned lopsidedly, thinking that perhaps the trickster god Ranald was smiling down on him.

A meaty finger had prodded him in the chest.

‘Not you,’ snarled a yeoman. ‘Whose man are you?’

Chlod had gaped stupidly, his mind whirring.

‘Who is your lord and master?’ the yeoman had asked, more forcefully. There were no free men in the camp. Not even the villeins who led the ragged groups of longbow men were truly free, for they still paid taxes and dues to their noble lord. Any peasant who did not belong to a lord was an outlaw, and outlaws were hanged.

‘Garamont,’ Chlod had lied. The yeoman frowned and looked at him doubtfully, but did not refute his claim.

‘Well, what are you doing standing over here, fool?’ snapped the man, cuffing him hard over the back of his head. ‘Get over there with your fellows,’ he said, pointing towards a small group of men and women, who were being led to the north.

Chlod hurried towards the group of peasants, praying that none of them would say that they did not know him. He kept his head down low as he shuffled past dozens of other peasants, trying not to catch the eye of any of them, but as he moved, he felt someone staring at him, and he looked up, straight into a face that he recognised.

It was another of the would-be assassins that had somehow escaped the hanging. The man began to push through the crowd of peasants towards him, and Chlod swore under his breath. He tried to ignore the man, dropping his head and moving as quickly as his clubfoot would allow, but the man drew alongside him. Chlod saw that his face was pale, and his eyes were filled with fear.

‘They are going to hang us,’ hissed the man, and Chlod looked around in alarm to see if any yeoman was nearby.

‘We will die like the others!’ the man wailed, clutching at Chlod’s clothing, and he cursed. He saw a yeoman turn in their direction, alerted by the sound.

‘Be quiet!’ snarled Chlod dangerously, his hand closing around the dagger concealed within his tunic. ‘Get away from me, now, or we will both be dead by sunset!’

The man continued to wail, clutching at him desperately.

‘You there!’ called the yeoman, stalking towards them, making the peasant wail even more. Chlod swore.

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded the yeoman.

‘We are dead men, dead!’ wailed the man clutching at Chlod’s jerkin.

‘What’s he on about?’ asked the yeoman suspiciously. Chlod flashed him a lopsided, idiotic grin.

‘My cousin,’ he said, his voice thick with feigned stupidity. ‘He is afflicted.’ Chlod leant forward, and spoke his next words in an over-exaggerated, conspiratorial stage whisper. ‘Maybe plague.’

At the word, the yeoman stepped back, one hand flying up to cover his mouth and nose.

‘Get him away!’ said the yeoman, waving his hand.

Chlod grinned stupidly and nodded, leading the peasant away.

Once clear of prying eyes, Chlod stabbed the man six times in the gut, and let him fall to the ground beside a pile of grain sacks.

He had not known what to do next. There were few places to hide, and there was no way that he could escape the camp without being seen.

His salvation had come in an unexpected form.

Maybe he was blessed.

He had grinned from ear to ear as he saw the approach of the grail knight and his pilgrims. In the pilgrims, he saw a refuge, and an idea formed in his head. He had scrambled towards them, bustling through the press of bodies to look upon the great knight.

‘My eyes!’ he had screamed, falling to his knees before one of the pilgrims.

‘My eyes are healed!’ he had lied, yelling at the top of his lungs. ‘It is a miracle! I was blind, but now I can see! Lord Reolus has healed my sight!’

He had been surrounded by the dirty pilgrims, who lifted him roughly to his feet.

‘Witness the healing powers of our great lord!’ bellowed one them. ‘This man was blind, but now his eyes are clear! He hath looked upon the greatness of lord Reolus, and his sight has been returned to him!’

‘A miracle!’ shouted Chlod, and he had been embraced into the fold of the pilgrims, cloistered within their number.

One of the pilgrims leant in close to Chlod, his eyes glinting with more than a touch of madness. He carefully unravelled a cloth, his face lighting up with fanatical devotion and awe.

‘Look upon this holy artefact, brother,’ said the buck-toothed pilgrim. In his hands, he reverently held what looked like a rotting lamb joint, rancid flesh still clinging to the bone. ‘The hallowed Reolus did eat of this bone,’ said the man in a hushed voice. ‘His teeth did tear at the meat, giving him sustenance, and now I am its bearer. It protects me,’ he whispered, ‘for the glory of the great man was imparted unto it when he did touch it with his healing hands.’

Chlod gazed at the bone in feigned awe. It stank, the rotting meat filled with squirming maggots, but he did not let his disgust show on his face.

Truly he was blessed, he thought to himself. He had food in his belly and was, for now, safe from prosecution. Life truly was grand.

The burning red orb of the sun dipped over the horizon, setting the sky on fire, and silence descended across the flat-topped hill of Adhalind’s Seat.

Hundreds of knights were gathered there, and they stood in serried, concentric ranks, surrounding an open area in the centre of the circle. Every noble that would fight this night was there, to join together in prayer and receive the Lady’s blessing before battle commenced.

Hundreds of yeomen and servants stood a respectful distance away from the knights, holding the destriers, lances and shields of their lords. They would not take part in the blessing, for the cult of the Lady was restricted solely to the nobility, on pain of death, and they dutifully faced away from the proceedings.

A cool wind whistled over Adhalind’s Seat, and Calard shivered involuntarily. He was at the forefront of the Garamont contingent, and his brother Bertelis stood at his left.

‘Where’s Tanebourc?’ whispered Calard, glancing sideways. Without Gunthar’s reassuring presence, he had come to rely on the tall, easy-natured knight, and it was unusual for him not to be at his side.

‘I don’t know,’ said Bertelis, glancing around. He shrugged. ‘He will be here somewhere.’ Calard nodded, frowning, but drew his gaze back towards the empty circle in front of him. He took a deep breath, and tried to clear his mind. Staring resolutely forward, he sought the peace that he had experienced within the serene grail shrine, but it was elusive, and thoughts kept intruding into his calm.

The gathered knights dropped to one knee as Anara walked serenely up the aisle that had been left in their ranks, her movements regal and calm, projecting purity, serenity and gentleness. She wore a dress of palest blue, and her hair was covered in a matching headdress. The sleeves of her dress were long and flowing, with streams of material hanging from the cuffs to the ground. Her silver fleur-de-lys pendant shone upon her pale neck, and a matching icon was set into the delicate silver belt that circled her slim waist. The belt had been beautifully crafted to represent entwined strands of ivy, each silver leaf perfect in every detail. A matching garland of silver ivy circled her headdress.

Anara’s head was held high, and her face was emotionless. She had applied delicate make-up to her face to accentuate her beauty, and the effect was stunning. Her lips were the colour of pale rose, and delicate lines of coal surrounded her eyes.

As she held a heavy silver chalice in her slender, pale hands, she was the very image of the Lady of the Lake herself, and Calard felt the intake of breath as the knights gazed upon her.

The Baron Montcadas and the grail knight Reolus walked a step behind Anara. Their sheer size and the masculine strength they projected made Anara appear even more delicate and fragile, like a single white rose. Montcadas, almost as broad as he was tall, walked slowly, his bearded face serious. He moved like a bear, his gait rolling and powerful. Reolus, almost two heads taller than the baron, walked with the grace and languid power of a lion.

Anara stopped in the centre of the circle of knights, her gaze sweeping over the gathered warriors. She gave no flicker of recognition as her eyes passed over Calard.

The baron and the grail knight dropped to one knee respectfully before Anara, and she lifted her chalice up high before her, like an offering to the sky. Lowering the grail, she dipped the fingers of one hand into the cool water within, and stepped towards the two kneeling men.

With soft words, she flicked the water over their bowed heads, before steeping back.

Montcadas rose, and turned around on the spot to address the gathered knights.

‘I am not one for speeches,’ he boomed, his voice carrying easily over the gathered knights, ‘so I shall keep this brief. We face a terrible foe, my brothers. They are many, and come at us with hatred and jealousy in their twisted hearts. We are like a beacon in the night, surrounded on all sides by darkness, and yet, with faith in the Lady, we shall defeat that darkness, and it will come to fear us.’

The baron prowled around the circle.

‘Each man here is a knight of Bretonnia. Whether a young knight errant,’ boomed the baron, giving Calard a slight smile, ‘or a revered knight of the grail,’ he said, bowing towards Reolus, ‘you are all knights of chivalry and honour. I know that you will fight with all your heart and all your valour. I need not implore you to do so, and so I shall not. For the honour of our noble land, of the Lady, of our valiant king, of our lords, and in honour of each other, I know that each man here will give his all. I am proud to fight alongside you. I could not wish for a finer group of knights. It is humbling to have the honour of fighting alongside you, and so for that I thank you, and I thank the Lady, for she has truly blessed us by sending the damsel Anara and the noble grail paladin Reolus to us in our time of need.’

The baron slid his sword from its scabbard, and raised it high in the air before him.

Over five hundred knights stood and mirrored the action, the hiss of steel resounding across the hilltop.

‘For the king, the Lady and Bretonnia!’ roared the baron, and the cry was echoed by the gathered knights.

‘Let us pray,’ said the grail knight Reolus as the cry faded. He did not raise his voice, but it carried easily to every ear. The grail knight turned towards Anara, and dropped to one knee. His sword was held in a downward grip in his hands, its point in the soil, and he bowed his head until his brow touched the pommel of the legendary weapon.

In turn, the circular ranks of knights dropped to their knees, bowing their heads to their swords. Anara stepped to Reolus, wetting her fingers in the chalice. Speaking softly, she pressed her hand to the grail knight’s crown. At a word from her, he rose to his feet and sheathed his blade. Then he took the grail from the damsel’s hands, and walked behind her as she began to move along the ranks of knights, blessing each man in turn.

Calard closed his eyes, feeling the cool metal pommel upon his skin. His lips moved silently as he recited prayers and mantras long ingrained in his memory. He lost all concept of time passing, until the scent of lavender and rose filled his nostrils, and he breathed in the heady aroma.

‘Lady of grace and beauty,’ spoke Anara softly, ‘protect this knight as he does battle in your name. Protect him from cowardly blows, and guard him from evil. Protect him, oh merciful Lady, and guide his lance and blade against your enemies.’

Her cool, wet fingers pressed lightly against his crown, and he felt warmth and calm wash through him. Now he felt no unease, and none of the dread he had felt earlier. It had been cleansed from him by the healing power of the goddess.

As he opened his eyes, blinking as if waking from a long, refreshing slumber, he saw that darkness had almost completely descended over the land.

‘Go now, my brother knights,’ boomed Montcadas, ‘and fight well.’

Calard sat in Gringolet’s saddle as the sun finally dipped over the horizon. Anara was alongside him, sitting casually upon the back of her white mare. They were scanning the distant tree line, which was getting harder to see as the sun descended.

‘Where will you stand?’ he asked at last.

‘Where I am needed,’ replied Anara, her voice vague and distant.

The knights were gathering into formation, and final orders were being bellowed to the men-at-arms as they moved into position. He had to join his own formation. All the young knights errant had been drawn together into wedges of thirty men, each led by an experienced knight of the realm, whose job it was to keep the eager young knights in line.

‘Will we be victorious?’ he asked softly. Anara was slow to answer.

‘It is… unclear.’

The black birds circling overhead erupted in a sudden cacophony of raucous cries as the last vestiges of the blazing orange sun disappeared. The cries were joined by hundreds of hunting horns that blared hatefully from within the corrupted forest encircling them. Pounding drums began to beat savagely, until the whole area resounded with the hellish sound. Roars and braying bellows echoed across the sky, and the wasted, tortured trees began to shudder and groan.

‘I have to go,’ said Calard, seeing the formation he was to join wheeling into position upon the hilltop, facing towards the west. He looked at his sister, his twin whom he had spent so many years seeking word of. Now that battle was to commence, he was concerned for her safety. It was a ridiculous notion, considering the power she was able to wield. He had not the words to express his feelings.

‘Be safe, my sister,’ he said at last. She made no reaction to his words, merely staring into the distance, her eyes clouded and vague. Calard pulled his noble destrier Gringolet around sharply, and kicked his heels into its sides, cantering towards his allocated position.

Anara shivered, feeling the malevolent hatred of the enemy wash over her like a wave.

‘And so it begins,’ she breathed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It seemed as though the corrupted Forest of Chalons was ablaze with fire. Thousands of torches flickered between the dark forms of the trees, and dark shapes moved within the twisted woodland as the massed forces of the enemy drew nearer. The entire forest was alive with movement.

There was to be no escape. The enemy had completely encircled the Bretonnians, and they massed beyond the tree line, snarling and braying in eagerness for the coming bloodshed.

The first beasts broke from the trees, holding torches aloft, hefting spears and swords, axes and spiked clubs. Many carried foul, totemic standards of twisted wood and rusted iron, from which were hung severed heads and hands, as well as battered Bretonnian helmets. They were lean, sinewy creatures, twisted mockeries of humanity, with small horns protruding from their scalps and evil expressions upon their hateful faces.

Many of them ran forwards, snarling and waving their weapons, before turning and slinking back to the forest’s edge. Thousands of the creatures moved within the concealing darkness of the trees. Horns blared and drums of taut human skin were pounded. Several of the creatures strode forward and turned their matted, furred backs towards the Bretonnians, cocking their legs to defecate and urinate. They flicked their cloven hooves backwards, kicking their foul spoor and clods of earth in the direction of the defenders, accompanied by braying barks that might have passed for laughter.

Calard tensed in the saddle, his eyes blazing with anger.

Massive war hounds prowled through the darkness, growling and snapping at each other, sniffing the air. Several of them began to howl, as the clouds parted and the green glow of the Chaos moon, Morrslieb, radiated down from the heavens.

Larger beastmen began to emerge from the trees. Massively muscled and with thick horns curling from their temples, they pushed their smaller brethren out of the way, their thick lips curling back as they snarled and spat. Many of these creatures bore evidence of sickening mutations; some had spiked ridges of bone that erupted from their spines and elbows, while others had an additional arm protruding awkwardly from their shoulders, or a single, weeping eye in the centre of their foreheads. These, it seemed to Calard, were given additional respect, and the smaller beastmen slunk around them warily.

Several herds of the centaur-like beasts emerged, roaring loudly and kicking at any of the lesser beastmen that came near them. Each of the groups held aloft a totem, upon which horrifying, skinless bodies were nailed, the muscles glistening wetly. Calard was horrified to see that not all of the men were dead, and he watched, aghast, as one skinless man writhed in agony, fighting against the iron spikes that had been driven through his hands and feet. His tongueless mouth opened in a silent scream of torment. He might well have been a knight of Bastonne, for all Calard knew, kept alive for the amusement of his tormentors. Even as he watched, he saw one of the beasts poke at the man’s exposed muscles with the barbed tip of his spear, laughing uproariously as the man thrashed and struggled.

As he watched the enemy gather, Calard began to see what he took as barbaric tribal distinctions. He saw one dominant group of beasts with black-painted arms, as if they had dipped their limbs in pitch. Another group had entwined briars and branches of thorns through their horns, and they snarled at any that came near them. Another group were daubed all over with blood. Their fur had been drawn into spikes, perhaps with lime and congealed blood, giving them a daemonic appearance.

This red-furred tribe was highly aggressive, and, even as he watched, he saw them surround one smaller, isolated beastman of another grouping and smash it to the ground with blows to the head and shoulders. The pack descended on the fallen creature, ripping and tearing, fighting each other in their eagerness. Calard saw the beasts feasting on the entrails of the unfortunate creature, pulling on intestines with their teeth and claws, and fighting over the organs. When they stepped back, mere moments later, they left a trampled, bloody and mutilated corpse, and they smeared the creature’s fresh blood across their chests.

There were clearly rivalries and blood feuds between the different groups of creatures, and members of the herds fronted up to each other, snarling and smashing weapons together, trying to prove their dominance over each other. Calard saw several violent clashes, as beasts slammed their horned heads together with bone-jarring force.

Most of the creatures wore little more than straps of leather across their bodies, though others wore scraps of armour that had clearly been scrounged from fallen enemies. One group wore thick plate armour that had been blackened with fire and beaten to fit their bodies. Plates of metal had been hammered into their heads, roughly hewn and cut to fit around their curling horns. These creatures bore immense, long-hafted axes and blades that they carried on their shoulders.

Even larger creatures stalked through the milling press, hulking monsters with blood-shot eyes, standing over eight feet tall, and with the heads of bulls. The smaller beasts hissed at them behind their backs, but scurried out of their paths wherever they walked.

Other nameless and formless horrors crashed through the trees, hauled into the clearing by giant chains and hooks that tore at their flesh. They were sickening, mutated mounds of fur, muscle and bone, and they screamed and howled in agony and mindless fury from mouths that opened up across their skin, and emerged from the tips of writhing tentacles. They were horrid amalgamations of torsos, heads, horns and limbs that seemed to protrude at random from their flesh, and Calard felt horrified loathing as he looked upon them.

Dozens of straining beastmen dragged one of the massive beast-spawn monstrosities forwards. Thick rings of iron pierced its flesh, and its skin was pulled taut, like canvas sails, by the black chains attached to them. It screamed and roared as it fought against its captors. Spines of bone and horn erupted from its back, and it swung its crab-like claws at any who got too close. Another of the creatures was covered in open sores that wept pus and blood, and maggots writhed beneath its skin, making it ripple like a pennant in the wind. It had a pair of conjoined horse’s heads, though spines had erupted above and below their eyes, and long, barbed tongues flashed from their toothy maws.

A massive, toothed orifice gaped open in the chest of another monster, displaying thousands of inward curving teeth and an array of barbed tentacles that waved blindly. A distressingly human head emerged above this foetid, circular maw, a single blinking, red eye peering out through the crooked teeth of its slack-jawed mouth.

One of the beastmen pulling the creatures forwards stumbled and fell, and was instantly lifted up into the air by a pair of malformed flipper-like appendages. It was stuffed into a flapping mouth that was too small to contain its oversized teeth. The beastman bellowed as it was devoured. Additional mouths opened up upon the spawn’s body, and slug-like tongues lapped at the blood upon its flesh.

All the while, more of the beastmen massed along the tree line, and the blare of horns and beating of drums rose to a chaotic, jumbled cacophony of tortured sounds.

Calard saw the men-at-arms below the hill shuffle and glance around at each other, their fear palpable. The knights leading the cohorts shouted encouragement to the soldiers, but their voices were tense and strained. Gringolet whinnied nervously as the scent of the beasts carried to him on the wind.

‘Easy,’ said Calard as he patted the destrier’s neck in reassurance. The steeds of the knights around him flattened their ears against their heads, and one of them reared, hooves flailing out blindly, but the knight quickly regained control of his mount.

A tall, hellish creature stepped from the forest, surrounded by heavily armoured beastmen. It clearly commanded respect from its minions, and silence descended around the clearing. The pounding of drums stopped mid-beat, and the horns were silenced. The braying and roaring of the beasts dropped away, and even the massive war hounds slunk low to the ground, snarling, their tails between their legs, as the creature stepped forwards.

Its face was a mass of stitches, fur and skin, and three pairs of horns erupted from its head. It drew to a halt just metres from the forest edge, and stared up at the Bretonnians before it balefully. Thorns and briars flowed across the ground around it, erupting from the soil wherever the unnatural creature trod. Calard jerked as he felt the creature’s eyes upon him, though that was surely impossible, for the beast was many hundreds of yards away.

It slammed its twisted, branch-like staff heavily into the ground, where it took root, bony tendrils penetrating the earth. The black birds overhead dropped like stones from the sky, swooping low over the battlefield to come to rest upon the branches of the staff, turning their malevolent, burning red eyes towards the defenders on the hill.

Lifting an arm, the creature extended a long, multi-jointed finger. It looked like the slender leg of a monstrous spider as it pointed towards the Bretonnians. To Calard, it felt as though the creature was pointing directly at him.

A mighty roar echoed across the clearing. The cacophony of noise began anew, and the beastmen began loping towards the hill in the centre of the clearing.

From every side they came, like a wolf pack moving in for the kill.

Gunthar jerked awake, the sound of horns filling his ears. He reached for his sword, but hands held him down. He swore, fighting against them, kicking and thrashing. He almost passed out from the pain, but struggled to maintain consciousness.

‘Leave him be,’ said a voice, and the bodies pressing down on top of him eased away. Breathing heavily and covered in sweat, Gunthar swung his legs over the side of the pallet, and staggered to his feet, eyes darting around. His vision swam, and he reeled, his left leg giving way beneath him. He caught himself, and stood straight once more, though his left leg was shaking and unsteady.

His feverish eyes darted around, looking at the anxious faces of the peasants that had been holding him down.

‘What in the Lady’s name is going on?’ Gunthar managed. In the distance, he could hear the hellish sounds of the enemy. ‘The camp is under attack!’ he said in shock, as realisation began to sink into his feverish mind.

‘You must lie back, my lord!’ said a small, middle-aged man emphatically. Gunthar recognised him as Montcadas’s surgeon. The ageing man had a small saw in his hand, and wore a dirty apron over his slight frame.

‘Damned if I will,’ snarled Gunthar. The peasants looked nervous and scared. He shouted for his arms and armour, and they jumped, but did not move to enact his order. Pain shot down his leg, and he was falling once more. He sat down heavily on the pallet. His brow was covered in sweat, and his vision blurred before him. He shook his head, and wiped a hand across his brow.

‘The wound is festering, my lord!’ said the surgeon.

‘You were going to take my leg, damn you!’ raged Gunthar, realisation dawning on him.

The little surgeon guiltily placed the saw on a small table, upon which was laid all manner of knives and other implements. They looked like the tools of a torturer. The little man wrung his hands in front of him. ‘It is the only way to save your life, my lord!’

‘What a life that would be! No, I will not face that dishonour.’ He licked his lips. His throat felt dry and thick. ‘Bring me water!’ he ordered one of the men, and a wooden goblet was pressed into his shaking hands. He put it to his lips, not caring that it was a crude drinking vessel fit only for a peasant. The water was cool and soothing, and he knocked it back in one long swig.

‘You would be alive,’ said the surgeon softly.

‘I would rather be dead than live like that,’ spat Gunthar. He realised that he was dressed in nothing more than a gown over his underclothes, and he gingerly pulled back the cloth to look upon his wound. He bit his lip as the material tore away from the wound, and he tasted blood in his mouth. His vision swam once more, but he blinked quickly, trying to focus his mind.

Around three inches above his knee, the injury he had sustained was angry and red, weeping a sickly looking fluid, the flesh around it rotting and festering. He gagged at the stink of the wound, despite the honey smeared over it.

He had seen enough wounds in his time as a knight to know that if the leg was not removed the wound would kill him. He stared at it in shock for a time, and swore under his breath. He heard men shouting orders outside in the gloom, and the roar of the enemy.

Gunthar’s gaze hardened, and he turned towards the surgeon’s underlings. They were still standing around awkwardly, unsure what to do. ‘My arms and armour, damn you!’ he shouted, making them jump again. ‘Go and get them now! And bring me my horse!’

The men looked to the surgeon nervously.

‘What are you looking to him for? I am a knight of Bastonne, and you will obey me, or I shall see you hanged! Go! Now!’

The men fled, running to fulfil Gunthar’s orders.

‘You are in no state to fight, my lord!’ the small man said with serious conviction.

Gunthar swung his fevered gaze back towards the diminutive surgeon, bristling in anger. The man’s face was lined with concern, and he felt the anger seep from him. He was so tired. It felt like he had been kicked and trampled by a wild stallion. Everything hurt. He sighed, his shoulders sagging.

‘I know,’ he said finally, ‘but I will not lie here while others are dying.’

‘I will not lie to you, amputating a leg is not without its risks,’ said the little surgeon softly. ‘I have performed the procedure twenty-three times. Seven of those men died through loss of blood, and your age would count against you, but if the limb is not amputated you will die, no question. This I know with certainty. What good will you be to Bretonnia then?’ He looked at Gunthar with weary eyes.

‘You are right,’ said Gunthar with resignation. ‘My death might well mean nothing. Whether I fight or not will not alter the outcome of the battle.’ He sighed wearily, talking more to himself than to the surgeon. ‘Fighting Ganelon was humbling. Fifteen years ago, I would have bested him without breaking a sweat. That duel made me feel old.’

‘You still won,’ said the surgeon softly.

‘Yes, and a skilful young knight of Bretonnia died,’ said Gunthar. ‘Who is to say what great things he may have achieved had he lived? We will never know.’ Gunthar laughed softly and without humour.

‘You could have many more years ahead of you, my lord. Who is to say what great things you may achieve?’

‘Perhaps, but I have no wish to live out the remainder of my years as an invalid, an embarrassing cripple unable to fight for my lord when the call to battle is sounded. I could not live like that.’

‘So you choose to die?’

‘I choose to die as a knight of Bretonnia,’ Gunthar said weakly. ‘I will ride to battle, with my sword in my hand and with the enemy in front of me, and, if such is to be my fate, I will die.’

The surgeon sighed, looking exhausted and dejected.

‘I am no warrior,’ said the little man. ‘I abhor violence in all its forms. I believe that life is a precious gift, and that it should not be set aside lightly. I have held the hands of hundreds of men as they died in torment from sickening wounds. I have seen countless young knights screaming in agony, tears of shame rolling down their faces as they lose control of their bodily functions. I have seen knights weep like babes as they try to hold their insides from spilling from their bellies. I see no pride in their deaths. I am not of noble birth, and as such perhaps I am incapable of understanding such things. Despite all of that, I will respect your wish, even if I disagree with it. A man should always be allowed to make his own choice of how he lives. Or dies.’

‘Good. Now help me up,’ said Gunthar.

A single arrow was loosed, soaring high into the air.

‘Hold, damn you!’

The arrow arced high into the air before reaching the top of its trajectory. It seemed to hang in the sky for a moment, defying the forces that were pulling it back to earth, before hurtling down into the ground, sinking into the earth several hundred yards in front of the advancing mass of bodies.

Giant hounds, mutated far beyond their natural size, pounded across the grass, their tongues lolling from slavering mouths. They streamed out in a wave before the beastmen running swiftly behind them. Like a deadly tide, they swarmed towards the Bretonnian lines.

Calard had to restrain his urge to drive his heels into Gringolet’s sides, and charge out to meet them head-on. He could see that Bertelis was struggling with the same internal urges.

‘I hate letting them come to us,’ his half-brother said. ‘The peasants will break and flee. Mark my words.’

‘There is nowhere for them to flee,’ remarked one of the knights at their side. Bertelis grunted in response.

More of the enemy were streaming from the trees on all sides, spilling out like arterial blood from a slashed vein.

‘Lady above, but there are a lot of them,’ said Calard.

At the base of the hill, stray arrows were being loosed by the Garamont bowmen, despite the shouted orders to hold. Calard swore, and kicked his steed forward, leaving the formation.

He thundered down the hill, and rode along the front of the lines of peasants. He swung his horse around, his face angry.

‘The next man that looses an arrow before he is ordered to will be cut down, here and now!’ he roared. ‘You will wait for the order!’

He turned to face the enemy, which was racing across the field in a solid mass, and lifted his lance high in the air. The night was lit with hundreds of torches and braziers, and though the moons had not yet risen, the numberless horde of the enemy could be easily picked out.

‘Hold!’ he shouted, his voice carrying over the righteous din. The open ground before the archers had been paced out, and Calard had memorised the distances. The closest enemy was still almost three hundred and fifty yards away. Though an exceptionally strong bowman may be able to fire such a distance, it was too far for the shot to be effective. ‘Hold!’

The enemy closed with sickening speed, far quicker than a man could run, and Calard felt a bead of sweat run down the side of his face. The slavering hounds in front began to outdistance the beastmen behind, racing over the grass with bounding leaps.

Calard blinked the sweat out of his eyes, still holding his lance aloft. The enemy leapt the low scrub bushes that roughly marked three hundred yards distance. He resisted the urge to drop his lance and order the attack. He could see more details on the creatures now: the angry brands that had been seared into the flesh of the monstrous hounds, the bronze-covered tusks that sprouted from the massive jaws of the largest beasts.

‘Draw!’ roared Calard, and the archers drew back their bowstrings, lifting the long weapons high.

The lead war hound, a monster of immense size with a row of horns sprouting from its head, passed a stand of low rocks that marked the two hundred and fifty yard mark.

‘Now!’ he roared, lowering his lance in the direction of the enemy. As one, the bowmen loosed, and hundreds of arrows hissed into the air. It looked like a dense flock of birds streaking high into the sky. Before they reached the fullness of their flight, a second volley was loosed. The third was fired just as the first cloud of arrows struck home.

There were roars of pain as the arrows sliced down into the massed enemy with lethal force. Scores fell as the arrows slammed home, driving through muscle and flesh. The enemy was too far distant for the archers to pick out individual targets, but it didn’t matter. They were so densely packed that almost every arrow found a mark.

The second volley struck, and Calard saw more beasts stumble and fall as the lethal shafts slammed into unprotected necks, heads and shoulders. A pair of arrows had driven into the thick neck of the hound leading the pack, but it was barely slowed.

All around Adhalind’s Seat, thousands of arrows were loosed in those first moments of battle, and countless hundreds of the enemy were felled. Those that did not die were trampled into the ground by those behind them.

Still, on the enemy came, charging through the devastating volleys towards the Bretonnian lines. As the distance closed, the bow fire became even more effective, and innumerable foes were cut down by the relentless storm of arrows. Beasts writhed in agony, pulling themselves forwards with their hands, desperate to be part of the carnage that was about to erupt. The ground was littered with thousands of twitching bodies that struggled to rise, only to be crushed by the hooves and claws of those pressing forward behind them.

Then the first wave of the enemy struck the Bretonnian lines, and the real bloodshed began.

Radegar’s heart was beating fiercely, his breath rapid and shallow as the twisted beasts of the forest screamed towards him. He clenched his hands around the rough-hewn shaft of his polearm, and licked his cracked lips, determined not to show his fear.

It had been a fine day when he had been chosen to join the Garamont soldiery. He didn’t know how old he was, perhaps fourteen, and he had lined up alongside two hundred other young men, trying to stand tall and straight. He had been in awe as he stood beneath the shadow of the grand castle of his lord, and had gaped open-mouthed at the figure of Lord Lutheure, flanked by a dozen knights of the realm, fully garbed in their battle armour.

His heart had raced then as well.

‘Don’t slouch,’ his father had said to him before he had left his home that morning, two hours before dawn, ‘and if you are not chosen, do not return, for we cannot feed you.’

He had travelled by wagon that morning, along with the other hopefuls. Once a year, all the eligible peasants under Garamont’s protection travelled to the castle in the hope of being picked to join the men-at-arms. The wagon had been filled with other boys his age, each one of them dreaming of joining the esteemed ranks of the soldiery.

He had puffed out his chest as the giant, scarred yeoman had stalked in front of the long line of hopefuls, a deep scowl upon his face. Fully half the gathered peasants he had dismissed instantly for being too small or weak from malnutrition. Others were dismissed because of their hunched backs, or because one of their limbs was wasted and useless. Others were sent home because their club-like hands were incapable of holding a weapon, and others because they were plainly simple in the head, drool dribbling from their slack lips.

Unlike his younger brother, who had passed into Morr’s care the previous winter, Radegar was lucky enough to have been born with two arms and two legs, and his hands were fully functional, even though he had six fingers on his left. He was broad-shouldered, though when relaxed they tended to slump inwards, and his arms were strong from hard labour.

Every time the brutal yeoman stalked past, Radegar would pull his shoulders square and stand tall, trying to look as strong and capable as possible. Nervousness had clawed at him as the group was whittled down, and his heart had soared as he was chosen to pass through to the next round of cuts.

The remaining boys had been given wooden staves, and organised into pairs. Radegar had been paired up with a boy from his own village, who was tall for his age. In the bout that had followed, Radegar had knocked the boy senseless. He did not feel any remorse.

He had grinned like an idiot when he had been chosen to join the ranks of the men-at-arms, and he had willingly sworn his oath before the castellan with eleven others that had been deemed worthy.

He had been given five copper coins, and his hands had shook as he held them. He had never even seen such a princely sum of money, let alone held it in his hands. One of the coins was taken from him instantly, to pay for the costs of his burial should he fall in battle. Three others were used to pay for his weapon, his tabard, his leather cap and his board. He had felt seven feet tall when he had first worn the tabard, after he had scrubbed out the blood of its previous owner.

It was Castellan Lutheure’s duty to provide protection for those in his service, and he had fulfilled this commitment by presenting each of the recruits with a long, rectangular shield bearing the Garamont colours and heraldry. They had seen much service already, but Radegar didn’t care. Of course, if he allowed the shield to be damaged or, Shallya forbid, he lost it, he would be taxed accordingly, but Radegar had been too thrilled at receiving his post to be concerned. His final copper coin had gone to pay for training, though he had received two copper bits after his first six months of service. Proudly, he had organised one of them to be given to his family, and the other had gone towards his board.

It had been such a proud day for him, receiving his first pay. Four years had past since then, and now at around eighteen, he was regarded as a veteran. He had fought in two battles, and killed three of his lord’s enemies. In the second battle, he had almost been killed but he had defied death and recovered from his wounds. But he had never had to face a foe such as he faced this day.

The big, scarred yeoman that had selected him four years earlier stood nearby, his perpetual scowl stamped on his face. The man seemed undaunted by anything, and he stood glaring at the approaching enemy, his thick-bladed sword held in his right hand. Even though the weapon was missing its tip and bore more than a hint of rust, that the yeoman was allowed to bear a sword at all was testament to the level of trust placed in him. Radegar would not allow himself to show any fear in front of the man, who he still regarded with a mixture of respect and fear.

More than the presence of this brutal yeoman, however; it was the fact that a knight of the realm stood within their ranks that made Radegar swell with pride and push his fear deep within. The knight’s helmet was high and had a miniature heraldic dragon upon its crest, and his armour gleamed in the flickering light given off by the braziers nearby. Radegar was deeply honoured to be standing alongside one of the nobility, and he swore that he would not fail in his duty. No, it would be a fate far worse than death to quake in fear in front of such a noble knight. Surely, as long as the regal knight stood against their foe, they would hold.

The enemy bore down on them, screaming and roaring, even as hundreds of flights of arrows continued to pepper their ranks from the hillside behind.

‘This is it, boys,’ bellowed the yeoman. ‘Don’t you shame me now, or I’ll cut off yer ears and eat them for breakfast! For Garamont!’

Radegar braced himself. He leant his left shoulder forwards, so that his shield protected him and the man to his left, just as the man to his right protected him. Each of the men-at-arms carried a long polearm, and the spikes of the unwieldy weapons were lowered to create a nigh on impenetrable wall of death.

The first of the gigantic hellhounds leapt between two of the heavy wooden stakes that had been driven into the ground in front of the men-at-arms. Its immense shoulders were covered in mangy, matted fur, and its eyes reflected the flames of the braziers.

It hurled itself at the dragon-helmed knight, and its massive paws slammed into his armoured chest, bowling him backwards even as his sword blade penetrated the beast’s chest. With one savage bite, the knight’s head, helmet and all, was ripped from his shoulders, and blood sprayed out like a fountain. The beast’s thick body was impaled by polearms, but it had done its work, and Radegar felt panic begin to rise within him. It had happened so fast.

He had no time to think, as scores of the massive hounds struck the line. Radegar thrust his polearm forward, taking one of the beasts squarely in the chest. The force of the beast’s momentum knocked him back a step, into the men behind him, and his feet slipped in the mud.

He saw his scowling yeoman hack his blade into the side of the head of another beast, the sword biting deep. Radegar pulled his weapon back, and with a shout he thrust again, feeling his weapon bite into flesh.

The man to his right dropped to his knees as a massive weight dragged his shield low, and in the next instant a snarling beast tore his face off with a snap of its jaws. The axe-head of a polearm slammed down onto the beast’s skull, cracking it like a nut, and it died instantly, blood and brain splattering. Men were shouting in fear, panic and anger, and order began to be lost. More holes were made in the shield-wall as men died, some as their arms were savagely ripped from their sockets by the monstrous hounds and others as massive jaws ripped at their throats, spraying blood wildly.

Radegar shouted wordlessly as he struck. A heavy weight slammed against his shield, and he was pushed backwards again. In that moment, Radegar knew that the line was going to break, and that he was going to die.

A hulking, goat-legged creature appeared before him, its snarling face that of an animal’s, though its eyes burned with feral intelligence. It held a curved blade in one hand, and leapt towards him. Radegar thrust his polearm desperately towards the creature. It swayed aside from the point, grabbed the haft of the polearm in one thick hand and pulled it violently towards it. Radegar was jerked forwards, stumbling off balance towards the beastman.

The beast’s blade flashed, and Radegar screamed as it sliced deep into his shoulder, cleaving muscle and flesh, and striking the bone with crippling force. His weapon dropped from fingers that he could no longer feel, and he fell to the ground before the massive creature. Its stench was overpowering, like rotting meat and urine, and it loomed above him, swinging its murderous blade.

I am dead, thought Radegar. Cloven hooves pounded as the enemy drove over the top of him. He was kicked in the head, and felt one of his legs break as a heavy cloven hoof stamped down upon the limb. Moaning in agony and fear, he waited for the fatal blow to fall, praying to Shallya that it would be swift.

Rough hands gripped him around his armpits, and he cried out in pain. His eyes lolled around in their sockets, and his body was slick with blood, but, for a moment, he thought he was being rescued, carried free of the battle. A glimmer of hope flickered within him.

That hope was dashed as his eyes came into focus. He was being dragged away from the Bretonnian lines.

An animal groan of panic escaped his lips, and he began to fight against the stinking creature hauling him away. He kicked out and thrashed around. Hands slick with his blood slipped, and Radegar was dropped heavily to the ground. There was an angry snarl, and a hoof struck him in the side of the head. He tasted blood in his mouth, and spat out shattered teeth.

The beast grabbed him around his broken leg, and began dragging him backwards through the mud, and he screamed again. His shield, the precious shield bearing the honourable heraldry of Garamont, was still attached to his arm, and it carved a furrow in the earth behind him.

Then, blessedly, he was released from his torment as he slipped into unconsciousness.

‘What in the Lady’s name are they doing?’ breathed Calard in horror. Scores of men-at-arms were being hauled away from the front line by the beastmen. They were being dragged kicking and screaming back towards the distant tree line, where the monstrous tall beast stood pacing back and forth like a caged animal, surrounded by its heavily armoured guard.

He had no time to consider the grim fate of these men, however, as trumpets blared, and the order to charge was declared.

Calard slammed down the visor of his simple, unadorned helmet and kicked Gringolet into a gallop.

All around Adhalind’s Seat, knights charged.

The ranks of the men-at-arms opened up before the knights errant, and they charged through the gap. They covered fifty yards in seconds, and Calard felt the thrill of battle wash over him.

Beastmen streamed into the gap created by the parting ranks of the Bretonnian infantry, and lances were lowered. Tensing for the impact, Calard picked his target, a hulking brute with horns spiralling from its forehead, wielding a pair of rusted cleavers.

The knights ploughed into the enemy, and Calard’s lance took his foe squarely in the chest, punching through its ribcage. It fell to the ground, blood pumping from the wound, tearing the lance from Calard’s hands, and his sword flashed into his hand in an instant.

Swinging the blade in a low arc, Calard carved a bloody slash across the neck of another enemy, and it fell with a scream, even as another lance tore through its shoulder, smashing it to the ground.

On the knights errant charged, driving through the enemy ranks and smashing them aside. Spears and blades glanced off shields and armour, and dozens of beastmen were crushed to the ground, trampled into pulp beneath the hooves of the destriers. The ground trembled beneath the charge of the knights. Nothing could stand in their path.

Surging through the press, the formation swung to the north, riding hard in front of the line of angled stakes, tearing through the enemy pushing forwards there. Faced with enemies on two sides, the beastmen fought desperately, many of them turning towards this new threat only to be cut down by the men-at-arms that, at that moment, surged forward through the stakes, stabbing and cutting.

Hundreds more beastmen surged forwards at the knights, screaming as they ran, covering the ground with swift leaps and bounds. They came on in an endless tide, and the air was filled with their braying roars.

Calard shattered the horns and skull of another beast with a downward strike, and reeled backwards in the saddle as a blade slammed into his shield, almost knocking him from the saddle. He fought for balance, his arm tingling from the impact, but remained in tight formation with the other knights. The knights errant swung around in a wide arc, cutting and killing, struggling to maintain their impetus.

A monstrous form burst through the tide of enemies, tossing beastmen aside in its eagerness to kill. Its immense, mutated form was covered in spines of bone and snapping jaws, and rents in its flesh gaped open, exposing countless mouths and tongues that writhed like serpents. It trailed lengths of chain behind it, and rampaged forwards, needing no goading now that the scent of blood was heavy in the air. A myriad of blood-shot eyes on stalks swung towards the knights, and it screamed in pain and bloodlust, the sound ripping forth from half a dozen throats. With a shout, the knights angled towards the monstrosity, cutting down the savage beastmen in their path.

A thick neck of glistening, exposed muscle burst from within the hulking mass, and snapping jaws closed around the neck of a horse, even as five lances drove home into the beast. Arms ending in bony spurs punched forward, skewering knights and tearing them from their saddles, and lashing tentacles wrapped around steeds, burrowing through flesh and eye-sockets, dragging them down.

Calard slashed with his sword, severing half a dozen eyestalks that spurted black, hissing blood as they were cut, and the remaining eyes retracted within the monstrous creature’s body. More lances and swords plunged into its malformed bulk, and its lifeblood gushed forth in a torrent, spurting from a dozen wounds.

It flopped to the ground, thrashing madly in its death spasms, killing another pair of knights as it died. A spear smashed into the side of Calard’s helmet, and he reeled, his ears ringing, and he saw scores of beastmen closing in around them. He kicked Gringolet forward with a shout, and the knights were then galloping clear, leaving the dying monstrosity behind them.

A horse collapsed as a swinging axe chopped its legs from beneath it, and it screamed as it fell, the knight borne upon the beast sailing into the air. The knight directly behind the fallen warhorse had no time to react, and his steed broke its front legs as it stumbled over the flailing beast. The fallen knights were set upon instantly by savage beastmen, their helmets caved in with powerful blows.

Galloping directly towards Adhalind’s Seat, the massed forces of the enemy scattering before them, the knights errant urged their steeds on. The men-at-arms again parted before them, and they thundered through the gap. The ranks closed behind them, and it was only then that Calard saw how many of his comrades had fallen.

Suddenly fearful, he glanced around to see his brother. Bertelis was there, at his side, his armour splattered with blood, and he exhaled in relief. Lifting his visor, Bertelis gave him a savage grin.

Bloodied, the knights errant cantered up the hillside, and wheeled around to face the battlefield once more. Peasants ran forwards, handing fresh lances to them, and passing them flagons of water.

Hundreds of beastmen were still streaming from the trees in a relentless, never ending swarm, and Calard felt a stab of panic. He had barely survived the first charge, but it had made virtually no impact on the enemy ranks. Breathing heavily, he took a sip of water, before passing the skin back to a peasant and making ready for another charge. It was going to be a long night.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Chlod swore again, tears of unrestrained terror running down his blotchy cheeks. He was pushed roughly from behind, and he stumbled forward. There was no way he could see that he could get out of this, and he cursed himself for a fool. He had thought he was so clever in seeking refuge amongst the pilgrims, but now he saw that he had doomed himself.

He was in the middle of the group of fervent men, being bustled and pushed from all sides. He could not have fought his way clear of them if he tried, which in fact, he had.

He had been enjoying the hospitality of the pilgrims and the sudden esteem he had gained since he had been ‘healed’ of his feined blindness. He had eaten better than he had done in weeks, happy to speak loudly of the miracle he had received in exchange for food and cheap wine. He had even accepted the heavy, spiked club that he had been given, thinking that, if nothing else, it could be sold or traded at a later date.

He had certainly not expected to be physically dragged into battle by the fervent pilgrims. They were madmen, he had decided; insane, deluded madmen obsessed with achieving recognition, however slight, from the object of their idolisation. They would gladly throw themselves onto the swords of the enemy if they thought that it would garner a nod from the grail knight, and indeed he had seen several individuals do just that.

The pilgrims did everything they could to be noticed by the grail knight. They cooked and cleaned for him, doted on his every word, and spit-polished his armour and boots, under the watchful eyes of his servants and squires to ensure they did not make off with anything. They threw flowers before him, and proclaimed his good deeds wherever he travelled. They immortalised him in song, and his every pronouncement, however mundane, was memorised and deemed as sacred testament.

The grail knight tolerated them at best, and did not acknowledge their presence in the slightest. So, when he had approached the pilgrims and said the words, ‘Gather your weapons. We fight the enemies of Bretonnia this day,’ his words were greeted with impassioned enthusiasm and fanatical devotion.

Chlod had never been in a battle before, not like this, and it terrified him. The screams of the dying and the brutal clash of weapons, the roars of the enemy and even the frenzied cries of the pilgrims, all filled him with terror.

Short even for a peasant, a fact not aided by his pronounced hump and stooped posture, he could see barely a thing, except for the back of those in front of him. Of the enemy he had seen no sign, but he could hear their savage roars and braying shouts, and he was not ashamed to feel his bladder loosen, and warmth run down his legs.

The pilgrims pushed and shoved, desperately trying to get to the front of the mayhem. Chlod tried to squirm and muscle his way further back, away from the front line, but, despite all his efforts, he was carried forwards, driven closer and closer to the terrifying sounds of slaughter.

Blood splattered into his face. The crowd surged forwards again, and Chlod could not help but trample over a fallen man, who screamed and reached out for him. Fearing that he would be dragged down under the surging crowd, Chlod knocked away the man’s grabbing hands with the base of his spiked club, breaking his fingers.

Then he saw the enemy, and he thought he would die on the spot from sheer panic. Taller by far than any of the peasants, they had the heads of goats twisted into hellish, daemonic visages, sharp teeth protruding from bleating mouths.

They slashed with axes and swords, dismembering the pilgrims with savage fury. He saw one of them fall, a shattered sword stabbing into its neck, and blood-drenched pilgrims fell upon it in a fury, stabbing with knives and hacking with axes.

For each of the enemy that fell, three or more of the devout, fanatical peasants were slain. The enemy was cleaving through the tightly-packed ranks of the peasants like scythes through wheat, and Chlod pushed back away from them with all his strength.

Only a few men stood between him and the foe, but try as he might, he could not pull away from them. Screaming incoherently, or bellowing the name of Reolus, the peasants surged forwards once more, and Chlod was driven closer to the enemy than ever.

An axe sang through the air and slammed into the neck of the man in front of him, and arterial blood sprayed across his uneven features. He could taste the hot blood on his lips, and could smell it in his nostrils. Then the man fell. The beastman struggled with its axe, the blade lodged between two vertebrae, and with a shout, the man next to Chlod rammed his rusted, scavenged sword into its belly. A second blade stabbed into its heavily muscled thigh, and it swung its arm around, smashing its shield into the face of one of its attackers, breaking the pilgrim’s jaw and half-ripping it from his face.

A powerful shove propelled Chlod towards the beast, just as it managed to tear its axe free of the corpse on the ground. With a shout of sheer terror, he lifted his spiked club in both hands and slammed it into the creature’s head. It fell to its knees, but was still alive and dangerous, and so Chlod rammed his club into its face again, knocking it backwards.

Blood covered his face, and he trembled uncontrollably. Then he was driven forwards once again by the surging crowd, and Chlod’s voice joined with the chorus of manic screams.

Dieter Weschler, captain within the Reikland state army and second cousin once removed from Emperor Karl Franz, had decided that he hated Bretonnia. He had an official function and duty to perform here, however, and was careful to maintain an air of civility. His duty had been given to him by the Emperor, and he would not allow his feelings and prejudices to betray him.

‘A show of solidarity between neighbouring nations,’ he had been told.

The nobles of this land were pompous and arrogant, and their peasants were downtrodden and lived in despicable, crushing poverty. How a nation could laud itself as being honourable while it was clearly so corrupt was beyond him. Behind the carefully constructed veneer of honourable conduct, this land was decaying and crumbling, self-centred and self-aggrandising.

What’s more, he would probably die fighting alongside them. It was a galling thought.

The pistol in his hand boomed as its wheel-lock mechanism created the spark that ignited the black powder, and the back of a beastman’s head exploded outwards in a spray of shattered bone and gore. Quickly holstering the precious weapon, he smoothly drew another.

Hundreds of knights were locked in battle beyond the rows of stakes in the ground, and he could see that if they were not supported, they would be surrounded and mercilessly cut down in moments. Dieter swore at the foolishness and arrogance of the knights. Could they not see that as soon as their momentum slowed, they were going to be surrounded and butchered?

Battle instincts that had been honed through years of service as an infantry sergeant, before he had been elevated to captain, reared within him.

‘Sound the advance,’ he ordered the peasant holding a rusted horn in his shaking hands. The man had only just taken on the role, after the head of the previous musician had been hacked from his shoulders only moments earlier. Dieter had slain the offending beast, and handed this witless peasant the instrument.

‘Sound the advance,’ he repeated. The man just stared at him blankly, and then lifted the horn to his mouth. His face went red with exertion, but his enthusiasm did not match the sound coming from the instrument. It sounded like a baby blowing bubbles of spit.

‘Oh, for Sigmar’s sake,’ snapped Dieter. He lifted his sabre up high in to the air before him. ‘Forward!’ he roared, his voice, honed on the parade ground, easily carrying over the din of battle. He stepped forwards into the breach as the enemy gathered their strength beyond the wall of deadly stakes.

Nobody followed his move, and he cursed himself for a fool. These simple peasants could not understand Reikspiel, the language of the Empire. He repeated his order, this time bellowing it in the Bretonnian tongue.

They were the worst soldiers that he had ever led, even worse than the stubborn Middenlanders. At least the northern men could fight, even if they questioned every order he gave them. These men-at-arms were ill-disciplined and poorly equipped, and had clearly received only rudimentary training. They were not fit to be soldiers at all, in Dieter’s mind, but then he was not surprised. The nobility were utterly obsessed with fighting on horseback, and gave little thought to the strategic use of infantry, no matter the fighting conditions or the foe.

‘Forward, damn you!’ shouted Dieter, his generally stoic manner cracking, and finally the men-at-arms began to advance.

They marched out between the angled stakes, pushing past dozens of impaled bodies. So thick had been the crush of the enemy charging at their line that scores of them had run blindly onto the fire-hardened spikes. Dieter dispatched a twitching, goat-headed creature that was trying to pull itself off a stake with a slashing cut that severed its spine.

Some fifty paces ahead, two formations of knights were locked in deadly combat as they fought vainly to ride free. They had lost all momentum, however, and were being surrounded by ever more enemy warriors, who were dragging them from their saddles and butchering them with savage, chopping blows.

‘Charge them!’ roared Dieter, and he ran forwards, praying to Sigmar that the men-at-arms were following.

Montcadas had clearly been uneasy when Dieter had requested to fight alongside the infantry. In truth, it was clear that the baron had not wished Dieter to fight at all, for fear of the political repercussions if he died while under Bretonnian hospitality.

‘The Emperor would wish me to fight alongside his Bretonnian brothers,’ Dieter had replied. ‘Just as I know that if ever the Empire was in need of aid, Bretonnia would support it.’

In truth, Dieter found all the politics wearing, and he longed to return to his former, simpler life as an officer in the state army of Reikland. This was certainly a far cry from the disciplined ranks of halberdiers he had commanded, but one could not always choose one’s tools.

The simple peasants had been frightened by his wheel-lock weapons, and had recoiled back from him as he had fired the handgun, crafted by the finest engineers of Nuln. The ignorant savages had thought it some form of witchcraft.

Dieter charged towards the swelling mass of unruly creatures surrounding the beleaguered knights. Levelling one of his pistols, he fired, and an enemy was sent crashing backwards, its skull pierced by the lead shot. With a shout, he reached the enemy, and slashed his sabre across the chest of one of the hulking beasts.

The men-at-arms struck then, swinging their polearms into the enemy with more desperation than skill. He saw several beasts go down, but many more turned aside the clumsy blows with swords and shields, only to tear into the peasants with brutal savagery, cutting then down in swathes.

Still, there were over a hundred peasants in the formation, and they pushed forwards relentlessly, stabbing and cutting. They took down perhaps one beast for every three of their number that fell. It was a staggeringly poor performance, but the charge was having the desired effect.

With the weight of numbers supporting them, the knights were finally able to kick their steeds free of the deadly melee, though the ground was littered with the corpses of those who had not been so lucky.

The men-at-arms were left unsupported, and Dieter knew that they would break at any moment. They were poor warriors at best, and were being slaughtered by the monstrous beasts. Dieter was walking steadily backwards, his sabre flashing left and right defensively as the enemy surged forwards.

He knew there would be no chance of an ordered retreat, and he saw the fear and panic in the eyes of the men around him. Any moment now, their resolve would be shattered. It would start with just one man turning and running, and then all semblance of order would be lost.

An axe swung at his head, and he ducked backwards, stumbling into a peasant and almost falling. A jagged spearhead was thrust towards his lacquered black breastplate, and he turned it aside with a deft parry. His blade flashed back in a lightning riposte that stabbed into the beast’s groin, and blood sprayed.

Bellowing roars echoed deafeningly over the already horrendous din, and Dieter saw massive creatures of muscle and horn rampage towards the faltering line of men-at-arms.

Half again as tall as the largest of the peasants, these behemoths smashed aside their smaller kin in their lust to kill. They broke limbs and shattered bones, their giant axes and cleavers cutting through any that were too slow to get out of their way. Snorting and stamping, the minotaurs lowered their heads and charged through the press, crushing bodies under their cloven hooves, and throwing beastmen over their shoulders with dipping sweeps of their heavy heads.

The resolve of the men-at-arms was shattered, like a delicate crystal goblet beneath a hammer blow. The peasant soldiers turned and fled, scrabbling over each other in their blind rout.

Dieter was not a stupid man, and he had no intention of throwing his life away for some pointless show of bravery. While the foolish Bretonnian nobility may have seen it as a gross display of dishonour, Dieter turned and ran for his life.

Lord Reolus lowered his glowing lance and charged. He thundered over the rough ground, eyes blazing with holy fury as he focused on the phalanx of rampaging bull-headed monsters.

He aimed the tip of the sacred lance, Arandyal, at the neck of the closest of the hulking creatures as it ploughed into the infantry. It swung its lowered head sideways, impaling one man upon its bronze-tipped horns. With a flick of its head, it sent the man spiralling up into the air like a rag-doll. As the peasant came tumbling down, the minotaur’s giant axe arced up to meet him. The axe cleaved through flesh and spine, hacking the man in two.

Greedily, the towering beast grabbed the upper half of the fallen man in one hand, lifting it up to its mouth to drink of the blood gushing from the terrible wound. Rivulets of hot crimson ran down the beast’s neck and chest, its tongue squirming like a monstrous worm in the entrails of its prey. Engrossed in its gory feast, it saw the approach of Reolus and his knights too late.

Arandyal speared towards the minotaur’s thick neck, but, with inhuman speed, it twisted, swinging its axe up to shatter the weapon. Reacting with the speed of a darting snake, Reolus rolled his wrist, and the tip of his lance flicked deftly in a tight circle, avoiding the axe and leaving a lingering arc of light in its wake.

The lance ripped the minotaur’s throat out, blood boiling as it came into contact with the sacred weapon. Arteries pumped blood from the fatal wound like geysers. It dropped to its knees, hands clutching at the wound, and Reolus smashed his sword, wielded in his left hand, through its skull.

The knights thundered on. More of the towering beasts turned to face the charge. So tall were they that they looked down upon the knights, even though they were sitting astride their massive steeds. With a roar, they leapt forwards to meet the charging knights.

With staggering power, one of them hacked its axe into the neck of a destrier, ignoring the lance that plunged deep into its thick chest. The axe-head tore through metal barding and flesh, severing the horse’s spine and sending its head flying. The knight riding the brutally slain horse was thrown sideways, to be crushed by his falling, headless, steed.

Another of the beasts stood up to the charge, its massive hand closing around the neck of another steed, which it hurled to the side contemptuously. Then it was struck by a pair of lances, staggered backwards and was instantly lost beneath the thundering hooves of the charging horses.

Two more beasts died beneath Reolus’s flashing weapons. Gore sprayed across his gleaming armour and tabard, but it ran off him like oil, leaving him unsullied by their foul heart-blood. One by one, the knights around him were smashed from their saddles. Arms were cleaved from shoulders, and men fell, screaming. Clubs the size of men crushed heads, and horses screamed as heavy blows cleaved deep into their flesh.

Still, no weapon came close to touching Reolus. He was like a god of war, cutting down everything in his path.

He was, however, but one man.

Oblivious or uncaring of the wooden stakes before them, consumed with bloodlust, a trio of minotaurs ploughed on after the fleeing men-at-arms. Reolus cut one of them down, his lance ripping through the tight muscles of its thigh, sending it crashing to the ground. Another of the beasts ran straight onto the wall of wooden stakes set deep in the ground, impaling itself, while the smaller and more agile humans slipped between the deadly spikes. Uncaring, the creature pushed forwards, legs pumping like pistons, and the thick stake drove deep into its gut.

The last of the beasts smashed the stakes aside with sweeps of its twin weapons and ran on, revelling in the slaughter as it continued its butchery. Beastmen streamed through the gap, whooping and roaring as they set about with abandon, chasing after terrified men and hacking them down with brutal blows to the backs of their heads.

Fighting with ferocious passion, Reolus struck down everything that drew within range of his deadly weapons. He fought like a man possessed, but the press of bodies around him was too great, even for him.

Hundreds of men were slaughtered before order was restored. His comrades all slain and his steed dead, pierced by a dozen blades, Reolus stood alone in the breach in the Bretonnian lines, killing everything that came within range of his deadly blade.

Baron Montcadas led the counterattack against the flood of enemies that had broken through, his spiked morning star smashing foes aside desperately. He would have fallen too, his knights surrounded and outnumbered, had not Dieter Weschler rallied the panicked men-at-arms and turned upon their attackers. At last, the enemies within the camp were cut down, though the destruction they had wrought in those frantic few minutes was staggering.

With cold efficiency, the Empire captain swiftly reorganised the men-at-arms, and personally led the charge that pushed the enemy back from where they had surrounded the grail knight Reolus.

Even as order was restored, the beastmen breached the Bretonnian lines in two other places, streaming through and slaughtering the men-at-arms desperately trying to hold back the tide of enemies.

Baron Montcadas knew that the hill could not be held indefinitely. Already, they had held for far longer than could have been expected, so great were the enemy numbers. The end was not far off.

Anara let her spirit soar free, and relished the familiar sensation as she left her earthly shell behind. She felt the winds of magic buffet her, but focused her mind and regained control, so that she rode the ethereal winds like a bird on the breeze.

The battlefield spread out below her like a map as she soared into the night sky. The combatants surged back and forth like tiny ants, and she watched the mesmerising patterns formed by the ebb and flow of battle.

She felt every death like a stabbing pain in her breast. Emotions flowed through her from below, and she felt keenly the exhilaration, terror, despair and savage joy of the knights as they killed and were killed. With her spirit-eyes she could see the silvery glow of pride and faith shielding them, and she thanked the Lady for her protection. The grail knight Reolus blazed with the intensity of the sun, the power of his faith almost blinding, and the enemy fell back from him, for even in their mortal, blind states they could sense his power.

From the enemy, she felt only rage, bloodlust and deep, all-encompassing hatred. So overpowering was the hatred that it struck her like a physical blow, and her concentration wavered for an instant. Her physical eyes flickered, and she saw the battlefield through her mortal eyes for a second before she regained control and surrounded herself with the healing light of the Lady.

She wept tears of the spirit for the tortured forest that had been corrupted by the enemy, feeling its pain and despair.

Something drew her attention, and her spirit flew low over the battlefield; dread, loathing and pity mixed within her. She came to the edge of he forest to the west, where the enemy leader stood. She flew close, looking upon him with invisible eyes that saw far more than those of flesh and blood.

Its minions were bringing men to it, dragging them forward like offerings to some brutal, primal deity. The beast lifted each of the victims to its eyes, gazing upon them intently, sniffing their scent. It seemed, however, that none of the men was what the creature sought, and it angrily stabbed its long, curving dagger into each man’s neck, before tossing them aside like refuse. Already, there was a great pile of the dead and dying behind the beast, and scores more sacrifices were being dragged forward.

Darkness swirled around the creature like a living thing, fuelled by the intense hatred that the beast exuded. Anara was repulsed, and fought the urge to flee, but she peered deeper, though it caused her pain, looking past the wall of anger.

She saw self-loathing, disgust and fear there, but there was something more, something that was the true essence of this creature’s power: betrayal, abandonment, and the intense, all-consuming need for vengeance.

That was all it lived for, Anara realised, pitying the creature. Vengeance against the one that had done it wrong was what drove it.

There was something else too: release. It desired release.

The creature looked up suddenly, and Anara reeled backwards in shock, for the creature saw her. Its eyes blazed with blue witch-fire, and it extended its will towards her, a writhing mass of black tentacles invisible to all but those who saw with the eyes of the spirit.

One of the oily, black, invisible appendages brushed against her spirit-arm and the ethereal limb went numb. It gripped her with immense strength, and she cried out, panic rising suddenly. The mass of black, tentacles surged towards her.

Blindly, she struck out, and white light flared. The grip on her arm relaxed, and Anara fled, streaming across the battlefield towards her body, feeling the writhing black will of the creature pursuing her.

Anara gasped, and sucked in a lungful of air as she was jolted back into the physical realm, almost slipping from the back of her majestic, white mare.

‘Damsel Anara, are you all right?’ asked Montcadas urgently. She ignored him, and pulled up the flowing sleeve of her arm. An angry red welt was rising there upon her flawless, ivory skin, and she hissed with pain. It felt like a scalding brand had been pressed against her skin.

Numbly, she heard the baron shouting for his aides to bring water and his battle surgeon.

She knew that the beast would not rest until its vengeance was achieved, and such was its overpowering will, that it was able to dominate and control the lesser beasts of the wild woods. While it lived, the beasts would never cease their attacks against Bretonnia.

The creature was even capable of commanding the woodland, dominating it to its corrupt will. It commanded the forests in a way unlike the fey that dwelt in the holy forest of Loren. Their magic was pure and in harmony with the natural world. This creature’s power was foul and brutal, filled with anger and cruelty.

The vision came to her unbidden. She saw the lands overrun with tortured forests. They were filled with sickness, like pus-filled boils, and the dead were sprawled upon the ground, rotting to feed the agonised roots. She saw castles and the great cities destroyed and smoking, covered in twisted briars and thorns, and skulls within helmets grinned at her. The land was dead, and the Lady was fading into nothingness.

At last, the vision began to fade, and she opened her eyes. All that she had seen would come to pass if the beast did not enact its vengeance. Unless…

‘The beast must die,’ she breathed.

Donegar licked his lips as he saw the telltale red and blue tabard and shield that marked his target.

‘A stray arrow missing its mark in the heat of battle,’ the knight had said as he handed Donegar the coin. ‘It is a tragedy, but such things happen. No blame will befall you, you have my word. No one will know from which bow the arrow was fired.’ The knight’s face was obscured by his helmet, and he wore a tabard of plain cloth. There was nothing about the knight that gave any hint to his identity, save his voice, which muffled as it was, held a recognisably Bastonnian accent.

‘Blue and red, with a white dragon,’ the knight had repeated, pointing at him with one armoured finger. ‘There will be another coin for you once the deed is done. Such a tragedy,’ he said mockingly, ‘a young knight killed by a stray arrow.’

Then the man had left, and Donegar had stared at the coin. With it, he could feed his starving children for a year.

He had half hoped that the knight with the red and blue heraldry would die in battle. He would not be able to claim the second promised coin, but he would not have to live with being a murderer. However, it had not happened thus far. Perhaps the young knight was protected by the Lady? Doubt gripped him. He had no wish to be cursed by the goddess of the nobility.

Then the thought of a second coin filled his mind. With it, he could afford to pay the wise woman to tend to his wife, who was dying of the wasting sickness.

The villein shouted his order, and the regiment lifted their bows high into the air once more, fifty arrows knocked to strings. They were the last of the shafts. Two more volleys, and they would all be expended.

Donegar pulled the string back to his cheek, the arrow nocked and ready to be loosed.

He lowered his aim, sighting on the group of knights errant that were breaking away from the battle and riding back towards the hill. He licked his lips once more, feeling sick in his stomach, but thinking only of his family.

Breathing heavily, Calard cut his way free of the enemy and rode clear. His armour was dented and pierced in a dozen places, and he had cast off his helmet after he had sustained a ringing blow to his head that had wrenched the helm out of shape and partially obscured his vision.

Parts of his chainmail hung in loose shreds, the links having been shattered by swords and axes, and the blue and red shield that proudly bore his personal heraldry was battered and dented. Gringolet sported dozens of cuts and wounds, but none of them were deep, the destrier’s plate and chain barding having taken the brunt of the damage, though the proud red and blue caparison was torn in dozens of places.

Bertelis too bore similar damage, and blood was leaking from a wound he had taken on his upper arm from a blow that had torn through his plate mail. The battle had raged for hours, and Calard had seen dozens of young men slain, never to gain their full knighthood.

No more than half a dozen knights remained in the formation of knights errant that Calard had started the battle fighting alongside, and they had been joined by the shattered remnants of other under-strength regiments. He had not known most of the knights, and one of them, curiously, bore no heraldry. His shield had been painted plain white, and he kept his helmet firmly on his head, even during the short moments of respite. Calard had recognised one of the knights, however, and he had glared hatefully as Maloric of Sangasse had joined their ranks.

The slim young knight was equally displeased, but neither of them wished to argue with their superiors. Much to Calard’s irritation, Maloric had acquitted himself well, killing with cold, swift efficiency. The presence of the Sangasse noble had made Calard fight with renewed vigour, determined not to be outshone by his pale-skinned rival.

‘How pleased I am to see you still alive, Garamont,’ said Maloric, flicking up his visor as they broke combat, his voice thick with sarcasm.

‘I thank the Lady that you were not knocked from the saddle, dear Sangasse,’ snapped back Calard. He tugged on Gringolet’s reins sharply, and pulled to the back of the formation, his thoughts dark. Bertelis, riding alongside him, went to drop back with him, but Calard stopped him with a curt word.

He dearly wished to lash out at the bastard Sangasse noble, and did not trust himself to remain at his side. The Baron Montcadas’s orders had been strict, and he was not going to allow his hot-headedness to bring dishonour to his family by breaking his word.

He didn’t see the arrow as it hissed through the air towards him. It struck him in the shoulder just above the top of his shield and he was knocked backwards out of the saddle.

He hit the ground hard, and all the air was driven from his lungs. The shaft had punched straight through his plate armour, and he groaned in pain.

Ahead, the knights errant rode on, oblivious to his fall.

The knight bearing no heraldry turned in the saddle and saw Calard lying motionless on the ground. A riderless grey steed was nuzzling at his body. The knight grinned.

She would be pleased. He felt suddenly aroused at the thought. Long had he desired her, and long had she teased and taunted him, maintaining a civil distance between them. Now, having done as she wished, she would be his. That had been the promise.

His grin faded as he saw the young Garamont noble push himself to his knees, one hand clamped around the arrow protruding from his shoulder. The knight cursed. It had not been a killing blow.

Pulling on his reins sharply, he peeled off from the formation and began riding towards the fallen knight. Thinking help was coming for him, Calard lifted his hand in a wave and struggled to his feet.

The knight snarled, and kicked his steed into a gallop, his fingers clenching hard around the hilt of his sword.

Calard saw the knight riding towards him, and pushed to his feet. The arrow hurt like hell, and he winced.

He looked up at the knight riding towards him. The knight flourished his sword, and kicked his steed into a charge.

Thinking the enemy was closing behind him, he swung around, but there was no enemy nearby. He turned around and froze for a second, not comprehending what was happening.

The knight was not slowing down, and Calard felt a chill run down his spine. He threw a glance left and right, seeking cover, but there was none. He felt helpless, having dropped his sword when the arrow had struck. The thunder of hooves shook the ground beneath his feet.

The sword flashed down towards him, and Calard threw himself desperately to the side, wincing at the pain in his shoulder as the arrow still imbedded in his flesh scraped bone. The sword sliced through the air, an inch away from him. The knight wheeled around sharply, and kicked his steed forward for another pass. He knew he would be lucky to avoid another attack.

Calard staggered backwards, keeping his eyes locked on the treacherous knight before him. Some vassal of Sangasse, no doubt, he thought venomously.

Then a pair of knights raced past him, one on either side, galloping hard from behind him. He recognised their heraldry: Bertelis and… Gunthar!

The charging knight pulled his steed to one side, his helmet turning left and right as he sought escape. The enemy was surging forwards once more, racing across the churned up earth towards them. There was nowhere for the knight to flee.

Bertelis and Gunthar bore down on him, and he kicked his steed forwards once more, to meet them head on.

His sword arced down towards the weapon master’s head, and Calard saw Gunthar’s sword flash. Then Gunthar was past the knight, who was tumbling to the ground. Calard had not even seen the blow, so fast had it been performed.

A wet nose nuzzled at Calard.

‘Good horse,’ he said.

Gunthar rode to Calard’s side, and flicked up his visor. His face was pale and wan, but his eyes were full of concern. The enemy was no more than a hundred paces distant, and closing fast.

‘Can you ride?’ he asked quickly, and Calard nodded. He pulled himself painfully into the saddle.

‘Bertelis!’ bellowed Gunthar. ‘Leave him! We have to ride, now!’

Bertelis ignored the shout, and slid from the saddle, consumed with rage. He stalked towards the fallen knight, who was scrabbling backwards, leaving a smear of blood beneath him. Gunthar’s wound had been fatal, but the knight was not dead yet.

‘Traitorous whoreson,’ spat Bertelis. He kicked the knight’s sword away from him, sending it spinning across the ground, and held the point of his blade to the knight’s neck.

‘Show your face before I kill you, dog,’ he spat. When the knight made no move to remove his helmet, Bertelis reversed the grip on his sword and plunged it two-handed down into the knight’s thigh.

The man screamed in agony, and Bertelis smiled.

As the cry faded away, he heard Gunthar call to him again. Looking up, he saw that the enemy was closing fast.

Dropping to his knees, he scrabbled at the man’s helmet. If it could be proven that it was one of Sangasse’s men, then the baron must surely have to take action against Maloric.

With a wrench, he pulled the helmet free, and gasped as he stared down at the familiar face.

‘Tanebourc,’ he breathed in shock. He stood up and staggered back a step, confusion and horror on his face.

‘Kill me, boy!’ said Tanebourc desperately. ‘Don’t leave me to the beasts!’

Staggering backwards, his eyes haunted, Bertelis ignored the man’s pleas and pulled himself into the saddle.

‘Kill me!’ roared Tanebourc again.

The horde of the enemies were closing fast, and with a final glance Bertelis rode away from Tanebourc. He heard the knight’s tortured cries escalate as the hateful tide of Chaotic creatures swarmed over him, and rode hard after Calard and Gunthar.

A lance of knights pounded down the hill past him, charging into the packed beastman forces, but Bertelis barely registered them.

Tanebourc was his mother’s favourite, there was no secret about that, and Bertelis knew that the man would do anything for her. If he had succeeded in killing Calard as he had intended, then he, Bertelis, his mother’s only son, would have been the heir of Garamont.

His mind whirled. Surely his mother would never stoop so low? She could be single-minded, and had a barbed tongue, but she was no murderer. Was she?

‘Who was it?’ Gunthar asked him later, his voice grim.

‘I didn’t recognise him,’ Bertelis said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Montcadas was bloody and weary beyond words. For three hours, the Bretonnian lines had endured constant attack, and he had no idea how many knights he had lost. More than half, certainly, and the casualty rate amongst the peasants had been even more severe.

They had exhausted their supply of arrows almost an hour earlier, and the peasant levy of bowmen was now forced to fight with knives and cudgels alongside the decimated ranks of men-at-arms.

The southern half of Adhalind’s Seat had fallen, and it was only a matter of time before the hill was completely overrun, an hour at most.

His arms felt leaden, and the spiked head of his morning star was thick with concealed gore.

‘Its will is driving the beasts,’ Anara had said, her voice distant and vague, her eyes fey and lost. ‘Kill it and the attack will falter.’

‘Then we kill it,’ he had replied, wearily. His orders had been passed, and every knight still fit to ride was gathered together for one final throw of the dice. They would take the fight to the monstrous creature leading the beasts, and see it killed, or die to a man in the attempt.

‘Lift the standard high,’ said Montcadas. His banner bearer was as weary as him, but he nodded grimly. All the knights around him were exhausted. Only the shining, silent figure of Reolus seemed beyond such mortal concerns. Even Anara looked wan and tired, dark circles ringing her eyes.

This is it then, he thought, a desperate last charge to slay the beast leading the enemy. Montcadas snorted. It was the stuff of legends, and with a grail knight leading and a damsel of the Lady with them, it seemed like the kind of heroic charge that the bards would sing of for generations, if they were victorious. If they were not, then no one would remember them.

The enemy warlord was out in the darkness, at the fringe of the tortured, unnatural forest to the north-east, the damsel had said. So, it was in that direction that the knights were preparing to make the final charge. Only a skeleton defence would be left to hold against the attacks that continued unabated against the hilltop.

It would be a glorious charge, over two hundred knights arranged in a solid wedge, with he and Reolus at its tip.

Wind whipped at the heavy fabric of the banner as it was lifted high. ‘Sound the horns,’ said Baron Montcadas.

A single note, as clear and sharp as a freshly-forged, virgin sword blade cut through the air.

‘May the Lady grant us the strength to finish this,’ breathed Montcadas.

Calard’s heart raced as he heard the signal. He was positioned towards the edge of the northern-most wing of the thick wedge of knights, and, though he bristled that he was not closer to the apex of the attack, just to be riding in such august company made him swell with pride.

‘Be strong,’ he said to his weary steed, Gringolet. ‘Just one last charge.’

Had it not been nearing midnight and the battlefield swathed in darkness, the charge would have been an awesome sight, every last living knight riding forth in one final, desperate attack.

He prayed that he would make a good account of himself, and that somehow his father would hear of it.

Calard urged Gringolet forwards with a kick, the mighty grey reacting instantly to his spurs.

His weariness and the pain of his injuries were forgotten as he rode towards the enemy. Though he knew that he would almost certainly die, he felt suddenly powerful, invincible, like one of the companions of Gilles le Breton, whose deeds were recounted in ballad and song.

The arrow had been painfully drawn from his shoulder, and the wound was heavily bandaged, allowing him little freedom of movement. Thankfully, it had struck him on his left side, for if it had been his right he would have been unable to couch a lance or swing a sword. The shaft had pierced the muscle just below the shoulder joint, punching straight through his thick plate armour, and he thanked the Lady that it was not a more serious wound. It was of course impossible to determine who had shot the arrow. A fluke accident perhaps, but a niggling doubt remained. An attempt had already been made on his life, and it made sense that having failed in his first attempt, Maloric would make another.

That Gunthar was riding alongside him filled him with pride, and not a little relief. He had been astonished to see the weapon master armoured and riding to his aid, for the last he had seen of the man he had been near death, his wounds badly infected. The wounds were healing well, Gunthar said, and Calard had not seen the lie for what it was.

The fact that an unknown knight had tried to kill him mid-battle was galling. It must have been one of Sangasse’s men, of that he was certain. One day soon he would have a reckoning with the treacherous worm.

The thunder of hooves was deafening, and Calard couched his lance tight under his arm as Gringolet galloped at speed across the field that had been churned to mud. The ground was littered with corpses.

He had clasped forearms with Bertelis before the charge. They didn’t speak; there was no need to. Both understood that they were unlikely to survive the night.

How changed he was, Calard had thought, looking upon his half-brother’s tired features. He looked older, and his eyes were haunted by the atrocities he had witnessed. Gone were the last vestiges of boyhood. All that Calard saw was a young knight, hard and tempered in battle. He wondered briefly if he too had changed so.

They had both seen so much death in the last months. The reality of war was far different from what either of them had imagined. Calard felt stupid, for though he did not really expect things to be like the tales they had listened to as wide-eyed children, he realised that he had not really known what to expect. Certainly not the stench of the battlefield.

Bertelis gave a wild whoop, and Calard grinned and tightened his grip on his lance. Not everything about his brother had changed. He was certain that if they survived this night, then they would both get incredibly drunk, and Bertelis would no doubt bed as many women as he could before he passed out. For a second, his thoughts drifted to Elisabet, and her face reared in his mind’s eye. He saw her seductive, playful dark eyes. The scent of her had all but faded from the silk scarf tied around his upper arm, but its mere presence lent him strength.

Calard lowered his lance, and the wall of knights slammed into the enemy once more.

The next sacrifice was dragged forward, and the Gave gripped the man by the front of his tabard, pulling him close, sniffing at him and peering at him intently. Again, despite the colour of the man’s livery, it was not the one it sought. With growing frustration, the Gave rammed his barbed knife into the wretch’s neck, and hurled him aside, to join the scores of other bloodied corpses scattered around.

A single horn sounded across the battlefield, and the Gave rose to his full, towering height, staring out across the open ground. The enemy was surging towards him in a great wave, and he bared his teeth, hissing. Reacting instinctively, hundreds upon hundreds of the lesser beasts altered their charge towards the hill, leaping across the churned up earth towards the charging knights, but they were being scythed down like wheat. The Gave cared not.

Responding to the threat posed to their master, the heavily armoured bestigor, who had thus far not partaken in the battle, were marching forwards to interpose themselves in the path of the enemy, hefting giant axes and halberds. While the rest of the beast herd was nigh on uncontrollable, surging forth in an unruly mob, the bestigor marched in deep ranks behind icons of black iron, and the earth resounded with the stamp of their iron-shod hooves. They smoothly reordered their formation to the beating of drums, widening their ranks to form a protective barrier around the Gave.

Deep rumbling growls resonated from the darkness of the trees behind the Gave. The sound vibrated through the Gave’s body, making his organs shudder, and his lips drew back in a cruel smile.

Trees were uprooted as they were pushed aside by a pair of titanic, dark shapes that rose above the canopy. With a gesture, the Gave directed them forwards.

Reolus’s eyes blazed with holy fury as he cut his way through the melee at the point of the Bretonnian charge. His blade carved through the heavy armour of the foe as if it were paper, and at his side the Baron Montcadas smashed aside more of them with every sweeping blow of his spiked morning star. The questing knight, Gundehar, rode on his other side, and he smashed the enemy away with mighty sweeps of his two-handed sword, passion and fervour giving him strength.

They were no more than a hundred yards from the tree line, and he could smell the foetid decay of the tortured trees in the air. Urging his steed forwards, feeling the malignant presence of the enemy war leader nearby, Reolus drove on, hacking his way through the heavy press of armoured beastmen.

There was an almighty crash, and his eyes flicked towards the darkness of the looming forest. Trees were being uprooted and smashed aside, and the ground began to shudder with titanic footsteps.

A pair of behemoths rose above the canopy: creatures both ancient and grown impossibly huge by the warping influence of Chaos. Like men wading through long grass, they burst from the tree line, smashing aside contorted oaks and elms, their ear-splitting roars sounding like mountains being shattered.

Each of the monsters stood some fifty feet tall, and each thunderous, loping step cleared almost twenty feet. They were malformed creatures of Chaos, their hulking shoulders covered in fur and protruding spines of bone, their monstrous gait uneven and awkward.

The ground shook beneath them, and Reolus felt the wave of panic that shuddered through the charging knights as they saw the pair of fell giants bearing down on them. He had killed such beasts before, however, and he would do so again.

It looked as though a single, monstrous creature had been sliced down the middle by a searing cut, forming two beasts from one flesh. They were perverted mirror images of each other, these Chaos giants, monstrous twins separated by foul magicks.

Each had an oversized arm and a smaller, deformed limb that was wasted and nigh on useless. One of the legs of each giant was as thick as a tree-trunk and covered with dank fur that hung to the ground like rope, while the other leg was crooked and thin.

Their heads each contained a single, weeping eye, though each orb contained a pair of pupils, and each beast had a single drooping ear pierced with human thigh bones and ribs. The other sides of their heads were a loathsome mass of red scar tissue, as if the two heads had once been one, but had been ripped apart. A single curling horn emerged from each of their heads, curved downwards from their temples. Lips flapped open to display slab-like teeth and tusks, and the creatures roared with one voice.

Each held a tree-trunk in its massive hands, and these they hefted as if they weighed nothing at all.

They loped through the press of beastmen, who came barely to their knees, smashing them aside thoughtlessly. Their monstrous cyclopean eyes were fixed on the knights, and the earth vibrated with each thunderous step,

The first of the giants struck the line of knights, sweeping its tree-trunk like a club. The makeshift weapon slammed into the front rank of Bretonnians, and half a dozen knights and their horses were lifted into the air and sent flying backwards, their bones and armour crushed. With its return swing, it sent another half dozen hurtling through the air.

The other giant came straight at Reolus, and the grail knight kicked his terrified steed directly towards it, making no attempt to move out of its way. The giant lifted its club high into the air as it pounded forwards, intending to smash him into the ground.

The heavy tree-trunk came hurtling down towards him, and he urged his steed to the side at the last moment. The tree smashed down, slamming into Gundehar, crushing him and his steed into the ground, rendering them into an unrecognisable, flattened smear of blood and armour.

With a roar, Reolus plunged his lance deep into the beast’s thigh as he rode past it. It sank three feet into flesh that was as tough as wood, and the creature and its twin bellowed deafeningly in pain, as if both felt the wound.

Letting go of its club, the giant swatted at Reolus with the back of its hand, which was the size of a wagon. The blow smashed into him and his steed, sending them flying. His horse crumpled to the ground, screaming in agony, and Reolus rolled from the thrashing destrier.

Howling in savage fury, the armoured beastmen surged forwards once more.

Dazed and hurting, Reolus struggled to his feet, killing the first ones that swarmed around him.

Dozens of lances plunged into the legs of the pair of giants, and they bellowed in fury and pain. A hand clasped around the body of a horse and it was lifted high into the air, whinnying in terror before its head was bitten off. The headless corpse was hurled back down into the knights, knocking another pair to the ground, and hot blood splattered down from the monster’s flapping lips.

Knights surged around the legs of the beasts, stabbing and hacking, but the charge had been all but blunted. Heavily-armoured beastmen surged into those that got past the pair of giants, smashing them from their saddles and pulling them down.

With a shout, Reolus cleaved his sword through the head of a beastman, and broke into a run towards the nearest of the two behemoths. He ducked a swinging axe and severed the leg of another beast. The closest giant swung around, sending four knights and their steeds flying through the air with a sweep of its arm, and Reolus threw himself to the ground as one horse tumbled towards him.

The knight, still in the saddle, sailed over Reolus and was crushed, his spine snapping as the weight of the horse landed on top of him. Reolus surged upright, and threw his sword with all his might.

The blade spun end over end and drove into the giant’s single eye, sinking to the hilt. The beast and its twin gave a tremendous roar of agony and rage, and the wounded creature began thrashing around blindly. Black blood spurted from its eye, and more than one fallen knight was crushed beneath its staggering footsteps. More lances plunged into its legs, and it spun around, arms flailing, killing knights and beastmen alike.

Baron Montcadas, miraculously still alive and in the saddle, smashed his ball and chain into the knee of the creature’s lame leg, shattering the kneecap. As the leg gave way beneath it, the monstrous creature teetered and fell.

Its arms swung wildly as it sought vainly to maintain its balance, but its fall was inevitable. It hit the ground with a resounding boom, crushing a dozen men beneath its bulk, and making others stumble and fall as the ground shook. Unhorsed knights swarmed over it, plunging their swords like daggers into its neck and body, even as others were hacked down by beastmen.

The fallen giant’s twin bellowed in pain and rage, and moved to its defence. With a violent kick, it sent three knights flying, their horses screaming as they spiralled back into their own ranks, bones crushed and armour wrenched completely out of shape.

Reolus swore. Horseless, and with the havoc unleashed by the giants, there was little chance that he would ever reach the enemy war leader. Buoyed by the appearance of the towering monstrosities, the enemy was surging forwards with renewed vigour, and, now that the charge had been stymied, the Bretonnians were being cut down in their hundreds. He prayed that those knights on the flank of the charge were continuing their attack, for, in them, lay the only chance of killing the enemy war leader.

With a growl of anger, Reolus caught the arms of a beastmen as it sought to cleave him from shoulder to sternum with a powerful axe-blow. Muscles straining to hold back the strike, he leant forwards and drove his knee into the beast’s groin. Again he slammed his armoured knee into the same place, and its strength wavered. With a final blow, the beast released its grip on its weapon, and Reolus swung it around in a lethal arc that tore the beast’s head from its shoulders.

The sole giant still on its feet was laying about it with destructive power, killing dozens of men with every passing moment. A score of swords and lances protruded from its legs, like bristles, and its flesh was slick with blood from the wounds, but it continued its mad rampage, apparently fuelled by the pain. Setting his sight on the towering creature, Reolus barged his way through the maelstrom of battle, the beastman’s axe held tight in his hands.

Calard slashed down at the enemy again and again. The beastmen pushed in against the knights, surging forward in a solid mass. There was little room for grace or skill, just a need to kill quickly and efficiently.

Titanic roars echoed across the din. Their charge had swung around to the east as the point of the charge, led by the grail knight Reolus, stalled. How such a thing could have come to pass was beyond him, for he had believed that nothing in the world could stand against the knight, but halted the charge had been. Out on the wing of the attack, Calard and the knights around him had continued on, facing less resistance than the rest of the force, and they now found themselves occupying the most forward point in the attack, yet still they pushed deeper into the enemy lines.

The trees were close, and they were surrounded and desperate. Calard knew instinctively that they would not last long, but he could not help feeling that they were painfully close to the beast leading the enemy forces. They just needed to keep going forwards.

He desperately parried a blow that stabbed towards his chest, and sent a riposte that sliced a bloody line across a beast’s face, driving it back for a second. It was instantly replaced by another foe that roared as it thrust a spear forwards. Calard swayed to the side, and the weapon slammed into the face of another knight, punching through his skull and piercing the brain. Gringolet kicked out, flashing hooves breaking limbs.

The enemy fought with savage fury as more of them pushed against the buckling line of knights, and increasing numbers of men were being dragged down with every passing moment. Calard struck a beastman on the crown of its head, splitting the skull, and it collapsed to the ground.

All semblance of order had been lost, and the knights’ charge began to falter. Each man fought as an individual now, all sense of formation gone, lost amid the chaos of the battle.

Seeing a gap open, Calard shouted and drove Gringolet on. The powerful grey reacted instantly, leaping forwards.

He didn’t see his brother Bertelis knocked from the saddle behind him.

The enemy closed ranks, fighting with frenzied intensity, and Gunthar swore as Calard disappeared from sight. His own steed had fallen, its skull smashed, and he stood protectively over Bertelis’s prone figure. Though Calard was beyond his reach, he would die before any further harm came to Lutheure’s youngest son.

He ducked and lifted his shield, and a swinging axe head scraped across its surface. Lunging forwards, he stabbed his blade into the towering beast’s midsection, the tip sinking deep, before stepping back once more.

Hissing against the pain in his injured leg, which threatened to collapse beneath him at any moment, he slashed his sword across the bestial, hate-filled face of another enemy.

All around him, horses kicked out with their hooves, rearing and biting as they had been trained. Gunthar stood over the fallen Garamont noble, fearing that he would be crushed beneath the hooves of the warhorses. Men shouted and screamed, and more of them were being dragged from the saddles and butchered. Blades flashed down from those still in the saddle, driving the surging enemy back, lashing out at any that came near.

A blade stabbed towards Bertelis, who was groggily struggling to rise, and Gunthar’s blade flashed out, deflecting the blow. He snapped off a lightning riposte that tore out the beast’s throat. It fell, blood gurgling from the wound, and Gunthar turned aside another blow that sliced towards his neck. His return blow punched through the beast’s eye socket, and it fell with a roar. More creatures surged forwards to fill the gap, and Gunthar glanced behind him.

Bertelis had ripped his helmet away, and blood was streaming from his scalp. He flopped back onto the ground, and Gunthar swore. The beasts crowding around, respectful now of his skill, snarled at him, their fingers clenching and unclenching on the hafts and pommels of their weapons.

Another knight went down, his horse screaming, and the beasts leapt at Gunthar.

He smashed a spear down into the ground, and turned aside a sword thrust with his shield. His blade lashed out, scoring a deep wound across the chest of one of the beasts, and then he deftly reversed the blow, hacking his sword deep into the creature’s neck. Gunthar spun away instantly, ripping his sword free, even as an axe sliced through the air where he had been standing a moment ago, and hacked his sword into the neck of another creature.

He stepped awkwardly to the side to better protect Bertelis, feeling his leg shuddering beneath him. He was breathing heavily, and his arms felt like lead weights. He was so tired.

Again the beasts came at him, and he swayed back from a wildly slashing, curved sword that passed by him, a hair’s breadth from his head, and his sword sliced across the beast’s arm, cutting through sinews and tendons, forcing it to drop its weapon.

A blade punched through his side, and he staggered. With a swing, he severed the beast’s arm at the wrist, and stabbed the point into its chest. An axe blow smashed into his shield, breaking his arm and making him cry out. His blade slashed across the creature’s leg, and it fell with a roar of pain.

Wincing against the grating pain of broken bones grinding together, his left arm hanging limply at his side, Gunthar stood over Bertelis, his heart pounding. His breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, and it felt like his lungs were on fire. The sounds around him seemed muffled and distant, as if his ears were stuffed with cloth, and he knew that his end was near.

‘Gunthar,’ breathed the young knight from the ground.

‘I’ll let no harm come to you, boy,’ gasped Gunthar, eyeing the circle of beastmen closing in around them.

One of them charged, its axe swinging up from the ground in a lethal arc. Stepping to the side, Gunthar avoided the attack and slashed his blade across the creature’s back as it surged by. Then he reversed the swing and plunged the point into the stomach of another beast as it surged forwards.

The flailing hooves of a knight’s steed almost struck him, and he staggered back. A curved blade crashed into his shoulder, and he stumbled. His gangrenous leg finally collapsed beneath him, and he fell to one knee. Still he fought on, desperate to protect Bertelis. He hacked his blade into a beast’s leg, and it fell with a roar.

A knight’s sword smashed down, cleaving the head of another creature down to its teeth, and blood splattered from the terrible wound.

Gunthar’s vision began to swim from loss of blood and exhaustion, and he half-crawled, half-stumbled to Bertelis’s side, expecting, at any moment, to be crushed or to have the life smashed from him by the enemy. Using his sword like a crutch, he pushed to his feet once more, swaying unsteadily.

‘Gunthar,’ breathed Bertelis.

‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ gasped Gunthar in despair. ‘I have failed you.’

‘No,’ said Bertelis, trying to lift himself up, but falling back to the ground.

A pair of beasts rushed at Gunthar. He killed the first, his blade severing its jugular, and blood sprayed out as it dropped to the ground. Desperately, he turned his blade towards the second. It slammed into him, bearing him to the ground. Its weight forced Gunthar’s sword into its body, and it snarled in his face, its eyes yellow and filled with hate as it died.

The weight of the beast pinned Gunther to the ground, its heavy, muscled mass crushing him, and he felt a moment of panic at his vulnerability. With a surge of adrenaline, he heaved the stinking creature off him, rolling it to the side.

He could barely breathe, and he coughed painfully, blood flecking his lips. He was so tired. Sleep beckoned him. All he had to do was close his eyes and the pain would stop. His eyelids fluttered.

No! He would not allow himself to succumb to the enticing sleep of eternity. Not yet.

Clenching his teeth against the agony, he pushed to his feet once more, and dragged his sword from the beastman’s body.

Breaking through the enemy’s line, not knowing how many knights were with him, Calard’s eyes narrowed as he saw the fell beast that was the enemy’s war leader. Corpses were strewn across the ground around the creature, and, with a shock, he saw that every one of them wore the colours of Garamont. They looked like the discarded toys of a petulant infant, tossed away in disgust, bloody and broken. Dozens more men were being dragged forwards, all wearing yellow and red, fresh sacrifices to the dark gods.

The creature’s head flicked around, its face rotting and covered in stitches, and its piercing eyes locked on him. Calard swayed in the saddle at the depths of hatred in its eyes.

It was a massive creature, standing perhaps seven feet tall, and, though its body was not heavy like the bull-headed creatures, its long limbs were tight with sinewy muscle. Though it was not as large or as physically loathsome as the mutated beast-spawn creatures, something about it was utterly wrong, as if such a beast should never have been born into the world. Fighting against the unfathomable horror threatening to overwhelm him, Calard kicked Gringolet forwards, angling his charge directly at the foul creature.

It slammed its staff into the ground, and black birds filled the air with fluttering wings and raucous cries.

Beasts wearing heavy armour and hefting large, single-bladed axes snarled, and leapt forwards. Calard dimly heard Bertelis cry out, but his eyes were locked on the hateful eyes of his quarry. As if the protecting hands of the Lady were cupped around him, he rode through the enemy, unscathed, and bore down on the creature.

It crouched low to the ground, lips curled back in a feral snarl, its long limbs tensing beneath it. In that moment, it resembled some monstrous spider, making ready to spring.

Black carrion birds, each with a single, pulsing daemonic eye, swooped down at Calard, battering him with their wings and stabbing at his eyes with hook-like beaks. He flailed at them wildly, crushing wings and fragile bones with the hilt of his sword, and knocking them away with his armoured forearm.

Through the blur of feathers and wildly flapping birds, Calard saw the beast spring, leaping through the air towards him with spindly fingers outstretched. Gringolet reared, whinnying in fear, and then it struck, slamming into Calard and tearing him from the saddle. Gringolet was borne to the ground by the weight of the foul creature, legs flailing wildly, and Calard hit the ground hard, the creature above him. The wind was knocked from his lungs, and he lay on his back, gasping for breath.

Stunned by the shocking impact, Calard dimly registered Gringolet screaming in pain, and he knew, in that moment, that his faithful steed must have broken a leg in the fall.

Anger rose within him, and he struggled to stand. His vision swam, but he could see the creature crouching above him, its eyes burning with hatred, though the rest of its body was a dark silhouette. Miraculously, Calard still held his sword, and, gasping for breath, he mustered the strength to strike.

A hoof slammed down onto his forearm, pinning it to the ground.

Gringolet screamed again, and from his prone position, Calard could see the stricken horse struggling to lift itself up from the ground. Its shattered right foreleg could not bear its weight, and buckled unnaturally beneath it, sending the horse crashing to the ground with a tortured cry that clawed at Calard’s heart.

With a surge of anger, Calard smashed his shield rim into the beast’s leg, and it stepped back with snarl, freeing his pinned arm. Staggering to his feet, Calard stepped towards the beast that towered above him, swinging his sword in a deadly arc towards its neck.

The monster’s hand flashed out, and it caught the sword blade, halting it mid-swing. Blood began to flow down the blade, running over Calard’s gauntlet, but, struggle as he might, he could not free the weapon from the creature’s iron grip. With a snarl of anger, it lifted one of its powerful legs and slammed a kick into his chest, sending him flying backwards.

From the ground, he saw that the beast still held his sword by the blade, and its head cocked to one side, as if the blood dripping down the blade intrigued it. Gringolet struggled to rise again, and collapsed to the ground once more. Snapping out of its reverie, the beast surged forwards suddenly and drove the blade into Gringolet’s neck. Calard cried out as his sword was pushed deep, until the hilt of his weapon rested against the grey’s flesh. A torrent of blood spilled from the mortal wound, and began pooling beneath it. The steed that Calard had raised from a foal thrashed for a moment, blood bubbling from its mouth, and he cried out to see the noble creature in such pain. Then it lay still, hot blood pooling beneath it.

Grinning, the beast returned its attention to Calard, and as he tried to lift his aching body from the ground, a kick slammed him back down. The hissing creature crouched over Calard, one hoof upon his armoured chest, and one hand pulling his head back violently to expose his throat. A dagger flashed before him, the metal blackened and covered with vile runes and symbols.

The hiss escaping from the creature’s lips stopped abruptly, and it drew its face close to Calard’s. Its breath was hot and foetid. It sniffed at him, as if sampling his smell. He gagged, trying to pull away, but he was unable to get away from the revolting creature.

It crouched closer still, though he tried to pull away, revulsion and horror rising within him, and it licked his face, from chin to temple. His skin burned where the hot, wet tongue touched his face, and he cried out involuntarily. He saw the creature’s eyes widen.

Calard cried out again as sudden pain stabbed into his mind like a hot knife, like writhing tentacles seeking something inside. It felt like worms were burrowing into his brain, and he screamed in agony, writhing beneath the monster, but powerless to pull away.

Images, memories and emotions flickered unbidden through his mind: Elisabet’s heart-shaped face as she leant in close to him, the touch of her lips, and the surge of love that he felt for her; the sudden reappearance of Anara in his life, and the shock of the change that had been wrought in her over the years they had been apart; he saw again the fight between Gunthar and Ganelon, and felt again the shame of his part in Gunthar’s injury; he saw himself and Bertelis riding out to the outlaws on the edge of the forest, back in Bastonne, a lifetime ago.

A million images flickered maddeningly through his mind, everything he had ever experienced, and he cried out at the excruciating, writhing pain.

He saw again the battle against the greenskins, and felt the hot surge of adrenaline that he had experienced in his first foray into combat. He saw Anara as a child, and the fearful glances she received from the servants. He saw himself as a child, after his mother had died, crying himself to sleep because he believed that his father hated him. His father…

The probing tentacles dug deeper, and Calard realised that he could feel the creature’s excitement rise. Images of the dying lord of Garamont reared up in an overwhelming parade: flashes of the family castle in Bastonne blurred with visions of his father from years earlier, happier memories of his father laughing, holding hands with his mother, and bouncing Calard on his knee.

He felt a surge of triumph from the beast, and he saw, for the briefest fraction of a second, memories that were not his.

He saw blood, so much blood, and horrified expressions. He felt pain and fear, and desperation... and hatred. He felt hatred like he had never felt it before, an all consuming need for vengeance, for blood, for death and for release. He saw the leering faces of daemons, and they clawed at him with talons of fire, eyes filled with the promise of power, and eternal damnation.

He watched through the Gave’s eyes at it fought with tooth and nail against the other beasts of the dark forest reaches. He felt exhilaration as he stood victorious over bloody corpses that he had ripped apart with his bare hands, the sweet, hot taste of blood upon his lips. He smelt the fear that rose from the other beasts as they backed away from him, snarling. He revelled in dominating them, forcing them to his will.

He heard the keening cry of an animal in pain. He hoped he would die, prayed that he would, to escape this torment. Then the probing tentacles within his mind retracted with a suddenness that made him gasp, leaving him exhausted, and with blood dribbling from his nose and ears, and he realised that the sound of an animal in pain was coming from his own lips.

The creature above him threw its head back and roared its triumph to the heavens, and Calard succumbed to darkness.

Reolus slammed the axe into the giant’s neck as it struggled to rise from the ground, and a torrent of blood gushed from the fatal wound. Staggering back, leaving the weapon imbedded deep in the monstrous beast’s flesh, and bleeding from a dozen wounds, the grail knight heard the keening roar of the beast’s war leader echo over the battlefield. It was the sound of victory, and Reolus’s heart sank.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was light when Calard woke, blinking heavily. His head was pounding, and he winced. He heard concerned voices, and he rolled to his side, vomiting up the contents of his stomach. That seemed only to make the pain in his head worse, like stabbing needles behind his eyes, and he was sick once more, his whole body convulsing with the violence of his heaving.

When at last the nausea left him he lay back, exhausted, his body aching all over. He saw canvas above him, and felt a hand on his shoulder.

His memories of the beast came back to him in a rush, and he struggled to rise, crying out, but hands pushed him back onto the pallet. Spots of light filled his vision, and a wave of dizziness overcame him.

‘…over. It’s over,’ said a voice that he realised was Bertelis’s.

‘…black tentacles, in my mind, prying, probing. Gringolet…’ Calard groaned. He jerked with the remembered agony.

‘…delirious,’ said a different voice, one that he did not recognise. Then everything began to fade once again, and he slipped into a tortured dream. He saw daemonic faces leering at him, blood, and a dark forest canopy overhead. He saw the back of a knight riding away from him, leaving him, and he felt a stab of fear as things began to creep out of the darkness around him.

He cried out in his sleep, writhing beneath sweat-soaked sheets.

‘Will he be all right?’ slurred Bertelis, looking down at his brother in concern. The ageing physician sighed wearily.

‘I don’t know. His physical injuries are not severe, and are healing well. The damage seems to be to his mind.’ He shrugged. ‘Such things are unpredictable. I am sorry, I don’t know what afflicts your brother. Maybe with rest, he will come back. Now, I am sorry, but I have other men that need tending.’

Bertelis nodded numbly, and the physician shuffled away. The cries of the wounded and the dying were all around. Hundreds of men lay on pallets and blankets beneath the awning, and more were being brought in every minute. The man had probably not slept at all since battle had begun.

He heard men moaning in pain, and winced at the screams as grisly amputations were performed. He took another long draught from the wineskin in his hand.

The death toll had been high. Barely a hundred knights had survived the night of blood. Of those, perhaps another twenty would die of their wounds before the day was out, and another dozen would bear crippling injuries until their dying day.

Bertelis’s head was wrapped in bandages, and his right arm was strapped and held immobile in a splint. He was told that he would not be able to wield a sword or a lance for months. He had been desperately fighting to reach his brother, and had fallen heavily as his steed had been cut from beneath him, breaking his arm as he hit the ground. As he had struggled to rise, an axe had smashed into his helmet, wrenching it out of shape and cutting deep into his scalp. He had been lucky it had been only a glancing blow, else his skull would surely have been smashed. As it was, he had been told that he had received a fracture, and he found that exerting himself in any way, even just walking for more than ten steps, made him feel nauseous and dizzy.

He had managed to pull his helmet from his head, and his face was awash with blood. He had been unable to focus his eyes, let alone stand and fight. He dimly remembered the beasts looming over him, and he had thought that, in that moment, Morr had come for him.

Then someone had killed the creatures, and stood sentinel over him: Gunthar.

With hazy, unfocused eyes he had seen the ageing weapon master kill perhaps a dozen of the beasts. With astonishing speed and displaying all his skill, Gunthar had fought furiously to defend him. At last, the knight had fallen, pierced by blades and spears, his armour covered in blood and punctured in a dozen places. Bertelis had cried out as the noble weapon master was finally felled, an axe slamming into his neck with brutal force. Gunthar had fallen facing Bertelis, and he had watched the light slip from his eyes.

He had died so that Bertelis might live, for moments later the enemy swarming around him was pushed back. The young knight swore, and took another swig of wine. The old man’s death haunted him.

The end of the battle was still a confused blur. There had been a terrible sound, an exultant cry of bestial triumph that echoed across the battlefield. It had pierced his mind. Then the battle had ended.

On hearing the cry, the beasts of the forest had slunk back into the trees, abandoning the field. Those embroiled in combat fought on, and it had taken over an hour before battle had finally ceased, but the fight had been over as soon as that exultant, bestial cry had sounded.

Thousands of peasants had been killed, and the stink of the mass graves was revolting. Even in death, the peasants managed to sicken him, he thought resentfully.

He looked down at Calard’s grey-tinged face. For the past twelve hours he had maintained his vigil over his brother, watching as he tossed fitfully, moaning and crying out in his sleep. Still, at least he was alive, which was more than could be said for most of the knights that had fought that night.

Garamont peasants had found Calard, lying comatose amid piles of the dead, and at first they had mourned for him. They had borne his lifeless body back to camp, convinced that he had been claimed by Morr. It was only when one of the duke’s physicians had examined him that a faint, fluttering heartbeat was felt.

There had been no victory celebration, for in truth there had been no victory. They had not slain the beast leading the enemy forces, nor had they sent the creatures fleeing from the battlefield. They had just left.

What was it all for? It seemed to him that there was no point to the attack, and no point to calling it off when they had, but then, the creatures were little more than beasts: animals driven by the senseless urge to kill, like a fox in a hen house. It was folly to even try to understand their motives.

Grief and black despair gripped him, and he shouted for more wine as he drained his wineskin. He kept thinking back to Tanebourc’s face, frantic with fear, as he begged for death.

He had believed, for a time, that his mother was sleeping with the man, though he spoke his thoughts to no one, not even Calard. Then, one night, his blood fired with drink, he had confronted her with the allegation. She had slapped him, hard across his cheek, her pale face flushed with anger. The blow had stung him.

‘How dare you!’ she had snarled, lines creasing her thick make-up.

He had believed her when she refuted his accusation, but, even if he had never consummated that lust, Tanebourc desired her, and Bertelis knew that she was manipulative. He was certain that she would be able to twist Tanebourc to perform any deed she asked of him.

Would she really try to have her husband’s first son killed, though? It was with horrible reluctance that he had to admit that she might. The evidence showed that she must have been the one behind the attempts, but that knowledge was his, and his alone.

A fresh wineskin was brought to Bertelis, and he snatched it from the hands of the peasant. Breaking the seal, he gulped down the fine wine greedily, seeking oblivion.

Calard lay upon the pallet for four days, tossing and turning, tormented by nightmares and daemons. He woke several times, and the peasants set to watch over him managed to force some water and food on him, but he was often delirious and confused in these moments of wakefulness. In a drunken stupor, Bertelis verbally abused the peasants and lashed out at them, ranting and stumbling, before he collapsed unconscious in a pool of his own vomit, and was carried to his tent.

When Calard finally rose from his fever, he was ravenously hungry and thirsty, and gorged himself. He felt sore all over, as if he had been trampled beneath a herd of cattle, and his head still pained him, though blessedly even that discomfort lessened as he ate and drank.

His brother came to him, looking haggard, and reeking of alcohol. He had been greatly cheered to see Bertelis, though he was disturbed by his brother’s state. The young, blond-haired knight was unshaven and seemed to be fighting his own demons, though he was clearly relieved and pleased to see Calard lucid and on the way to recovery.

Calard had grieved when he learnt of Gunthar’s fate, a deep sadness overwhelming him. He had wept tears for the knight, though he had hurriedly blinked them away, and it was with pride and respect that he heard of the weapon master’s last moments. He had died doing his duty, but Calard wished that he had spent more time with the weapon master. He had so much yet to learn, and he cursed himself for not being more attentive and respectful to the knight. It was too late now, and Calard regretted it. He could not have imagined a time without Gunthar’s stern presence, and now that he was gone there was a vacuum in his life that he felt would never be filled.

He mourned similarly for Gringolet. It would be impossible to replace the noble destrier.

With shock and horror, he learnt of the extent of the losses. So many men had died, the majority of whom he had got to know well over the course of the campaign.

Baron Montcadas had survived, though he had lost his left eye when a beast’s jaws had closed around his head. He regaled Calard with the account of how he had killed the beast, dislocating its jaws and beating it to death with his fists. In truth, Calard had been unsure whether the baron was exaggerating or not, but he suspected not. It seemed that nothing could kill the barrel-chested bear of a man.

The baron had pursued the beasts into the forests, but had called off the hunt, fearing ambush. The beasts had melted swiftly into the trees and were gone, leaving devastation behind them.

With the departure of the beasts, the unnatural forest that encircled Adhalind’s Seat had begun to decay at a heightened rate. The trees rotted away within days, collapsing under their own weight and filling the air with their putrid stench. Insects and worms writhed through the liquefying mass that blanketed the land, and birds swarmed in their thousands to pick through the rotting morass. Within a month, the existence of the vile forest would be little more than a memory, though the fields would be tainted for generations.

Driven by restlessness, Calard ignored the protests of the baron’s little physician and was soon up on his feet. He moved around stiffly, flexing his tight limbs and stretching bedsore muscles. His wounds were healing well, and though it would be many weeks before his shoulder was healed where the arrow had struck him, he had retained some movement there.

It was as he moved through some training exercises with the sword that Anara had come to him, along with the grail knight Reolus.

He had never been so close to the revered knight, and he was awed and humbled in his presence. Anara was coolly distant, not even asking how he fared, much to his disappointment, but the grail knight asked after his health with genuine concern.

Seen up close, it was impossible to gauge the grail knight’s age. His face was smooth and unlined, untouched by any scar, which would have been remarkable, even if he had fought in only half the battles it was claimed he had. Indeed, if the stories were to be believed, he had once borne a horrible scar across his face, from his ear to his lips, but the scar had disappeared when he had drunk from the Lady’s grail. He was not a handsome man, which had surprised Calard, his features evoking power and strength more than manly beauty. His jaw was square and thick, and his brows heavy, the nose broad and flat. It was a warrior’s face, of that there was no doubt, and he wore his hair clipped short, flecks of silver at his temples.

In truth, he did not look like the romanticised hero sung about in his ballads. There were no flowing golden locks or beauty to make married women and virgins swoon, but he certainly had an awesome presence, one that demanded respect. There was something about him that Calard could not put his finger on, something that made him seem just a little larger, a little fiercer, a little more imposing than other men; something a little more… vital.

There was an off-putting, intense burning light in his eyes, a fey potency, otherworldly and dangerous. Calard found he could not hold the grail knight’s gaze.

‘I fought alongside your father,’ the grail knight said, making Calard widen his eyes in surprise, ‘a good man, strong. At Drowning Man’s Moor he led a desperate countercharge against the restless dead that turned the battle.’

‘That battle was more than forty years ago,’ said Calard softly, his eyes large. The grail knight smiled back at him.

Calard wanted to ask a million questions, but did not wish to appear like a gawking adolescent.

‘You fought the beast,’ said Reolus, the smile dropping from his face.

‘I… I wanted the glory of killing it,’ admitted Calard. ‘I thought I could best it, but I… failed,’ he said, hanging his head.

‘It was a brave attempt.’

‘Gunthar would have said foolish.’

‘Impetuous, I would say.’

‘Why did it leave?’ asked Calard. The question had been troubling him. ‘Why did it not… finish what it started? Surely it could have won the field?’

‘It could,’ said Reolus, his eyes burning with witch-fire. ‘Had the battle lasted another hour, there would have been no Bretonnian alive, knight or otherwise. In truth, I don’t know, Calard. We were hoping that you could shed some light on it.’

‘Me?’ asked Calard in shock.

‘It took something from you,’ said Anara vaguely, staring around. Her eyes seemed to be following invisible movements through the air. It was unnerving, like the way a cat would stir and stare intently at a blank wall, as if seeing something beyond the ken of human perception. Calard shivered. What did she see? In truth, he didn’t want to know. Her eyes came back into focus and she stared at Calard. ‘It touched your mind. What did it see?’

Calard blanched as he felt a flash of remembered pain in his head of the insidious tentacles pushing into his mind, sifting through his memories like an open book, rummaging through his deepest desires, his hopes, his aspirations. It felt like he had been violated by the hateful creature, and he shuddered, feeling again the tainted touch of the creature inside him.

‘It saw everything,’ said Calard, his voice thick, his eyes haunted, ‘every memory, everything I have ever experienced.’

He didn’t say how for a brief moment he had felt linked to the creature, seeing its memories as if they were his. In those moments, he had experienced all that the beast felt, and he had revelled in the power, the destruction, the taste of blood on his lips. He had felt savage joy as he had relived the killing, the destruction that the beast had wrought. He had felt the beast’s rage at all things beautiful and peaceful, felt how they mocked him, and he had yearned to see the world burn.

Were those just the beast’s memories overlaid over his? Or did they reflect the dark desires that he kept hidden even from himself?

Had the beast tainted him in those brief moments when their minds had melded together? Was he now damned?

‘It found what it was seeking in you,’ said Anara, her eyes burning deep into his soul. Could she see the taint that he feared was lurking deep within? ‘What was it? What did it find?’

‘I don’t know! It saw everything. Everything that I am, it saw in those moments.’

The air in the tent became icy, and the light seemed to dim. The pain in his head returned. It felt like seething maggots were burrowing through his brain, and he clenched his eyes closed tightly. Images flashed through his mind, images that the beast had seen, felt and experienced, just as he had experienced its memories. He didn’t want to feel this again, didn’t want to see it again, and he pushed against it.

‘What did it see?’ asked Anara again, her voice cold and insistent. It was she! She was doing this, making him relive those moments as he lay helpless beneath the beast.

‘Stop,’ moaned Calard, fighting against her, resisting.

‘What did it see?’ she asked icily. Unable to hold back the flood of images, Calard succumbed, and it was like a dam bursting. He was lost adrift in a sea of images, feelings and memories. They flicked through his mind in a maddening parade, one after another.

Again, he felt the hot surge of savage victory as the beast had found what it had sought.

‘Father,’ murmured Calard, his vision swimming, as he came back to himself. He was on the ground, though he didn’t remember falling, and he wiped at the foam that flecked his lips.

‘What? What was it?’ asked Anara, peering down at him, her face intense and cold, almost cruelly so. He glared up at her. She had done this to him. She had made him relive those painful moments. The throbbing pain in his head faded, and he pushed himself upright, breathing heavily.

‘It saw Castle Garamont. It saw our father.’

Dawning comprehension fell over Anara’s face.

Reolus helped Calard to his feet, his face cold and stern, lit with the same impassioned light that had infected his sister.

‘What does it mean?’ he asked at last, looking towards Anara. He had never felt so distant from her than at that moment, even in all the years they had spent apart. She seemed like someone he didn’t know at all, and she looked at him as if he were a stranger.

‘I know what it is,’ she said at last, ‘and I know where it has gone.’

Chlod pulled his eye away from the tear he had cut in the fabric, and backed away from the tent. He limped heavily through the camp, wincing at the wounds he had suffered. In truth, he had been amazed that he had survived. Only a handful of the pilgrims had, and he had been one of the lucky few.

He had shaved the top of his head, and had strapped a battered breastplate awkwardly to his chest. A sword, its blade broken halfway along its length, hung from his belt, alongside various artefacts of holy significance that he had stripped from the dead bodies of other pilgrims. He looked every inch the weary battle pilgrim, and he was confident that his disguise would keep him from a hanging.

He limped back to the fire of the pilgrims, and they clustered around him. A sausage was pushed into his hands, and he ate it greedily, fat dripping down his chin as the pilgrims waited on his word with bated breath. It had been easy to dominate the remaining pilgrims, and he had appointed himself their abbot. As such, he had the pick of the food they scrounged, and the least louse infested blanket to sleep beneath. He could get used to this life, he thought.

‘Do you know where we go?’ asked one of the devout peasants, who sported a livid, open wound upon his face. Already it was infected, and flies clustered around the cut.

‘Our glorified benefactor is preparing for a journey!’ announced Chlod between mouthfuls of sausage. ‘And so, we must journey with him!’

Anara was speaking in an alien tongue, her voice soft and lilting. The sound was musical and enchanting, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand erect. He had never heard such beautiful sounds, though something in them was vaguely unsettling, even frightening. Unbidden, the memory of a childhood rhyme said to ward off the fey spirits of the woods leapt into his mind.

His steed whinnied, and he stroked its nose to comfort it. It was a good horse, a big chestnut with a brave heart, but it was not Gringolet. At Anara’s insistence, the eyes of each of the horses had been covered with cloth.

Only twenty-five knights had been chosen, though Calard still did not understand the nature of the journey. Surely they had no time for this ritual, whatever it was. The beast was the better part of a week ahead of them, and he had no idea how they were to find it, or catch up to it. It was all too confusing. He didn’t understand what was occurring around him, and it made his anger rise to be kept in the dark so.

He had been surprised and honoured when he had been picked to accompany Reolus and the others, though he knew not why he had been chosen.

‘It is only right. All will be made clear,’ Anara had said, mysteriously. He found such vague statements infuriating, but he had not argued. He had, however, expressed his displeasure when Maloric had also been singled out to accompany them, but his words had been for nought. Reolus had chosen the young Sangasse noble, seeing in him someone destined for greatness, he claimed, though Calard found that hard to believe. Maloric had tricked him somehow, he was certain, though how he had done it was beyond him.

He wished that his brother could have joined them, but his injuries were such that it was impossible. He felt deep unease at the prospect of riding to battle without Gunthar, Bertelis or Gringolet. His brother would remain with the rest of the knights and Baron Montcadas. He prayed that he would see them again.

His sister lifted a silk kerchief before her, and delicately unwrapped it to reveal an oak leaf that gleamed of gold. She continued to speak in the beautiful, fey language and the leaf began to shine with a golden inner light.

Mist began to rise from the still pond they were arrayed before, as if summoned by Anara’s lilting voice. It flowed across the top of the mirror-like pool and coiled around his legs. It billowed upwards, and, with a gasp, Calard saw a ghostly form take shape within the mist. It glided forwards like a spirit, its body transparent, and he saw that it was a woman of incredible, haunting beauty.

‘The Lady,’ Calard breathed in awe. Her hair flowed around her as if she were underwater, and her billowing dress rippled like the surface of a lake. Her arms were held out to either side, and she glided through the mist like an apparition. She seemed to glow from within, and yet Calard could see the trees on the far side of the sacred pool through her body.

Her lips moved, but Calard heard no sound. Anara answered her, still speaking in that otherworldly tongue, and the ethereal, graceful Lady gestured with one elegant, slender limb. She inclined her head to Reolus, who bowed deeply, and then her almond shaped eyes roved over the gathered knights. Calard felt his mouth dry up as he felt the power of those eyes turn towards him. He lowered his gaze, toying with the reins in his hands, unable to meet her stare.

After what felt like an age he felt her attention shift away from him, and he sagged, feeling drained.

Billowing mist surrounded the legs of his warhorse, as if stirred by a growing wind, though no breeze penetrated the sacred copse. He lifted his eyes once more, gazing around in wonder. Glowing orbs of light circled through the mist, like will-o-the-wisps from children’s tales, and he realised that the trees around him were fading. He thought he heard high-pitched giggles from the glowing spheres of light as they swooped around his head, and he tried to focus on them, to see past their blinding light. He felt his cloak and hair being tugged as if by tiny, mischievous hands, and he almost laughed out loud in wonder.

The mist began to swirl around the clearing with more vigour, centred on the heavenly vision of womanhood, and Calard’s mouth hung slack in wonder.

He heard haunting music, and a thousand achingly beautiful voices lifted in whispered song all around. Tears ran down his cheeks. In wonder he glanced towards Reolus. He realised, strangely with no sense of alarm, that he could see through the grail knight, as if his body were as ethereal as the mist billowing around them.

Anara too seemed as insubstantial as smoke, and, with a shock, Calard lifted his hands before his face to see that they too were transparent and ghostly, like smoke that could be carried away on the wind. His heart beat fiercely in his chest, and he found it suddenly hard to breathe. His chestnut destrier too was as insubstantial as a ghost, as were the reins in his hand.

He turned his head to the side, and saw that the other knights too were gazing in fear and wonder at their ethereal limbs, and he saw the dread in Maloric’s ghostly eyes.

Montcadas lifted a hand in farewell. He alone amongst the gathered knights was not insubstantial, his body and limbs as solid as ever.

‘Be calm,’ said Anara’s voice, sounding like a distant whisper. ‘No harm shall come to you. Step forward into the mist.’

Calard saw that the vision of the Lady was fading, and he cried out to her, not wishing to be parted from her holy presence. A hint of a smile played upon her lips, and she was gone. Calard could see nothing of his surroundings now, the mist having swallowed everything. The other knights were gone, as was Anara, and he was alone, lost adrift in the mists.

‘Step forward,’ said Anara’s whispering voice, apparently from a great distance, and Calard closed his eyes and did as she bid him, leading his chestnut warhorse.

Baron Montcadas stood motionless, watching until the knights and Anara had faded completely from sight. The ghostly mists dissipated, and he was alone in the sacred copse.

He whispered a final, parting blessing, and walked out into the sunshine. A ragtag group of grail pilgrims was clustered beyond the grail sanctuary, sitting around a small fire over which a scrawny hare was spitted. Barely a dozen of them had survived the battle, and they looked up at him expectantly, their faces brightening. Seeing that he was not their lord Reolus, their shoulders slumped, and they turned back to their fire.

Montcadas began to walk back to the camp, but paused, looking back at the wretched little band of pilgrims. Being of low birth, they would be hanged if they were discovered entering the sacred copse surrounding the grail shrine, and doubtless they would wait out here beyond its edges until Reolus emerged. He smirked, thinking that they would be waiting a long time. How long before they realised that Reolus was not going to return to them? A month? A year? Until death claimed them? That was most likely, he thought. They would wait like loyal, abandoned hounds for the return of their master, who was, even now, hundreds of miles away.

He felt a sudden pang of guilt for them. They had bled to defend Bretonnia from the beasts, just as everyone else had on the field of battle, and he felt he owed them at least the knowledge that their master was gone.

Turning around, Montcadas strode towards the pitiful group. They saw him coming and jumped to their feet, lowering their eyes and wringing their hands nervously. Nobles spoke to them infrequently, and when they did it was usually to drive them away or curse them.

Montcadas cleared his throat.

‘Lord Reolus has gone,’ he said. ‘It is pointless for you to wait for him. He will not come back this way.’

The pilgrims traded glances, confused by his words. Montcadas nodded his head, his guilt assuaged, and turned to leave.

‘My… my lord?’ stammered one of the pilgrims, and the baron turned back towards them, eyebrows raised in question. The one who had spoken was a hunchbacked wretch with an uneven face. The man bowed several times, and a rat poked its head out briefly from his tunic. The pilgrim bit his thick lip, but did not speak further.

‘What is it? Speak, man,’ said Montcadas impatiently.

‘We… we are his pilgrims, my lord, and we must follow in his footsteps wherever he leads us.’

‘And?’

‘We… we saw him go into the trees, my lord. He has not come out.’ The man was picking his words carefully, trying not to sound antagonistic. ‘Is he not, therefore, still inside?’

‘I said that he has gone, and so he has. He is gone.’ Montcadas turned away and began to walk away from the pilgrims, tiring of the discussion.

‘Please, my lord!’ cried the hunchbacked pilgrim, limping after him. ‘Where has he gone?’

Montcadas gave a long sigh and paused.

‘To Bastonne,’ he said over his shoulder, and marched away.

It seemed like an age had passed before the mists began to clear and Calard began to make out shapes around him once more. Shadows of trees loomed over him, and he saw the stars overhead, glinting in between boughs and leaves. He recognised these woods, and his brow creased in confusion.

Like ghosts appearing out of the mist, he saw the others walking alongside him, each one leading his horse, and Anara, walking out in front, leading her snow-white mare. A chill wind rustled the leaves overhead, and the mists lifted away, dissipating as if they had never been. Calarc saw that his limbs were solid once more, and let out a breath of amazement.

It was night, and Mannslieb was a glowing disc of light high in the heavens overhead, though it had been the break of dawn but moments before. Anara removed the scarf covering her mare’s eyes, and the other knights did likewise. In silence, they followed the damsel through the woods, gazing around in wondering incomprehension. Finally, they came to its edge, and again Calard’s jaw dropped.

In the distance, out across the rolling, dark fields was his home, Castle Garamont. It was on fire.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A million questions raced through Calard’s mind as they galloped through the darkness towards the castle. How had they travelled so far in so short a time? Why was Castle Garamont besieged? And by what manner of foe? Was his father well?

He yearned to ask these questions, but Anara’s face was cold and focused, and she chanted softly. He dared not disturb her thoughts, and the faces of the other knights were grim and serious, focused and set.

As they rode closer, he could hear shouts of men and bellowing roars that were all too familiar. The beasts had come to Garamont.

The main keep and two of the towers were ablaze, fires roaring from windows and lighting up the night hellishly. They galloped past rundown, peasant hovels, the inhabitants of which were standing out in the night, wailing and staring at the distant fires in horror.

Anara’s voice was getting louder, and he heard a peal of thunder roll across the heavens. Heavy droplets of rain began to fall, just a few at first, and then more, until the skies erupted in a torrential downpour.

The rain made it hard to see, and it seeped inside Calard’s armour, soaking the padding beneath and weighing him down, but he pushed aside these minor concerns. On they rode, kicking their tired steeds forward. Desperation and panic was growing within Calard.

As lightning flashed, they saw a flood of black figures racing towards the castle, streaming through the shattered gatehouse into the courtyard beyond, and Calard gave a cry of despair, kicking his steed on with renewed vigour. In that split second of sudden light, he had seen countless hundreds of beastmen spilling from the forest, and racing towards the castle.

They came upon a herd of the beasts, who turned and hurled themselves into their path, and Calard’s lance rammed deep into the chest of the first of them, lifting it off the ground. Reolus impaled one beast on his lance and killed another with a sweep of his sword. One knight fell, but the others continued on, smashing aside the enemy and crushing them mercilessly. Anara rode on in their centre, apparently oblivious to the engagement, as she continued to chant and the rain continued to increase in intensity.

Lightning flashed again, and Calard cried out in desperation as he saw the sheer number of the enemy. They were but a handful of knights, and he saw no hope of stemming the tide of beastmen, especially since the castle had already been breached. He rode on, regardless, determined to die defending his home if such was the Lady’s will.

They got closer, overtaking scores of beastmen in the race to the castle, and Calard, having discarded his lance, swung a lethal blow into the back of the head of one of the enemy, his strike powered by desperation and rage.

They thundered onto the cobbled road leading into the castle, and two more knights fell, one with a jagged spear jutting from his neck, and another as an axe hammered into his steed’s chest. Reolus kicked his massive steed into the lead, and carved a path of destruction through the beasts, hacking left and right.

They pounded across the lowered drawbridge.

The portcullis was a shattered ruin, its black iron lattice wrenched completely out of shape by some colossal force. The heavy wooden doors of Castle Garamont were twisted and contorted completely out of shape, writhing tree limbs and sap dripping roots having sprouted from the ancient planks and torn the gate apart.

They passed scores of bodies, loyal men-at-arms who had died defending the castle. Their bodies had been viciously hacked apart, their limbs thrown haphazardly across the cobbles. Galloping after Reolus, the knights thundered through the gatehouse. A beast hurled itself from an overhead balcony and tackled a knight from the saddle. The man was instantly swamped with enemies, who hacked at him with axes and swords, rending him limb from limb.

Galloping free of the gatehouse, Calard saw that the courtyard within was teeming with the enemy. They were running riot, smashing, burning and killing. Through the driving rain, he saw men-at-arms upon the battlements fighting hard against the creatures that swarmed up the stone stairways. From atop the towers, bowmen fired into the heaving mass of beasts within the courtyard, but it was like spitting into the wind. Flames licked up at another of the towers, and he saw men jump from its top, hurtling down to smash amongst the carnage below rather than be burnt alive.

There, standing among the carnage, was the beast, the Gave, revelling in the destruction being wrought. It snarled, and directed its minions towards the knights with sharp sweeps of its staff. Then it barked, animalistic commands as it stalked up the steps towards the keep. Calard raked his spurs into the flanks of his warhorse, urging it towards the creature.

At his side, Anara released her grip on the neck of her snow-white mare and spread her arms out to either side, palms open to the heavens. She lifted her head high and cried out in a lilting tongue that Calard did not understand, and he felt the hairs on his arms stand up.

The dark clouds overhead boomed ominously, and then, with a barked command of power, lightning flashed down from the dark sky, stabbing into the densely packed enemy ranks like a jagged blade.

Dozens of creatures were consumed as the powerful energy coursed down from the heavens to strike raised weapons and helmets. Arcs of energy coalesced over their bodies, jumping eagerly between the beasts, consuming scores of them instantly. They jerked spasmodically as their flesh was cooked and their blood boiled, sparks and branches of white-hot power flashing back and forth over their forms.

Another, more powerful spear of light arced down from the heavens and struck the ground in the centre of the courtyard, and the accompanying boom was deafening. Scores of beasts were slain instantly, their flesh charred and blackened, and all those within twenty yards were hurled from their feet, their fur and skin singed.

Calard struggled to remain in the saddle, clinging frantically to his steed’s neck as it reared in terror. Several knights were thrown, hitting the ground hard as they fell. Calard wrenched on the reins, dragging the destrier back under control, and kicked it towards the shattered great doors leading into the keep, galloping over the burning and smoking corpses of those killed by the lightning strike.

An acrid metallic stink rose in the wake of the crackling discharge, mingling with the repulsive smell of burnt hair and flesh.

Calard slashed his sword into the charred head of an enemy as it struggled to rise, and pounded across the smoking courtyard. Other beasts were knocked aside by his warhorse’s bulk, limbs broken beneath its hooves. Reolus hacked down more of the creatures, and galloped at his side, as did Maloric and Anara, and the last knights remaining in the saddle.

They rode up the great stone steps leading to the keep. The creature leading the beastmen was pushing itself to its feet, one side of its body charred and smoking, its skin blistering and blackened from the lightning strike.

Then Calard and his companions were past the creature, riding through the arched entrance, into the keep, the hooves of their steeds slipping on the smooth flagstones, echoing sharply.

The beautifully carved, heavy doors to the keep had been smashed down, and shouts and screams came from within.

The great entrance hall was wide, its walls lined with archaic suits of armour. The enemy was thick here, flooding the hall, intent on destruction and slaughter. Flames were consuming the ancient tapestries hanging on the walls. Priceless depictions of Gilles le Breton’s famous twelve battles, which had taken a generation to weave, were destroyed in moments. The heat inside the keep was almost unbearable. A huge chandelier covered in candles dropped from the high ceiling, the chain clattering loudly as it ran out. It slammed into the floor with a resounding clatter, crushing a pair of beasts beneath it.

Clangs rang out as old suits of armour worn by past lords of Garamont were kicked from their pedestals, and Calard saw a servant dragged from a side door and butchered. Another man was slammed head first into a wall, his skull cracking under the impact. Sounds of fighting echoed up from stone side passages, and he could hear men and women screaming as the beasts ran rampant through the keep. The bodies of men-at-arms and knights littered the flagstones.

The knights rode up the hallway, driving the enemy out of their path, cutting them down with sword and lance. At the far end of the wide corridor, the doors to the audience hall were being forced open, the beastmen heaving a crude battering ram with all their brutish muscle against it.

‘For Garamont and the king!’ roared Calard.

Castellan Lutheure of Garamont sat tall upon his high-backed throne, the unsheathed sword of his family across his knees. His right hand was clasped weakly around the pommel of the revered weapon, while his left hand held the cold blade itself. His eyes were locked on the double doors that were the main entrance to his audience chamber.

Thick beams of wood had been hefted into position to brace the heavy doors, but they were bulging in with every shuddering impact. The battering ram slammed into the doors again and again, and timbers groaned in protest.

To Lutheure, the sound was a death knell. It may as well have been Morr knocking at his chamber door, coming at last to claim him.

A handful of loyal knights stood fanned out at the bottom of the dais on which Lutheure sat, swords in their hands, ready to step into the breach as soon as the doors were smashed asunder. It would not be long.

The side doors were similarly barred, and there was crashing against them also, though Lutheure was certain that the main doors would be broken down before they were breached.

Dozens of elderly courtiers, advisors, servants and ladies were clustered at the back of the chamber. Some of them were crying softly, while others were praying to the Lady for deliverance. They jerked violently with every crash of the battering ram. Several of them awkwardly held weapons in hands more suited to quills or refined crystal glasses.

Lady Calisse sat at the castellan’s side. Her face was pale and drawn, though she showed no fear, and her head was held high and proud. Lady Elisabet of Carlemont, hovered nearby, visibly shaking, her large, doe eyes wide and tearful.

‘Please, my lord,’ begged Garamont’s aged chamberlain, Folcard. ‘The passage is hidden, and the beasts will never find it. The tunnel leads deep into the bedrock. You will be safe there until the siege is lifted.’

Lutheure turned his rheumy gaze towards the fierce old chamberlain.

‘One of these days you will need to show me all the hidden passages that riddle this place,’ he wheezed.

‘On my word, my lord, but to see that day, you must come, now!’

‘I will not,’ said Lutheure softly.

‘My lord, you must!’

‘I will not hide from my enemies like a frightened peasant,’ said the castellan forcefully. ‘This is my ancestral home. I shall not be driven from it, and if the Lady decrees that my time in the world is past, then I shall die defending it to the last.’

‘Then I shall stand alongside you, my lord,’ said the castellan.

‘Don’t be a fool, man,’ said Lutheure. ‘You have not held a sword in your life. Go.’

‘I will not,’ said Folcard, his fierce eyes blazing.

Lutheure chuckled, though it descended into a painful, racking cough. He lifted a goblet from the small table at his side and took a sip of his pungent remedy. It was truly foul, and, though his health had steadily declined in the last months despite his physician’s ministrations, he had continued to drink the brew rather than face his wife’s wrath.

‘We are as stubborn as each other,’ he said when he had recovered, wiping flecks of blood from his pale lips. ‘A pair of stubborn old fools.’

‘Indeed so, my lord.’

Lutheure turned his gaze towards his wife, but she spoke before he could utter a word.

‘My place is with you,’ she said, her eyes brooking no argument. ‘I am not leaving your side.’

He had never won an argument with her in his life, and he knew that he was not going to start now. Resigned, he turned back towards his chamberlain.

‘Get the others out,’ he said.

The chamberlain bowed low, and moved towards the rear wall. He moved with the jerky stiffness of a hunting crane. He pressed his thumb against a small innocuous stone on the wall, and it sank inwards with an audible click. Moving to another place on the wall, he pushed and there was another click, followed by the grating sound of stone on stone. A panel slid aside, revealing a dark hole. A man would have to crawl on his hands and knees to enter the hidden passage. Beckoning swiftly, the chamberlain urged the first of the courtiers to enter.

‘Crawl through,’ he said. ‘You can stand after ten paces. Just keep following the passage. Feel your way forwards. Hurry now!’

‘You too,’ said Lutheure to Elisabet. Tears ran down her heart-shaped face, and she nodded numbly.

With a tremendous sound of cracking timbers, the beams barring the doors gave way, and the enemy surged in.

With shouts, the knights defending the chamber leapt forwards, killing the first of the beasts that tumbled inside.

‘And so the end is here,’ said Lutheure.

Elisabet was ducking down, gathering her long dress in her hand as she prepared to crawl into the hidden passage. The darkness within was complete, utterly swallowing those that had already crawled within. She was the last person to enter, and the portal would be sealed behind her. The thought was terrifying.

‘Hurry, girl,’ barked the chamberlain.

Steeling herself, biting her lip, Elisabet began to crawl into the darkness. The slipper of the person in front of her kicked her in the face, and she cried out, the sound echoing loudly. She could hear others further along weeping as they crawled into darkness, and some wailed in fear.

‘For Garamont and the king!’ came a shout from the hallway, and she stopped short.

‘Calard!’ she called, her voice echoing sharply around the enclosed space, and she began to push herself back the way she had come. Despite the chamberlain’s protests, she squirmed backwards, back out into the audience chamber.

‘Calard!’ she called again as she pushed herself to her feet, oblivious to the dust and muck that coated her knees and hands. With a curse, the chamberlain tripped a switch and the hidden passageway was sealed shut.

Reolus led the charge, his flashing blade, Durendyal, striking down into the back of a beast’s skull, smashing it into bloody shards. The remaining knights thundered into the audience chamber.

Calard took in the scene in an instant. He saw half a dozen knights in front of him, fighting back the dark beasts of the forest, their swords bloodied. He felt a stab of outrage as he saw a wasted, skeletally thin old man sitting in his father’s throne, and it took a moment for him to realise, with a shock, that it was his father.

Calard was filled with sudden grief. His father’s muscle was all but wasted away and his skin was a sickly grey. His eyes were almost completely lost in the deep recesses of their sockets, and he was dressed in robes. He clearly did not have the strength to wear his armour, even if it had fitted his gaunt frame. That must have hurt his pride immensely, and Calard’s heart was filled with sorrow.

The Lady Calisse sat at his father’s side, and the vulture-like figure of Chamberlain Folcard stood behind them.

‘Calard!’ someone cried out, and he saw Elisabet, her face streaked with tears. He swore. What was she doing here? Still, the hope and love he saw in her eyes filled him with grim determination.

With sudden vigour, he drove the point of his sword into the unprotected back of a beastman that had just felled one of the knights. The thrust skewered the creature between the shoulder blades, and it gave out a sickeningly human squeal of pain as it dropped.

‘Seal the doors!’ ordered Reolus, sliding from his saddle, kicking out and sending a beastman that rushed at him sprawling as he did so. More of the braying monsters were stampeding up the corridor towards the chamber, and Calard pulled his steed around sharply before dropping from the saddle. A spear was thrust towards him, but he had no time to raise his defences. A blade knocked the blow aside, and the creature’s jugular was neatly sliced open. It fell, blood bubbling from the wound. Calard’s thanks died in his throat as he saw who had saved him.

‘No thanks necessary,’ said Maloric when it was clear that Calard was not going to offer any.

Several knights grabbed the reins of the horses and dragged them away from the main floor of the audience chamber.

Reolus stood alone in the open doorway, holding the flood of the enemy back with his flashing blade. The grail knight parried blows with consummate ease, sending flashing ripostes that killed quicker than the eye could follow. Behind the surging enemy, the Gave was stalking up the corridor, eyes ablaze with fury.

Maloric and Calard ran to the doors.

‘Now!’ shouted Reolus, sensing a lull in the attack. He stepped swiftly back into the audience chamber, and the two knights errant slammed the doors closed.

The thick timbers that had barred them shut were splintered and useless, and Calard frantically looked around for something, anything, that could be used to barricade the entrance. He leant his weight against them as the enemy hurled themselves against the doors from the other side, and his armoured feet began to slide across the blood-slicked flagstones.

‘Help us!’ he cried, and more knights ran forwards to lend their weight. Others ripped long pikes and halberds from the walls of the hall and inserted them into the heavy iron brackets to bar the doors shut, but they seemed pitifully fragile against the force battering from the outside. There was a tremendous crash, and the knights were hurled backwards a step. The beasts had clearly resumed their former tactic, and were once again using their battering ram.

‘Step back, and make ready,’ said Reolus, his voice calm and authoritative. ‘The Lady is with us.’

As if his words were a charm, the hammering at the door ceased abruptly, and the knights looked at each other in confusion. They backed away, hands clenching around the hilts of their weapons. The tension in the room was thick, and Calard took the moment of respite to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The sudden silence was eerie, and he fully expected the doors to explode inwards at any moment.

He risked a glance up at the dais, and his eyes met Elisabet’s.

‘I love you,’ mouthed Elisabet to him.

His eyes shifted to his father, whose uncompromising visage frowned down at Anara, who was walking slowly up the stairs towards him. With great effort, the castellan pushed himself up from his throne, using the blade of Garamont like a crutch.

The Damsel Anara climbed the stairs to stand before the castellan. He looked like an animated skeleton, his robes hanging loosely on his emaciated body, and every contour of his skull pushing against his skin. She felt rather than saw Calard following in her wake.

‘Who is this?’ asked the Lady Calisse as she stood up from her throne, sensing that something was taking place that she did not understand.

The damsel glanced in her direction, and the lady sat back down abruptly.

‘The lady Anara,’ said chamberlain Folcard, with not a little disdain in his voice.

‘Your… your daughter?’ asked Calisse.

‘I have no daughter,’ rasped Castellan Lutheure.

Anara regarded them coldly, no flicker of emotion showing on her face. She had severed her connection with her blood family long ago. Such was the way of the damsels of the Lady.

Lutheure swayed suddenly, and one of his legs buckled beneath him. The sword of Garamont clattered as it struck the floor, and both the chamberlain and the Lady Calisse jerked into motion to catch the lord of Garamont, though both were too slow.

Anara stepped forward quickly and caught the castellan before he could fall. Though he towered over her, he was frail and she supported him easily in her arms.

Up close, his face a hair’s breadth from her own, she could see how sallow and transparent his skin was. She saw the burst blood vessels splashed across his nose and cheeks, and the dark liver spots that marked his flesh. She looked into his yellowed eyes and saw how close he was to death.

There was something else in his face, too, some taint. There was a black sickness within him, eating away at him, that no physician would have recognised. Only one such as she would have been able to perceive it for what it truly was, for it was necrotic in nature, based on the foul tenets of those schooled in the black arts.

Even as she came to this conclusion, her eyes snapped towards the small table at the castellan’s side, locking on the goblet upon its smooth surface. Lutheure was gently lowered back into his throne by his wife and chamberlain, while the Lady Elisabet hovered nervously nearby. Anara lifted the goblet to her nose, sniffing. She recoiled from the noxious, underlying taint within the liquid and cast the goblet away from her. It clattered to the floor, spilling its vile contents upon the stone.

‘Who gave him that?’ she asked. No one was paying her any mind, intent on the wellbeing of the castellan.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Calard, coming up behind her. The unearthly silence beyond the doors to the audience chamber still held, as if the enemy had suddenly dissipated into thin air. Anara knew better. She could feel the foul presence of the Gave beyond the portals, gathering its strength.

‘Who gave him that brew?’ she asked again, this time imparting a fraction of her power into the words.

Lady Calisse stuttered as she was compelled to answer.

‘It is… it is my husband’s remedy,’ she said, ‘for his illness. His physician–’

‘It is poison,’ said Anara acidly.

Stunned silence greeted her proclamation. Elisabet paled. The chamberlain’s face lit up in alarm. She saw Calard’s eyes go cold, boring into the Lady Calisse.

‘You bitch,’ he said, staring venomously at his step-mother. She looked back at him without comprehension. ‘Attempts on my life… Poisoning my father… And for what? So that Bertelis would become the ruler of Garamont?’

Calisse’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, and Anara probed into her mind with the powers vested in her by the Lady of the Lake, skimming her thoughts for any sign of guilt.

‘I should cut you down here and now, you murderous viper!’ said Calard. Covered in blood and with his sword in his hand, his eyes blazing with fury, he stepped towards the lady of Garamont. She cowered before him.

‘No,’ said Anara, ‘it was not her.’

The words cut through Calard’s rage, and he stared down at his twin in confusion. What was she saying? It all made sense!

He looked back at his step-mother. She stared at him with murderous eyes.

Surely she was behind it all?

Wasn’t she?

‘Who, then?’ he asked. He wanted to strike out at someone, anyone, and desperately wanted a target for his wrath. ‘Who has been poisoning my father?’ he asked again, more forcefully.

Anara’s eyes misted over, and then settled on Elisabet. Calard’s heart skipped a beat.

‘No,’ he whispered.

Elisabet came to Calard’s side, pale and drawn, and clung to him like a child.

‘Why is she looking at me like that, my love?’ she asked, her voice scared.

Calard was shaking his head.

‘Her,’ said Anara, staring accusingly at Elisabet.

This was insane! Why in the Lady’s name would his love wish to kill his father? No, Anara was wrong.

‘You are mistaken, sister,’ said Calard desperately.

‘I am not,’ she replied, her eyes glinting feyly. ‘Ask her, if you wish.’

Elisabet was crying, tears running down her face, and she clung tightly to Calard, uncaring of the blood and gore splattered over his breastplate and arms.

‘You cannot believe her!’ Elisabet said frantically, her eyes wild. She stared up at him with imploring, desperate eyes. Her expression would haunt him forever. ‘You cannot believe her!’

Calard looked deep into the eyes of the woman he loved, and saw the ugly truth that lay behind her beauty.

‘Why?’ he whispered in horror.

‘You cannot believe her!’ Elisabet cried again, but Calard stumbled away from her, tears welling in his eyes.

‘Why?’ he asked again.

‘I did it for us!’ wailed Elisabet finally, moving into him, tears running down her face. He backed further away, as if she were a plague victim, though it broke his heart to see the hurt in her eyes.

‘She would have seen you disowned,’ cried Elisabet, pointing an accusing finger at Lady Calisse. The smell of her perfume was intoxicating, confusing, and he stepped further away from her. ‘She would have convinced your father to disown you. You know I speak the truth! He has eyes only for Bertelis! You would have been left a pauper, with nothing! We would have been left with nothing!’

Calard shook his head in horror at what he was hearing.

‘It was for us,’ implored Elisabet.

Calard stumbled away blindly, tears running freely down his cheeks.

‘Calard,’ wailed Elisabet. She went to follow him, but Folcard grabbed her by the arm.

‘Haven’t you done enough, girl!’ the fierce chamberlain hissed.

‘Calard!’ she cried. ‘I love you! Calard! Please forgive me. I did only what I thought best for us, for our future together! Calard!’

His world collapsing around him, Calard stumbled down to the bottom of the dais stairs and fell to his knees, his sword dropping from his limp grasp. He ripped the silk token of Elisabet’s affection from his arm and let it fall to the floor. He dimly heard a hard slap, and the Lady Calisse screeching like a wildcat as she threw herself at Elisabet.

‘Stop it!’ he heard Anara snap, her voice tinged with power. ‘The beast comes.’

There was still no sound from the hallway beyond the double doors, but as Anara spoke they heard a new noise. It was a groaning, creaking sigh, like a house settling in the cool of evening, or the sound a ship made as it rolled from side to side in a heavy swell. The hairs on Calard’s body stood up, as if the air was charged with static, and he felt an acid tingle on his tongue.

‘The door,’ muttered Maloric, and Calard looked up through his grief.

The grand wooden doors were swelling and bulging with sudden, unnatural growth. Woody tendrils were sprouting from their surfaces, waving like blind tentacles. Thorns weeping sap pushed out, and the knots on the surface of the doors began to seep with more of the sticky fluid, running like blood down to the floor.

Branches burst from the wood as if it was gifted with sudden, corrupt life. They coiled upwards, straining against the lintel and cracking stone. Black, foul-smelling buds unfurled, releasing bloated flies that launched into the air. Leaves the colour of rotting vegetation sprouted, only to waste away and fall to the floor an instant after they had appeared. Roots erupted from the base of the doors, creeping out across the stone slabs of the floor, probing between cracks and digging deep into the mortar. Burrowing beneath the stonework, they began to push the flagstones up, and spreading cracks ran out in all directions, like a spider’s web.

With a tearing sound, the doors were pulled apart by the sudden growth, and there stood the Gave, eyes alight with foetid magic. The doors were wrenched further apart, and a tide of Chaotic beastmen swarmed into the audience chamber around their master.

Knights leapt forwards to meet them head-on, and Calard saw Maloric and Reolus rush into battle, their blades singing through the air. The irony of a noble of Sangasse fighting to save the lord of Garamont was not lost on Calard.

Finally facing an enemy upon which he could unleash his fury and grief, Calard swept up his dropped sword and entered the frantic combat.

He roared wordlessly as he swung the blade, all thought of protecting himself swept aside as he let his rage overcome him. He fought like one of the berserk warriors of the icy north, venting his anger in the flesh of the enemy. He hacked the arm from the first beastman that he met, shrugging off the hammer blow he received in the chest, and smashed his blade into the beast’s head, cleaving through one of its horns and smashing its skull.

Calard allowed a red mist to descend over his vision, and he slashed around in his frenzy, caring not at all for his own safety. He threw himself deeper into the fray, and blows rained down upon him, but still he killed, his armour suffering the brunt of the attacks directed towards him.

‘Protect the lord Garamont! Fall back!’ someone cried, and Calard came to his senses. His father was still alive, and he had a duty to perform in protecting him. Throwing his life away meaninglessly would be a dishonour to his lord, and he was suddenly determined to make his father proud, at last, to protect him with his dying breath.

A meaty fist slammed into his temple, and he was sent sprawling to the ground.

Dazed, he dimly registered the towering Gave as it strode through the melee, its backwards-jointed legs giving it an awkward gait. It smashed a pair of knights aside with a sweep of its staff, and stabbed its sacrificial dagger into the throat of another. Calard cried out as it took its first step up the dais towards Lutheure.

Reolus was advancing into the roiling midst of the enemy, fighting his way to the doorway once more in an attempt to stem the flow of beastmen, while the other knights fell back to protect the castellan. The grail knight moved with subtle grace and economy of movement, expending no more energy than was required to kill. He had retrieved a fallen sword from the floor, and was fighting with two blades, spinning them around in deadly arcs.

Calard pushed to his feet, dazed, and moved towards the towering creature. A beastman threw itself into his path, its face a snarling blend of goat and man, and Calard tried to kill it quickly. His blade flashed for its neck, but it swayed back from the blow and hacked out with its axe. The blow glanced off his shield, knocking him back a step, agonisingly further away from the beast stalking up the dais steps.

A pair of loyal knights defending his father stepped forwards to slow the towering beast. It ignored them, feral eyes locked on the lord of Garamont, who was staring at it with eyes filled with horror and loathing. He had pushed himself to his feet once more, supported by his chamberlain, and held the blade of Garamont in his hands, its tip shaky and unsteady. His wife was cowering behind the thrones where the chamberlain had thrust her.

The two knights came at the beast simultaneously. With inhuman speed, it stepped into the attack of the knight on its right, releasing its grip on its staff, which remained upright, rooted upon the steps.

With its free hand, it caught the descending sword-arm of the knight at the wrist, wrenching the metal out of shape and pulling him violently off balance. The sacrificial knife stabbed into the knight’s neck as the beast spun, punching through metal and chain, and blood gushed from the wound. Still turning, the beast slammed the knight into its other attacker, sending them sprawling down the steps.

Calard barely avoided another brutal attack from the beastman he was engaged with. The beast had put too much strength behind the blow and stumbled off balance. Calard killed it with a thrust.

Anara was still standing alongside the castellan, looking tiny and insignificant as she faced down the beast looming before her. She was muttering an incantation softly under her breath, and the creature snarled at her, baring its teeth. Then it roared, the power and fury in the deafening cry making Anara recoil back a step. It threw its arm up towards her, its long fingers splayed out.

The air blurred before its outstretched hand, like a heat haze against the horizon on a hot day, and Anara was sent tumbling backwards, as if struck by a heavy blow. She struck her head against the heavy armrest of her father’s throne and fell unconscious to the floor.

Another desperate knight ran at the towering Gave, his sword held in a two-handed grip. The beast swung its staff up, and thrust it into the charging warrior. It struck the knight in the chest and root tendrils writhed over his body. His boots slipped on the smooth flagstones, and he fell heavily down the steps, the staff attached like a leech to his body. The roots of the twisted stave wriggled madly as they burrowed between gaps in the knight’s armour, pushing through chain links and digging deep into muscle and flesh.

The knight screamed, his body withering as the hateful staff sucked the life from him. Dark veins pulsed as the knight’s blood was drawn from his body.

It was all happening too fast. Calard surged up the stairs towards the beast, screaming in hatred and loathing. It swung towards him with inhuman speed, and backhanded him across the side of the head, sending him crashing to the bottom of the dais.

A sword sliced across its back, scoring a bloody wound. It bellowed in pain and anger, and lashed out blindly. The sacrificial dagger plunged into its attacker’s helmet, sinking six inches of metal into the man’s brain.

Maloric, his noble face twisted in disgust, came at the beast from the side, but it kicked one of its hooves hard into his midsection, denting the Sangasse noble’s breastplate and sending him reeling, gasping for air.

A sword flashed towards the beast, and it stepped backwards quickly, its hand flashing down to grip the weapon as it lanced towards its heart. Blood welled beneath its long, spider-leg fingers as it turned the blade away, and the knight, off balance, stumbled towards it.

Releasing the sword, the beast wrapped its hands around the knight’s helmet and twisted. A sickening crack sounded, and the warrior fell to the ground, his head almost completely turned around.

Nobody now stood between the Gave and the castellan.

Calard rose to his knee, his vision blurred, and staggered back up the dais stairs.

Elisabet shook free of the chamberlain’s weakening grasp and staggered backwards, half-blinded by tears. She felt cold stone behind her. There was nowhere to run.

Tears continued to run down her face, and she sobbed in terror and shame. The look of horror and revulsion that Calard had given her was imprinted in her mind. She hated herself for what she had done, but why didn’t he understand that she had done it for them?

It had been an easy thing. She had given the servant, Annabelle, to the Garamont household, and the peasant girl had quickly become an integral part of the daily routine in the castle. It had taken her months to build up the courage to seek out the crone, but at last she had done so, and it was from her that she had obtained the poison.

‘It is a slow acting substance,’ the crone had told her. ‘It will cause a death that will not arouse suspicion.’

How wrong she had been.

Annabelle had added the poison to the castellan’s remedy each day, though of course the girl knew not what she did. She was paid handsomely to keep her activities secretive, and not to ask questions.

The full understanding of what she had done weighed down upon Elisabet. Though the shame and doubt had plagued her, she had overcome them, focusing only on the future that she would have with Calard. She would learn to live with the guilt. So long as they were together and happy then everything she had been forced to do, however distasteful, would have been forgotten in time.

She loved him so very much.

Barely knowing what she was doing, she fumbled against the back wall, feeling around the place where she had seen the chamberlain press. At last one of the stones clicked inwards. She quickly located the other switch, and the gaping black hole was again revealed.

What cursed twist of fate had caused Calard’s twin to appear and shatter all her hopes and dreams? And why could Calard not see that everything that she had done had been for him?

Crying for all that could have been, and all that was now lost to her, Elisabet ducked into the crawl space, wriggling into the darkness.

Damn them all, she thought, sobbing tears of anger, bitterness and grief.

Garamont’s aged chamberlain stepped in front of his lord, his hawk-like profile defiant and completely lacking fear. He stood, unarmed, before the beast. It was half-crouching, moving like a stalking wolf, but still it towered over the man.

‘Move to your right, my lord,’ said the chamberlain, not taking his eyes off the creature. Lutheure, his body withered and hunched, shuffled to the right as instructed. Wise to their thinking, the beast stalked sideways, cutting off any route of escape.

‘A step more,’ hissed the chamberlain, and again the beast matched their movement. Its back was now to Calard, as Folcard had no doubt intended, and he stepped as softly as he was able up the steps behind it.

As if suddenly tiring of the game, the beast lurched forwards and grabbed the chamberlain by his shoulder. The elderly man was hurled to the side. He slammed into a pillar, and crumpled in a heap at its base.

Calard leapt up the stairs with a shout, hefting his sword, but the beast was too fast. It stepped forwards, its powerful legs covering the ground quickly, and swatted Lutheure’s blade aside with a contemptuous sweep of its hand, the ancient sword of Garamont spinning across the stone floor.

Its hand closed around Lutheure’s thin neck, and it lifted him up into the air. Knocking the thrones out of its path, almost crushing the Lady Calisse in the process, it slammed the castellan against the back wall. Calard cried out. The old lord’s feet were a good foot off the ground, and he kicked weakly. The Gave bent forward and snarled, its face an inch from the castellan’s.

Perhaps hearing or sensing Calard behind it, the beast swung its head around and levelled its dagger towards him, snarling in rage. Still Calard came on, and the beast bent its arm, placing the tip of the dagger against the lord of Garamont’s neck. The old lord, his eyes fearful, swallowed thickly, and a bead of blood ran down his throat.

Calard froze, hatred burning within him.

Calard’s stepmother was wailing from where she had fallen, tears running down her face.

‘My husband!’ she cried.

Calard took a cautious step towards the beast. It hissed in warning, pressing the dagger deeper into his father’s flesh, and Calard froze. He risked a glance down at Anara, who was stirring at his feet, a purple bruise spreading across her temple.

Maloric, back on his feet, was circling around the flank of the beast, his body low, as if he was stalking game.

‘Maloric,’ hissed Calard. ‘Don’t.’

Ignoring him, Maloric stepped lightly up the dais stairs, intent on his prey. The beast hissed at him and pressed the dagger deeper into the castellan’s neck. Calard saw blood begin to flow more freely.

‘Maloric!’ barked Calard. The beast, distracted by the shout, turned its head towards Calard, which was all the opening that Maloric needed.

The Sangasse nobleman leapt forwards, his slim blade stabbing deep into the beast’s side. It snarled in anger and pain, and dropped Lutheure. The castellan crumpled to the floor, and Calard cried out, lurching forwards to strike the beast down.

With a downward slap of its open hand, the creature snapped Maloric’s blade, leaving the tip protruding from its body. Maloric staggered back, gazing in horror at his shattered weapon.

The Gave tore the blade from its side and sent it hissing through the air. It struck Calard in the shoulder of his sword arm as he lunged forwards, shearing through his armour and sinking deep into his flesh. The force of the throw spun him to the ground, and his sword flew from his hand.

The beast turned back towards Lutheure, who was trying to drag himself away, and it stamped towards him angrily. The Garamont lord cried out weakly as the beast’s hand clamped around his leg and jerked him back.

Blood was running from the wound in Calard’s shoulder, and his fingers felt numb. He looked around for a weapon and saw the revered sword of Garamont lying discarded on the flagstones nearby. Shaking off his shield, he lifted the exquisite blade from the ground. He held it two-handed, forcing his numb fingers to close around the hilt.

The beast was crouching over his father, revelling in his terror. Reaching behind its heavy head with both hands, one still holding the bloody dagger in its grip, Calard heard leather ties break, and, for a moment, he could not fathom what the wretched creature was doing.

Calard stared in horror as the beast removed its own face.

It clawed at its features, and like a snake shedding its skin, the stitched, rotting flesh was ripped away. Even its horns fell away from its head, and, it was only when they dropped to the floor and he saw the leather ties and buckles, that Calard realised the beast had been wearing a mask.

The creature blinked, and its true features were exposed.

Calard’s mind baulked as he found himself looking at a broad, disturbingly human face. It was like the face of a savage, its cheeks and brow heavily scarred from self-inflicted mutilations, and smeared with mud and dried blood, but it was clearly a human face. Somehow that seemed to make it even more horrific. Ice-blue human eyes darted around before fixing once more upon Lutheure.

Thick ropes of matted hair hung down to its waist, and a long goatee beard hung from its chin. If one saw just its face, and not its unnatural bestial legs and furred body, it might have passed for human, albeit one that was feral and barbaric. Its lips drew back, exposing hundreds of small, sharp teeth, and the image was shattered.

‘Abomination,’ breathed Lutheure in revulsion and horror.

‘What is it?’ Calard asked no one in particular, his voice thick with disgust.

‘Our brother,’ replied Anara from the floor, touching a hand gingerly to her bruised temple. Calard felt his sanity begin to fray.

‘Borne by our mother before she threw herself to her death in shame,’ continued Anara, ‘a creature that should have been killed at birth.’

Looking past the filth that encrusted the beast’s face, past the savage scars that crisscrossed its features, he saw his own face looking back at him. It was like looking in a bewitched mirror, and seeing a corrupted and distorted vision of himself looking back.

No one moved, stricken with the horror of the creature’s true nature. None could dispute the familial resemblance. This beast was of the Garamont bloodline.

‘Your line is cursed,’ hissed Maloric. Calard wanted to strike Maloric down, but, for all that, he could not argue with his words.

The beast snarled down at Lutheure. Then, with a movement fuelled by hatred, the beast rammed its dagger into the side of Lutheure’s neck. Calard screamed, yet was powerless, as the serrated blade sank through his father’s flesh to the hilt. The blade was wrenched clear, and it clattered on the stone as it was dropped from long fingers.

Arterial blood pumped from the fatal wound, and Calard roared in protest and horror, running forwards. The beast lifted Lutheure to its chest, cradling the dying man almost like a mother holding a sick child to her bosom. An anguished howl ripped from its throat.

Calard swung the sword of Garamont in a powerful, two-handed arc, blinded by grief and rage. Rather than try to avoid the blow, the creature merely tilted its head back, exposing its neck. In that instant, all the bestial hatred, loathing and rage slipped from its face.

Calard slammed the sword into the Gave’s neck, the blade hacking deep into its flesh. Rich blood spurted from the shocking wound, and its head tipped backwards, only loosely attached to its body by tendons and sinews. The beast fell twitching as its blood pooled beneath it, mixing with its father’s blood.

Calard dropped to his knees, cradling his father’s head in his hands. The life was slipping quickly from his eyes, and his mouth moved as he tried to speak.

‘My son,’ he gasped, blood gurgling from his neck.

‘I am here, father,’ Calard said, tears running down his face.

The dying man’s eyes searched past Calard frantically. ‘Bertelis,’ he gurgled, and Calard felt a pain lance his heart as he realised it was not he that his father sought. Even in death, his father spurned him.

A deep wracking sob shook Calard’s body. The Lady Calisse wailed as she threw herself over her husband’s corpse.

The sounds of battle continued unabated as Reolus continued to hold the enemy at bay, but Calard did not register them.

His eyes were locked on his father’s gaunt, dead face.

EPILOGUE

Spluttering torches made shadows leap like capering, daemonic figures across the roughly hewn stone walls.

The chamber had been carved from the bedrock beneath Castle Garamont centuries earlier, long before the foundations of the fortress had been laid. In ages past, chieftains of the Bretonni tribe had gathered here for meetings of great import, though this had been long forgotten by all but a handful. For centuries, the meeting place had lain dormant, forgotten and redundant, its very existence known only to the successive chamberlains of the Garamont household, and accessible only by secret passages known to few.

No one had needed to use the chamber for over five generations.

Now, seven hooded figures were gathered here, hugging themselves against the icy chill permeating from the ancient stone surrounding them. The seven sat in rough stone thrones carved into the walls.

‘The Garamont line is tainted,’ said one of their number, nothing more than his chin visible within the shadow of his hood, ‘and one now rules whose bloodline is cursed.’

There were mutterings among the gathered figures.

‘Tanebourc failed. The time for subtlety is passed. We must eradicate this stain upon the Garamont name.’

‘You would have us act against the lord we have sworn fealty to?’ voiced one of the hooded figures, his voice strong: a knight’s voice. ‘And betray our oaths of allegiance?’

‘We swore an oath to protect the line of Garamont!’ snapped the first speaker. ‘I saw the cursed beast. It was the blood-brother of our newly appointed lord, a thing that should not have been,’ he said forcefully. ‘Our duty is clear. In the Lady’s name, we are duty bound to stamp out this… taint, for the honour of the Garamont bloodline.’

‘It should have died at birth,’ he added, speaking to himself, remembering. If only Lutheure had finished it, so long ago. Who could have predicted that it would survive? He cursed himself for not seeing the creature dead.

‘Then what?’ asked another hooded figure. ‘Does not our lord Lutheure’s youngest son bear the curse in his blood?’

‘It was not Lutheure’s blood that was tainted,’ snapped another. ‘His first wife brought this curse upon the Garamont line. Bertelis is not tarred with her… unholiness.’

Several of the hooded figures rose from their seats, their voices angry. Others rose to meet the arguments, and the raised voices echoed maddeningly around the enclosed space.

The first speaker raised his hand for silence. ‘Enough!’ he barked, his voice authoritative and fierce. The angry din died down, and the hooded figures took their seats.

The first speaker pulled his hood from his face, and glared around, silencing the last of the mutterings.

‘This is our duty,’ barked Folcard, chamberlain of Garamont. ‘As painful as it is, our path is clear. In the name of Garamont and of the Lady, we must cleanse the taint.’

The chamberlain’s fierce gaze settled on each of the hooded figures in turn.

‘Lord Calard must die.’

KNIGHT OF THE REALM

PROLOGUE

The glow of embers cast a hellish light through the tent, and ribbons of acrid smoke coiled around the seated figure. Threatening shadows surrounded him, whispering hatefully, and the seer’s eyes snapped open.

Barking a curse of warding, the seer upended a bowl of warm blood onto the glowing coals. It boiled and spat and the murderous shadows retreated into the darkest recesses of the tent, banished. A moment later and the seer was alone, seated cross-legged before the hissing embers.

His upper body was naked, and a crisscrossing network of scars covered his sinewy, taut flesh, interspersed with talismanic tattoos and ritual piercings. Bones, flint runes and sticks were bound within his thick mane of dark hair, and his tattooed lips parted in a smile, exposing teeth that had been filed to points.

‘At last,’ he said.

The seer surged upright, pulling thick furs around his shoulders and snatching up his goat-skulled staff. Throwing aside the heavy flap of his tent, he stepped out into the roaring gale.

The snow was knee deep, and he leant into the wind as he stamped his way through the Skaeling village of Strovengaard. Snow and ice billowed around him, and he could see little, merely vague shadows suggesting the tents and structures of the village. It mattered not; he could have walked blindfolded through the village without tripping or making a false step.

Climbing the icy stairs of the longhouse, hunched against the fury of the gale, the seer slammed the iron-shod butt of his staff against a pair of grand double doors. They were carved with stylised images of warriors and daemons, surrounded by spiralling designs that seemed to writhe with movement, but the seer was wise enough not to be ensnared by their tricks.

The doors opened a crack before their guardian recognised who it was that sought entrance and the doors were thrown wide. The seer strode inside, snow blasting in around him, and the portals were slammed shut.

It was stiflingly hot inside and stank of sweat and charred meat. The feast was in full flow, and the general hubbub rose to the rafters as the favoured warriors of the tribe, the huskarls, ate and drank, laughed and fought.

Each member of this warrior elite was a battle-scarred veteran that had proven himself time and time again before his peers, his lord and the gods themselves. They were giants among men, fierce, proud and volatile, each one marked in some way by the Great Powers, and yet even through their haze of drunkenness, they instinctively gave way as the shaman stalked amongst them.

The seer stood barely to the shoulder of any of the huskarls, but they parted before him like the ocean before the prow of a dragonship. None caught his eye, and conversations silenced as he passed. Even the massive warhounds of the tribe, stalking around the periphery of the feast, cowered before him, whimpering and snarling.

One pair of eyes did not lower, and the seer threw a glance towards the squat, inhuman figure seated in a dim corner of the hall. He saw malice and hatred in those stony eyes, and returned the glare briefly. How he would love to cut the heart from that one and devour it before life faded from the stunted bastard’s eyes.

Dragging his gaze away from the dark dwarf, the seer continued to make his way through the press of warriors. An icy trickle ran down the back of his neck as the snow and ice upon his furs and hair began to melt. The butt of his staff slammed into the sawdust covered floor with every step.

Against the far wall was a raised platform, upon which a dozen people feasted, seated at a long table perpendicular to the others in the room, allowing them an unobstructed view across the hall. The wall behind this table was hung with weapons, shields, severed heads, skulls and beast pelts of all description. They were all trophies won by the lord of the tribe, their high jarl, in the decades since he had come to power; the day that he had hacked his father’s head from his shoulders and claimed his ascendancy.

As a seer of the Skaelings, he had no need to bow to any man or beast, and yet as he reached the bottom of the dais he dropped to one knee and lowered his head. His jarl was more than just a chieftain to him, for he had welcomed him into his home, clothed and fed him, and taught him the ways of the Skaeling Norscans. To the seer, his jarl was a father in all but name and blood.

‘Rise, Bjarki,’ the Skaeling chieftain said, his voice deep and sonorous.

The seer lifted his head to look upon his adopted father, his eyes shining with savage anticipation.

High Jarl Egil Styrbjorn sat brooding upon a wooden throne carved to resemble a twin-headed dragon, its clawed forelimbs forming the armrests and its unfurled wings the high back. He was a massive man, tall and powerfully built despite his years. Bjarki could feel the touch of the gods upon the high jarl as a tingle upon his flesh and a dull buzzing in the base of his skull. Both his beard and long, dark blond hair were streaked with silver, though his icy grey eyes still blazed with strength and vigour.

Flanking him were his wives and daughters. His youngest wife, the personification of Norscan beauty itself – tall, proud, and strong – was leaning against her husband, her bosom pressed against one of his powerful arms. His youngest child was no more than a babe; his eldest was already past child-bearing years. Not that such a thing had been put to the test – no Skaeling chieftain would allow a daughter to marry until he had a son to carry his name.

‘I have seen her, my jarl,’ said Bjarki, a slight smile curling at the seer’s tattooed lips.

All eyes turned towards him, and the dull murmur of conversation died.

‘I have seen her in a blood-vision,’ said the seer, ‘delivered by the gods themselves.’

Styrbjorn’s wives and daughters traded glances, and the Skaeling chieftain leant forward ever so slightly.

‘Speak plainly, little bear,’ said Styrbjorn.

‘I have seen the one who will birth you a son,’ said the Skaeling seer.

The only sound was the crackling of flames and the dull howl of the wind outside.

‘Where?’ growled Styrbjorn.

‘Across the sea, in the land of the southern horsemen. Bretonnia.’

CHAPTER ONE

Boughs creaked and groaned overhead, and an icy wind whispered through the trees like a dying breath. Thorned twigs scratched at Elisabet’s arms as she pushed through the tangle of brambles and branches, drawing blood.

The hem of her dress was tattered and stained, and strands of unruly hair had escaped their binding, pulled loose by snagging branches.

The wild forest resisted Elisabet’s every step, and she began to imagine that there was a malicious sentience within it, a darkly verdant will that lurked at its heart, thwarting her attempts to penetrate its borders.

She shivered at the thought, realising that there was a certain truth in the notion; all the whispered stories she had heard said that the crone Haegtesse did exert some measure of power over the woods. That power ensured those who meant her harm, or those whom she did not wish to receive, were turned around, finding themselves walking back towards the edge of the woods instead of into them. It was for this reason that Haegtesse had not hung from the gallows decades, or indeed a century, earlier. In truth, many had come to believe that she was nothing more than a local superstition, a story told to scare children into behaving.

Elisabet, however, knew that the crone Haegtesse was no myth, for she had visited her once before. Long had she cursed that day, and a wretched sob rocked her slender frame.

She hardly knew why she sought out the hag again now. Was it shame that brought her back to the place that had started it all? Her resentment, her anger, her self-loathing?

Where else had she to go, she thought bitterly? She was outcast, her life forfeit.

Again she saw her beloved Calard’s face, a mask of horror and disgust.

A twinge of bitterness stabbed through her. It had all been for him. How could he not see that?

In truth, Elisabet didn’t know why she came here. It felt like she was being drawn here, and she had no power to resist this siren call. It was as if an invisible leash was fastened around her neck, dragging her inexorably back to the crone’s cave.

Elisabet’s foot caught between a pair of twisted roots resembling sinewy arms, and she winced as her ankle twisted beneath her. She fell awkwardly, hands burying themselves in the rich leaf litter. Insects and worms writhed across her skin. Horrified, she pulled herself free of the contorted roots and scrambled to her feet.

Her eyes widened as she came face to face with the doll-totem. She was certain that it had not been there just a moment before.

It dangled less than two feet in front of her face, and she staggered back from it, her large, dark-rimmed eyes wide.

It hung from a low bough, like a corpse swinging slowly from a gibbet, a crude representation of a woman, crafted of wood, bone and hair and strung together with half-rotted sinew. It stunk like rancid meat, and Elisabet covered her nose and mouth. What looked like dried blood was daubed upon the totem’s chest, in between its malformed breasts, and strings of beads, shells and knucklebones hung from its cruciform, spread-eagled arms and legs. Its fingers and toes were twigs and it wore a frayed skirt of dried grass and thorns.

Its face was framed by dark, human-looking hair that crawled with lice. Skin, possibly human and dark with age, had been stretched across a lump of wood crudely carved in the shape of a human head, and Elisabet felt her stomach lurch as she saw maggots squirming beneath. A wide slash filled with human and animal teeth represented the doll-totem’s mouth, and holes had been burnt for eyes. Rotten acorns stood in for eyeballs, and two further slits in the skin represented nostrils. Bloated flies crawled in and out of these gashes. The face seemed to leer at her, and Elisabet tried to stem the panic rising within her as it swung back and forth, creaking, in front of her.

Keeping her distance, Elisabet edged past the doll-totem. She saw more of them, the low branches hanging with dozens of the vile things, each one a horrific mockery of humanity. Some had twisted horns sprouting from their heads, and others were blackened with fire. Some had rusted nails hammered into their eyes, while others had disgusting, unrecognisable lumps of flesh hung around their necks like scarves, some with scraps of fur and skin still attached.

Keeping her gaze resolutely forward, Elisabet followed the twisting path. At last she came upon the cave. A moaning wind emerged from within, bringing with it the sickly scent of rot and decay.

The giant husk of a tree loomed overhead, its twisted roots spread out beneath it, slick with blood-like sap. This ancient tree had grown atop a rocky outcrop, its thick roots cracking the stone and framing the cave entrance like mighty pillars. The slim fissure was dark.

A raven sat above the cave entrance, its head cocked to the side as it glared at Elisabet with one yellow eye. It cawed, the sound ugly and harsh, and a whisper emerged from within the cave, carried to Elisabet’s ears on the breath of a foetid wind.

‘Come, child…’

Elisabet shivered, unsure if the words had been real or imagined. An inner voice was screaming for her to turn and run, to flee this horrid place, but she could not. The invisible leash tugged at her, impelling her onwards.

The black-feathered raven stared down at her, and she felt the hatred and hunger of the carrion eater wash over her. She flinched as it took flight, crying raucously, and it flapped off into the darkness.

The pull upon her grew more insistent, and the last fragments of her resistance were stripped away. With a sob, she entered the cave.

Elisabet stretched her hands out to either side, fingertips brushing the cold, wet rock. After a dozen hesitant steps into darkness the tunnel turned to the right, leaving the daylight behind, and the dim glow of candles could be seen flickering across the walls in front. She saw that the stone had been carved into daemonic forms, capering horned figures, naked succubi and scaled, dog-faced warriors engaged in all manner of horrific debauchery, and she quickly averted her gaze.

The cave opened up before her. Its extent was hidden in darkness, but the candles, thick and squat and exuding reeking, black smoke, illuminated its centre. Roots from the tree above reached down into the cave like the arms of corpses. Less wholesome things hung there too: skinned hares dripping blood, twitching rodents and bats impaled on hooks, and dozens of doll-totems, grinning at her as they slowly turned.

Seated cross-legged upon a rotten pallet of straw and matted fur beneath these macabre ornaments was the crone, Haegtesse.

Her head was bowed, and unruly, matted grey hair hung over her face, obscuring it like a mortuary veil. Her withered, skeletal body was draped in dank cloth, and she clutched a doll in her claw-like hands.

‘Come closer, my child,’ said Haegtesse.

Elisabet wanted to run, but her own free will was of no consequence. Involuntarily, she began moving towards the hag. She felt like a player’s marionette, her legs moving to the whim of another.

‘No,’ she whispered, tears running down her cheeks, even as she did as Haegtesse bid her.

‘Do not fight it,’ said the crone. ‘It will be easier for you if you do not.’

With a gesture, the hag ordered Elisabet to sit down opposite her.

Elisabet was shaking her head, but found herself sitting cross-legged on the pallet opposite the crone.

‘So young,’ said Haegtesse, reaching forward with a withered claw of a hand to touch Elisabet’s porcelain cheek.

‘You made good use of the poison I gave you, then?’ said Haegtesse.

Elisabet did not answer, but the hag did not seem to mind, muttering and chuckling to herself. Elisabet sat like a statue, unable to move anything but her eyes.

She flashed a glance down at the totem in the crone’s lap. The doll’s eyes were beetles, their legs kicking as they sought futilely to escape the pins that impaled them. The twig-hands of the doll were slick with blood, and fat flies crawled between its fingers.

‘A good likeness, yes?’ said the hag.

The witch laughed as understanding came to Elisabet.

The doll represented her.

The black hair stitched into the thing’s head was hers. The tattered cloth that wrapped its body was a torn fragment of a dress she had discarded the previous winter. Who knew what other parts of the doll were connected to her? Nail clippings? Blood? What did it mean?

She tried to pull away as the crone reached for her, but she continued to sit as rigid as a statue, unable to move a muscle, nor so much as cry out.

There was a searing pain as Haegtesse pressed her fingertips to Elisabet’s temples, and a feeling of vertigo overcame her. It felt as though the ground beneath her was shifting, and blinding agony stabbed in the back of her eyes.

From somewhere she heard the tortured wail of an animal in pain, and then she was falling, falling into darkness…

Beneath the shade of the tall, silver-barked beech trees, the hunters rode in a snaking line, two abreast. The mood of the nobles at the front of the party, carrying their stout, leaf-bladed boar spears, was sombre. Huge mastiffs, their powerful bodies armoured in thick plate, trotted alongside their masters.

Ranging out in front of the hunting party were dozens of peasants with snuffling dogs, scouring the forest for game. Unlike the armoured fighting dogs, these peasant runt-hounds were as scabby and wretched as those holding their leashes. Still, they had their uses. It was these half-starved animals that sought out the spoor of the great boars that roamed the Forest of Arden, and once discovered it was their duty to drive them back towards their noble masters for the kill.

Often, the runt-hounds and their peasant masters were gored to death by rampant boars or other less mundane beasts that dwelt within the wilds, but it mattered little. More important was that no damage was done to the mighty boars in the process; by law, only a noble was allowed to bring one down, and if it had already been injured by a foolish – and soon to be hung – peasant, then the honour of the kill was lessened.

Leading the hunt was a nobleman of middling years, Baron Lothgar of Artois. His face was a mask of irritation, and it was clear that his mood had infected those retainers and courtiers riding nearby. He wore a deep red tabard over his breastplate, and a silver boar’s head was emblazoned upon his chest.

From further back along the procession of hunters came laughter, and the nobleman’s expression darkened.

‘Any game within a half a mile will be long gone,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Listen to them. They may as well be banging drums and singing the Chanson de Folgar at the top of their lungs.’

‘His pedigree is sound, though, my lord,’ said the knight at his side. ‘A castellan, no less. He would make a fine match for Lady Madeleine. Without speaking out of turn, my lord, would it perhaps be wise not to allow your irritation to jeopardise this opportunity?’

The baron sighed. He knew the advice was sound, but he lived for the hunt. To have it ruined by disrespectful young knights made his choler rise. And he could not shake the nagging feeling that the young Garamont brothers were wasting his time.

He turned in the saddle to regard his guest, riding alongside his eldest unwed daughter, Madeleine.

Lothgar winced as he saw the young lord of Garamont drinking freely from the wineskin. The wine the young lord was swigging like water was a hundred and fifty years old, acquired for no small sum from fair Quenelles. Though it was Bordeleaux that was most famed for its vintages, the wines of Quenelles had a touch of the fey about them, grown near the Forest of Loren as they were, and were highly sought after by true connoisseurs.

Lord Calard, Castellan of Garamont, was a young man, no more than twenty-two years of age. He was not as tall as his brother, but was more powerfully built. His dark hair hung loose to his shoulders in the latest fashion. His wealth was obvious in the cut of his blue and red doublet, and his dragon rampant heraldry shone with silver. Indeed, the sword at his waist alone would have been worth more than half of Baron Lothgar’s estates.

‘He and his brother, along with his entourage, have been my guests for a week now, drinking my oldest wines and dining on my finest foods. Another week of this and I will be a pauper,’ said Lothgar. ‘I hope this proves worthwhile.’

‘If Madeleine ensnares him then it will be, my lord.’

Baron Lothgar grunted in response, casting his gaze skywards.

‘The weather is turning,’ he said. ‘and there is little chance of any sport here. The boar can wait another day. Let us return home.’

The knight nodded his head as he drew his steed to a halt. He signalled to one of the peasants trotting nearby, who lifted a horn to his lips and blew three sharp blasts.

‘Let’s hope that Lady Madeleine has been more successful in her hunt,’ said Lothgar.

‘It would appear that the hunt is over, my lord castellan,’ said Lady Madeleine.

A drunken cheer rose from the knights of Bastonne at the proclamation.

‘About time,’ said Lord Calard. ‘We are in need of more drink, anyway.’

Lady Madeleine raised a delicately plucked eyebrow.

‘You have not already consumed enough of my father’s wine for one morning? I’d suggest that you were already drunk if it were not impertinent.’

‘That would be impertinent indeed,’ said Calard in a low voice, leaning towards Madeleine. ‘But I am disappointed. I had hoped, amidst the confusion of the hunt, to have stolen some time with you alone, unchaperoned.’

‘Now it is you who is being impertinent,’ said Madeleine.

Calard stood in the saddle, and saw that Baron Lothgar was guiding his steed towards him. He dropped back into the saddle and gave Madeleine a wink.

‘Care for a quick ride?’ he said with a wicked gleam in his slightly glazed eyes. ‘It is too fine a morning to return to your father’s castle just yet.’

‘Too fine a morning?’ replied Madeleine, laughing. ‘It’s raining, you fool.’

‘Nothing wrong with a bit of rain,’ said Calard. He turned his steed in a tight circle, and it stamped its hooves, eager to run. ‘Well?’

‘My father will not be best pleased,’ she said.

‘And you? Would you be best pleased?’

Calard smiled as he saw the young lady shake her head slightly, exasperated with him. She sighed.

‘Fine,’ she said.

Calard kicked his horse into a gallop, and the two of them raced off through the trees, just as the baron was drawing near. Calard laughed out loud at the outraged look upon his host’s face.

Calard had been away from Garamont for almost two weeks now. The pressures and demands of his new-found position niggled in the back of his mind, as much as he tried to ignore them.

He had a realm of his own to govern now, and was responsible for all who dwelt within it, peasant and noble. Levelling taxes and levies, resolving grievances, overseeing the proper usage of his realm’s monies, negotiating alliances and border disputes with his neighbouring lords, ensuring his dues were paid to duke and king, maintaining order across his lands; all were his duty now to oversee. The amount of paperwork was unfathomable, the petty politicking and back-stabbing of his court exhausting. He had a newfound respect for his father, for he had never heard the old man complain, nor had he ever appeared to falter under the pressure. Indeed, Calard had never realised there was any particular pressure in the position.

‘There is much work to be done here, my lord,’ Folcard had said when Calard had informed him he would be attending the tournament in Lyonesse. ‘I shall pen a polite refusal.’

‘No,’ Calard had said. ‘I think a few weeks away will do me good. In my absence, I empower you to act on my behalf, Folcard. You are more suited to all this anyway.’

Calard was well aware that he was running away from his responsibilities, but he had pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind.

He and his companions had been on their way to the tourney when they had stopped in at Lothgar’s estate a week earlier. The baron had welcomed them in, opening up his cellar and organising an impromptu feast, mistakenly believing that Calard was here to woo his daughter. In the week since, Calard had been happy to maintain the misunderstanding. They had time to kill before the tournament in Lyonesse began and besides, he was enjoying himself.

They rode for several minutes, weaving between the silver-skinned trunks of birch, and Calard was impressed with the skill of the lady’s riding. Even at a full gallop, she remained elegant in her side-saddled position, courtesy in a large part to the double-pommelled saddle on which she sat. Such a saddle allowed ladies to ride at a gallop, and even to safely jump fences and fallen logs. Beneath her flowing dress, Madeleine’s legs would be curled around the twin pommels, holding her tight against the horse’s body.

At last they came upon a clearing, and the two of them reined in their steeds. Calard was laughing, and he swung his leg over his mount and dropped to the ground, using his boar-spear for balance. He staggered, and realised he was more drunk than he had thought. Madeleine laughed, and ramming the spear into the ground he stepped in close, his hands circling her slim waist.

He breathed in her scent as he lifted her from the saddle and placed her lightly on the ground. She did not resist as he pulled her close.

‘So, when are you planning on asking my father, then?’ she breathed.

‘Asking your father what?’ said Calard, distracted as he looked down into the impressive crevasse of her bosom.

‘Why, for my hand in marriage, you fool.’

Calard blinked.

‘What?’ he said.

‘You were going to ask my father for my hand?’ she said, pulling away from him and fixing him with a steely look.

‘Well?’ she said, eyes hardening.

‘Well…’ said Calard.

Madeleine pushed away from him, a look of outrage on her face.

‘You bastard,’ she said.

From somewhere, Calard heard dogs barking, but in his drink-addled state, and with a furious young lady glaring at him, he barely registered the sound, nor what it portended. The ears of both horses suddenly flattened, and they began pawing at the ground, nostrils flaring.

‘You are a drunkard fool, Calard of Garamont,’ snapped Lady Madeleine. ‘A boy, playing at being a man. I shall be telling my father forthwith that your intentions here have been anything but noble.’

The sound of dogs barking came ever closer, and Calard’s eyes were drawn past Madeleine’s shoulder. The horses whinnied in fear. Madeleine’s voice seemed to fade away as he saw the undergrowth shudder, leaves and branches shaking.

‘Are you even listening to me?’ she said, but her voice had become just a distant drone.

A massive, furred shape burst from the trees, snorting and stamping. It was almost five feet tall at the shoulder, and its bulk was immense. Its fur rose in a sharp, matted ridge down its spine, and four tusks emerged from its slavering mouth, each easily two feet in length. Its beady, red-rimmed eyes were filled with rage. A second later and it was charging.

Calard hurled Lady Madeleine aside. She fell with a squeal of outrage to the muddy ground, and Calard reached for the spear embedded in the earth.

The immense boar, easily the largest such beast that Calard had ever clapped eyes on, came at him in a wild rush, hurtling across the clearing at great speed. Thick, ropey threads of spittle dripped from its maw as it bore down on him, and Calard spun the spear up in front of him. The beast must have been ten times his weight.

Jamming the butt of the spear down into the ground, Calard stamped one foot down hard onto it, setting it as best he could. The bladed tip he lifted, and he tensed his body as the immense beast hurled itself at him, intending to rip him from groin to neck with its tusks.

The spear took the boar in its chest, and the force of its impact drove it deep into its flesh. It felt to Calard like he had been struck by a falling mountain, and he was hurled backwards, falling to his back as the boar’s momentum carried it over him.

The stink of the beast was terrible, and hot blood gushed across his face. It came down on top of him, its weight all but crushing the life from his body. The creature was not dead, and it struggled to right itself, slipping in the mud and its own blood. It snorted, swinging its head around to gore him, but trapped underneath the beast as he was, he was mercifully out of its reach, and it merely gouged out several great rents in the earth.

He heard the pounding of horses’ hooves nearby, and heard dogs barking and growling furiously. He gasped as the great boar staggered to its feet, one hoofed leg almost crushing his hip, and he tried to roll to the side. The boar swung its head violently, and he heard a pitiful yelp as a dog was sent flying.

Calard rolled from beneath the mighty beast as a spear rammed down into its shoulder, and a pair of armoured boarhounds leapt on it, jaws snapping. Calard’s spear was still embedded deep in its chest, and blood was pumping from the wound. Another spear was driven into the boar, striking deep behind its left shoulder blade. The tip of the spear found its heart, and it slumped to the ground, still fighting. The huge, armoured dogs continued to worry at the beast as it died, until they were hauled off the immense carcass.

Calard was helped unsteadily to his feet. He put a hand to his head and saw blood on his fingers.

‘Are you all right, my lord?’ said a voice, but he couldn’t focus on whom it was that had spoken.

‘Fine,’ he managed. Then he fell backwards, and hit the ground hard.

Suddenly, everything changed.

Calard didn’t hear the harsh words spoken between father and daughter, or the concern in the voice of his cousins, Huebald, Baldemund and Tassilo. He didn’t see his companions as they swung from their saddles to come to his aid. It was as if as soon as he struck the ground he was transported to a different place, a different time.

Dark clouds rushed across the skyline with unnatural speed, as if hours were passing in the blink of an eye. The light faded, until it was as dark as twilight, throwing the surrounding forest into gloom. The temperature plummeted, and he began to shiver uncontrollably. His breath fogged the air in front of his face, and splinters of frost began to form across his armour.

A thick, cloying fog rose around him, and Calard looked around for any sign of his companions. He could see nothing. He was alone, utterly alone.

The undergrowth beneath him began to writhe like a living creature, and he cried out, but the rising fog deadened all sound. Ivy and grass coiled around his hands and boots, crawling over his leggings and curling around his arms. He fought to rise from the ground, but the plant-life tightened around him, pinning him in place.

A ghostly figure began to materialise within the fog, and Calard ceased his struggles, his eyes widening. He heard the snort of a destrier, and as the apparition solidified, he saw that it rode the largest warhorse he had ever seen.

An overpowering, earthy smell filled his nostrils. It was not an unpleasant scent, but was strong and heady, a mix of sap, moist earth, rotting vegetation, oak and fir.

The rider was armoured from head to toe in archaic plate. Coiling ivy bedecked this armour, and a thick plume of leaves erupted from the crown of his helmet. The greenery covering the apparition’s armour was in constant movement, constant growth. Fresh leaves unfurled, new life bursting forth. Within heartbeats, these young leaves matured and grew wide, before starting to wither and yellow. Then they fell from its armour, and the mesmerising cycle began anew.

From within the darkness behind the eye-slits of its helmet burnt a pair of furious, glowing orbs, exuding a ghostly green light, and Calard felt his body shudder involuntarily with terror as they fixed on him.

Calard fought against the plants restraining him, thrashing and pulling against their restrictive grasp, desperate to get away. The grass, ivy and roots merely tightened their grip, and whipping strands of ground creepers wrapped themselves around his neck, constricting his breath.

The immense destrier stamped its hooves and snorted, exhaling great billowing clouds of steam. The apparition slowly drew its sword.

That sword, ancient and terrible, was covered with intricate spiralling engravings, and an icy fog fell from the blade. The knight levelled the point of the sword towards Calard, and he felt a freezing chill emanating from the blade.

Calard’s breath was coming in short, sharp gasps as he stared up at the knight looming above him, expecting to be cut down at any moment. The supernatural figure exuded a raw, elemental power, a kingly majesty that was at once terrible and awesome. Its glowing green eyes glared down at him balefully and he felt its terrible rage wash over him like the untamed fury of a storm.

The knight muscled its immense steed closer, black hooves slamming into the ground scant inches from Calard. The mighty beast tossed its head, and he felt its hot breath on his face.

Face me, coward.

Calard reeled backwards as the stabbing pain of the unnatural voice pierced his mind.

Face me! it pulsed again, and he cried out.

‘I can’t!’ he cried. How could he fight against this supremely powerful, mystical warrior, him with his hands bound by whipping cords of ivy, roots and grass?

How can you hope to best me, if you cannot even best yourself?

‘Help me!’ cried Calard, though to whom he cried to, he couldn’t say.

Coward!

The power and malice in the words stabbed at him, and Calard cried out, closing his eyes tightly. He heard the mournful sound of the apparition’s blade humming through the air, and he clenched his eyes tighter, waiting for the blow to fall.

‘Just do it!’ he bellowed.

‘Do what, my lord?’ said a concerned voice.

Calard opened his eyes, and found himself staring into his cousin Tassilo’s concerned face.

‘Tell me what you would have me do, my lord, and I will gladly do as you wish,’ said the knight.

Calard turned his wild gaze from Tassilo, kneeling over him, and saw his other companions, Huebald and Baldemund, standing nearby, looking worried. A light rain was falling, but it was bright, despite the thick canopy created by the tall beech trees. The unearthly chill was gone, and of the apparition, there was no sign.

‘Are you all right, my lord?’ said Baldemund.

Calard nodded, though he immediately regretted it as shooting pain lanced through his head.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Stupid of me, to have fallen. I’m fine, really.’

All sense of drunkenness had left him, though his head was pounding and there was a horrible taste in his mouth.

His hands were still shaking as Tassilo helped him to his feet.

‘You gave us a terrible shock,’ said the young knight with some relief. ‘I thought you’d lost your senses there for a moment. One of the boar’s hooves must have struck you in the head. It bled a lot, but the wound isn’t deep.’

Calard mumbled something about the drink, and wiped a hand across his face. He waved away Tassilo, and pulled himself back into the saddle.

‘Baron Lothgar? Lady Madeleine?’ he said.

‘Gone,’ said Huebald. ‘I don’t think they are best pleased with you.’

‘No?’ said Calard, still somewhat woozy.

‘I think the lady’s words were something along the lines of “I’d sooner marry the boar than that Bastonnian pig”,’ said Tassilo, smirking.

‘You were thinking of marrying her?’ said Baldemund.

‘Of course not,’ said Calard, looking around. ‘Where’s the boar?’

‘The baron’s peasants took it,’ said Huebald.

‘Was it as big as I remember?’

‘Bigger,’ said Tassilo, smiling.

‘Come,’ said Huebald. ‘I’d say it was past time that we were making our way back. I think it wise for us to collect our gear and be on our way before the baron decides to gift it to the poor.’

Calard’s mind was drifting back to the glowing eyes of the apparition. The Green Knight… It had been the same for months now, the vision. It haunted his dreams, and only strong drink seemed to keep it at bay.

Calard dragged his thoughts back to the present.

‘Yes, I fear we have outstayed our welcome,’ he said. ‘Just let us hope that my brother has done nothing in our absence to bring further dishonour upon our host.’

He had a sinking feeling that was not going to be the case.

‘Get up!’

Bertelis tried to ignore the voice, and rolled over in the sumptuous bed, throwing an arm across his eyes.

Clothes – his clothes he realised – were thrown at him, and he groaned.

‘Come back to bed,’ he said, reaching out with a hand, his eyes still closed.

‘Get up, you fool!’ the girl said again, her voice filled with panic. Bertelis lowered his arm and propped himself up on the mattress, his gaze lingering on the girl frantically dressing herself at the foot of the bed.

Lady Celeste, Baron Lothgar’s younger daughter, was a beauty and no mistake, petite and perfectly formed in all the right places. He watched the delicate curve of her back as she struggled to pull on her dress. Her fair hair was pinned up, but errant strands hung loose down her pale shoulders. He smiled, enjoying the view as she bent over to retrieve one of her slippers. Articles of clothing were strewn across the room, having been cast aside in the heat of passion the night before.

Celeste saw his grin and her eyes flashed with a mixture of panic and amusement.

‘Get up, you fool!’ she said again. ‘My father is on his way here, now!’

The grin dropped from Bertelis’s face and he hauled the sweat-soaked sheets aside, the threat of discovery galvanising him into action. Naked, he leapt to his feet.

‘What is he doing back so early? I thought the hunt was meant to take all day?’ said Bertelis.

‘It was,’ said Lady Celeste. She threw open the wooden shutters of her window and leant out.

‘Oh, Lady above, he is already on his way up,’ she wailed. ‘I’ll be disowned!’

Celeste raced around her room, throwing discarded undergarments into a basket in the corner of the room. She heaved a padded blanket off the floor and with a sharp whip, made it settle over her bed.

Bertelis was standing there uselessly, still naked, holding his bundle of clothes in front of him. Struggling to drag her wayward blonde hair into order, Celeste ran to the door and peered out. Bertelis made to follow her, but she pulled back abruptly, hearing footsteps and her father’s voice. She slammed the door, panicking.

‘He’s here!’ she said, eyes darting around the room. ‘Lady, preserve me!’

Her gaze settled on the window. Following her gaze, Bertelis began shaking his head.

‘No. No!’ he said, even as Celeste began pushing him. He ducked and picked up his bundle of clothes as he was shoved towards the arched window.

‘What are you doing?’ he said, half laughing. ‘It’s got to be a fifty foot drop!’

‘More,’ said Celeste, still pushing him towards the window. She gave him another solid shove.

‘There’s a ledge,’ she said. ‘Now go!’

A cold wind whipped at Bertelis’s back, and he glanced over his shoulder, seeing the cobbled courtyard far below.

There was a knock on her door.

‘He’s here!’ Celeste wailed.

Bertelis turned around on the spot, so that he had his back to the room. The ledge was not even a foot wide.

Lady Celeste slammed the shutters of her window closed, almost knocking Bertelis down into the courtyard, stranding him on the sill. For a moment he teetered on the edge before regaining his balance. The cold air made goose-bumps rise all over his body.

Fearing what would happen if Lord Lothgar were to open the windows wide only to come face to face with his naked buttocks, he shimmied to the side, pressing himself up against the cold stone wall, his clothes bundled in front of him.

Looking down he saw his brother Calard riding into the courtyard below, accompanied by his retainers and vassals, returning from the hunt. He saw Tassilo’s upturned face, saw the young man’s mouth gape open.

Calard’s gaze settled on Bertelis, seventy-five feet above the courtyard. Bertelis grinned, and raised a hand in greeting.

‘Well, that went well,’ said Calard.

The five knights of Garamont, accompanied by some thirty-odd men-at-arms wearing the red and blue of Calard’s heraldry, were around four miles from Baron Lothgar’s castle. The rain was getting heavier, and the sun was dipping low.

‘Who would have thought Baron Lothgar would have known such… colourful… language,’ said Bertelis.

‘Not I,’ said Calard.

‘I think my ears are still ringing.’

‘Still, I would imagine any father would have a few choice words to say if they found a naked man on his daughter’s windowsill,’ said Calard.

‘And if his other daughter had just been turned down by said man’s older brother,’ piped in Tassilo.

‘True,’ said Bertelis. ‘I didn’t quite realise she was that young.’

‘Or that we had drunk quite so much of his cellar,’ said Calard.

‘Live and learn, eh?’

‘Indeed,’ said Calard.

Laughing, the brothers led their entourage away from their host’s lands, heading north-west.

For a moment it was like old times between the two, the tension and distance that had grown up between the two brothers temporarily forgotten.

Such a respite was not to last.

Elisabet awoke to pain. She ached all over, and it felt as though there was a weight pressed against her chest, making breathing difficult. She was lying on her side, with her legs drawn up to her chest. Her joints groaned as she struggled to push herself up. There was no strength in her arms, and every movement brought with it fresh agonies.

She was still within the cave, she saw, though her vision was hazy and vague. Candles still burnt around her, giving off their sickly stink, but Elisabet was alone – of Haegtesse there was no sign.

The hateful doll-totem of herself lay on the pallet, grinning up at her mockingly.

Feeling the witch’s control over her gone, she tried to push herself to her feet, to run from this horrific place, but her vision swam and her legs had no strength, and she collapsed in a sprawled heap. Wheezing, her heart hammering weakly against her ribcage, she sobbed.

What had been done to her?

It was then that she looked at her own hands. They were wasted, the skin loose and covered in liver spots. Her fingers ended in yellow, cracked nails. She saw that the hair hanging before her eyes was grey, and she could feel the lice against her flaking scalp. Looking down at herself, she saw that her youthful, supple body was gone, replaced with the cancerous, ancient and skeletal form of Haegtesse.

A groan of horror clawed its way up from her age ravaged, half-collapsed lungs, passing her toothless, bloody gums and emerging as a croaking wail.

Outside, Haegtesse heard the desolate cry, and smiled. She ran her hands over her stolen body, feeling the pleasing contradiction of softness and firmness, the tautness and fleeting elasticity of youthful skin. She breathed in deeply, rejoicing in her clear vision and the strength she felt in her limbs.

With a smile, she walked away from the cave, leaving her wasted, dying husk behind her. It had served its purpose these past ninety years. Now she had need of this body, young, untainted and fertile.

The brambles and thorns parted before her, and she began walking to the north.

CHAPTER TWO

Bertelis’s arms felt like leaden weights and his breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, but he pushed through his exhaustion and launched another attack.

Feinting with a strike to the head, he rolled his wrist and whipped his sword around in a low, disembowelling slash. His opponent took the attack on his shield and launched a strike of his own, his blade hissing through the air. Bertelis deflected the blade, letting it glance off his black and red shield, throwing the other knight slightly off balance. Not giving the man a chance to recover, Bertelis launched into a series of swift attacks, his blade cutting left and right, forcing his opponent backwards, defending frantically.

Stepping in close, Bertelis slammed his shield into his opponent. The knight grimaced and staggered back. His rear foot, supporting the majority of his weight, slipped in mud, and he dropped to one knee. In an instant, Bertelis’s sword tip was at his throat.

‘I concede,’ said the defeated knight, Huebald, blinking rain out of his eyes.

None of the cousins felt any shame at being bested by their younger kinsman. Bertelis had always been talented with the blade but had never been one to dedicate himself to training. That had all changed since the death of Gunthar.

Gunthar, the old weapon master of Garamont, had taught both Bertelis and Calard in the arts of swordplay and the joust since the day they could walk. He had been one of the finest swordsmen in all of Bastonne in his day, and he had been wounded in a duel six months earlier, a duel that he had fought in lieu of Calard. Though he had defeated his opponent, Gunthar had in turn been badly injured. His wound had festered, and his only chance would have been to have his leg amputated, though even then his chance of surviving was slim. Refusing to suffer such an ignominious fate – for what good was a knight that could not even sit in the saddle? – Gunthar had given his life defending Bertelis, standing over him and protecting him while he was incapacitated. He had taken a dozen or more enemies with him before he finally fell, a hero, pierced by a score of blades.

The old weapon master had given his life that Bertelis might live, and that was something that the younger Garamont brother had found hard to accept. In the months since, he had dedicated himself to his training to an almost obsessive extent.

Bertelis removed his blade from his cousin’s throat, his chest heaving with exertion. Still he allowed himself no rest, and turned to face his other two cousins.

‘Come,’ he said, nodding to Tassilo. Slender and quick, the youngest of his cousins was a skilful swordsman and Bertelis enjoyed sparring with him.

‘Enough, brother,’ said a voice.

Bertelis turned to regard Calard, who was emerging, dishevelled, from his red and blue tent. His face was heavy with stubble, and his dark hair was unruly, hanging around his shoulders. He was dressed in the same clothes he had been wearing the night before, and even from here, Bertelis could smell the reek of alcohol on him.

‘Decided to grace us with your presence?’ said Bertelis, sheathing his sword.

‘Couldn’t really sleep with the racket you lot were making, could I?’ replied Calard.

‘It’s almost midday, brother,’ said Bertelis. ‘We were meant to strike the camp at dawn.’

‘Water,’ ordered Calard, sending servants scurrying. He was handed a goblet of water, and drank deeply.

‘Midday?’ said Calard, squinting up at the overcast sky.

‘That’s right,’ said Bertelis.

Calard’s bleary gaze wandered around the clearing.

‘Training again?’ he said.

‘No, I’ve been milking cattle,’ snapped Bertelis. ‘Yes, I’ve been training, for all the good that it will do. At this rate we are not going to arrive at the tournament in time to take part anyway.’

‘The tournament’s what, a week away? That’s plenty of time.’

‘It is two days away, brother,’ said Bertelis. He turned away, muttering under his breath, a look of disgust on his face.

Calard’s expression darkened.

‘Don’t turn you back on me, brother,’ he snarled.

Bertelis turned back towards him.

‘How can I serve you, my lord Garamont?’ he said, giving a mocking bow.

Feeling the eyes and ears of his knights and peasants all around, Calard bit back his angry retort. He fixed his younger half-brother with an angry stare.

‘Come here,’ he said through gritted teeth, lifting the tent flap and gesturing inside. ‘I would speak with you alone.’

Seeing the shared glances between his knights, Calard felt his rage build.

‘Strike the camp,’ he ordered. ‘We leave within the hour.’

Calard poured a goblet of wine and offered it to his brother. Bertelis refused, as he knew he would. The wine was worth a small fortune, being one of Bordeleaux’s finer exports, and rather than have it go to waste, he drained the goblet. As an afterthought, he poured himself a second.

‘Don’t ever talk to me like that again in front of our cousins,’ said Calard. ‘Our father would never have stood for such disrespect. He’d have had you flogged for such insolence.’

‘Our father is dead,’ said Bertelis. ‘You didn’t save him, remember?’

The colour drained from Calard’s face.

It had been less than six months since the death of Lord Lutheure, killed by a hateful creature of Chaos. Castle Garamont had been overrun and Calard, accompanied by the revered grail knight Reolus and a lance of loyal knights, had raced to save it from destruction. Even travelling the fey paths of the Lady of the Lake, led upon those mystical secret ways by his sister, the Damsel Anara, and travelling many hundreds of miles in the blink of an eye, he had been unable to save his father.

The true horror of the event had been two-fold. One, that Lutheure was already dying, his body withered and wracked by poison delivered by Calard’s beloved, the Lady Elisabet of Marlemont. And two, that Lutheure’s killer, a horrifying creature that was truly neither man nor beast, was none other than the castellan’s own mutated son, driven and obsessed to slay its own father. The same blood that flowed in its veins flowed through Calard’s, and the horror and disgust of that knowledge haunted his dreams.

Tainted blood.

That was what Calard knew his knights whispered behind his back, and yet he did not silence them. Indeed, he feared it was the truth.

‘You think he would have lived had you been there?’ said Calard, his eyes haunted.

‘We’ll never know,’ said Bertelis.

‘Maybe you could have saved him,’ admitted Calard. ‘But you were not there; your injuries are only now fully healed.’

‘As I said, we’ll never know.’

Calard stared into his brother’s accusing eyes, seeing the anger simmering there, and he sighed. Taking his goblet of wine, he sank onto a divan, his shoulders slumped.

‘What is wrong with you these days?’ he said, not looking at Bertelis. ‘Where is all this anger coming from? Is it because of father’s death? Is it because of me?’

Bertelis’s hands were clenched into fists.

‘What’s wrong with me? Take a look at yourself. You’ve been drunk for months, neglecting your responsibilities… you don’t even know what day it is.’

‘I didn’t ask for our father to die.’ snapped Calard. ‘I didn’t ask to become the lord of Garamont.’ He looked up at his brother. ‘Is that what this is about? You want to be the lord of Garamont, Bertelis? I’ll abdicate. I don’t want these responsibilities. You can have them.’

‘That is not what I want and you know it,’ said Bertelis.

‘I’m sure your mother would be most displeased to hear you say that,’ said Calard.

‘Leave her out this,’ growled Bertelis.

‘I thought you’d be the last person to lecture me,’ said Calard, taking another swig of his wine. ‘You used to be different. All you do is train these days. You never used to be so… obsessed.’

‘Would that I had paid more attention to Gunthar,’ said Bertelis.

For a moment, there was silence.

‘You’ve changed, brother,’ said Calard, at last.

‘Yes, I have,’ said Bertelis. ‘Maybe it is about time that you did, too.’

Calard placed his goblet on a side table and hung his head in his hands. His half-brother and he had always been the closest of friends. He had believed that he would always be able to rely on Bertelis, no matter what. How had things gone so wrong?

Everything had changed with the death of their father. Calard’s whole world had been shattered. He was blood-brother to a mutant monstrosity. His beloved had been exposed as a would-be murderer. Attempts had been made on his life, and he had accused – falsely, it seemed – his step-mother, the Lady Calisse, Bertelis’s mother. And he had been thrust into a position of great authority and responsibility that he was nowhere near ready for.

Coming back to the present, his head still in his hands, Calard sighed.

‘There is truth in your words, brother,’ he said. ‘And I am sorry for mentioning the Lady Calisse.’

In a way, Calard felt sorry for his brother, for he knew that the Lady Calisse spouted her poison in his ear at every occasion.

Bertelis folded his arms and shifted his feet.

‘You are under a lot of pressure,’ he said. ‘I do not envy you.’

Calard smiled, though his eyes were hollow and empty.

‘Is it really two days until the tournament?’

‘It is,’ said Bertelis.

Calard swore.

‘Two weeks we’ve been away from Garamont then,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Folcard is going to kill me.’

Though well into her middling years, Bertelis’s mother, the haughty and proud Lady Calisse, was a strikingly handsome woman still, and as she laughed, the years dropped away from her.

In her prime, Calisse had been a renowned beauty, and before she had wed Lutheure of Garamont, a score of knights from all over Bretonnia had paid her suit, competing for her hand. Elegant and imperious, she was reclining on a velvet chaise longue within castle Garamont, her diaphanous silk dress flowing around her.

‘It was you who tried to have him killed,’ she said in a soft voice, her eyes gleaming with deadly amusement. ‘I knew it!’

The chamberlain of Garamont, Folcard, stood in the doorway, tall and gaunt, like a looming vulture waiting for its prey to die. His face was long and severe, and his nose was hooked. He had the look of one who had been sucking on lemons, and deep frown lines were permanently etched on his face.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Folcard said.

‘Oh, calm yourself,’ said Calisse with a dismissive wave of a hand heavy with rings. ‘I sent all the servants away that we might speak freely.’

For more than six decades Folcard had served the Garamont line, overseeing the day to day running of the castle and its estate with a rod of iron. He was the terror of the servants, an exacting and harsh master, but he was nevertheless widely respected for he was himself no slouch, even at his age, and put in more work than any of those who served under him.

Castle Garamont and its line was Folcard’s life, utterly and completely, and his devotion could not be questioned. Which was why Calisse was so amused to have finally worked out that it was he who had tried to have Calard murdered while engaged in Bordeleaux the previous autumn.

Folcard glared at her, making no attempt to hide his disdain for her, though she was long past caring what the old chamberlain thought of her.

‘It was Tanebourc, wasn’t it?’ said Calisse. ‘He was the one that you coerced into doing your dirty work?’

‘Your lover?’ snapped Folcard. Calisse stared at him blankly.

‘Yes, I knew that you were being unfaithful,’ said Folcard. ‘Your adulteries started soon after Bertelis was born, if I am not mistaken?’

‘Was that how you got to him? You blackmailed him into doing what you wanted, threatening to tell Lutheure that he was bedding me if he didn’t do as you wished?’

‘Something like that,’ said Folcard.

‘If you knew of my… infidelity these last twenty years, why did you never speak of them to my husband?’

‘I am a loyal servant of Garamont,’ said Folcard coldly. ‘I would never have done anything to bring dishonour upon my lord.’

Calisse laughed, the sound cold and unfriendly, but filled with genuine humour.

‘But you would happily have your lord’s son murdered?’ she said. ‘It is a curious sort of honour you follow, my dear chamberlain.’

‘The Lady Yvette of Bordeleaux was tainted,’ spat Folcard. ‘Touched in the head. Corrupted. She ensorcelled Lutheure, ensnaring him and clouding his judgement.’

Lady Calisse’s expression hardened. Always she had felt as though she were in the shadow of her husband’s first wife. Always it felt to her as if her husband had judged her, weighing her against his first partner. He would never allow so much as a bad word spoken of her in his presence, and Calisse had been forced to endure having a painting of the woman stare at her across the great hall for her entire marriage.

‘She frequently suffered fits,’ continued Folcard. ‘She would fall to the ground, her limbs shaking and foam frothing from her mouth. It was clear to everyone but Lutheure that she was… unclean. When she gave birth to the twins, Calard and Anara, everything seemed to be in order. There was no obvious corruption in them, and I prayed to the Lady that their blood was pure. All seemed well, and indeed even Yvette’s fits became infrequent. Lutheure was ecstatic. Truly, in all the days that were to come later, I never saw him happier than at that moment.’

Calisse bristled, but Folcard continued on, lost in the past.

‘But it did not last long. Calard seemed fine, but the midwives refused to hold Anara. She was only weeks old, but they said that they could hear the babe’s voice in their minds. There was something terribly wrong with Anara, and in the years that followed, it became clear that she shared her mother’s curse. She was of the fey; touched in the head, abnormal. She would hug a kitten to her chest, and cry out in horror as its heart stopped beating. She would stroke one of Lutheure’s hounds, only for its eyes to start bleeding; as much as she cried, it would be dead within the day. She would see things that had not yet come to pass. She could hear people’s thoughts. Everyone hated her, and worse, she could read the hatred in their hearts. There was much relief in the court when the Enchantress took her away.’

Lady Calisse shifted uncomfortably. Though Anara was now a young woman, a holy damsel of the Lady no less, their brief meeting had left Calisse terrified.

‘But still worse was to come, and it was this that proved Yvette’s blood was truly cursed. Once again, she was heavy with child, though this time the pregnancy was difficult. She travelled to Bordeleaux, to be near her mother for the birth, which was long and bloody. She birthed an abomination. I will not dwell on it, for you saw the foul creature with your own eyes. I curse the day that it was allowed to live. Yvette hurled herself to her death in horror and shame.’

‘Would that she had courage to have done so a decade earlier,’ said Calisse. ‘She might have spared all of us the horror of her foul get. But what relevance does this lesson in the sordid Garamont family history have?’

‘Calard might appear wholesome and untainted, but the same blood that runs in the veins of his freak sister, the same foetid blood that ran through the veins of the abomination, runs in his own. By his bloodline, that of cursed Yvette, he is tainted. I love Garamont more than life itself, and I will not stand by and see its line devolve. Who is to say that were Calard to sire an heir, that son would not be a debased bestial fiend? No, I cannot allow such a chance. Thus, for the good of the line of Garamont, Calard must die.’

Calisse wore a look of repugnance on her face. She could not fault Folcard’s logic, nor even his twisted loyalty. Her own desires were far more straightforward; she merely wanted to see her own son succeed her husband, not her stepson.

‘It would seem that we are in accord,’ said Calisse. ‘We both want to see Bertelis become castellan.’

‘That would seem to be the case,’ said Folcard, somewhat reluctantly.

‘Then, what do you propose we do about it?’

‘Things are already in hand, Lady Calisse,’ said Folcard.

‘Ah,’ said Calisse. ‘I should have expected as much. You are so very efficient, aren’t you, Folcard?’

‘I do my best, lady,’ his hawk-like eyes glinting. ‘Now if that is all, I will return to my duties.’

‘Fine,’ said Calisse, dismissing him with a languid gesture.

With barely a sound, the stick-thin chamberlain backed off into the darkness and was gone.

She plucked herself a heavy, blood-red grape from the bowl at her side, and popped it into her mouth.

‘Very fine indeed,’ said Calisse to herself.

CHAPTER THREE

The peasants were clustered behind the dry stone wall, cowering against the wind and rain, pressed together for warmth. There was almost a score of them, and while they had tried to make a fire their kindling was soaked through and would not take. They had at last given up, and were now shivering beneath their rotting shared blankets, each lost in his or her own bleak thoughts.

There were only a handful of them; the last pilgrims of a living saint, the hallowed grail knight Reolus of Quenelles.

Once they had followed their glorious idol wherever he went, traipsing across the countryside and proclaiming his brilliance to whoever would listen. They had gloried in the magnificence of just being near him, and they had eagerly performed any mundane tasks that they thought might ingratiate themselves into his favour: collecting wood for his fire, delivering him fresh game, lovingly polishing his boots with their spit if he left them outside his tent.

They had worshipped the ground Reolus walked on – literally – for it was clear for all to see that the blessing of the Lady was upon him. He had drunk from the sacred grail of the goddess, and the power of the Lady infused him. The grail knight was, in their minds, the holiest, most devout paladin in all of Bretonnia, and perhaps just by being close to him, they might themselves share in a sliver of his blessed glory.

They had not clapped eyes on the object of their devotion for almost two seasons. They had accompanied him to Bordeleaux, there to fight the foul greenskins and beasts of the forest. Some forty-odd pilgrims had fallen in those battles, but they had done so gladly, hoping that in death they might be noticed by their idol. Nevertheless, once victory had been attained, the grail knight had entered a sacred copse of trees and never come out. In the blink of an eye, he had travelled across Bretonnia, leaving his pilgrims lost and in despair.

Immediately, they had set out to find him. Their journey had taken them hundreds of miles as they chased rumours of where he had been. They were run out of villages and pelted with stones, and several of their comrades had hung from the gallows for crossing the land of a Bordelen lord. They had entered Bastonne, for that is where they had been told he had travelled, but there they learnt that he had headed north, into Gisoreux.

The pilgrims had been forced to scrounge food where they could, and more of their number had hung when they were caught poaching on the estates of a Gisoren noble lady. In truth, it had been lucky that any of them had escaped. Then they had backtracked into Bastonne, having missed their lord by less than a day, but a week later they had lost his trail. A bear had killed two more of their number when they had tried to take shelter within a cave, and another had starved to death only days earlier. They had stripped his body and left him in a ditch, donning his clothes in an attempt to stave off the cold. Winter was closing in, and their predicament was only going to worsen. They were now in central Bastonne, and had no idea in which direction they should go to seek their lord and master.

Still, devout and full of faith that they would be reunited with the living saint, they continued to carry with them a varied melange of sacred objects: a broken shoe that Reolus had once worn, a gourd from whence he had drunk, a bone with dry scraps of meat still clinging to it, that he had chewed once and discarded, along with a host of other holy artefacts.

Several of the pilgrims wore scraps of royal blue cloth edged in silver, torn from Reolus’s discarded tunics, tabards and cloaks. The most holy of these fabrics bore a good sized portion of Reolus’s sacred heraldry – a silver unicorn upon a field of blue – and this was worn proudly upon the chest of Chlod, the leader of the pilgrims, a hunchbacked peasant with a lopsided face.

An opportunistic liar, murderer and thief, Chlod had bullied and lied his way to become the leader of the pilgrims, not out of any sense of actual faith or devotion, but for purely selfish reasons. As the abbot of this ragtag group, he had the pick of any food and scraps that they managed to scrounge, and he enjoyed ordering the others around. He had only joined the pilgrims in the first place as a means of hiding from retribution after he had been one of a handful of peasants hired to kill a nobleman. The murder of the young knight – Calard of Garamont – had failed, and while the other peasants had been caught, tortured and hung, Chlod had managed to avoid the clutches of the yeomanry.

Chlod was currently having the crown of his head shaved to the scalp by another of the pilgrims, a thick-bodied woman covered in mud and faeces. Her tongue jutted from the corner of her mouth as she concentrated. A rat poked its head out from the neck of Chlod’s shirt, twitching its whiskers. Momentarily distracted, the woman’s hand slipped, and she sliced his scalp with her rusted blade.

‘Stupid woman,’ said Chlod, turning and thumping her in the face with a meaty fist. She fell backwards with a cry, shielding her face from further assault. Chlod touched a hand to his head. He winced, and his fingers came away bloody. There were still several clumps of hair clinging to his shaved crown, but he decided that he didn’t want the woman coming near him with her knife again today.

Several of the pilgrims were eyeing his rat, licking their lips, and he shoved the creature back under his clothing, glaring at them.

‘You ain’t eating him,’ he growled. ‘You can eat each other first.’

‘Lord Reolus the holy will deliver sustenance into our hands,’ said a toothless pilgrim, his eyes filled with passion and belief.

‘Wish he’d do it soon,’ muttered Chlod.

One of the peasants stood up, stretching his back. He squinted through the rain for a moment, looking back along the muddy road on the other side of the low, stone wall behind which his companions cowered. His eyes widened, and he dropped to the ground behind the wall.

‘Someone’s coming!’ he said in loud whisper.

The pilgrims shrunk further under their grimy blankets, as if trying to disappear beneath them.

‘Who?’ said Chlod.

‘Don’t know,’ came the reply.

‘Is it a patrol?’

‘Don’t know!’ said the pilgrim, in a belligerent voice.

‘Shh!’

‘Don’t know,’ repeated the pilgrim, quieter this time.

‘Well, find out, then,’ said Chlod, in a bullish stage whisper, a heavy, spiked club clenched in his hands.

The pilgrim turned around and warily poked his head up over the top of the wall. He looked around for a moment, then ducked back down.

‘It’s a woman,’ he said. ‘A lady.’

‘A lady?’ said Chlod, his brows drawing together. Curious, he scrambled around, shuffling awkwardly, and squinted over the wall.

She was walking along the road towards them, her head lowered as the rain lashed at her. She wore a long purple dress that clung to her body, completely soaked through as it was, and despite the fact that its hems were tattered and dragged in the mud, the material was clearly rich. Chlod imagined the rings that the lady undoubtedly wore on her fingers, the earrings that would pierce her lobes and quickly calculated what price he might be able to get for her hair. He licked his lips.

His eyes scanned the area around the lady, for what lady of renown would travel by herself, especially in such weather? As much as he tried, however, he could spy no guards accompanying her, no knights, no servants.

‘Looks like Reolus delivered,’ he said with a feral, lopsided grin.

The other peasants were peering over the wall now too.

‘You think she might have some food to spare?’ said the thick-limbed, female pilgrim.

‘I think that the price we’d get for her dress alone would keep us fed for a year,’ said Chlod, not taking his eye off his prize.

‘But… she’s a lady,’ exclaimed another of the pilgrims, a stick-thin man of middling years with a gaunt face.

‘We’d all hang if we so much as looked at her funny,’ said another.

‘There ain’t no one around to see what happens,’ said Chlod. ‘And besides – if we don’t get nothing to eat soon, how will we be able to serve our lord Reolus? Won’t be much good to him dead.’

‘But… she’s a lady!’ said the gaunt faced pilgrim.

Chlod pulled his predatory gaze away from the noblewoman, and glared at the speaker.

‘How many ladies you know what wander around in the rain and the mist, all on their lonesome? She’s a wanton, and no mistake,’ he said. ‘That’s probably why Reolus sent her to us – Bretonnia’d be better off without her.’

‘You really think Reolus would want us to rob her, Chlod?’ said the gaunt faced man, his eyes wide.

The hunchbacked pilgrim nodded his head solemnly.

‘I think it’s our duty, as his holy pilgrims, to do so,’ he said.

Chlod couldn’t care less what Reolus might wish for him to do. All he cared about was his own skin. Murdering a noblewoman didn’t bother him in the slightest, so long as he got away with it. He’d done worse.

He risked a glance over the wall again and saw the lady was no more than twenty paces away. Her path would take her close to the wall. Her dark, sodden hair was loose, and obscured her face. Gesturing for silence, he pointed for three of his companions to crawl back along the wall some way. He gritted his teeth in frustration at the racket they made, but glancing through a hole in the wall, he saw that the lady was still coming, seemingly oblivious to the danger.

When she was no more than a few yards off, Chlod leapt to his feet.

‘Now!’ he shouted, and with some difficulty, he clambered over the wall. His club foot clipped its top, dislodging a few stones, and he fell flat on his face. Righting himself quickly, he hobbled out into the roadway brandishing his spiked club, leering at the young lady before him, who had stopped moving as soon as he appeared. Had his intentions not been murderous, his appearance might well have been comical.

Three others leapt out onto the road behind the lady, brandishing broken swords, cudgels and knives, and he felt the reassuring presence of another behind him.

The woman was young, barely out of her teens. Had she been of low birth she would already have spawned half a dozen youngsters and her back would be bent from working in the fields, but this was a noblewoman. She had no need to work, and her back was straight, her skin as flawless as alabaster, and Chlod grinned as he saw the flash of silver on her fingers.

‘Don’t move, now, young miss, and you won’t come to no harm,’ he lied, his fingers tense on the haft of his club.

He edged towards her, moving slowly as if not to frighten her, and the other pilgrims closed in silently. She was like a rabbit cornered by hounds.

The young lady though, it seemed, had no intention of running. Indeed, she showed not the slightest hint of fear, which made Chlod uneasy. This was not how the rabbit was meant to act. His eyes passed her, trying to spot her guards, but the road was clear. From beneath her lank hair, he saw the lady’s lips begin to move as she began to mouth something under her breath.

‘Take her!’ he barked, hefting his spiked club in both hands, intending to brain her with the brutal weapon and be done with it.

‘I think not,’ said the girl. There was something strange about her voice, and it gave the pilgrims pause.

Chlod saw one of her eyes then, wide and malicious, staring out from behind rain-slick strands of black hair. He thought he saw shadows moving in the periphery of his vision, but he could not drag his gaze away from the horrifying stare of the girl. Unholy power beyond the ken of simple folk lurked there. In her terrifying, black eyes, he saw an ancient soul long condemned to darkness.

Too late he realised his error. This was no defenceless noblewoman. This was something else entirely, something ancient and vile.

The girl’s mouth continued to move, incanting softly.

Shadows shifted with malevolent purpose around him. He felt a chill as one of the shades passed by him, and the pilgrim behind him toppled face first into the mud without a sound, blood bursting from his eyes, ears and nose.

The shadows closed in, and Chlod knew that his end had come. He could hear them whispering to him, their insane, indecipherable voices filled with hatred and an unquenchable hunger.

‘Wait,’ said the girl, her voice making his skin crawl. The shadows paused, hissing angrily.

Chlod just stared at the girl-witch, his eyes wide in horror. She smiled from beneath her wild nest of hair. It was not a pleasant smile.

‘You’d like to serve me, wouldn’t you?’ she said.

Chlod threw himself into the mud before her.

The silver moon of Mannslieb was high overhead when Calard and his companions finally crested a rise and saw the tournament camp laid out before them. The night was bitterly cold as winter drew in, but the sounds of laughter and music, and the smell of roasting venison and boar warmed their spirits.

They had crossed over the border of Artois the previous evening, passing into the lands of Lyonesse, on the north-western coast of Bretonnia. They had ridden through the night, stopping only briefly for a few hours rest before pushing on. The previous night had been the same, and everyone was saddle-weary and drained. Still, they were here now, and the tournament proper was not due to commence until first light the next morn.

Tournaments were encouraged by king and duke in times of relative peace as a means of keeping the knights of Bretonnia battle-ready and their skills sharp. While the southern lands of Carcassone and Brionne were currently at war, besieged by a plague of verminous skaven emerging from beneath the Vaults, and the north of Quenelles was being subjected to bloody attacks from a clan of ogres descending from the Massif Orcals, much of Bretonnia was currently untouched by war on any scale large enough for the call to reach L’Anguille, Lyonesse or Artois, hence this tourney.

Many of the nobles present would have arrived a week ago or more – or at least sent their servants ahead of them, in order to claim the best site for their tents – and though there would already have been countless individual bouts, jousts and many drunken nights of feasting, it was for tomorrow’s event that the gathering had met. It was the highlight of the week’s entertainment, and judging from the number of tents pitched across the lowlands, it would be one of particularly impressive scale.

Calard and his entourage rode down towards the jubilant encampment, scanning the pennants flying atop the tents for those of friends and relatives. While the vast majority of knights present were from Lyonesse, Artois and L’Anguille – the place chosen for the tournament was near the border of all three lands, after all – there was on display heraldry proclaiming that some of the participants were from more distant lands: Gisoreux, Couronne, Bordeleaux and Montfort. There was even one knight from war-torn Carcassonne, far to the south.

‘There,’ said Bertelis, spying what it was they had all been looking for; heraldry declaring that other knights of Bastonne were present.

Calard and his entourage turned their steeds towards the Bastonnian contingent, and he ordered his servants on ahead to find a suitable location to pitch their tents. The peasants were exhausted, for they had not even had the chance of rest that the knights had, busy as they were preparing food for their masters and taking care of their horses, but they knew better than to voice any resentment.

Without complaint, they kicked their heavy draught horses on ahead, laden with tents, foodstuffs, chests of clothes and anything else that their lords might need to make their lives more comfortable while away from home.

‘Montcadas,’ said Bertelis brightly, standing in the saddle to get a better view of the flapping heraldry.

Calard saw the Bastonnian baron’s heraldry too, and he smiled. They had fought alongside the baron in the campaign in Bordeleaux two seasons past, when Calard and Bertelis, as knights errant, had ridden to Bordeleaux to engage a massive greenskin army. In the ensuing war, the Bretonnians became embroiled with a further enemy – the beastmen. During those bloody times, Montcadas had left an impression on both of the brothers. As fierce as a bear and almost as hirsute, Baron Montcadas had taken the young brothers under his wing, earning their respect and admiration.

The smile dropped from Calard’s face as he saw a tent near the baron’s; it was white and flew a pennant with a blood-red dragon motif in its centre.

‘Looks like the vermin have come out for the tournament as well,’ said Bertelis.

‘Maloric,’ spat Calard.

For generations there had been a blood feud between the Garamont and Sangasse families. Three years Calard’s senior, Maloric was the young earl and heir of Sangasse, and had been his rival and enemy since birth. Calard and Maloric had fought alongside each other in the Bordeleaux campaign, though their antagonism had resulted in Gunthar’s mortal injury, and despite Maloric’s assistance in the defence of Castle Garamont against the horrific half-human beasts of the forest, the hatred between the two remained strong. If anything, it had intensified since Calard had inherited the mantle of castellan; Maloric had seen first-hand the twisted creature that had been Calard’s brother, and had spread the word around the courts of both enemy and friend of the Garamonts’ shame.

‘Maybe in the tournament tomorrow I will have a chance to put the weasel on his arse,’ said Bertelis.

‘I pray that one of us does,’ agreed Calard.

‘Come!’ said Tassilo. ‘Tis a night for revelry! For dance, for drink, and pretty faces!’

‘Never mind their faces,’ said Baldemund, ‘I’m more interested in what else they’ve got to offer.’

Long tables packed with feasting nobles were positioned at the centre of the encampment, surrounded by heaving pavilions. From within these vast tents came sounds of merriment – and the clash of swords.

‘We might not be too late to enter the duels,’ said Bertelis. ‘Care to enter, brother?’

‘You go,’ said Calard. ‘I’m going to try and find Montcadas. I haven’t seen him since…’

He didn’t need to finish the sentence; Bertelis knew of what he spoke. Calard turned in the saddle and flicked a gold coin towards Tassilo, who caught it deftly.

‘If the duels are not yet done, put this on my brother,’ Calard ordered. His cousin nodded.

‘Might enter myself,’ said Tassilo with a smile.

Calard flicked him another coin.

‘Put this on your opponent,’ he said with a smile.

While Bertelis and Tassilo moved off towards the largest of the pavilions, accompanied by a quartet of peasants to act as their squires, Calard and his other companions dismounted, handing their reins to waiting servants.

‘Make sure they are brushed down, fed and watered,’ said Calard, not even deigning to look at the peasants to whom he spoke. ‘The night is cold – see that they are well blanketed.’

‘Now to find Montcadas,’ he said. Succulent aromas reached his nose; he could smell roasting meat, as well as frying onion and garlic sauces, and his stomach grumbled loudly.

‘But first,’ he said, ‘let us eat.’

Hunger was not a sensation familiar to many Bretonnian nobles, and the three knights were salivating as they picked their way through the crowd.

‘Garamont!’ boomed a deep voice, and Calard looked up from his meal of stuffed quail and venison to see the heavy-set figure of Baron Montcadas marching towards him. The baron was shorter than Calard, but what he lacked in height he made up for in width. A patch bearing the fleur-de-lys covered his left eye, and vivid scars covered the left side of his face. A wide grin split his thick beard, and as Calard pushed himself upright, the baron swept him into a crushing embrace.

‘Good to see you, my boy!’ said Montcadas, releasing him and slapping him hard on the shoulder. By the rosy tint of the baron’s nose he guessed that the baron had been enjoying the vintages on offer.

‘It is good to see you too, baron,’ said Calard. ‘You know my cousins?’

The two knights bowed to the baron, who nodded his head in response, before turning his attention back on Calard.

‘A knight of the realm now, eh? And a castellan, no less.’

‘I’d have fallen in my first battle had it not been for you,’ said Calard.

‘Ah, don’t be daft, boy,’ said Montcadas, though Calard could tell that his words had pleased the baron.

Montcadas’s expression darkened, and he lowered his voice.

‘I was grieved to hear of the death of your father. A good man, Lutheure,’ he said. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’

Calard nodded his head and smiled his thanks.

Montcadas took a step back from him, casting a critical gaze over the young lord of Garamont.

‘You are not looking your best, boy,’ said Montcadas. ‘What’s Folcard been feeding you?’

‘I am not sleeping well,’ admitted Calard.

Montacadas regarded Calard thoughtfully.

‘There is a lot of pressure that comes with becoming the head of a noble family,’ said Montcadas in a low voice. ‘There is no shame in feeling out of your depth at first.’

‘Am I so transparent?’ replied Calard.

‘You’ve a good head on your shoulders. You’ll do fine,’ said Montcadas.

‘Were that it were so simple,’ said Calard.

‘Of course it is not as simple as that, but don’t make the mistake of trying to complicate things. You’re new to your role. You’ll make a few mistakes, but everyone does. Learn from them and don’t dwell on the past.’

‘I’ll try, baron,’ said Calard, and despite himself, he felt his mood lift for the first time in months.

‘The fates have not been kind to you of late, boy, and that’s the Lady’s truth. But it’s what you do under such circumstances that will be your making,’ said Montcadas, unusually serious. ‘Or your downfall,’ the baron added, shrugging. ‘It’s up to you now. But don’t forget that you have friends and allies on your side.’

‘I appreciate it, baron,’ said Calard.

He saw an attractive young lady moving through the crowd towards them, being led by the hand by a young boy, no more than six summers old. The boy was wearing an exquisite, miniature suit of armour. Seeing their approach, Montcadas smiled, his previous seriousness evaporating.

‘What you need is a wife,’ he said, his voice booming. ‘If you think running a realm is hard, try being married. It’ll put things in perspective. And speaking of which, allow me to introduce you to my sister’s youngest, the Lady Josephine.’

‘Uncle!’ she said in exasperation, shaking her head. Then she curtsied, gazing appraisingly at Calard for a moment before lowering her eyes as a good lady was taught.

‘My lady,’ said Calard, bowing.

‘Lord Calard,’ said Josephine, a smile in her self-assured voice, ‘it is my pleasure to introduce you to your second cousin once removed, young Sir Orlando of Bordeleaux.’

Calard looked down at the boy, then towards Montcadas questioningly.

‘Young Orlando here is the son of your mother’s niece, Calard,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘They are close family friends of my house. I was, after all, the one who introduced your mother to your father.’

‘I never knew,’ said Calard, before turning his attention back to the boy, who was staring up at him curiously.

He dropped to one knee to be on a level with the boy.

‘It is an honour to meet you, Sir Orlando,’ he said, bowing his head solemnly.

The boy bowed in return, his face a serious mask of concentration. The boy’s attention was suddenly drawn away from Calard, and his jaw dropped.

‘Look!’ he cried, pointing into the sky.

There were gasps and exclamations of wonder from the nobles around them, and Calard stood, looking up into the night sky to see what Orlando has spotted.

Angling down through the clouds, moonlight shimmering like silver upon their flanks and feathered wings, was a flock of winged horses. Fully armoured knights rode in their saddles, and they circled down towards the ground in graceful arcs.

‘Pegasus knights!’ cried Orlando, his voice full of excitement and wonder.

One of the knights pulled away from the others, leaning back in the saddle as his steed furled its wings tight against its body. It dropped towards the ground like a diving hawk, gaining speed with every passing moment. At the last second it spread its wings and scores of nobles ducked involuntarily as the pegasus swept down low, passing just overhead.

Peasants scrambled out of the way as the pegasus landed, silver-shod hooves striking the earth. It slowed its pace and halted, tossing its head.

The pegasus was larger than any destrier, and must have been pushing twenty hands tall at the shoulder. They were known to be aggressive, and though they looked noble and angelic in countenance, Calard knew that they could be unpredictable and dangerous when the mood took them, and would wilfully stomp a man to death if provoked. Nevertheless, amongst the Bretonnian nobility they were highly sought after steeds, fierce and loyal if raised from a foal, and eager to bear a knight into the thickest fray.

It was said that vast flocks of pegasus could be seen soaring the mountain peaks above the tiered city of Parravon, though Calard had never journeyed so far east to see if such tales were true. It was from those stocks that the majority of the pegasus seen within Bretonnia were bred. Such creatures did not come cheap, however, and those who rode them were amongst the wealthiest knights of all Bretonnia. Nor was purchasing a pegasus foal any guarantee that the beast would bond with its intended rider and accept him, and few were willing to risk the investment – one did not wish to be two hundred feet in the air before discovering that your mount had taken a dislike to you. No amount of wealth could protect you then.

The knight riding upon the snow-coloured beast wore a tabard of red and silver over plate shined to an almost painful degree, and he bore a silver pegasus motif upon his chest. The attention of every man and lady was upon him, and he tore his helmet from his head theatrically. Wavy blond hair dropped to his shoulders, and he flashed a winning smile to his audience as he slid from the saddle.

Spontaneous clapping erupted, and there were cheers. The knight lapped up the attention, bowing low.

Josephine’s eyes shone as she looked upon the dashing knight.

Calard instantly disliked him.

‘Who’s this?’ he said, unimpressed.

The knight was irritatingly good looking, and was instantly surrounded by a coterie of fawning supplicants, both men and women. He exchanged a brief word with several nobles, bowing to lords and placing a kiss upon the hand of half a dozen blushing ladies of particular beauty, wealth or social position.

‘Laudethaire,’ said Montcadas. ‘Beloved of Parravon. Whatever else might be said about him, though, he’s a damn good fighter.’

Laudethaire, his pegasus steed having been led away, swept by Calard and Montcadas with barely a glance, exuding scented perfumes. Over one shoulder he proudly wore a golden sash, which proclaimed him as the lord of the joust, having won the prestigious award earlier in the day.

He did a theatrical double-take when he saw Lady Josephine, and paused, a look of rapture on his face.

‘Such beauty must surely make even the goddess envious,’ he said, taking her hand. He maintained eye contact with her as he placed a kiss upon her hand. ‘Enchanted, my lady.’

Josephine curtsied, oblivious to the venomous looks she was receiving from dozens of women nearby. With a warm smile, Laudethaire moved on, and Calard was bustled by the devotees following in his wake. As the jostling crowd began to clear, he saw that the Lady Josephine had a slight blush to her cheeks.

His expression brightened as he saw a familiar figure pushing through the crowd.

‘Here,’ said Tassilo darkly, holding out a pouch bulging with coin.

Calard took his winnings.

‘I take it by the bruises on your face that you did not win then, my friend?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Tassilo, placing a hand gingerly to his cheek. ‘But at least you benefited from my humbling.’

‘Bertelis?’

‘Through to the finals,’ said Tassilo. ‘His is the next bout. He’s facing the knight who defeated me – Merovech of Arlons.’

‘Never heard of him,’ said Calard.

‘I hadn’t, either,’ said Tassilo. ‘But the man is a devil with the blade.’

Tiered seating had been erected around the sides of the pavilion, from where hundreds of nobles watched the progression of bouts on display in relative comfort. They sat on down-filled cushions, and servants wound through their ranks, keeping goblets topped up and bearing platters of extravagant and exotic sweetmeats: jellied eels, ox tongues, liver pâté, jaguar’s earlobes, quails’ eggs. The most wealthy and influential of these lords and ladies occupied private booths swathed in velvet and hanging with their personal and family heraldry.

Calard saw Lord Orderic, the host of this tourney, seated within the grandest of these booths. An immensely fat noble of considerable wealth and influence, Lord Orderic was drunk and clearly enjoying himself. He had boar fat dripping down his face, and he wore a lascivious grin as he slipped a pudgy hand up the dress of a serving girl.

‘This way,’ said Baron Montcadas. ‘I have a booth.’

The bear-like Bastonnian lord trundled through the crowd, leading Lady Josephine by the arm. Young Orlando held onto Josephine’s free hand, staring around him in wide-eyed excitement. Calard, walking behind, found himself staring at Josephine’s slender waist and the sway of her hips beneath her midnight blue slip.

A collective groan of empathetic pain rose from the audience as, down in the roped-off area in the centre of the tent, a broad-shouldered knight suffered a heavy blow to the head, wrenching his plumed helmet out of shape. Honourably, his opponent stepped away from him, allowing his seconds to rush forward and help the knight free of his damaged helmet. Polite applause greeted this act of chivalry, and the knight lifted his visor, smiling and saluting the audience while his opponent had a bandage quickly wrapped around his bleeding head. Several flowers were thrown in the knight’s direction from blushing young ladies, who turned away giggling to each other when the knight bowed in their direction.

Montcadas led them into his private booth, and they took their seats overlooking the spectacle. Orlando stood on his seat in order to see over the wooden balustrade in front.

The wounded knight’s seconds left the duelling floor, and the bout recommenced. It was over quickly, when the unwounded knight slipped on one of the flowers that had been tossed towards him. He stumbled, and his opponent struck him a mighty blow to his shoulder that knocked him to the ground. With a sword-tip at his throat, the knight was forced to concede, though his face was thunderous.

Trumpets blared and the crowd cheered and hollered. As the two knights left the competition floor, a troupe of players danced and cartwheeled in to entertain the crowd before the next bout commenced. One of them, a woman with greasepaint on her face, held up a flaming brand, and spitting out a mouthful of combustible oil, sent a burst of flame roaring into the air, like the breath of a dragon. Bizarrely, jugglers tossed dried and desiccated frogs into the air, keeping a dozen or more aloft at any one time, and the crowd laughed at the clownish expressions on the faces of a band of stunted men the size of children, who were dressed up like miniature knights and riding pigs. These ‘knights’ charged around the arena, waving wooden swords and clinging desperately to their steeds.

One of the swine took fright as the fire breather blew another burst of flame into the air, and the pig dove into the crowd, squealing wildly, while its miniature rider held on for dear life. Two more of the diminutive ‘knights’ came together, and a blow from one of them sent the other rolling off the back of his own swine, which garnered a cheer from the crowd.

‘There he is,’ said Tassilo, pointing.

Calard saw his brother on the edge of the arena, rolling his arms as he stretched out his muscles. Bertelis’s heraldry, a silver dragon on a black and red field, was displayed on an unfurled banner held aloft by one of Garamont’s yeomen. Calard yelled out, but his voice was lost in the crowd.

Another of the hog-knights was knocked from his saddle as his steed charged into one of the jugglers, and another cheer rose from the crowd. One of the rider’s legs got caught in the rope that served as reins, and he was dragged around the arena on his back, much to the amusement of the crowd and his fellows. Orlando’s giggling was contagious, and Calard found himself chuckling along with him.

At last trumpets sounded and the arena was cleared, the hog-knights being herded off to the side by the jugglers. One of the pigs had to be physically picked up by a strongman, and carried squealing back to its enclosure.

‘Round eighteen!’ bellowed a fat crier, his voice carrying out across the expansive pavilion. ‘Betwixt Sir Bertelis of Garamont, Bastonne,’ he roared, gesturing towards the young knight, ‘and Sir Merovech of Arlons!’

Calard and his companions bellowed their support, stamping their feet and thumping the balustrade.

Bertelis smiled and waved to the crowd, turning around on the spot, before pulling on his helmet. The yeomen clustered around him helped strap his shield onto his left arm and he strode out into the centre of the floor.

His opponent, Merovech, walked out to meet him. Bertelis was one of the tallest knights of Garamont, yet Merovech was taller still, and he walked forward with a languid, relaxed grace that spoke of immense self-confidence. He moved as if his armour were a second skin.

That armour was of an archaic, old fashioned style, fluted and with serrated barbs at its edges, and for a moment Calard was reminded of the armour of the Green Knight, who continued to haunt his dreams. But no, this armour was quite different, though he suspected they were fashioned in a similar, bygone age – or at least Merovech’s armour had been crafted with such ancient designs in mind. Armour styles were constantly in flux across Bretonnia, with fashion changing as frequently as the seasons, and while most knights would look down upon one who could not afford to keep up with the latest trends, there was not a single derisive comment or disdainful look cast towards Merovech.

His armour was of such dark steel that it was almost black, and he wore a spotless tabard of pure white over it. He carried no shield, but bore a pair of blades strapped at his side. He bore no heraldry other than a simple black fleur-de-lys, an ancient symbol that reflected purity and devotion.

That symbol was carried by most nobles in some form or other, both knight and lady. Whether it was worn as a silver pendant around the neck, engraved on a knight’s armour, or woven into a maiden’s undergarments as a symbol of her chastity, it was a symbol of ancient and holy significance. It was said to represent the lily, the sacred flower of Bretonnia. In the old tales, hundreds of lilies reputedly burst into flower under the full silver moon when the Lady of the Lake first appeared to Gilles le Breton, in the age of heroes long past.

The first knight to be given the honour of bearing the fleur-de-lys as his personal heraldry had been Landuin – the finest of all of Gilles’s Holy Companions. The fairest, most skilful and noble knight ever to have walked the Old World, Landuin hailed from the realm of Mousillon, which was at that time the envy of its neighbours. Landuin’s tale was one of tragedy and betrayal, however, one from which his reputation, and that of his realm, was never to recover. ‘Those dwelling at the loftiest of heights have the furthest to fall,’ was an infamous line from The Death of Gilles le Breton, referring to Landuin’s fall from grace.

Repressing a shudder at merely thinking of the cursed realm of Mousillon, Calard dragged himself back to the present.

Merovech’s helmet was crafted to resemble a snarling dragon, and the tall knight saluted Bertelis graciously as the crier and seconds cleared the arena. Bertelis returned the salute, and the two stepped away from each other, awaiting the signal for them to commence.

‘For Garamont!’ roared Calard, thumping his hands on the banister.

Brass horns hanging with pennants were raised to lips and they blew a resounding staccato.

Bertelis drew his sword and cut the air in front of him with a few practise swings. Merovech drew the larger of the two blades scabbarded at his waist, a sword of beautiful design. Most knights would have been forced to use the weapon with two hands, such was its size and weight.

The crier raised his hands into the air, silencing the horns.

‘Commence!’ he roared, going red in the face before trotting backwards out of the way.

Calard leant forward, watching intently as the bout began.

The pair of knights stalked around each other.

Stepping forward with the speed of a striking serpent, Bertelis was the first to make a move, whipping his sword in towards his opponent’s chest. His footwork was precise, his strike perfectly balanced. Merovech turned it aside with the minimum of effort, and feinted a riposte.

The two knights continued to stalk around each other, Bertelis launching the occasional testing strike, which Merovech would deflect with the barest turn of his wrist, but Calard could see that neither knight had revealed their full speed or power.

Bertelis launched another attack, an overhead strike. As Merovech’s blade rose to deflect it, Bertelis rolled his wrist, flicking his sword towards his opponent’s neck. It was a blindingly fast shift of direction, one that had caught Calard out on more than one occasion, but Merovech avoided it easily.

Again and again it looked like Bertelis was going to score a hit upon the taller knight, only for Merovech’s sword to turn the blow aside at the last moment, scant inches from striking home. Calard could see his brother getting increasingly frustrated, but where in the past this might have led him to attack furiously, leaving himself open for counterattack, he now channelled his emotions, using his anger to add strength and focus to his blows.

He launched a blinding series of strikes, attacking high and low. As Merovech side-stepped, Bertelis spun around on the spot, his blade slicing through the air towards his opponent’s neck. It was a perfectly executed strike, and one that Bertelis had clearly set up. Merovech swayed backwards at the last second and Bertelis’s sword missed him by less than an inch.

Stepping back, Merovech saluted Bertelis for a move well performed, and drew his second blade, a shortsword that he wielded in his left hand to complement the one held in his right. He twirled the blades before him, and stepped forward to engage Bertelis.

The twin blades formed blurring arcs and the audience sat in silence, spellbound. Bertelis backed away steadily, desperately fending off the attacks coming at him from every angle. There was no time for him to even consider launching a counterattack of his own, and it took all his skill and concentration merely to keep his enemy’s blades from his neck.

Merovech swatted Bertelis’s blade to the side with his shortsword, and a spin of his other sword sent Bertelis’s blade sailing into the air. It spun end over end and sank point first into the ground. The move had been so fast that Calard had barely seen what had happened, but he applauded as Merovech stepped back to allow Bertelis to retrieve his weapon in order to allow the bout to continue.

‘He’s good,’ Calard said grudgingly.

Saluting each other, the knights came together again. The bout lasted only a few more heartbeats. Bertelis saw an opening, and lunged forward, the tip of his blade striking for his opponent’s heart. Belatedly he realised that Merovech had lured him into the strike.

Bertelis’s sword was battered to the side and Merovech’s twin blades crossed, slipping through the gap between Bertelis’s helmet and breastplate, and as they touched the chainmail coif protecting his neck, they stopped. Had the blow been followed through, Calard had no doubt that his brother’s head would now be lying on the ground, such was the near perfect execution of the killing move.

Thunderous applause broke out across the pavilion, and Calard joined in, shaking his head at the skill of the unknown knight. The only knight he had ever seen to rival his skill was the revered grail knight, Reolus.

Merovech saluted Bertelis once more, before sheathing his swords and pulling the helmet from his head. His face was as white as virgin snow. His hair too was devoid of colour and it fell halfway down his back, as straight as a blade.

Bertelis looked furious with himself, but Merovech leant in to him, speaking words unheard by any other.

Bertelis’s heraldry was pulled down from the boards positioned at either end of the duelling grounds. The heraldry of eight more knights, including Merovech’s, remained; these were the finalists, and they would duel to become the overall winner and be awarded the scarlet sash that would proclaim them as lord of the sword. Calard had no doubt that Merovech would be wearing that winner’s sash come the end of the evening.

‘How did he not win the joust?’ said Calard.

‘He did not compete,’ replied Tassilo. ‘He only came into camp after dusk.’

Calard drained his goblet, his mind drifting back to his nagging responsibilities, knowing that the time to return to Garamont drew near. He lifted his empty goblet again, waving it impatiently. As it was being filled, he cast a look along the length of the booth.

Lady Josephine was leaning forward in her seat, smiling and laughing with someone on the other side of the balustrade. Leaning forward to see who it was, Calard’s expression darkened. His long time rival and foe, Maloric of Sangasse, was standing on the tier below the box, smiling and chatting.

Feeling eyes upon him, the rakishly handsome Sangasse nobleman glanced in Calard’s direction, and though he maintained his smile, his eyes hardened. He said something to Josephine, and they both laughed lightly, and Calard’s free hand clenched on his sword hilt.

Maloric placed a lingering kiss upon Josephine’s hand before he moved off. He nodded his head respectfully to Montcadas as he passed, and his eyes glinted with sardonic amusement as he glanced up at Calard.

‘I see that your brother lost, Garamont,’ he said, his voice thick with derision. ‘What a surprise. Doing Bastonne proud.’

‘Keep walking, Sangasse,’ snapped Tassilo.

‘Tighten your dog’s leash, Garamont,’ said Maloric, managing somehow to look down his nose at Calard and his companions, even though he was positioned on a lower tier. ‘Its yapping is wearisome.’

‘Piss off, Sangasse,’ growled Calard, his face an angry red.

Maloric leant in, peering at Calard’s face, and he chuckled.

‘Drunk again, I see. It’s becoming rather frequent, from what I hear. I also hear that the new lord of Garamont is unfit to rule his own household, let alone his realm, and that his elderly chamberlain is forced to run it for him. Such a sad state of affairs,’ he said, shaking his head in mock remorse.

‘Go to hell, Sangasse,’ said Calard, ‘or I’ll call you out here and now. You have no swordsman to hide behind this time.’

‘And you no old man,’ replied Maloric. ‘But I would take no pleasure in killing a drunkard, even one with a bloodline as cursed as yours. Come for me when you’re sober, perhaps.’

‘Is there a problem, Sangasse?’ boomed Montcadas.

‘No problem,’ replied Maloric. ‘Though, methinks Lord Garamont here has had enough wine for one evening.’

The Sangasse noble turned on his heel to leave, and the glass in Calard’s hand shattered.

Maloric looked back over his shoulder, laughing.

‘Are you all right, cousin?’ said Tassilo, concern in his voice.

‘Fine,’ snapped Calard.

CHAPTER FOUR

The wooden cup slipped from Rolan’s hand, falling to the stone floor and spilling its contents. He came awake with a start at the sudden noise, his entire body jerking violently. He was still dressed, and seated in the sole rickety wooden chair before the fireplace, and he blinked dimly as he heard the cup rolling across the uneven floor.

It was deathly cold in his small hovel, and dark, and he scowled into his fireplace, pulling his lice-ridden blanket further around his shoulders. An icy wind clawed through the cracks in the walls, and his breath fogged the air in front of his face. Clutching his blanket around him like a cloak, he knelt down in front of the hearth, his knees cracking alarmingly. He picked up the rusted scythe-head leaning against the wall and poked at the lump of peat in the centre of the fireplace. Smoke was still rising from within the fibrous hunk of bog mud, and embers glowed and crackled as he poked at it. Leaning close, he blew steadily until tongues of flame licked up its sides.

Rolan stood up with a groan, stretching his back out. His joints ached; winter was fast approaching, and he was not looking forward to it. He had lived on the island of Landri his whole life, and recognised the signs that the approaching season would be long and harsh. There were thousands of islets that made up the archipelago off the north-west coast of Bretonnia, though the vast majority of them were uninhabited and barren. Landri was one of the furthest from the mainland, and was large enough to maintain a steady, if small, population.

Outside, the wind had picked up, and he heard his sheep bleating frantically.

‘Bloody foxes’, said Rolan. Throwing off his blanket, he stood up and moved to the door.

‘Come, dog,’ he said.

Hauling the door open with both hands – its leather hinges were long rotted and useless – he braced himself against the icy wind that swirled in around him.

‘Dog!’ he said. ‘Come!’

On her belly, the sheepdog backed away further under the table, its tail between its legs and its head between its paws, whimpering.

‘Stay there and let your master catch his death out here alone then,’ muttered Rolan.

Rolan stepped out into the night and hauled the door closed behind him. As an afterthought he grabbed the rusted pitchfork leaning against the wall of his hovel. Mannslieb was full overhead, but the silver moon was obscured behind a thick bank of clouds, making the night darker than it ought to have been.

His hovel was located on the northern point of Landri, positioned high on the grassy headland and staring out into the dark wasteland that was the ocean. All was darkness across the water, and the roar of the swell was loud. Immense sheer cliffs dropped down onto sharp rocks jutting like knife-points from the turbulent waters. The sea crashed relentlessly against the base of these cliffs, battering the headland with primal force, day in, day out.

Rolan’s closest neighbour was more than a mile away, and it was a good three miles to Landri village and the abbey around which the mainstay population of the island was clustered.

Rolan could see his flock only dimly in the gloom: pale shapes clustered in a tight conglomeration in the corner of their stone-walled enclosure that backed up against his hovel. The shaggy-coated animals were pushing and shoving at each other, desperate not to be on the edge of the flock, and several were scrabbling frantically to leap the low walls.

Clucking his tongue reassuringly, Rolan swung the gate into the enclosure open, and stepped into the muddy, churned up yard. These sheep were his life, literally; if harm were to come to them, it was he that would suffer for it. His lord was not a forgiving man.

He stomped through the mud, using his pitchfork as a walking stick, and started to count his livestock. As far as he could tell, they were all accounted for, and they seemed to calm a little in his presence.

The wind changed abruptly, and a smell carried to Rolan’s nostrils. It was a wet, bestial odour, like rancid meat, sweat and urine; the stink of a predator.

His flock went berserk, bleating madly, fighting each other to escape their enclosure, trying futilely to clamber over the dry-stone wall. Rolan spun around, bringing his pitchfork up before him, eyes wide.

At first he thought it was an animal, massive and shaggy and horned. It clambered over the wall on the opposite side of the enclosure, dislodging several stones that would have taken two men to lift. Then he saw the long handled axe held in its hand, and he realised it was a man, albeit one of immense stature, who was wearing the pelt of some great beast across his shoulders and a horned helmet on his head.

Rolan was not a tall man, and long years of work, solitude and malnutrition had further shrunk his shoulders and stooped his back. The stranger towered over him, seeming to grow with every quiet step he took towards him, and Rolan suspected that even his lord would have been dwarfed by him. Nevertheless, Rolan was no coward.

‘Back with you, devil,’ Rolan said, jabbing the air with his pitchfork,

The interloper laughed then, a barking, harsh sound. The clouds parted briefly, and Rolan saw the stranger more clearly, and a cold fear gripped his heart. Norscan…

Prayers to Manann were made daily, and weighted effigies of sacrifice were thrown into his ocean depths by the peasants on holy days each year, in the hope that the god of the sea would protect the island’s fishermen, and smash the ships of any Norscan raiders. It seemed that these devotions had not been enough to abate Manann this year.

There were scores of watchtowers and keeps scattered through the archipelago, each equipped with a pyre that needed just a spark to ignite it. Those beacons, once lit, could be seen for miles all around, giving advance warning of the approach of any enemies. Why had none of them been lit?

Rolan saw more of the raiders now. They were circling around the sides of his hovel, dark and be-horned shadows moving with silent, deadly intent, like hunting pack animals, like wolves closing in on the kill. Rolan turned and ran.

He rounded his hovel only to see another of the immense, fur-cloaked Norscans slam a heavy, iron-shod boot into the door, smashing it to splinters.

Spinning, Rolan made to run to the south, over the wind-swept moorlands towards the village, but he froze as he saw the glow of fire in the distance. The village was burning.

There came a tortured yelp from inside his hovel as the raiders found Rolan’s loyal sheepdog. His limbs were quivering now, and he backed away towards the cliff edge as the Norscan closed in around him. He felt the open expanse behind him, and he glanced down towards the crashing breakers far below.

In the bay that swung around to the west of the headland on which he stood, a score of ships could be seen. These were not the fishing boats used by the Bretonnian fishermen, nor even the multi-tiered greatships of the fleets of Couronne and Bordeleaux that he had glimpsed on occasion in the distance. No, these were Norscan longships, equipped with square sails and banks of oars that propelled them at formidable speed through the oceans. A brazen idol projected forth from the prow of each of these vessels, twisted representations of gods and daemons, and immense spiked rams sliced beneath the water-line. Black shark fins cut through the waves in the wake of the longships.

Larger ships, with two, three or even four banks of oars remained in the deeper water offshore, while the smaller longships rode the waves onto the beach, like killer whales hurling themselves onto land to snatch at seals basking there.

A dozen longships had already been dragged up onto the beach, and in the moment before the clouds once again obscured the view, Rolan could see scores of Norscan butchers making their way up the twisting paths from the beachhead.

Eyes wild, Rolan spun back towards the half dozen giants closing in around him, brandishing his pitchfork. It looked useless next to the heavy, spiked and bladed weapons of the raiders, and he doubted that he would be able to even land a blow before the end came for him.

Stories of the bloody sacrifices performed by these northern monsters came back to him, stories of still-beating hearts ripped from chests, and all manner of agonising tortures performed on their victims before the release of death was granted. He took another step backwards, and felt the edge of the cliff beneath his heels.

He glanced down again. Better to be dashed upon those rocks than be butchered in the name of some infernal daemon-god. The pitchfork dropped from his fingers, spinning end over end towards the jutting rocks below. With a shuddering breath, Rolan closed his eyes and stepped backwards into open space.

A mailed fist grabbed him by his shirt front. Feet dangling out over the cliff-face, Rolan gasped. He was hurled to the ground away from the cliff’s edge, tossed through the air one-handed as if he weighed no more than a newborn lamb. There he cowered, shaking like a leaf in a storm, looking up at the Norscans with wide, wild eyes. One of them grabbed him by his hair and hauled him roughly to his feet. With the haft of his axe, another then struck the back of his legs hard, breaking the bones and forcing him to his knees.

Rolan cried out as his head was reefed backwards. His eyes bulged as an axe was buried in his throat.

Overhead, the gods rumbled their approval.

High Jarl Egil Styrbjorn placed one heavy boot on the prostrate, dying priestess and yanked the blade of his axe free. Splintered ribs protruded from the chest wound, blood bubbling around them. The dying woman’s eyes were wide, her mouth open in silent agony, but the jarl gave her no further notice – just another weakling southerner, a pitiful wretch that he earned no honour from slaying. Spinning an axe around in each hand, he continued up the steps towards the abbey’s smashed doors, leaving the woman to die, alone and ignored.

The axes that the Skaeling warlord wielded were ancient, hellforged weapons, heavy with infernal magicks, their blades shaped in the likeness of wolf heads. A gleaming blood-red ruby was inset into the hafts of the axes, representing the eyes of the great wolves, and they blazed with inner fire. The axes were named Garmr and Gormr, in honour of the great wolves that accompany Kharnath on his bloody hunts across the heavens. They were holy artefacts of the Skaelings, handed down through the generations.

The air was rich with smoke and the sounds of butchery – the screams of the dying, the clash of weapons, the roaring of his men. At the top of the stairs, Styrbjorn paused, looking back towards the sea.

The burning enemy township grew like a malignant tumour around the abbey. Scattered pockets of resistance remained, but the enemy were weak, and Styrbjorn felt no particular desire to join the slaughter. These were not worthy foes, not like the Graelings, the Vargs, or any other Norscan tribes, nor the Kvelligs and Tahmaks of the Kurgan. The slant-eyed Hung tribesmen too were enemies that you could be proud to fight and kill, men that knew not the meaning of fear or panic.

But these soft-bellied southerners, they were hardly men at all. Few stood even to the Norscan’s shoulders, and they were as weak in spirit as they were in body. Almost universally, it seemed, they were a race of malformed runts; pathetic, wretched and honourless. Any one of them would have been killed at birth had he been born of a Skaeling woman, for any mother would have been shamed to bear such a stunted wretch. Only the ruling class had any backbone at all, and even they would have been regarded as lesser men had they been born into any Norscan tribe.

Scores of longships could be seen in the harbour of the burning township, though it was only a fraction of the fleet that had accompanied him from Norsca. Fully half of his ships had beached unseen on the north side of the island, and their warriors had closed in on this town under the cover of darkness. When the first of his longships had been seen approaching the town, the terrified inhabitants found that their escape was already cut off from behind. None had been spared – not man, woman or child. Even the dogs of the enemy were butchered like vermin. Bands of his warriors still roamed the town, hunting down the last survivors. Some dragged screaming women by the hair from burning buildings, to be used and slaughtered in the name of the true gods, while others ransacked the more wealthy structures for plunder.

Even as he watched, he saw more of the enemy cut down by his men, smashed from their feet by axe, sword and spear. He saw heads hewn from shoulders and lifted high into the air for the gods to see, before being rammed onto spikes or hung from belts. He saw weeping, terrified men have their throats slashed before being kicked face down into the streets and spat upon for their cowardice. He saw shaggy-furred warhounds worrying at the bodies of the fallen, tearing apart flesh and crushing bone with their powerful jaws.

Styrbjorn whistled sharply and two of the hounds lifted their blood-smeared snouts from the belly of their latest kill.

The warhounds, brothers of the same litter, were massive beasts the size of small ponies. Their back legs and flanks were scaled like a lizard, the skin tough and leathery. Their heavy shoulders, forelegs and heads were covered in thick black fur. Bony spurs ran down their backs, and tusks like those of a boar jutted from their toothy maws. Around their necks were thick, spiked collars, and Styrbjorn’s rune was branded into their flesh. They slunk away from their kill, growling and swinging their heavy heads from side to side, and a curt command from Styrbjorn brought them loping towards him.

Flanked by the warhounds, Jarl Styrbjorn stalked inside the abbey. Its doors had been smashed off their hinges and lay in splinters, and he stepped over bodies sprawled across the floor. The stink of blood made his eyes dilate and his heart beat a little quicker. It was clear to Styrbjorn that many people had fled here to the abbey for protection. The notion that any god would offer succour to those who cowered from their enemies rather than fight them was laughable.

Guttural laughter accompanied a cry of agony that echoed through the interior of the abbey and Styrbjorn strode down the central aisle towards its origin. A cluster of his elite huskarl warriors were gathered on the dais at the head of the abbey, surrounding a figure sprawled on the floor. Encased in ornate armour of Chaos, these warriors had the mark of the gods about them, a palpable aura that made the skin tingle. Still, Styrbjorn was god-touched himself, and he wore the favour of his warlike deities like a cloak.

Styrbjorn’s huskarls stepped aside, bowing their heads, and he saw that the figure that occupied their attentions was an elderly woman, perhaps someone of holy significance. She was garbed in a long green dress, and a silver amulet resembling a three-petalled flower hung from a fine chain around her neck.

Bjarki, the Skaeling seer, stood before the holy woman, clutching a curved sacrificial blade. He was grinning.

Blood was streaming down the woman’s cheeks. Her eyes had been cut out, Styrbjorn saw. Her fingers and thumbs had been hacked off as well, and she groped around her blindly, leaving bloody smears on the stone floor.

Bjarki had long been in the jarl’s ear, urging him to strike against the lands of the southern horsemen, the lands called Bretonnia in the indecipherable southern tongue. Long had the seer desired to see wreck and ruin come to these lands, and his excitement that his dreams of devastation were now starting to come to fruition was abundantly clear.

Almost twenty years ago, Styrbjorn had been aboard the longship that had come across the tiny fishing coracle, adrift in the middle of the sea that divided Norsca from the southern lands. There had been two people aboard that tiny boat – an old man, and a young boy no more than six winters old. From their dress and the indecipherable babble that they spoke it was clear that they were southerners, and knowing the currents of the seas in that region as well as any living man, Styrbjorn knew that they had come from Bretonnia.

Laughing, Styrbjorn had nailed the old man to the mast of his longship, and a similar fate would have befallen the boy, had the Norscans not seen the witch-light in his eyes. Defiant and unafraid, the small boy stood his ground, his fists clenched as he stared down the longship full of Norscans, and every Skaeling there could see as clear as day that the boy was god-touched.

Impressed with his bravery in the face of death, the Norscans had instantly dubbed the boy Bjarki – ‘little bear’ in the Skaeling dialect. Styrbjorn had taken the child into his household, feeding and clothing him and teaching him the ways of the Norse. He had taught him how to hunt sabretusk and blood-bear, to kill with axe and blade, to honour the gods with his actions and taught him the meaning of pride and honour.

The boy never talked of why he was adrift on a coracle accompanied by no one but an old bondsman, and Styrbjorn never pressed him. It was clear that the child had renounced any ties to his birth land and embraced the way of the Skaeling wholeheartedly. That he harboured a burning hatred for Bretonnia was obvious, and Styrbjorn encouraged this emotion, knowing that it would fuel the youngster’s growing strength.

It mattered not at all that Bjarki was not of Norse blood – the power of the gods was with him, and no tribesman would be foolish enough to incur the wrath of the gods by doing him harm.

Styrbjorn’s seer at that time, old Skaelabran, had been a withered ancient who had all but despaired of finding a successor. For a decade the old seer clung to life as he taught the secret ways to the young Bjarki, and many were the scars and beatings that the youngster endured under his harsh tutorship.

When Bjarki had been with the Skaelings a little over a year he had first voiced his desire to see Bretonnia burn. Four times Styrbjorn had raided its coastlines during Bjarki’s childhood, and the boy had raged and stamped his feet when he had not been allowed to accompany him, to witness the slaughter first-hand. Styrbjorn was impressed with the youngster’s enthusiasm, but his decision would not be changed. Bjarki was much smaller than the Skaeling boys his age, and Styrbjorn would not risk incurring the wrath of the gods by taking him on a raid before he was ready for it.

It was not old age and senility that eventually did for old Skaelabran. Little more than a skeletal husk held together by bitterness and diabolic will, his life was finally ended with a knife thrust to the heart, care of his young apprentice. Having learnt all he could, Bjarki saw no further use for the vicious old Norscan. It had been a proud day for Styrbjorn, who regarded Bjarki as his blood-kin.

The seasons flowed into each other and the years turned, and for the last five years Bjarki had accompanied Styrbjorn on his raids. Those had been fruitful years of plenty, and much wealth and favour had been garnered in raids against the Empire, the Kurgan and other Norse tribes. Much of their successes had been attributed to Bjarki, and Styrbjorn was past the point of feeling any jealousy or anger when these whispers reached his ears. Still, in that time Styrbjorn had not chosen to pitch himself against the Bretonnians.

‘Only a foolish hunter returns to the same hunting ground every day,’ he remembered his grandfather telling him. ‘A wise hunter varies his hunts, so as not to hunt any one of his prey-flocks to extinction.’

He remembered the words well, and after a half-decade of raiding the Bretonnian coastlines every season, he had then directed his men elsewhere for a further five years, allowing the Bretonnians to grow weak and complacent.

The tortured priestess on the ground – for Styrbjorn was certain now that she was a holy woman – looked up at him, despite her lack of eyes, and he felt certain that she perceived him. She began to talk, spouting a stream of garbled nonsense that he knew was directed at him in particular.

‘What does she say?’the jarl asked.

Bjarki licked his lips, his eyes filled with bloodlust and hunger.

‘She says that we defile this place with our presence,’ said the seer, smirking. ‘That the Lady will strike us down.’

‘The Lady?’ questioned Styrbjorn, nodding his head towards a pristine marble statue at the rear of the dais.

Bjarki turned his head towards the statue and gave a curt nod.

‘The patron goddess of this land,’ he said. He spat towards the statue. ‘A minor deity of little true power.’

Styrbjorn knelt down before the woman on the floor. She could not see him, but recoiled from his closeness. It was not something that Styrbjorn was unfamiliar with – there were few even amongst the Skaelings who were able to remain close to him for long without experiencing discomfort, even pain. The eyes of the gods were on him, and just to be in his vicinity was to catch a measure of their gaze. Those of particular weakness were even known to fall to the ground in his presence, their bodies becoming instantly warped and altered as the gods gifted them the blessing of change.

The tortured priestess tried to grasp the totemic amulet around her neck, but without fingers, the movement was pathetic and useless, making Styrbjorn smile. He reached out and closed his own large hand around the amulet, ignoring the pain it caused and the stink of burning flesh. With a sharp yank, he broke the chain, and hurled the offending amulet away from him.

The priestess tried to pull away, her face a grimace of loathing, but he reached down and grabbed her by the throat, his fingers almost encircling her neck. It was like the neck of a swan, delicate and fragile, and it would take no more than a twist to end her life. Exerting little effort, he dragged her towards him, so that her face was no more than a foot from his own.

‘Before you perish, know that your death shall not be meaningless. The lord of skulls shall feast on your heart and drink of your blood, woman. And know that in the times of Darkness that will soon come to engulf the world, the gods themselves will walk the lands, leading their legions in the battle to end all battles. And in those End Times, great Kharnath will cut down your Lady, hacking her head from her shoulders and great shall be the lamentation. Your goddess will perish – she knows this. And now you too know the truth.’

It didn’t matter to him that she could not understand his words; he could see that they pained her, and that was all that he wished.

Sobbing and babbling, Styrbjorn allowed her to pull away from him as he rose back to his full height.

‘Do with her what you will,’ he said to his men, and stepped past them, moving towards the statue of the goddess. Styrbjorn shook his head derisively. If this was who they prayed to, then no wonder they were weak. This was no god to be feared and respected; not like the gods of the north.

The goddess was tall and slender, with flowing hair entwined with ivy and leaves. In her hands she bore a chalice. Tears ran down her cheeks, dripping rhythmically into the goblet, and Styrbjorn touched a finger to her face. The tears appeared to be real, pooling in eyes that were far too expressive to be carved of mere marble.

Behind the Skaeling jarl, the agonised cries of the priestess faded into a strangled, gargling sound, and he knew that Bjarki had slashed her throat. Still staring into the statue’s eyes, he saw that the salty tears of the goddess suddenly turned red. She wept blood tears for her defiled priestess, and Styrbjorn chuckled.

Turning back towards his warriors, Styrbjorn held out his hand.

‘Give me your hammer,’ he ordered one of his huskarls, who immediately handed over the massive double-handed weapon to his lord. Indeed, had Styrbjorn calmly ordered him to kill himself, or any of his comrades, the man would have done so without a second thought. Styrbjorn smiled. It was good to have such devotion.

The Norscan chieftain was in good spirits as he swung the hammer around in a powerful arc. The blow smashed the goddess’s head from her shoulders. Stepping forward, Styrbjorn slammed the flat of his foot into the statue’s midsection, tipping it backwards. It broke in two as it struck the back wall, and he swung the hammer again, shattering goblets and chalices carefully arrayed along the ledges set into the walls to smithereens.

‘Will you not strike me down?’ Styrbjorn sneered down at face of the goddess, whose head had rolled so that it had come to rest looking up at him, blood tears still trickling from its eyes.

Nothing happened, and he smirked, shaking his head.

How could he respect a people whose very god was not worthy of respect?

It was three hours later, and the sky was lightening with the approaching dawn. Styrbjorn sat upon his throne, which had been brought up from his longship and placed upon the dais where the statue of the Bretonnian goddess had once stood.

Impaled figures surrounded him. Not all were dead, and many twitched and moaned as they slid further down the spikes. Only cowards faced such a death – warriors who stood and fought, even weakling southern warriors such as they had encountered, were given honourable deaths, killed by the blade and the axe. Those who fled in panic and cowardice, who soiled themselves in fear, or dropped their weapons mid-battle – they were given no such respect.

Bjarki squatted at his feet, a savage grin on his blood-smeared face. The shaman had enjoyed the night’s work, though Styrbjorn sensed this bloodletting had merely whetted his appetite.

The pews that had filled the abbey had been smashed apart and piled atop each other, and a fierce blaze now roared in the middle of the floor, the flames licking up towards the rafters high overhead. The stained glass images of the enemy goddess had been smashed out, and hundreds of corpses had been nailed into the stone walls; their bodies stripped and their flesh used as parchments, the runic symbols of the Norse gods had been carved into their skin.

The fires were being stoked with oil and wood, and severed heads were thrown into the searing heart of the blazing pyres. Hair frizzled and burst into flames, and skin and flesh melted from skulls like butter. Inside, brains and tongues bubbled and broiled under the intense heat, and lower jaws fell away from the skulls as muscles and tendons were rendered to ash. Finally, all that would be left would be blackened, ash-covered skulls, and once the fires had died down they would be dragged from the embers and arranged into piles, in honour of Styrbjorn and great Kharnath, the skull-taker.

‘Why do we linger here, manling?’ snarled a voice like rocks grinding against each other, and Styrbjorn turned from staring into the flames to regard the craggy face of Zumarah.

The dwarf stood no taller than a Norscan boy of ten years, though he was almost as broad as he was tall. His chest was immense, and his thick limbs were easily as strong as any Norscan’s. The fire of hatred burnt in the dwarf’s deep set eyes, and a double row of lumps protruded from beneath the flesh along the ridge of his brow. Styrbjorn did not know if those studded growths had been implanted beneath the flesh, or whether they were gifts of the gods. The pair of tusks that rose from his lower jaw, however, were certainly evidence of the gods’ touch. The dwarf’s skin was tough and stony, the texture of rough granite and a deep, ruddy colour, and a thick beard, as black as coal and bound into a dozen tight, ringletted coils wound with meteoric iron hung down past his waist.

‘We linger here because I wish it, dwarf,’ said Styrbjorn.

‘You promised me slaves, Norscan,’ growled Zumarah, ‘and I would have them. So far I have seen none.’

‘These ones were promised to the gods,’ said Styrbjorn, gesturing to the impaled figures arrayed around the edge of the dais. Those still living cried out for death, but no one harkened to their pleas. ‘And I would not seek to anger the gods by denying them, for you or any other mortal. Be patient, Zumarah – tonight was just a skirmish; the real battle will come soon. You shall have what you were promised.’

‘My services do not come freely, Norscan,’ snarled Zumarah, ‘nor do they come cheaply. And Ereshkigal-Namtar hungers.’

‘Your… daemon-construct shall feed soon. I have given you my word, dwarf-kin, and the word of a Skaeling jarl is not given lightly. Your geld shall be honoured.’

The dwarf snarled, setting his feet solidly and glaring up at the seated jarl. Hatred and vitriol oozed from the dwarf’s every pore.

‘Do not think to cheat me out of my dues, manling,’ growled Zumarah.

The greed of the dark dwarfs was unlike anything Styrbjorn had ever experienced. It was beyond passion, beyond desire. It was more akin to a burning need, a desperate compulsion for acquiring wealth and slaves far beyond what they could ever need. Still, it mattered little. The daemon-construct that Zumarah had crafted and bound to his will was a weapon of awesome power and destruction. He had first seen its power in action against the Aesgars, and it had levelled their fort in moments. The destruction it had wrought was wondrous and terrible.

‘The rest of my fleet is two days behind us,’ said Styrbjorn. ‘We wait here until their arrival before we push onto the mainland.’

‘You have such little faith in the strength of your warriors that you must wait for reinforcements?’ sneered Zumarah.

Bjarki hissed, exposing his sharply filed teeth and rattled a bone-charm threateningly. The dwarf looked at the Skaeling seer with a look of derision and contempt.

‘You think I fear your curses, bane-spinner?’ snarled the dwarf. ‘Stay your tongue or I’ll rip it out.’

Bjarki leapt to his feet, his face flushing with anger, but Styrbjorn laid a hand on his shoulder, keeping him from lashing out.

‘Two days, we wait here,’ said Styrbjorn. ‘This is my decision, and there is to be no discussion. The gods caused the seas to rise in anger, and the ships bearing my tuskers have been delayed; I wish to see how these Bretonnians fare against such beasts, and will not attack without them.’

The dwarf regarded the jarl defiantly, refusing to be cowed by the big Norscan chieftain. The stony-faced creature’s beard split into a grin.

‘We understand each other, you and I,’ said the dwarf. ‘This is good. Two days.’

With that, Zumarah turned and strode away from the jarl, his short legs and heavy build giving him an oddly rolling gait.

‘Why did you hold me back?’ spat Bjarki. ‘He deserves the blessings of the Pox Father’s touch for the way he spoke to you, my jarl.’

‘Is it for my honour that you would call down Grandfather Nurgleth’s attentions, or your own?’ said Styrbjorn.

Bjarki, still quivering with barely suppressed rage, flashed an angry glance towards him, witch-light sparking.

‘It is always for your honour, my jarl,’ he said.

‘You feel that I need your help, or that of anyone else, to protect my honour, Bjarki?’ said Styrbjorn, his voice low and dangerous.

The seer licked his lips.

‘Of course not, my jarl,’ said the seer finally.

‘Good,’ said Styrbjorn, and his eyes took on a lustful, eager light. ‘Now tell me, the woman who shall bear my son – she is coming to us even now, you say?’

‘She is making her way towards the crow-fields,’ confirmed Bjarki. ‘There, the gods have decreed that you shall win a proud victory over the weakling horsemen. Great will be the slaughter. Great will be the lamentation of their women. Your consort-bride will arrive on the eve of battle, and your son shall be conceived under the green moon, after victory has been won.’

Styrbjorn smiled. A son! He had waited so long for one of his women to bear him a son to succeed him, but long had that eluded him. Thirteen daughters his wives and consorts had borne him, but no son. Indeed, two of them accompanied him now, sword-maidens of commensurate skill, easily the match for any of his warriors.

‘You hear that, daughters?’ he said. ‘Soon you will have a brother, and then you will be free to wed!’

Fraygerd and Hrefna were born of different mothers, but that they were sisters was obvious. Both shared their father’s tall stature and noble countenance. Both had long, straight hair the colour of sand, though Fraygerd wore hers bound in tails while Hrefna’s hung loose and wild. A little more than a year separated the two – they were nineteen and seventeen respectively – and though Fraygerd was the taller and stronger of the pair, Hrefna’s fiery nature more than made up for that deficiency on the field of battle.

‘I’ve yet to meet the man who I would deem worthy of marriage,’ said Hrefna, and Styrbjorn smiled. He turned back towards his seer, who was staring at the two girls with undisguised desire, for all that they stood more than a foot taller than him.

‘Tell me where she is now.’

The seer nodded, and knelt cross-legged on the floor. With one hand he drew his knife, and slashed it across his palm, which was crisscrossed with a mass of scars. Blood welled and muttering an incantation under his breath the seer wiped his knife clean on the matted furs wrapped around his shoulders before sheathing the blade. Clenching his fist and holding it above him, he threw his head back and allowed the drips to fall onto his face, splashing onto his tattooed lips, his cheeks and falling upon both eyelids.

Bjarki began to rock slightly, still muttering an incantation. The taut muscles of his arms and torso, covered in ritualised scars and ink, began to twitch as his spirit soared. God-touched as he was, Styrbjorn felt the vicious little shaman’s spirit pull clear of its mortal flesh; it felt like a cold breath on his skin as the seer’s soul-spirit brushed by him and was gone.

Moments later, he felt the shaman return, and Bjarki gave a shuddering breath as he slammed back into his body.

‘Well?’

‘She’s five day’s walk south of the crow-fields.’

‘She has an armed guard?’

‘No,’ said Bjarki, wiping away the blood that was dripping from one of his nostrils. ‘She has a measure of power of her own.’

‘She is alone?’ said Styrbjorn, concern in his voice.

‘A group of wretches accompany her. She is using them for her blood-magic. They are armed, but they are not warriors. But she does not need them for protection, my jarl – as I said, she does not need protecting.’

Styrbjorn was unconvinced.

‘I want you to go to her, Bjarki. I will not risk anything befalling her before the consummation. Kveldulf,’ he ordered, gesturing towards one his warriors nearby, a bow-legged, broad-shoulder Skaeling with a nose that had clearly been broken a dozen times. The warrior stepped forward and dropped to one knee. ‘You and your horsemen will accompany Bjarki to the mainland.’

‘As you wish it, my jarl,’ said Kveldulf.

‘Find her, and protect her, Bjarki,’ ordered Styrbjorn. ‘Bring her to me. I’ll see you at the crow fields – that is where the battle is to take place, yes?’

‘That is what I have read in the entrails, my jarl,’ said Bjarki, bowing his head. Standing, he nodded to Kveldulf. ‘Ready your horsemen, warrior. We sail within the hour.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Calard’s head wasn’t pounding yet; that would come later. Cursing himself for having agreed to take part in the day’s event, he grimaced as he accepted a lance handed to him.

The sun could not pierce the thick banks of cloud overhead, for which Calard was thankful – he didn’t think he could have dealt with direct sunlight stabbing into his eyes. Drinking deeply from a waterskin, he swished the cooling liquid around his mouth. Bertelis was riding alongside him and though he said nothing Calard could feel his brother’s silent rebuke.

‘Keep tight, and don’t break formation,’ said Montcadas, ahead of them.

The baron, being the most senior of the contingent from Bastonne, had assumed command, and would be leading the charge of their formation. It had been the baron’s decision that all the knights of Bastonne would fight as one single lance formation, much to Calard’s chagrin, for it meant that Maloric and his Sangasse lapdogs would be fighting at his side. He had hoped to face his rival from opposite ends of the field, but the baron had scuppered any such ideas the night before. Indeed, had it not been for that proclamation, Calard would certainly not have drunk quite so much as he had – at least that was what he told himself at any rate.

‘Think you can manage to stay in the saddle until the start without throwing up, Garamont?’ sneered Maloric.

‘If I’m sick, I’ll make sure it’s in your direction,’ muttered Calard.

‘Can we stop this line of conversation, please?’ groaned Tassilo. The young knight was positively green in the face from overindulgence.

‘And for the love of the Lady stay downwind,’ snapped Maloric. ‘I can smell the wine on you from here.’

‘Don’t disgrace me today,’ snarled Bertelis under his breath to Calard, leaning in close, and he bit his tongue not to snap back an angry retort.

‘Let’s show these uptight bastards how the knights of Bastonne fight!’ roared Montcadas, and the nobles around Calard and Tassilo lifted their lances high with a cheer.

‘Does he need to be so loud?’ groaned Tassilo.

‘You’ll feel better to be up and moving about soon,’ said Calard, though there was little conviction in his voice.

Abruptly, Tassilo lost his battle with his insides, and he leant over in the saddle and vomited loudly. Maloric turned away in disgust, while Huebald and Baldemund chuckled and instantly began ribbing the young knight for his lack of drinking constitution. Bertelis said nothing and merely stared straight ahead, the muscles in his jaw twitching. Calard himself was breathing deeply.

A scabby peasant dog dodged between the legs of the horses and began to lap at Tassilo’s vomit, and Calard felt his stomach heave. A sharp horn echoed across the field and Calard willed himself not to be ill, holding onto his lance tightly.

The knights began to move, walking forwards to the cheers of the crowd in the stands. Heralds hollered the names of the knights in turn as they moved forward, accompanied by further cheers and shouts, amid much banner-waving and fanfare. Horns blared, and drums beat out regular tattoos as the knights moved into position opposite each other across the open field.

The field had been well chosen, for it was broad and flat. It slid off to the south-west, where it became marshy and boggy, but was otherwise well drained, and though its grass would still doubtless be completely churned up by mid-afternoon, it would not become the muddy quagmire that had been the fields of several tournaments he had taken part in. One such tournament the previous spring, at Glaston, had been an utter debacle. By its conclusion, it had been impossible to discern who was ally and who was opponent, for everyone was caked head to toe in clinging black mud that obscured their heraldry and colours. The event had been called off after more than two dozen deaths, most suffered when destriers had broken limbs in the sinking mud and thrown their riders.

Gunthar had always taught him that the location of a battle was as important for victory as any other factor, often more so even than the quality of the combatants. He had told Calard stories of castles held by half a dozen peasants against endless hordes of greenskins, and of entire armies of knights being slaughtered by lowborn archers because of a poorly chosen battlefield, situated with a sinking marsh across its centre.

This was a prime location for an even contest that favoured neither side, and as he cantered his destrier into position he looked across the field. The sides had been evenly split, with roughly six hundred knights gathered on each end of the tournament field. Double that number of peasants were gathered behind their masters, though they would take no direct part in the event. They were there as support for their lords, to attend to the fallen, to supply fresh lances and water on each turn.

This was not a florid, theatrical joust. This was a true test, the closest that one could come to true warfare during times of peace. The dukes and even the king himself were known to compete in these events on occasion, often in disguise so as not to receive any particular quarter from their opponents, and more than one knight had been honoured for having proved a worthy opponent to these luminaries.

In essence, this was a battle as any other battle, mortal or otherwise. The knights, ranked up in tight formation, would charge across the field at each other in an attempt to strike their opponents from the saddle. Those unwilling or unable to continue retired, aided or carried from the field by their retainers if necessary, and so the tournament continued. Having made a pass, the knights would wheel around and their formations would regroup for another charge. So it would continue until one side was declared the winner. More often than not, the battle would rage through the morning, and horns would blare, announcing a cease to the event, and the combatants would eat and drink and have any injuries tended. Then, another horn would sound, and the battle would recommence. Usually, a victor was declared before mid-afternoon, but it was not unheard of for battles to rage long into the afternoon and into dusk if no clear winner could be seen.

Serious injuries were commonplace, and death was an accepted part of every tourney. Even those with the smallest turnout would be lucky not to have at least one death during the day’s event, but this was but a part of what made the tournaments what they were. If there was no risk, then the tourney would be a poor training ground for the rigours of real battle.

‘The enemy have refused to quit the field!’ bellowed a crier, yelling the traditional phrase at the top of his lungs. ‘In the Lady’s name, our honour demands that we clear the field of their presence!’

A great cheer rose from the gathered knights, and Calard heard Tassilo groan. He smiled. He was still not feeling great, but the fresh air and light mist of rain that had begun to fall was making him feel eminently better than he had when he had first risen. He might even make it through without losing the contents of his stomach, he thought.

‘For Bastonne!’ roared Montcadas.

The knights began to edge forwards, nudging their steeds into a walk, and Calard slammed down the visor on his helmet. That walk turned into a trot, and the knightly formations began angling towards each other across the field. Several smaller detachments of knights errant kicked their steeds forward on the flanks, galloping out to take up flanking positions against their opponents while their comrades advanced more slowly.

The first strike was between two of these smaller detachments of young knights errant, who, eager to get to grips with the ‘enemy’ had charged headlong across the field towards each other from outset.

Cheers rose as a dozen knights were struck from the saddle, falling hard onto the earth.

Montcadas, riding at the tip of the wedge of Bastonnian knights, urged his steed into a canter, and the others did likewise, keeping their formation tight. Lances were held in the vertical position, and for a moment it seemed strange to Calard that the baron had a lance in his hand too, rather than his usual spiked morning star. Still, such a weapon would have been inappropriately deadly for a tourney. As it was, tourney lances were not nearly as lethal as war lances, blunted and crafted to break more easily with far less likelihood of skewering the victim. They were capable of delivering a powerful blow, easily enough to break bones and send a knight pitching from the saddle, but usually not enough to penetrate armour or impale.

Calard felt the familiar thrill as the speed of the knights picked up, and the ground began to thunder beneath the pounding of hooves. Great sods of earth were torn up as twelve hundred knights drew towards each other, gauging the moment to lower lances and kick their horses into the gallop.

‘Charge!’ roared Montcadas, kicking his spurs into his steed’s flanks. As one the Bastonnians swiftly lowered their lances and their destriers leaped forwards to meet the foe head-on and at full pace.

The knights of Bastonne and Lyonesse struck each other at full gallop, and the power of the two forces coming together was bone-shattering. Even muffled by his helmet the sound was tremendous, with men shouting and bellowing, horses screaming, hooves pounding the ground like an avalanche. Lances cracked sharply like dry tinder as they broke upon shield and breastplate, and metal struck metal as horses and knights smashed into each other.

Adjusting his bodyweight for the strike, Calard expertly guided his lance-tip towards the chest of a knight with a snarling lion upon his helmet crest. Intent on his own strike, the knight was not prepared for the blow, and Calard rose in the saddle as he struck, putting the full weight of his armoured body and the momentum of his horse behind the blow. The strike was nigh on perfect, and it struck the knight just below the heart, lifting him from the saddle even as Calard’s lance shattered into splinters.

The Lyonesse knight pitched backwards to fall amidst the flailing hooves, and Calard was rocked backwards in the saddle by the force of the impact, which jarred up his arm and shoulder, numbing it. A lance speared towards him, and he turned his shield at the last moment as he reeled, forcing it to skid off the shield’s surface without breaking.

Splinters of wood spattered off his helmet as more lances were broken. As he thundered past the knight, he slammed the weighted, counterbalanced end of his splintered lance into a knight’s helmet. The man did not fall, but he slid sideways in the saddle as his balance was thrown, and Calard saw Maloric’s already broken lance smash him to the ground.

Abruptly, there was nothing in front of Calard but open ground, as the two wedges of knights rode clear of each other. Throwing his shattered lance to the ground, Calard turned in the saddle, smiling, as he heard his brother Bertelis alongside him whoop with unashamed joy. Around six of his comrades had fallen in the exchange, but more than ten of the Lyonesse knights were down.

The knights rode across the field to where their opponents had begun the charge, where hundreds of peasants were arrayed, holding out fresh lances. Others were racing across the field either on foot or upon the backs of thick-limbed draught horses, dodging between charging lance formations, to attend to fallen nobles and lords. Already dozens of knights were being stretchered off the field with broken arms and legs, and the screams of horribly injured horses were cut short as their throats were mercifully slashed.

‘Tassilo?’ asked Calard, not seeing his cousin.

Huebald lifted his visor and shook his head, rolling his eyes.

‘He practically threw himself onto a lance,’ he said. ‘I think he just wanted a lie down.’

Calard laughed out loud, feeling the last hint of his hangover dissipate like fog under a rising sun.

‘Baron?’ said Bertelis sharply, cutting through the jovial chatter.

Montcadas was slumped in the saddle, and Calard’s smile dropped from his face. He swung from his horse and dropped to the ground, running to the baron’s side, as the big man pitched sideward.

Calard caught him, but the baron was a huge man, and his armour easily doubled his weight. Maloric was at his side a moment later, and together the two of them lowered the big man to the ground, the blood-feud between them momentarily forgotten.

A shattered lance was embedded in the baron’s chest, having punched through his breastplate. It was on the opposite side than his heart, thankfully, but blood was bubbling up through the rent metal, staining the light-coloured timber of the lance a deep red. A tourney lance should not have been able to penetrate a breastplate, but it had been known to happen on occasion, usually when the blunted tip of the lance had already been broken off.

The baron was roaring through gritted teeth like a wounded bear.

‘Get a surgeon here, now!’ bellowed someone.

Calard was staring at the wound, realising that the lance tip had pierced one of the baron’s lungs, and knowing that he would likely begin drowning in his own blood shortly if nothing was done. Nevertheless, the shock of seeing the injury had frozen him into inaction, and he stared numbly at the blood foam bubbling from the wound. Unaffected by Calard’s immobility, Maloric pulled the baron’s helmet from his head.

The Sangasse nobleman hissed, and Baldemund, standing behind them, swore under his breath. The baron was still roaring in pain, his jaw gritted so tight that Calard feared he would shatter a tooth.

A splinter of wood four inches long had pierced Montcadas’s right eye – his sole remaining eye. Blood was streaming down his cheek and soaking his silver-flecked beard. Instantly, Calard understood what had happened. When the lance that had pierced Montcadas’s chest had shattered, one of the long splinters of wood had shot upwards, slipping through the visor-slit of the baron’s helmet and sunk into his eye.

‘Pull it out, Lady damn it,’ roared Montcadas.

‘Don’t touch it,’ Huebald advised. ‘Pulling it out might do more damage.’

The baron reached for the sliver of wood and Calard was shaken out of his stupor, grabbing Montcadas’s gauntleted hand before the older knight could rip the offending splinter from his eye. The baron roared in agony and rage, fighting against the hands holding him down, desperate to tear the shard of lance-wood from his eye.

‘More damage?’ Baldemund muttered under his breath. ‘The man won’t see again, mark my words.’

Calard knew instinctively that his cousin spoke the truth. Montcadas was shaking his head from side to side in absolute agony. His eye was a pool of blood, and Calard winced just looking at the stiletto-sharp, red-soaked splinter protruding from the socket.

‘Where’s that damn surgeon!’ bellowed Calard.

A blast of horns sounded in the distance, echoed by dozens of others back and forth across the tournament field. It was the signal to cease combat, and for a moment Calard thought that perhaps the competition was being called to a halt because of Montcadas’s injury. He dismissed it straight away – even deaths rarely halted a tourney.

He heard men shouting in the distance, voices raised in concern and inquiry, but he paid them no mind.

A surgeon arrived, slipping his way through the knights crowded around Montcadas, and Calard was pushed aside. He stood up, feeling helpless and distraught.

More raised voices intruded on him and horns blared nearby. He turned towards Bertelis, who had turned away from Montcadas and was craning his head to see what was going on. The men all around were calling out in confusion, speaking in hurried tones as whispers spread like wildfire through the gathered knights.

‘What is it?’ said Calard.

‘Yeoman outriders, wearing the colours of the Duke of Lyonesse,’ said Bertelis.

‘Lyonesse is under attack!’ shouted one of the yeomen from horseback. ‘The duke requests your aid! The enemy is upon us!’

‘What enemy?’ shouted Calard.

‘Norscans!’ came the reply.

CHAPTER SIX

Every movement was agony. Her joints throbbed with rheumatism and arthritis, and she became short of breath after hobbling no more than twenty paces. Her vision was hazy and indistinct, and the bright light hurt her eyes. She leant up against a barrel placed to the side of the muddy roadway through the hovel village to catch her breath.

Elisabet had left the crone’s cave before dawn, desperately trying to make her way back to her home. Surely, she thought desperately, someone would be able to help her.

Elisabet was still gasping like a fish stranded on land when the rock hit her. It struck her on the cheek, splitting her aged skin, and weak, thin blood ran down her face. She cried out and raised her feeble arms up to protect herself as more rocks, lumps of manure and rotten vegetables rained down upon her.

‘Witch! Witch! Witch!’ shouted the voices of children, taunting her.

Elisabet covered her face protectively. A rotten marrow exploded as it hit the barrel beside her, spreading stinking foulness and writhing maggots. Another rock struck her, this time hitting her between her withered breasts, and there was a dry, wooden snap as a rib broke.

Crying out, she staggered to her feet and hobbled as fast as she could, trying to escape the relentless children. She slipped in the mud and fell.

‘Witch! Witch! Witch!’

The children closed in around her, and several of the larger children began hitting her with sticks. Scabby dogs darted around the filth-encrusted youngsters, yapping excitedly, and Elisabet cowered, crying and wailing.

‘Get away, you dirty little wretches!’ bellowed a voice, and the old woman cried out in relief as the children scattered, shouting insults and laughing.

She lay crying in the mud and the manure, trying desperately to catch her breath and slow her heart that was fluttering like a bird’s. Everything hurt. Vaguely she registered a group of men standing around her, but she didn’t have the energy to lift herself up or to offer them thanks.

‘’Ware yourself, warden,’ said one of them. ‘That’s the crone Haegtesse, that is.’

‘Bollocks,’ scoffed the warden.

‘That’s her all right,’ said another. ‘Old witch put a curse on my cousin, she did. I ain’t touchin’ her. She’s got the evil eye.’

A shadow leant over her, and she cowered before it.

‘That right, you old hag?’ said a brutish voice.

She shook her head painfully, moaning.

‘I asked you a question, witch,’ said the warden, jabbing her with the butt of his halberd.

‘No,’ she managed.

‘You callin’ my man a liar? This good upstanding pillar of the community, here?’ he said, jabbing her in the chest again with his halberd.

‘No,’ she whimpered. She crawled on hands and knees towards the man, scrabbling for him with claw-like hands. He stepped away from her reach.

Trying to reclaim some dignity, Elisabet climbed to her feet, straightened her back and lifted her chin to look upon the yeoman ruffians.

‘Don’t look ‘er in the eye!’ warned one of them, and they all took a wary step backwards.

Affecting an imperious tone, she addressed them.

‘I am the Lady Elisabet of Marlemont, and I demand that you escort me to my father’s estate immediately.’

For a second there was silence, and then the yeomen burst into laughter. The sound struck Elisabet like the stones that had been hurled against her moments earlier, battering her with equal force and she felt herself wither beneath the onslaught.

A name floated up from the back of her mind, and she realised that she recognised the voice of the warden. He was one of the peasant warriors that had accompanied her beloved Calard to the east six months previous, to fight the greenskins menacing Bordeleaux. Before he had left, he had done her a kindness, she remembered. What was his name? Perdi? Perlo?

‘Perdo,’ she said, pointing a finger towards him as she remembered. ‘Warden Perdo.’

The warden stepped back from her with a sharp intake of breath.

‘How do you know my name, hag?’ the peasant yeoman demanded, his men shuffling nervously.

‘You did me a kindness once. I was riding with Calard, returning from the western fields. A dog barked, startling my mare and she shied. I lost my balance for a moment, and dropped a scarf to the ground. You picked it up for me,’ said Elisabet, the vision as clear in her mind as if it had been yesterday. ‘I tried to stop him, but Calard’s brother, Bertelis, cuffed you over the head for it. Said I’d never get the stink of your touch out of the silk. I am sorry for that. It was a noble gesture, and I never thanked you for it.’

Silence greeted her claim.

‘Told you, Perdo. She’s a witch,’ muttered one of the men.

Elisabet made to speak again, but the warden stepped forwards and slapped her across the face with flat of his mailed hand. The blow stung her, loosening several rotten teeth and sent her sprawling back down into the mud.

‘There weren’t nobody there but myself, the lady, and the two young lords,’ he snapped. ‘Only way you could know that is if you really are a witch. Bind her! And gag her, so she don’t bewitch us.’

Elisabet was shoved face-first into the mud, and her hands were trussed up painfully behind her back. She winced, trying to beg them to stop, to listen to her, but her head was reefed backwards and a twisted strip of stinking cloth was jammed into her bloody mouth, then tied around the back of her head. Her ankles were bound with biting cord, and she was lifted up roughly, like a prize pig being led to the blooding.

‘Take ’er to the dungeons,’ ordered the warden. ‘She can rot down there until the chamberlain decides what to do with her.’

Chlod licked his lips as he glanced fearfully towards the noblewoman seated before the glowing embers. Her arms were covered in blood up to her elbows, and her hair was matted and tangled. Her once fair dress was muddied and torn around its hems, and her face was streaked with grime and dirt.

The corpse of one of the pilgrims was spread-eagled out before the witch, chest ripped open and ribs splayed. She pawed through the innards, muttering under her breath, and lifted several organs to her nose. Some she merely sniffed, others she licked or nibbled. Chlod’s stomach churned. Her hands dipped again into the viscera, hauling intestines out and slapping them down onto the flat of a rock, and she began poking through the mass of stinking guts.

The pilgrims huddled together in a miserable clump, their faces long and their eyes haunted. Some of them, like Chlod, were watching the woman’s grisly work, while others had their eyes tightly closed, their heads turned resolutely away. Some cried softly to themselves, and one was muttering a prayer to Reolus, begging him to deliver them from this evil creature.

‘Quiet,’ snapped the witch, casting a hateful glance in their direction, and the pilgrims shrunk under her gaze.

Turning back towards her grisly work, the witch peered intently into the human entrails, poking at them with her long fingernails and delving amongst the glistening, ropey tract with her blood-slick, slender hands.

From within a big bag covered in matted fur, the woman pulled a vile doll, its body made from a twisted burl of wood and strands of dark hair stitched into its head. Its face was horrific, something from a nightmare, with the skin of some creature pulled taut across it and held in place with nails. Sharp animal teeth, perhaps from a wolf or a badger, protruded from its gash of a mouth, and its eyes were staring buttons on bone. What looked like tattoos had been painted onto the thing’s lips. It was a hideous thing, and the witch stroked a bloody hand across its hair, smoothing it down in a horrible mimicry of child-like affection.

The witch nestled the doll amidst the entrails of the pilgrim, standing it upright so that it looked back at her from within its gory throne, and she began to chant, rocking back and forth and holding her bloody hands out before her.

The pilgrims murmured in fear, hugging each other tighter. There were only a handful of them left now. This was the second victim that the witch had taken for her vile practices. At least it was one less mouth to feed, Chlod thought.

He didn’t have any idea what the witch’s destination was, but she seemed to know where she was heading. She pushed them on relentlessly, heading in a steady north-westerly direction. She seemed to have a sixth-sense for avoiding trouble, and guided them around patrols of knights and men-at-arms, avoiding chattels, castles and peasant villages as if she could see the lay of the land from high above, like it was a map laid out before her.

Chlod felt a chill run down his spine. Frost began to form before his eyes, coating the low-hanging branches near the witch, making them droop low from the weight, and he saw a thin coating of ice appearing on the doll, crackling across its face like a creeping sickness.

The witch looked up into the empty space above the coals of her fire pit and smiled. Chlod wondered if she were demented, for there was nothing there, but she began to converse with the empty space as if it were a living, breathing person. He wondered if there was something there, something that he did not have the ability to perceive.

She was talking in a language that he did not understand, one that sounded harsh and guttural to his ears that were used to the soft and florid language of the Bretonnians. He had heard men of the Empire speaking their own tongue, and this language was something akin to that, though subtly different and perhaps not quite as hard on the ear as that loathsome tongue.

The one-sided exchange lasted for several minutes, until an accord seemed to be met, and the conversation ended. The icy chill departed, and Chlod began rubbing his hands together, trying to restore the circulation in his fat, sausage-like digits.

One by one, the pilgrims drifted into a restless sleep. Chlod remained awake the longest, watching the witch as she continued to poke through the grisly remains of his erstwhile comrade until his eyes started to droop. He hadn’t slept in several days, and when oblivion finally came upon him, sneaking up like a phantom in the dark, he slept like a dead man, neither moving, nor dreaming.

The severed heads hanging from the saddle and traces of Bjarki’s pony bounced up and down as he galloped across the dark landscape. For three nights he had been back in the lands of his birth. They had ridden hard through the nights, moving without pause from dusk till dawn. The Skaeling ponies were hardy beasts, and though Bretonnian warhorses would easily outpace them over short distances, they were capable of maintaining their pace for hours on end without rest. After three nights of ceaseless travel, Bjarki and the band of riders moving with him had covered hundreds of miles, but their steeds showed no sign of tiring. They lay low during the daylight hours.

A dark, insatiable hunger gnawed within Bjarki. For long years he had waited for his chance to avenge himself against the society that had turned its back upon him, and now that his time for vengeance had come he found himself drunk with the desire for bloodshed.

Being back in Bretonnia brought all his old memories resurfacing. With the return of this knowledge, his fury and hatred increased tenfold.

Had he stayed on at his father’s wealthy castle-estate, no more than three days ride from where he now was, then the Enchantress would have come to claim him sooner or later. Such was the way of things in Bretonnia. In this land, those born with the gift – ‘fey-touched’ as the Bretonnians would say – were regarded with outright fear and suspicion. The Enchantress scoured the countryside for children with the witch-sight, for those who had the gift of premonition and who could instinctively tap into the breath of the gods that flowed down from the north. These children she gathered to her, taking them from their families who attempted to forget that they had ever been born. Perhaps one girl in every hundred taken would return a decade or more later as a handmaiden of the Lady, one of her damsels, schooled in the mystical arts; boys that were taken were never seen again.

Even as a child he had heard a myriad of possible fates for these sons of Bretonnia stolen from their families. Some said that they were abandoned in the middle of the dark wildwoods of the realms, left to fend for themselves against the beasts that dwelled there. Some even said that that was what beastmen were – the boy-children abandoned by the Enchantress and altered by her magic. Others said that they were spirited away to the Lady’s fair isle, there to live in perpetual states of childhood, doomed never to grow up, and to serve forever as pageboys and servants. Some even whispered that it was the sacrifice of these children that kept the seasons turning, and that if the practise were ever to cease, that Bretonnia would become entrapped in an eternal, never-ending winter.

Such would have been his fate. In a society raised to abhor those with his talents, he had no place. His parents hated and feared him, and even as a toddler he had come to despise them for it, taking pleasure in making them feel awkward when guests paid visits, antagonising them whenever he could.

In the witching hours of one mid-autumn night, he had been woken by his elderly caretaker, and hurried from his father’s castle. Scared, and not knowing what was happening, he remained silent as he was led down the empty winding streets towards the harbour. A boat was waiting for them. Terrified and shivering he had somehow fallen asleep.

When he had awoken it was just before dawn and land was only a vague, misty shape on the horizon. Wide eyed and pale, he’d been given food and water, and the old man tried to calm him. The Enchantress was coming, he’d said. Doubtless his parents would have been relieved to have had him taken off their hands, but this old man, fearful of what would become of his young charge, had taken it upon himself to save the boy. The old fool.

It had been the will of the gods that the Norscans found him.

Bjarki licked his lips, tasting the blood upon them, rich and metallic. He was in his correct, allotted place, doing what it was the gods wished of him.

The woman who would bear his jarl a son was nothing more than a tool, he saw that now –a lure to bring the Skaelings to these lands. She was important – if it were not for her, his jarl would not have been tempted to attack the southlanders – but he was under no illusions about her real value. However, his lord would have no reason to keep his warriors here in Bretonnia if any harm came to her, and so he would protect her with his life.

She was close; he could almost taste the breath of the gods upon her.

Bjarki turned towards the minor Skaeling chieftain, Kveldulf. The man was a born horseman. He was awkward when moving on his own two feet – his legs were bow-legged and too short for his broad body – but in the saddle there were few Skaelings who could match him.

‘Hurry,’ he urged the chieftain. ‘She is close – less than an hour ahead of us.’

The horseman nodded his head, making his beard, braided with tiny skulls, shiver like the charms Skaeling women used to protect their young from wind-borne daemons.

With a barked command he passed the word, and the twenty horsemen picked up their pace.

Chlod was pissing up against a tree when the marauders rode into camp. Hurriedly, he finished his business and dropped to the ground. He swore to himself. Why did these things always seem to happen when he was relieving himself?

There was a score of them; brutal looking savages dressed in outlandish furs and leathers, their heads covered in horned helmets. They were big men, and their arms and faces were covered in warpaint and tattoos. Many sported beards of blond hair, and they rode upon unarmoured, stocky horses. These were sturdier beasts than the warhorses of the nobility, smaller and more compact, with shaggier coats. Severed heads and hands hung from their saddles, and vile symbols had been daubed and branded into their flanks.

Chlod pressed low against the ground, his eyes wide and fearful as he peered around the thick roots of the tree at the intruders. It was still an hour or two before dawn, and had the urge to urinate not come upon him, he would undoubtedly have still been fast asleep.

The marauders stood motionless amongst the trees as they surveyed the camp. Chlod didn’t know if he had been seen, but he dared not move for fear of drawing attention to himself.

As it was, the attention of the riders appeared to be focused upon the witch who stood to meet them.

One of the riders, a short, wiry figure with unruly dark hair and a massive cloak of spiked fur over his shoulders, dropped to the ground, stepping towards the witch, speaking the same language that Chlod had heard the witch talking earlier in the night. She answered him in the same language, and he gestured questioningly towards the sleeping pilgrims.

Hearing voices, one of them woke up and yawned. That yawn turned into a startled squeal as she saw the horsemen.

The witch shrugged her shoulders and the wiry one smiled, before swinging towards the pilgrims.

Chlod shrank back further between the roots of the tree as he saw the savage figure slide a handaxe from his belt, keeping his body between it and the pilgrims, so that they could not yet see it. The others were awake now, and they stared around them with wide eyes, visibly shaking. One of them cried out for Reolus to save them, but no avenging paladin of light appeared. Another waved a slipper that the grail knight had once worn at the horsemen, perhaps hoping that they were nothing more than apparitions and that by brandishing the holy artefact would banish them. It didn’t.

The fur-cloaked individual slammed his handaxe into the neck of the slipper-wielder, who fell clutching at the wound, blood fountaining from between his fingers. Two of the pilgrims made a run for it, but these the horsemen struck down. An axe spun end over end and struck one of them in the back, and another of the marauders stood in the saddle and hurled a javelin that took the other pilgrim in the neck.

She fell no more than ten yards from Chlod’s position, and for a moment he stared into her eyes as she looked right at him. The tip of the javelin, along with two feet of its length, was protruding from her throat and blood bubbled around it as she died, one hand reaching out for Chlod, who shrank back.

A horseman thundered across the clearing and ripped the javelin loose, and Chlod felt certain that he had been seen. He closed his eyes, but opened one a moment later when the fatal blow did not fall. The horseman had turned away from him, and looking past him, Chlod saw the last of his pilgrim companions butchered, head caved in by the wiry one’s axe.

One of the horsemen moved forward, and the head of his steed lowered towards a bloodied body. The pony bit into the pilgrim’s arm, tearing off a strip of flesh that it gulped down greedily, and Chlod felt his gorge rise as the other steeds stepped forward to graze on the corpses.

The axe-wielding savage spun suddenly, turning his gaze in Chlod’s direction, eyes narrowing. It was clear that he could not see him in the gloom, but perhaps he sensed him there. Blood and brain matter dripped from his axe head, and he took a step in Chlod’s direction.

A word from the witch halted him, and he spat a reply in her direction. He threw a quick, venomous glance in Chlod’s general direction, and then swung away with some reluctance. A horse was made available for the witch, and though the beast shied away from her, whinnying in fear, a barked word from the wiry man made it freeze. She climbed up into the saddle of the beast, whose ears were flat against its head and eyes were wide in panic.

Without a backwards glance, the witch rode away from the camp, accompanied by her newfound companions, leaving the bloodied corpses of the pilgrims in her wake.

Chlod lay motionless, petrified into immobility, as he listened to the sound of horses’ hooves moving into the distance. He lay there long after the sound of the horses had faded. Not until the first weak rays of the early winter dawn turned night into day did he dare shift his position.

Shivering uncontrollably, he shuffled forward and began to rifle through the pockets and pouches of his dead comrades. He took what little foodstuffs and coin they had, and almost as an afterthought, he stripped them of all the artefacts of devotion.

Though the holy items had done little to protect them from the axes of the marauders, Chlod judged that he had little to lose by carrying them, and if perchance there was any remnant of sacred power within them, then he figured he might magnify their protection by bearing them all.

Half an hour later Chlod wandered out of the treeline, his pockets bulging. He wore a dented knightly helmet on his head, one that had been worn and discarded by Reolus a decade earlier, and a breastplate upon his chest that had been shorn almost completely in half by the dreaded cockatrice of Yoravale. He’d discarded his trusty spiked club, and now wore a sword on his hip, one once wielded by Reolus, though it had been tossed aside after its blade had been shattered two feet from its tip by a river troll at the Bridge of Tears. His malformed, hunchbacked body was wrapped in scraps of material from Reolus’s personal standard, and he was beginning to feel good, upbeat even. Once again, he’d survived against the odds and come out, if not smelling of roses, at least better off than he had been an hour earlier.

A smug smile was smeared across his uneven face as he walked out onto the fields beyond the tree line.

In the distance he saw a wagon, loaded with produce, making its way along a pitted roadway.

Snow began to fall, but even that could do nothing to lessen Chlod’s buoyant mood. Breaking into an awkward, loping jog, Chlod headed for the distant wagon.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Bretonnian army was gathering strength as it moved northward. Each day, hundreds more knights and their respective entourages joined the march, answering the Duke of Lyonesse’s call to war. Word was received that already Duke Adalhard had already engaged the Norscan vanguard on the fields of northern Lyonesse, fighting them to a standstill, but that while he was engaged, a far larger force had swung to the north-west, riding unopposed inland into hillier country.

From the reports of the yeomen outriders, it was understood that the Norscans had landed without warning some three days’ ride north of Castle Lyonesse and struck swiftly inland, burning everything in its path. The force was said to number in the tens of thousands.

It had pained Calard to leave Baron Montcadas behind. The grizzled, tough old fighter had been treated as best he could, and the field surgeons had been confident that he would recover well from the wound he had suffered in the chest, barring complications arising from infections. However, there had been nothing that could be done for the baron’s eye. The splinter of lance that had embedded itself there had damaged it beyond repair. Having already lost his left eye in battle against the beastmen six months earlier, the baron was now blind, condemned to live out the rest of his life in darkness. Worse, it ensured that he was unable to fight for his duke and king, for what good was a blind knight in battle? How could he fulfil his sworn duty if he could not even defend himself, let alone the lands bequeathed to him by his lord?

Montcadas had put on a brave face, but Calard had seen through his bluster, recognising that he was fighting back a terrible black despair. In the care of the young Lady Josephine, and escorted by a cadre of retainers, he would even now be making his way back to Bastonne. Calard’s young cousin Orlando had wanted to ride with them to war, and had sulked when he had been told in no uncertain terms that he would be riding back to Bastonne with the baron and Josephine. Calard had asked that they come visit him at Garamont upon his return and had fared them well, feeling a deep sense of pity for the baron.

Calard had seen the knight kill orcs and beastmen by the dozen. He’d seen him bash the brains out of twisted monstrosities twice his size, and seen him shrug off injuries that would have slain a lesser man. And yet, for all his resilience all it had taken was a random freak accident in a tourney to lay him low. The field surgeon had said he’d been lucky – had the splinter sunk an extra half inch it would have pierced the brain. In the baron’s place, Calard wondered if he might have preferred that it had.

Word had been received that a Bretonnian army was moving in support from Couronne, dispatched at the king’s behest, and it was said that it already crossed the Sannez and was pushing into the ancestral lands of L’Anguille. There, it was due to link with a substantial, if sluggishly marshalled army of that dukedom, and from there they would turn southward in the hope of halting the Norscans’ progress inland.

There had been bad blood between Lyonesse and L’Anguille of late, border disputes and a rekindling of a long dormant feud, and it was said that this was the reason for Duke Taubert of L’Anguille’s lack of urgency in coming to the aid of his neighbour. Apparently, he had raised a considerable army, but was holding it back, waiting to see if the Norscans turned towards his own lands. In the meantime, it seemed he was content to let them ravage the lands of his rival. Only when the force sent from Couronne entered his realm did he make any pretence of aiding Lyonesse.

The Norscans’ goal remained unclear. Had they been just a raiding force intent on loot and slaughter, then doubtless they would have stuck close to the shore, for there were many settlements and towns dotted all along the north-west coastline. They might have sailed eastward towards the city of L’Anguille itself, with its famed lighthouse built long before the rise of the Bretonni, or sailed southward towards the bountiful lands of Bordeleaux, Aquitaine and Brionne.

Calard and his companions had left the tourney fields two and a half days ago, and ridden hard through the lands of Lyonesse. It was a fecund landscape, though more open than Bastonne, and almost oppressively flat. It was markedly colder here than it was in his homeland too, and cutting winds whipped across the fields from the distant coast.

Pulling fur-lined cloaks around them tightly to combat the ceaseless winds, utterly ignorant of the discomfort of the freezing Garamont men-at-arms struggling to keep up the relentless pace, the brothers allowed the drudgery and boredom of the ride to wash over them. It was too cold and the wind too loud for them to pass the time in conversation, and each was left alone with his thoughts.

Only at night, as they clustered around campfires, drinking wine and feasting on succulent venison and boar did they swap stories and boasts with the other knights with whom they travelled. Calard, his brother noted, drank only sparingly, and was mixing water with his wine.

Several of the Lyonessian knights had fought the Norscans before, and the brothers listened to their tales intently, seeking to learn all that they could of the foes they would be facing within days. It seemed that the sight of their dreaded longships appearing in the night to raid and burn was not uncommon along the Lyonesse coasts. From these warriors they learnt that the Norse were depraved, bloodthirsty barbarians who had sold their souls to Dark Powers; towering brutes of men, savage and fearless in battle. It was said that they had no concept of honour and were nothing more than merciless butchers, neither giving nor expecting mercy on the field of battle. It was also said that they murdered their own children, the ones deemed too small or weak to uphold the honour of the tribe, and that their lives were ones of constant struggle and warfare, against both rivals and the harsh landscape of Norsca itself, filled as it was with mutated, predatory beasts, never-ending winters and months on end of absolute darkness.

They heard tales of berserkers more animal than man, who foamed at the mouth and felt no pain as they hurled themselves at their foe, and of shaggy beasts that came down from the frozen mountainous lands of the barbarians to join battle. They heard tell of dark sorcerers who called down the curses of their bloodthirsty gods, and of daemons of blood and fire that stalked alongside the Norscans, flames billowing from their maws and their blades smoking with infernal runes.

What made them worse in Calard’s mind was that they were, or at least had once been, men. These were not near-mindless, savage creatures like greenskins, whose nature it was to fight and kill, nor were they feral beasts of the forest whose base, uncontrollable urges and innate jealousy forced them to seek out humans to kill. No, these were men, thinking, rational men, who had chosen willingly to walk a path into damnation. They revelled in it.

Calard shuddered to think of how far they had allowed themselves to fall.

He was riding alongside his brother in silence, with his cousins Tassilo, Baldemund and Huebald nearby. Horizontal sleet slashed at them, and they were braced against biting wind, lost in their own misery. The other knights that paid fealty to Garamont rode behind them, and Calard’s men-at-arms, bone-weary and half-frozen, marched and stumbled alongside, heads bowed. These peasants, bedecked in tabards of blue and red, bearing heavy polearms and shields freshly painted with Calard’s dragon heraldry, were forced to stomp through the snowy, long grass alongside the road, which was occupied by the knights of the army.

One of the peasants stumbled, clearly exhausted. The man had wrapped a threadbare strip of cloth around his lower face in an attempt to keep warm, but he had no gloves, and he was shivering uncontrollably. He lurched into the roadway in front of Bertelis’s steed, tripping over his broad-headed polearm, and the younger Garamont noble was forced to drag his steed’s head to the side, pulling the destrier out of the way to avoid a collision. As he passed the man, Bertelis kicked him in the side of his pot helmet, knocking him to the ground.

Turning in his saddle, Bertelis glared angrily down at the man, pulling his mink-lined cloak close around his neck with one sheepskin lined glove. His gaze roved across the men-at-arms and settled on the yeoman in charge of the regiment, a thick-jawed, brutish man sporting a livid scar across his left cheek. His lips were blue, and his teeth were chattering.

‘Discipline your man, yeoman,’ Bertelis snapped. ‘Had I not been wary, that one might have injured my horse. See that he suffers twenty lashings at the end of the day’s march. And I want your entire regiment on a double-watch duty tonight in penitence for his failings.’

The yeoman warden bowed his head, accepting the punishment without complaint. Any word of defiance would only have made things worse for him and his men, and with a nod, he ordered the man who had stumbled lifted back to his feet, and the march continued.

‘Lazy wretches,’ said Bertelis as he turned away. Calard merely grunted in response.

Another half an hour passed in silence, until a shout came from up ahead. Peering through the blinding white gale, Calard saw Laudethaire and one of his pegasus knights descending through the clouds, fighting against the buffeting winds. The Parravonians had been ranging out ahead of the army, scouring the land below.

‘Hope the bastard falls off,’ remarked Bertelis as Laudethaire came swooping down to land.

‘I’d pay to see that,’ said Calard.

It was from the pegasus knights that the army had learnt of the movements of Duke Adalhard and his warriors, and of the army of Couronne and L’Anguille moving south-west to cut off the Norscans.

‘I’m going to ride forward to hear what news he brings,’ said Calard. ‘I could do with moving, just to try and warm up a bit. I think my arse is frozen to the saddle. Coming with me?’

Bertelis nodded his head in response.

‘Keep an eye on this lot,’ said Calard to his cousins, nodding towards the men-at-arms stumbling alongside the road. ‘Make sure they don’t slacken off the pace.’

Kicking their steeds forward, the brothers pulled off the roadway and cantered up past line upon line of knights. Men-at-arms, wretched peasant bowmen and servants scurried out of their way like vermin fleeing before a lamp, but Calard paid them no mind – they may as well have been invisible to him. Towards the head of the column he rode, passing several hundred knights whom he had seen at the tourney, though he had been unable to spot the knight who had beaten Bertelis in the duel, Merovech of Arlons. He certainly would have been handy in the coming battle, for rarely had Calard seen a knight more skilful with the blade.

Horns blew, and the entire column came slowly to a halt.

Bertelis shook his head as many hundreds of peasants by the roadside slumped gratefully to the ground. Others quickly broke open wagons of food and drink, running lightly through the ranks of knights offering refreshments.

‘It’ll take an age to get them moving again now,’ he said.

Cantering forward, they came upon a circle of knights that had gathered around Laudethaire to hear his report. The blond-haired knight, clearly enjoying the attention, was speaking to Orderic, the noble who had organised the tourney.

Calard and Bertelis nudged their horses forward until they were positioned just outside the inner circle of knights, and they strained forward to hear Laudethaire’s words.

‘They are riding ten miles ahead of us, my lord,’ the Parravonian said, in answer to a question from Orderic.

‘Who’s he talking about?’ Calard said to a nearby knight.

‘Norse war party,’ answered the man.

‘They are riding hard, in order to rejoin their main force. They have with them a noblewoman of Bretonnia,’ said Laudethaire, his voice carrying over the wind, and his gaze passing over the gathered knights theatrically.

Calard frowned, and several other knights voiced their outrage.

‘A captive?’ called one knight.

‘I would presume so,’ answered Laudethaire. ‘I would have launched a rescue attempt, of course, but the cross winds would have made such an attack a foolish, suicidal endeavour. It is risk enough that my pegasus fly at all in these conditions.’

‘Of course,’ said Bertelis under his breath.

‘She must be rescued,’ announced Orderic. ‘She is a noblewoman of Bretonnia. She cannot be allowed to suffer whatever loathsome fate awaits her at the hands of the savages. If we sent riders ahead, now, do you think they would reach the war party before it rejoins the full Norse army?’

‘No,’ said Laudethaire. ‘But there is more. The enemy, it seems, has grown weary of running. They have set camp, and await us no more than half a day’s ride to the north. It seems that a stage has been set for us to face the Norse in battle at last!’

A cheer rose from that pronouncement.

‘And what of the army of Duke Adalhard?’ said Calard, raising his voice so that he was heard. ‘And of the forces of Couronne, and L’Anguille?’

Laudethaire looked through the crowd at Calard, assessing who it was that addressed him. His eyes flickered condescendingly over Calard’s heraldry and bearing, a look of distaste on his handsome face. Clearly unimpressed, he turned away.

‘The army of Lyonesse is making camp five miles from the Norscans’ position,’ he said finally. ‘If you ride hard, you should make it there before daybreak.’

‘And the knights of Couronne and L’Anguille?’ said Calard, an irritated edge to his voice.

‘They are a day and half away,’ said Laudethaire, casting another condescending glance in his direction. ‘Have I answered enough of your questions now, Bastonne?’

Calard felt his face redden as several knights chuckled, and he saw Bertelis reach for his sword. Calard reached out a hand to halt his brother.

‘For now, yes, oh Beloved of Parravon,’ said Calard in a mocking tone that raised more chuckles.

‘Enjoy riding through the snow and the mud,’ snapped Laudethaire, and with that, he spun his pegasus around, which snorted and stamped its hooves. It broke into a gallop, wings unfurling and beating hard as it soared up into the air.

‘He will be sipping wine in the duke’s camp within the hour, I’ll wager,’ said Bertelis, as he and Calard swung away from the disbanding gathering.

‘Bastard.’

As night descended over northern Lyonesse like a shroud, the Skaeling horsemen thundered into the Norscan encampment, Bjarki and Haegtesse riding at the fore. The shaggy coated Norscan ponies’ flanks were lathered in sweat. Hounds snarled, and bondsmen and warriors moved out of the way respectfully, eyeing the witch desirously.

Haegtesse rode with her head held high, enjoying the stares. She had made herself more presentable for the lord of the Skaelings, braiding her hair into plaits and washing the blood and grime from her pale skin. A blood bear’s pelt hung across her shoulders, the fur spiked and thick, and her totem-dolls hung from her delicate silver belt. To the Skaelings Haegtesse looked like some foreign princess, and they felt pride that this was to be the one who would bear their jarl a son. Pale, youthful, cold and beautiful, she drew many openly lustful looks and enthusiastic whoops from these men who had not had a woman in weeks, though those nearest to her lowered their eyes and backed away, feeling in their bones and their guts that she was powerfully god-touched.

Night was drawing in quickly, and the sky overhead was dark with movement. Tens of thousands of ravens and crows accompanied the Skaelings, hanging overhead like an impenetrable thundercloud, hungry and impatient for the slaughter to begin. These dense flocks of carrion eaters had accompanied the Norscans from their homeland; a black amorphous cloud of feathers and malicious will that had shadowed their longships, knowing that a feast of soft flesh would soon be theirs.

Less mundane beasts circled overhead, shadowy hissing creatures with leathery wings that snapped like canvas sails.

In the distance there was a trumpeting roar, and the ground shook as some beast of immense weight and power thrashed against its restraints. Laughter and the sounds of feasting warriors mingled with the sound of weapons being sharpened, of seers invoking the blessings of the Dark Gods. Those Norscans with more than a little beast in them, the ones known as the ulfwerener, howled up at the rising green moon, the eye of the gods, and the bestial sound was joined by the roars, growls and howls of many hundreds of the immense hounds that prowled the outskirts of the camp, seeking easy meat.

While her outwards appearance was one of youth and health, Haegtesse could already feel the malignant black cancers growing inside her, corrupting her newfound body from within. Already they were working their way insidiously through her liver and stomach, and their loathsome black touch was reaching towards her lungs. It was happening quicker now than she had experienced before – each new body that she claimed decayed quicker than the last, and it seemed that the process was speeding up exponentially. She doubted that this body, young and strong as it was, would last her longer than a handful of years, a decade at a push, before it was a little more than a rotting cadaver, toothless and haggard, having aged a dozen years with each passing season.

Much of her strength was currently being utilised to protect her womb from the malignant sickness spreading through her body, shielding it so as to ensure that she did not fall barren. Such a thing could not be allowed to come to pass – the daemon-child that she would bear the Skaeling jarl was the key to her immortality.

The Norscans had set their camp at the northern end of a sweeping valley ridged by steep sided hills. At the far end of the valley rose a hill that was not unlike an ancient burial mound, though of a scale that would only have been built for a king of great wealth and influence. No one knew how these mounds, or mottes as they were known locally to the Lyonessians who lived in their shadow, had come into existence. They seemed too regular in shape to have been naturally formed, so it was surmised that they had been built of human endeavour, but for what purpose remained unclear. Perhaps they were burial mounds, of the first Bretons tribesmen that had come to these lands, or perhaps they had been raised as defensive structures, with wooden hilltop forts constructed on top of them by even more ancient peoples long forgotten.

Whatever the case, the mottes dotted the landscape of northern Lyonesse. Most of them had castles built atop them, for they occupied powerful positions in the landscape, but this particular motte was said to be cursed, and no one had ever dared to raise a foundation upon it.

‘Make way!’ snarled Bjarki.

Passing by tens of hundreds of Skaeling warriors, all readying themselves for battle, the horsemen wended their way towards the motte at the far end of the valley.

Haegtesse’s eyes shone as she stared up at the towering hillock. That was the place where the child must be conceived. She had read the portent in the eyes of the sacrifices she had lured into her woodland cave, seen it in the entrails of a dozen slaughtered swine and witnessed it in a score of prophetic dreams. Under the full moon, on the turn of the tide, the child must be conceived – not an hour later, nor an hour earlier. And while predicting the waxing and waning of the Chaos moon of Morrslieb was an impossibility, she knew with absolute certainty that the auspicious night was close. Two nights perhaps, maybe three, and the green moon would wax gibbous, passing as close to the surface of the world as it had for a decade and exerting its power upon those beneath its baleful gaze.

It was on such nights that the dead rose from the earth, when once sane family men brayed at the moon and slaughtered their sleeping families with hands that had turned to talons, and when the veil that separated the material world from the realms of Chaos was at its thinnest. Even those without the sight were able to perceive daemonic things straining to tear through the ethereal boundary that bound them, screaming into reality to rend and feed.

And it was under such a moon that the daemon-child would be conceived.

At the foot of the towering hillock they reined their steeds in. Simple tents of fur and crossed logs had been erected here, and totems hanging with skulls, severed heads and burnished icons of the Norscan gods had been hammered into the ground. The Skaeling jarl’s huskarls lounged here, massive intimidating god-touched warriors bedecked in heavy armour and fur.

‘Where is he?’ demanded Bjarki.

Before the huskarls could answer, skin tent flaps were thrown aside and Styrbjorn emerged from his hastily erected residence to greet his bride. A pair of swordmaidens emerged behind him, and from the similarity they bore to the Skaeling lord, Haegtesse surmised these to be the jarl’s daughters.

The Skaeling too had prepared himself for the meeting, and he looked every inch a warrior king.

He stood a head taller than any of his huskarls, and his broad shoulders were encased in thick plates of dark metal fashioned into the likeness of snarling, tusked wolf heads. His broad chest was protected by a breastplate of ensorcelled dark iron, with the azure, unblinking eye of Tchar in its centre. Chainmail hung from his eight-pointed belt-buckle, and his legs were encased in spiked armour.

His thickly muscled arms were bare and covered with tattoos, and gold and bronze torcs were coiled around them. He was not wearing his war helmet, and his long, grey-streaked hair hung down his back. Over his shoulders he wore the shaggy pale fur of an ymgir, one of the snow yetis that stalked the mountains of Norsca.

The jarl’s eyes, as pale as the eye of Tchar on his chest, settled hungrily on Haegtesse.

The witch smiled as she saw the Skaeling jarl, and slid languorously from the saddle.

Without speaking a word, the jarl swept her into a crushing embrace, pulling her hard up against him and drawing her into a powerful kiss. Haegtesse allowed herself to melt into his body, feeling his taut muscles and the invigorating touch of the gods on his tongue. She felt her desire for him strongly as her body responded to the towering Norscan, and was pleasantly surprised by the strength of her passion. It had been many decades since anyone had stirred her like this.

Breaking from the passionate kiss, the Skaeling hooked a powerful arm around her back and began to guide her forcefully towards his tent. It was obvious that he intended to have her there and then, to rut with her like an animal and slake his desire, but Haegtesse stopped him with a hand upon the chest.

‘Not yet,’ she said in the Skaeling dialect.

Standing up tall she came barely to the Norscan’s chest, and her body was weak and fragile compared to the brutal power in his massive frame, and yet Styrbjorn froze beneath her touch. She could feel his lust raging within him, and she knew that he longed to drag her into his tent, screaming and fighting if needs be, but she realised that he could feel her power, and was respectful of it.

Such respect was a welcome thing after dwelling within Bretonnia this last century, where she was feared and despised. It was good to be back amongst those who understood her place in things. They were not Kurgans, but at least they paid homage to the true gods, even if they knew them by different names.

‘What is wrong, woman?’ said the Skaeling, his eyes flashing dangerously.

‘Patience, jarl of the Skaelings,’ Haegtesse said, playfully running a fingertip down the front of Styrbjorn’s breastplate. ‘The gods themselves have ordained this conception, but it must take place under strict ritual. Trust me and the son I bear you will be the greatest warrior your tribe has ever seen.’

The Norscan flicked a glance towards Bjarki, who nodded almost imperceptibly, and the jarl released Haegtesse.

‘Fine,’ he said.

‘It must take place at the top of carrion hill,’ said Haegtesse, gesturing up at the hill looming behind them, ‘under the gaze of the gods. I will need eight of your strongest men for sacrifice.’

‘They are yours,’ said Styrbjorn without hesitation.

‘Good,’ said Haegtesse. ‘I will take my leave, and prepare the site.’

When she had gone, the jarl slapped a meaty hand on Bjarki’s shoulder, rocking the slighter man.

‘She’s the one,’ enthused Styrbjorn, his eyes filled with passion and excitement. ‘After all this time! A son!’

‘Indeed, my jarl,’ agreed Bjarki.

‘And all this ritual is necessary?’

‘It is, my jarl.’

Styrbjorn looked down at the seer curiously.

‘What is it that bothers you, little bear? Are you not pleased that at last I shall father a son? Your position within the clan will not change, you know that.’

‘I know, my lord. That is not what troubles me.’

‘No? Then what? Speak, man.’

‘I don’t trust her, my jarl,’ said Bjarki. ‘What does she get out of this?’

‘She will be the mother of the greatest Skaeling warrior ever to walk the earth. Is that not enough?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘She’s a beauty as well, isn’t she? And powerful. Just touching her made my flesh tingle.’

‘She is a powerful blood-witch, it is true. But it would be wise for us to be wary of any trickery on her part. I’d suggest killing her as soon as the child is born.’

‘After she bears me my son, you may do to her anything you like, little bear,’ said Styrbjorn.

‘Tomorrow, we will rout these southlander horsemen,’ said the jarl, changing topic and gazing out along the valley. ‘We will slaughter them all, and laugh as they beg for mercy. It will be a good day, little bear.’

‘I have no doubt of that, my lord.’

‘They are arrogant, these southlanders. They think we are nothing but mindless barbarians, like the slant-eyed Hung. They will underestimate us, expecting us to simply charge at them across the open ground.’

‘There is honour to be had in such tactics,’ said Bjarki. ‘The blood god favours such a direct approach.’

‘The skull-taker cares not whose blood it is that runs,’ said Styrbjorn. ‘Personally, I would rather it was their blood and not mine.’

‘True enough,’ said Bjarki.

Bjarki had lived alongside his jarl for long enough to know that the grizzled old warrior had devised a battle plan days earlier. He would have been labouring over the best way to defeat the southlander horsemen ever since he had announced the invasion, constantly refining and discarding plans as he concocted new and better ways of claiming victory.

He was a wily old wolf, Styrbjorn. That was the reason the jarl had ruled as long as he had. Normally, a chieftain of his age would have long since been supplanted by a younger, stronger aspiring champion, but Styrbjorn was cunning. He could outthink his younger rivals. It was a rare gift, and Bjarki looked forward to seeing what ploy the old wolf would employ against the southlanders.

‘Their pride will be their downfall,’ predicted Styrbjorn. ‘And they will fall hard.’

Calard and the other knights from the tournament rode into Duke Adalhard of Lyonesse’s camp close to midnight, bone-weary, aching and cold. They had ridden ahead of the lowborn men-at-arms and archers, who were unable to keep up the pace. The footsloggers would likely not reach the camp before dawn.

Storm clouds were building overhead, blotting out the stars and the moons, and snow had been falling since nightfall. Already, it was several feet thick on the ground, and several inches were being added with every passing hour.

The camp was a hive of activity when they rode in, despite the late hour, with hundreds of flaming braziers lighting up the area like day. Thousands of peasants ran to and fro, busy on errands and mundane tasks, and a great many knights were already fully armoured and mounted up, in readiness for attack. From the northern outskirts of the camp, came shouts and the sound of weapons clashing, and it was clear that the Norscans were already launching probing attacks, testing the Bretonnians’ defences. It was obvious that few would be getting sleep this night.

Laudethaire made a special effort to come out and greet Calard and the other weary knights as they rode into camp, making a show of how rested he was, and Calard’s mood darkened as he saw the smirk on the noble’s face.

Garamont servants had ridden ahead and made tents and food ready for the brothers, and while they were hungry and the idea of a soft pallet was tempting, Calard and the other noble lords made their way towards the duke’s pavilion, to present themselves to him before seeking sustenance and rest.

The duke was a man of middling years, a tall knight with dark, shoulder-length hair who wore an expression that showed he clearly did not suffer fools. He was garbed for war, and a fine red tabard bearing a silver lion-head design hung over his exquisite suit of plate. A cloak made from the pelt of a lion was swept over one shoulder, and seeing the skin of the mighty beast Calard was reminded of the tales of Gilles le Breton and his companions he had learnt at his father’s knee.

Thierulf, closest friend and devoted ally of Gilles, harkened from the lands now known as Lyonesse, and it was said that when he was no more than a boy he slew a marauding lion with his bare hands. Skinning the beast and wrapping its still bloody fur around his body, Thierulf returned to his father’s hill fort in triumph, and his legend was born. It was in honour of this great hero that the nobles of Lyonesse, particularly those who claimed descent from Thierulf’s bloodline, incorporated a lion into their heraldry in some form or other.

Calard was instantly impressed with Duke Adalhard. The aura of authority around the man was palpable; this was a man who was used to being instantly obeyed, and yet it was obvious that he was a warrior first and foremost. He had no doubt that the duke would be leading the charge once battle was met; he had the air of one who would not shirk from battle.

‘Lyonesse thanks you all for your swift response,’ the duke said to the gathered, weary nobles. ‘With your aid, we shall wipe the field of these barbarian invaders, and win a great victory on the morn. You’ve ridden hard, and I thank you for that. Get some rest – I’ll need you fresh tomorrow.’

‘On the morn, duke?’ questioned one of the knights. ‘Are not the Norscans already assailing us? Is not battle already underway?’

‘There is no real strength behind their attacks,’ said Duke Adalhard. ‘It’s all bluster. They are merely trying to keep us in a state of readiness and tension, to sap our strength before tomorrow – that is when the real battle will take place. Get some rest. My men will ensure that the attacks are nothing more than feints.’

The duke’s gaze settled on Calard, and he reddened beneath the stern warrior’s gaze. There were only fourteen dukes in all of Bretonnia, each ruling over one of the ancient dukedoms formed when Gilles le Breton unified the Bretonni tribes. As such, the Duke of Lyonesse was one of the most powerful individuals in all of Bretonnia, and Calard felt awed merely to be in his presence. He lowered his gaze as the duke’s eyes narrowed.

Your bloodline is tainted.

Again he heard Maloric’s voice, the words stinging him. Did the same corruption that had spawned his mutated, hateful beast-brother reside in him?

‘It is Garamont, isn’t it?’ said the duke finally, snapping Calard from his doubts. He looked up, startled to have been picked out, and even more shocked that the duke knew his family.

‘Yes, my lord,’ he managed, and the duke nodded his head sagely.

Calard felt incredibly self-conscious as dozens of pairs of eyes turned towards him. Knights who had previously barely registered his presence now looked at him with newfound respect. Just being recognised by the duke had clearly raised him in their esteem.

‘I knew your old weapon master, Gunthar,’ said Duke Adalhard of Lyonesse. ‘A good man. Best swordsman I ever met. I was saddened to hear of his passing.’

‘Thank you, lord,’ said Calard. ‘Not a day goes past that I do not miss his presence.’

Calard breathed out and wiped a hand across his brow as the duke’s attention shifted away from him.

The snow continued to fall as preparations for the next day’s battle were made, and with the sounds of Norscan war drums, horns and shouts echoing through the night, Calard finally allowed himself to succumb to his exhaustion. Half an hour after meeting the duke, he fell into a fitful sleep in his tent, dreaming of blood and fire, haunted by howling warriors with the faces of wolves. Inevitably, his dreams shifted, and again he faced the ethereal, terrifying apparition of the Green Knight.

Again he was powerless, stricken with paralysing fear before the ghostly spectre. It loomed before him, brandishing its dolorous blade, surrounded by coiling fog.

‘Face me!’ the Green Knight taunted, and Calard awoke lathered in sweat.

It was dark, still an hour or so before dawn. He had been asleep for no more than an hour. Nevertheless, Calard pushed himself from his pallet; he would get no further sleep this night.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The snow had continued to fall throughout the night, and the landscape was blanketed in a thick, unspoiled layer of white. Within an hour the blood of thousands would be splashed across it, the battlefield churned into a quagmire of slush and mud, but for now it was pristine and virginal.

The early morning sun was hidden behind thick clouds. Not a sound rose from the Bretonnian battle line other than the snap of standards blowing in the wind and the occasional whinny of horses. Peasants held the reins of their lords’ steeds as the knights knelt in the snow, heads bowed as they prayed to the Lady of the Lake, invoking her protection in the coming battle.

Relentless drumming could be heard from the Norse lines, a mile and a half further along the valley, but the sound was muffled by the worsening storm. The howl of wind muted all other sound, and swirling eddies of snow ensured that the enemy were indistinct and hazy in the distance.

Such a blizzard was unnatural, particularly so early into winter, and Calard wondered if there might not be some diabolic sorcery at work.

His eyes were closed tightly and his lips moved silently as he beseeched the Lady for her protection. Warmth infused him as he whispered his prayer, dispelling the icy chill from his limbs, making him feel rested and strong. All doubt washed away as he felt the power of the goddess upon him, and he was confident that by day’s end the Bretonnians would be victorious.

A horn sounded and Calard completed his ritual prayers, blinking his eyes as he came back to the present. Still feeling the warmth of the Lady’s blessing within him, he mounted his armoured destrier and accepted a war lance as it was handed to him. Across the battle line, some ten-thousand other knights swung up into the saddle, all having prayed to receive the blessings of the goddess. Five times that number of peasants were ranked up in deep formations behind the knights. They had not prayed; the Lady of the Lake was a goddess of the nobility, and no peasant was allowed to worship her – not that she would answer them if they did. The idea that the goddess would care for the lowborn masses, who had no understanding of honour or chivalry, was laughable.

The valley was open and flat, almost two miles wide and clear of rocks and trees. It was the perfect horseman’s battlefield, and it suited the Bretonnian way of doing battle to fight the enemy here. The sides of the valley rose up to hills, and although it was now completely obscured by the blizzard, Calard knew that a massive motte was located at the enemy’s back.

As a predominately infantry army, one might have expected the Norscans to position themselves atop that motte, forcing the Bretonnians to assail them there, but it seemed that the Norse were eager for battle, and had marched forward to meet the Bretonnians head-on.

Already, yeomen outriders were riding those hills, ensuring that no enemy forces would outflank the Bretonnians. The weather was too severe to allow Laudethaire and his pegasus knights to overfly the enemy army, and the exact number and disposition of the enemy forces was vague. Nevertheless, it was clear that if one discounted the peasant men-at-arms and bowmen who were unreliable in battle at best and a liability at worst, the Norscans outnumbered the Bretonnians, but not by a substantial margin. Considering that the bulk of the Norscan army was on foot, and that most of them wore little in the way of armour, the odds were considered favourable.

From what little had been garnered by the yeomen scouts, the enemy were forming up in a wide advance, with a strong centre. It was there in the centre that the most heavily armoured warriors had been seen, and it was likely there that the enemy chieftain had positioned himself. Light cavalry had been seen ranging out on the flanks. The duke had positioned his knights accordingly. The enemy appeared to have little in the way of missile fire, and lacked the long pikes and spears that were the bane of knightly formations, and so the duke’s plan was to hit them hard and fast, to ride them down in one concentrated charge that would rip the heart out of the enemy army.

The knights of Couronne and L’Anguille were still a day and a half’s march to the north, but it seemed to Calard that trying to forestall battle until their arrival was unnecessary. Clearly the Duke of Lyonesse had come to the same conclusion, though Calard wondered how much of his decision had to do with his running feud with L’Anguille. For decades there had been tension between the two dukedoms, and border disputes and bloodshed between their nobles had become commonplace.

Muffled shouts could be heard on the wind, and banners were dipped and waved as orders were passed. In response, several thousand lightly armoured peasant bowmen ran lightly forward on the flanks of the knightly formations, and the mounted yeomen on the extreme left wing began cantering out wide.

The bowmen trotted through the snow ahead of the main battle line and Calard swore. He was freezing, and he just wished the battle would commence so he could get moving and warm up. Despite all his best efforts, snow had seeped through the joints of his armour and melted, soaking the padding against his skin and making his limbs shiver uncontrollably.

‘Come on,’ he said. A trickle of melted snow slid down the back of his neck, and he grimaced in discomfort. He brushed snow from his shoulders, feeling the chill through his gauntlets, and kicked away the ice that had formed on his stirrups.

Muffled drums echoed in the distance, and Calard felt a brief flicker of trepidation as he heard wolves howling above the gale. Monstrous, trumpeting horns blared in the distance, and Calard briefly pondered the size of the instruments needed to make such a sound. The crisp, clear sound of Bretonnian horns blared, signalling the advance.

‘At last,’ murmured Calard.

The knights began to move at the command, walking their steeds forward through the snow while tens of thousands of men-at-arms marched behind.

Duke Adalhard was situated in the centre of the army, surrounded by his most senior knights, all bedecked in the finest armour that money could buy. The duke’s standard bearer held aloft the famous banner of Lyonesse, an embroidered four hundred year-old tapestry depicting the hero Thierulf, wearing his trademark lion pelt, standing atop a pile of dead greenskins, his head surrounded by a halo of light. It was a revered artefact rumoured to have the hair of elven princesses woven into its design, and it was said that no army fighting under it had ever lost.

The knights of Bastonne had once again formed up together, though it left a bad taste in Calard’s mouth to be forced to fight alongside Maloric and his Sangasse lapdogs. Despite his lack of sleep, Calard’s mind felt more focused that it had done in months – most likely due to his refusal to partake in any wine since the abandonment of the tourney, four days earlier. His senses were as alert as they had ever been; perhaps a blessing of the goddess. He vowed that he would outdo Maloric this day.

All across the field, scores of knightly formations moved forwards through the storm, standard bearers straining against the wind to keep their banners upright. Horses snorted and stamped their hooves impatiently as the icy winds blasted, driving snow against them. Calard patted the neck of his destrier, murmuring soothing words that were swallowed by the gale.

Out ahead, the peasant bowmen took up positions on the flanks, angling their lines up against those of the enemy in the far distance. Under the barking orders of villeins and yeomen, and with more than a few cuffs to the backs of heads of the more dull-witted of the inbred sots, the bowmen set themselves, planting arrows point first into the ground in front of them. They did not draw yet, for while the enemy would have been at the extreme of their range under normal circumstances, the blizzard and blustering winds were such that firing at anything more than half the regular longbow range would have been pointless.

Calard had his visor down to keep the biting wind off his face, and he squinted through the blizzard, trying to see the enemy. They were nothing more than vague shadows in the distance now, and as blasts of wind and snow whipped across the valley, they were almost completely obscured. Calard prayed that the scouts had been correct in their appraisal of the Norse battle lines, for by the time they got close enough to see the enemy lines clearly it would be far too late to alter the battle plan.

Nevertheless, Calard knew that there were few forces in the entire world that could stand against a concentrated Bretonnian heavy cavalry charge, and he had little doubt that today would once again reassert the dominance of the Bretonnian knight. Even if this vile weather was some sorcery of the enemy, it would avail them little. The snow was certainly not deep enough to hamper the powerful destriers they rode, and the centre of the valley dropped away slightly to either side, ensuring that the deeper snow drifts were located off to the flanks, far from the action that would be taking place in the centre of the field.

All ten-thousand knights were moving forwards now, the entire noble contingent of the army bar some four hundred knights that were being held back as a tactical reserve. One mighty charge, concentrated at the enemy’s centre, and the battle would be as good as over. The knights out on the wings would ride forward as if they were going to assault the flanks of the enemy, before angling inwards once the enemy had no time to react to the change of direction, and they would smash into the centre along with the bulk of the Lyonessian force.

It was a simple plan, but one that many Bretonnian generals had used to good effect on dozens of battlefields.

Calard and the other knights of Bastonne were located towards the right of the centre, formed up behind an uninspired but wealthy and influential knight of their lands, Lord Sigibold, who was the most senior knight of their party since Baron Montcadas had been forced to leave them. He was a capable warrior, though Calard recognised that he was a poor leader of men, and it had been with some reticence that the knights of Garamont had fallen in behind him.

Calard’s cousin Tassilo had summed the man up well when he described him as ‘deeply average in all regards.’ No one disliked the man, but no one really liked him either, and it was clear for all to see that he was far out of his depth.

Still, Calard doubted that even Lord Sigibold could possibly make a mess of leading the Bastonnians today. All the knights of Bastonne were seasoned warriors, and while Calard and Bertelis were the knights with the least experience of them all, they were far from the eager young knights errant that they had been a year earlier.

Horn blasts sounded, and the knights all along the battle line urged their steeds into a canter. They passed by the bowmen on each flank, kicking up powder as the destriers’ momentum began to increase.

Dark, low clouds hung over the Norscan army and it seemed to Calard that they were somehow unnatural; they were too dark, too low, and they seemed to shift and pulse like a living creature, their shape in constant fluctuation.

Pushing the thought aside, he concentrated on making sure he kept tight with the knights around him, and as their pace increased, the knights seamlessly formed the wedged lance formation that had proven so deadly against the enemies of Bretonnia for so many centuries. Deadly and with the full weight of armoured men and horses behind it, the lance formation was able to punch through the most resilient defences and drive deep into formations, dividing them and sending men scattering. Indeed, many times all it took was for an army to see the Bretonnians thundering towards them en masse to send them fleeing the battlefield; it was a brave – or foolish – man who willingly stood in front of a charging knight, let alone an entire army of them. Such an outcome was unlikely this day though, Calard judged. Nothing he had heard about the Norscans made him think that the notion of turning tail and fleeing in the face of their enemies would even cross their barbarian minds.

The snow muffled the sound of the thundering hooves, and again Calard thought he heard the sound of wolves howling, though it was impossible to pinpoint where the sound was coming from.

A regiment of knights errant out to the right, impetuous and hungry for glory, lowered their lances and kicked their steeds into a gallop, breaking ranks and pushing ahead of the battle line. Calard knew instinctively that they had launched the charge too early, and that their steeds would be struggling by the time they struck home.

For many of those young knights, some of whom might have been as young as fifteen, this would be their first and last taste of battle. Every battle was dangerous, of course – even tourneys had no small amount of risk involved – but it was a knight’s first foray into battle that was so often his last.

It was the way of battle, Gunthar had taught him. The first to die in any battle were the most inexperienced, the weakest, the poorest warriors, the unlucky, those too young to be fighting, or those too old and slow. Most of these died in the first clash, and it was then that the real fighting would begin. This factor was even more emphasised in a siege, Gunthar had told him. In the first days of a siege, the weak were picked off one by one until only the most veteran, hardened warriors were left on either side. It was brutal and it was savage, and many good men were lost in the opening skirmishes, but it was the way of things, in the same way that the wolf picked off the weakest in the herd, and the runt of the litter invariably died when the hardship of winter descended.

Calard could see the enemy moving now, could hear their drums pounding out a savage rhythm as they began loping through the knee-high snow towards the wall of knights bearing down on them.

Glancing out along the line to the right, he could see barbarous, lightly armoured horsemen bearing down on the yeomen riders out there, who were firing their bows from the saddle.

Clouds of arrows fired by the foot archers further back darkened the sky, arcing over the knights’ heads before descending into the enemy ranks that were now running full pelt towards the knights, screaming war cries that could be heard only vaguely, as if they were coming from a great distance. The depth of the enemy ranks could still not be gauged due to the gusting snows, but Calard saw hundreds of men stumble and fall as the arrows slammed down amongst them, driving through furs into heathen flesh and muscle, punching through horned iron helmets to pierce skulls. Shields were lifted up high as hundreds more arrows sliced down through the gale, but it did not slow the Norscans.

From amongst the barbarian lines, black iron chains were released, and hundreds of shaggy-furred hounds were set loose. Slavering and howling, they bounded ahead of the Norscans, kicking up clouds of snow powder in their eagerness to close the distance. They were immense beasts, and many of them bore the mark of mutation and corruption. Some had boar-like tusks curling from their maws, while others had two heads or serpentine tails that ended in snapping snake heads.

They bounded through the snow towards the impetuous knights errant out in front, Norscan hound and Bretonnian knight hurtling towards each other at full speed. One warhound, a massive beast with hindquarters striped in alternating bands of orange and black, leapt into the air and ripped the first knight from the saddle, massive jaws clamped around his head. Then the rest of the knights and hounds struck each other, coming together with colossal force.

A dozen monstrous hounds were skewered on lances, and several more were bowled over by the flailing hooves of the mighty destriers, bones shattered. Young knights were dragged down into the snow, yanked from their saddles as jaws locked around legs and torsos, wrenching plate mail out of shape. Calard saw a destrier stumble and fall, screaming horribly as a warhound bore it to the ground, jaws gripping its neck, and the unfortunate knight in the saddle of the mauled horse was ripped apart as three snarling hounds leapt upon him.

The knights’ errant charge had completely stalled now, their impetus lost, and those young knights still in the saddle were slashing down at the hounds with swords and lance-butts. One of the beasts was struck in the spine, and its hind legs gave way beneath it. Still snarling and snapping, the beast was killed as hooves caved in its skull.

Seeing that the young knights were getting the better of the warhounds, the rest of the Bretonnian army flowed around the melee, keeping their momentum going as they bore down on the Norscans.

They were around two hundred yards from the barbarians, and horns blared suddenly. As one the wall of Bretonnian knights spurred on their steeds, breaking into a thundering gallop.

Ten thousand lances lowered, and a roaring cry rose from the lips of the knights.

‘For Bastonne!’ roared Calard, and dug his spurs into his steed’s side once again, urging the stallion on.

His heart was racing. There was something breathtaking about being part of a massed charge, and it never failed to fill Calard with excitement.

He could see the enemy more clearly now; hulking brutes bedecked in furs and hefting brutal looking axes, blades and spiked maces.

The barbarians’ charge faltered, individual warriors slowing as the wall of knights thundered towards them. Calard felt the thrill of victory wash through him. The enemy were men after all. They were not daemons or monsters, but merely men – men that knew fear.

The howls of wolves echoed from the flanks, but Calard ignored the sounds, intent on the enemy in front of him.

The flush of imminent victory spurred the Bretonnians on, and they hurtled towards the Norscans, lances lowered.

The battle would not last long at all, thought Calard. Overhead, a sound like thunder shook the heavens.

A dark red, spitting light shot up through the blizzard and exploded overhead.

‘That’s the signal,’ snarled Zumarah to his dark kin, his eyes gleaming. He spoke in his native tongue, a guttural language not unlike the sound of gears grinding and rocks being crushed.

The Chaos dwarf gazed adoringly at Ereshkigal-Namtar, his beloved and priceless daemon-construct.

Zumarah had personally overseen its creation in the nightmarish hellforges deep below the scorched surface of Zarr-Naggrund. For over fifty years he had slaved over its construction, barely allowing himself or his slave-crews any rest, so consumed was he in his obsessive work. Thousands of slaves had perished during its forging. These ones had their life fluids drained from their bodies, their bones and gristle ground to powder, and this viscous mix was added to the alloys, tempering them and dyeing the metal of the great beast a ruddy, blood-bronze.

Upon the completion of the physical, inert form of the infernal machine, he had been present for fifty days and fifty nights of ritual and ceremony as great Hashut’s high priests infused it with the eternal daemon-twins. Ereshkigal and Namtar had been the true names of these malicious daemons of blood, rage and industry, and they had struggled hard against their bindings, screaming and roaring as they strained to break their bonds and rip the high priests, and Zumarah, apart from the inside out. Nevertheless, their struggles had been in vain, and they had now been caged within his daemon-construct for over a decade.

Its construction was a thing of beauty, and Zumarah felt a jealous pride as he looked upon Ereshkigal-Namtar’s exalted form.

It was the size of a small house, standing almost fifteen feet tall and some twenty feet long, and weighed more than a fully laden Norse dragonship. Indeed, transporting the infernal machine across the seas had not been an easy task, but one that, if the Norscan’s word could be valued, would be worth his while.

Ereshkigal-Namtar had not accepted its imprisonment, and still it strained against its bonds. Steam rose from its brazen body, and runes that glowed with heat shimmered across its form. Ensorcelled chains, each link the size of a man’s head, bound the daemon engine, connected to its blood-bronze body and pounded deep into the ground to hold it in place. Chunks of shiny black volcanic rock engraved with runes of power were hammered into its sides, and these runes glowed like lava as they exerted their power of containment upon the twin daemons locked inside the machine.

The bulk of the engine’s weight was borne upon a pair of immense, spiked wheels, each taller than an ogre, and filled with hundreds of intricate, interconnected cogs and wheels that were in constant motion. The barrel of the engine’s gaping, tooth-filled maw, which was wide enough to swallow a horse with ease, was rimmed with more runes of binding, and the stink of sulphur, blood and death rose from within.

The brass flanks of the daemon engine rippled with movement as the daemons struggled vainly to escape, and a myriad of gargoyle-like faces pressed forth from within, each one more horrific than the last as they snarled and reached for Zumarah.

The stony-skinned dwarf laughed at them.

‘Ready Ereshkigal-Namtar for firing,’ he growled over his shoulder to his two kinsmen.

Belonging of a lower caste level than he, these two Chaos dwarfs wore but simple masks of metal over their faces rather than the tall helmets of the nobility, and heavy aprons of leather, with strips of metal woven into them, protected their squat bodies from the heat of their daemon-machine charge. They bowed their heads to their forgemaster, and moved forwards to align the cog-runes for firing.

Hellcannon the Norscans had called his beloved daemon engine. Zumarah liked the name. It was appropriate, and fitted well.

A dozen black orc slaves with heads bowed in dog-like submission squatted near the engine, their powerful bodies covered in scars and burns. As Zumarah’s kinsmen aligned the cog-runes, the heat from Ereshkigal-Namtar increased exponentially as its power grew, and the black orcs whimpered, turning their heads away. Creatures sorcerously bred for servitude by the high priests of Hashut in ages long past, each of the black orcs wore a collar of iron around their necks. Thick chains connected each of these collars, and just like the daemon-engine that they tended, the ends of this chain had been hammered into the ground.

Zumarah turned towards the battlefield below, and although it was all but completely obscured from view by the roaring blizzard, he knew that his estimations of the distance and trajectory were accurate.

He grinned to himself, his eyes blazing with hatred and his tusks pressing against the stony flesh of his cheeks as he imagined the carnage about to be unleashed.

‘Fire,’ he growled.

The Norscans’ advance had completely stalled, and some of them were even now turning around, pushing back against those behind in their panic. They were already breaking and running and the Bretonnians were still a little over a hundred yards from their lines. This is going to be an absolute rout, Calard thought.

The entire Norscan centre turned tail and fled in the face of the Bretonnian charge. It was hard to see exactly what was going on, thanks to the blinding gale of snow and ice particles, but it was clear that the Norscan centre had almost completely dissolved.

Again he heard roars and howls off to the flanks, and this time he thought he heard something else reach his ears on the wind; men screaming in pain and terror. He glanced to the east, but could see little, though he thought he saw vague shapes, animalistic and furred in the blizzard, and knights turning around in confusion and panic.

The sight was alarming, but there was little that he could do but concentrate on his own duty, and he dragged his attention back to the front and centre. Besides, even if the Norscans were somehow overwhelming the Bretonnian flanks, their entire centre had been all but routed.

Seeing the enemy running before them, the Bretonnian war horns blared, and the army of Lyonesse swept forward into the gap.

The knights at the forefront of the charge caught up with the Norscans, many of whom, seeing that they were about to be overrun, turned and hurled themselves at the knights, swinging their axes murderously. These ones were hacked down where they stood, lances smashing them from their feet and impaling them.

The Bastonnians thundered into the breach in the Norscan line, and Calard lined up a fleeing man with his lance. The man spun towards the charging horsemen, but Calard’s lance took him in the chest before he could swing his axe, driving through his ribcage and punching out his back. The lance was wrenched from Calard’s hand and he slid the blade of Garamont from its inlaid scabbard, the ancient heirloom gleaming coldly.

More Norscans were run down, and Calard struck a blow upon the head of one of the barbarians, cracking the skull.

Calard realised that many of the Norscans had fled not directly away from the Bretonnians, but rather had moved off to the sides, pushing into the ranks of Norscans on the flanks. He turned his head from side to side in concern as he realised that none of the men he had faced appeared to be the heavily armoured Norscan elite that they had expected.

There was something very wrong here, he realised suddenly. His gaze was drawn upwards as the shadowy outline of the reportedly haunted, towering motte at the end of the valley hove into view.

Abruptly, there came a sound like a mountain falling, and a comet trailing hellish red flames shot up into the air from the top of the steep-sided hillock. It soared up high and Calard followed its trajectory skyward, mouth gaping wide in shock and wonder. Then the roaring comet reached the top of its arc and began to descend towards the ground; towards the charging Bretonnians.

‘Lady protect us,’ Calard breathed as the roiling inferno came screaming down towards the valley floor, and he heard shouts of panic and fear spread through the ranks.

Calard was thrown from the saddle as the missile smashed down amongst the knights fifty feet to his left, making the ground shudder beneath the impact, and the sounds of horses and men roaring in agony rose to the heavens, louder even than the screaming winds. The heatwave of the blast burnt Calard’s lungs, and he gasped as, even at this distance, his plate armour heated up to an uncomfortable level.

Those knights closer in to the blast were cooked alive inside their armour, their flesh bursting into flames along with tabards, banners and horseflesh. A circle over fifty yards in diameter was scorched into the ground, ice and snow instantly turning to steam. Hundreds died in that first barrage, their flesh igniting beneath the intense heat, their blood boiling within their veins.

Those directly under the impact of the fireball were unrecognisable, nothing more than charred, twisted corpses that still burned fiercely. So intense were the unnaturally burning, vivid red flames that plate armour ran like quicksilver, dripping onto the ground in flaming, hissing blobs.

Hooves flashed near Calard’s head as he pushed himself to his knees, horses screaming and bucking in terror all around. The stink of cooked flesh made him gag, and he staggered unsteadily to his feet as knights fought to regain control over their horses. Spying the precious blade of Garamont on the ground a few feet distant, he leapt for it, uncaring of the danger, and closing his hand around the hilt, he sheathed it.

‘Calard!’ bawled a voice, and he looked around to see Bertelis. Dodging through the chaos of terrified animals, he reached his brother, grabbed onto his saddle as he caught his breath, standing close so as to lessen the chance of getting trampled or kicked.

‘What in the name of the Lady was that?’ Bertelis shouted. Calard merely shook his head in response.

‘Sigibold?’ he shouted.

‘Dead,’ replied Bertelis.

Calard spied a horse with no rider nearby, its ears flat against its head and its eyes wide in terror. He lurched towards the beast, making a grab for its reins. Securing them, he swung himself up into the saddle. The terrified animal reared, but Calard would not be unsaddled again, and the animal quickly began to calm down under his firm control. Calard cast a quick glance around him, appraising the situation.

Duke Adalhard, thankfully, had not been engulfed in the blast, and Calard could see him and the majority of his army of knights still charging up the centre, intent on running down the few fleeing Norscans that could still be seen there. From his position, it was obvious that the Norscans were merely leading the Bretonnian duke further into their midst. He caught a glimpse of massive warriors bedecked in black iron closing in from the flanks, giants of men with horned helmets and snow-covered furs over their shoulders that were stalking towards the Bretonnians in their thousands, encircling them.

The Bretonnians had been duped into charging the centre, Calard realised, which had given way before them with little resistance. It had been a simple, well executed ploy, and Calard felt despair as he realised that in all likelihood no knights would ride away from this battle alive. Now the hammer blow was about to fall, and the Norscans were going to close in on either side, like wolves.

No, Calard corrected, seeing further as the wind suddenly dropped. The first hammer blow had already fallen.

He saw thousands of corpses strewn across the snow out on the flanks, bodies that had literally been torn apart.

Even as he stared despairingly out towards the flanks, he saw figures bursting from snow drifts, powder and snow exploding upwards as they leapt from their concealment and fell upon the knights and peasants out on the army’s edge. Calard heard their war cries as they laid into the Bretonnian flank, tearing through rank after rank, their axes reaping a bloody toll, hacking men apart without mercy.

‘This is a massacre,’ said Calard, turning his horse to survey the battlefield all around. The surviving knights of Bastonne were milling around in confusion. No one was taking command. In every direction Calard saw thousands of Norscans marching through the blizzard towards them. In the rear, seeing the enemy closing in, the men-at-arms and peasant bowmen took flight, hurling weapons to the ground and quitting the field.

Seeing the rout, Bertelis swore and jerked on his reins, bringing his nervous steed back under control.

‘We die here, then,’ Bertelis shouted over the roar of the wind. ‘We’ll take as many of these whoreson bastards as we can with us.’

‘No,’ shouted Calard, shaking his head. ‘We have to pull back. There is no victory to be had here!’

‘Coward!’ shouted a voice, and Calard spun to see Maloric. ‘You’d bring dishonour upon the knights of Bastonne by fleeing like peasants?’

Some four hundred yards ahead, another fiery comet of death roared down through blizzard, and though its impact was hidden in the gusting snow-flurries, the ground shook beneath them as it struck home, and screams could be heard dimly from within the snowstorm.

‘This battle is lost!’ bellowed Calard. ‘What good will more deaths do? Alive, we can seek vengeance!’

‘The battle is not over yet!’ snarled Maloric. ‘Knights of Bastonne! To me!’

Calard cursed, but the milling knights rallied to the call, dragging themselves into order, and Maloric raised his voice to address them.

‘We must ride to the aid of the Duke of Lyonesse!’ bellowed Maloric, raising his sword into the air. ‘It is our duty as the king’s knights! Are you with me?’

Muted cries of affirmation answered the Sangasse noble, though Calard remained silent, his face dark. The wind changed direction suddenly, and Calard could see the Norscans closing in, thousands upon thousands of them – they appeared to be in no particular hurry.

‘I’ll not follow a Sangasse dog,’ snarled Tassilo.

‘Then be branded a coward and a traitor,’ retorted Maloric, loud enough for all to hear, and the nobles affiliated with Garamont bristled in anger. Tassilo brandished his sword, but Calard halted him with a barked order.

‘The king would wish us to ride to his brother duke’s aid!’ roared Maloric, infuriated by the reticence of Calard and his knights. ‘We ride now, with or without you, Garamont!’

Calard’s cousins looked to him to make his decision. He could feel Bertelis’s gaze upon him, and he knew that his brother wanted to fight, even if that meant following the Sangasse noble. His every instinct told him that it was folly, but reluctantly, Calard nodded.

‘Fine,’ he said.

As one the Bastonnians broke into a gallop, charging into the snowstorm after the duke and the bulk of his army, riding hard. They could see little, though Calard knew the enemy was near at hand, and he felt certain that this ride was doomed.

They came upon the army of Lyonesse abruptly as the winds shifted, and they saw that the entire force of knights was engaged in a desperate battle. A hectic melee was underway, with the full force of the duke’s knights engaged on three sides. Clearly, the Norscans had turned to face the Bretonnians, picking this place to make their stand, and they had stood up to the duke’s charge. Doubtless the casualties had been many, but they had absorbed the charge, and the Bretonnians’ flanks were now completely overrun. The slaughter was terrible, with countless hundreds of knights already ripped from their saddles and butchered.

With a shout, Maloric ordered the knights of Bastonne forwards, spearing towards the heart of the melee. More Norse were appearing out of the snowstorm, and Calard knew that they were completely surrounded. And still worse was to befall the Bretonnians, for the Norscan chieftain had one final surprise.

The ground began to shudder and reverberate as if shook by an earthquake and monstrous trumpeting lifted above the roar of the wind, the same sounds that Calard had heard before battle had commenced. It was akin to the blare of massive horns, but Calard could not begin to fathom the size of the instruments needed to create such a din.

He didn’t have to wait long to discover what it was that made the sounds, and what he saw made his blood run cold.

From out of the blizzard’s whitewash came three massive shapes, pounding forwards through the snow and ice, the ground reverberating with every titanic footfall of the monsters.

They were giant, shaggy-hided beasts, each as tall as a castle wall. They had huge trunks of muscle extending from their wide heads, and one of them raised this prehensile limb to the heavens and again the terrifying trumpeting sound echoed across the battlefield. The immense beasts were quadrupeds, with large flapping, dark furred ears and beady eyes filled with burning rage, and each had four immense tusks that curved down to the ground.

Atop the backs of these monsters were strapped immense howdahs of timber, their sides draped with furs and leathers and dotted with shields, and within these structures were dozens of warriors.

The Norscans battling the Bretonnians hurled themselves aside, though many of them were too slow or too far lost in their own battle frenzy. The beasts thundered forwards, smashing into Norscan and knight alike with titanic force, sending men and horses flying through the air with each great sweep of their heads. Tusks skewered destriers and riders alike, blood spraying in all directions, and massive trunks wrapped themselves around men, crushing ribs and limbs before hurling them into the blizzard, arms and legs flailing. Still others were crushed into nothingness, trampled beneath immense stamping hooves that flattened them completely – armour, bone and all.

Hundreds of knights were slaughtered as the trio of behemoths smashed through the knights with the elemental force of a thunderbolt, and many more were killed by the javelins and axes hurled by the Norscans riding within the howdah towers. Lances and swords dug into the legs of the shaggy-furred beasts but it was like striking rock, and weapons were jarred from numbed hands. These attacks were little more than pinpricks to the mighty beasts, who seemed not to feel any pain.

The army of Lyonesse, already struggling to survive being engaged on three sides by the brutal Norscan warriors, was utterly shattered by the appearance of these three monstrous beasts. Merely the stink of them, thick and unpleasant, was enough to drive horses mad with terror, and panic spread across the entire battle line. The heart of the Bretonnian army was smashed apart, the immense mammoths thundering through the ranks of knights with impunity, killing everything that came near them. Hundreds of noble knights of Bretonnia were left as unrecognisable smears of blood trampled into the ground, and countless more were killed as they were smashed through the air by swinging tusks, or hacked apart by the bloodthirsty warriors who descended on the panicked knights in a fury, axes smashing men from saddles and cleaving the legs from beneath proud destriers driven mad with fear.

The banner of Lyonesse fell and was trampled underfoot. Tens of thousands of black-feathered carrion birds were descending from the skies, battling the winds in their eagerness to feast on the corpses, and Calard realised that what he had earlier taken for a storm cloud had actually been these feral birds, massing in their tens of thousands.

Calard saw what could only be the war-chieftain of the Norscans seated upon a high-backed throne atop the howdah-tower of one of the mammoths, a giant, grey-bearded warrior bedecked in dark metal, and he felt intense hatred that such a barbarian had caused the deaths of so many noble knights. His gaze flickered to the figure seated at the chieftain’s feet, a woman of obvious beauty, and Calard felt his blood run cold.

Elisabet!

Knights were streaming from the field now, with no thought of honour or dignity, leaving their butchered comrades to lie where they fell. He could feel the displeasure of the goddess.

The duke fell, and panic rolled across the battle line.

The army of Lyonesse was routed.

CHAPTER NINE

It was nearing midnight and Styrbjorn stood amongst his huskarls in a wide ring atop the plateau of the steep sided hill. The battle had gone well, the horsemen army crushed, and he could feel the gods’ approval. The scale of the bloodshed had fuelled his desire, and he stared hungrily at his writhing witch-consort, alone within the circle before him.

She wore nothing more than a light shift, which showed off the contours of her body to good effect. Her arms and legs were bare and she wore no shoes or slippers upon her feet, though she gave no indication that she felt the chill night air. Every inch of exposed skin, from the smooth flesh of her legs and arms to her face, was covered in ritualistic patterns and runes carved into her flesh by Bjarki’s steady hand. These cuts were not deep, just enough to bring the blood to the surface, but they did nothing to mar her beauty. Indeed, to the jarl, they merely enhanced her allure, for the sight of blood always enhanced his desire.

His witch-consort had created a consecrated circle at the top of the wind-swept hill, and it was outside this that Styrbjorn’s warriors were gathered. The edges of the circle were marked with gore-coloured powder from which a vague red smoke arose, together with a smell like bowels that had been opened by a sword thrust. Eight bodies – the warriors that Styrbjorn had handed over for sacrifice – were positioned equidistant around the circumference of the circle, each representing one of the eight points of the star of the true gods.

Each of the Skaeling warriors was nailed to an A-frame of timber propped up with a third hunk of lumber, their arms spread wide and their feet dangling two feet above the ground. Their skin had been flayed from their bodies and their chests had been ripped open, the ribs broken and splayed outwards to expose the organs within. Not all of them were dead, and those still living moaned wordlessly from mouths bereft of tongues, twitching as carrion birds pecked at their moist innards, jabbing sharp beaks into soft, living flesh. Their hearts, exposed to the elements, thumped erratically, and they thrashed their heads from side to side, trying vainly to stop the murderous crows and ravens from feasting on them.

Blood-smeared, foul smelling totem-dolls hung from the A-frames, turning slowly as the winds pushed at their bloated, repulsive forms. The closest of them was a representation of a child, or a baby. Blond hair lined with silver – his own, he realised dimly – was stitched into the babe’s head. A pair of horns, perhaps hacked from the head of a goat, protruded from the babe’s chin.

A raven landed on the head of this doll before realising that it was an unstable roost and flapping off, cawing loudly, sending the totem-doll swinging wildly.

Skull-headed braziers burnt foul herbs and roots, embers glowing brightly as the icy winds howled.

Three fifteen foot tree-trunks stripped of their branches leant against each other in the centre of the circle, tied together with barbed chain, forming a crude tent structure with no sides. The excess length of the chain hung down in the centre of the structure, and another totem-doll hung there, the rusted hook emerging from its back passed through one of the links, so that it hung some four feet above the ground, spinning slowly.

The ground beneath the doll was spread with furs, and it was upon these that Styrbjorn’s witch-consort lay, writhing and moaning softly, speaking in the daemon tongue. Her eyes were hazy and indistinct, and she ran her hands over her body in ways that made Styrbjorn’s heart rate quicken. The hallucinogenic smoke from the braziers was having an effect on him as well, and he could see the insubstantial shades of daemons cavorting around his witch-consort, caressing and stroking her flesh. His desire for her was strong; all he wanted to do was step forward into the circle and take her.

‘Not yet,’ said Bjarki, at his side, as if hearing his lustful thoughts. ‘The conception must take place at the exact right moment.’

‘And how long will that be?’ said the Skaeling jarl, his voice husky.

As if the gods were giving him their own answer, the wind suddenly picked up, making the embers in the braziers glow brightly. Like the breath of the gods themselves, it swirled around the circle in an anticlockwise direction. Under the effects of the mind-altering smoke, Styrbjorn saw elemental daemons and spirits howling within that wind. Faces snarled at him, and clawed hands reached out towards him. The wind intensified, and he saw more creatures in the flash of movement whipping around him, skinless winged beasts with reptilian faces, naked women with bird-like talons in place of hands and feet, and monstrosities with mouths filled with rotting fangs and worms. Styrbjorn smiled deliriously as the daemons of the air whipped around him, scratching at his flesh and tugging at his braided beard.

The wind began to lift, rising high into the sky above the circle, and the clouds themselves began to rotate, slowly at first, then faster, and faster. Soon the sky resembled one of the great whirlpools that sometimes appeared to threaten his dragonships off the coast of Norsca, a swiftly spinning maelstrom centred directly overhead. A patch of open sky appeared in the centre of the swirling clouds, and Styrbjorn’s breath caught in his throat as he glimpsed the immense green eye of the gods peering through the clouds down at him.

The clouds were ripped aside by the force of the swirling winds and Styrbjorn could see that the green moon was hanging low and full, directly overhead. His flesh tingled as the green light bathed him in its glow, and he heard the moans of his witch-consort escalate. In his drug-addled state he imagined that the moon was literally a great eye, its pupil slitted like a serpent’s. He could feel the malevolence flowing down from that eye in waves, and he smiled drunkenly; the gods themselves had manifested to witness the conception. Truly, his son would be blessed by the gods indeed!

Licking his lips, he looked down at his shaman.

‘Now?’ he said, his voice rough and bestial.

The wiry seer, an expression of rapture on his face, nodded his head.

Styrbjorn shrugged off his furs and stepped over the blood-powder marking the circle. Billowing smoke rose from the powder as he passed the barrier, and he felt more than saw the shadow-daemons within the circle rise up to challenge him, surrounding him, hissing malevolently. Shadows of movement flickered in the corner of his vision as they jabbed at him with insubstantial talons, but he heard them hiss in pain and recoil, even as he felt their icy claws numb his flesh.

Then Styrbjorn felt delicate, warm hands against his flesh and he forgot the daemonic shades, forgot that he was surrounded by his entourage of onlooking huskarls, forgot that the gods themselves stared down from the heavens. He gazed upon his witch-consort, the one who would bear him a son, and she pressed a goblet into his hands, brimming with a potent smelling brew. He drained it in one draught, throwing his head back and closing his eyes. It burnt as it washed down his throat, and he marvelled as he opened his eyes, for all the colours he perceived seemed brighter than they had done before, swimming before him with almost painful brilliance.

All of his senses were heightened to levels that Styrbjorn could never have imagined possible as the potent brew began to take effect. The overload of sensation was staggering. He tossed the goblet aside, eyes focused on the woman writhing on the ground before him.

The witch gazed up at him with eyes that had turned completely black and licked her lips. Taking him by the hand, she drew him into her embrace, and under the unblinking eye of the gods overhead, a daemon-son was conceived.

Scores of birds took flight, filling the air with the flapping of wings and panicked cries, shattering the peace of the forest glade. Tiny glowing sprites with flickering, insubstantial wings darted away, disappearing in an instant as if they had never been.

The majestic equine beast that had a moment before been drinking from the still pond lifted its head. Its flanks glowed like moonlight and the single horn that rose from its forehead gleamed with pearlescent brilliance. It regarded its mistress with deep, soulful eyes.

Morgiana opened her almond-shaped eyes and turned to regard the noble creature.

‘You felt it too, then,’ she said, her voice soft and musical. The unicorn stamped one of its forelegs into the ground, and tossed its head.

Horrific images of fire and death still lingered in her eyes, and she shuddered at the brutality her prescience had foreshadowed. She saw again the as yet unborn child, daemonic eyes ablaze with the promise of savagery. She saw him as a young man, flames wreathing his horned head, the coastal cities of Bretonnia in ruins and the oceans filled to the burning horizon with tens of thousands of Norscan longships. The screams of the endless lines of innocents being led to the sacrifice made her wince, and she saw mountains of skulls piled high beneath the turbulent heavens. She heard children weeping, and the stink of burning flesh still lingered in the back of her throat.

Morgiana folded her long, slender legs beneath her as she sat up. She moved with unearthly grace, her every movement languid, her every gesture effortless. She carried herself like a queen, yet no queen of Bretonnia had ever wielded such power as was hers to command.

No higher authority existed in all of Bretonnia than the Fay Enchantress, save the divine. The power to dethrone kings was hers to command; only the goddess could call Morgiana to question.

A priceless hand mirror hung from the golden girdle encircling her slender waist, and she lifted the potent artefact up in front of her. Her own, flawless image stared back at her coldly. Her hair was bound up within an elaborate headdress of the latest Bretonnian courtly fashion, and her ageless, regal face was pale.

The Enchantress blew lightly upon the mirror. Hoarfrost began to form upon the intricate silverwork of its frame, and her reflection misted over as if a sudden, impenetrable fog surrounded her.

Shapes began to form in the mirror, hazy like a dream at first, but slowly solidifying into recognisable human forms: a pale, dark haired young lady, her head thrown back in rapture and a powerful warrior kissing her neck.

The young damsel opened her eyes and stared out of the mirror directly at the Enchantress. Her suitor continued his affections, oblivious to their distant observer.

Morgiana reached a hand towards the image of the girl in the mirror, eyes locked with those of the dark haired young woman. Her finger tips touched the surface of the looking glass, which was as cold as ice, and sank within. The mirror’s surface was as yielding as water, and ripples made the vision of the damsel and her lover shimmer as Morgiana’s hand sank within it.

She placed her fingertips upon the young damsel’s head. Morgiana felt the damsel shudder as she sent the vision of what might come to pass if the daemon-child lived into her mind. It was over in a second, and the Enchantress pulled her hand back. It was numb with cold, but she ignored the discomfort.

‘What would you have me do, mistress?’ said the vision of the girl in the mirror. Her lover tensed and lifted his head, looking around for who it was she talked to.

‘Bring the child to me,’ Morgiana the Enchantress whispered. Her gaze flickered to the broad, strong features of the damsel’s lover. ‘Take Reolus with you. His sword will be needed.’

‘It shall be as you wish, my mistress,’ replied Anara.

Then the vision in the mirror faded, and the Enchantress stared at her own reflection. There was a hint of sadness in her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Anara,’ she whispered.

The goblet that the jarl had drained and hurled away from him had rolled to the edge of the circle of blood-dust surrounding the intertwined couple. Smoke rose from where the liquid seeped from the vessel, and Bjarki knelt down before it. His jarl and the witch were in the throes of passion within the circle but Bjarki paid them no heed, concentrating on the goblet. Lifting it carefully, so as not to disturb the ritual circle, he raised it to his nose, sniffing. Frowning, he touched a finger to the small amount of liquid still contained within and licked it.

All manner of herbs and roots could be tasted within, as well as the essence of certain dream-inducing mushrooms that he was familiar with. But behind all that, there was a bitter taste that he recognised, though he could not put his finger on what it was. Bjarki furrowed his brow and stood, pushing through the circle of enthralled, drug-addled huskarls, trying to identify the substance in his mind.

Bjarki stalked down to the bottom of the hill, the witch-consort’s banshee screams of pleasure ringing out across the lowlands. Muttering to himself, he entered his tent, wracking his mind for the source of the herb or root that he had tasted in the brew. Herbs, roots and the innards of animals and men hung from cords strung above his head, and he flicked through them, hoping that something would jog his memory.

Finding nothing, he squatted on the floor and began to tear open his saddlebags, untying leather thongs and rolling out bundles of leather within which were hundreds of small pockets, each containing a neatly wrapped bundle of leather and fur, tied up with dried sinew and horsehair. Within each package was a rare ingredient, either gathered by Bjarki or one of his predecessors or traded from the lands of the Kurgan, the Hung or the southlanders, or lands even further afield; the hot forests of the lizard-people many months’ sail to the south-west, the realm of the Dragon King in the east beyond the great wall, or from the lands of sand and dust-daemons to the south.

Norse runes were burnt into the leather of these packages, telling him what was contained within each – some he had never opened, having never had the need. He flicked through his precious collection with growing irritation, cursing.

Bjarki finally gave up, angry and frustrated, and he threw himself down onto his furs.

It came to him just as he started to drift off to sleep.

‘Whorlroot,’ he said to himself. ‘The devious bitch.’

The witch had dissolved a large amount of the deadly root in his jarl’s draught, concealing its taste within the hallucinogenic brew’s potent flavour. In small doses, if taken regularly, Bjarki knew that the root would slowly kill a man, wasting his muscles and eating him away from the inside. It was a cunning way to do away with an enemy if obvious hostility needed to be avoided, so long as one could slip the root powder into a draught regularly enough without causing suspicion, for its symptoms were akin to many wasting sicknesses, and only one particularly skilled in herb-lore would ever detect it. Taken in the quantity that the witch had slipped into Styrbjorn’s draught, it would cause the victim to fall into a deep sleep from which he would not wake – unless a draught to countermand its effects was imbibed. Thankfully, such an antidote was relatively simple.

Quickly, Bjarki began tearing open his pouches and grinding up roots, praying to the great gods of the Skaelings that he was not too late.

Haegtesse opened her eyes with a start as she felt a sharp kick from within her belly. The cold light of dawn penetrated weakly through the low hanging cloud cover, and fresh snow blanketed the top of the hill, but with her naked body wrapped in the thick furs strewn within the ritual circle atop the hill, she felt the chill only on her cheeks.

Her hands ventured down over her stomach, which had been firm and flat only hours earlier, marvelling at the considerable bump there now. Her flesh was taut and stretched, bulging with new life. She felt the daemon-child within her kick again, more forcefully this time, and she gasped. She could hear the child’s as yet unformed thoughts flowing through her mind like an incoherent whisper, confused and jumbled yet pulsing with staggering intensity. Such power!

The gods of Chaos had clearly blessed the union, and she judged that she would come to term within the month. She felt a flicker of unease as she considered how powerful the boy would be by the time she gave birth. He was already so strong, though his power was as yet unfocused and vague. Once he gained mastery over it, he would be horrifyingly potent. He would – if he lived – command power that she could not hope to comprehend.

She sat up with some awkwardness, unused to the weight of the child within her. She clutched the furs around her and glanced down at the figure of the Skaeling jarl. He had rolled away from her, and was wrapped in furs, so that she could not see his face. She did not hear his breathing. She was almost sorry to have killed him; he had been a fine lover.

Nevertheless, his death had been necessary – he would never have stood by and allowed her to do what it was she intended. She would leave this stinking Norscan camp concealed in the shadow of Dark Magic and birth the child in the wilderness, alone. It would be a simple matter to befuddle the minds of any sentries, and yet she didn’t even think that would be necessary; the Skaeling warriors had celebrated their victory long into the night, and few warriors would be yet awake.

Again the child kicked within her, and she gasped.

By the time the daemon-child reached five years of age he would be capable of things that had taken her half a dozen lifetimes to master, and she doubted that she would be able to overcome him. But as a newborn? He might have power, but he would not yet know how to control it, nor have the self-awareness necessary to protect himself from her. And he would be dead long before he mastered his gods-blessed power.

She stroked her belly lovingly.

‘A month’s time, and the gods will hear your birth screams,’ she whispered. ‘And then you will die – by my knife – and I shall live forever.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said a voice in her ear.

She started in alarm and spun around to see Jarl Styrbjorn staring at her, his eyes as cold as ice. How could this be? He had drained enough of the draught to kill one of his immense tuskers!

She began to mouth an incantation that would summon her guardian daemon-shades to her and rip Styrbjorn’s soul to shreds, but the jarl backhanded her hard across the side of the face and she fell with a cry. She hadn’t even seen the blow coming, and the pain was intense. Stars flashed before her eyes and she could already feel the bruise rising.

‘Kurgan bitch,’ growled Styrbjorn. ‘You think I’d let you harm my son? You think you could kill me?’

Haegtesse couldn’t talk, still dazed by the sledgehammer blow that the Skaeling jarl had struck her. She tried to get away from him, scrabbling frantically on hands and knees, but he grabbed her by the hair and hauled her head back, exposing her throat. She was powerless against his strength, and for a second she thought he was going to kill her.

As Styrbjorn held her immobile, a horrific device of black iron was lowered over her head by another set of hands. The Skaeling seer, she realised dimly. Of course – he must have been the one to realise what it was Styrbjorn had drunk, and concocted its antidote. Damn him!

The device the seer carried was a helmet-like cage, and it stank of blood as it was lowered over her head. She saw that runes of the Dark Tongue were engraved upon its bands, and she struggled violently, screeching like an animal as she tried to avoid having it locked in place.

Styrbjorn struck her again then, a blow that rattled her brain and left her almost insensible. The brank was fastened around her head. Inward facing spikes carved deep gouges in her flesh, and she winced. The front of the headpiece was hinged, and as its door was pushed closed and locked, a spiked metal tongue depressor was forced into her mouth. It pierced the flesh of her cheeks and tongue and bit deep into the roof of her mouth. She almost choked on her own blood as it filled her throat.

Her arms were wrenched painfully behind her back and bound tightly with cord. The Skaeling seer, Bjarki, squatted in front of her, grinning, and her eyes flashed with hatred. Yet without the power of speech and with her hands bound, she was as helpless as a newborn.

‘Whorlroot,’ said Bjarki, still grinning. ‘Clever. It was a close thing – another half an hour and the father of your unborn child would have been worm-food.’

Jarl Styrbjorn stood up, stretched his arms, and shouted for his armour.

‘Bring her,’ he said, gesturing to the clearly pregnant, bound figure of Haegtesse. ‘We make for the coast.’

‘Tell us another story?’ begged one of the peasants, a plea which was echoed by a dozen others crowding around inside the hovel, hot with sweat and the heat of the open fire.

Chlod, stuffing his mouth with hard bread dunked in stew, grinned, wiping hot gravy from his chin. He waved a hand, and one of the peasants that made up his audience handed him a clay jug of cheap wine, which he swigged from.

The peasants were looking at Chlod expectantly, and he was relishing being the centre of attention as he spoke of the holy feats of the grail knight, Reolus.

Chlod had arrived at Lyonesse, upon the rocky north-east coast, some two days earlier, borne upon the back of a wagon laden with produce, and had been enjoying its hospitality ever since. To his audience, he was a dashing adventurer, a heroic pilgrim seeking his master, and they happily fed and watered him in exchange for his tales.

‘One more story, then,’ he said, smacking his lips.

It didn’t get much better than this, he thought, with a smile. He should be able to work this charade here for at least another few weeks. He shoved half a biscuit down his shirtfront for his rat, and then, with his audience hanging on his every word, he began another fanciful tale about how he, a lowly peasant pilgrim, saved the life of the holy paladin Reolus.

CHAPTER TEN

The waves pounded relentlessly against the white stone of the castle walls, the crashing of the surf sending deep, sonorous booms echoing through its halls. Sprays of foam and icy water exploded up the sheer sides of the fortress, reaching for the battlements. Snow was falling from dark clouds overhead and while it was only early afternoon, it was as dark as twilight.

Calard stood upon the north-west wall, braving the elements as he stared darkly out towards the horizon. He could taste the salt spray upon his lips, and snow gusted through the crenulations, billowing around him and chilling his flesh.

It had been three weeks since the catastrophic defeat of the army of Lyonesse, three weeks since he had been forced to flee like a peasant from the wrath of the Norscan whoresons. He had felt the Lady’s displeasure as he and the other knights of Bastonne had fled the field, pursued by the howling hordes of Chaos.

The slaughter had been terrible, and above it all the Norscan chieftain had watched from atop his throne upon the back of the immense tusker, laughing as the monstrous beast smashed men and horses out of its path with every swing of its heavy head.

He shuddered as he thought again of the violent trumpeting of the monsters as they rampaged through the ranks of the proud knights, stomping and slaughtering everything in their path. They seemed inured to pain, ignoring scores of lances imbedded in their tree-trunk legs, and barely seeming to register the flashing swords that hacked at them. Calard felt his despair grow. What could a man do to fight such beasts? What could an army do to fight them?

Calard clenched his hand into a fist and struck the cold stone of the battlements, compacting the snow settling there.

He thought of the Lady Elisabet, the lady whom he had given his heart only to be cruelly betrayed. She had been the last person he had expected to see in the midst of that chaotic battle, a prisoner sat at the Norscan warlord’s feet upon the back of the mighty beast.

Again he saw Elisabet’s large tearful eyes as she tried to get close to him, just after he had learnt of her murderous plot to kill his father, the castellan of Garamont. He saw again the hurt, the pain, and the desperation – the love – in her expression, and it felt like a cold claw clutched at his heart. He had believed that he would wed Elisabet within a year of his return home from Bordeleaux, and had even gone so far as to meticulously plan how he was going to ask for her hand.

He hated her. She had shattered his dreams. She had poisoned his father, turning him into a withered skeleton, old before his time. And he hated himself for the fact that there was a part of him that loved her still.

She was out there, he thought, staring off into the distance, a captive of the brutal Norscan warlord. His anger rose just imagining what horrors she was being subjected to by the Norse chieftain, by his men. No matter what she had done, she didn’t deserve that.

Staring intently at the horizon, seeing the storm clouds rolling in from the north and the flash of lightning in the distance, he swore. He felt so helpless. She was probably in Norsca by now; if she was still alive at all.

The battle had ended in butchery, and the scale of it filled him with loathing and disgust; the enemy were nothing more than bestial savages. He had seen knights hacked limb from limb by frenzied Norsemen long after there had been any honour left in the fight. He had seen blond-haired marauders tear out the throats of knights with their bare teeth. He saw hulking, black-armoured barbarians bedecked in furs matted with congealed blood slaughtering the injured, beheading them with mighty sweeps of their broad-bladed axes. None were given mercy or clemency. Even the steeds of unhorsed knights were hacked apart by axe and sword, giant mutated hounds savaging them and tearing great chunks of meat from their flanks.

The Duke of Lyonesse had been carried clear of the slaughter, though the famed banner of Lyonesse was lost, trampled into the mud. Miraculously, the duke was still alive; he’d merely been knocked unconscious by a blow to his head. The Lady had clearly intervened on his behalf, protecting him from worse hurt. He was hastily borne away from the battlefield, his closest coterie of knights escorting him swiftly for Castle Lyonesse in the west, upon the walls of which Calard now stood.

After their victory, the Norse army had struck for the coast, driving hard. For a week Calard and those surviving knights that had not accompanied the duke had dogged the progress of the barbarians, but there were less than fifteen hundred survivors of the ten thousand knights that had fought in the battle, and they could do little to threaten them.

They had engaged in running battles with the outriders of the Norscans but these were nothing more than skirmishes for they had not the numbers to force the Norscans into a decisive battle. They had not even the strength of numbers to stop the Norscans from sacking a dozen villages and small hamlets as they rampaged back towards the coast, and the mood of the Bretonnian camp had been grim.

By the time the knights of Couronne had caught up with the remnants of the shattered Lyonessian army, half of the Norscan army had already put to sea. The relief force had been pitifully small, however, for the majority of the knights despatched had turned back as soon as it was clear that the Norscans were not seeking to penetrate deeper into Bretonnia. Only the younger knights errant, those desperate to prove their worth, had continued their ride from Couronne.

He had been surprised to see a familiar face amongst the knights, however; none other than the foreigner Dieter Weschler, a nobleman of the Empire that Calard had fought alongside six months earlier. The man’s appearance was, if anything, even more fastidious and outlandish to those attuned to Bretonnian sensibilities than Calard remembered; all puffy sleeves, tights, ostentatious plumes and lacquered black steel.

Dieter was, it turned out, now the Empire’s ambassador to Bretonnia, though he confided in Calard that he was growing tired of the king’s court, with all its intrigue and back-stabbing. He had leapt at the opportunity to ride forth and do battle, and he saw that doing so was an opportunity to further strengthen the relations between Bretonnia and the Empire.

However, as pleased as Calard was to see his old comrade in arms, he was furious to learn that the entire relief force that had set out from L’Anguille had turned back once it had established that the enemy no longer threatened their own border.

Nevertheless, fighting alongside Dieter, Calard and the remaining knights had made a good account for themselves in a daring attack against the last of the Norscans boarding their longships, yet the battle had little relevance; the enemy warlord – and Elisabet – had already departed Bretonnian shores.

In impotent rage Calard had stood upon the snow-covered beach, surrounded by dead and dying Bretonnians and Norscans, and watched as the last longships pulled away into the distance. It had been a grim journey from there to Castle Lyonesse, a day to the south, and Calard and the other Bastonnian knights had ridden in silence, escorting the injured. For two nights they had been the guests of the Duke of Lyonesse within his island fortress – one of the most impressive and defensible castles in Bretonnia.

It was located just off the north-west coast of Lyonesse, some four hundred yards from the mainland.

Calard heard someone climb to the top of the stairs behind him, but did not bother to turn to greet them. In silence Bertelis moved to his side and leant against the battlements, gazing out to sea.

The brothers stood in silence, listening to the pounding of the surf as snow billowed around them. Only a week earlier neither of them had seen the ocean, and Calard had dreamt of the day when he would since he was a child, but this was not how he had imagined it. He had envisaged blue-green waters sparkling with reflected light and filled with an abundance of life, not the unyielding fury of this isolating wasteland of black, icy water.

‘Do we return to Garamont then, brother?’ said Bertelis finally, his voice low.

Calard sighed. He had no wish to return to his ancestral home and face his responsibilities, but he could not continue to shirk his duties, he knew.

And as much as he hated to admit it, there was nothing that could be done now to save Lady Elisabet. She was gone, as were the Norscans, across the seas.

‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘It is time to return home. Ready the men.’

Bertelis nodded and turned to leave when a fanfare of horns began to sound. Calard frowned.

‘What’s this?’ he said.

They could see men running towards the east gate, and they heard shouts of excitement and awe. The gates were opened, and the portcullis raised, and again long fluted horns blared.

‘Must be someone important,’ said Bertelis, and the brothers began descending the walls quickly, with no further discussion, joining the crowds that were thronging towards the east gate.

Reolus, holy grail knight of the Lady and the epitome of knightly perfection, rode alongside a damsel of the Lady through the rapturous crowd, his head held high.

It seemed that the clouds parted momentarily as the illustrious pair entered Castle Lyonesse amid a fanfare of excitement, and rays of sunlight shone down upon them.

Reolus rode upon a powerful, jet-black destrier that was easily twenty hands high, while the damsel rode without a saddle upon a smaller dappled grey. The grail knight carried aloft his gleaming silver lance, the famous Arandyal, and bore his helmet under his other arm. His face was expressionless, his features strong and ageless.

The grail knight wore a flowing tabard of regal blue over his gleaming armour, its edges embroidered with silver thread. The damsel wore a filmy purple dress, and her hair was bound up in an elaborate headdress, her face obscured by a silken veil.

A thick cloak, its inside lined with softest mink fur, hung from Reolus’s shoulders, and a golden clasp in the shape of the Lady’s holy chalice was fastened upon his chest. Only those who had supped from the grail were allowed to wear such emblems, those who had come face to face with the goddess herself and been found worthy. The grail knights were the most respected individuals in all of Bretonnia, paragons of virtue and honour who were beyond reproach.

Calard’s breath caught in his throat as he gazed upon the hallowed warrior once again. A palpable holy aura shimmered around Reolus, and his eyes gleamed with the Lady’s power.

The Duke of Lyonesse was amongst those that spilled out to witness the grail knight’s entrance to his castle, and he bowed low before Reolus and the damsel of the Lady. Calard and Bertelis pushed through the crowd to hear his words.

‘Lord Reolus and Lady Damsel, I am honoured,’ said Duke Adalhard. ‘What is mine is yours; I will have apartments readied for you immediately. We shall feast this night in your honour!’

Reolus raised a hand, and the cheering that had erupted at the duke’s announcement simmered down.

‘Your hospitality does you proud, my lord duke,’ said Reolus. ‘However, I fear there are more pressing matters at hand. The Norscans.’

‘The Norscans have left,’ said the duke with a frown.

‘No,’ said the damsel, and Calard jerked as if he had been struck, as he recognised the voice as that of his sister, Anara.

‘No, my lady?’ questioned Duke Adalhard.

‘The Norscans have not left Bretonnian lands,’ said Anara, her voice vague and ethereal. ‘They are encamped thirty miles westward. They have defiled the temple of the Blessed Lady upon the Isle of Landri, and slaughtered all its priestesses. I can hear their souls crying out in fear even now, denied their eternal rest.’

‘The Lady Elisabet?’ called out Calard, pushing to the front of the crowd, and he blushed as he felt hundreds of pairs of eyes turn to focus upon him. Anara regarded him as if he were a stranger, with no hint of recognition in her eyes.

‘She is there,’ said Anara finally, ‘and it is the will of the Lady that she be reclaimed from the Norscan infidels.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Calard shivered as the icy wind whipped across the exposed top of the keep. The pegasus stamped their hooves, clearly unimpressed, and the knights of Parravon stroked their necks, whispering quietly to placate the powerful steeds. They looked as unhappy as their mounts with the arrangement, and Calard felt a knot in his stomach at the prospect of riding one of the temperamental beasts.

‘Mount up,’ said Laudethaire.

Calard grimaced as Bertelis gave him an excited smile and pulled himself smoothly into the saddle. The pegasus snorted and reared instantly, unfurling and beating its wings violently in protest at its unfamiliar rider, but Bertelis stayed in the saddle, grinning like a madman, and brought it under control with a firm yank on the reins. Its ears were still flat against its head, and it quivered in anger, but it began to settle as its owner grabbed it by the bridle and talked to it in a firm, calm voice.

Reolus was already astride his mount, as stoic as ever, and his pegasus seemed content and relaxed beneath him. Anara ran a hand along the length of the pegasus she was to ride and it knelt before her, much to the amazement of the Parravonian knights, allowing her to step into the saddle in a dignified manner. She barely seemed to register the strangeness of the situation, lost as she was in an animated discussion with herself.

Calard gazed at the pegasus that he was to ride and felt his mouth go dry, though he did not for a moment regret insisting that he be part of the rescue. The Parravonians had been resistant, but Reolus had backed Calard’s wish, and his word brooked no argument, even when Bertelis demanded that he too accompany the war-party.

The winged steed was a magnificent beast, larger than a Bretonnian warhorse and as white as virgin snow. Its mane was thick, a mix of feathers and hair, and its powerful wings were held tight against its body, furled like an eagle’s. It flashed him an angry look, steam billowing from its flared nostrils, and he swallowed.

‘Frightened, Garamont?’ said Maloric smugly from the back of his own pegasus.

Calard flashed the Sangasse noble a dark look. He still could not believe that the grail knight Reolus had suggested he accompany them; couldn’t the grail knight see that he was nothing but a treacherous dog?

‘Mount her just like a horse,’ advised the knight holding the pegasus’s reins. ‘Get your feet in the stirrups quickly and hold on tight, as she won’t like being ridden by a stranger.’

Calard nodded, blushing as he felt the eyes of his companions upon him, and gripping the pommel with one hand, he placed his left foot in the stirrup and hauled himself into the saddle. The pegasus bucked, throwing its head around violently, and spun on the spot. Calard had ridden since before he could walk, and was well used to breaking in rebellious steeds, but never had he ridden a beast as large and powerful as this, and he struggled to bring her back under his control.

She reared, unfurling and beating her wings, sending snow gusting in eddies before her, and Calard felt himself half-kicked out of the saddle as the pegasus reared and bucked again.

‘Whoa!’ shouted Calard in what he hoped was a firm, authoritative voice, and using his whole body weight and the strength in his arm, he pulled the pegasus’s head to the right, simultaneously using his right leg to disengage its hind quarters, robbing it of its strength. It snorted and pulled against him, but could do nothing against his practised one rein stop, and it began to calm down as it realised its rider was not inexperienced.

‘Damage her mouth and you will be paying restitution, Bastonne,’ said the Parravonian knight haughtily.

‘And what restitution will you pay if she throws me into the ocean?’ muttered Calard in reply.

Having brought the pegasus under control, at least temporarily, Calard looked out over Castle Lyonesse and its surrounds, trying to ignore the knotting of his stomach. He breathed out evenly, trying to slow his rapidly beating heart.

The keep on which they stood rose higher than any of the castle walls, allowing a clear view across the island fortress and the surrounding sea. It truly was an impressive defensive structure, and though Calard felt there was a good amount of pride involved in the duke’s claim that it would never fall by force, he could well believe that fully manned and well-provisioned, the castle could hold against an enemy besieger for many months, possibly even years.

Its walls were high and thick, and towers topped with immense trebuchets were built at strategic points along its lengths, each one offering good vantage for archers to fire down upon anyone trying to scale the sheers walls on either side. Even the smallest of these towers was easily three times the height of any of the towers of Castle Garamont – indeed, the entirety of Castle Garamont could be completely enclosed within Castle Lyonesse ten times over.

From his high vantage point, Calard looked over the tightly packed buildings huddled within the castle walls below the keep towards Lyonesse harbour. A dozen ships were anchored in the calm waters of the protected cove, inside the protection of the walls. After the keep itself, the massive gatehouse that covered the entrance to the harbour was the most defensible part of the stronghold. That arched gateway was of such scale that the largest ships of the Bretonnian fleet would be able to sail through it into the harbour with room to spare, passing beneath the most immense portcullis Calard had ever seen.

When that portcullis was lowered, he heard tell from the proud local knights, its weight forced a second portcullis to rise from the rock beneath the water like a counterbalance. These two black iron gates, one falling and one rising, would meet a few yards under the water, forming an impenetrable barrier.

Calard’s eyes drifted away from the harbour towards the temple of Manann, positioned on top of the rocky cliffs at the southern tip of the island. He could see the statue of the sea-god staring out to the open sea atop the circular temple, trident in hand and flanked by bizarre beasts that were half lion, half fish.

Though the Lady of the Lake was the official patron deity of the Bretonnian nobility, it was a fool that would not pay his respect to the lord of the ocean when travelling upon – or over – his domain. Calard had already left an offering of gold at that temple earlier that day; the idea of falling from the back of a pegasus into the ocean filled him with dread. He knew that if such a thing occurred, the weight of his armour would ensure he sank like a stone. The mere thought of the deep sea beasts that Manann ruled, the unnamed, blind and pallid horrors said to dwell upon the abyssal ocean floor made him shudder with horror. He hoped that his offering would see him safely back onto solid land.

‘How long will it take to reach the island the Norse have desecrated?’ asked Reolus.

‘An hour, with favourable winds,’ replied Laudethaire.

‘May the Lady protect you all,’ said Tassilo. He stood with the rest of Calard’s cousins, Baldemund and Huebald, looking concerned.

Calard nodded and pulled on the reins as his steed began to become agitated.

‘It is time that we were gone,’ said Reolus, and is if understanding the grail knight’s words, his pegasus stretched its broad, feathered wings, first to one side then the other, like an eagle readying for the hunt.

Cold fear knotted Calard’s stomach again, though as no one else seemed to be showing any sign of unease, he tried to hide it.

‘I’ve always wanted to fly,’ said Bertelis. For a moment he looked again like the excitable young boy he had once been, his eyes alight with adventure, rather than the rather serious, solemn young man he had become since their return from Bordeleaux. Calard felt none of his exuberance, and was clutching his reins tightly, his jaw clenched so hard it hurt.

‘For the glory of Parravon, the Lady and the King!’ bellowed Laudethaire, raising his lance high.

‘For the glory of Laudethaire, more like,’ said Maloric under his breath, and had he not been in a mild panic, Calard would have grinned despite himself.

‘To the air!’ cried Laudethaire, and urged his steed towards the edge of the battlements.

‘Lady protect me,’ muttered Calard as the other pegasus broke into a gallop towards the edge of the keep. The animal beneath him wanted to join them, and with a flick of the reins and a kick he urged it forward.

The pegasus in front leaped the battlements, wings beating powerfully. Then Calard’s own steed was at the crenulations and he roared wordlessly as it launched into the air.

There was a moment of weightlessness and Calard felt his stomach rise up into his chest. The sheer walls of the keep fell away and suddenly there was nothing between him and the ground a hundred yards below but air. For a sickening moment he was certain that he was about to plunge to his death.

Then the pegasus beat its wings and they rose into the air, his steed tucking its forelegs beneath it like a leaping horse. With no prompting from Calard, who was concentrating on not falling to his death, the pegasus swooped into a banking turn behind the other knights, soaring around the keep. The rush of the wind made Calard’s eyes water, and he gaped at the sheer drop below him, clutching at the pommel as he stared in uncomprehending horror down at the buildings at the base of the keep, far below.

They swung around to the west and dipped down towards the wall. Flying past one of the great towers that guarded the approach from the western seas, Calard dimly heard people cheering and saw waving banners, but he was too busy trying to stay in the saddle to pay them any attention. The pegasus briefly furled its wings, and Calard let out an uncontrolled groan as they hurtled down towards the ground for a moment. Swooping down low over the western wall, he saw men-at-arm sentries waving up at them. His eyes goggled as he saw the waves crashing against the jagged rocks far below and then they were out over the ocean, with nothing beneath them but the icy depths, leaving Castle Lyonesse behind them.

Calard realised that he had been holding his breath, and he let it out slowly, trying to relax. The winds buffeted them, making the pegasus rise and fall in the air unpredictably. Nothing could be seen out in front but the open ocean and storm clouds, with the occasional jagged spear of rock rising from the black water, and Calard cursed.

He heard a shout, and turned his head to see Bertelis waving at him exuberantly. Calard ignored him, and turned his head forwards again, staring resolutely out to sea, clinging to the reins with grim determination.

‘An hour,’ he muttered to himself. Right now that seemed like an eternity.

The pegasus banked and began to circle down through the clouds. Calard was frozen, and his whole body was aching – he had found it impossible to relax in the saddle knowing that he was hundreds of feet above the ocean. He could see nothing through the dank clouds; they might have been a thousand feet up or a dozen.

A gap appeared in the clouds below, and for a brief moment he saw the island that the Norscan had claimed, far below. Calard saw countless figures moving in the light of thousands of fires far below. They looked tiny and insignificant from his vantage, but he knew from experience that each of those figures was a fearless warrior, standing almost a head taller than any Bretonnian. Low fog hung over the ocean, but he could see thousands of longships that had been pulled up upon the beaches of the island. His rage grew as he looked upon the defiled ruin of the chapel to the Lady upon the southern tip of the island.

That chapel seemed to be the focus of the Norscan’s revelry, and he heard drunken shouts, roars and booming laughter echoing up from it. It had been gutted by fire, and its roof had caved inwards in several sections, allowing the billowing snow to fall within.

Then the clouds closed in, concealing his view and their approach. Like a flock of birds flying together in an arrowhead-like formation, the pegasus swooped down through the clouds, with Laudethaire at its apex. Calard had no idea how the knight was navigating their progress, but he seemed to know where he was headed. They dropped further through the clouds, Calard leaning back in the saddle as the angle of descent increased, and he felt that they must surely hit the ground or the ocean at any moment.

They broke through the low hanging clouds again, and Calard saw that they had dropped perhaps a hundred and fifty feet. The open ocean was now beneath them, partially concealed in thick fog. Laudethaire had clearly guided them out to sea, so as to approach the island from an unseen quarter.

Calard swore as his pegasus dived, and he hung on grimly. The pegasus dropped like a stone as it entered the thick bank of fog. It swooped low, hooves trailing in the icy water as it followed Laudethaire’s lead towards the rocky cliffs in front of them.

The swell was immense, and Calard’s pegasus lifted them higher with a powerful beat of its wings as a towering wave threatened to engulf them. The beast tossed its head in pleasure as the wind whipped sea-spray off the top of the waves into them.

‘Stupid beast,’ spluttered Calard, spitting sea water from his mouth.

The flight of pegasus banked to the east, gliding silently through the fog, heading for a rocky cove. There were no longships beached here, for blade-like rocks pierced the waters on approach to the small bay, making it impossible to navigate safely. Thankfully, there were no Norscans in sight – this was clearly an unoccupied area of the island. On the headland, Calard could see the defiled chapel of the Lady, lit daemonically from within by fires.

The flight of pegasus glided into the cove, and they hit the ground running. Calard dragged his steed to a halt. Swinging a leg over the saddle, he dropped to the ground. His legs were shaky, but it felt good to have solid ground beneath him, and he let out a ragged breath.

‘Didn’t fall off then, Garamont?’ asked Maloric from nearby. Calard was pleased to see that for all the cockiness in his voice, the Sangasse noble looked pale and worn – clearly the flight had taken its toll on him as well.

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ said Calard through lips that were numb with cold.

In a low voice, Laudethaire indicated that two of his Parravonian kin would take the pegasus to the skies, so as to avoid risk of their discovery.

‘What if we need them in a hurry?’ asked Bertelis.

‘They will be near,’ said Laudethaire, looking briefly at the younger of the Garamont nobles as if he were a bug.

‘Does anyone else think that the Norscans might not just stand idly by while we walk into their camp and take Elisabet?’ said Maloric.

‘Scared, Maloric?’ said Calard in an acidic tone.

‘Just not stupid,’ he shot back. ‘I care for her too, Garamont.’

‘She’d not give you the time of day, Sangasse,’ said Calard, his voice rising as hatred and jealousy reared within him. In Bordeleaux just before the war against the beasts of the wildwood, Maloric and he had exchanged heated words regarding Elisabet. Maloric had claimed that the token of affection he wore on his arm had been a gift from her, and Calard had reacted angrily, discounting his words as those of a viper. Still, even then, he had suspected the Sangasse noble spoke true.

‘Stay your tongues,’ said Reolus, his voice low and firm.

Calard fell instantly silent, ashamed to have been admonished by the holy paladin.

‘The Lady’s power shall conceal our approach,’ said Anara, her voice vague and ethereal as she stared around at things that the others could not perceive. ‘We shall be as ghosts, spirits passing unseen through the night.’

Calard shuddered, and swapped an uneasy glance with Bertelis.

‘Do not speak,’ said Anara softly. ‘Do not make sudden movements. Do not draw your weapons. Any of these things will break the spirit-walk and that will be the death of us all.’

The knights, other than Reolus, regarded the slight figure of Anara warily, but they nodded their heads in understanding. Each of them regarded the damsel with a mixture of reverence, suspicion and fear, for her ways were strange and unearthly, and yet undoubtedly divinely inspired.

As the pegasus took to the air, angling out over the sea and disappearing into the fog, Anara began to incant. Calard could not understand her words, but it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and he could taste an oddly metallic tang in the air. Anara’s eyes rolled back in her head and she threw her arms out to either side, palms held up to the heavens as she continued to speak in that soft, unnatural voice.

Calard felt his skin prickle, and a wave of intense cold passed through him, making him shiver involuntarily. Ice crystals began to form on his armour, and his breath misted the air in front of his face. Thick fog rolled up off the water and began to surround the knights, who looked around them in unease. The biting chill permeated deeper into Calard’s body, making his joints ache and every breath painful, and the forming ice threatened to lock up the joints of his armour. His hands and feet were numb, and he could feel that numbness creeping up his limbs and into his body.

It was suddenly hard to keep his eyes open. All he wanted to do was to lie down and let oblivion take him.

Blinking against the urge, Calard looked around at Bertelis, who was pale and drawn, his eyes haunted. The fog continued to build around them, rising to engulf them completely, and Calard felt the icy touch reach his heart. He gasped.

This was what death must feel like, he thought. To lie down and give in to it was so tempting. He could forget the pressing responsibilities that he felt unworthy to bear. He could forget about his doubts as to his own purity. All he had to do was close his eyes, and nothing would matter.

Do not, thundered his sister’s voice in his mind, making him start with its sheer power. Give in and you will be lost forever in this place, neither alive nor truly dead.

Calard’s drooping eyes flicked open, and he focused on his sister’s face. She gave no indication of having spoken to him, still engrossed in her incantation, with her head thrown back.

Lost in this place, Calard thought, confused. Where are we?

He was not surprised when Anara answered him, still speaking directly into his mind.

We are in between, she said, in the shadow realm. This is neither the world of the dead nor the world of the living.

Calard looked around him. His surroundings had not changed, though the fog obscured them. No, he realised, that was not quite correct. The landscape around him had changed, but he had not noticed it at first, blurry and indistinct, as it was in the thick fog. The surrounds were devoid of all colour, he realised, cast in shades of grey, like the vague memory of a dream.

Come, said Anara into his mind, and this time he realised that she must have been speaking to everyone. With the grail knight Reolus at her side, his eyes shining with holy light, Anara stepped forward. The fog parted before her like a peasant rabble before a queen, and the knights fell in behind.

They walked in silence, and indeed every sound seemed to be muffled, as if they were hearing them from a great distance. The pounding of the waves, deafening only minutes before, now sounded faint and even the howling of the wind seemed distant. Calard frowned as he realised that he could not feel the touch of the wind at all, and though he was chilled to the core of his being, he could not feel the snow upon his face. Indeed, those flakes of snow being carried into him by the wind that he could not feel were not settling on any of them, he realised. He reached out to catch one of the snowflakes; it passed right through his hand, as if it were nothing more than an image, with no physical form at all.

‘What…’ he began before he remembered Anara’s warning not to speak. He saw by his brother’s expression that he too was trying to understand what was happening, and as they climbed steadily up from the beachhead, Calard realised that nothing around them seemed real; everything was like a dream.

The hillside itself was shadowy, with no colour to it at all. The rocks and low shrubs clinging to the hillside were vague and indistinct, like after-images that were not really there at all. Calard reached out to a strand of tall grass as he passed it, but his hand passed through the colourless ghost image.

Gazing up towards the defiled chapel, Calard saw that it too appeared as a slightly distorted shadow image, and even the light of the fires burning within had no colour to them – they merely burnt bright white.

Abruptly a pair of Norscan appeared, rounding a stand of rocks just ahead, heading directly towards them, moving down towards the cove, axes in hand. They were no more than a dozen yards away and could not fail to notice the group of knights in their path. Curiously, he could see a glowing sphere of light in the centre of the Norscans’ chests.

Calard’s hand flashed to his sword but a hand stopped him. Anger surged as he saw that it was Maloric’s, and in that moment all he wanted to do was cut the Sangasse noble down. How dare he lay hands upon him!

Maloric shook his head and nodded further up the line. Calard glanced up the hill, seeing that the Norscans were making no aggressive moves towards them – indeed it looked as if they had not noticed them at all, though they were now less than half a dozen paces away. His eyes were drawn again to the glowing light in the centre of each Norscan’s chest. The glow was coming from within them.

Calard felt a chill as the Norscans’ eyes passed over him, looking through him. He saw also that the two warriors were vaguely transparent and he realised that just as everything else in this shadow-realm, they were as ghosts. Or perhaps, he thought, it was himself and his companions who were the ghosts here.

The larger of the Norscans, a hulking warrior that loomed over them all, was clearly irritated, and he and his companion were bickering in their brutish tongue, though it sounded like their voices came to his ears from a long way away. The smaller man was pointing down at the cove, and Calard guessed that he had heard or seen something of the Bretonnians’ arrival. They are probably sentries, he thought.

Anara and Reolus gave the pair no mind and continued to climb up the shale-strewn path, and the Norscans walked straight through them. The ghost images continued on, still bickering, and Calard flinched as they walked through him. He felt nothing except a momentarily flicker of warmth as the glowing centre in the middle of the Norscan’s chests touched him in passing.

Marvelling at the powers wielded by his sister, Calard and the knights topped the shale path and found themselves looking down upon the Norscans’ camp. Tens of thousands of warriors were picketed in the snow, their tents dotting the landscape as far as the eye could see. The hills rolled out before them, and Calard saw endless campfires surrounded by marauders who were eating, drinking and fighting.

Every one of them had a burning sphere of light in their breast, and he saw that some were brighter than others. A couple of the warriors, perhaps one or two in every thousand, had fires that burnt with such white-hot intensity that it hurt his eyes to look upon them.

An altercation between two clearly inebriated warriors escalated, cheered on by their comrades, and one of them buried his axe in the other’s neck. Blood rendered black in Calard’s monotone vision sprayed out across the snow, and with another blow the head was severed from the warrior’s shoulders. The victor hefted the head of his opponent high into the air, but this was not what Calard was focusing on. His eyes had been drawn to the soul-light of the defeated Norscan. He watched as the sphere flickered and grew faint before blinking out completely, like a candle snuffed out.

Quickly, whispered Anara, and the knights followed as the damsel and the grail knight led the way up towards the headland, towards the imposing chapel positioned there.

They moved through the Norscan camp, walking straight through tents and warriors like ghosts. An immense warhound lifted its head at their passing, growling, but a drunken Norscan kicked the beast into silence.

They walked straight through cooking fires on which animals and men were spitted, feeling nothing as they passed through the flames.

In the distance they could hear the trumpeting of the shaggy mammoths that had wreaked such havoc against the army of Lyonesse, though where those beasts were caged or picketed, Calard knew not.

Everywhere he looked, Calard saw vile evidence of the Norscans’ brutality. Bodies were impaled on spears driven into the earth, their skin stripped from their muscles and loathsome symbols carved and branded into their flesh. Warriors were stretching the flayed skins of men across their shields and massive pauldrons, daubing their breastplates and faces with blood.

Warriors that seemed more beast than men hunkered down over the butchered carcasses of animals, ripping them apart with hands and teeth in the manner of dogs, growling at anyone that came near.

They passed near a warrior whose soul-light burnt with particularly fierce intensity. The hulking Norscan was bedecked head to toe in black armour, and a single twisting horn sprouted from his helmet. A pair of serrated swords were crossed upon his back, each blade covered in glowing runes of dark power, and a forked tongue darted from his mouth as if he were tasting the air as Anara steered them past him. He stood up, sniffing, searching for them, but his eyes, which Calard saw were as black as pitch, passed over them without focussing – clearly even with his daemon-given powers he could still not see them.

Every instinct screamed for Calard to draw his sword and attack these vile, heathen barbarians. Their very presence was an affront to the goddess, and he was quivering with hatred as they picked their way through the enemy encampment. These were the ones who had butchered so many honourable knights three weeks earlier, and he dearly wished to enact the Lady’s vengeance upon them.

They climbed in a direct line towards the defiled chapel at the top of the headland. Bloody standards made from the flensed skin of his kinsmen were rammed into the earth outside the temple, and they fluttered and waved in a strong wind that he could not feel. The ornate stained glass windows of the chapel had been smashed, and he saw that young women wearing the garb of temple novices had been nailed to the walls, the symbols of the profane deities of the Norscans carved into their foreheads and their eyes plucked from their sockets by the carrion birds that perched on every available roost. There were tens of thousands of the crows and ravens, and they squabbled and fought for positions out of the wind.

She is near, came Anara’s voice.

If Anara felt any outrage at the wrong done to the temple of her patron deity, she gave no outward sign. The doors of the temple had been smashed inwards with colossal force, hinges ripped completely from the wall, and the bodies of innocents were strewn around, nigh on unrecognisable as having once been men and women. Most of them had been half-consumed by carrion birds and warhounds.

Reolus made to climb the steps and enter the temple, but Anara stopped him with a hand upon his arm, and proceeded to walk around the outside of the temple, heading for its rear.

Dim sounds of revelry could be heard coming from within as the knights followed the damsel’s lead.

They were high up on the headland here, with sheer cliffs that fell away into the ocean far below. Calard jerked in shock as there was a dim crash and a man fell through him to land at his feet, an axe embedded in his back, amid a shower of glass. Calard stepped away from the man as he tried to rise then fell forward, dying, his soul-fire flickering.

Calard continued on after the others, rounding the rear of the temple. What he saw made him recoil in horror.

A circle of eight thick wooden pylons had been driven into the ground, their fire-blackened lengths daubed with infernal symbols. They were hazy and indistinct, as was everything in this cursed shadow-land. Affixed to each pole was a chain. The eight lengths of chain met in the centre of the circle, where they were welded to a thick collar of metal encircling the neck of a young woman.

The woman was heavily pregnant, and a black iron brank was locked around her head like a cage. The device was akin to the scolds’ bridles that were sometimes used to punish gossiping or argumentative peasant women, but this one filled Calard with loathing, for there was something deeply unnatural about it. Shadows writhed around it like living things, and it was engraved with vile runes that burnt with fiery intensity, binding the woman as powerfully as the brank itself.

A crude awning – a heavy canvas sail of a Norscan longship, Calard realised – had been strung up over the woman, giving her a modicum of protection from the elements, and fires burnt outside the circle. Furs were strewn beneath her, but the tension of the chains ensured that the woman was unable to lie down upon them – the best she could manage was to sit slumped, her head lolling forward, with the chains keeping her in an upright position. To treat anyone with such disregard made Calard feel sick to the pit of his stomach, but to do so to a pregnant young lady was beyond reason.

A score of armed guards stood around the circle, talking amongst themselves, backs to the fires to ensure they maintained their night-sight, but Calard paid them no mind, his eyes focusing on the slumped form of the pregnant woman. Even shadowy and ghostlike as she was, with her face obscured by the repulsive brank locked around her skull, he realised that there was something sickeningly familiar about her.

‘Elisabet,’ he breathed in horror.

The ghostlike figures of the closest sentries snapped to attention as he spoke aloud, their heads turning in his direction.

One of them muttered something under his breath, staring straight at Calard and making a warding motion with one hand. Calard reached for his blade, his hand closing around its ornate hilt.

The other sentries were hefting shields and weapons, gazing around them warily. As if awoken by the sudden tension of her captors, the imprisoned figure of Elisabet moaned and lifted her head, the chains attached to her neck clinking.

‘In the Lady’s name,’ breathed Calard in horror, taking an involuntary step forwards.

One of the sentries barked a word in the harsh Norscan language, and made to lift a horn to his lips and sound a warning that would bring the entire Norse army running.

Reolus was suddenly in motion. He drew his sacred sword, Durendyal, and in this shadowy in-between realm it blazed with ethereal flames. Similar flames seemed to burst into life from the grail knight’s eyes, burning with the fury of the goddess, and the Norscans fell back from him, terror written on their faces at the ghostly apparition taking shape before them.

Then the grail knight cut down the first sentry, his blade first hacking through the Norscan’s horn just as it touched the warrior’s lips and slicing cleanly through the man’s head, carving through teeth, skull and brain matter with the ease of a hot knife cutting through pig-fat. Before the top half of the man’s head had slid away from the rest of this body, Reolus had stepped past the warrior and killed another two men, his blade sliding through the muscled torso of one and the other dying instantly as Reolus skewered his head-on the length of his sacred blade. He moved with such sublime grace and speed that no one had even made a move, and three men were already dead.

‘Take them!’ roared Reolus, and Calard tore the blade of Garamont from his scabbard, leaping towards an axe-wielding ghost. He saw that his own sword too was glowing faintly, and his vision shimmered before him as he stepped out of the realm of shadows and back into reality.

Sensation returned to Calard in a flood, almost stunning him with their vibrancy. The sound of battle around him was loud, and he felt the biting wind tugging at his cloak, felt the heat of the fires nearby. He smelt blood and death, and he plunged his sword into the throat of the Norscan before the hulking warrior could react to his sudden appearance. The warrior’s ice-blue eyes widened as the blade slid through his flesh and severed his spine, blood bubbling up from the fatal wound.

Laudethaire and Maloric hacked down another pair of the sentries, and as Calard kicked the Norscan off his blade, he saw Bertelis sunder the skull of another, his blade carving down through the man’s head. Reolus spun through the melee, a living avatar of the Lady, killing and dismembering with every pass of his blade.

All the guards were dead in seconds, and Calard ran to Elisabet’s side. She had stood at the sound of battle, and he could see her eyes wide as she stared around her through the bars of her imprisoning headgear. He looked down at her distended, pregnant belly, his mind reeling. How was this possible? When last he had seen her, no more than three weeks earlier, she had been as slim as ever, a petite girl.

Calard looked helplessly at the chains that bound Elisabet, having no idea how to release her from their bondage, but Anara was at his side suddenly. She placed her hands upon the seamless iron collar around Elisabet’s neck. Speaking a single word, there was a flash of light and then the collar fell away.

Now that the chains no longer held her upright, Elisabet slumped forwards, and Calard caught her lightly in his arms.

‘There is powerful sorcery at work here,’ said Reolus as he looked down upon the brank enclosing Elisabet’s head.

‘Get it off her,’ said Calard.

‘I shall try,’ said Anara, and she placed her hands upon the cage of black iron, closing her eyes. Smoke began to rise from under her palms, and Calard gagged as the smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils. Elisabet, unable to speak because of the iron gag of the brank, moaned in distress, and Calard held her strangely unfamiliar body tightly against him.

‘Brother… Did you?’ asked Bertelis, staring at Elisabet’s pregnant form.

Calard shook his head in response.

The horrible runes engraved upon the iron bars of the brank blazed a deep red, and Calard saw beads of sweat begin to run down Anara’s face and her brow crease in pain. Smoke and the stink of burning flesh continued to rise from the damsel’s hands, and the runes binding the ironwork burned ever brighter. At last there came a sound like the cracking of ice, and the ironwork broke, falling away from Elisabet’s head and dropping to the ground, the skin of Anara’s palms still attached.

Anara fell backwards in a swoon, her hands blistered and raw as if she had grasped a red-hot poker from the coals. Reolus lowered her gently to the ground, and Calard looked down into Elisabet’s face.

She was looking up at him with a smile that made his blood run cold, and as he stared into her eyes, they turned as black as night, as if ink had been dropped into her irises and was spreading rapidly to cover the entire surface of her orbs.

Calard released her, recoiling as if he had suddenly found himself embracing a cadaver.

‘You’re not Elisabet…’ he groaned.

‘No, I’m not,’ said the thing that wore Elisabet’s body. Then it began to speak in a tongue that made Calard’s stomach clench in horror, and maddening, horned shadows rose up around him. He heard malignant whispering in his ears, and his sword dropped from numb fingers.

Then he felt insubstantial talons pierce his flesh and he gasped in agony and fell to his knees.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The interior of the despoiled chapel was filled with wood smoke and the smells of sweat and cooking meat, and the sounds of drunken revelry rose to the rafters. Warriors shouted, clinked drinking horns and laughed as a young skald recounted the gore-soaked adventures of Knut the Bloody, a Skaeling berserker who had fought alongside the ever-chosen Asavar Kul.

This revered hero had taken part in the sacking of the Kislevite city of Praag two hundred years earlier, before, glutted with blood, he ventured northward, journeying into the heart of the god-touched lands, there where dreams and nightmares become reality. The Skaelings were enjoying the tale, roaring their approval as the skald re-enacted a battle fought between Knut and a mighty bloodthirster of Kharnath that ended with him breaking the back of the monster over his knee, and the powers that be granting him daemonhood and eternal life as a reward for his tenacity.

In one corner of the chapel a fight was underway. More warriors were sent sprawling and tables overflowing with food and drink were sent smashing to the stone floor as a massive, bearded huskarl laid around him in a drunken fury. He had already sent one man crashing through a stained glass window, an axe buried in his back, and half a dozen others were strewn around him, bloody and broken. Another was felled, bellowing as the huskarl shattered his forearm with a hammer-blow of his fist.

Styrbjorn reclined in his throne atop the stepped dais at the end of the chapel, only half listening to the ranting Chaos dwarf, Zumarah, who was speaking angrily, standing one step from the top of the dais, spitting his words out as he addressed the Skaeling jarl.

‘…promised me slaves, manling,’ the dwarf was saying. ‘And here we sit on this Hashut-forsaken rock, doing nothing!’

‘Patience, Zumarah,’ said Styrbjorn, waving away the words of the infuriated dwarf. ‘Once the witch bears my son, then we shall take the fight back to the southlanders.’

‘You speak lies and poison, manling,’ said Zumarah, placing a foot on the top of the dais. Styrbjorn’s warhounds were instantly on their feet, baring their teeth and snarling at the dwarf. Unfazed, the dwarf merely snarled back at them, though he did not move any closer to the Skaeling jarl. Styrbjorn barked a command, and his warhounds dropped to their haunches, tails between their legs, though their unblinking eyes remained fixed on Zumarah.

‘Once the bitch spawns the child, you will be taking it back to Skaeling lands, mark my words,’ said the dwarf. ‘If you do not deliver on your promise to me, I shall take my slaves from amongst your own people, starting with your bitch daughters.’

The shield-maidens Fraygerd and Hrefna, standing to either side of their father’s throne, bristled. Hrefna half-drew her sword from her scabbard, her face twisted in anger. The dwarf, standing only half the height of the tall, blonde warrior woman but easily three times her weight, snarled and reached for the double-headed axe strapped to his back.

‘Let me cut his heart from his chest and offer it to mighty Kharnath, father,’ spoke Hrefna.

Styrbjorn held up a hand to forestall any violence, and cast an amused glance at the dwarf.

‘It’s a foolish individual who insults a Skaeling woman, Zumarah,’ he said. ‘Their fury is far deadlier than any man’s.’

‘And it’s a dead man who thinks he can swindle a dawi, manling,’ snarled the dwarf.

Bjarki was seated cross-legged at Styrbjorn’s feet, head down as he listened to the conversations occurring around him, and he smiled to himself. In truth, he agreed with the dwarf’s sentiment; Styrbjorn was growing soft. He had believed that the Skaeling jarl would stay on in Bretonnia after the great victory at the crow fields, carving a swathe of destruction across the length and breadth of his hated birth land, and he had longed to be a part of the slaughter of the people who had turned their back on him. Long had he dreamed of returning to his father’s estate and killing everyone there. He had not expected the jarl to flee like a frightened child to this island sanctuary to see his son birthed in solace, stalling Bjarki’s blood-dreams of vengeance.

‘Your son should be born surrounded by death!’ Bjarki had argued with Styrbjorn the day after the victory. ‘The first sounds he hears should be the din of battle; the screams of the dying, the roar of the victor, the clash of steel and the rending of flesh!’

Styrbjorn had grabbed him around the throat, his face flushing in anger and his eyes glinting with the gods’ favour.

‘Who is jarl here? Remember your place, little bear.’

Styrbjorn had shoved him away, and Bjarki’s hand had leaped to the welts around his throat. He was not used to such treatment. As wiry and tautly muscled as he was, he was still slight of frame and puny next to the hulking Skaelings – and Styrbjorn was larger even than any of his chosen huskarls – but few would dare incur the wrath of the gods by laying a hand upon one of their chosen representatives.

Before he could snarl a curse, Styrbjorn had levelled one meaty finger at him.

‘Don’t go against me in this, Bjarki,’ the jarl had warned in a dangerous voice. ‘You are like a son to me, but I will not risk my blood-son by staying here in this foreign land.’

Bjarki knew that many of the Skaeling warriors were unhappy with the decision to leave the southlander’s lands, and he had heard whispers of malcontent amongst the chieftains that had sworn themselves to Styrbjorn. In truth, if he did announce that he was sailing back to Norsca after the birth of the daemon-child, the seer would not be at all surprised if a leadership challenge arose, and that Styrbjorn was forced to fight to maintain the dominance he had held these past decades.

Bjarki came back to the present, his head snapping up as he felt the sundering of the rune-magic binding the witch, Haegtesse.

‘The witch!’ he snarled, leaping to his feet, interrupting the bickering between the dwarf and the Skaelings. ‘She’s free!’

Styrbjorn rose instantly from his throne, snatching up the twin axes, Garmr and Gormr.

‘With me!’ he roared deafeningly, his god-touched voice booming through the chapel. All activity ceased instantly, the young skald freezing mid-sentence, and giving pause to the bearded huskarl, who was holding another man by the scruff of the neck, fist poised to cave in his face.

Then the jarl was racing through the chapel, smashing men out of his way in his hurry, warhounds at his heels, and he angled towards a side-door leading out to the rear. Bjarki darted forward in the wake of his jarl, flanked by Styrbjorn’s daughters, and every warrior present followed a second later, swords and axes bared.

It felt like blades of ice were being driven into his flesh, and Calard gasped in agony as they pushed towards his heart. He’d never felt such pain in his life, and his eyes were wide as he tried to focus on the face of the shadow-creature before him.

It was no more solid than a firelight shadow, and he could see straight through it, though the impression of a blank, featureless face could be vaguely discerned. It turned its head on the side and leant in close to him, staring intently at him as if intrigued by the pain it was inflicting. He groaned in excruciating torment as the shadow’s talons encircled his heart. He knew that it could kill him at any moment; all it had to do was clench its hand and his heart would burst like an overripe melon under a hammer.

The nightmarish shade seemed to be savouring his torture; he saw its outline shudder as if in the throes of pleasure as it fed upon his pain, and heard its whispering hisses increase in excitement. He stared in horror as it lifted its other hand towards his face, needle-like talons of black smoke poised to ram into his brain. He could do nothing against it, paralysed in agony and terror.

The creature’s hissing stopped abruptly and it swung its strangely ovoid, blank face away from Calard, as if it had heard a sound. Reolus’s blade, gleaming like quicksilver, sliced through its insubstantial cranium, and it emitted a horrible, wailing screech as its head came apart.

Calard gasped and fell forward as the shade pulled its talons from his flesh, its long limbs contorting as it reeled in agony. Its shadowy head was in two halves, each hanging loose from its shoulders, and for a second Calard thought he was going insane, for a second image flickered before his eyes, superimposed upon the outline of the shade.

It was a skinless, horrific thing and it writhed in agony as a substance like oily smoke rose from its split head. It had no eyes or nose, just a lipless mouth filled with tiny, serrated teeth. The daemon emitted a chattering wail that might have been pain, and thrashed around as if in the midst of a fit. Calard saw the image for only a fraction of a second before the daemon was once more as insubstantial as a shadow, but he knew that he had glimpsed the creature’s true form.

Then it was gone, dissipating into smoke, leaving behind it a stench akin to rotting, foetid meat. Dimly, Calard heard the frantic cries of his fellow knights, and Bertelis gasped in pain.

Calard’s chest was numb where the daemon’s talons had pushed through his flesh but feeling had returned to his fingers and he swept up his fallen sword as he leaped to his feet. Shadows danced all around, and he saw one of them rising up between him and Bertelis, who was trying to keep it at bay with sweeps of his sword as he backed away. Calard, looking through the shadowy daemon, could see his brother’s face contorted in horror.

The daemon glided forwards and he saw Bertelis’s sword pass clear through its body. It had no visible effect on the shade, which loomed over him with taloned arms raised high, ready to plunge them down into his body. Calard cried out and threw himself forward, and he slashed the blade of Garamont through the insubstantial creature’s body.

Its whispers turned into wails and it swung towards him, oily smoke coiling from its wound. It lashed out with one long, taloned arm, and again Calard saw it as it truly was for a fraction of second. The exposed muscles of its skinless arm glistened wetly, and sharp, curving bone protruded six inches from the bloody flesh of its fingertips. Calard leapt back from its strike and struck with his blade, which was gleaming with silver light. He severed the daemon’s arm at the elbow and it wailed again. He cleaved his sword through its neck with his return strike. It felt like he struck nothing more solid than air, but the daemon dissipated into the night, leaving a rancid stink behind it.

Two of Laudethaire’s Parravonians were down, twitching and writhing, and Calard saw a third slump to the ground as one of the shadow daemons plunged its talons into his head. He saw the man twitching horribly, blood running from his nose and his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he went into violent convulsions, arms and legs rigid and his back arching unnaturally.

Horrifyingly, the dying man seemed to attract the interest of the daemons, which bent over him, their heads lowered so that they were only an inch from the faces of the convulsing man, as if utterly fascinated by the spectacle, forgetting everything else that was going on around them. Several of the daemons crowded around each dying man, completely absorbed as they thrashed out their last moments of life.

Laudethaire slashed furiously with his own blade, and two of the shadows disappeared into coiling smoke. Calard saw Maloric backing away from another pair of the daemons that materialised out of nowhere, his face pale as his sword passed harmlessly through them. Bertelis swore as he slashed his own blade through the head of another creature, to no effect.

‘Stay with me,’ said Calard, keeping the creatures at bay with the ancestral sword of Garamont, which was said to have been blessed by the Lady of the Lake. He had always thought that was just a story, but now he believed it. The shadow-wraiths were wary of the glittering blade, and they kept their distance now, chattering and whispering.

Now with some space around him, Calard cast his gaze around the circle.

Anara was picking herself up from the ground, leaning upon her white staff, her eyes locked onto the… thing resembling Elisabet. Calard cried out as a trio of shadows darted towards his sister, but he needn’t have bothered. As they descended on her, ethereal claws raised, the damsel whispered a word and slammed the butt of her staff into the ground. A sphere of light flashed into existence, completely enclosing her, blinding and crackling with power. Two of the daemons were caught in the blast, and they were instantly rendered to smoke. The third recoiled away, only to be cut in half by a flick of Reolus’s gleaming sword, which he was wielding in two hands with consummate skill.

The grail knight, his eyes blazing with fey power, was closing on the witch, who was cackling maniacally. From over her shoulders and under her outstretched arms dozens of shadow-wraiths were flying forwards at the holy paladin, hurling themselves into his path as the witch backed away towards the cliff edge.

Reolus hacked his blade around him in a blinding dance as he stepped forwards, his body angled as if he was battling against a gale. Scores of shadow daemons flew against him, intangible clawed hands reaching to impale him but he carved through them, in constant motion, slicing his way towards the witch.

Calard gasped as he felt frozen knife talons plunge into his leg, and the entire limb went numb. Bertelis cried out, but there was nothing he could do against the revenants, and Calard knew that he would have died then and there had it not been for Laudethaire, who sliced his own gleaming blade through the back of the shade looming up before him. It screamed in torment as its body dissipated into the air.

With a nod of thanks, Calard spun around, his blade leaving a trailing arc of light through the air as he forced another shade back. He saw Maloric surrounded, and the Sangasse nobleman lifted his shield before him as one of the phantoms struck at him. It was a futile gesture, for its taloned arm merely passed through it, and Maloric cried out.

For a moment, Calard’s rival looked straight at him, looking through his attacker, and Calard saw the desperation in the knight’s eyes. Calard knew that Maloric was too proud to cry for help from the likes of him, and as a silent communication passed between the two rivals, he saw the flare of hatred in the Sangasse noble’s eyes.

He doesn’t expect me to go to his aid, Calard realised, and again he felt a contradiction of emotions: mild satisfaction in knowing that Maloric was about to die; a twinge of dishonour that the Sangasse expected him to do nothing.

Another revenant rose up behind Maloric. The Sangasse earl did not register this new threat, and he was unprepared as the shade readied to plunge its knife-like claws into his head.

Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Dimly, he heard Norse war cries and realised that they had been discovered. They would be overrun in moments, but that didn’t seem to matter at this instant. Calard’s entire world shrunk; all he saw was his mortal enemy about to be cut down.

Then everything was moving quickly again.

Calard roared a cry of warning and leapt forwards. His blade struck one of the daemons standing in his path, which dispersed into amorphous, stinking smoke, its true form flashing before his eyes momentarily. Maloric, perhaps thinking that Calard was going to strike him down next, lifted his shield protectively and drew his sword back, ready to plunge it into Calard’s neck, unaware of the danger behind him.

The shade rearing up behind Maloric struck, and Calard threw himself forwards to intervene. Even as insubstantial, shadow-talons stabbed down towards the Sangasse earl’s helmet, Calard thrust his gleaming sword over Maloric’s shoulder, impaling the daemon.

For a second he saw its blind, skinless face spitted on his sword tip before it disappeared.

Maloric’s sword was just inches from Calard’s throat, his eyes were wide in shock. Calard swung away from him to engage the other darting shadows surrounding them both.

Laudethaire lifted a curving, silver horn to his lips and blasted a long note upon it, before turning to face the onslaught of Norscans closing in on them. More of his companions had been overwhelmed now, for their weapons were useless against the daemons. Clusters of the shadowy daemons still lingered over their twitching bodies, heads lowered over them in fascination, chittering excitedly.

Reolus was continuing to battle against a veritable flood of daemons. They had completely surrounded him, stabbing and slashing. It was impossible to discern how many of them there were, for their forms blurred together into one, nightmarish twisting fury, spinning around the grail knight and almost completely obscuring him from sight.

Calard dragged his gaze away as again he heard the roar of enemies made of flesh and blood. A tide of Norscans was racing towards them, axes and spears raised. At their fore was a massive beast of a man whom he recognised as their war leader, a seven foot tall giant with grey-streaked hair and beard. He wielded an axe in each hand and his face was a mask of rage.

A pair of giant warhounds raced out in front, outpacing their master as they headed directly for Calard, but the warlord barked a command, pointing towards the witch. They changed direction instantly, heading towards the heavily pregnant noblewoman, who was still backing away towards the edge of the headland.

Laudethaire blew another note on his silver horn, and cutting through the shadowy body of another daemon, he swung to face the onslaught of Norscans.

Anara was shouting words that Calard could not understand. He realised that she had been incanting for some time, and as she reached a crescendo she slammed her staff into the ground again. A blast of light and wind radiated out around her, exploding outwards with colossal force.

Calard was thrown to the ground, half blinded, but as he blinked his eyes and struggled to his knees, he saw that the last of the daemons were gone.

The witch too seemed to have been stunned by the sheer power that Anara had unleashed, but she recovered quickly. Calard felt sick to the pit of his stomach as he saw the features of his Elisabet twisted by hatred and evil as she stared at Anara, and he felt the witch gathering her power.

Lightning crackled in her black eyes, but before she had a chance to unleash it, one of the giant Norscan warhounds struck her, bowling her over and jaws clamping around one of her arms. There was the sickening sound of bones crunching as the beast bit down hard, and the witch screamed in agony, her concentration shattered. The second hound leaped on her, biting into her thigh and shaking its head from side to side, throwing her to the ground like a rag doll.

Then the Norscans were upon them. The giant enemy war leader claimed the first kill, cleaving his axe through the body of one of the Parravonians, the huge weapon shearing through plate armour, flesh, ribs and spinal column, and blood splattered everyone nearby. The knight fell, hacked completely in two through the chest.

An axe arced for Calard’s head, and he managed to turn it aside with a frantic swipe of his blade, though the force of the blow jarred his arm. A spear-tip screeched a line across his helmet, and he lashed out with his sword blindly. A solid boot slammed into his chest, knocking him backwards to the ground.

A wild-haired Norscan leapt on his chest, straddling him. This one was not nearly as large as the others, and his hair and eyes were dark where the others were generally flaxen-haired and pale-eyed. Still, for all that he seemed possibly even more savage than his comrades, with a crazed look in his eyes that was somehow akin to the unnatural light he sometimes saw in Anara’s eye, and he wondered if this could be some feral Norscan sorcerer or priest. His tautly muscled chest was covered in tattoos, and he wore thick, matted furs over his shoulders. Calard’s eyes focused on the serpentine dagger the Norscan lifted up in both hands, blade angled downwards, ready to be plunged into his neck. He fought him, struggling to throw the manic Norscan off him, but to no avail.

A shield smashed into the Norscan’s face, breaking his nose and knocking him off Calard’s chest, and Bertelis stepped in front of his brother, defending him as he scrambled back to his feet.

Another of the Parravonians was hacked down by the Norse warlord, split from crown to sternum, and another had his head shorn from his shoulders by the thick-bladed sword of a black-armoured bear of a man who looked incredibly drunk.

The enraged gaze of the warlord was fixed behind the knights desperately forming a defensive circle against the Norscans surrounding them, and Calard risked a glance behind him to see what was happening. Only feet from the edge of the headland, he saw Reolus kick one of the warhounds away from Elisabet. The animal scrabbled frantically, but went over the edge, yelping as it fell a hundred feet onto the rocks below. The grail knight impaled the other beast with a downward strike of his blade, plunging it down with both hands like a huge dagger. The sword was driven through the warhound’s thickly muscled neck, pinning it to the ground as it died, thrashing and snarling, hot blood pooling beneath it.

Calard heard the Norse chieftain roar in fury as he launched himself towards the grail knight, barging his own warriors out of the way in his haste.

The witch-Elisabet, one hand clutching her distended belly, was trying to regain her feet. One arm was a floppy, blood-smeared ruin, but there was still power in her, and she inhaled sharply, electricity crackling in her eyes.

Again Laudethaire blew a note on his silver horn, and the air behind the witch was suddenly filled with beating wings and flailing hooves as a white, equine shape soared up from the edge of the cliff, a knight in its saddle. The witch spun around and extended one hand towards the pegasus, and arcs of contorting energy leapt from her fingertips to strike the beast in the chest.

It screamed as its flesh withered and atrophied beneath the coruscating dark energy, as if all the moisture in its body were suddenly drawn out. It muscles shrivelled and its skin shrank. In a heartbeat its ribs were protruding like those of a month old corpse, and its head was little more than a skull covered in a taut layer of dried skin, shrivelled eyes lolling in empty sockets.

Bones snapped like dry twigs, unable to hold the pegasus’s own bodyweight, and the noble beast toppled out of the air as its wings snapped with audible cracks. It hit the ground and all four legs were instantly broken. Desiccated, but somehow still alive, the pegasus toppled backwards over the cliff’s edge, taking its rider with it.

The witch spun back towards Anara, but the damsel thrust the point of her staff forward, striking her squarely between the eyes. The blow felled the witch instantly, and she slumped to the ground, unconscious.

More pegasus rose up from over the edge of the headland, and they swooped down into the frantic melee. They buffeted the Norscans with their powerful wings, breaking arms and knocking men back, their hooves caving in skulls. Only one of the beasts had a rider in the saddle, and that knight drove his lance through the body of a Norscan, impaling him.

‘Mount! Mount!’ shouted Laudethaire, leaping into the saddle of his own steed, which had cleared a space around its master. A hurled spear struck him in the shoulder, driving up underneath his pauldron and embedding deep in his body, and he rocked backwards, gasping in agony.

Bertelis took a heavy blow on his shield that bent it out of shape, though his lightning riposte slashed open his attacker’s throat, and blood fountained from the fatal wound. He spun, and grabbing the saddle horn of a pegasus, he hauled himself up.

There was a rearing pegasus before Calard, keeping the Norscan temporarily at bay with its flashing hooves.

‘What about Reolus and Anara?’ shouted Calard, trying to see through the press of pegasus and men.

‘They’re fine,’ shouted Laudethaire, wrenching the spear from his shoulder and hurling it away from him. ‘Get in the saddle, Garamont!’

Calard stepped into the stirrups and was up in the saddle in an instant. A blade arced towards him and he met it with a blow of his own, the sound of steel on steel ringing out loudly. He hacked the blade down as the pegasus reared and flapped its wings, carving through a Norscan’s helmet and skull.

Guiding his steed with his knees, Calard turned around, casting a wary eye around him.

A pegasus nearby went down, an axe carving its legs from beneath it, splashing its pristine white body with blood, and another knight was killed, dragged from the saddle by a frenzied warrior woman and hacked apart. The Norse had encircled them now; the brief respite that they had enjoyed with the arrival of the pegasus was now lost.

Laudethaire was already airborne, and the other pegasus were eager to fly, following his lead.

Another of the noble creatures was killed, an axe shattering its chest and it spilt its rider over its head as it ploughed into the ground, rolling on top of the knight and crushing the life from him.

Calard slashed down at a Norscan straining to grab his reins. He sliced the fingers from the marauder’s hand, and narrowly avoided being struck from the saddle by a wildly aimed axe-strike.

‘Go! Go!’ he urged, kicking the pegasus hard, and it broke into a gallop, bowling Norscans out of the way, and then he was in the air. A spear sliced past his head, and he saw another of the pegasus fall screaming as it was struck by a hurled axe, the heavy weapon spinning end over end before breaking the beast’s right wing.

As he rose into the air, he glanced around towards the headland. He saw Anara in the saddle of a pegasus, and Reolus climbing into the saddle of another, cradling the unconscious form of the witch that wore Elisabet’s form.

Calard saw the enemy warlord launch himself towards Reolus, roaring in outrage. Anara was in his way, and her pegasus reared as the Norscan bore down on her, silver-shod hooves flashing as it rose into the air. The Norscan came on, undaunted by the power in the beast’s limbs, and he grabbed it by its bridle, dragging it back down to earth in an inhuman display of strength. Even as he pulled the pegasus off balance, he slammed his axe into its neck, and blood sprayed.

Reolus’s pegasus could not possibly carry three people, and Calard tugged frantically on the reins, dragging his steed’s head around towards his sister. She had rolled clear of her dying mount, and was facing the towering Norscan looming before her.

Calard guided his pegasus down towards the warlord from behind, and his blade sliced through the air as they dipped low.

The Norscan sensed the attack coming and hurled himself to the side, throwing himself into a roll, avoiding Calard’s blade by scant inches. The pegasus hit the ground running, and Calard reached towards Anara with one hand. They gripped each other’s forearms, and the damsel swung up behind him. The powerful steed continued to gallop for a few steps before it leaped out over the edge of the cliff, and they soared into the updraft.

Calard glanced over his shoulder and saw Reolus, bearing the unconscious and pregnant body of Elisabet, launch into the air behind them. The massive Norscan chieftain standing on the cliff’s edge roared in outrage, eyes blazing in fury.

Turning, Calard leant forward in the saddle and patted his pegasus mount on the neck.

Bjarki moved to stand alongside Styrbjorn, wiping the blood of his broken nose from his face. The jarl stared in fury at the white shapes of the pegasus flying into the distance, heading eastward.

‘I want her back, Bjarki,’ Styrbjorn said. He looked down at the seer, his eyes blazing with the fire of the gods. ‘If it means killing every single one of these southlander whoresons, I want her back.’

Bjarki smiled and licked his sharpened teeth in anticipation.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Inside the walls of Castle Lyonesse, in the shadow of the looming keep, Chlod shivered and stood as straight as his hunched back allowed. The yeoman warden stalked up and down the ranks of peasants, scowling as he barked orders at them. Chlod had been one of the lucky ones – only a tiny fraction of the population that inhabited the township on the mainland had been allowed to make the crossing and take shelter within the castle walls.

The Norscans had appeared on the horizon at dawn and panic had spread like lice through a flophouse. The sails of countless longships could be seen in the distance, spread as far as the eye could see. Peasants in their tens of thousands had streamed to the docklands, desperate to board one of the barges that ferried between the town and the island fortress of the duke, just offshore.

In times of peace, those barges ran back and forth from the duke’s castle half a dozen times a day, loaded with produce, servants and taxes. The ferry-masters had been serving their duke in such a manner for countless generations, and they knew their craft well. Only in the most turbulent of seas were they reluctant to make the crossing.

A growing, panicked mob of peasants had raced to the docks, fighting each other in desperation to get aboard the flat-bottomed vessels, but they had been met by a garrison of men-at-arms, who were determined not to let them pass. Scores were killed in the ensuing ruckus, but the crowds had been held at bay until a contingent of knights had arrived. The duke’s knights had ridden into the crowd, killing scores before the remainder had scattered.

Only those who were judged able to fight had been allowed to make the crossing, for there was a finite amount of space within the castle walls; there was no hope of it providing shelter for everyone. Those deemed unable to aid in the defence of the castle – including women, children, the elderly and the infirm – had been advised by the duke’s men-at-arms to abandon their homes and strike westward, to seek shelter in the villages a day’s ride away. No escort was offered – every able man was going to be needed in the forthcoming siege.

One loudmouth peasant merchant, fat with self-righteousness, had berated the men-at-arms, shouting that it was the duke’s duty to protect those who laboured in his service, those who paid him taxes. Chlod had backed away from the merchant, as had all the other peasants nearby, knowing what was to come. The obese man had been clubbed to the ground by the soldiers, leaving him a broken, bloody mess in the mud. No one else had voiced their displeasure after that. They knew better. They understood and accepted their lot in life, and did not voice such complaints; or at least not within earshot of the men-at-arms.

Chlod had heard a rumour that the famous knight Laudethaire, Beloved of Parravon, had conducted a daring raid against the Norse two nights ago and rescued a beautiful princess from the clutches of the barbarians. He had also heard that the story was being spread by individuals in the pay of the Parravonian knight, and while some might have said that was mere slander, Chlod could well believe it was true.

The story had sounded romantic and heroic in its increasingly exaggerated retellings the night before, but now that the consequences of it were becoming clear, Chlod dearly wished that the noblewoman had been left where she was. The nobility had never done anything for him but make his life a constant misery; it would be just his luck to die now because of one upper-class wench. All those who had not been allowed to seek shelter within the walls of Castle Lyonesse had probably been condemned to death – some ten thousand peasants, all told. He found it morbidly amusing, and not at all surprising, that the nobility would happily sacrifice so many for the life of one of their own.

Nevertheless, Chlod happily admitted to being a selfish individual, and he was just pleased that he had managed to be amongst those deemed sturdy enough to help in the defence of Castle Lyonesse. In truth, he had no desire to fight – he had been engaged in one of the noble’s wars before, in Bordeleaux, and frankly it had scared the stuffing out of him – but he reckoned that he was safer within these stout walls than outside them.

His judgement had proven sound. Only hours after the longships had been sighted, the Norse had surrounded the island fortress, and hundreds of their ships had been beached on the mainland. From atop the walls, the Bretonnians had watched impotently as the township on the mainland was sacked. The ash from the burning town still filled the air, falling from the sky like a dark mimicry of snowflakes. They had watched as enemy outriders had galloped westward. Chlod expected few of the peasants that had abandoned the town would survive.

Several of the Norse ships had been sunk as the immense trebuchets atop the castle tower had loosed, giant counterweights propelling the arms of the war machines at great speed. Chunks of rock were hurled high into the air, and while most fell short, splashing down into the ocean, some of the longships had ventured within range and were smashed to tinder. The Bretonnians had cheered as the waters around these wrecks had turned into a bloody, churning froth as the Norscans were devoured by the sharks following in the wake of the ships, but the mood had soon turned sombre once more as the sheer scale of the Norscan force became apparent.

Just outside the range of the trebuchets, the Norscans formed an arcing blockade around the island fastness. Longships were lashed together, forming an impenetrable wall, and hundreds upon hundreds more were beached on the mainland. A few of the ships were unlike the others – large hulks with giant cages built into their decks, though what was held in those holds Chlod could not discern. Still, the trumpeting that issued from them as hundreds of Norscans strained to drag them up the beach had threatened to make his bowels loosen.

Barbarians swarmed through the burning streets of the town, and Chlod had seen thousands of them march off to the north and south. He had hoped that perhaps they were heading off to find easier pickings elsewhere, but his hopes were dashed when, hours later, the enemy began to return with freshly felled lumber. For ladders, battering rams and such, most likely.

All through the day the enemy had worked, and now that it was approaching dusk it seemed that they were readying themselves for their first attack against the castle. Chlod shivered again. He had hoped to have slunk off and found a place to hide by now, but no such opportunity had as yet presented itself. Patience, he thought to himself. In the confusion of battle it should be easy to disappear.

In truth, Chlod didn’t expect there to be any such need, however. The walls of the castle were huge – indeed the fortress was the grandest structure that he had ever seen – he could not conceive of how the enemy could possibly tackle it.

Chlod was snapped out of his reverie as he heard the blare of a thousand horns sound.

‘Right, this is it then, you scum!’ shouted the yeoman warden who had been given the job of getting Chlod and the other untrained peasants into a semblance of a fighting force. The men around him – farmers, shopkeepers and merchants in the main – looked scared, holding their simple spears awkwardly. None of them had been given shields or armour. Few of them had ever held a weapon in their lives.

‘Don’t even think about making a run for it,’ snarled the yeoman. ‘I’ve passed the word amongst the men-at-arms that they are to kill anyone who does not stand and fight. Now get moving!’

Men-at-arms wearing white tabards with a red lion’s head on their chests flanked the new recruits, and they jabbed them forward with their halberds. Chlod found himself herded along with the rest of the group he had been assigned to, passing through the streets inside the castle toward the eastern walls.

At the bottom of the walls he paused, squinting upwards. The stairway up the inside of the wall was steep and high, and there was no banister to stop anyone from falling if they made a misstep. He swallowed thickly.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ barked one of the men-at-arms, giving Chlod a shove.

‘Afraid of heights,’ said Chlod.

The man-at-arms snorted, and cuffed him hard over the back of his head, making his teeth rattle.

‘Get moving,’ said the man, and Chlod begin the ascent, pressing himself hard up against the wall, keeping as far from the edge of the stairs as possible.

Finally, sweating and shaking, he reached the top of the towering wall. It was colder here, for there was no protection from the biting winds. Thousands of bowmen were already stood upon the walls, with bundles of arrows stacked against the battlements. Chlod pushed past them to look through the crenulations. What he saw took his breath away.

Night was falling rapidly, but the enemy could be clearly seen thanks to the fires still raging through the township on the mainland. More than a thousand longships, each one brimming with Norscans, were being rowed at speed towards the island.

Countless drums began to beat then, both from the land, the approaching ships and from aboard all the longships surrounding the castle, and tens of thousands of voices rose in a blood-curdling roar.

The siege of Lyonesse was about to begin.

Calard stood alongside Bertelis and the Empire ambassador, Dieter Weschler, as they surveyed the approaching Norscans from the top of the eastern gatehouse. Calard’s cousins, Baldemund, Huebald and Tassilo stood nearby. The knights of Bastonne were all fully armoured in plate and chain, over which they wore their heraldic tabards and cloaks. They had the visors of their helmets raised, and each stood with their hands resting upon the pommel of their swords.

Dieter, in contrast, was dressed in the fashion of the Empire, which was frankly bizarre to the eyes of the Bretonnians. He wore a black lacquered breastplate with a gold symbol of a twin-tailed comet upon it, the symbol of the barbarian hero the citizens of the Empire worshipped as their patron god. He wore knee high riding boots, bright blue tights and an outrageously prominent codpiece. The sleeves of his silk tunic were puffy and slashed, and extravagant dyed red feathers – griffon feathers he said – bobbed from the top of his black sallet.

However, it was the Empire nobleman’s weapons that drew the most disapproval from the Bretonnians. He wore a sheathed sabre – lighter and more flimsy than any Bretonnian sword – and had a pair of pistols holstered at his sides. Calard had seen Dieter use those weapons before, and though no Bretonnian noble would ever use a missile weapon anywhere outside of the hunt, he respected their killing power. Alone of the men gathered atop the gatehouse, Dieter was not paying attention to the Norse longships being rowed towards them. His whole focus was upon the weapon held reverently in his hands, a multi-barrelled handgun. He was oblivious to the looks of distaste of the knights around him as he lovingly stroked it.

‘This,’ said Dieter, speaking the Bretonnian tongue with a strong, harsh accent, ‘is von Meinkopt’s Whirling Cavalcade of Death.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Bertelis mildly.

‘Yes, she is beautiful, is she not?’ said Dieter, spinning the barrels of the weapon. ‘The repeater handgun – the epitome of superior Empire technology.’

Calard grunted, paying little attention. The Norse ships were almost within range of the trebuchets.

‘You know that the engineers of Nuln have devised a carriageless horse?’ continued Dieter. ‘A mechanical, equine steed superior in every regard to a horse of flesh and blood. A marvel.’

That got Calard’s attention, and he turned towards the Empire ambassador with a look of bafflement on his face, unsure if this was some strange joke that did not translate well. He shook his head, and turned back towards the enemy. The air was filled with the reverberation of thousands of drums, echoing in from all directions, making Calard think of the huffing beat of a forge’s bellows; or perhaps the breathing and heartbeat of some infernal god.

‘This is not a full scale assault,’ said Tassilo. ‘They will just be testing our strength.’

‘Looks like a lot of them to me,’ said Huebald.

‘What is going on over there?’ said Calard, peering past the approaching longships towards the mainland. There was a flurry of activity on a hill overlooking the beachhead claimed by the Norscans. He had already learnt that the Norscan warlord was no unthinking barbarian. The tactics he had used in defeating the army of Lyonesse spoke of a cunning strategist, and he was suspicious of what he was up to now.

‘They’re building something?’ ventured Tassilo.

Dieter pulled out an extendable cylinder with glass at either end, and raised it to one eye. The Bretonnians swapped bemused glances behind his back, not having any idea what the eccentric Imperial envoy was doing.

‘They are digging in,’ said Dieter, removing the cylinder from his eye and replacing it back in its case without explanation.

‘They are what?’ said Tassilo.

‘They are creating a defensive emplacement. It is common in my homeland. For… For…’ Dieter waved his hand, trying to find the right word to use. ‘Artillery,’ he said in Reikspiel, though the Bretonnians stared at him blankly. ‘War machines. Cannon,’ he said, finding no suitable Breton word.

‘That’s far out of range of our trebuchets,’ said Calard, eyeing the distant construction of the emplacement with unease.

As if speaking the word for the giant stone throwers was the signal, the first of the trebuchets nearby fired.

The leather sling attached to the arm of the war machine whipped through the air, flinging the chunk of rock nestled within it spinning high into the sky. The peasants arrayed along the walls below gave a cheer, and a dozen trebuchets fired, hurling their missiles into the darkening sky.

The first rock scythed down through the air, smashing the mast of a longship and plunging through its rear deck, taking a dozen oarsmen with it. The ship instantly floundered, taking on water, and Norscans were sent reeling into the turbulent waters as their vessel began to sink. Great explosions of water marked the place where other rocks had missed their mark, but several more ships were sunk as their hulls were smashed to splinters, and scores of warriors were killed as the sharks cutting through the waters gorged themselves.

Still, the number of ships far outweighed those few that were sunk, and they sliced through the water at impressive speed, their dragon-headed prows smashing aside the timbers and warriors floating in the sea before them. Banks of oars rose and fell with perfect synchronicity as the Norscans heaved at them, pulling the longships swiftly through the ocean.

Several of the longships struck rocks and submerged reefs as they neared the island, ripping great rents in their hulls and dooming the warriors aboard. But for every longship that floundered, either struck by trebuchet fire or fatally damaged by the knife-like reefs below the surface, a score successfully ran the gauntlet.

The first longships ran aground, ploughing at speed into the soft sand that ran along the eastern bank of the island, and Norscans were instantly over the edge, leaping into the knee-deep waters and racing for the walls. Hundreds of arrows were loosed as knights and yeomen spread across the battlements shouted the order to fire. The first wave of Norscans onto the beach were scythed down, but more leaped onto the sand as longship after longship joined the fray.

Scores of hastily constructed ladders were carried up the beach by teams of fur-clad warriors. The air was thick with arrows, and hundreds more Norscans were cut down, but still on they came, mindless of the casualties they were suffering, stamping uncaring over their fallen comrades.

Dieter moved towards the gatehouse battlements, his repeater handgun loaded and clasped in his hands.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, but the peasant bowmen loosing their shafts through the crenulations did not hear his polite words.

Bertelis slapped a peasant archer across the back of the head as he was reaching for an arrow, and the man, an ugly brute with warts all over his face, mumbled an apology and shuffled aside, moving to a different firing position.

Dieter threw the young Garamont noble a dark look and nodded his thanks to the peasant, before stepping up and taking aim with his handgun.

A moment later there was a deafening boom and acrid smoke billowed from the weapon, which bucked in Dieter’s hands violently. There was a clockwork clicking noise and the barrels rotated, and Dieter fired another shot. Again the barrels rotated, and he fired again. Each shot resulted in the death of an enemy, punching through breastplates and skulls with impressive force. The amount of smoke almost completely obscured the Empire ambassador, and Calard coughed. Dieter fired the last two barrels, though Calard doubted he could actually see a target now so thick was the smoke.

Blinking away the tears that the black powder brought to his eyes, Calard moved to the southern battlement of the gatehouse, looking along the long eastern wall.

Many hundreds of bowmen were positioned there, though as the first ladders were slammed against the walls, they moved back to allow the men-at-arms, knights and spear-armed peasants behind them to step forwards.

Polearms and spears pushed at the first ladders and several were knocked backwards, the Norscans already climbing them falling into their comrades swarming towards the walls behind them. Hundreds of arrows were fired from the towers and the gatehouse into the Norscans massing at the base of the walls. Men fell from ladders as arrows thudded into their bodies, though others ignored the shafts protruding from shoulders and necks and pushed on, climbing up towards the battlements.

Boiling oil and pitch was tipped over the edge of the walls, scalding flesh and searing upturned Norscan faces, making eyes run from sockets like melted fat. Still more longships ploughed into the soft sand of the western beach, though Calard saw that this was but a fraction of the Norscan’s strength.

More ladders were hefted into position along the western wall below Calard’s position on the gatehouse, and he saw the first enemy berserkers reach the battlements. They leapt over the walls, roaring incoherently, swinging axes and swords wildly.

Polearms were brought crashing down onto the horned helmets of some, killing them instantly. Spears stabbed others, but the Norscans appeared not to care about the wounds they took, and began laying about them with furious abandon. He saw a massive, near naked savage with three arrows protruding from his tattooed flesh take a sword thrust to the chest as he scrambled over the battlements, but even that didn’t stop him. With foam spilling from his mouth, he hacked the head from a knight’s shoulders, sending it flying down to the ground inside the castle walls, far below.

More Norscans pushed onto the wall, spilling into the gap formed by this berserk fiend, and Calard instantly saw the danger.

‘With me!’ he roared, drawing his sword and throwing himself down the stairs towards the breach.

A polearm slammed down onto one of the berserker’s shoulders, making his arm go limp, but still he would not fall. He hacked his axe into the neck of one peasant, and kicked another off the wall. Calard barged his way through the men-at-arms and archers, running along the wall towards the immense Norscan, who he realised must have been over six and a half feet tall.

‘For Bastonne!’ Calard shouted.

Hearing his cry, the Norscan spun around towards him, swinging his axe in a murderous arc. Calard ducked beneath the blow and rammed his sword up into the marauder’s belly. Blood burst from the shocking wound, and his guts flopped out onto the stonework, accompanied by a repellent stink. The Norscan dropped his axe, bellowing in fury and pain, but still he did not die. He grabbed Calard around the neck and squeezed, and the squeal of metal being forced out of shape sounded sharply.

A sword hacked into the berserker’s neck and he finally fell. Calard gasped, and nodding his thanks to his brother Bertelis, he ripped his sword free of the Norscan’s gut. Other knights had also seen the breach, and had raced forwards from the other side, and the last of the Norscans that had made it over the wall were cut down.

He saw a pair of peasants struggling to push a ladder back away from the wall, and cursed their stupidity.

‘Slide them to the side!’ he shouted. The peasants stared at him stupidly, and he cursed again. Sheathing the blood-smeared blade of Garamont, Calard grabbed a broad-bladed polearm from the dead hands of a man-at-arms. The weapon had a vicious hook on the backside of the blade, normally used to drag knights from the saddle, and Calard hooked this around the top of the ladder.

‘Help me!’ he ordered, and a pair of peasants leaped forward to lend him their strength. Together, they dragged the ladder to the side. Just as a snarling Norscan appeared at the top of it, the ladder began to fall. The warrior leaped for the wall, grabbing it with one hand, but a mace pulverised his skull and he fell without a sound.

The falling ladder gained momentum as it tipped, striking another some yards away and knocking it sideward. Three ladders in all were sent smashing to the ground, taking scores of Norscans falling to their deaths.

The battle raged on for an hour, and Calard’s sword arm felt like a leaden weight by the time he heard the Norscans sounding the retreat.

Thousands of the enemy had been slain, the dead littering the ground. Teams of peasants moved along the walls, clearing them of the dead. They killed any wounded Norscans they came across, though these were surprisingly few – the enemy tended to fight on until they were killed, pushing through the pain of horrendous injuries and forcing the Bretonnians to finish them with killing blows. The corpses of the Norscans were thrown unceremoniously over the walls. The Bretonnian peasants who had been killed in the first attack too were hefted over the walls.

The bodies of the knights who had fallen in the battle were carried reverently from the battlements and borne to the square down by the protected Lyonesse harbour. There they were gently placed upon pyres, their arms crossed over their chests. They were all fully armoured, and their shields were placed at their feet. They were cleaned of blood and gore as best they could, so that they looked like they were merely lying in repose. Those knights who had suffered particularly horrendous wounds were covered with their cloaks.

The entire castle was silent as the pyres were lit.

‘This is just the beginning,’ said Bertelis as the knights’ bodies were consumed in the roaring fires.

Calard knew that it was going to get much worse.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Weary and sore and still wearing his full battle gear, Calard knocked on the heavy oak door. The hallway was dark, lit only by flaming sconces set into alcoves every five yards. An icy wind blew in through the arched windows facing out to sea, making the flames flicker and dance, sending shadows cavorting madly across the stone walls.

The door was opened by a grim-faced steward, who motioned for silence and ushered Calard inside. The murmur of voices involved in deep discussion came from within.

He stepped inside and the door was silently closed behind him. It was much warmer in here, with a pair of fireplaces on opposite walls burning fiercely. This was the Duke of Lyonesse’s personal study, and Calard was overawed to be stood within it.

The ceiling was high, and paintings of the past dukes of Lyonesse lined the east and west walls. Some were standing in heroic poses, one foot placed upon the body of a vanquished foe, or upon a rocky outcrop and gazing into the distance. Others were riding mighty, rearing destriers, or doing battle with monstrous foes. All were suitably dramatic and incredibly lifelike. The dukes in the older portraits wore archaic styled armour and old-fashioned haircuts and clothes. Several elaborate suits of armour stood in-between these paintings.

The south wall was dominated by the stuffed and mounted heads of monsters and beasts hunted and killed by the various dukes. Calard saw the immense, wide-skulled head of a wyvern, the head of a stone troll, the brutish head of an orc warlord with skin so dark as to be almost black. Other creatures he did not even recognise: there was a snarling lizard creature with a bright red frill of skin around its neck, the head of a creature that vaguely resembled an ogre but with skin that looked like stone, and the head of a snarling, hateful looking beast with a thick black mane. That one might have been a manticore, Calard thought. There were the stuffed heads of giant boars and exotic, sabre-fanged cats, and a huge, humanoid skull that was easily ten times the size of a man’s. Above them all was the head of a black dragon, its maw spread in a frozen, eternal roar.

A polite cough drew Calard’s attention, and he reddened as he turned towards the north wall, realising that he had been gawping with all the slack-mouthed dignity of a peasant. A small gathering of knights stood around the fireplace, the ones that he had heard speaking in hushed tones as he entered, though they had fallen silent now and were looking towards him.

He bowed low to the group, his cheeks burning.

Calard’s gaze was instantly drawn to Reolus. The grail knight dominated the room, radiating power and authority, and the others stood around him, their body language showing their deference. His face was broad and ageless, and he nodded almost imperceptibly to Calard in greeting, a slight smile on his lips, and the young lord of Garamont felt instantly more self-assured.

He did not know all of the knights standing with Reolus, though from their heraldry, ornate armour and rich clothing he recognised that they were important nobles of the Lyonessian court. It was likely that they were related to the duke either through birth or marriage. They were all easily a decade older than Calard, and were most likely the duke’s most senior knights.

Maloric was there as well, and he flashed a dark look towards Calard, who smirked at him. If anything, Maloric’s hatred of him had merely increased after he had saved the Sangasse noble’s life on the Norscan occupied isle of Landri.

The Empire ambassador, Dieter Weschler, gave him a clipped bow. Everything about the man was neat, organised and precise, from his carefully waxed and curled moustache to every fold of his puffy sleeves. Even his movements were measured and efficient.

Laudethaire stood with them, affecting a dramatic pose with one hand upon the mantelpiece above the fire and his luxurious blond hair flowing past his shoulders. He eyed Calard with a look of disdain.

‘Are you lost?’ said Laudethaire, loudly.

Calard, taken aback, did not answer immediately.

‘I… I, um,’ he stuttered eventually.

‘“I, um”. Very insightful,’ said Laudethaire. ‘We are here awaiting the imminent arrival of the Duke of Lyonesse, so why don’t you run along now and leave this to your betters, hmm?’

Calard reddened again and stumbled over his words as he tried to form a reply. He saw Maloric’s face twitch in amusement, but Laudethaire had not yet finished.

‘It’s bad enough that we have one noble of Bastonne present,’ said Laudethaire with a careless gesture towards Maloric, ‘and I mean “noble” in the loosest possible sense of the word, but two?’

One of the knights of Lyonesse chuckled in amusement and the humour dropped from Maloric’s face. Calard wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole as he felt the eyes of everyone present boring into him.

‘The young lord of Garamont came here at my request,’ said Reolus, his voice quiet as he stared at the Parravonian pegasus knight. ‘Are you calling my judgement into question, Laudethaire?’

To his credit, Laudethaire hardly baulked, his fear of causing the displeasure of a grail knight flashing only momentarily across his face.

‘I jest,’ he said smoothly, recovering instantly. ‘And if my humour was misinterpreted, I offer my most humble apologies. The Parravonian wit is oft misunderstood.’

Laudethaire bowed low to Reolus. As he straightened, he flicked his long blond hair over his shoulder and flashed Calard a winning smile that did not reach his eyes.

‘No insult was taken, I am sure,’ he said.

‘None at all,’ mumbled Calard. Reolus winked at him behind Laudethaire’s back.

Thankfully, the conversation the knights had been having before Calard had entered the room started up again, and the attention was taken off him. He moved towards the group, but stayed on the outer fringe, affecting an interested expression.

The discussion, which was mainly between the knights of Lyonesse and Laudethaire, went largely over Calard’s head, and he had little to contribute. They were discussing inter-dukedom politics and court life, and Calard was amazed at the offhand way they spoke of the back-stabbing, machinations and duplicitous plotting that occurred between their various Bretonnian households. From the sounds of it, the politicking that took place in the royal court of Couronne was as deadly as any battlefield; more so in many ways, for at least on the battlefield you knew who your enemies were. To Calard it sounded vile, a poisonous viper’s nest of intrigue and double-dealings. As lord of Garamont he knew that he would be forced to become involved at least in part in the politics of Bastonne, but he did not relish the thought of it at all. He did not believe he was even remotely suited for such duties.

‘Montforte is a fool,’ Laudethaire was saying, scathingly. ‘He has lost much favour at court due to his heavy-handed approach in dealing with the trade issue. His decrees are restricting the flow of goods through the pass…’

‘Axebite Pass?’ said Dieter, his brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to keep up with the swift-flowing diatribe.

The valley known to the cartographers of the Empire as Axebite Pass was the largest and most accessible route between Bretonnia and Dieter’s homeland. It cut through the giant peaks of the Grey Mountains that separated the two lands of men. At either end of the sheer-sided valley stood a mighty fortress, spanning the gap. On the Bretonnian side was Montforte; on the Empire side was Helmgart. Countless battles had been fought in the valley between the two impenetrable castles, for the peace between Bretonnia and the Empire was a fractious thing, and there had been blood spilt on numerous occasions.

Laudethaire looked at Dieter, as if weighing whether to even bother answering his question. Finally, he nodded once, and turned away to continue talking with the Bretonnian knights.

‘His wife is the one with the brains, you know. Montforte has got rich thanks to her shrewd dealings. Abominable woman. She should have been born a man,’ said Laudethaire.

‘Or strangled at birth,’ said one of the Lyonesse nobles, eliciting chuckles from his comrades.

A pair of double doors opposite those that Calard had entered through were thrown wide and conversation ceased. A thickset man dressed in courtly array stepped into the room.

‘Lord Adalhard, Duke of Lyonesse, and the Damsel Anara!’ he bellowed, far louder than was necessary, and stepped aside. The knights dropped to one knee, lowering their heads respectfully.

‘Rise,’ said a firm voice, and as he stood upright Calard saw the duke escorting his sister into the room, her forearm gently placed upon his. The duke was garbed for war. Anara’s gaze floated lazily around the room, her eyes distant, as if she were seeing things that no one else could perceive.

‘We don’t know when the enemy will attack again, so let us get straight to the point,’ said the duke, coming to a halt and casting his gaze around the gathered nobles. A manservant swiftly brought a chair to him, but he waved the man away. ‘Casualties?’

A steward stepped forward, flipping open a leather-bound book.

‘Nineteen knights of noble birth slain,’ he said. ‘Forty-two injured. Of those, nine will not fight again, and seven will require months of recovery time.’

‘Peasants?’ said the duke.

‘Under two hundred,’ said the steward.

‘And rough estimates of the enemy losses?’

‘Perhaps… eleven hundred,’ guessed the steward.

‘If we maintain those odds, my lord, then the enemy will surely have no chance of breaching our defences,’ said one of the duke’s knights, a massively overweight marquis with glittering rings on his fat fingers. ‘We could hold them here for months on end, if not indefinitely, could we not?’

‘It would be costly, Carabas,’ said the duke. ‘And who knows what L’Anguille is up to while we are occupied here. Invading my lands, no doubt. The man is a swine.’

‘There is a way that the siege might be broken,’ ventured another of the duke’s knights, a stick thin, severe looking baron.

‘Speak it then, Broussard,’ said the duke.

‘We give them what they want. We give them the girl.’

Calard’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

‘Pah!’ scoffed the marquis, scowling at his compatriot. ‘Castle Lyonesse has never been taken. We have nothing to fear from the likes of this barbarian rabble. Why should we deliver them what they want, like bullied children?’

‘We have already underestimated them once,’ said the duke, ‘and we all know what happened as a result of that. I will not do so again.’

‘But my lord… you cannot really believe that the castle could fall, surely?’ said the marquis. ‘It has stood for more than fifteen hundred years, and outlasted a dozen sieges.’

‘It has, Carabas,’ agreed the duke. ‘But that does not answer the baron’s question.’ He looked around the room, and his gaze came to rest on Laudethaire. He raised his eyebrows questioningly. ‘Well?’

‘I swore an oath to protect those unable to protect themselves, my lord’ said the knight loftily. ‘I would rather die than break my word.’

‘Nobly spoken,’ said the duke. ‘Though I feel there is a caveat coming…’

‘You are as perceptive as you are honourable, my lord,’ said Laudethaire with a bow. ‘If it were known beyond any shadow of doubt that the lady that Lord Reolus and I rescued was indeed what she appears to be, there would be no contending what must be done. But I saw her wield unholy powers with mine own eyes. She is possessed. I say give the witch over to the Norse.’

The duke grunted noncommittally. He looked down at the ground thoughtfully for a moment, then lifted his gaze, switching between Maloric and Calard.

‘And you two? I believe that both of you had some… attachment to the girl.’

Calard licked his lips, his mind spinning.

‘I cared for Lady Elisabet of Marlemont, it is true,’ said Maloric slowly. ‘But I am not convinced that the creature that lies unconscious is her.’

‘Anara? Is it Elisabet?’ asked Calard, looking at his sister, who was talking to herself, acting out two sides of a hushed conversation. She did not seem to have heard the question, and several of the knights glanced at each other uneasily. She laughed to herself, and then scowled, and kept talking under her breath.

‘Anara,’ said Reolus, gently touching her on the arm. She snapped out of her double-sided conversation, looking vaguely startled, like someone forcibly woken from the middle of a dream. She smiled warmly at the grail knight, and for a moment she once again resembled the girl that Calard remembered.

‘Your brother asked you a question,’ said Reolus.

‘Is it Elisabet?’ said Calard as the damsel turned towards him with a questioning expression. ‘Is it Elisabet that we brought back with us?’

‘Yes,’ said Anara solemnly. ‘And no.’

Calard furrowed his brow.

‘It is Elisabet’s body,’ elaborated the damsel, ‘but she does not inhabit it.’

‘Possessed, as I said,’ said Laudethaire.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Calard.

‘Her body is a puppet,’ giggled Anara, making spider-like motions with her hands, as if she were manipulating a marionette. ‘She has no control over her strings. I thought at first she might be in there, imprisoned and helpless, a passenger with no control, but that’s not so. She is… gone.’

‘Gone?’ said Calard.

‘Gone,’ said Anara.

‘Can you expel this… presence… that has taken up residence within the girl’s body?’ asked Reolus.

‘Yes,’ said Anara.

‘Elisabet will be herself again?’ said Calard.

‘Yes. No. Maybe,’ said Anara, shrugging. Her eyes misted over. ‘If she is alive, there is a good chance that she will return. It might happen instantly, or it may take years, or never. She may not be able to find her way back. She may be wandering the spirit-world, lost and blind, or she may already have passed through the veil into the realm of Morr. She might not want to come back.’

‘It is worth the risk,’ said Calard. Maloric nodded his head in agreement.

‘Fine,’ said Duke Adalhard. ‘Do it. And if she does not return, then do we hand her over to the Norscans? Reolus, what do you say on the matter?’

‘You know my answer. It is unthinkable to even consider handing a noblewoman of Bretonnia over to the likes of these Chaos worshippers. Even if she were to pass from the world when the exorcism takes place, she deserves better than to have her body handed over to the enemy. Were it to mean the death of every last knight of Lyonesse, I would answer the same,’ said Reolus. ‘As indeed would you, my lord.’

‘I would,’ nodded the duke. ‘It’s agreed then. Our fates are in the Lady’s hands, and the courage of those defending this castle.’

‘We have nothing to fear from these heathen savages, my lord,’ said the Marquis of Carabas. Calard noted that this knight had not been present at the massacre some weeks earlier, and he shook his head at what he saw as his uninformed bravado.

‘What’s that noise?’ said Laudethaire suddenly.

At first Calard heard nothing, then a distant sound like the roaring of a furnace could be discerned above the howling wind. And it was getting closer.

Horns blared in warning, and shouts of panic, fear and alarm echoed up from all over the castle. Then there was an almighty crash, like the rumble of thunder directly overhead, and the ground shook. Calard felt the floor reverberate, and the suits of armour arranged around the room clattered as the vibrations running up through the keep made them shudder. The reverberation made an ancient candelabra upon the mantelpiece jump forwards, and it would have smashed upon the floor had not Laudethaire caught it as it fell. He placed it back upon the mantelpiece as the reverberations subsided.

‘Earthquake?’ said Laudethaire.

‘No,’ said Reolus, shaking his head. ‘The Norse.’

A second fireball was arcing through the air, daemonic fire trailing in its wake, as Calard burst out onto the top of the keep. He ran to the east-facing battlements, leaping up the stairs to the crenulations as other knights rushed up the stairs behind him, pushing gawping men-at-arms out of the way. Calard noted that it came from the location that they had identified earlier as the dug-in emplacement upon the beachhead. Shouts of panic could be heard from all over the castle.

The blazing comet lit up the sky, like a miniature sun screaming across the heavens, though the light it cast was a deep, malevolent red, tinging everything ruby with its daemonic glow. It roared like a dragon as it hurtled down towards the castle. The turbulent strait running between the island and the mainland was lit up, and Calard could see hundreds of longships ploughing through the water towards them. The second assault was about to begin.

‘To arms!’ shouted Calard, he raced back towards the stairway leading down through the keep.

Halfway down the spiralling, dark staircase, Calard was thrown against the wall, losing his footing as the ground shook beneath him; the fireball had clearly struck, and deep reverberations made the whole island shudder. He swore and pushed himself off the wall, and continued his mad dash down through the levels of the keep.

He was breathing hard as he reached the bottom of the spiralling stairway and ran out into the courtyard at the base of the keep. Men-at-arms were running towards the eastern wall, and Calard paused to catch his breath. Reolus and Dieter ran out into the courtyard behind him.

The sky was filled with a hideous roaring sound, and Calard shielded his eyes against the inferno as another fireball came screaming down towards the island. Even from this distance, Calard could feel the intense heat it radiated as it fell inexorably towards one of the immense towers looming above the eastern curtain wall. Calard looked on in horror.

Men were streaming away from the doomed tower, racing along the walls to either side of it and hurling themselves down the stairs leading from its lower levels to the inside courtyard. There was only one exit from the top of the tower, a steep spiralling staircase, and no doubt scores of men would be fighting to hurl themselves down it. Calard knew that none of them would survive.

The roaring inferno struck the top of the tower with colossal force, engulfing it in red fire. The entire castle trembled beneath the impact, and the top two levels of the tower were utterly demolished in an instant. Stone turned molten beneath the unnatural heat, running like syrup down the sheer sides of the walls, and tons of red-hot rocks were sent flying in all directions.

Hundreds of men were consumed in the raging holocaust. Those standing exposed on top of the tower were killed instantly, flesh and bones burnt away to cinders even as the trebuchets were rendered into ash. The skin of those inside burst into flame, their lungs filled with scalding heat and fire as they breathed in. The top of the tower exploded like earthenware left too long in a kiln, stonework thrown out in all directions. The lucky ones were ripped apart in the detonation, heads and bodies crushed by hunks of superheated stone, but those who were not killed instantly were hurled into the air, their flesh burning as they plummeted hundreds of feet to their deaths.

Molten, burning chunks of rock crashed down into the buildings within the castle walls, smashing through shingled and thatched roofs, and a dozen of them were instantly ablaze.

The walls of Castle Lyonesse had stood resolute in the face of the restless dead of cursed Mousillon, and had repelled more than one large-scale assault by the dark elven kin from across the seas. They had withstood stones hurled by catapults, had defied battering rams, and even held firm against the cannons of the Empire navy. Yet even after just minutes of this barrage, it was clear that Castle Lyonesse was doomed unless the enemy artillery was neutralised.

A red-hot piece of stonework the size of a man’s head spun end over end down towards Calard. He shouted a warning and dived to the side as it arced towards him. It took a peasant warden standing nearby squarely in the face, taking his head clean off.

There was an almighty crash, and Calard looked up to see the upper half of the tower, or at least the half which had not already been destroyed, collapse and fall, its structural integrity shattered. Once again the earth shook as hundreds of tons of stonework smashed to the ground, causing a great cloud of dust to rise.

‘By the blood of the Breton,’ swore Calard, seeing the terrible destruction that had been wrought.

‘Not even the cannons of Nuln are so potent,’ said Dieter, his face red from the exertion of racing down the stairs.

‘If this continues, Lyonesse will be a molten ruin in hours,’ said Reolus, his eyes blazing with rage.

The snap of timbers heralded the re-commencement of the firing of trebuchets. The Norscan longships were drawing close once again. Hundreds of knights and men-at-arms were racing towards the battlements of the curtain walls, and Calard was about to join them, to aid in the defence, when Reolus spoke once again.

‘The enemy artillery must be silenced,’ said the grail knight grimly.

‘Laudethaire’s knights?’ said Calard, and Reolus shook his head.

‘The Parravonians are too few.’

‘What then?’ said Calard, feeling a deep sense of foreboding and helplessness. ‘They are out of range of the trebuchets. And it is not like we can sally forth and ride across the ocean.’

‘This was not always an island,’ Reolus said thoughtfully. ‘Back in the times of Gilles le Breton, there was a sprawling township below this hill. It was the greatest city in Bretonnia, the envy of all, before it was drowned by Manann’s wrath. The main entrance to the castle ran along a ridge – you can still see where that ridge is. It forms a causeway beneath the water,’ he said.

Now that it was pointed out, Calard could vaguely recall seeing a cobbled road leading from the eastern gate into the ocean. He had thought nothing of it, but now that it was drawn to his attention, he could well imagine the sunken land beneath the waves, picturing the sprawling township in his mind’s eye. He could well believe that a road had once run along the ridge from the towering wooden palisade of the castle that would have stood where Castle Lyonesse now did.

Another fireball roared into the air, and Calard dragged himself away from his musings.

He could not fathom what possible relevance the grail knight’s random lesson in history had. And unless Reolus was proposing to swim across the strait, he saw no possible way of nullifying the enemy war machine, other than Laudethaire and his kin. He felt the grail knight’s impenetrable gaze boring into him, and he shrank beneath it ever so slightly.

Reolus cocked his head to one side, his brow creasing, as if hearing a voice that Calard could not. The young lord of Garamont shuffled restlessly, his hand clenched around the hilt of his sword. Again he glanced towards the eastern walls, seeing the archers atop the battlements preparing to loose their arrows. Calard was impatient to join the defenders. He knew that his brother and his cousins were there, for he had left them there when his presence had been requested in the duke’s chambers.

Barbarian horns and drums could be heard now, and Calard was about to abandon the grail knight and run towards the curtain wall when Reolus snapped out of his reverie.

‘Get your steed saddled,’ ordered the grail knight, swinging south towards the stables.

‘What?’ said Calard, his desire to fight alongside his brother urging him to run westward with all haste. ‘Why?’

Reolus stopped and rounded on Calard, who quailed under his fierce glare. The grail knight seemed to shine with a potent light from within, his eyes blazing with holy fervour and Calard took an involuntary step backwards. What had possessed him to question the holy paladin?

He dropped to one knee, bowing his head, unable to hold Reolus’s terrible gaze.

‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ he mumbled. ‘It shall be as you command.’

Reolus merely nodded in response, before turning away from Calard and striding towards the stables. Calard had to jog to keep pace with the paladin.

A section of the eastern wall was struck by a fiery inferno as Calard jogged along behind Reolus, and screams of pain and fear echoed through the night as a fifty foot section exploded inwards, as if it were made of sodden timber, not thirty feet of solid rock. The war machine had struck high, taking off the top twenty feet of the high wall. A full breach had not been smashed through the immense barrier, but Calard had no doubt that the next shot would be recalculated to be more damaging still.

He looked back over his shoulder as he ran, and whispered a silent prayer to the Lady that Bertelis and his cousins were all right.

Scores of buildings were ablaze now, and while teams of peasants were running back and forth from the harbour, hefting barrels of water to throw over the raging inferno, Calard could tell that it was a useless endeavour; those buildings already burning were lost. All that could be done was to try to contain the blaze.

Amid the mayhem, Calard noticed that the grail knight had a scarf wrapped around his upper left arm – a token of affection, gifted by a noblewoman. He realised that he recognised the mauve, silk scarf as belonging to his sister.

‘Your sister is far more powerful than you give her credit for,’ said Reolus. ‘By the Lady’s grace, Lyonesse may yet survive the night.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Anara stood precariously atop the battlements of the eastern gatehouse, arms lifted to the heavens and her head thrown back as she invoked the power of the goddess. If she slipped, she would fall more than a hundred feet to her death, but she had no fear. Her black hair whipped around her wildly like the serpentine locks of a gorgon as the fierce winds buffeted her. She stood barefoot, unmindful of the ice and snow turning her toes blue, and her wispy, sheer dress fluttered around her like a shroud. Nothing mattered but the rush of power surging through her.

The men-at-arms stationed atop the gatehouse eyed her warily, making warding motions with their hands, for even they could feel the gathering energy being channelled through the damsel. Knights kissed tokens of the Lady as they felt the presence of the goddess manifesting within Anara.

Below her, the Norscan longships were just reaching the island, horn-helmed warriors leaping the gunwales into the shallows in their eagerness to take the walls. Thousands of arrows sliced through the night, cutting down the first wave of Norscans onto the beach, but as before, there were more enemies than archers, and countless hundreds of the northern barbarians, bellowing war cries and waving axes, were streaming towards the wall sections damaged by the devastating barrage.

The clouds roiled above as Anara continued to draw the winds of magic into her, and her limbs began to shudder. It threatened to consume her, and she clenched her hands into fists, but her concentration was solid, and a slight smile played at the corner of her lips as she slowly gained mastery over the power she was attempting to control.

Her eyes began to glow as if there was a light burning within her, and as she moved her lips, speaking in the language of the fey, blinding light billowed from her mouth. Wisps of ethereal fog rose from her skin, and her hair played out around her as if charged with static energy. The air crackled with intensity and an electric tang could be tasted upon the air.

Waves crashed furiously against the shore, and Norscan longships rose and fell as the swell intensified. Walls of water crashed over the sides of several, and one was smashed against the rocks as it was turned sideways by a towering wave, its hull splintering like matchwood. Men were dragged screaming into the icy waters, which churned as frenzied sharks feasted, turning the waters red and the foam pink with blood.

Still Anara continued to call upon the power of the Lady, and a trickle of blood ran from one nostril. Her legs were quivering now, threatening to buckle, but no man stepped forward to support her, fearing that to do so would break her concentration, dooming them all. A thick fog began to form across the raging strait, hanging low over the water and growing thicker with every passing moment.

The ocean continued to heave, rising and falling with increasing fury. The Norse strained at the tillers of their longships, desperate to keep their vessels astern of the heaving surf, for if they were turned even slightly when a wave hit them they would be lost. Few civilisations were as skilful as the Norse at navigating treacherous seas but, even so, more longships were being overturned and smashed against the rocks as the surging ocean swell continued to build.

Within minutes, the unnatural fog surrounding the island fortress was so thick as to be utterly impenetrable, swallowing all sound. The shouts and roars of the Norse became dim and muted, and even the pounding of the waves was now faint. The fog rolled up the beach, obscuring the rocks and the Norse until it caressed the castle walls. Looking down from the battlements, it looked as though an ethereal ghost sea surrounded the fortress.

Dimly, Anara registered intense heat on her face as a roaring inferno screamed over her head, passing no more than twenty feet above her. The searing heat that radiated from the fireball made the snow and ice atop the castle gatehouse melt, and steam rose from Anara’s clothes. The war machine’s fiery missile came down inside the castle compound, fifty feet behind the gatehouse. It smashed down through the roof of a well-to-do inn, and the whole structure, and the stables and blacksmith attached to it, was instantly a hellish inferno.

Still the seas rose and the fog thickened, forming an impenetrable, heavy soup, and Anara pulled herself out of her incantation for the briefest of moments.

Now, she pulsed.

‘Now!’ roared Reolus, and the mighty, thirty-foot high doors of the gatehouse groaned open. The wall of fog beyond the gate rolled through the portal as it opened, creeping across the cobblestones like a living, amorphous beast. It coiled around the legs of the grail knight’s destrier, making the paladin and his steed appear like some vengeful, holy manifestation; a supernatural avatar of the Lady’s wrath. Calard shuddered, seeing again the Green Knight closing in on him, sword drawn, but he shook the disturbing vision off.

Anara’s voice ghosted down from the top of the gatehouse overhead, musical and otherworldly. His flesh tingled and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as the air filled with expectant energy, and Calard lifted a devotional pendant carved in the likeness of the Lady to his lips, invoking her protection.

Calard could feel the blessing of the Lady upon Reolus, radiating from him like the heat from a forge. A vaguely shining aura surrounded the holy knight, a luminous glow that seemed emphasised by the fog billowing around him.

In one hand the grail knight held aloft his silver lance, Arandyal, its length shining with holy light; in his other hand he held its twin, the sacred sword Durendyal. Both holy weapons were of immense cultural significance, and even the lowliest inbred peasant had heard the tales of the terrible foes Reolus had vanquished with them.

The paladin’s face was hidden behind the visor of his tall helm, topped with a gleaming heraldic unicorn of silver surrounded by a crown of lit candles, but his eyes blazed with the Lady’s favour. His intricately-worked, ornate armour reflected the light of those candles and the roaring flames of the buildings burning within the castle walls. The silver edging of his regal blue tabard glowed.

Reolus’s unicorn heraldry was emblazoned proudly upon his chest, the design mirrored on the flanks of his steed’s matching caparison. That destrier was large, powerful and as black as pitch, and it bore the weight of Reolus and the heavy chain and plate barding beneath its flowing caparison effortlessly.

The thick, reinforced gates groaned fully open, and Reolus gestured forward with his blessed lance.

‘To victory!’ he roared, his voice infused with the power of the divine, filling the fifty knights gathered behind Reolus with fiery passion.

‘To victory!’ they echoed, and Calard’s chest swelled with pride to be part of such an august company, to be riding behind such a holy knight.

As one they kicked their steeds forward, galloping out through the gates and into the fog beyond.

Calard could not see more than ten feet in front of him, but he felt no sense of fear or doubt as they thundered out of the castle, galloping directly towards the sea across the sand-swept cobbles on the ancient roadway. The Lady was with them, and they were led by one of her greatest champions – nothing in the world could stand against them.

They came upon the Norscans suddenly, and judging by the expressions on the barbarians’ surprised faces, they must have appeared like ghostly apparitions, galloping out of the fog and led by a faintly glowing demigod of war, his helmet ringed with candles. Still, the Norscans were a warlike people not given to fear, and they responded with admirable courage, dropping ladders and leaping forward with axes raised, war cries on their lips. Yet for all their bravery they were smashed aside by the tight wedge of knights, crushed and broken beneath the hooves of the mighty destriers.

The causeway dipped as its angle increased and they ploughed through the fog towards the sea. Reolus did not slow his charge, and none of the knights riding behind him faltered. A voice in Calard’s mind was urging him to pull his steed up, telling him it was utter foolishness to continue this mad ride through the fog and into the sea, but he grinned fiercely, rejoicing in the feeling of freedom that riding a warhorse at full gallop allowed.

A dragon-prowed longship appeared out the mist, driving a furrow through the sand off to the right of the causeway as it slammed into the beach. Calard saw Norscans leaping over the gunwales gaping in astonishment at the formation of knights riding at full gallop along the causeway towards the ocean, but then they were past them and Calard turned his attention back to the fore.

Impossibly, he heard Anara’s voice in the fog all around him. Other voices joined hers, and Calard felt an aching pang in his heart at the beauty of the half-heard song.

The knights galloped down the causeway. It extended out into the strait further than the beach itself, and Calard could see the waves lashing the shore off to either side. The stones were slick with sea water beneath the hooves of the warhorses, and seaweed was clumped in stinking piles. Crabs as large as a man’s head skittered sideward off the causeway, waving their oversized claws, their armoured shells covered in spikes.

Suddenly the ocean could be seen before them, dark and threatening. Black fins cut through the water no more than fifteen feet out, and yet on the knights galloped, guiding their steeds straight towards the sea. There was a great sucking sound from up ahead, and Calard saw the icy waters of the ocean surge away from the tip of the knightly formation, as if being drawn back to form an immense wave.

They rode forward for another dozen yards or so, and still the waters retreated before them. The causeway continued to descend at a steady angle, and he saw fish and eels flopping uselessly upon the ground, gasping for breath. He glanced to the side and saw the ruined corner of an ancient building protruding from the rock bed, the crumbling stone walls covered in weed and barnacles.

They were underneath the heavy fog that blanketed the sea then, and the path before them was suddenly clear. Calard took a sharp intake of breath as he saw the walls of water to either side of them as they continued to plough down the causeway, galloping deeper even as the waters continued to draw back away from them.

They drove a wedge through the ocean waters, which parted before them like enemy soldiers before the charge. The ruins of more buildings could be seen off to either side of what Calard realised must once have been a thriving thoroughfare. He gaped in astonishment at the sheer walls of water to either side of the lance of knights; it looked like they would come crashing down on top of them at any moment. There was nothing physical holding them back, but hold they did, and the knights galloped on, still riding downhill, moving ever onwards.

Finally the causeway levelled out and they were galloping along the flat. The sheer walls of water on either side were over thirty feet high here, towering cliffs that loomed over them threateningly. The sea spray washing over their edge was blinding, and Calard looked up, open-mouthed. The fog blanketing the ocean was falling over the edge towards them like a gaseous waterfall. So strange was the experience of looking up at the ocean from its floor, with the fog cascading over the walls of water, that Calard wondered if he might be dreaming.

All manner of hateful ocean-dwelling creature was stranded upon the ground around them, flopping back and forth impotently. He saw all sorts of fish, many of which had gaping mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth. He saw a shark easily three times the size of his horse, and it thrashed back and forth furiously. It was no natural beast, that, and he recognised the touch of Chaos upon it – dozens of grabbing tentacles surrounded its tooth-filled maw, and clusters of hate-filled eyes glared at him from the side of its broad head.

The bodies of Norscans were there too, the corpses of those that had been dragged to the ocean floor by the weight of their iron armour. Many of them were missing limbs and great chunks of flesh, clearly having been partially devoured by the sharks and whatever other flesh-eating creatures dwelt in the depths. Crabs swarmed over these bodies, obscuring them in a chittering blanket of chitin, tearing strips off their flesh with barbed claws.

Calard heard shouting overhead and glanced up to see the prow of a Norse longship balancing precariously on the edge of the oceanic cliffs. The raiders were frantically rowing backwards, trying to pull themselves back from the brink, but the ocean swell buffeted them, pushing them further over the edge. He urged his steed on, casting a nervous glance back up towards the teetering longship.

It tipped over the cliff of water and began to fall. Men tumbled from the ship, arms and legs flailing. Calard leant forward over the neck of his steed, kicking his heels into its flanks.

A Norscan fell on top of a knight behind him, knocking the Bretonnian from the saddle, and making his horse stumble. An oar smashed down onto the rump of another destrier, making its back legs give way and sending its rider flying. That knight plunged into the wall of water and was instantly set upon by the sharks lurking on the other side.

There was an almighty crash as the prow of the longship smashed down onto the ocean bed behind the knightly formation. The draconic figurehead ploughed into the causeway, and there was a sickening sound of splintering timbers as the weight of the ship crashed down behind it. Its mast broke, crushing a pair of knights at the back of the lance formation as it smashed down onto the rocky ocean floor.

Turning in the saddle, Calard watched as the longship splintered. Men continued to fall, bones breaking as they hit the ground. He saw that the long chasm-like corridor of water behind them was closing, and in another moment it claimed the shattered Norscan vessel, which was crushed by the pressure of the water rushing in upon it.

That frantic ride through the valley of water was the strangest experience of Calard’s life thus far, and as they galloped up the causeway and onto the mainland itself, he marvelled at the power that was his sister’s to command. Parting the ocean itself – he would never have believed such a thing was possible.

The fog above continued to obscure their progress, so that the Norse had no warning of the attack they were about to face. With Reolus riding at the fore, the lance of Bretonnian knights galloped out of the ocean, angling their ride across the hard packed sandy beach that led around the bay towards the emplaced, infernal war machine of the enemy on the hillock protruding into the ocean half a mile to the north.

The enemy were completely unprepared for such an assault, and before they had even registered the presence of the enemy in their midst, the Bretonnians were cutting a swathe through them, galloping along the hard-packed wet sand around the edge of the bay. They passed scores of longships, many of which were being pushed into the sea by warriors. Some of these marauders saw the Bretonnians behind them, and their voices rose in shock and alarm.

Calard’s lance took a surprised Norscan in the face, the tip of his weapon punching through the man’s eye-socket and smashing out the back of his skull. Releasing his hold on the weapon, he drew the blade of Garamont in a smooth motion and hacked down another enemy warrior, cleaving deep into flesh.

Horns of warning sounded, and Reolus pushed the knights on. They were not far from the war machine’s emplacement now, but Calard knew that there were tens of thousands of Norscans all around – it was only a matter of time until they were surrounded and overwhelmed.

A sound like the roaring of a thousand lions echoed out across the land, and an immense ball of red flame shot into the air from up ahead, arcing above the strait towards Castle Lyonesse. Flames dripped like molten rock from the immense, deep red missile as it hurtled though the air, and the heat that came off it was intense. Choking black smoke blanketed the area where the shot had come from, upon the hillock jutting into the bay up ahead, and Reolus guided them towards it.

Norscans ran into their path, screaming in fury, but the Bretonnians carved through them like a scythe through wheat. Reolus fought with incomparable skill, killing with every strike. Dozens had already fallen beneath his blade and lance, and no enemy had even looked like landing a blow upon him.

They swung westward, hugging the sweeping bay and rising out of the fog that blanketed the water and beachhead, closing in on the enemy artillery.

They could see more clearly now, but as they climbed out above the fog they were themselves revealed to the enemy. Countless fires dotted the darkness in the east, and thousands of Norscan warriors yet to take part in the siege snatched up their weapons and began racing through their camp towards them.

The desolation of the mainland could be seen clearly. The burnt-out husks of buildings stood like blackened skeletons. It would take many years to rebuild the town back to what it was, for the taint of the Norscans to pass and for the scars of this destruction to fade.

At a curt gesture from Reolus, half the knights riding behind him peeled off to the east. If the Norse overwhelmed them from the rear before they had a chance to destroy the enemy artillery then this whole gamble would be for nought, and so those knights that wheeled off from the main formation would hold them off as best they could.

Calard felt a pang of sadness and pride as the formation split. Those knights peeling away were forming a long line to protect their rear, and every last one of them must have known that he would likely not survive, yet not one of them baulked in the face of their duty. Part of Calard wished that he was riding at their side, for their names would surely be remembered in the pages of history, their noble sacrifice honoured for all time. It was only by chance that he was positioned on the left side of the lance formation, and so was not part of that group riding off towards certain death and eternal glory.

Calard snorted. There was no certainty that any of them would make it back to Castle Lyonesse from this risky sortie, and he realised that the sacrifice of those knights would be meaningless if they did not succeed in destroying the enemy artillery.

They were climbing steadily now, rising off the hard packed sand lining the bay and joining a rough roadway leading up towards the headland, where the emplaced war machine was located. A low, crumbling wall separated the promontory from the town, and as the knights rode through a shattered gate, he realised what this area was set aside for; it was a cemetery, a sacred garden of Morr.

Of course no noble would ever have been buried here; this was a graveyard reserved for the peasant dead. As such there were few individual gravestones scattered across the snow-covered hill, for the vast majority of those buried here would have been packed into mass pits, their graves unmarked. Only the wealthiest peasant merchants could have afforded their own plots. Clumps of skeletal rose bushes protruded from the snow, though few of the trademark black roses that could be seen in the gardens of Morr all across the Old World were in flower.

Calard focused his gaze upon their target, squinting towards the infernal war machine that was smashing apart Castle Lyonesse with its relentless barrage. Hulking, ape-like creatures attached to each other by chain could be seen hard at work around the machine, being whipped by squat, barrel-chested figures, but he paid them little thought, his eyes widening as he looked upon the hulking metal construction.

It was partially obscured by steam and acrid black smoke exhaled by the hellish machine as if it were alive and breathing. It was something akin to the cannons of the Empire that Dieter had described to him, but he had never imagined one to be this size. Its huge barrel must have been twenty feet in diameter, and it squatted upon huge bronze wheels filled with clockwork mechanisms. Glowing runes were engraved upon its brazen body, and Calard felt his eyes sting just looking upon them. The bulk of the creation shuddered, swelled and contracted, as if its hide were organic, not unliving bronze and black iron. Curiously, the machine was staked down, with giant chains hooked to its form and hammered into the ground, as if it were a wild beast its captors feared and not an inanimate cannon.

The image of the war machine seemed to shimmer as if in a heat haze, and he saw the squat figures tending it shovelling what looked like body parts and coal into a gaping metal funnel upon its back as they rode closer. In disgust, Calard realised that many of the mass graves of the peasants were even now being dug up, with scores of what must have been slaves working to exhume the bodies of the dead. For a moment Calard had the impression of a huge, insatiable beast being fed by its caretakers, but he discarded the thought as the product of an overactive imagination.

He realised that the slave-creatures were orcs, though they were larger and darker-skinned than the ones he had fought in Bordeleaux. Their heads hung low beneath their massive shoulders, and their flesh was covered in scars and burns. They cringed as their squat captors whipped them, each lash of the barbed leather lengths flaying skin from muscle.

None of them registered the Bretonnians’ presence until they were almost upon them, so intent were they on their work. A hulking orc worker looked up at the knights bearing down on them as it dragged a frozen corpse up from one of the pits, and it blinked at them dumbly with beady red eyes.

Then the creature bellowed, its massive tusked jaw opening wide, and its comrades lifted their heavy heads towards the knights.

Calard saw what he presumed to be the leader of the war machine’s crewmen swing towards them, and growl something in a strange, grating tongue. The creature – it was certainly not a human, but neither was it a greenskin – was a stunted thing, wearing an outlandish high helm and clad from head to toe in heavy plates of overlapping armour.

Its broad chest was covered by a thick black beard tied into tight coils, and stubby tusks protruded from its mouth. Calard realised it was one of the dwarfen-kin said to inhabit the mountainous reaches of the Old World. He had always been led to believe that they were honourable and doughty allies, even if they were greedy and stubborn, but there was nothing good in this warped creature; it had clearly been twisted by the malignant forces of Chaos. It shouted something in its strange, deeply resonant language, and the black-skinned orc slaves were whipped into the path of the Bretonnians.

The slaves needed no encouragement, scrambling out of the grave pit, hefting their tools and launching themselves towards the knights. Behind them the stunted worker-creatures continued to toil away at ‘feeding’ the monstrous war machine. The slavemaster itself lifted a weapon from a stand at its side. That weapon vaguely resembled Dieter’s repeater handgun, but where the Empire ambassador’s weapon had five thin barrels, this arcane construction had just one barrel, though it was flaring and wide at its end.

The black orcs were hampered by the chains welded around their necks, but they attacked the knights without fear. Perhaps they longed for death, Calard thought. Each of the beasts was huge, with densely muscled arms twice as thick as a man’s thigh. Reolus took the head off the first of the beasts with a sweep of his dimly glowing sword and ran another through with his lance. Two other orcs were raised into the air, half-strangled by the chains around their necks as Reolus lifted the spitted orc high, before hurling it away from him with a flick.

Several of the hulking beasts used the chains binding them as a weapon to take out the legs of the horses, showing a glimmer of bestial intelligence. Several steeds were felled as the black orcs pulled the chains taut, muscles straining, and the knights riding these unfortunate horses were catapulted from their saddles.

Calard slammed the blade of Garamont down onto the head of another of the dark-hued greenskins. It was like striking rock, sending a jarring shudder up his arm, but his blow shattered its skull and hacked deep into its miniscule brain, blood spurting. The creature didn’t register it was dead right away, and it snarled and swung a wild blow, forcing him to sway to the side to avoid it.

Calard saw the dwarf slavemaster heft his heavy weapon to its shoulder, and he gave a shout of warning. There was a tremendous boom, and fire billowed from the widely flared barrel of the blunderbuss. A swath of death ripped through the Bretonnians and four knights were killed instantly, flesh and armour shredded.

There was a sound like some infernal giant beast sucking in a great intake of breath, making the air reverberate, and then the war machine fired again, sending a roaring fireball skyward.

At this range, the heat was nigh on unbearable, and Calard’s vision wavered before him. A black orc made a grab at him but he severed the creature’s arm at the wrist, leaving its immense hand locked around the reins. Another knight was thrown from the saddle as one of the greenskins wrapped its ape-like arms around the forelegs of his steed, getting trampled in the process but managing to drag the destrier down to the ground. The knight directly behind tried vainly to haul his steed out of the way, but there was not enough time or room, and the legs of his horse were broken as it slammed into the fallen steed in front.

Calard struck another orc a glancing blow, his sword rebounding off its thick skull, making it reel. It stumbled and disappeared under the flashing hooves of another knight, and they were through.

Reolus galloped hard, steering them towards the snarling, stunted dwarf slavemaster. The heavily armoured creature had discarded its blunderbuss in favour of a heavy axe, its blade gleaming black obsidian. Its companions had joined it now, hefting heavy spiked tools in their thick, gloved hands.

Each of the dwarfs was no more than four foot high, but they were built like oxen. Each had a thick beard that fell down over their leather and iron aprons, and their arms were almost as thick as their bodies.

Behind them the immense enemy war machine lurched, seemingly moving under its own impetus, and Calard recoiled in the saddle as he saw clawed legs of living bronze at the front of the war machine’s carriage ripping up the ground as they dragged its weight around to face the knights.

Choking black smoke was exhaled from the barrel of the infernal machine, and Calard saw the entire thing writhe as it turned, metal flexing like living flesh. Daemonic faces appeared in the brazen sides of the giant weapon, pressing outwards from within, snarling and hissing. He saw that the rim of the gaping barrel was lined with tusks and fangs. The inside of the barrel was lined with concentric circles of teeth, thousands of them, and volcanic fire raged deep within, making Calard’s eyes water and his armour heat up unbearably.

The barrel snapped shut as the living war machine lunged forward, straining like a wild bull at its restraints. Hellish runes glowed white-hot as it pulled against the chains. The steeds of the knights, as well trained as they were, refused to continue the charge towards the infernal daemon engine, baulking and fighting against their riders.

The knightly formation fractured, some horses rearing and bucking while others came to a dead halt. Others swung to the side, flattening their ears and galloping at full speed, while some tried to throw their riders.

Calard’s steed reared, pulling against him, and he fought to regain control.

The dwarfen slavemaster stepped forward and hacked his obsidian axe into the chest of one bolting horse, and it screamed in a disturbingly human manner as it collapsed to the ground, throwing its rider. The knight was instantly set upon by a pair of brutish black orcs, who slammed his head into a rock, crumpling his helmet like paper with a sickly, metallic squeal.

Only Reolus continued the charge, and he cut down two of the Chaos dwarfs with slashes of his blade. The immense daemon engine ripped free of several of its chains, tearing the links apart in its fury, and it lurched towards Reolus, brazen fore-claws ripping up great sods of earth in its eagerness.

Calard cried out as the immense, sentient engine lunged for the grail knight. With masterful control, Reolus forced his steed to back up, and the huge maw of the hellish cannon snapped shut just feet in front of him. He drove his silver lance into the machine, and smoke rose from where its point entered the beast, as if it were a heated poker being plunged into water.

Reolus ripped his lance free as the daemon engine thrashed in pain or anger, and red fire spouted from the puncture wound.

Calard was thrown from the saddle of his steed as his destrier bucked again, and he landed hard. He heard again a deep sucking intake of breath, and gasping for breath he pushed himself to his knees, turning towards Reolus.

The grail knight was seated defiantly in the saddle before the immense daemon engine, a glowing aura surrounding him. Calard shouted in denial as the machine belched volcanic red fire towards the grail knight.

Reolus was completely hidden from view, lost within the hazy inferno that consumed him, and Calard pushed himself to his feet. The blade of Garamont was in his hand, and bellowing in outrage, horror and despair, he charged towards the hellcannon.

The dwarf slavemaster was suddenly before him, snarling hatefully as it swung its black-bladed axe in a murderous arc. Calard managed to get his shield in the path of the blow, but the axe sheared through it, knocking Calard to the side but saving him from harm. He slashed with his own blade, but the dwarf turned it aside easily. This was a foe of considerable skill, Calard realised.

The hellfire spewing from the maw of the daemon engine ceased, and the young lord of Garamont risked a quick glance towards Reolus, expecting to see nothing but a charred corpse. Miraculously, the grail knight appeared unharmed, sat aback his night-black steed, and the aura around him glowing almost painfully bright. The Chaos dwarf’s axe almost took off one of Calard’s legs as he gaped at the holy knight, but he managed to step back at the last second, though the axe grazed his armour, cutting through it with contemptuous ease.

The glow surrounding Reolus began to fade, and he urged his steed towards the giant hellcannon, brandishing his weapons. The infernal daemon engine snapped at him, but he ducked beneath its gaping maw and drove his blade into its side, tearing a gaping rent in it as he rode by. The machine thrashed, and flames the colour of blood roared from within its body.

It rounded on the grail knight, clockwork wheels grinding and bronze forelimbs scrabbling, and dozens of reaching talons extended from the machine’s sides, grabbing for him. He evaded their grasp with ease, severing several of them with cuts of his blade. They fell to the ground, hunks of lifeless, inert metal, the life infusing them gone, and he plunged his lance into the beast again.

It was clearly in pain now, and the runes binding it blazed with heat. Another slash of his sword carved through one of the binding hoops of iron that ringed the engine’s barrel, and its runes disappeared with a hiss.

Pegasus knights suddenly descended from the low clouds. A lance sliced towards the dwarf that Calard was frantically defending against, and the stunted creature swatted the weapon aside with a sweep of his axe.

Laudethaire himself swooped down low and struck the hellcannon with his own blade. It did little real harm, his sword merely ringing off its barrel with a hollow metallic ring, but it distracted the daemon engine, which swung at him, jaws snapping. That was all the opening that Reolus needed, and he leapt from his saddle, driving his sword down into the hellcannon like a dagger, using both hands to push it home.

Again the metal hide of the beast parted like yielding flesh beneath his sword, tearing a gaping hole in its side. The grail knight leapt backwards as lava and red fire spewed from the horrendous wound. The runes binding the daemon hissed and disappeared, and the entire engine began to melt beneath the heat contained within it. Its metal-cogged wheels began to sag, and its brazen forelimbs dripped like syrup.

Calard saw the surge of rage in the dwarf slavemaster’s eyes, and he smiled.

Then, there was a primal scream of victory as the daemons that had been bound within the machine were released from their imprisonment. For a second Calard saw their true form, standing amidst the fiery destruction of their hellcannon prison. They were black-skinned creatures three times the height of a man, with shadowy bat-like wings extending from their shoulders. Fire burnt in the cluster of eyes set into their foreheads, but their screams of victory turned to one of outrage and fury as their bodies began to turn to smoke. With a final bellow of pure hatred that echoed for a hundred miles in every direction, the daemons were sent roaring back to the infernal plane from whence they had come as the material form that had bound them to the real world was destroyed.

A blast of superheated air exploded outwards, knocking everyone within fifty yards to the ground, and Calard closed his eyes against the furious light that surged into the heavens as the daemons were banished.

It was perhaps thirty seconds later when Calard’s senses returned to him and he registered the shape of Reolus, once again in the saddle, looming over him.

‘Take my hand, Calard,’ ordered the holy paladin.

In awe, Calard accepted the proffered hand, and he swung up behind the grail knight. Then, together with the last of the knights that had accompanied them, they turned back towards Castle Lyonesse.

High Jarl Egil Styrbjorn stood motionless, his face unreadable as he surveyed the carnage unleashed as Zumarah’s hellcannon was destroyed. Bjarki paced back and forth like a caged animal, snarling, his hands clenching and unclenching.

‘Why is it that the enemy seer is able to part the sea, and yet you are not?’ said Styrbjorn mildly, though there was a dangerous edge to his voice.

Bjarki spat a curse in response, and continued his restless pacing.

‘Is her power so much greater than your own?’ continued Styrbjorn.

‘I’ll rip her heart from her chest before this siege is done,’ snarled Bjarki.

‘You say the bitch goddess of this land is weak, so why is it that her seer continues to shame me?’ said Styrbjorn. ‘Is their goddess stronger than you say? Or is it my seer that is the weak one?’

‘Insult me and you insult the gods themselves,’ snarled Bjarki in a warning tone.

‘The gods reward those who are strong and fearless, and punish those who are useless and weak. I have long been in the gods’ favour.’

‘Things change, mighty jarl,’ said Bjarki, his tone mocking and derisive. ‘The favour of the gods waxes and wanes like the green eye in the night sky.’

The seer began pacing again.

‘Calm yourself, little bear,’ said Styrbjorn in a steady voice. The unnatural fog blanketing the turbulent strait was dissipating, blown clear by the icy gale, and he saw the ocean closing behind the enemy. He watched as a handful of knights rode towards the distant gatehouse, and dimly heard the cheers that welcomed their return.

‘That hellcannon was our best chance of breaching the cursed fortress,’ said Bjarki.

‘It is a setback, nothing more,’ said Styrbjorn. ‘And the enemy has revealed something to us this day.’

Bjarki looked to his jarl questioningly.

‘The waters of this strait are not so deep,’ said Styrbjorn. ‘The roadway is perhaps thirty feet beneath the waves at most.’

‘Thirty feet or three hundred feet, what difference does it make?’ said Bjarki.

‘Your eagerness for blood is clouding your mind, little bear,’ said Styrbjorn. ‘Think!’

The seer’s face twisted in outrage, and his hand flashed for the dagger at his side. For a moment it looked as though he would draw it and stab his jarl, but the moment passed, and his expression changed to one of introspection.

‘Thirty feet,’ he said, his hand rising from the hilt of his dagger to the braided goatee beard hanging from his chin, which he scratched at absently. In the distance, the heavy gates leading inside the enemy fortress slammed shut behind the handful of knights that had managed to escape the Skaelings’ wrath, and the heavy portcullis crashed to the ground, sealing the entrance way.

Realisation dawned, and Bjarki flashed a smile at his jarl. Styrbjorn grinned savagely in return.

‘Thirty feet is not so deep,’ said Bjarki.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Elisabet’s arms and legs were bound to the four corners of the bedposts and her mouth gagged. She fought against these restraints with possessed fury, muscles straining, and blood flowed from her wrists and ankles. Her flesh was lathered in sweat and her long dark hair plastered against her skin. Her eyes were completely black, and she thrashed wildly as Anara continued to speak the words of banishment, standing at the foot of the bed.

Calard watched on in horror as the thing inhabiting Elisabet’s body struggled to maintain its hold. The air was chill in the room despite the roaring flames of the fireplace, and shadows danced at the edges of his vision.

Elisabet’s heavily pregnant body went into spasms, her back arching and lifting her off the bed as Anara’s voice rose in intensity. The shadows all around seemed agitated, and Calard could hear a faint whispering in his ears, and his hand closed around the hilt of his sword. Anara had assured him that the daemon-shades were unable to manifest within the room – she had sanctified and blessed it in the name of the Lady – but Calard was still uneasy.

With a shout, Anara completed her ritual, and Elisabet went into a final, shocking paroxysm, her eyes rolling back in her head and her limbs going rigid. Spasms wracked her frame, throwing her around on the bed, which shuddered under her exertions. Then, the girl was suddenly still.

Calard moved to Elisabet’s bedside. She was breathing shallowly, for which he was grateful – he had thought for a moment that her heart might have given out altogether.

Anara slumped backwards into a padded chair. She was pale and drawn, with dark rings around her eyes as if she had not slept for a week. The exorcism had clearly drained her.

The young castellan of Garamont was exhausted as well, though his was a physical tiredness. It had been two days since the enemy daemon-engine had been destroyed, and the Norscans had been attacking the walls since then non-stop. Calard had managed to snatch a few hours of rest between attacks, but even then his sleep had been haunted by visions of the Green Knight, and he had awoken feeling more tired than before. His armour was dented and splattered with gore, and his once pristine blue and red tabard was torn and smeared with blood and mud.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Is Elisabet herself?’

Anara opened her eyes and looked at him with exhausted eyes. The damsel nodded her head.

‘When will she wake?’ he said. ‘Will she recover?’

Anara merely shrugged in response. In the distance, Calard heard horns sound. Another assault was about to commence. He swore, and gave Elisabet one final look. Her breathing seemed regular, if shallow. Anara curled her legs up beneath her like a little girl, and was instantly fast asleep.

More horns blared, and Calard turned and walked wearily from the room. He closed the door softly behind him.

Calard’s cousins were waiting for him outside, but they did not immediately register that he had emerged from Elisabet’s room.

‘You know what must be done, Tassilo!’ Baldemund was saying, his voice low and threatening.

‘I’m just not sure any more that this is the right path,’ said Tassilo, shaking his head.

‘It is too late for second thoughts now, cousin,’ said Huebald fiercely. ‘We gave our oath to Folcard. He is relying upon us.’

‘Why are you arguing? Folcard is relying on you for what?’ said Calard, frowning. His cousins froze, then turned slowly to face him. Tassilo dropped his eyes to the floor.

‘Nothing that need concern you, cousin,’ said Baldemund. ‘You have enough on your plate already.’

Calard wanted to press the point, but found he simply did not have the strength. He was so tired.

‘Is Elisabet…’ said Huebald in concern. ‘Is it done?’

Calard nodded, too weary to speak.

‘Are you all right, cousin?’ Baldemund asked him in a quiet voice.

‘Let us get back to the walls,’ said Calard, ignoring the question.

Haegtesse jolted, feeling a horrible sense of vertigo as her spirit slammed back into her aged, decrepit and cancer-ridden body.

The witch tried to scream in outrage and denial, but a leather gag ensured that nothing but a weak, gargled cry passed her lips. Opening her eyes, she could see little. Once again she was practically blind, cataracts filling her milky orbs, and her heart fluttered weakly within the fragile cage that was her ribs. Her hands were tied tightly behind her back. Rats squeaked and rustled through the mouldy straw that littered the dank ground.

In the deepest oubliette beneath Castle Garamont, with her hands bound and her mouth gagged, there was nothing for the witch Haegtesse to do but wait for death.

Chlod was ripped from his restless, haunted sleep as a heavy boot kicked him hard in the side. Horns were sounding from the towers all around, and he groaned. The enemy had been coming at them relentlessly for almost three days now. The defenders had repelled wave after wave of attacks.

Everything hurt. His body was a mass of bruises upon bruises, and his limbs ached. Breathing in deeply was painful, and he was certain that at least one of his ribs was broken. He’d twisted his left leg badly the day before, and throbbing pain emanated from his knee. The little finger of his right hand had been severed by an enemy axe, and while he knew that he had been lucky – had he not slipped on a pool of blood and fallen on his arse, then the axe would have taken his head off – that thought did little to alleviate the pain.

Chlod had thought he would have been able to slink away from the front line at some point during the battle, or in the lapses between assaults, but so far he had been allowed no such opportunity. The yeomen wardens were as watchful as eagles, and they guarded all the stairways leading from off the walls. He had already seen them kill half a dozen would-be deserters, the screams of the dying men ringing out sharply as they were hurled over the battlements. He had considered leaping off, but his legs had begun to shake even just looking down towards the courtyard inside the curtain wall. It was perhaps thirty feet to the ground, and he was certain that he would break both his legs upon landing on the unforgiving stones below, if he survived the fall at all.

So exhausted had he been after the last assault that he had just slumped down in a heap where he had been fighting, huddling up against the battlements to escape the penetrating winds. He had fallen into a dreamless, exhausted sleep almost immediately.

It seemed as though he had only just closed his eyes, but already the next assault was about to begin.

‘Get up, you dogs,’ barked a grizzled man-at-arms, jabbing the butt of his halberd into peasants still lying on the ground. One of them didn’t move, and Chlod realised the man had died in the interim between the last assault, having either frozen to death or succumbed to injury. He didn’t look older than fifteen.

‘Get rid of him,’ snarled the man-at-arms, and Chlod was pushed roughly from behind. Together with two other peasants, he manhandled the already ice-cold corpse over the crenulations, pushing it over the edge to join the growing pile of bodies at the base of the wall.

Snow was falling once again, blanketing everything in an ever-deepening layer, and Chlod stamped his feet in an attempt to get some feeling back into them. He had cheered as he saw the holy paladin Reolus riding back into the castle, jumping up and down and hollering loudly, hoping that the grail knight would acknowledge him as one of his pilgrims. He had hoped that if Reolus saw him, he might be allowed off the walls in order to go to the grail knight, but if he was heard, the knight gave no indication.

Chlod had tried to convince the yeomen guarding the stairways that his master needed him, but they had laughed in his face. One of them pushed him backwards hard with his polearm, and Chlod had fallen on his backside, staring up at the man hatefully.

In truth, Chlod had felt considerable joy that Reolus still lived. Though he cared not a jot for the nobility, he found himself pleased that the grail knight was not yet numbered among the casualties. There was something special about him, that much was obvious, and Chlod felt somehow that while the knight lived they still had hope. It mattered not that he was just one man. While the grail knight lived, Chlod felt confident that the enemy would be repelled.

He pulled off his helmet and scratched his head. A peasant nearby was staring slack-mouthed at the shaved circle on the crown of his head.

‘What are you staring at?’ said Chlod.

‘Are you really his pilgrim?’ asked the man. He was a solidly built simpleton with one shoulder hanging half a foot lower than the other.

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘You an abbot or something?’ said the man.

‘That’s right,’ said Chlod, puffing out his chest. He looked around him as if checking to see if anyone else was within earshot, then beckoned the big man towards him.

‘Tell you what,’ said Chlod. ‘You guard my back in the next attack, and if we are both livin’ at the end of it, I’ll make you my novice.’

‘Would you?’ said the man, his eyes widening. Chlod nodded gravely.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Otho, father abbot.’

‘Brother Otho. It sounds good, dunnit?’ said Chlod. The big man nodded his head. Chlod produced a small bone from his tunic pocket with a flourish, and held it out to the man, who took it in his hands reverently.

‘What is it?’ he said breathlessly, staring at it as if it were made of solid gold. ‘The finger of a saint?’

‘Better,’ said Chlod in a hushed voice. ‘It’s a chicken bone.’

‘A chicken bone,’ said Otho with reverence in his voice.

‘A chicken bone gnawed on by none other than Reolus the… the Oh So Mighty and Grand,’ said Chlod, affecting a dramatic voice that elicited an exhalation of wonder from the big peasant. ‘It will protect you. But only – only – if you make sure that I, his holy abbot, am kept from harm. If even one heathen lays a hand upon me, the bearer of that sacred bone will be struck down. You understand?’

The big man nodded his head solemnly.

Other horns blared, and warning shouts announced that the enemy longships were drawing near. Trebuchets began firing, and Chlod pulled the broken sword from the loop of leather around his waist, feeling quietly smug at having tricked the big peasant into protecting his back. Perhaps he would survive a little longer than he expected.

Otho dropped to his knees before Chlod, bowing his head. After a moment of staring at the man in incomprehension, Chlod chuckled to himself and stepped towards him. What matter did it do to push the charade a little further?

He made a warding sign in the air, imitating a benediction that he had once seen a priest make, and placed his hand on the man’s head.

‘Bless me too, father abbot!’ shouted another peasant, dropping to his knees.

Other men pressed in, reaching for Chlod with outstretched hands. Others pushed themselves to the ground before him, heads bowed to receive his benediction. They were not just peasant archers and men like he, drafted hastily into service, either; a number of men-at-arms wearing the duke’s white and red tabards were among their number. Chlod shook his head at the absurdity of the situation.

His pet rat squirmed under his shirt, and he patted it absently, a gormless smile on his face.

‘Here they come again!’ came a shout.

‘Bless you all, sons of Reolus!’ shouted Chlod.

The peasants gathered around him roared their approval, and hefted their weapons in their hands as the first arrows began to fire upon the enemy storming up the beach.

Calard plunged his sword into the neck of another Norscan as he tried to clamber over the battlements. Blood spluttered from the barbarian’s lips, yet the dying warrior gripped Calard’s blade with one hand, trapping it.

As Calard struggled to free his weapon, a man-at-arms to his right fell backwards, a spear jutting from his chest, and a white-bearded, heavily muscled Norscan leapt over the wall, howling like a blood-maddened wolf. The veteran enemy warrior swung to his left, slamming his axe into a knight’s neck, shearing through metal. As the knight fell, the Norscan ripped his axe free and swung towards Calard, who was still struggling frantically to free his trapped sword. Seeing Calard’s predicament, the warrior who had a hold of his sword grinned, blood dribbling from his mouth.

Calard growled in frustration, using all his strength trying to rip his sword loose, but to no avail. Still, he had no intention of releasing his grip on the Garamont heirloom, for he knew that as soon as he let go the Norscan would fall backwards to his death, taking the sword with him.

Bertelis slammed into the white-bearded Norscan from the side, driving him into the battlements. Losing his grip on his axe, the old warrior hammered his elbow into Bertelis’s helmet, snapping his head backwards. Bertelis reeled, and Calard saw his brother’s blade embedded to the hilt in the Norscan’s gut.

Huebald and Baldemund stepped protectively in front of Bertelis as the Norscan pulled the bloody sword from his flesh and hurled it away from him. Blood was gushing from the mortal wound, but the Norscan merely roared in fury and hurled himself at Calard’s cousins.

Calard placed one foot upon the edge of the crenulations and heaved with all his might, and finally tore his sword free, severing the Norscan’s fingers in the process. The man dropped backwards, still grinning, and was gone.

The young lord of Garamont swung around to see white-beard with his paw-like hands wrapped around Huebald’s neck, throttling the life out of him even as Baldemund stabbed him repeatedly.

Calard bellowed wordlessly as he launched himself to the aid of his cousins, and the Norscan looked up at him, still howling, just a fraction of a second before the blade of Garamont carved into his skull. Blood and brain matter splattered over Calard’s face and chest, and the Norscan finally fell.

‘Breach!’ shouted Tassilo, leaping past Calard as giant, black-armoured warriors heaved themselves onto the battlements behind them. A knight fell, hacked from collarbone to sternum by a sickeningly powerful axe blow, and his companion butchered a pair of men-at-arms, black-bladed twin swords flashing.

Tassilo barged into the first of them with his shield. The Norscan was a head taller than the young Bretonnian nobleman, but the icy stonework was slippery underfoot, and he lost his balance. The Norscan barked a curse and dropped his axe, black-armoured fingers scrabbling for a handhold as he fell back over the battlements.

The second Chaos warrior took a step towards the wall’s defenders, pale eyes burning with cold intensity within the shadowy depths of his helmet. Almost as an afterthought he lashed out with one of his swords, and Tassilo fell with a gasp of pain as the tainted weapon carved through the plate armour encasing his forearm. Tassilo dropped to his knees, grasping his wounded arm, and Calard saw his cousin’s vambrace blacken and corrode.

The Chaos warrior’s broad shoulders were hung with wolf pelts, and he towered over Calard and his companions. Black smoke rose from the deadly, jagged blades of his weapons, and Calard knew that this must have been one of the enemy chieftains. More enemy warriors leapt over the walls behind him, but Calard’s gaze was fixed on the giant warrior closing towards him. This was a worthy foe, he knew, and he relished the opportunity to prove himself before the Lady and his comrades – and to himself.

‘This one’s mine,’ he said, though Baldemund and Huebald were already stepping away, leaving him at the fore, alone and exposed, though Calard noticed not at all.

Tassilo managed to scramble back before the chieftain’s advance, still clutching at his wounded arm in obvious agony.

Calard gripped the hilt of the sword of Garamont tightly, and whispered a swift prayer to the Lady of the Lake as he stepped forward to meet this enemy champion.

A shadow fell over him and he ducked involuntarily as a winged shape swooped low over his head.

The enemy champion took a step back, raising his swords up before him, but before he could ward off the blow, a lance was driven into his chest, punching though his armour and impaling him on its length. The lance tip burst out through the back of his body, transfixing him, and then the pegasus mounted knight was past, banking sharply off to the right.

A cheer rose up from the defenders as Laudethaire flew over their heads, drawing his sword and brandishing it in salute. Calard realised that scores of men had seen the Parravonian strike down the enemy chieftain, and he had no doubt that all those who had not would know of it before the day was out.

‘Bastard,’ said Calard. Once again Laudethaire had claimed the glory, and Calard and his ilk were left to clean up the remnants.

The Norscans came at them in a rush, and Calard only just managed to get his shield up in time to turn aside a swinging axe. He was knocked to his knees by the force behind the blow, and he slashed desperately with his sword. The blade sank deep into his attacker’s calf. The Norscan fell with a curse and was finished off by a peasant, who hammered the spiked tip of his polearm down into the man’s face.

As Calard rose back to his feet his shield was knocked aside by a heavy hammer, the blow designed to leave him unprotected. A boot struck him full in the chest, sending him crashing backwards, his breastplate groaning under the force and the wind driven from his lungs.

He hit the ground hard, flat on his back, and his head struck the stone. Had he not been wearing his helmet he might have been killed. As it was he was merely stunned, though he would have a headache for a few days if he survived this latest assault.

Winded, he struggled to rise, though he saw that the Norse who had managed to storm onto the ramparts had been killed, their ladders pushed from the walls.

The Norse champion, impaled upon the length of Laudethaire’s lance, was still alive, though he was clearly mortally wounded. The blood that dripped from his wound was black and hissed as it struck the stonework, melting shallow pits in the rock where it fell.

He stared up hatefully at Calard as he stepped forward to finish the warrior. Calard’s blow shattered the Norscan’s helmet and took half his head away, but still he did not die. The shattered pieces of the warrior’s helmet fell away from his face, exposing a mass of skinless flesh. Maggots writhed through the fibrous muscles of the champion’s face, and his lipless mouth was studded with rotting fangs. A single large horn protruded from the Norscan’s forehead. Calard had thought that horn but part of the brutal ornamentation of the Norscan’s helmet, but he saw now that it was part of the champion’s own flesh and bone.

The chieftain spat a gobbet of phlegm up at Calard, which splattered against his helmet, just below his eye-slit. He could hear the foul acidic sputum eating through metal, and he ripped his helmet off his head, dropping it at his feet.

The enemy chieftain chuckled, his ice-white eyes filled with dark humour, and Calard struck him again, this time hacking his putrid head from his shoulders. A rancid stink rose from the corpse, and Calard gagged.

Several men-at-arms were with Tassilo, helping remove the armour from his arm, and Calard saw that the wound was already festering with poison. Calard barked an order, demanding that the champion’s fell, black-bladed swords be wrapped in blankets and hurled from the walls. He ordered the rancid corpse of the Norscan thrown over the battlements, and half a dozen men lost the contents of their stomach at the repulsive stink of the rapidly decomposing body.

Bowmen stepped lightly through the knights and men-at-arms at a shout from a yeoman warden, and they began firing between the crenulations once again; another enemy assault was about to hit home.

Bone tired, Calard leant against the wall, his back to the battlements and closed his eyes, breathing hard.

It seemed like only moments passed before he heard ladders slam up against the walls as the next enemy assault struck. Weary beyond words, he opened his eyes and pushed away from the battlements, turning to wait for the enemy to appear.

As weary as he was, Chlod was starting to enjoy the level of respect and deference he was receiving from the soldiers fighting around him. In truth, he had begun to believe his own rhetoric; he had started to believe that he was the prophet of Reolus’s glory, and that in his exalted position he was afforded a certain amount of holy protection.

So it came as a considerable shock when a hulking Norscan berserker, his red hair and beard a tangle of braids and dreadlocks, tore through his fanatical devotees like a maelstrom of death and grabbed him by the shirtfront. Chlod’s eyes bulged and he scrabbled to free himself from the man’s grip.

A mailed fist smashed into his face. Then he was lifted off his feet and tossed over the battlements. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

Elisabet awoke to sharp pain, gasping. It took her a moment to realise that she could see clearly and that she was no longer curled upon the rotting pallet in the dank dungeon cell. She was lying in a soft bed, and she stared up at the rich velvet draped above the four-poster bed, not knowing if she was dreaming, or if this was reality and being trapped in the body of the old crone had been the delusion. The sheets under which she lay were drenched in sweat and she doubled over in agony, groaning, as shooting pain again lanced through her.

Her hands clutched at her belly, and horror rose within her as she felt the swelling there. She threw off the covers and stared in incomprehension at her heavily pregnant young body.

Had she escaped one horrific nightmare only to find herself in another?

‘Your contractions are close,’ said a voice from nearby, and she turned her head to see a slight, waifish young woman with a distant expression on her face. She recognised her as Calard’s sister Anara, and she gaped at her in horror as she digested the damsel’s words.

‘Contractions?’ she breathed.

‘The child is ready to enter the world,’ confirmed Anara.

‘Tell me this is a nightmare,’ said Elisabet in desperation. ‘Tell me this is not real!’

Anara held a wet cloth to Elisabet’s forehead as fresh pain made her double up in agony. She called for water and towels over her shoulder, and as she shook her head in the negative, Elisabet cried, wailing in fear, incomprehension and pain.

‘How?’ she managed. Then another thought struck her, and she leant towards Anara, clutching at her in desperation. ‘Who is the father?’

‘The enemy,’ said Anara.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Chlod awoke to darkness. He could hear shouts and screams in the distance, but they were muffled and faint. I am dead, he thought, and I am hearing the echoes of the living seeping down into Morr’s underworld.

He realised dimly that the reason he could not see was because he was lying under something. Another thought struck him then; maybe he was not dead, but rather was buried alive.

The thought was horrifying, and with a strangled cry he fought to wriggle and squirm to the surface. His eyes registered firelight, and he saw that he was half buried beneath a pile of corpses. He panicked. In desperation and terror he struggled to escape the morass of dead bodies, fighting to free himself. The stink of death, a vile mixture of blood and excrement from loosed bowels, was heavy in his nostrils.

His head spinning, Chlod crawled out from under the bodies beneath which he was pinned, stumbling over the uneven mound of corpses as he pushed himself to his feet. He tried not to look at their blood-smeared faces or their hideous wounds. His eyes were wild and slightly unfocused, and he could feel that the left half of his face was slick with blood. His helmet was gone, and his body was aching all over.

A body slammed down next to Chlod, and he stared at it in mute incomprehension. The man was a powerfully built Norscan and he wasn’t dead yet, though blood was pumping from a horrible throat wound. The bodies had cushioned his fall, as they had doubtless done for him. He was trying to scream, but all that came from his mouth was a gargle of blood. The Norscan reached a hand towards Chlod, though he could not tell if it was a silent appeal for aid or a threatening gesture.

Chlod lifted his gaze, following the direction from where the man had come, and only then did he register that he was at the base of immense castle walls. He was confused for a moment and he stared up stupidly. Wasn’t he meant to be up there? Had he fallen?

Sound came crashing in on him suddenly, as if stoppers had just been removed from his ears, and he staggered under the aural assault.

Men were roaring in pain, anger and challenge, and the sounds of weapons clashing rang out sharply. He heard the unmistakeable sound of steel hacking into flesh and bone, and heard the snap of timber and leather as trebuchets fired. Arrows sliced downwards, loosed from the ramparts as well as from slits in the walls and towers, and one of them grazed his wrist, eliciting a gasp of pain and shock from his lips. Ladders crashed against parapets, and war cries were belted out at the top of warriors’ lungs. Feral drums echoed across the battlefield, bouncing back off the castle walls, and horns rang out.

Chlod pressed his hands to his ears and stumbled backwards, his eyes wild as he saw the carnage and mayhem unfolding all around him. There was movement everywhere, and hundreds of enemy warriors were pushing and shoving as they climbed the ladders nearby or hauled themselves up thick ropes. No one seemed to register his presence, though there were hundreds of Norscans only yards away.

Then war horns were sounding the retreat, and the enemy began streaming back towards the longships half hidden in the blinding gale of wind and snow.

A Norscan leaped off the ladder he was climbing, landing heavily in front of Chlod. He staggered back away from the blood-smeared warrior. The man snarled at him and lunged forwards, grabbing him by the front of his tunic. He raised his axe for the killing blow, and Chlod cringed, whimpering like a babe as he waited for death.

Another Norscan barked something in their crude language, and Chlod saw his would-be killer scowl and lower his axe. He was shoved backwards, and he tripped over a headless corpse. The Norscan gestured angrily with his axe, shouting at Chlod. He stared up at the brutal warrior, not understanding his meaning, and received a boot to the head that sent him sprawling backwards.

Spitting out a couple of teeth, Chlod pushed himself to his feet as the Norscan shouted again, gesturing towards the ocean with his axe. Chlod turned his head to look where the warrior was pointing. He could see Norscans pushing longships back into the ocean. The Norscan stepped forward to strike him again, and like a dutiful dog, Chlod began scurrying towards the ocean.

Hundreds of enemy warriors were running down the beach and throwing their weight against the ships, pushing them into the furious ocean. Chlod staggered down the sand in their midst, being shoved along by his Norscan captor.

Arrows cut down dozens of men as shafts struck them in the back and in the legs. Bodies were floating face down in the ocean, being tossed to and fro by the surf and banging up against the sides of the longship. Their comrades ignored those that fell, or who were already dead. Breathing hard, Chlod was pushed towards one of the longships, which was already putting to sea.

Chlod splashed into the ocean. The water was freezing, instantly numbing his feet. He sucked in a breath and stepped back sharply as he saw black fins cutting through the water only ten yards out. A boot in the small of his back shoved him forward, and he fell to his knees in the icy waters. A breaker crashed over him, and he came up spluttering.

Arrows sliced into the water around him, striking several Norscans wading out to the departing longships. He saw a shark lurch out of nowhere and clamp its jaws around the leg of one warrior as he hauled himself over the side one of the ships, taking it off at the hip. Screaming and with blood pumping from the stump, he was kicked into the sea by his comrades, who clearly had no mercy or time for a warrior unable to stand.

A spinning hunk of masonry hurled by a trebuchet came crashing down through the hull of another longship a dozen yards out into the strait, instantly killing several men. The others were forced into the shark-infested waters as the ship was split in two, and the ocean turned red and turbulent as the voracious carnivores feasted.

Chlod floundered in the whitewash as a wave hit him. He jerked as the frantic rat hidden inside his shirt front bit his chest in its fear. He swung around, desperate to put as much distance between himself and the cold-blooded killers circling nearby, but was met with a solid fist to the jaw. The blow laid him out cold. He didn’t feel a thing as his limp body was hefted onto the Norscan’s shoulder, nor when he was thrown over the side of the longship like a sack of wheat and kicked into the iron cage, alongside a score of other prisoners.

He came awake instantly as strange, pungent herbs were shoved under his nose. A savage tattooed face framed by matted dreadlocks and braids was just inches from his own. The figure squatting over him grinned down at him, exposing teeth that had been filed to points, and a hand slapped him hard across the side of the head. Chlod found that his hands were bound behind his back, and he was dragged to his feet by a pair of unseen figures. Then the flat of a blade smacked across the back of his knees, forcing him to kneel.

Chlod’s eyes flickered around him, taking in his surroundings. He was in the middle of what he guessed was the Norscans’ encampment. Two pyramids of severed heads, each easily twenty feet high, were behind the barbarian holding Chlod immobile. Crows and ravens hopped over the grisly shrines, pecking at eyeballs and tearing tongues from mouths, and as he looked upon them, he began to shake uncontrollably.

‘It is good you are awake,’ said the barbaric figure, and it took Chlod a moment to realise that the man was speaking Breton, though it was with a brutal accent. The man clamped a hand around Chlod’s jaw, holding his head steady. ‘Gods hear you scream when you awake.’

He registered the wooden block that was before him. He saw the marks where an axe had bitten into the wood repeatedly, and he saw blood – some fresh, some dry and old – that had stained the chopping block almost black. He started blubbering like a teething babe, tears and snot running down his bloody, dirt-smeared face.

‘No, please, no, no,’ he said, closing his eyes tightly against the foul image.

Chlod was grabbed by the hair from behind, and forced forward. His arms were reefed up behind his back painfully, and the side of his face slammed into the wood of the chopping block. He could taste fresh blood on his lips.

‘You will not die just yet. I’m going to cut you first,’ said the Norscan seer, whispering in Chlod’s ear. ‘Just enough to make you scream. Your cries will get the attention of the gods – only then will your death come.’

Chlod was crying like a bairn, his eyes clamped tightly shut. He felt the cold touch of a blade upon the back of his ear and he screamed. Hands held him immobile, pressing his head hard into the chopping block.

Bjarki grinned as the prisoner screamed beneath him. He could feel the presence of daemons nearby, just beyond the veil separating the real world from the blessed madness beyond, and knew that they were savouring the pain he would unleash upon this one.

‘Wait!’ screamed the Bretonnian. ‘I can help you!’

Bjarki ignored him.

‘I… I know a way into the keep!’ screamed the Bretonnian. ‘A secret way! Unguarded! Please don’t kill me!’

‘Stop,’ ordered a voice. Bjarki swore. The Bretonnian continued to scream, wailing like a beaten dog.

‘I said stop, little bear,’ growled the voice again, more forcefully this time, and Bjarki’s head snapped up. He glared angrily at his jarl, who was standing flanked by his two daughters. Each of them had their hands on the hilts of their blades. The jarl had his arms crossed over his broad chest.

‘Why?’ said Bjarki.

‘What did he say, just then?’ demanded the jarl.

‘He’s pleading for his life,’ said the seer. ‘Pathetic, really.’

‘Did he not say anything else,’ said Styrbjorn, eyes narrowed.

Bjarki licked his lips, wondering if he could get away with lying to his jarl. He dismissed the idea; he would not risk further distancing himself from Styrbjorn over the life of one Bretonnian dog.

‘He claims to know a way into the keep. An unguarded way, he says.’

‘Let him up,’ said Styrbjorn.

‘He’s lying!’ stormed Bjarki. ‘He’d say anything if he thought it would give him a few more seconds of life!’

‘Let him up, I said,’ growled the Skaeling jarl.

‘They are offerings to the gods, my jarl,’ snarled Bjarki. ‘You risk offending the great powers by intervening.’

Styrbjorn levelled a finger threateningly at the seer, and Bjarki shook his head, muttering under his breath.

He glanced down at the pitiful wretch still held immobile beneath his knife. The Bretonnian had stopped screaming now, and was merely whimpering, tears mixing with blood and mucous. Then in one sharp, angry movement, he sliced away the Bretonnian’s ear. The wretch screamed in agony, and his squeals increased as alcohol was splashed onto the wound.

‘Fine,’ said Bjarki, and he shoved the bleeding wretch to the ground at Styrbjorn’s feet. He tossed the man’s ear to one of the warhounds lurking nearby, which caught it deftly in its mouth and swallowed it in one gulp.

It did not take long to wrangle the information out of the wretched Bretonnian. Bjarki found it disgusting at how quickly the man betrayed his comrades. Still, he was a cunning one – he kept the exact location of this supposed secret entrance into the keep to himself, clearly trying to keep himself alive. In truth, had he coughed up the location of the entrance, he would already be dead, so perhaps he was not as stupid as Bjarki first thought.

‘He will not keep it from us for long,’ said Bjarki with not a small amount of relish, brandishing his serpent dagger.

‘No,’ said Styrbjorn. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of his pathetic screams. He’ll lead us to it.’

‘You will accompany this raid yourself?’ said Bjarki.

‘Gods no,’ said Styrbjorn with a laugh, shaking his head, and his daughters smirked. Sensing there was something he was missing, Bjarki bristled, narrowing his eyes.

‘It would take a week to get the smell out of my nostrils,’ said Styrbjorn, and an evil grin appeared on his face. ‘No, dear Bjarki, you will lead it.’

‘What do you mean about the smell?’ said Bjarki, still wary. Styrbjorn laughed again, as did his daughters.

‘I think I already know what this “secret entrance” is. You’ll see,’ said the jarl with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

Bjarki scowled up at the latrine chute some twenty feet up the north side of the keep’s wall.

It had taken the better part of two hours to navigate their way around the rocks to this position unseen, and Bjarki was in no mood to see the humorous side of the plan.

Half a dozen men had been chosen to accompany him. All were slightly built warriors, smaller than their brethren. At first Bjarki had thought this was some implicit insult, but now he understood. The latrine chimney was narrow; only the slimmest Norscan would have any hope of fitting inside.

They had waited until the white moon had slunk over the horizon before setting off, moving stealthily and keeping to the shadows. Weapons had been wrapped in furs, and jangling buckles and armour stripped off them so that they could move in silence. For most of the way they had been forced to wade through waist-deep water, always keeping a wary eye out for sharks, and trying to keep their bodies low, so as to ensure that wherever possible the rocks were between them and anyone who may have been looking down from above.

The wall beneath the chute was slick with excrement, and it coated the rocks at the foot of the wall. At any time other than extreme low tide the waves would be lapping up against the base of the wall, washing away the foulness. Already the tide was beginning to turn, and Bjarki realised that there was no chance of getting back around to the east of the island before the rising waters forced them to swim. He did not relish the idea of that, giving the dark fins of the ever-present sharks a glare. They were true beasts of Kharnath; fearless, indiscriminate killers, and driven mad by the merest whiff of blood in the water. He knew they would take him as willingly as any other Norscan or Bretonnian that fell into their domain – that he was a seer of the gods mattered not at all.

Bjarki still didn’t see the need for this far-fetched ploy, and he suspected that Styrbjorn insisted on it merely because it amused him to think of his seer climbing a filth-smeared chute. He was certain that the direct attack Styrbjorn planned would be enough to take the castle walls, but seeing that there was no turning back now, he sighed and nodded to one of the warriors accompanying him, Eilif.

Eilif was Styrbjorn’s nephew, and the slender young warrior had his blond hair pulled back in a single thick plait that hung down past his waist. He nodded back at Bjarki and began picking his way over the rocks to the base of the wall. He had a length of rope looped over his shoulders, knotted every couple of feet, and after pausing to look up for a few moments to pick out his route and memorise the location of handholds, he began his ascent.

Eilif climbed swiftly and surely, and Bjarki cast a look up towards the battlements atop the keep. If anyone looked down now, they would see the Norscan clearly, but thankfully the arrogant Bretonnians seemed not to expect any attack from this quarter – there was no room to land a ship, and the keep was too high for ladders or grappling hooks. The Norscan continued climbing hand over hand, digging his fingers and toes into the gaps between the stones.

At last the young Skaeling reached the toilet chute and he jammed his feet into crevices and pulled a hammer and a six-inch iron spike from where they had been tucked into his belt. Waiting until a wave crashed against the rocks to help disguise the sound, Eilif struck the spike sharply, driving it into the mortar between two stones, before pressing himself hard up against the wall and freezing. He was concealed from above by the jutting chimney of the latrine shaft itself, and Bjarki and the others ducked back behind the rocks, lowering themselves into the black waters as the heads of several sentries up above peered over the edge.

After a minute or so, Bjarki risked a glance upwards, and saw that the sentries were no longer visible. He signalled to Eilif, who quickly unlooped his rope and tied its end to the piton. He let the rope unfurl, and Bjarki grabbed it as it fell down to the base of the wall.

The iron bars that blocked the latrine chute were corroded and crumbling, and it took little effort for Eilif to rip the latticework free, though Bjarki winced at the sound, ducking back behind the rocks. When no sentry seemed to have heard the sound, the bars were dropped from above and deftly caught by a warrior below. The young warrior climbed swiftly back down the rope.

‘Bring him,’ said Bjarki in a low voice, and the Bretonnian prisoner was shoved forward. His head was bound in cloth, and blood soaked the area where his left ear had been. His mouth was gagged so that he did not shout out and alert the guards. His eyes were wide with fright and pain, and filled with tears. Still, having someone that knew their way around the inside of the castle would be useful.

‘You first,’ growled Bjarki.

He was a hunchbacked wretch, and the seer looked at him critically for a moment. Though he was certainly stronger than he looked, the malformed Bretonnian peasant might have trouble climbing the rope, let alone the vertical latrine chimney. And if he slipped and fell while half-way up, he might ensure those behind him fell as well.

‘No,’ said Bjarki, changing his mind. ‘I am first.’

The Bretonnian nodded his head, clearly just grateful to be alive. Still, Bjarki knew that given the briefest opportunity, he would try to run. He dipped a finger into a pouch, and leant towards the wretch, who drew back away from him in fear.

‘Give me your hand,’ said Bjarki, imparting a portion of his power into his voice. Unable to resist the seer’s order, the Bretonnian held out his hand, palm up. Had Bjarki told him to slit his own throat he would have done so, and the terror in the man’s eyes showed that he understood that.

Bjarki took the man’s hand in his and closed his eyes, muttering arcane phrases. After a moment he opened his eyes and turned the peasant’s hand over. There was a black mark upon his wrist, and the wretch’s eyes widened as he looked upon it.

‘This is the mark of Drazh’la’gha the flesh-eater,’ said Bjarki in a low, menacing voice that made the peasant wince. ‘It is a curse, and I am the only one that can remove it. Attempt to escape, shout a warning to any defender, or try to trick me in any way, and Drazh’la’gha will consume you from the inside out. Do as I say, and I will remove it. You understand?’

The peasant clenched his eyes tightly shut, and tears were once again running down his face. It was disgusting and shaming, and Bjarki felt nothing but loathing for this pathetic creature.

‘You understand?’ he said again, and the man nodded his head. ‘And do not think that death is an escape. If you die while the curse is still in place, your soul shall never have rest. It shall be the plaything of Drazh’la’gha for all eternity. You do not want to fall to your death while climbing, Bretonnian filth.’

Satisfied, Bjarki nodded to the young Skaeling warrior, Eilif.

‘See that he follows close behind me,’ the seer ordered. Then giving the latrine chimney one last, sour look, he began the climb.

‘What was it?’ said Duke Adalhard, speaking to one of his knights who had gone to look over the edge of the keep, having heard a metallic sound from below.

‘Nothing, lord,’ said the knight. ‘Perhaps a trick of the wind.’

Adalhard nodded vaguely, turning his mind back to the task at hand. From atop his towering keep, Duke Adalhard was organising the defence of his castle, communicating with those below with flags and runners. He saw hundreds of longships ploughing through the seas towards the western battlements, the longest stretch of wall within the castle, and the least heavily defended. It would be difficult for the enemy to gain a foothold upon the narrow strip of land beneath the western walls, and the approach was treacherous, with many hidden rocks and surging waves.

Still, a foothold was possible, and he could ill afford to leave those walls undefended. With some reluctance he ordered them bolstered, sending the last reserve companies of men-at-arms and knights towards them. The eastern walls had taken the brunt of the assault and were in desperate need of reinforcement, but there were no more men to spare. Ideally, the defenders would be rotated on shifts, in order that weary men were able to get some decent rest and food, but that was a luxury that the duke was unable to afford.

The Norse assault was now hitting Castle Lyonesse from all angles. The heaviest concentration of enemy forces came at the eastern walls, but longships were being rowed at speed towards the island from every quarter in an effort to ensure that the Bretonnian’s defences were spread as thinly as possible; and it was working. Only the north was not suffering attack – the keep took up most of the northern tip of the island, and it was simply too tall, and the ocean’s currents north of the island too fierce, for an attack to have any attempt of success from that quarter.

Thankfully the enemy artillery had been silenced. Adalhard was under no illusions as to what would have happened had it not; he would have gone down in history as the only duke to allow Castle Lyonesse to fall to the enemy.

Damaged crenulations and battlements had been barricaded with sacks of grain, barrels filled with water and hastily nailed together planks of wood. One wall section fifty feet wide had collapsed, killing three knights and scores of peasants, leaving the wall only half its original height.

That was the biggest chink in the castle’s armour, and the enemy had hurled themselves against it, clambering eagerly up the loose stones and chunks of masonry, screaming war cries and bellowing praise to their infernal gods. It was only because the grail knight Reolus had taken it upon himself to stand there, atop the crumbling wall, defying the enemy, that the section had not yet been overrun. His presence inspired those around him to great heights of bravery and courage, and it was there that the fighting had been the fiercest.

Between attacks the duke ordered wine, bread and cheese distributed amongst the defenders, and he had opened up his storehouses, seeing to it that even the lowliest peasants drafted into service – those of them that were left alive at any rate– were supplied with blankets, replacement weapons, adequate arrows and shields.

Had this been any other enemy, Duke Adalhard would have felt confident that he would be able to hold almost indefinitely, or at least long enough for aid to come from Couronne, if not from his eastern neighbour, the bastard Duke of L’Anguille. His greed-sick rival was doubtless enjoying hearing of his misfortune, already plotting how he could move against Lyonesse and extend the borders of L’Anguille.

With all the reserve companies committed to action, there was little more that Adalhard could do. He ordered a manservant to bring him his shield and helm.

‘You cannot be considering fighting on the walls, my duke?’ said one of his nobles, the stick-thin Baron Broussard, aghast at the notion.

‘I am. And you will be fighting alongside me, my dear baron,’ Adalhard said with some relish. ‘Every man able to wield a sword is to fight.’

The man blanched. Inwardly, Adalhard was pleased to see the man squirm. He had little time for those willing to send honourable men to their deaths but who would not face the same dangers themselves. Broussard was a political animal – Adalhard had always been sure to keep the man onside for he would have made a deadly political opponent – but in truth he loathed the man, and he was certainly no warrior.

‘But if you were to fall, my lord, surely that would be a terrible blow to morale?’ said Broussard smoothly, though Adalhard noted that a sheen of sweat glistened on his brow.

‘And what does it say to the men if I were not to fight? It will give heart to the men to see me face the same dangers as they,’ replied Adalhard dismissively.

‘It is foolishness, my lord!’ protested Broussard. He turned towards his companion, the porcine Marquis of Carabas, looking for support, but the man avoided his gaze. ‘We must hand the young woman over to the Norscans! Any other path is folly, my lord duke!’

‘I have already made my mind up, baron. See that your man brings your weapons and armour. I expect to see you garbed for war in ten minutes’ time. A second late and I will have you branded a coward and turncoat, and I will see you swing. Am I understood?’

‘I always knew that you were a fool,’ said Broussard bitterly.

‘If I am to die,’ said Adalhard, ‘then I will do so with honour, defending the realm I was sworn to protect. I will not cow to the demands of any Norscan whoreson, even if it does mean certain death.’

‘There is no honour in death, however it comes,’ said Broussard. ‘The notion of honour is a convenient fiction, and every Bretonnian with half a brain knows it. It means nothing!’

‘You are wrong, baron,’ said Adalhard.

‘I should have allied myself with L’Anguille long ago,’ said Broussard. ‘At least then I would still be alive on the morn.’

The duke said nothing, merely regarding Broussard with the expression of one who unwittingly steps on a slug while walking barefoot.

‘None of us are going to survive this!’ said Broussard, an edge of hysteria entering his voice. ‘We are all going to die here if you don’t hand the witch over to them! What does she matter to you, anyway? She’s just some Bastonnian whore! Can you not see that?’

‘What I see,’ said Adalhard, ‘is a man willing to hand a woman of noble birth over to blood-drenched savages in an attempt to save his own pathetic, worthless, honourless life. What I see is a man unwilling to take up a sword and fight the enemies of his lord. You disgust me, Broussard. I should have disposed of your services long ago.’

Broussard’s face twisted in fury, and he scrabbled for the dagger sheathed at his waist. Before any of Adalhard’s bodyguards could react, he pulled the blade clear and lunged at the duke.

Adalhard swatted the dagger aside with the flat of his hand and backhanded the baron in the side of the head. Broussard was knocked to the ground, and before he could rise the duke’s men were upon him, pinning him down.

The Duke of Lyonesse drew his sword. Elven runes engraved upon the blade glittered, and he took a menacing step forwards. The baron struggled, his eyes wide with terror, but he was held firmly.

‘You condemn every man in this castle to death if you do not hand her over,’ Broussard said, breathing hard.

‘And I condemn every man to live in shame if I do,’ said the duke.

Broussard licked his lips, and a spark of hope appeared in his eyes as the duke sheathed his ancestral sword.

‘You are not worthy of dying a warrior’s death by this sword,’ said Adalhard, shattering that fleeting hope. ‘It would be a dishonour to the memory of my forefathers to stain its blade with your blood. Hurl him over the battlements.’

The baron began screaming and fighting, and Duke Adalhard turned away as Broussard was manhandled towards the crenulations atop the keep. The man was bustled over the edge, and his screams grew faint. A moment later they stopped altogether.

The duke’s manservant returned, bearing Adalhard’s gleaming, golden helmet and white shield, with its red lion’s head heraldry protruding from its surface.

‘What of you, Carabas?’ said the duke as he pulled his helmet onto his head. He looked towards the overweight noble.

‘I’m no warrior,’ said the marquis, ‘but I would be honoured to stand at your side and do my part.’

There was fire in his voice, and Adalhard believed him. As porcine and gluttonous as Carabas was, he had always known there was a certain strength in the man, and he felt admiration for him at his words. For a warrior, his body and mind trained for war, it still took great courage to walk onto the battlefield. To walk onto the field of war knowing that you were unskilled, unfit, and that the first enemy you met would most likely kill you took courage beyond what Adalhard believed he himself possessed.

‘The honour would be mine, Carabas,’ he said, with feeling.

‘Can’t say I ever liked that bastard,’ said the fat marquis, gesturing over the ramparts with his thumb. ‘About time, I’d say. But I fear I will make you wait longer than the ten minutes you gave him. It will take me that long to get to the bottom of the stairs, let alone have my man stuff me into my armour.’

Adalhard smiled.

‘I’ll wait,’ he said.

In the distance there came a horrible trumpeting sound that Adalhard had heard before, and the smile dropped from his face.

‘What in the Lady’s name was that?’ said Carabas.

There was little room inside the latrine chute, yet Bjarki climbed steadily and easily, using his back, knees and elbows to wedge himself in the shaft and shimmy his way up. He slipped once or twice on the faeces-slick walls of the chimney, but did not panic, and caught himself each time before he had fallen more than a yard or two. A little light filtered down from the various latrines that joined the chute; just enough to see by.

The progress of the Bretonnian captive below him, however, was painfully slow and halting, and Bjarki snarled in frustration as he looked down at the shadow of the man, willing him to hurry up. The noise the man made as he climbed made him cringe, and with every passing moment he was certain that they would be discovered. The peasant’s breathing was heavy and laboured, and he had wedged himself inside the shaft as he tried to catch his breath. Bjarki could just make out the wretch’s arms and legs shaking with fatigue, and he cursed again.

‘You fall, and eternal torment awaits,’ Bjarki said in a hoarse, low whisper, his voice ghosting down to the Bretonnian’s one good ear. He heard the man swallow thickly, and start climbing again, and Bjarki smiled grimly in the darkness.

It had been such a simple thing to trick the peasant into believing he had placed a curse on him. Curses were tricky things, requiring considerable preparation and not a small amount of risk – much more trouble than one ignorant wretch was worth. He smirked again as he thought of the black ‘mark of Drazh’la’gha’ upon the man’s wrist; nothing more diabolical than powdered charcoal mixed with spit.

Hearing the man coming up behind him, Bjarki recommenced climbing, shimmying easily up the chimney until he came to an angled pit that entered the shaft. Flickering candlelight could be seen between the cracks in the planks that sat on top of the latrine, and Bjarki manoeuvred himself so that he could push himself up towards it with his feet against the far wall.

Praying that the Changer of Fates was smiling upon him, Bjarki pushed the cover up an inch and hooked his fingers around the rim of the latrine. Then, hearing nothing in the room beyond, he pulled himself up, pushing the cover back with his head.

The room was small and square, with a slit window set in its back wall. Its door was pulled closed, and seeing no one, Bjarki hauled himself fully out of the latrine chute.

He had left his thick fur back at the camp, and his sinewy bare arms and tattooed torso was smeared with stinking effluent. His dreadlocked hair had been pulled back into a ponytail and it too was covered with the noisome filth.

Turning, he could see that the Bretonnian was struggling. Reaching down, Bjarki grabbed the man by the scruff of his tunic, and hauled him up and into the room.

Chlod flopped, stinking, onto the floor and Bjarki curled his lip in disgust.

‘Where are we?’ he said. The Bretonnian looked at him stupidly, and Bjarki tore the gag from the man’s mouth.

‘Where are we?’ he repeated.

‘In the keep?’ said the Bretonnian slowly.

Bjarki swore in the Skaeling dialect, shaking his head at the man’s staggering stupidity.

‘Where in the keep?’ When no answer was forthcoming, Bjarki narrowed his eyes. ‘You’ve never been in the keep, have you?’

‘Please don’t kill me, lord,’ wailed the man, throwing himself to the floor before Bjarki.

‘Quiet, fool!’ hissed Bjarki, hearing footsteps outside the door, but there was no placating the bubbling peasant. Bjarki drew his dagger, its blade undulating like a serpent’s body, and he tensed himself as he heard the footsteps halt beyond the door.

The door was pushed inwards and Bjarki saw a man bedecked in a white and red tabard, his face framed by a chain coif. His eyes registered his surprise as Bjarki leapt forwards and rammed his dagger up under his chin, the blade sinking to the hilt. Seeing another figure in the hallway stiffen in shock, Bjarki sidestepped the first man, dragging him inside the small room as he did so.

Bjarki reached out towards the man that was about to raise the alarm, his fingers stabbing forward like claws and he barked a single guttural word in the Dark Tongue. Swirling ribbons of energy leaped from his fingertips and struck the Bretonnian in the head. Blood burst from his ears, nose and eyes and he fell to the ground without a sound.

Moving to the body, Bjarki cast a quick glance along the corridor to ensure he was unseen. Thankfully, it seemed that the two soldiers had been alone. He grabbed the body by its shirtfront and dragged it out of the hallway.

Eilif had emerged from the latrine, his face and hair smeared with foulness. He was crouching over the body of the first man that Bjarki had killed, blood pooling beneath him. The Bretonnian peasant was pressed back against the wall, shaking in fear and exhaustion from the climb. Bjarki retrieved his serpentine dagger and cleaned its blade upon the quaking peasant’s shirt front before re-sheathing it at his waist.

The Norscan seer stepped back out into the corridor, checking for guards. He gestured, and Eilif joined him, dragging the Bretonnian peasant along with him, and the other Skaelings began emerging from the latrine.

When they were all out, Bjarki led them silently down the western corridor, judging that one way was as good as another. They all moved quietly, hugging the shadows. He signalled that he, Eilif and the Bretonnian would take the lead, while the others were to keep some distance back.

They moved forward warily. Bjarki cautiously tried the first few doors they came across, which opened into rooms filled with rich furnishings – tables, couches and sumptuous carpets. Moving on, they came to a staircase, and Bjarki led his companions down four flights, at last coming to the ground floor of the keep. Two other staircases also descended from the upper levels here, all three of them emptying into a broad hall lined with ancient suits of armour. Torches burnt in dozens of sconces, lighting up the cavernous expanse.

Bjarki, Eilif and the Bretonnian peasant were cautiously descending the stairs when the sound of voices and marching feet reached their ears. Bjarki waved a warning to those behind, who melted into the shadows without a sound. He and Eilif backed up, dragging the Bretonnian with them, and they dropped behind a thick stone balustrade.

Peering around the corner, Bjarki saw a middle-aged man in golden armour appear, descending the grandest of the three staircases alongside a grossly overweight man who looked vaguely comical in his oversized armour. Twenty knights marched behind them.

There were too many of them to be taken by force, and Bjarki and his comrades remained motionless, all but invisible in the gloom as the enemy knights marched across hall. A huge pair of doors was thrown open, and the sound of battle beyond entered the hall. Then the enemy were gone, and the doors slammed shut behind them.

Moving swiftly, Bjarki moved towards those same doors, accompanied by the other Skaeling warriors. Opening the doors, he peered outside, looking across the small inner courtyard of the keep, towards its gatehouse that led out into the castle proper.

There were few soldiers outside – they were all defending the outer walls. Pockets of archers patrolled the keep’s walls but none of them were looking down into the courtyard – none of them expected an enemy from within.

‘Eilif and I will make for the harbour as planned. We raise that gate and this siege is as good as over,’ snarled Bjarki. ‘We’ll take the Bretonnian with us – he may prove useful.’

Bjarki’s gaze passed over the gathered warriors.

‘Raising the portcullis is all that matters,’ he said. ‘Once the enemy sees us, it is your role to draw the attention away from us.’

Each of the warriors understood what it was he was asking, and their chests puffed out in pride.

‘We go,’ Bjarki said ‘Now!’

The Norscans slipped out into the courtyard and made a dash for the keep’s gatehouse, Bjarki in the lead. Eilif was a step behind him, half dragging the Bretonnian along with him, and the other warriors moved swiftly behind them. There were no cries of alarm, and they managed to move into the cover of the gatehouse unseen. Silently, they padded beneath a hanging portcullis as they proceeded through the tunnel-like corridor towards the other side of the gatehouse. Murderholes and arrow slits glared at them, and Bjarki knew that taking this gate by force would have been costly indeed. He was thankful it was open. They passed beneath another portcullis, and then they were out into the square beyond the keep.

Enemy soldiers ran to and fro, reinforcements streaming towards breaches in the walls. At first, no one seemed to register that the enemy were amongst them, and Bjarki darted towards a side-alley.

The Norscans were halfway across the square when there was a shout, and Bjarki saw a shaven-headed Bretonnian pointing in their direction. A group of warriors began running towards them.

‘Take them!’ the seer shouted, and the Skaeling warriors, bellowing war cries at the top of their lungs, threw themselves into the path of the enemy. Bjarki darted towards a side-alley, Eilif and the Bretonnian peasant at his heels.

They ducked into the shadows of the alley, and Bjarki paused, looking back to see if they were being pursued. It appeared that they were not. The Skaeling warriors that had accompanied him were carving into the enemy, axes and swords hacking into flesh, but already they were being surrounded.

‘Die well, warriors of Norsca,’ said Bjarki, and he turned away, continuing south towards the island fortress’s harbour.

It took them the better part of five minutes to wind their way down to the harbour unseen, and a further five to pick their way around its edge to the immense gatehouse that spanned the harbour entrance.

The only entrance they found was locked and barred.

‘Might I try, my lord?’ ventured the peasant. Bjarki raised an eyebrow, and gestured for him to go ahead.

The Bretonnian peasant stepped forward and rapped on the heavy door. Bjarki stepped to the side, and pulled Eilif with him. He heard a wooden panel slide aside a moment later.

‘What?’ demanded a voice.

‘Rations,’ said the peasant. ‘Bread and wine.’

‘We’ve already got ours,’ said the voice, with a hint of suspicion and wariness.

‘I’m just followin’ orders. But if you don’t want ‘em…’

‘I didn’t say I don’t want ‘em. Hold on a minute,’ said the voice, and Bjarki heard the sound of bars being removed, then a heavy key turning in a lock. Eilif readied his knife.

The door was thrown wide.

‘Where are these rations then?’ said the voice. Eilif stepped around the corner and plunged his knife into the speaker’s throat.

They bustled inside, and Eilif finished off the warden with half a dozen stabs to the chest, before lowering him in a corner and covering him with empty sacks. Then they began to climb the stairs of the gatehouse.

Moving as quickly as possible, they climbed a steep staircase that spiralled up and up, and at last came upon a landing. A heavy, locked door barred their progress. The peasant grinned at Bjarki and lifted his eyebrows questioningly, but the seer doubted the charade would work a second time, and he knew that his time was drawing short.

Bjarki gathered himself, closing his eyes and sucking in a deep breath. He gestured sharply, and the door was smashed inwards as if struck by a battering ram.

Eilif was through in an instant, and by the time Bjarki had entered the room, two of its occupants were already dead. Eilif tackled the last to the ground and slit his throat.

The room was large, with arrow slits in the southern wall looking out to sea and large arched stained glass windows in the north wall looking down over the harbour and across the castle itself. They were located directly above the harbour entrance itself, Bjarki realised.

In the centre of the room there was an immense circular wheel embedded in the floor, with a number of wooden spokes protruding from its sides. A pair of mules were hitched to these spokes, and the stone under their hooves was covered in sand and hay. They stood immobile, disinterested in the killing that had occurred around them.

Bjarki studied the wheel for a moment. It was not dissimilar to a millwheel, and he guessed that it was connected to gears and turning mechanisms underneath the floor. He reached out and pulled down a lever, and nodded in satisfaction as he heard disengaged gears clamp together beneath the floor.

‘Bar the doors,’ he ordered. The Bretonnian backed away into a far corner, out of the way, and Bjarki ordered him to stay put. Eilif positioned himself atop the staircase that they had just climbed, weapon in hand.

Bjarki moved to one of the arrow slits looking southward. He could not see the longships lurking out there in the gloom and the snow, but he knew they were there, waiting for his signal. With a muttered incantation his left hand erupted into blue fire. He saw a single torch flare briefly in response out there in the darkness, eight hundred yards out.

Bjarki watched closely, biting his lip as he waited for the ships to appear. The minutes dragged by, but then he saw them, a score of dragonships ploughing swiftly through the ocean swell on a direct course for the gatehouse. Judging by the shouts he heard from atop the gatehouse, he guessed that the enemy too had sighted them, and he could hear grinding as the giant trebuchets above were levered around into position to target them.

Gauging the distance and speed of the dragonships, Bjarki left it another thirty seconds before running back from the window and slapping the rump of one of the mules. It dutifully began trudging around in a circle, as did its companion, and the sound of grinding gears could be heard. A rumbling could be discerned underneath the floor, and the sound of chains tightening around pulleys. Then those pulleys began to turn, and the chains began to be reeled in, locking around the teeth of immense cogs concealed within the walls, and the dual portcullis began to open; one latticework descending into a slot carved into the rocks twenty feet beneath the water, and the other lifting up into the gatehouse itself. From the outside, it must have looked like the mouth of some giant beast opening.

The mules continued to trudge around in their monotonous circle, and the grinding of gears and chains echoed loudly, making the whole gatehouse shudder. There were shouts of alarm and shock from outside, and there came a pounding at the doors. A moment later, heavy weights began slamming into those doors, making the wooden braces barring them groan.

Moving back to the south-facing wall, Bjarki looked out to see the dragonships no more than fifty yards out. This was going to work, he thought, with a grin. Then one of the doors gave way, its timbers splintering inwards, and enemy soldiers bundled inside.

Still grinning, Bjarki turned towards them, the power of the gods flaring in his eyes. Blue flames sprang up over both hands as he called upon great Tchar. With a roar, he thrust his hands towards the enemy, and they were instantly consumed in a roaring conflagration. The faces of daemons could be seen in that billowing blue fire, and those caught within the inferno screamed in torment as their bodies were twisted out of shape, remoulded into a form more pleasing to the Great Changer.

Fifty feet below, a score of Skaeling dragonships ploughed beneath the open portcullis and into the harbour. Each of the ships was packed with blood-hungry berserkers, the most rabid, unhinged warriors in the entire Skaeling war host.

In the distance to the east came the sound of deafening trumpeting.

Calard was staring in mute horror towards the south as he saw the enemy ships slipping into the harbour inside the curtain walls.

‘How?’ he breathed, feeling all hope fade.

The flagging spirits of the defenders had lifted as the Duke of Lyonesse joined the fray. The lord of Lyonesse had moved along the walls, speaking to the knights, offering words of praise and encouragement, and to have him amongst the fighting had made morale soar.

Much to Calard’s surprise, the duke had even spared a few words for the peasants defending his walls, praising their efforts and promising them a feast worthy of the king himself once the enemy had been seen off. Calard saw the effect such a simple gesture had on the defenders, knight and peasant alike. He saw shoulders that had been slumped in defeat and despair straighten, and chests puff out as the duke rekindled their sense of pride. These were the actions of a true leader, Calard recognised, and as lord of Garamont, he pledged to remember these lessons. Whether he lived long enough to put them into practice was another thing completely however – and all the good that the duke’s presence had done was now shattered. Every Bretonnian fighting on the walls saw that all their dogged resistance had come to naught, for the enemy was now sailing right into the heart of the fortress so many of them had already died to defend.

Calard saw the duke in the distance shouting orders and barking commands as he attempted to redirect defenders from the walls towards this new threat. He was sending one out of every three men down to face the enemies within the castle, and although Calard saw this risked losing the walls to the enemy, it would not matter if the enemy took the castle from within. More enemy longships were ploughing through the gatehouse into the harbour, and Calard knew that if the great portcullis was not closed, then the castle was lost. He saw the duke gesturing towards the arched gatehouse that spanned the entrance to the harbour, and saw a trio of white winged shapes begin hurtling towards it; Laudethaire and the last of his companions.

Swearing, Calard chopped his sword into the neck of a Norscan as he scrambled over the ramparts, and he kicked the man’s body off the walls as he slumped forward.

‘Let’s get off these damned walls,’ he called to his brother, who nodded. They made to move towards the stairs, but a deafening trumpeting sounded, painfully loud, and Calard froze. Turning, he peered out through the driving snow and wind beyond the castle wall.

He saw a giant shape in the ocean that he at first mistook for just another longship, packed with warriors. It was moving inexorably towards the island, though it was rolling steadily from side to side, and for a moment Calard stared at it, uncomprehending, as he saw it had no sail.

Feeling a sense of rising dread, Calard moved to the battlements and narrowed his eyes, shielding them from the biting wind with one hand. His breath caught in his throat as he realised that it was not a ship at all; it was the wooden fortress strapped atop one of the giant, hateful mammoths that had wreaked such havoc three weeks earlier. The beast was fording the strait, battling against the pounding surf as it trudged along the same causeway that Calard had himself ridden two days earlier. It was no more than fifty yards from the beach.

The water washed over the beast’s shoulders, so that only the top half of its dome-like head could be seen. Its trunk was lifted up out of the water, and the great wooden fortress chained upon its back heaved from side to side as the behemoth strode through the heavy swell. Waves crashed over the top of the battlements of the mobile fortress, but the berserkers clinging there merely howled in defiance, their cries sounding barely human at all. Calard caught sight of the other two giant beasts wading through the swell behind it.

Horror filled Calard as he realised that if the mammoths were large enough to walk along the causeway then they were large enough to allow those riding upon their howdahs to leap directly onto the walls, as if they were living siege engines.

Behind him, blood curdling roars echoed throughout the castle as the enemy longships inside the harbour were driven up against the shore, and the merciless warriors within leaped over their gunwales, intent on the slaughter.

Calard felt utterly torn, not knowing where his sword was most needed.

‘Lady protect us,’ he breathed.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Calard and the other defenders upon the eastern walls stared in mute horror as the first of the mountainous war mammoths rose from the ocean like some infernal beast emerging from the depths. Its matted, thick fur hung in sea-drenched ropes and steam rose from its flanks. Its massive head was protected by plates of black iron hammered into its skull, and giant bands of metal studded with spikes as long as a man’s arm encircled its four sweeping tusks. Overlapping links of black iron protected its trunk, forming a flexible carapace like the shell of a beetle, and its large, flapping ears were pierced with dozens of hooks and rings each as large as a man’s head.

The beast lifted its heavy head as it trudged out of the ocean, and it trumpeted deafeningly, the sound making Calard’s ears reverberate painfully. The waves crashed around its tree-trunk legs, and the ground shook as it strode out of the breakers and onto the beach.

The warriors riding within the fortress upon the giant beast’s back roared in eagerness and bloodlust, driving themselves into a berserk fury. They clashed their weapons against their shields and the sides of the great howdah holding them, and a hugely muscled Norscan pounded upon a pair of huge drums, human skin pulled taut across their tops.

Banners of flayed flesh covered in Norscan runes and symbols of infernal deities hung from twisted icons of dark metal, flapping in the fierce gale. Easily a hundred Bretonnian heads were impaled upon spears and metal spikes protruding from the sides of the wooden howdah. The bodies of a score of knights had been pushed onto lances, and they rose in a grisly fan from the back of the howdah.

The second and third mammoths following behind the first could be seen clearer now, battling through the fury of the breakers amid the driving snow and wind, and Calard saw that the enemy warlord himself was accompanying this latest assault. He rode upon the back of the second war tusker, seated in a high-backed wooden throne, arrogantly prominent upon the forecastle of his howdah, clearly disdainful of the Bretonnians’ arrows.

A spinning hunk of masonry hurled high into the air by a trebuchet crashed down onto the head of the third mammoth, striking it a glancing blow, and it bellowed in rage and pain, shaking its head from side to side. The heavy iron champron hammered into its skull was dented inwards by the blow, and hot blood began to stain the waters around it as it floundered in the surf. It stumbled, and Calard could see the fins of fifty or more sharks circling wildly, the taste of the blood in the water driving them into a frenzy that mirrored that of the Norscans themselves.

A larger shape scythed through the breakers suddenly, scattering the sharks before its bow wave. It powered into the shallow water with powerful flicks of its tail, and Calard saw that its hide was black and white. Its mouth gaped wide, exposing hundreds of razor-like teeth, and it hit the mammoth hard, knocking it sideward and ripping a great chunk of flesh from its body.

The mammoth bellowed again, and the warriors upon its back jabbed downwards with spears, trying to fight off the monstrous attacker. Calard saw several of the fearless warriors leap over the sides of the howdah, dropping onto the back of the thrashing black and white beast and driving spears deep into its body.

The mammoth swung around and struck its attacker with its tusks, lifting it out of the water and hurling it away, sending the foolhardy Norscans upon its back flying. The killer whale plunged back into the water thirty feet away, only to be turned upon by the sharks and other killer whales lurking in the deeper water. The Norse warriors that had been sent flying were ripped apart by the voracious ocean predators, shredded in an orgy of bloodlust.

The mammoth regained its footing and charged up onto the beach, blood streaming from its wounds. A huge chunk of flesh was missing from its shoulder, and the flesh within was pink and wet.

‘Shoot them!’ screamed Calard in desperation, seeing that the peasant bowmen all around were frozen, staring in gormless horror at the three mammoths that were now charging towards the castle walls. With those monstrous beasts outside the walls, and the enemy inside the walls, Calard knew that the resolve of the peasants was about to snap. All it would take was for one of them to turn and run and the whole stinking rabble would throw down their weapons and stampede from the walls.

The rising panic and desperation was palpable as the courage of the defenders faltered, and he knew that the next few moments were critical to forestall a complete rout. His old weapon master, Gunthar, had taught him that in moments of indecision it was the nature of men, particularly peasant inbreds, to want someone to step to the fore and give them direction. If no one did so, then they would become a mindless rabble.

‘In the name of the king, hold!’ Calard roared in his loudest and most authoritative voice. He registered that men, even knights, were turning towards him, looking to him for direction and perhaps reassurance.

‘Aim for their eyes!’ he shouted. ‘Now!’

Generations of enforced servitude ensured that the peasants responded to Calard’s order without question, and as one they lifted their bows and launched a shower of arrows towards the charging mammoths.

Countless shafts rained down upon the titanic creatures. Many ricocheted off the thick armour plating of the beasts, but hundreds more embedded themselves in flesh and muscle, until the lead creature’s forelegs resembled pin cushions. The warriors upon the back of the beasts ducked behind their wooden battlements and held their shields high, and hundreds of arrows sank into the woodwork, but some were struck, screaming in pain as arrows thudded home into their flesh.

A pair of arrows struck the lead beast in its left eye simultaneously, sinking deep into the rage-filled orb and instantly flooding it with blood. It bellowed in agony and reared up onto its hind legs, ceasing its thunderous charge. Men fell from the howdah as it tipped precariously backwards, while others clung on desperately.

More arrows thudded into the mammoth’s underbelly as it reared up, and as its forelegs came crashing back down to ground, it turned away from the castle walls. Enraged and in pain, it struck out at the Norscans racing up the beach alongside it, smashing them aside with a sweep of its tusks.

Scattered cheering rose from the defenders, but it sounded strained and weak, for the other two mammoths came on at full speed, lowering their heads like charging bulls. The handler of the enemy warlord’s mammoth tugged on his crude reins, dragging on the vicious barbed hooks driven though the tusker’s sensitive ears, turning it directly towards the wall section only thirty yards from Calard’s position. The other beast thundered headlong towards the immense gate leading into the castle itself.

It struck with the elemental power of an avalanche and the metal lattice-work of the first portcullis buckled inwards with a sickening shriek. The heavy reinforced gates beyond were smashed apart, and the sound of wood splintering echoed sharply as the dozen immense bars that sealed the gate, each as thick as a tree trunk and bound in iron loops, were sundered.

The other beast struck the wall like a living battering ram, and hundreds of men staggered as the whole wall section shook. Large hooks of black iron attached to chains were hurled over the battlements, and then the first of the enemy were over, leaping onto the walls and laying about them with huge, jagged axes and swords, killing with every stroke.

These warriors were the enemy warlord’s elite bodyguards, each of them a mighty champion in their own right, massive warriors clad in black plate festooned with unholy fetishes and icons. They were unlike anything that the Bretonnians had yet encountered, men whose lives had been extended by the Dark Gods; they were faster, stronger and more deadly than any mortal man.

With contemptuous ease they killed everything that stood before them, hacking through armour, flesh and bone, but they were as children next to the enemy warlord who stepped onto the walls in their wake, hefting a massive axe in each hand. Red gems embedded in the axe blades blazed with fiery power each time the fell weapons claimed a life, as if pleased with the slaughter they enacted.

Scores of knights roared war cries and ran forward to stem this breach, only to be hacked apart by the enemy warlord and his unholy bodyguard. More ladders slammed against the castle walls and scores of grappling hooks were hurled over the battlements. Calard and his kin tried to fight their way towards the enemy warlord, but it was like trying to battle against a raging flood. For each step they took towards the brutal giant of a man, they were forced back three paces by the sheer weight of the enemy. Norscans were streaming over the now undermanned walls, hacking down men-at-arms and knights left and right, and Calard roared in fury as he and his kin were driven back.

The enemy warlord fought like a bloody demigod, his twin axes wailing as they sliced through the air, hacking limbs and heads from bodies with every swing. He laughed as he killed, revelling in the screams of the dying, the geysers of blood fountaining from neck stumps and the sound of bones shattering beneath his axe blades.

Seeing the brutal warlord carving effortlessly through the defenders upon the wall, Reolus moved to intercept him, but there were a score of enemies between them. The grail knight fought with a burning intensity that was terrifying to behold, killing with every strike of his holy blade, Durendyal. Norscans fell before him as he rampaged along the wall. He carved his sword through the neck of one enemy and lopped off the arm of another with the return blow as the Norscans came at him. He spun, avoiding a sword thrust and rammed his blade into the guts of his would-be killer, before ripping the blade clear in a spray of blood and decapitating another man as he continued to turn.

The grail knight swayed to the side and a massive spiked mace missed his skull by scant inches, and he kicked the legs from beneath the off-balance Norscan before smashing his blade down into his head, splitting it to the neck. A jagged sword stabbed towards his unprotected back but he sensed it coming and whipped around, deflecting the blade with his armoured forearm, and punched the man square in the face with the hilt of his sword, his whole body weight behind the blow as he turned. The man fell back with a cry, spraying blood and teeth, and Reolus lashed out with his blade, the tip nicking the Norscan’s neck with all the precision of a surgeon, and arterial blood spurted from the wound.

The black-armoured elite bodyguard of the enemy warlord came at Reolus, and he ran forward to meet them head-on.

He traded blows with the first, glittering silver-steel clashing with tainted black-steel, and he was forced back a step by the sheer brutal power of the Chaos warrior. The fully armoured Norscan was taller than Reolus, and his shoulders a foot wider, but as fast as he was he could not match the grail knight’s sublime grace.

Reolus ducked in beneath the Chaos warrior’s defences as an axe sliced through the air where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier and slammed his blade into the Norscan’s side. The blow sundered his heavy armour, buckling it inwards and carving a bloody rent that shattered a dozen ribs. Before the Chaos warrior could react, Reolus had whipped his sword back for a blinding return blow that struck the Norscan in the side of the head, carving through his helmet and skull. With a heavy clatter of armour the enemy warrior fell.

The next died in a heartbeat. Hefting an immense, double-handed spiked hammer as he charged towards the grail knight, the Chaos warrior did not even have a chance to bring it crashing down before Reolus’s blade had penetrated the eye slit of his helmet, sinking deep.

The holy paladin of the Lady killed another two of the huskarls, sustaining only a few scratches himself, drawing ever closer to the enemy warlord. Perhaps recognising the presence of one worthy of facing him, the Norscan turned towards Reolus, and their eyes met across the mayhem of the brutal melee.

The two began moving towards each other.

‘Lady of grace, grant me, your servant, the strength to defeat this enemy,’ breathed Reolus. He clenched Durendyal tightly in both hands, and the fury of the goddess infused him.

The inside of the gatehouse spanning the entrance to the castle harbour had been transformed into a scene out of a nightmare, and Chlod stared around him in abject terror.

Men whose bodies had been remoulded into obscene, unrecognisable forms by the Norscan seer’s dark magic flopped upon the ground, bellowing in agony and torment, the sound torn from bloody throats that opened up at random across their bloated flesh.

Their bodies were in constant flux and they continued to mutate wildly, bones cracking and reforming in random and bizarre forms, their flesh rippling and bulging with new, unholy life. Spines burst from the backbones of some, while gibbering, mouthed tentacles burst from the flesh of others, cackling and waving wildly. Human skin changed texture and colour, becoming scaled and dark on some, while others sprouted thick, brightly coloured fur and feathers. Worm-like appendages appeared within the flesh of others, making skin bulge grotesquely as it struggled to contain these new growths, and blood splattered as they burst forth.

Useless flaps of membrane-skin with a glistening sheen grew between the random, gristly protuberances that sprouted from one man’s arms, while the head of another was ripped apart from crown to chin, exposing hundreds of savage teeth. A revolting, fleshy tongue emerged from within the exposed skull, and it began probing the ground until it was severed by the gaping skull-mouth slamming shut. Chlod stared in horror at the severed tongue as it flopped back and forth on the ground. Its tip peeled back to reveal a snapping mouth, and it proceeded to devour itself, even as it bulged and mutated into a new and wild form, sprouting legs and wings.

Several of the men had merged together, and this vile amalgamation of flesh and muscle screamed incoherently as its body mass bulged and grew, and turned upon its horrified companions. Limbs of glistening, wet muscle sprung from its body, spikes of bone protruding from club-like appendages, and the monster dragged itself towards its erstwhile allies, half a dozen once-human faces screaming insanely. It lashed out with its ever-changing limbs, smashing knights and men-at-arms into the walls, pulping their flesh.

One knight was speared through the midsection by three lengths of bone that had grown from what was once a human leg, and as he bellowed in agony, he was dragged in close to the hideous creature that the seer’s magic had spawned. Ribs cracked as the creature’s chest tore open in a vertical slit, flesh and muscle ripping apart. The broken stubs of ribs resembled vile teeth, and the knight was pressed into this newly formed, mouth-like cavity. The creature’s chest slammed shut, locking the knight within its body, and his flesh became one with the growing beast.

A thick appendage of blood-slick muscle shot from within the chaotic creature’s body and wrapped around the arm of another knight, who struggled to free himself. A circular lamprey mouth appeared upon the tip of this rope of muscle, and it burrowed up into the knight’s armpit, squeezing through a gap in his armour and biting through his chainmail. The knight began to scream as it burrowed into his flesh, consuming the man from the inside out.

The two mules that were hitched to the wheel mechanism used to raise and lower the portcullis were whinnying in fear and straining to escape their traces. The monstrous spawn tore one of them loose, lifting it up into the air before ripping it in two. One half it devoured, while the other half it hurled at the knights who were bringing their swords to bear on it, smashing several of them backwards as the bloody corpse struck them.

Behind all this, the Norscan sorcerer was striking down more Bretonnian warriors, clearly revelling in his power.

Chlod backed away from the horrors being unleashed, his sanity fraying, and found himself up against the large stained glass windows in the north wall that looked out over the harbour and island.

Seeing a bloody knife that a dead Lyonessian soldier had used lying on the floor nearby, Chlod half-considered grabbing it and plunging it into his own breast; better to die than be consumed by that hulking spawn creature and become part of it. Then he recalled the sorcerer’s words: If you die while the curse is still in place, your soul shall never have rest. It shall be the plaything of Drazh’la’gha for all eternity.

Chlod looked down at his wrist again, staring at the daemonic black mark there, and began to weep.

Then there was an ear-splitting crash as the stained glass windows exploded inwards.

Chlod fell forward to his knees as shards of coloured glass rained down around him, cutting his hands and face, and he felt strong winds buffet him.

Something large and white hurtled over the top of him, and there was a clatter of hooves on stone.

Gaping up from the ground, Chlod saw a knight riding upon a pristine white pegasus plunge his lance into the heavy mass of flesh that was the Chaos spawn. Black blood spewed from the wound, hissing and burning, and a dozen mouths opened and screamed in pain.

Two other pegasus knights crashed through the stained glass windows, and Chlod pressed himself flat to the floor, making himself as small as possible, praying that he would not be trampled.

Through his fingers Chlod saw the first knight, Laudethaire, plunge his lance into the spawn again, and for a moment he thought the Beloved of Parravon was going to slay the beast, adding to his already impressive tally of heroic feats.

Then the throat of Laudethaire’s pegasus was torn out by ripping teeth, thick bloody cords of muscle, ligaments, arteries and flesh torn free in a torrent of blood. Its virginal white fur was splattered with gore, and the noble beast reared and fell, throwing Laudethaire from the saddle.

One of Laudethaire’s companions was killed, the Chaos spawn impaling him and tearing him from his saddle. His steed reared, kicking out with its hooves, but whipping tentacles studded with barbs wrapped around its neck and bore it to the ground.

The thrashing beast had its noble flesh subsumed into the spawn’s bulging mass, before the creature consumed Laudethaire’s dying pegasus noisily. Twisted, befouled wings sprouted from the beast’s back in mockery of the pristine white wings of the noble creature. The Parravonian noble himself staggered to his feet but was struck bodily by the young blond-haired Norscan who had accompanied Chlod and the seer.

The Norscan strained to ram his knife into the knight’s throat. Laudethaire managed to catch hold of the warrior’s wrist before the knife plunged home, and the pair struggled, locked together, shards of coloured glass crunching beneath them. They reeled around, almost as if they were locked in some macabre dance, and then toppled out through the smashed window.

There was a horrible screech as the third knight rammed his lance into the monstrosity’s head – or at least one of them. A large flipper-like appendage slammed into the knight that had wounded it, breaking his steed’s wings like twigs and sending nobleman and pegasus smashing back through the stained glass windows, falling to their deaths.

Chlod backed further away from the thrashing monster. It might have been in its death throws, but he could not be sure. A lance still protruded from it and black blood was oozing from the wound. The Norscan sorcerer was nowhere to be seen. Backing up against the smashed window, Chlod looked down and saw Laudethaire clinging desperately to the ledge just below, hanging by one hand. If he fell, his plate mail would certainly drag him to the ocean floor.

Hundreds of black crows and ravens were circling around the gatehouse outside, filling the air with their ugly cries, sensing death.

‘Help me!’ urged Laudethaire, his voice filled with panic. ‘For the love of the goddess, help me, damn you!’

Chlod licked his lips. He didn’t want to risk getting pulled out of the window himself; even if he survived the fall, which was doubtful, he was a poor swimmer. Still, having the vaunted Beloved of Parravon in his debt was a tempting proposition.

‘I’ll make it worth your while, damn it!’ begged Laudethaire. His fingers were beginning to slip on the stonework.

Greed outweighing self-preservation, Chlod went to reach for the knight. Laudethaire slipped suddenly, his finger losing their hold, but he managed to catch himself just before he plunged to his death, grabbing another ledge just below the first.

Chlod swore. There was no chance of him reaching the knight from his position now and so, trying not to look down, he climbed out onto the first ledge. Keeping one hand holding tightly to the windowsill, he stretched his hand down towards the Parravonian knight, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth in concentration.

‘Quickly, you foetid little peasant bastard!’ snarled Laudethaire from between clenched teeth.

Chlod’s expression darkened and he froze, just inches from grabbing hold of the knight’s forearm.

‘What are you doing?’ gasped Laudethaire, his eyes filled with fear and indignant outrage. ‘Help me, damn you!’

Chlod snorted, and stood upright.

‘I’ll see you hang for this!’ snapped Laudethaire. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

‘You’re dead,’ retorted Chlod, and slammed his heel down into the knight’s face.

Laudethaire lost his hold on the ledge and he was gone, dropping like a stone towards the ocean, falling to his death. Chlod watched the knight plummet, arms and legs flailing wildly, until he hit the water. Then he was gone, disappearing into the black ocean waters, the weight of his armour dragging him down. Chlod spat after him derisively.

Something fleshy and stinging touched his neck, and Chlod almost fell himself as he swung around to see a pinkish, lumped tentacle squirming over the windowsill from inside. He gave a girlish screech of shock, and brushed it away with the back of his hand, shimmying along the ledge as he did so to escape its touch.

More tentacles appeared, flowing over the windowsill like a living waterfall, and Chlod knew that there was no escape from their numbing touch.

Without giving himself time to rethink the idea, Chlod closed his eyes and let go, falling backwards off the ledge.

Duke Adalhard deflected an overhead blow with his shield and slashed open his attacker’s throat. Blood fountained from the fatal wound, and Adalhard stepped back, his blade flashing down to deflect a spear that was stabbing towards his groin, and with a roll of his wrist he struck upwards, the tip of his sword crunching up into the chin of another Norscan, shattering bone and teeth.

At his side, the corpulent figure of the Marquis of Carabas stabbed another berserker in the belly. The baron’s wide eyes betrayed his fear, but the duke was proud of the fighting spirit of the man. An axe blade sliced through the air to take the baron in the neck, but Adalhard struck out, knocking aside the killing blow and plunged his sword into the Norscan’s chest, sliding the blade between the ribs to pierce the heart.

There was a moment’s break in the fighting and Adalhard gazed down towards the harbour. The cobbled road he stood upon was slick with the blood of the dead and dying, and from the top of the hill leading down to sea level he could see hundreds more Norscans leaping ashore. He had seen Laudethaire’s noble attempt to retake the ocean gatehouse, and the Parravonian might yet succeed in closing the portcullis, but the damage was already done.

‘We can take them, my lord,’ urged one of his knights, but Adalhard shook his head.

Behind him, the enemy were streaming through the shattered main gates, while a black wedge of enemy warriors had taken up position upon the east wall, where hundreds of Norscans were pouring in over the breach. The eastern gatehouse too was lost to the enemy, the entrance smashed asunder by one of the Norscans’ immense tuskers. Thousands of enemies were streaming through the gap.

The castle was lost.

Adalhard was so tired. A part of him wanted nothing more than to charge down into the enemies before him, to go down fighting, here and now; get it over with. But he knew what had to be done. He would make the enemy bleed for every inch of ground they took, to make their progress as painful as possible. That was his duty; to the Lady, to the king and to himself.

‘Back!’ roared the Duke of Lyonesse, though it left a bitter taste in his mouth. ‘Fall back to the keep!’

Reolus paused as frantic horns sounded the retreat. He glanced down and saw hundreds of knights and men-at-arms streaming back towards the keep.

The grail knight pulled his gaze back towards the enemy warlord, who was moving purposefully towards him, spinning his twin axes. Every instinct screamed for him to engage the enemy leader, to smite him in the name of the Lady, for his presence in this holy land of his ancestors was an affront, a cancer that needed to be cut out, a boil that needed to be lanced.

He glanced down again and saw the Duke of Lyonesse in the centre of a block of knights, prominent in his golden armour and helmet. They were falling back in steady order, the duke hollering orders over the din of battle. The enemy were surging up the streets from the harbour like a dark tide, and Reolus knew that his place was down there, protecting the duke’s retreat.

He turned back towards the still advancing enemy warlord, and gritted his teeth in frustration.

He knew it was only his pride that made him want to defeat this enemy rather than aid the fallback of the duke and his men. As if sensing his decision, the enemy warlord ceased his advance.

‘As the Lady is my witness, we shall face each other soon,’ promised Reolus, though he doubted whether the enemy could understand his words. The Norscan said something in reply, a guttural utterance that might have been acknowledgement.

Reluctantly, Reolus backed away, moving towards the stairs descending down the inside of the wall. Enemies moved to intercept him, but they were waved back by the enemy warlord, and he realised that the Norscan had understood his intent, if not his words.

Eyes blazing with the white heat of righteous fury and frustration, Reolus nodded his head towards the towering enemy leader. It was not a gesture of respect, merely an acknowledgement that they would meet again. The Norscan inclined his head in response.

Yes, they would meet again, Reolus thought. And when they did, one of them would die.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The keep at the heart of Castle Lyonesse, its donjon, was a strongly defensible structure built of the same gleaming white stone as the outer walls. It was in essence a fortress in its own right, with five tall, cylindrical towers at its corners and walls almost eight feet thick, topped with crenulations and dotted with arrow slits. An impressive gatehouse was the sole entrance into the keep, complete with a pair of portcullises and massive, barred iron-bound doors.

The castle now belonged fully to the enemy, and they swarmed over the abandoned walls and up the streets from the harbour. So many longships had by now passed beneath the still-open arched gatehouse and entered the harbour that there was no room for them to beach; the Norscans merely lashed them together and clambered from ship to ship onto the land, streaming up to surround the keep. They ransacked, smashed and torched every building within the curtain walls, and choking black smoke filled the air.

The main gatehouse in the eastern wall was a shattered ruin, having been smashed almost to the ground by one of the war mammoths, and thousands of Norscans surged through the breach now that there was no one to stem the tide.

Cheers had risen from the keep as one of the giant war mammoths was felled. Barrels had been fired by the great trebuchets atop the keep, and a handful had smashed down upon one of the great beasts, dousing its matted fur and howdah with oil. Hundred of arrows lit in flaming braziers had been fired from the tops of the towers, and the beast had roared in pain and fear as it was consumed by fire. It had rampaged through the enemy ranks, killing hundreds as it smashed them out of its way with its spiked tusks. Nevertheless, it was but a small victory amid the darkness, and the cheers quickly died away.

In the distance, a handful of hermit knights had defended the temple of Manann upon the south-western island headland until the last, and the Bretonnians within the keep had watched mournfully as the last of them had been cut down in the distance. With their protectors slain, the old priests of the sea god had been dragged outside and sacrificed, their heads hacked from their shoulders and impaled on spears. Ropes were tied around the mighty bronze statue of Manann atop the temple, and it was brought crashing to the ground. Peasant archers and men-at-arms upon the walls of the keep moaned in horror and whispered prayers of appeasement at this sacrilege.

Untold thousands now surrounded the keep, and there was not a knight or lowborn within with any doubt that it would fall. It was not a matter of if the keep fell, but of when.

Thousands of crude skin drums pounded a relentless tattoo, and the enemy warlord strode through the ranks of his horde, an unmistakeable figure that towered over his minions. He was surrounded by a coterie of black-armoured elites, and Calard stared down at him in hatred from the crenellated keep walls.

The enemy gave the defenders no chance to rest or recoup their strength, and Calard knew that every one of the Bretonnians was as exhausted as he. He’d never felt as tired in all his life. He felt numb, and yet sore all over, and his thinking was vague and hazy, as if his head were stuffed with wool. Every movement was an effort. Still, there was no opportunity to close his eyes and fall into the sleep he so desired.

With a gesture from the warlord, thousands of screaming Norscans launched themselves at the keep, streaming past their black-armoured leader, who stood with arms crossed, an implacable rock amidst the dark tide of chaos. Hundreds were cut down by wave after wave of arrow fire.

Under the cover of shields, the Norscans reached the foot of the gatehouse, attaching thick chains to the portcullis by hooks. These chains had been hitched around the shoulders of the largest of the enemy war mammoths, the one that had borne the enemy chieftain onto the walls just hours earlier, and its handlers urged it forward, striking it with barbed switches. The immense long-furred beast bellowed and lurched forward, chains snapping taut behind it. The portcullis groaned and held for a moment. The mammoth bellowed again and its titanic muscles strained. With a tortured groan of protesting metal, the portcullis was ripped free, and it was dragged fifty yards across the ground, carving a furrow through the snow before the mammoth was halted.

More Norscans were killed as they charged through the now open, arched gateway towards the second portcullis. Scores were killed in the arched passageway leading through the gatehouse as arrows were fired at close range through narrow slits, and the tortured screams of hundreds more echoed loudly within the enclosed space as boiling oil poured from murder holes in the walls and ceiling. Men screamed in agonising torment as their flesh was scalded red raw, eyeballs hissed and smoked as they boiled in sockets, and the Norscans fought each other in their desperation to escape.

Those that did manage to reach the portcullis at the end of the murderous passage were met by polearms and spears thrust through the latticework, and dozens were impaled as they ran headlong into the wall of steel. More archers stood on the other side of the portcullis with the men-at-arms and knights, and they fired their deadly shafts into the Norscans straining to hook their immense chains onto this second barrier. No armour was protection against fully drawn longbows at such close range, and arrows punched through helmets and solid iron breastplates with ease.

Still, the Norscan warlord sent wave after wave of his warriors into the deadly passage, uncaring of the mounting casualties, so intent on taking the keep was he. When the oil ran out, the Bretonnians pumped boiling water through the murder holes and dropped rocks down upon them, while their arrows continued to cut down the Norscans in their scores.

More than a thousand men must have died within the space of some fifteen minutes, and the scale of slaughter was awesome and terrible to behold. Still the enemy came on, charging into the corpse-filled passageway, clambering over the dead and dying in their desperation to reach the portcullis at the far end and earn the approval of their lord and gods.

For more than an hour the enemy continued to storm the gatehouse, with little success. Even when the great chains were secured upon the portcullis, the Bretonnians on the other side were able to unhook them, dislodging them and slaughtering the Norscans beneath their withering hail of arrows.

The enemy chieftain paced back and forth. He seemed determined to take Lyonesse in the shortest time possible regardless of the cost, and the Bretonnians were shocked and horrified at how much the barbarian had achieved in such a short space of time.

Everything Calard had ever learned of siege warfare from Gunthar and his tutors spoke of how they were generally long, drawn out affairs that might last half a year or more. The great siege of Carcassone, some two hundred years earlier, had lasted over three years. Generally, he had been taught, an adequately manned castle facing odds of ten to one or less would fall only when the defenders were starved out, had succumbed to disease, or were betrayed from within. Walls sometimes collapsed when tunnels were dug to undermine them, or fire used to destabilise supports and make stone crack, but such tactics were slow and plagued by failure.

When a siege reached a point of stalemate between rival noble houses of Bretonnia, the outcome was often decided by a duel. That was often preferable to a long, protracted siege, which was costly both monetarily and in manpower.

This, however, was not a war being waged between honourable Bretonnian families. Nor was there a stalemate here; the enemy was winning this war, swiftly and surely, and Calard was still staggered that an ignorant savage, a bloodthirsty raider of the northern seas, had been able to take Lyonesse where so many had failed before, and at a speed that was almost unfathomable. And once the second portcullis was torn down, the keep had an hour, perhaps two, before it was overwhelmed.

From within the keep, Calard heard the cry of a woman in pain – Elisabet, in the midst of labour.

‘This is no natural pregnancy,’ Anara had told him that morning, stating the obvious.

‘Of course not. A month from conception to birth? It is an abomination,’ Calard had said, shaking his head in horror.

‘There is no guarantee what the child will be,’ Anara had said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘There is power in it,’ Anara had said, ominously. ‘It is no normal offspring of man and woman.’

I truly am cursed, thought Calard bitterly. And perhaps my curse is such that it lays low all those that I care for.

Unbidden, a vision of the Green Knight flashed into his mind, staggering in its intensity.

‘Face me!’ the vision boomed, its voice hollow and full of potency. Once again Calard’s terror overwhelmed him. He fell back from the supernatural apparition that was bearing down on him, blade drawn. The Green Knight towered above him, eyes blazing with iridescent light.

‘I cannot!’ he whimpered.

‘What?’ said Bertelis, standing alongside him on the wall, and Calard snapped back into reality. His brother was looking at him in concern.

‘Nothing,’ he said with a forced smile.

Elisabet groaned in agony, her teeth tightly clenched. She was lying back upon the four-poster bed, her body lathered in sweat. Basins of water were nearby, blood-soaked cloths lying over their edges.

‘The child is close,’ said the Damsel Anara, her voice vague and distant even at such a time. Elisabet cried out, tears running down her red, sweat-streaked face.

‘I can’t do it,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t want it!’

Anara shrugged. ‘The child will come whether you want it or not.’

Elisabet screamed in agony, exhaustion and anger.

Bjarki was standing alongside his jarl when the newborn’s birth scream echoed out over the din of battle. The sheer, unfocused power contained in that scream made him stagger, intense pain stabbing into his mind. The sound was excruciating, tearing through both the real world and the insubstantial realm of Chaos, existing in both realms simultaneously.

Even as he winced, a trickle of blood running from his left nostril, the Skaeling seer grinned fiercely; never in his life had he felt such pure, raw power as was present in that scream. The daemon-child was even more puissant than his divinations had foretold. Even those with no affinity for the winds of magic, blissfully unaware of the ever-present and potent energies swirling around them, felt an uncomfortable wrench in the pit of their stomach as the daemon-child announced its arrival.

Warriors on both sides that had been battling furiously a moment before backed away from each other, knowing that something momentous had happened but unsure as to what. The sound of swords clashing grew more sporadic, then stopped altogether. An unnatural silence descended over the entire castle.

‘My son,’ said Styrbjorn in awe. ‘My son!’

The jarl took a few steps towards the enemy held keep, pushing his black-armoured huskarls out of his way.

‘Make them understand my words, seer,’ ordered Styrbjorn over his shoulder.

‘What?’ said Bjarki, recovering himself and wiping the blood from his nose.

‘Make them understand my words,’ said Styrbjorn, flashing his seer a glare. ‘Or is such a thing also beyond your power, little bear?’

Bjarki glowered at his jarl.

‘Fine,’ he said at last, and centring himself, he began muttering an incantation. Drawing his knife, he cut a slash across the palm of one hand. With a flicking motion, splatters of blood struck the ground before him, and as he completed his rite, he nodded to Styrbjorn.

Waving his huskarls back, Styrbjorn strode forward into the open killing ground before the keep, with Bjarki at his heel. The strings of hundreds of bows were drawn as he moved into range, but no arrow was loosed. Fifty paces from the keep, Styrbjorn came to halt, staring dismissively at the defenders.

Styrbjorn’s eyes, as pale as the frozen pack ice that ringed his homeland in the winter months, searched the faces of the keep’s defenders. He picked out the one bedecked in gold that he had judged to be the jarl of this stone fort, but his eyes continued scanning the ramparts.

At last he found the one he sought: the swordsman in white and blue; the one that he had hoped to cross blades with upon the castle walls. That one was perhaps the only worthy opponent amongst the enemy, and he could not understand why he was not the jarl of this stone fort, for he was clearly more deadly than the one armoured in gold.

‘I am Egil Styrbjorn, High Jarl of the Skaelings, slayer of souls and butcher of immortals,’ roared Styrbjorn, his booming voice infused with the power of the gods. ‘Hear my words!’

Calard jolted with shock as, a fraction of a second after hearing the warlord’s indecipherable challenge, a second voice whispered in his mind, translating his words. That voice spoke Breton with a thick, Norse accent, but it was understandable.

The knights around him glanced around them in shock, muttering, shuffling their feet, and invoking the protection of the Lady, and Calard knew that they too heard this unholy voice. His eyes drifted towards the smaller figure at the warlord’s side, and he realised that the whispering was issuing from his lips and being projected through some diabolic sorcerous means into the minds of all the defenders.

‘The blood of ten-thousand slaughtered enemies stains my blades,’ roared Styrbjorn, hefting his twin axes, Garmr and Gormr, into the air. ‘I have bested nameless horrors in the northern wastes and walked free to speak the tale. Alone, I speared a great wyrm of the undersea, battling it for a day and a night before dragging it ashore and cutting its head from its neck. I have walked the smoking paths of the nightshades and emerged unharmed. I have strangled ice trolls with my bare hands. I have run with the ulfwerener, hunted with the ymgir and feasted with the bloodbeast. I have stood upon the Knife Peaks as the gods threw jagged bolts of lightning down upon me, and defeated one of the great dragon-kin wakened by the storm, cutting its still beating heart from its chest.

‘This and more have I done, I, Egil Styrbjorn of the Skaelings! Never have I asked for quarter from an enemy, and never have I offered it. Until now.’

Bjarki’s voice faltered as he completed the translation, and his jaw dropped. What madness was this? Muttering rippled through the Skaeling war horde.

‘My jarl?’ Bjarki questioned.

‘They have my son, little bear,’ said Styrbjorn.

‘The keep will be ours within the hour!’ said Bjarki. ‘We do not need to debase ourselves by seeking terms with these weaklings!’

‘They have my son!’ hissed Styrbjorn. ‘Who is to say they will not smother him before the fort falls? That they will not hurl him from the ramparts as soon as we take it by force? It is what I would do in their position.’

‘If they were intending to kill the child, they would have done so by now,’ reasoned Bjarki, his voice angry.

‘This is my son!’ bellowed Styrbjorn, and Bjarki took an involuntary step back from his jarl’s rage. The power of the gods radiated from Styrbjorn as his fury rose to the surface, making Bjarki’s skin tingle. ‘I have waited this long for one to carry my name; I will not risk losing him now!’

‘Honourless dog! Lickspittle! Coward!’ bellowed a voice that sounded like rocks grinding against each other and Styrbjorn swung towards his own lines, eyes blazing with fury.

The Chaos dwarf, Zumarah, stepped forward, pushing Norscans out of his way.

‘Oath breaker!’ roared Zumarah, his tusks quivering in rage.

Bjarki could feel the Chaos dwarf’s words resonate with the Skaeling horde, and he saw many of the Norscan warriors shifting uneasily. They had come this far, and had lost many of their sword-brothers in taking this castle. Not a one of them would be content to walk away now, with the destruction of the enemy within their grasp, and the fiery words of the dwarf were striking a chord with them.

Styrbjorn pointed one of his axes at the bristling dwarf.

‘You dare insult me, Zumarah?’ he roared in outrage.

‘I do and I do so again. I call you coward and oath breaker, Styrbjorn. I will not be cheated of my dues!’

‘You mouth is still flapping, stunted wretch,’ Styrbjorn bellowed back. ‘Quiet your yapping, or I’ll beat you like the dog you are.’

‘You’re welcome to try, oath breaker,’ snarled Zumarah, unshouldering his obsidian greataxe. ‘I’ll carve your flesh and grind your bones.’

Bjarki licked his lips. Styrbjorn had no choice but to face this challenge or risk losing face in front of the entire horde.

Styrbjorn brandished his twin axes, and began marching towards the dwarf, his face a mask of fury. Zumarah leered at him and set his feet wide, hefting his double-bladed axe. The Skaeling jarl broke into a loping run, and with one quick glance up at the Bretonnians, wondering what they must be thinking, Bjarki turned to watch the outcome of the challenge.

Ensorcelled obsidian met hellforged steel, and the two warriors traded a score of blows within the space of a few heartbeats. Nearly seven feet tall, the Norscan towered over Zumarah, but the dwarf was like a rock, unyielding and immovable. Zumarah fought with a rabid fury, spitting and growling like a beast as he hacked and chopped.

Zumarah turned his shoulder into a swinging axe blade, taking the force of the blow without flinching, and met a strike from the Norscan’s other blade head-on with one of his own. The Norscan hammered the flat of his foot into Zumarah’s chest, but it was like striking a mountain and the dwarf remained unmoved.

Zumarah swatted aside a blow that arced towards his thick, bull-like neck, and hammered his greataxe into Styrbjorn’s side.

The blade tore through the Skaeling’s black armour and bit deep into his flesh, breaking ribs. Growling in pain, Styrbjorn dropped his axes and grabbed the haft of the dwarf’s weapon, locking it in place. The blazing red wolf eyes of Styrbjorn’s axes faded to darkness now that they were separated from their master’s touch.

Zumarah hissed and spat as he tried to free his greataxe from the grasp of the Skaeling. Keeping hold of the axe shaft with his left hand, Styrbjorn slammed his gauntleted right fist into the dwarf’s face.

The black armour that encased his fist was spiked and barbed, and the Skaeling struck with enough force to crack stone. Indeed it was like striking stone, but Zumarah merely laughed maniacally even as blood began to stream down his broad face.

Again and again Styrbjorn pounded his fist into the Chaos dwarf’s face. One of Zumarah’s tusks snapped under the onslaught, but the dwarf did not weaken, and continued to fight to free his weapon. Styrbjorn struck the dwarf another half dozen blows around the head, each more powerful than the last, but they seemed to be having little effect other than breaking the skin. The dwarf’s skull was like iron. Perhaps it was iron, thought Bjarki.

With a surge, Zumarah threw Styrbjorn off, who spun and stumbled to one knee, facing away from the Chaos dwarf. Zumarah grimaced in victory and stepped forward to finish the jarl. The Skaeling war horde stood immobile and silent, the only sound the whip of banners and the howling of the wind.

One of Styrbjorn’s axes, Garmr, was lying in the snow before him and Styrbjorn launched himself at it even as Zumarah came at him, swinging his greataxe back for the killing blow. Styrbjorn’s fingers closed around the haft of his axe and its blood-ruby eye flared into life.

Rolling onto his back and with a grunt of effort, Styrbjorn hurled his hellforged axe at the Chaos dwarf. It spun end over end and took the dwarf square in the face. Zumarah’s charge faltered, and the dwarf stood there for a moment, the axe buried deep in his skull, before he fell to the ground, dead.

The blood ceased streaming from Styrbjorn’s wounded side as his god-touched body began to heal, and he rose to his feet. Growing stronger with every passing heartbeat, the Skaeling jarl retrieved his weapons and swung towards his warriors, his face angry. Behind him, a host of crows and ravens descended on the dwarf, almost completely obscuring him.

‘Is there anyone else?’ he roared, his voice infused with the power of the gods, echoing painfully loudly around the castle. ‘Is there anyone else that would dispute my will?’

There was no movement and no sound from the Skaeling war host, and Styrbjorn continued to stare challengingly across their ranks for long moments. Satisfied at last, he turned back towards the Bretonnian keep.

The figure in gold was standing atop the ramparts, his cloak flying behind him.

‘I am Duke Adalhard of Lyonesse,’ he shouted, his voice echoing out over the silent Norscan hordes. ‘Speak your terms, Norscan.’

Silence greeted the Norscan’s demand.

Duke Adalhard turned to look along the ramparts, and his eyes met those of Reolus. The grail knight nodded his head almost imperceptibly, and the duke turned back towards the enemy.

‘It shall be so,’ hollered Duke Adalhard. ‘One hour’s time.’

Reolus was kneeling in silent communion within the duke’s private grail shrine when the door slammed open. The grail knight recognised the distinctive perfume of the Damsel Anara; a mixture of rose petals, lilies and pine needles.

‘What do you think you are doing?’ Anara said, coldly.

Reolus finished his prayer and opened his eyes. The pristine features of the Lady gazed down upon him, the statue’s eyes full of love and sympathy. Kissing the golden chalice icon he held in his hands, he rose to his feet and turned to face his lover.

‘My duty,’ he replied in a soft voice.

‘The child is not yours to barter,’ said Anara, her eyes full of anger. ‘And yet you offer it to the Norscan butcher?’

‘The Norscan challenged me,’ said Reolus. ‘I was honour bound to accept.’

‘You did not need to accept his terms,’ said Anara.

‘You would have preferred to see Lyonesse reduced to a smoking ruin?’ said Reolus, more sharply than he intended. ‘For every man here to be offered to the Dark Gods as sacrifice? The duke, your brother, the Lady Elisabet? Yourself? Me? Everyone would have been butchered. You know that as well as I.’

‘The child is important,’ said Anara.

‘And the enemy will take it only if I fall beneath the Norscan’s axe. I do not intend to do so,’ retorted Reolus.

‘The child is not yours to use as a bargaining tool like some prized sow,’ said Anara.

‘The child is a Norscan half-breed!’ said Reolus, his voice rising in pitch.

‘That child is promised to the Enchantress!’ shot back Anara. Reolus stared at her in silence, his anger fading.

‘Of what do you speak, my love?’ he said, his voice soft.

‘The reason I am here. The reason we are here. I am to deliver the child to the Enchantress. She sensed the power in it as soon as it was conceived. It cannot be allowed to remain in the world. The Enchantress shall take it into the realm of the fey, where its power can be controlled.’

Reolus’s shoulders slumped, a haunted look appearing in his eyes as he contemplated this new information. He fell to his knees before Anara, his head hung low.

He knew that he had wanted to test himself against the Norscan warlord. He wanted the glory of defeating him. Had he allowed his pride to blind him? Had he angered the goddess by his actions?

‘I did not know,’ he said finally. Anara regarded him coldly.

‘You did not need to know,’ she replied. The only sound was the howling wind outside, which beat upon the small shuttered window high in the shrine’s back wall. Hundreds of candles flickered as a slight breeze managed to creep through the cracks in the window.

‘It is foolish to think that the enemy will depart after you kill the Norscan. They have no honour,’ said Anara.

‘But I do,’ said Reolus. ‘It would have been beneath me to refuse the challenge just because I believe they will not honour their promise.’

The damsel sighed, her cold mask slipping. She embraced him, pulling his head to her bosom.

‘You are a fool, Reolus,’ she said.

‘I cannot go back on my word, Anara,’ said the grail knight.

‘I know,’ she said, and a single tear ran down her cheek.

The cousins, Baldemund and Huebald, stood at Tassilo’s bedside, their faces grim. The injured knight’s sickness was worsening. Wounded by the tainted blade of the corrupt enemy champion, Tassilo’s body was lathered in sweat, and he was shivering violently. The flesh around the wound had turned black and stank like rotten meat, and all the ministrations of the duke’s overworked surgeons had been for naught; the sickness continued to spread.

‘We must do it tonight,’ said Baldemund fiercely. ‘Before the duel. While his guard is down.’

‘I had hoped that he would fall in battle,’ said Tassilo weakly. ‘At least then he would have had an honourable death. And our hands would not be stained with blood.’

‘But he did not,’ said Baldemund. ‘And this war is all but over. What we do is for the good of the Garamont line. Remember that.’

‘We would be betraying Garamont if we did not act,’ said Huebald.

‘I just don’t know anymore,’ said Tassilo miserably. ‘What if Folcard was wrong?’

‘Folcard is not wrong. None of us takes pleasure in what must be done,’ Baldemund hissed. ‘But it is our duty. Calard’s blood is unclean. His mother was fey-touched. His sister’s a freak, and his brother was… well, we all saw what his brother was. We cannot risk the Garamont bloodline being forever tainted.’

‘Calard must die,’ said Huebald. ‘We do it, now.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

Calard was slouched on a simple bench in one of the keep’s kitchens, weary beyond words but unwilling to allow himself to fall asleep. The kitchens were not an area often frequented by nobles and the furniture in the room was simple and functional, with little thought for comfort or aesthetics. Still, just to be sitting down felt like luxury, even garbed in full armour as Calard was.

His sword was upon the thick wooden table in front of him, and he was chewing on some salted meat that Bertelis had discovered in one of the clay pots in the adjoining walk-in larder. He, his brother and the Empire ambassador, Dieter Weschler, were sharing a jug, and even though it was just cheap cooking wine – all the good vintages would be stored in the no-doubt cavernous cellar beneath the keep – no wine had ever tasted finer to Calard.

They sat in silence. Calard’s mind was a jumble of turbulent emotions. He replayed his vision of the Green Knight over in his head, trying to decipher its meaning, but the thought of Elisabet, nursing her Norscan-fathered child upstairs, kept intruding. He was also excited by the prospect of seeing Reolus meet the barbarian warlord in challenge. He was certain that the duel would be recounted all across Bretonnia in years to come, and he felt privileged to be present at such an august event.

‘He will win, won’t he?’ said Bertelis.

‘The Lady is with him,’ replied Calard by way of answer.

‘I have never seen a better swordsman,’ said Dieter, ‘except my Emperor’s personal champion, Ludwig Shwarzhelm. And even then, it would be a close thing.’

‘You think your Emperor’s man could beat Reolus?’ said Bertelis, doubtfully.

‘I would not wager my entire fortune on it,’ said Dieter. ‘Perhaps just a portion.’

‘I’d happily wager my fortune on Reolus,’ said Bertelis. ‘Had I a fortune to wager.’

‘By Sigmar’s grace, such a wager will only ever remain theoretical,’ replied Dieter. ‘Long have the bonds between our realms been strong, and long may that continue.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Calard. ‘We have plenty enough enemies around us than to draw weapons against friends.’

The door to the kitchen was pushed open as Calard and Dieter clunked their goblets together in salute, and Huebald and Baldemund walked in, looking grim and tense.

Calard’s brow creased in concern.

‘Tassilo?’ he said.

‘Worsening,’ said Huebald, coming to stand opposite Calard. Baldemund sat down at the table, sliding the sword of Garamont aside.

Calard and Bertelis stood instantly, intending to go to their cousin’s side, but Baldemund held up a hand to forestall them.

‘He is weak. The surgeon says he should only receive one visitor at a time,’ he said. ‘And he has asked to see Bertelis first.’

‘Really?’ said Calard, who had always been closer to Tassilo than his brother. Baldemund nodded.

Calard looked at Bertelis, who shrugged.

‘Well, he has asked for you, so go,’ said Calard, and Bertelis left the room.

Huebald, sharing a glance with his conspirator, cleared his throat and turned towards Dieter.

‘Could you give us the room, ambassador? There is a family matter that my cousin and I would like to discuss with Lord Garamont.’

‘Of course,’ said Dieter, who stood up and gave a curt bow of the head to Calard before taking his leave.

Huebald and Baldemund were left alone in the kitchen with Calard, who offered them the jug of wine. They made no reaction to his offer, and he frowned as he placed the jug back onto the table.

‘What is it?’ he said, a feeling of dread descending over him. Was Tassilo dead? Had something happened to Elisabet?

‘You know that we are loyal to Garamont, don’t you cousin?’ said Huebald.

‘What are you talking about?’ said Calard in confusion. ‘Of course I know that.’

‘And you know that if anything were to threaten the Garamont line, we would do whatever it took to preserve its integrity, yes?’ said Huebald.

‘What is your point?’ said Calard.

Baldemund stood. Calard stared up at his two grim-faced, silent cousins.

‘By the love of the goddess, spit it out,’ Calard said.

‘I’m sorry that it has to go this way, cousin,’ said Baldemund. Then he and Huebald slid their swords from their scabbards.

‘What is this?’ said Calard, suddenly conscious of the fact that his own sword was beyond his reach.

‘Something that should have been done a long time ago,’ said Huebald, moving around the table towards Calard, blade drawn.

‘I’m sorry, Calard,’ said Baldemund, circling around his other side. ‘The purity of the Garamont line must be preserved.’

Calard stood up sharply, knocking over the bench on which he sat. Huebald picked up the sword of Garamont and hurled it across the room. It clattered on the stone floor and slide to a far corner, beneath the great arched oven built into the wall.

‘Your bloodline is cursed; you know that as well as we do. It cannot be allowed to bring Garamont to ruin.’

‘This is madness,’ snarled Calard, still backing away from the two armed knights.

‘No,’ said Huebald. ‘It would be madness for us to ignore the oath we swore to your father and stand by and allow his house to fall to damnation.’

‘You swore the same oath to me,’ snapped Calard. ‘Where is your honour?’

‘You should have stood aside and let your brother rule, Calard,’ said Baldemund. ‘You could have avoided all this.’

‘Enough talk,’ snapped Huebald. ‘It is time the taint that besmirches Garamont’s honour was removed once and for all.’

Calard backed up against the wall. There was nowhere to run.

‘Please don’t hate me for my part in it,’ said Tassilo, his eyes feverish.

‘Hush,’ said Bertelis. ‘Calm yourself. You need your rest, cousin. Lie back.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Tassilo, fighting off Bertelis’s mothering attentions. ‘It had to be done! For the good of the Garamont line!’

‘Sleep, cousin,’ said Bertelis. ‘You’ll feel better once you have had some rest.’

Tassilo was burning up, sweat pouring off his body and his skin radiating heat. He reached out and grabbed Bertelis by the arm.

‘Listen to me! His blood is tainted,’ said Tassilo. ‘It had to be done. Do not hate me.’

‘What are you talking about, cousin?’ Bertelis said warily, wondering if Tassilo was delirious.

‘You will do Garamont proud, Bertelis.’

Bertelis felt a sense of foreboding descend over him, and he stared at Tassilo with haunted eyes, fearing the answer to his next question.

‘What have you done, Tassilo?’ he said.

‘Do not hate me,’ said the feverish knight. He coughed, splattering blood and mucous down his shirt front.

‘You are talking about Calard, aren’t you?’ said Bertelis with some urgency. ‘What have you done, cousin?’

‘For the good of Garamont,’ Tassilo managed, in-between wracking coughs.

Bertelis stared at him in horror. Could this merely be some fevered delusion? In his heart he knew that it was not.

‘Oh mother, no,’ he breathed. Long had his mother, the Lady Calisse, hated Calard; long had she desired to see her own son take up the rulership of Garamont. Bertelis had been convinced that she had been behind the attempts on Calard’s life six months ago, before the death of their father, but his mother had vehemently denied that.

Bertelis had even gone so far as to keep the identity of one of Calard’s would-be killers from his brother, in an attempt to save his mother from shame and retaliation. It had been Tanebourc, a favourite of his mother’s, that had tried to kill Calard on the field of battle in Bordeleaux, and had his identity been made known, then the finger of blame would surely have settled upon Bertelis’s mother, the Lady Calisse.

Still, his mother had denied it so vociferously that he had almost believed her, for all that he knew she was capable of such a thing. Almost.

‘Lady of grace, let it not be so,’ breathed Bertelis, and he spun to leave.

He paused in the doorway and looked back towards the sick man, who was staring at him with dark ringed eyes.

‘If any harm has befallen my brother, I will return here and kill you myself,’ promised Bertelis. Then he drew his blade, and ran from the room.

‘Forgive me,’ breathed Tassilo.

Maloric yawned as he strode along the corridor, heading towards stairs that would lead up to the ramparts atop the keep. He came to a fork, and glanced down the shadowy side-passage. He did a double-take when he saw a pair of men-at-arms dressed in the red and blue livery of Garamont standing guard outside a door halfway down the corridor. At a whim he changed his course, turning to walk towards them.

The pair of guards were talking in low voices, but they fell silent as they saw him approach. They stared resolutely ahead as he stopped in front of them, wisely not looking him in the eye. Their polearms were crossed over the door, barring the way.

‘What is in there, peasant?’ Maloric demanded of one of the men.

The man-at-arms stuck out his unshaved chin.

‘Kitchen, my lord.’

‘Very important duty, guarding a kitchen,’ said Maloric. ‘Stand aside.’

‘We cannot do that, my lord,’ said the man-at-arms.

‘The lord of Garamont is having his way with a serving girl inside, is he?’ sneered Maloric.

‘I wouldn’t know, my lord,’ said the peasant, shifting his feet awkwardly.

‘Of course not,’ said Maloric. ‘Stand aside.’

‘We cannot do that, my lord,’

Maloric stepped in close, staring into the peasant’s eyes. He could smell the cat’s piss stink of the man’s sweat, and his lip curled in disgust.

‘I am going through that door, peasant,’ said Maloric in a low voice. ‘And if you attempt to stop me I shall see you both hang.’

Maloric put a finger upon the blade of the man’s polearm and pushed it out of his way, staring at the man the whole while, daring him to resist. Cowed, the man shifted his feet and looked down, but did not make a move to stop him. Maloric turned to stare at the other man, who, after glancing at his companion, moved his own weapon out of Maloric’s way.

‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ he said, and pushed through the doors, a half-smile on his face.

Unarmed, Calard knew that he had no chance against both Huebald and Baldemund. Both were skilful swordsmen and he had no more room to back away from them, nor was there any form of weapon nearby.

‘The Lady curse you,’ he snarled.

‘You are the cursed one here,’ returned Huebald.

The door to the kitchen opened inwards suddenly, and the traitorous cousins were momentarily distracted.

Calard moved swiftly, stepping in close to Huebald and slamming his fist into his cousin’s face.

Huebald managed to turn his head, so that Calard’s gauntlet glanced off his cheek rather than breaking his nose. Still, the blow was a powerful one, and Huebald’s head snapped back.

Before Calard could wrest the sword from Huebald’s grasp, however, the tip of Baldemund’s sword was at his throat, and he froze. More pressure was applied to the sword tip, and Calard was backed up against the wall. Only then did he notice who the intruder was.

‘What in the name of the Lady is going on here?’ said Maloric in amusement, a sardonic half-smile on his face.

‘This is none of your concern, Sangasse,’ snapped Huebald. ‘Walk away. Now.’

‘I don’t take orders from the likes of you, Garamont lapdog,’ replied Maloric, casually walking further into the kitchen. ‘Think I’ll stay awhile.’

‘I’m telling you, Sangasse; turn around and walk out of here,’ growled Huebald. ‘This is nothing to do with you.’

In response, Maloric turned a chair around so that its back was facing the Garamont knights. He sat down, straddling it, an amused expression on his face.

‘Two armed knights against one, unarmed. Not very sporting,’ he commented. ‘But please, don’t let me stop you.’

Calard tensed himself, about to risk trying to overpower Baldemund, who still had him pinned to the wall, a sword at his throat.

‘Don’t,’ warned Baldemund, sensing his intention. The sword tip pressed harder against his neck, breaking the skin.

‘Do as he says, Maloric,’ said Calard. ‘Get out of here. This is a family matter.’

‘Your family really is not normal, Garamont, you know that?’ replied Maloric, smirking. ‘Inbred lunatics, all of you.’

‘I told you to leave, Sangasse,’ Huebald said, taking a threatening step towards Maloric.

‘Take one more step towards me with that drawn sword,’ said Maloric, still looking at Calard and still smiling, ‘and it will be your last.’

‘Kill the Sangasse bastard!’ shouted Baldemund, and Huebald stepped forward, his blade flashing for Maloric’s head.

The Sangasse noble stood quickly, stepping back, drawing his blade and kicking the chair he had been sitting on into Huebald in one smooth motion. Huebald stumbled as the chair struck him in the mid-section, and Maloric’s blade slashed through the air.

Huebald dropped his sword, which fell with a clatter to the floor, and lifted a hand to his throat, which had been neatly sliced open from left to right. He lifted his hand, covered in blood, up before him, and his eyes goggled in shock and his mouth gaped open soundlessly. Then Huebald fell, first to his knees, then face first onto the floor.

Calard felt Baldemund tense for the killing thrust, and he grabbed the blade in his hands, dragging it to the side. The tip of the blade sliced across his throat and blood began to run freely from the wound, but it was just a shallow cut, and he managed to wrest the blade away. Throwing himself forwards, he smashed into Baldemund, knocking them both off balance.

Of the pair, it was Baldemund who recovered the quickest, and he thundered an elbow into the side of Calard’s head. The young lord of Garamont hit the ground hard. He tried to rise but fell back onto the floor, struggling to maintain consciousness.

Baldemund stood over him, blade poised to finish him off, but he turned warily towards Maloric as the Sangasse noble stalked towards him, blood dripping from his sword.

‘I have no argument with you, Maloric,’ said Baldemund, but the Sangasse noble snorted in derision.

‘I believe your words were “Kill the Sangasse bastard”. That’s good enough justification for me. It’s not every day I get to kill lackeys of Garamont,’ said Maloric, and their blades came together.

It lasted no more than a few heartbeats. After trading several blows, Maloric parried a desperate attack and sent a lightning riposte that clipped Baldemund in the temple.

The knight staggered as blood welled up from the scalp wound, and he fell to one knee. Maloric stepped forwards and ran Baldemund through.

Bertelis came crashing through the kitchen door, blade in hand. Seeing Maloric standing over his brother, bloody sword in hand, he let out a roar and charged towards him.

Maloric twirled his blade in his hand, the half-smile returning to his face, and he stepped forward to meet Bertelis head-on.

‘No,’ said Calard, pulling himself shakily to his feet.

Bertelis’s and Maloric’s blades came together, their deeply ingrained enmity lending their attacks venom. Bertelis’s blows were swift and powerful, but they were all turned aside by Maloric’s flashing blade, which seemed to twist through the air like a silver-scaled serpent, awaiting the perfect moment for a fatal strike.

‘Stop!’ bellowed Calard.

‘Why?’ growled Bertelis, keeping his eyes on his opponent.

‘Don’t stop on my account,’ sneered Maloric.

‘If he had not arrived, I would now be dead,’ said Calard.

‘Don’t flatter yourself that it was intentional,’ retorted Maloric.

Bertelis lowered his sword, glancing down at the lifeless bodies of his cousins, Baldemund and Huebald. He shook his head in disbelief.

At that moment a horn sounded, joined instantly by the brutal pounding of human-skinned drums. A great roar erupted from beyond the keep’s walls, and thousands of weapons began clashing against shields in time with the drums, a deafening, barbarous din.

‘Reolus,’ said Calard.

The outcome of the war was about to be determined.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Calard, Bertelis and Maloric burst out onto the top of the keep. The ramparts looking down over the square were packed, with the majority of the surviving defenders crowding in to get a clear vantage. The battlements and towers were thronged with men, and peasants clung to flagpoles and took up precarious positions atop the crenulations in order to get a clear view down below.

Maloric spun to leave them, to find his own way through the press of bodies. He turned and looked back over his shoulder, as if feeling the looks of hatred he was receiving from the brothers. He stared hard at Bertelis.

‘We have unfinished business, you and I,’ said Maloric, before shoving a path through the heaving pack of humanity away from the brothers.

Bertelis spat upon the ground in the Sangasse noble’s direction.

‘Our own cousins,’ Bertelis said bitterly, shaking his head. ‘I can still not believe it.’

Calard grunted in response. In truth, he was still in shock himself, and gnawing doubt was churning his insides. What if Huebald and Baldemund were right?

‘Out of the way, peasants!’ said Bertelis in a large voice, barging his way through the press in a different direction. Calard shook his head, trying to dispel his anxiety.

The Garamont nobles pushed their way through the unwashed masses, bustled from side to side as the crowd surged. The knights towered over the vast majority of men-at-arms and bowmen, hundreds of generations of malnutrition and inbreeding ensuring that few of low birth stood even to a knight’s shoulder.

‘Get out of the way, damn you,’ snarled Bertelis, brutally shoving men out of his path. Those he deemed too slow received a hard clip over the back of the head for their troubles, despite the fact that there was nowhere for them to go.

They barged their way through the stifling crowd, both of them turning their noses up at the ungodly stink of the peasants, until they finally stepped up onto the battlements. With much cursing and shoving, they finally neared the crenulations. A pair of Lyonessian knights errant turned as they were jostled from behind. Their harsh words died on their lips as they saw that Calard and Bertelis were of higher status, and grumblingly vacated their position in deference.

Their position gave them an unrestricted view of the square below. They could see the vast sea of Norscans arrayed in a semicircle around the keep, a seething mass of barbarians. They maintained a distance of some two hundred paces from the base of the keep’s walls, leaving the square below – the agreed location for the forthcoming duel – clear.

A roar rose from the throats of every Norscan as the enemy warlord stepped out of the ranks of his barbaric countrymen, and Calard squinted as he took in his appearance.

The Norscan was an absolute beast of a man. By his silver-streaked beard and craggy, weather-beaten face, Calard judged that he was in his middling years, but he was no less impressive for that, and he looked to be in the prime of his strength.

Bedecked in heavy armour of dark metal, the barbarian wore a thick white fur of some unknown beast over his massive shoulders. Curving horns emerged from his dark helmet, their tips encased in beaten bronze. His thickly muscled upper arms were tattooed and encircled with iron torcs; his forearms and hands encased in black plate gauntlets.

An immense pair of twin axes, blades fashioned to resemble wolf heads were strung over the Norscan’s back, and a smaller pair of single-headed axes were strapped to his armoured thighs. Threaded onto strings of sinew, the teeth of sharks, wolves and other larger and more unfamiliar predators hung alongside engraved bone-fetishes around his neck.

In the centre of the Norscan’s breastplate was a large jewel of pale blue that resembled a great, unblinking eye, and it made Calard feel vaguely uneasy even to look upon it.

The barbarian chieftain’s face, framed by his helmet and its vertical nose-guard, had been daubed with blood or paint, every inch of exposed skin coloured a bright red, giving him a daemonic appearance. Charcoal had been rubbed into his eye sockets, making his eyes stand out dramatically.

Turning towards his own lines, the Norscan lifted his clenched fists, encased in black, segmented armour, above his head and the cheering intensified. Then the warlord began striding out into the open area between his lines and the Bretonnian keep. His head was held high, and his walk was of one supremely confident in his own ability.

Half way to the keep he came to a halt and stood there, gazing contemptuously at the defenders. Then he bellowed a challenge, his voice deep and reverberating, and though the Bretonnians could not understand his words, his tone was an unmistakeable challenge.

In answer, the great oaken doors of the keep’s gatehouse groaned open, and its one remaining portcullis rose. Reolus walked out, alone, to face the Norscan warrior, and the gates sealed behind him, echoing with finality.

The Bretonnians’ voices rose as one as they cheered their champion, who was striding in a direct line towards the towering Norscan, his head held high. He was fully bedecked in his ancient, ornate plate mail, and the unicorn crest atop his helmet was surrounded by candles. His pristine regal blue cloak rippled out behind him, and the silver edging of his tabard seemed to glow with reflected moonlight, for all that it was daytime, and the noon sun hidden behind the mass of clouds overhead.

The revered grail knight seemed calm and relaxed as he marched forward to meet his enemy. His weapon was sheathed and he carried no shield – indeed Calard had never seen the paladin use one.

When Reolus was forty paces from his enemy, the Norscan unhooked one of the handaxes strapped to his thighs. The grail knight’s holy blade, Durendyal, was instantly in his hands, the movement so fast that Calard had not even seen it drawn, and Reolus broke into a run towards the Norscan.

The black-armoured warlord hurled the axe at his closing attacker, eliciting an angry murmur from the Bretonnians. Duels were meant to be fought hand to hand, face to face; it was dishonourable to utilise missile weapons on the field of battle, let alone in a formal challenge. Peasants were allowed to use bows and man trebuchets, for they had no honour to lose, but no knight of noble birth would ever sully himself by using a ranged weapon outside of the hunt.

The axe was hurled with incredible power, and it spun through the air, end over end, towards Reolus’s head. He swayed to the side as he increased the speed of his run, and the throwing axe hissed by him, missing him by scant inches.

Less than twenty paces now separated the two paragons of war, and the Norscan had his other throwing axe in his hand. He waited for the grail knight to draw closer – fifteen paces, ten – then hurled the missile at Reolus with even more power than the first.

The grail knight swatted the axe aside with his sword and sprinted towards the Norscan, his blade clenched in both hands. The enemy warlord drew his twin battleaxes and stalked forward to meet Reolus head on. With a roar they came together.

Reolus ducked beneath a swinging axe and sliced his blade across his opponent’s side as he surged by him, his gleaming sword carving through armour and flesh. Still, there was no great cheer from the Bretonnians as their hero took first blood – the onlookers watched on in tense silence. The blood on Reolus’s blade danced and spat, like fat on a hot skillet, leaving its surface spotless.

The wound did not appear to slow the Norscan, however, and he swung towards the grail knight, twin axes carving murderous arcs through the air, forcing Reolus to duck backwards and sway his body to the side to avoid their touch.

The Norscan went after him, axes cutting left and right, and Reolus was forced to his knees as he blocked a heavy overhead strike. The barbarian warlord kicked the grail knight hard in the chest, sending him crashing onto his back, eliciting a deafening roar of approval from the Norscan host.

Reolus was back on his feet in an instant, and again the combatants hurled themselves at each other. Reolus’s blade was a blur of silver that weaved a deadly pattern through the air as the grail knight ducked and spun, in constant motion, as he avoided the Norscan’s brutal attacks.

He could not match the Chaos lord’s sheer power and risked having his sword knocked from his hands by meeting the Norscan’s blows head-on. Nevertheless, his sword mastery was beyond compare. With the most delicate of touches, he ensured that blows that would have shorn his head clear of his shoulders and severed limbs were deflected, just missing their mark and leaving him unscathed. He deftly turned aside axe blows that, had they connected, would have hacked him in half, and his blindingly fast ripostes sliced through the Norscan’s armour, scoring several wounds within the first minute of the duel, splattering the snow underfoot with blood.

The spectacle of the two champions doing battle, both displaying skill and strength far beyond normal men, was breathtaking. Several times Calard felt certain that Reolus would be caught by the Norscan’s devastatingly powerful strikes and slain, only for the grail knight to sway out of the way at the last moment, or knock the axe head off target, before spinning away and launching a series of attacks that had the warlord frantically defending. More than once a cheer lifted in Calard’s throat as he was certain that Reolus was about to land the killing blow, but each time the cheer died away before it sounded, with the Norscan battering the Bretonnian’s sword aside just before it plunged into his throat, or forcing the grail knight to pull the blow before it landed by launching a deadly attack of his own.

Axe and sword came together with a clash that echoed through the castle, neither warrior backing down. Reolus ducked under his enemy’s guard, even as the Norscan sought to drive his knee up into the Bretonnian’s mid-section, and the grail knight carved his sword into the warlord’s side as he moved smoothly past the bigger man. The wound was deeper this time, and blood began to run down over the Norscan’s hip and leg, staining the ground underfoot.

The Norscan turned, roaring in anger, swinging his axes in a pair of lethal arcs. Reolus stepped forward and dropped to one knee, the axes slicing the air above his head, and thrust his blade into the warlord’s stomach.

The gleaming silver blade of Durendyal drove through his foe’s gut, melting through the thick plate armour smoothly. Lunging forward, Reolus wrenched the blade sideward in a disembowelling cut. Blood erupted from the terrible wound, and a deafening roar erupted from the Bretonnians. Calard punched the air victoriously, screaming at the top of his lungs, ignoring the pain in his neck, and Bertelis howled in approval.

However, the Norscan was not yet done. He backhanded Reolus, putting all his strength and bodyweight behind the blow. His armoured fist caught the grail knight under the chin and snapped his head back. Reolus was lifted off his feet and thrown backwards, his back arching, and came crashing down onto the hard packed snow ten yards away.

The Norscan swayed and dropped to one knee, grimacing in pain, blood streaming from his stomach like a waterfall. His twin axes dropped from limp fingers. Blood pooled beneath him, melting the snow, and his head drooped.

Reolus’s gleaming sword was still protruding from the Norscan’s gut, impaling him, and blood spat from the wound as if the blade was white-hot. Calard held his breath, willing the barbarian to fall, aware that he was watching the death of a mighty foe.

Reolus picked himself groggily up from the ground, visibly unsteady on his feet, and turned to watch the Norscan die. His helmet had been wrenched out of shape by the Norscan’s fist. He pulled it off and hurled it away from him, shaking his head to clear it. Blood was on his lips, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

The sight of that blood filled Calard with disquiet. It seemed to bring the revered grail knight down to earth, emphasising his mortality, making him seem vulnerable and human. Calard had always regarded Reolus as some eternal saint of the Lady, ageless, immortal. He had never considered that he was a man of flesh and blood, a man that could be killed, just like any other.

Still, he had bested this mighty enemy, and Calard wondered if there was any living being that could possibly defeat the holy paladin. At this moment, he believed not. Surely, only a god would have any chance.

Calard’s eyes widened in horror suddenly, and a hushed silence fell across the ramparts.

In defiance of death, the Norscan dragged the hissing blade slowly from his body, and dropped it to the ground.

The torrent of blood flowing from the Norscan’s gut wound had slowed to a trickle, and then it stopped altogether. Calard shook his head in horrified wonder as the towering barbarian pushed himself to his feet, in defiance of Morr’s claim upon him, in defiance of rational thinking.

No man should have still been standing after such a dismembering cut, nor after losing so much blood.

The Norscan picked up his axes as he rose, and he rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck from side to side, as if he were merely warming up rather than having just received what should have been a mortal wound. He sucked in a deep breath, and Calard felt his skin prickle, as if there were unholy forces at play here that he could not perceive. Then the Norscan breathed out, and a cloud of black smoke emerged from his lungs. The barbarian’s eyes locked onto Reolus with icy intensity. He flashed the grail knight a predatory smile, white teeth contrasting sharply with his red painted face, and Calard felt his blood run cold.

Was the Norscan not a man at all, but rather some immortal daemon in human form? Had Reolus been tricked into fighting a being incapable of being killed?

The Norscan spun his axes in front of him, rolling his wrists. The blades wailed as they cut glittering arcs before him, as if the air itself cried out in pain as they sliced through it.

‘He can’t lose,’ said Calard. ‘He can’t.’

‘He won’t,’ said Bertelis, though Calard thought he could detect a hint of doubt in his brother’s voice.

Grail knight and hellspawned Norscan warlord stood staring at each other in hatred, one armed, one not. Reolus’s sword, Durendyal, lay upon the ground in front of the barbarian lord. The blade of the hallowed weapon was glowing fiercely, as if reacting to the proximity of this ancient, ancestral enemy.

Surprised murmurs rippled along the battlements as the Norscan kicked Reolus’s weapon over to him. Bertelis smiled in wonder and Calard blinked in disbelief. He was shocked to see such an honourable move from an accursed Norscan child-murderer.

The immense warrior gestured for Reolus to pick up his sword and continue the battle. Reolus stared at his sacred blade for a moment, then knelt to retrieve it. He turned it around in his hands, so that he held its blade point downwards like a dagger. He leant his head against its crosspiece, eyes closed as he prayed to the Lady. The Norscan began to pace back and forth like a caged beast, clearly impatient but graciously allowing his opponent to finish his entreaty to the goddess.

After a moment, Reolus opened his eyes, and white holy fire burnt there, furious and intense. He saluted, his sword leaving a faint glowing after-image hanging in the air for a moment, and nodded to the Norscan. The barbarian warlord ceased his restless pacing and strode towards the grail knight, axes bobbing up and down in his hands in eagerness.

They came together with a brutal clash of weapons, trading blows back and forth with such speed and skill that it was impossible for the eye to follow.

Calard found himself virtually unable to breathe, so focused was he on the struggle between these two awesome warriors. Never would he see their like again, he knew. Each was a champion that rose but once a century, and both would doubtless be remembered long into the future, their deeds recounted for generations to come.

Reolus stepped around his larger opponent, every movement in perfect balance, his glowing blade flashing back and forth to turn aside the Norscan’s furious attacks. For long minutes the two battled, each straining to land a killing blow, yet they were so evenly matched that few hits found their mark at all, and none of those were fatal.

They stepped apart after a brutal passage of attacks, and both men were breathing hard. The Norscan was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and parts of his armour were hanging loose from his body. Reolus was bleeding from a cut to his head where he had suffered a glancing blow, and his armour was rent in two places, with blood seeping from wounds to his thigh and shoulder.

Still, neither warrior was about to relent, and after no more than a few heartbeats rest, they closed the distance separating them, grunting with effort as their blades came together.

The Norscan snarled and brought one axe crashing down in a powerful blow, intending to cut Reolus from crown to sternum. The grail knight whipped his sword around in a circular double-handed parry, and the axe blade slid down his sword to slam into the ice-hard ground. The Norscan’s second axe wailed as it hammered around in a vicious arc, slicing towards Reolus’s hip, and Calard tensed.

Rolling his wrists deftly, Reolus continued the movement of his circular parry and his blade flashed up, slicing cleanly through the Norscan’s wrist even as the axe screamed towards him. The Chaos warlord’s hand was completely severed, and it fell to the ground, axe still clutched in its grasp. The move had been so perfectly executed, so perfectly timed, that it took Calard a moment to register what had just occurred.

The barbarian bellowed in pain and rage, blood pumping from the stump of his arm, but still managed to get his other axe blade in the way of a savage strike from Reolus that was arcing in towards his groin. The Norscan deflected another two lightning attacks, staggering backwards in an effort to put some room between him and his furious attacker.

A wild swing forced Reolus to jump backwards, giving the Norscan some much needed breathing space. The bloody stump at the end of his left arm was dripping into the snow, and he was hissing in pain and rage.

Reolus circled the Norscan warily, the blood that had splattered his silver and blue tabard sliding off it like water off oiled leather, leaving it pristine and unspoiled. The Norse were chanting a word – a name? – over and over, stamping their feet and clashing weapons against shields in time to the pounding rhythm.

‘Styr-bjorn! Styr-bjorn! Styr-bjorn!’

The sound echoed relentlessly around the castle, rebounding back off the curtain walls, reverberating maddeningly. The sound drowned out the shouts and cheers of the heavily outnumbered Bretonnians, and the Norscan warlord seemed to find strength in the sound.

‘Styr-bjorn! Styr-bjorn! Styr-bjorn!’

With a roar, the Norscan launched himself towards Reolus, slashing his axe towards the grail knight’s neck. Reolus turned the blow aside and struck for the throat, but the Norscan caught the blow on his armoured forearm, knocking it aside. The grail knight deflected two more slashing axe blows, each one knocking him back three paces, and the Norscan kept coming after him, roaring in fury.

Reolus swayed aside from one of the frenzied attacks and the Norscan’s arm flicked out as they came close together, bloody stump hooking around the back of the grail knight’s neck. Before he could slip free, Reolus was pulled into a rising knee, the blow striking him in the sternum with sickening force. His breastplate buckled inwards, and the Norscan drove his knee up into the smaller man again, wrenching his armour further out of shape.

The grail knight managed to twist free of the Norscan’s grasp, his blade slashing a bloody gash across his enemy’s face.

Reolus ducked beneath a hate-fuelled strike, the axe slicing a hair’s breadth past his face, and stepping to the side, the grail knight slashed his blade across the barbarian’s thigh. The blade sliced through armour and iron-hard muscle and struck bone. The Bretonnian paladin tore his sword free, and as the Norscan swung at him with his bloody stump, he impaled the limb on its length. The sword passed through the warlord’s forearm and slid clear though the other side.

With a twist of his arm, the Norscan disarmed Reolus, leaving the fiercely glowing blade Durendyal jutting from his arm, and with astonishing speed, the warlord backhanded his opponent, the hallowed sword plunging into Reolus’s neck.

The grail knight staggered back a step, gasping in shock as blood sprayed from the fatal wound. Using his body’s momentum, the Norscan’s axe wailed through the air and hacked Reolus’s head from his shoulders.

Calard reeled as he saw the grail knight’s head sail into the air, blood spraying out in fountain as it spun. It hit the ground and bounced and rolled, finally coming to rest staring up at the keep, eyes wide and staring and mouth fixed open in an expression of surprise. The fey white flames in Reolus’s eyes spluttered and died.

His body was on its knees, blood pumping from his neck like a geyser, then it fell forwards into the snow, lifeless.

The Bretonnians had fallen into deathly silence, staring in disbelief and shock at the headless corpse of their defeated champion. Calard groaned in horror, shaking his head in denial, his eyes wide with shock.

‘Lady of grace, no,’ breathed Bertelis.

‘Styr-bjorn! Styr-bjorn! Styr-bjorn!’ came the relentless pounding chant of the Norscans, the sound increasing in volume.

The Norscan warlord turned and struck the grail knight’s corpse, leaving the blade embedded deep in his flesh in the manner of a woodsman leaving his axe embedded in a log. Then the towering warrior limped over to Reolus’s head, and bent to retrieve it. He hefted it into the air by its hair, and Calard groaned again as the warlord raised it high for all to see. Throwing his head back, the Norscan roared his victory to the heavens.

As if in response, lightning crackled through the dark clouds overhead, lighting them from within, followed a moment later by rolling thunder.

For a fraction of a second Calard saw a second image superimposed over the body of the Norscan, a black-fleshed daemon of incalculable power. It was larger than the Norscan by a good four feet, cloven hoofed, and its eyes blazed with hellfire. Shadowy wings were furled behind its back, and black smoke billowed from its fanged mouth. Two pairs of horns curled from its head, and its pitch-black muscles rippled with power. Before the image flickered and disappeared, Calard saw that it had but one hand, and in its other it held a familiar, wolf-headed axe, its ruby eye burning red. The image was gone in an instant, and he blinked, unsure if he had truly seen it or not. Was it a glimpse of what the Norscan was becoming? Was it the Norscan’s true form?

‘Styr-bjorn! Styr-bjorn! Styr-bjorn!’

Calard swayed as the sound pounded against the keep, and he saw the enemy warlord turn and bark an order, beckoning with his bloody stump of an arm.

The Norscan sorcerer strode forward, a grin on his savage face, and rammed a spear into the snow, its tip pointing towards the sky. Then the savage warlord rammed Reolus’s head onto the spear, and fresh roars erupted from the barbarian horde as thunder rolled ominously across the heavens.

The sorcerer slashed his hand and began to chant, and the warlord turned back towards the keep.

‘Bring me my son,’ he boomed, his voice stabbing into the mind of every man present.

‘Calard!’ said Elisabet as the doors to her chambers were thrown open. Her haunted face lit up momentarily to see him, but the young lord of Garamont’s face was a grim mask and he avoided looking at her. The Duke of Lyonesse entered behind him, accompanied by the sweating, fat Marquis of Carabas.

The young lady of Marlemont was propped up in her bed, with her swaddled babe asleep in her arms. Her face was flushed, and the Damsel Anara sat in a high-backed plush chair nearby, her tiny frame dwarfed by the massive chair.

‘He is dead, then,’ said Anara flatly.

Calard nodded curtly in reply, and he saw tears in his sister’s eyes before she dropped her head.

‘I felt it when he passed over,’ she said, ‘but I hoped that I had been mistaken.’

‘He fought bravely,’ said Calard, his voice cracked. He still could not believe Reolus was dead.

‘You have come for the child, then,’ said Anara, and Elisabet glanced sharply at the damsel.

‘I have,’ said Calard coldly, answering his sister.

‘The babe was promised to the Enchantress,’ said Anara, rising to her feet.

‘Of what do you speak?’ Elisabet breathed, clutching her child protectively to her chest.

‘It is nothing but a Norscan bastard,’ snapped Calard, looking at Elisabet for the first time since entering the room. She recoiled from his anger and hurt, tears coming unbidden to her eyes. The baby was woken by Calard’s sharp tone, and it began to cry.

Calard swore, and his gaze quickly shifted, moving back towards his sister. Anara had a determined look upon her face, chin jutting forward. He remembered her wearing the exact same stubborn expression as a child. His expression hardened.

‘We have to give them the child,’ he said coldly.

‘You cannot take him,’ said Elisabet. Calard saw that her face was unnaturally pale and drawn, and there was a feverish light in her eyes. She was rocking back and forth, her son bawling in her arms. ‘He speaks to me, speaks right into my head. He doesn’t want to go with you. You cannot have him.’

‘She is not in her right mind,’ said Anara. ‘She has been through much.’

Calard stared at Elisabet in horror and pity.

‘Will she recover?’ he said.

‘Perhaps,’ said Anara. ‘Given time.’

‘Reolus gave his word,’ Calard said in a low voice. ‘I have to take that child.’

‘It was already promised to the Enchantress,’ replied Anara.

‘It would besmirch Reolus’s honour if we did not give it to the Norscans,’ hissed Calard, not taking his eyes off Elisabet, who was still rocking back and forth, muttering to herself.

Calard realised that if his sister decided to put her foot down and refuse to hand the child over to the Norse, there was nothing that he, or the duke for that matter, would be able to do to contradict her. As all damsels, Anara operated outside of the structured, hierarchy of order in Bretonnia, having the power to overrule knights and dukes alike, though they rarely chose to enact that power in practice. Only the king held more sway than they, and even he could be overruled by the Enchantress.

‘The young castellan of Garamont speaks the truth, Lady Anara,’ said Duke Adalhard. ‘As much as it pains me, we must. It would make a mockery of Reolus’s memory if we did otherwise.’

Anara continued to stare at Calard, and he could see that she was divided. Her eyes filled with tears once again, and she dropped her gaze.

‘Why did you leave me?’ she whispered. ‘Foolish man.’

She blinked away her tears and lifted her head.

‘The consequences of this act will lie upon you two, and you two alone,’ she said finally, staring first at Calard, then at the Duke of Lyonesse. ‘Whatever evil befalls Bretonnia as a consequence of this child living – and evil will befall Bretonnia because of this child – you will be the blame and cause of it.’

‘Agreed,’ said Calard.

‘Agreed,’ said Duke Adalhard after a moment of thought.

Anara stepped aside, shaking her head, and Calard hardened his heart as he walked to Elisabet’s bedside.

‘He doesn’t want to go with you,’ said Elisabet. She screwed her eyes shut tightly, and began shaking her head from side to side. ‘He’s hurting me! He says he will stop hurting me if you all go away! Go away! Don’t take him from me. He needs me!’

Elisabet was in obvious pain, and she clutched her wailing child tightly to her body.

‘Give me the child,’ he said in a low voice.

Elisabet continued to cry, shaking her head.

‘Elisabet,’ said Calard, his voice cracking as he reached for the swaddled babe. ‘Elisabet, you have to give him to me.’

She wailed, crying out in denial and pain as her child was taken from her. Calard turned his back on her, head bowed, holding the child in his arms. Elisabet screamed and sobbed, clawing at him as he walked away.

Calard looked down into the bawling child’s face. He looked like any other babe, with nothing to hint at any inherent evil lurking within. A tuft of pale hair topped his head, and his eyes were a startling silver-grey. He was a big baby, strong and healthy, and his cries came from powerful lungs. Calard tried to shut out Elisabet’s frantic cries as he walked from the room.

Bertelis and Maloric stood outside, and the passageway was lined with knights, their faces uniformly sombre.

Down the grand marble staircase he descended, the only sound his own footsteps echoing sharply, the cries of the child in his arms and the ever more frantic screams of Elisabet, echoing through the passages behind him.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he began to cross the broad chamber towards the keep’s inner courtyard, flanked by Duke Adalhard and the Marquis of Carabas. Scores of knights were gathered as witness in the great hall, as silent and respectful as if they were attending a funeral procession. The Empire ambassador, Dieter Weschler, bowed curtly as they passed.

Halfway across the hall, Calard heard a strangled cry and turned to see Elisabet, dressed in her nightclothes, struggling to chase after him. She was being held back by Bertelis at the top of the stairs, and Anara hovered in the shadows behind her.

‘Please, Calard, don’t!’ Elisabet wailed. ‘He is scared, my love, and he is hurting me! He doesn’t mean to. Give him back to me and the pain will stop. He needs me!’

Elisabet struggled against Bertelis, and her nails dug into the younger Garamont noble’s face. He cursed, and released her. Bertelis pushed her away from him, positioning himself to block her progress.

‘Calard, please!’ begged Lady Elisabet.

‘Quiet, woman!’ barked Bertelis. ‘Poisoner! Deceitful slattern! Murderess! All of this is your fault! Every knight that died here is on your head! Every one! Reolus died because of you!’

Lady Elisabet slapped Bertelis across the face, the sharp sound echoing throughout the hall.

Blood was seeping from the corner of his mouth, and Bertelis’s eyes blazed in anger. He slapped Elisabet back, striking her with the back of his hand, perhaps harder than he had intended. The young Bastonnian noblewoman reeled back from the blow, losing her balance as her bare feet slipped on the smooth marble surface at the top of the stairs.

Calard sucked in a breath as he saw Elisabet fall. Bertelis reached for her in desperation, trying to grab her, but he was too slow, and Elisabet tumbled backwards down the staircase. Her head cracked sharply on the corner of one of the steps, and she came to rest half way down, broken, lifeless.

Bertelis took a few steps down towards her, his eyes wide in horror. Anara pushed by Bertelis and descended swiftly, kneeling besides the fallen girl. She felt for a pulse, and looked Calard in the eyes. She shook her head.

Calard halted, a wracking sob making his body shake. The child in his arms continued to bawl, his cries echoing through the expanse of the hall. Bertelis looked down at his brother, his eyes filled with despair and horror.

‘I… I…’ said Bertelis, shaking his head in denial.

‘Come, lad,’ said Duke Adalhard, placing a hand upon Calard’s shoulder. Calard stared at his brother for a second, then turned and strode from the hall.

He exited the great doors and walked down the steps into the small courtyard beyond. Snow crunched underfoot, and the sky above was filled with the ugly cries of carrion birds. Calard walked across the courtyard, his expression hardening with every step.

As he walked towards it, the great doors of the keep’s gatehouse were swung wide, and the one remaining portcullis lifted with the clanking of chains. Only half an hour earlier, Reolus himself had walked out through those same gates.

The duke was a reassuring presence at his shoulder, and he kept his head held high as he walked through the devastation of the killing ground. Untold hundreds of bodies were strewn within the passage passing through the gatehouse, killed by arrow and scalding hot oil. They lay, contorted in their twisted death throes, many of them with their skin blistered and peeling from their bodies. The stench was repulsive.

Calard’s eyes fixed onto the figure waiting beyond the gatehouse; the enemy sorcerer. The wiry man grinned like a fox, peering hungrily towards the child held in his arms, and Calard felt his hatred swell within him.

The immense figure of the enemy warlord stood twenty paces back from the keep, arms folded across his broad chest. He looked even larger than Calard had remembered, and he clenched his jaw together tightly, wanting nothing more than to see the Norscan dead. A young woman stood at his side, garbed for war in the manner of a man, and the resemblance between her and the warlord was so strong that there could be no doubting that she was his daughter.

A black-armoured Norscan was dragging Reolus’s body through the snow by one foot, and he dumped the holy knight unceremoniously before the gatehouse.

The Norscan warlord bellowed something in his indecipherable tongue, the words sounding harsh and mocking to Calard’s ears.

The sorcerer translated, speaking Breton with a heavy accent.

‘The High Jarl of the Skaelings says that you may keep the body,’ said the sorcerer, grinning, exposing teeth that had been filed to points. ‘The head he will keep, so that his enemy’s power will be his, now and forever.’

Calard bristled but bit his lip to keep quiet.

‘Take the child and be gone, Norscan filth,’ said Duke Adalhard.

‘Yes, the child,’ said the sorcerer, eyes lighting up covetously. ‘Give it to me.’

Calard’s jaw twitched, and he looked to the duke. Adalhard nodded, somewhat reluctantly, and Calard stepped warily towards the sorcerer.

As he drew near, he realised he could smell the man. It was the smell of a predator’s den – a mixture of rotting meat, wet fur and sweat – though there was something else there as well, an oddly metallic tang that made his skin crawl.

Every instinct screamed to draw his sword and run this foul creature through, but Calard pushed the urge back. His eyes flashing with the desire to do violence, he held out the wailing boy-child to the enemy.

The sorcerer snatched the babe from him, sneering at Calard victoriously. Then the sorcerer spat, and Calard felt the Norscan’s hot saliva strike him in the face. He snarled and reached for his sword, taking an aggressive step towards the sorcerer, but Duke Adalhard was at his side in an instant, a hand on his arm. Cursing under his breath, Calard slid the half-drawn sword of Garamont back into its scabbard.

The enemy sorcerer snorted derisively and barked something in the Norscan tongue that was clearly an insult, then turned his back on Calard, striding towards the towering warlord.

The barbarian lord took his child in his arms, and its crying ceased instantly. The brutal Norscan, his face still painted a terrifying, daemonic red tone, smiled down at his son and the babe gurgled and smiled back.

Then the Norscan lifted the child in one hand, and turned to face his army. He roared two words at the top of his lungs, words that could only have been ‘my son’, and the Norscan army roared.

‘We have the child,’ gloated Bjarki. ‘Let us finish the horsemen bastards off. Great Kharnath will rejoice as their blood flows and his throne is garnered with their skulls.’

‘I agree,’ snarled Hrefna. ‘Let us bleed them all for the death of my sister.’

Styrbjorn’s elder daughter, Fraygerd, had died beneath the blade of the gold-armoured enemy jarl, and Hrefna was still feeling the loss keenly.

‘No,’ said Styrbjorn, smiling down at the gleeful face of his son.

‘No?’ said Bjarki. ‘Why in the name of the true gods not?’

‘I defeated a worthy foe this day,’ replied Styrbjorn, ‘a mighty champion the equal of any that I have ever battled. I gave my word that if I defeated him I would leave these shores once my son was delivered to me. I would honour his memory by holding to my word.’

‘Honour his memory?’ spat Bjarki. ‘He was a soft, southern whoreson! He deserves no such honour!’

‘I said no, Bjarki. For now.’

Styrbjorn turned towards the gatehouse of the enemy stone fort, seeing the enemy jarl, armoured in gold. Another man stood at his side. This one had dark hair, and wore a tabard of blue and red over his armour. A silver dragon was emblazoned on his chest. A good symbol that, he thought. To the Norse it represented power, martial strength and passion. That warrior was young, he saw, and bristled with hatred. That was an emotion Styrbjorn understood, and knew that had this angry young knight been born of a Skaeling woman he would have been blessed by great Kharnath and become a mighty warrior indeed.

‘Translate for me,’ he ordered, and began to speak.

‘I shall honour your dead champion, and hold to my promise. I leave these shores, but I shall return. On that day my son will stand at my side. Together we shall lay waste to your lands. We shall kill every man, woman and child that we find, and shatter every last one of your stone forts to rubble. There shall be no quarter given then. There shall be no bargaining for your lives.’

The young, angry knight dressed in red and blue snapped something in reply as Bjarki completed his translation.

‘What did he say?’ he asked.

‘He said “I will be waiting”, my lord,’ replied Bjarki.

Styrbjorn smiled, nodding his head towards the young knight.

‘I believe that he will,’ he said. Then he turned and walked away, barking orders.

Within two hours the Norscans were gone, dragonships heading back out to sea, turning northward once at the horizon. They left their dead where they lay, thousands upon thousands of corpses left to rot, and the shores of Lyonesse were littered with shattered ships.

‘I will be waiting,’ repeated Calard.

Chlod woke with a start as his rat bit him hard on his one remaining ear. He cried out, feeling constricted, unable to see, and shivering uncontrollably. He was soaked to the skin and half frozen, and bizarrely, the smell of apples was strong in his nostrils.

It took a moment to remember what was going on. He was not dead; not yet, at any rate. He was inside a barrel in the storeroom at the bottom of the harbour gatehouse. He’d spent almost an hour and half in the freezing waters feigning death, trying to appear as nothing more than another floating corpse, before an opportunity to escape had arisen. He had slunk out of the harbour like a half-drowned rat, his limbs numb with cold, and had managed to evade detection as he crawled his way into the storeroom. Once there, he stowed himself inside a half-empty barrel, climbing in and pulling his legs up to his chest, sitting on top of a pile of rotting apples, before pulling the lid over its top.

He pushed up that lid now and peered out, his tongue sticking out the side of his crooked mouth. Seeing no one, and hearing nothing, he climbed warily out, and stretched his aching back.

He moved to the entrance of the tower, keeping to the shadows and ready to duck back into his hiding place at the slightest sign of trouble, and looked out across Lyonesse harbour. There was not an enemy in sight; even their longships were gone. He saw figures moving through the streets, and ducked back until he realised they were men-at-arms, sorting through the dead.

The Norscans were gone. It was a miracle!

He was alive!

Chlod looked down at the scrap of regal blue cloak still clutched his hands. He rubbed the inside of the scrap against his face, liking the sensation of the mink-fur against his skin. Placing it on his lips, he kissed it. Did it truly have protective powers? Had his prayer to Reolus truly been answered?

He pondered the notion for a moment, and came to the conclusion that Reolus must have protected him; there was no other explanation.

‘I truly am his pilgrim,’ he said in wonder.

It took him the better part of an hour to make his way up to the keep, and by the time he got there his stomach was full of food looted from abandoned houses, and he was dressed in clothes that were almost completely free of bloodstains that he had stripped from a corpse. He wore a pouch bulging with coin, and upon his fat, sausage-like fingers he had pushed several copper and bronze rings, which he had hacked from the bloated fingers of the dead.

All in all, Chlod was feeling mightily pleased with himself, but that newfound sense of well-being was shattered when he came upon the corpse of Reolus. The headless body of the grail knight lay atop a stone altar in the middle of the square before the keep, surrounded by flowers and candles. Hundreds of mourning nobles were trailing past the body, paying their last respects, and Chlod wordlessly joined the peasant queue.

For six hours he waited, kept twenty paces back by stern-faced wardens, but at last the queue began to move. No lowborn was allowed within a dozen yards of the holy paladin’s body however, and Chlod stamped his foot in frustration – he had been hoping to garner a holy keepsake from the grail knight’s corpse, just in case the protective magic of his scrap of Reolus’s cape ran out. He had a knife in his hand, hidden in a deep pocket, ready and everything; he had thought to perhaps get himself a finger.

Chlod stuck his lip out in a pout as he stood on tiptoes to see the corpse. There were too many guards around for him to have any hope of sneaking past them to get his relic; he’d just have to wait until the knight was interred. He’d been a grave robber before, and had no qualms about desecrating one of Morr’s gardens again.

He was about to turn away when he heard a voice.

‘Stop that peasant! Yes, that one!’

A hand grabbed Chlod by the scruff of his neck, and he was dragged backwards, wincing.

‘The wretch stole something from you, did he?’ said the warden who had a hold of him, and Chlod squinted up to see a young knight walking towards him.

He recognised him as the lord of Garamont, and he swore under his breath. He’d run into the man several times over the last year; he’d narrowly escaped a hanging after poaching on Garamont lands, and had even been employed to kill the knight once. That had been a narrow escape. He tried to keep his head down, praying to Reolus that he wasn’t recognised, else he would hang for sure.

‘Release him,’ ordered the knight, and the warden did so. The man-at-arms gave him a cuff over the head for good measure, and Chlod glared at him.

‘I know you, don’t I?’ said the lord of Garamont, eyes narrowed.

‘I don’t think so, my lord,’ said Chlod, his eyes downcast.

‘No, I do know you. You were one of Reolus’s pilgrims, weren’t you?’

‘Um,’ said Chlod, not sure the best way to answer.

‘Answer the question, scum,’ snapped the warden, cuffing him hard over the head once again.

‘Enough of that, warden,’ said the knight sharply, his tone icy.

‘Sorry, my lord,’ said the soldier, glaring at Chlod as if the rebuke was somehow his fault.

‘Were you or were you not one of Reolus’s grail pilgrims?’ asked the noble once again.

‘Yes?’ ventured Chlod finally.

‘What will you do now?’ said the noble, and Chlod tensed.

This was a dangerous question, and he licked his lips as he tried to concoct an answer that would not condemn him. All peasants within Bretonnia owed fealty to a lord or landowner; they were bonded to them as serfs, and they could not as much as pass wind without their say-so. Those engaged in holy pilgrimages were sometimes allowed a modicum of freedom, but since Chlod’s benefactor was now nothing more than food for worms, he had no right to claim being on a pilgrimage any longer. If it was made known that Chlod had run away from his lord’s service he would be flogged, castrated and left to rot in a cage hanging from the castle walls.

‘I, ah…’ he said.

‘I think he’s an imbecile, my lord,’ offered the warden, but he promptly shut his mouth when the knight glared at him.

Before Chlod could fashion a plausible story, the noble spoke again.

‘Can you cook?’ he said. Chlod blinked, surprised by the question, and then nodded his head vigorously.

‘Clean?’

Again he nodded his head.

‘Good. If you are no longer bonded to any lord, I offer you employment,’ said the lord of Garamont. ‘Out of respect for your former, now deceased benefactor, may the Lady bless his soul, you will be my manservant. Is that agreeable?’

Chlod nodded his head enthusiastically once again. He clutched the scrap of Reolus’s cloak tightly in his hand. Once again, the grail knight had smiled upon him. Things were looking up.

‘Calard,’ said Bertelis, pushing through the crowd to reach his brother’s side. The younger son of Garamont’s eyes were red-rimmed, and his lip was trembling.

‘I… I’m so sorry,’ he said, unable to look Calard in the eyes. ‘It was an accident. I didn’t mean…’

Calard stared at him coldly.

‘You killed her,’ he said, accusingly.

‘Brother, please…’ breathed Bertelis, a pained expression on his face. Calard’s voice, devoid of emotion, interrupted him.

‘From this day forth I have no brother,’ said Calard. He turned his back on Bertelis, and walked away, a hunch-backed peasant loping along behind him.

Epilogue

Calard stared grimly at the two bodies hanging from the walls of Castle Garamont; a traitor and a witch.

After the death of Reolus back in Lyonesse, three months earlier, he had gone to his cousin Tassilo’s side. He had been horrified and disappointed to learn that the dying knight had been a party to the plot against him, and the young noble had begged for forgiveness. With his dying breath he had confessed to Calard from whom the order had originated.

He stared coldly at the corpse of the old chamberlain, Folcard, as it swung in the breeze.

In truth, he had been surprised that the plot had originated from Folcard, for he had suspected that the Lady Calisse, Bertelis’s mother, had been responsible. Calard felt a momentary twinge of guilt for how he had treated Bertelis, but hardened his heart against it. Since he had returned to Garamont, the Lady Calisse had confined herself to her quarters, which suited Calard just fine. Even if she was no murderess, she was a still a viperous serpent and he had no wish to look upon her.

The witch had been a surprise. Left to rot in the deepest oubliette of Castle Garamont’s dungeon, she had been dragged out on Calard’s order, and with a shock he realised that he recognised her. Not her physical appearance – he was certain that he had never clapped eyes on the hideous crone before – no, it was by her hate-filled eyes that he had recognised her.

He had ordered her tongue cut from her mouth on the spot, and had not felt happy until he had seen her last twitch of life as she was hung.

‘Cut the hag down,’ Calard ordered. ‘Have the body burnt.’

The hunchbacked manservant nodded his head.

‘The other one?’ the peasant said.

‘It can serve as a warning to all traitors,’ said Calard. ‘Leave it where it is.’

With a bow, the hunchback limped off and Calard, castellan of Garamont turned on his heel and strode through his castle. Servants and bondsmen curtsied and bowed as he passed them by. He climbed a staircase, his footfalls ringing out sharply, and marched down corridors lined with portraits of previous lords of Garamont.

He stepped out onto an east-facing balcony. The early morning sunshine was bright, and there was not a cloud in the sky.

A table was set for breakfast here in the sun, and his guests sat there, dining.

Baron Montcadas, a strip of folded silk covering his empty eye sockets, was snorting into his food at some jest made, no doubt, by Calard’s young cousin, Orlando. Opposite the boy sat Montcadas’s niece, Lady Josephine. She smiled warmly at Calard as he approached the table.

Montcadas turned his head in Calard’s direction, hearing his approach.

‘That you, boy?’ boomed the baron, and Calard shook his head slightly, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

‘I’m no more a boy than you are the Fay Enchantress,’ replied Calard.

‘Bah,’ said Montcadas, waving a hand dismissively. ‘When you get to my age, everyone is young. Will you join us for breakfast?’

‘No,’ said Calard, and he saw the disappointment on Josephine’s face. He felt a certain amount of regret; he had come to truly care for the girl, and he believed that had his heart not been so damaged, he would have come to love her. She would have made a fine wife, but his path was set.

‘You intend to go through with this, then?’ said the baron, all levity gone from his voice.

‘I do,’ said Calard.

The castellan of Garamont turned towards his young cousin, who was sulking. The boy didn’t want him to go, he realised.

Calard placed the scabbarded sword of Garamont upon the table before the seven year-old Orlando.

‘Until the day comes that I should return, victorious, you are now the castellan of Garamont, young master knight,’ Calard said.

No one said anything, and with nothing more to be said, Calard bowed and walked away.

Calard’s heart felt lighter than it had done for what seemed like an age, he realised. It was as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He knew that he left his realm in good hands. Baron Montcadas had promised to stay with the boy, to govern in his stead until such a time came as Calard returned to claim his position, or Orlando came of age – whichever came first.

He had a spring in his step as he strode through Castle Garamont, the home that he was about to leave behind for the Lady knew how long. It was highly likely that he would never live to see its halls again, but even that thought did not dampen his spirit.

Quickening his pace, Calard hurried to the small shrine to the Lady on the ground floor of his castle. Outside its entrance was his lance, and he took it his hands, bearing it before him as he entered his family’s humble chapel, where countless Garamont lords before him had prayed.

Once inside, he placed the lance reverently upon the altar. Hundreds of candles lit the chapel, lending the space a serene glow. Kneeling, Calard bowed his head.

‘Lady of grace and beauty,’ he began, speaking the ritualistic vow in a hushed, reverential tone, ‘I set down my lance, symbol of duty, upon your shrine. I spurn those whom I love. I relinquish all, and take up the tools of my journey. No obstacle will stand before me. No plea for help shall find me wanting. No moon will look upon me twice lest I be judged idle. I give my body, heart and soul to you, oh Lady, and I shall seek wherever thou might be found. This is my questing vow, and I swear it before you, mistress of mercy, and beg that you shall strike me down should I falter.’

He felt the spirit of the Lady infuse him, warming him from within, and he knew that he had made the right decision.

This was the only way that he was ever going to prove his purity, to his knights and to himself. This was the only way that he was going to be free of the recurring nightmare of the Green Knight. It was time for him to face his fear, to stand and defy it.

It was time for Calard to take up the quest, never to rest until he was visited by a vision of the Lady of the Lake herself and offered a draught of her sacred grail. For many knights such a journey took decades, though most were slain long before their goal was fulfilled.

Many of those knights who succeeded in their search and drank from the holy grail died as a result, found unworthy; only those pure of heart, with not a hint of taint within them, survived imbibing that divine nectar.

Calard smiled. He was now embarked on the Long Journey; he was now a questing knight of Bretonnia.

It was nearing midnight and Bertelis was huddled before a spluttering fire, miserable and soaked to the skin. He sat in the lee of a dark ruin. Once it had been a sacred grail chapel, but it had long been abandoned to nature and the weather, its crumbling walls overrun with ivy and moss.

The younger son of Garamont raised his head as he heard the sound of horse’s hooves on the road, and watched as a knight garbed in white plodded through the rain towards him. As he got closer, Bertelis recognised the knight’s heraldry; a distinctive black fleur-de-lys. His jaw dropped in wonder. This was none other than Merovech of Arlons, the albino knight who had bested him in the tournament before word of the Norscan invasion had come. He stood to welcome the swordsman to his camp, suddenly embarrassed at his pitiful fire.

‘Ho the camp,’ called Merovech from twenty paces distance. ‘May I approach your fire?’

‘Please do, my lord,’ called Bertelis.

The knight reined in and looked down at the youngest son of Garamont. He raised the visor of his helmet, exposing his face, as pale as winter snow.

‘Bertelis, isn’t it?’ said Merovech, taking in his host’s heraldry.

‘I am honoured that you remembered me, my lord Merovech,’ said Bertelis with a bow.

‘I said that we would meet again,’ replied Merovech. ‘I was impressed with your swordsmanship. It showed potential.’

‘I fear that my humble skills pale in comparison to yours, my lord,’ said Bertelis.

‘Ah, but skills can be learnt,’ said Merovech, exposing sharp canines as he smiled. ‘And I am a very good teacher.’

REST ETERNAL

The knight’s heavy plate armour, once flawless, was now dented and worn. Once it had shone like a mirror; now it was dull with grime and wear, and awash with fresh blood.

Some of that blood was his, but most of it belonged to the beast.

‘Lady, give me strength,’ said Calard. His breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, and his heart was hammering in his chest.

As if in response to his prayer, the beast roared, the sound reverberating off the dank walls of the cavern. Calard’s bearded face was splattered with the vile beast’s stinking spittle. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his weapon, a bastard sword with a blade four and a half feet long. Blood dripped from the tip.

The icy mountain winds outside howled. The claws of winter tugged at Calard’s tattered woollen cloak and ruffled his unwashed hair, but he kept his eyes fixed on the beast. He had pledged his oath – his questing vow – to see this monster dead, and he would not falter. Either it would die, here and now, or he would.

The cold winter light outside was quickly swallowed by the darkness of the cavern. The shape of the beast could only be dimly discerned, but its breathing was loud. The close walls further amplified the rumbling sound, giving the impression that it was the cavern itself that was breathing.

Nevertheless the darkness could not hide the sheer size of the beast. Its reptilian, horned head was massive. Its eyes – or rather the one eye that Calard had not yet put out – glinted reflectively, filled with murderous hunger as it focused on him.

The beast’s tail was poised behind it, curved over its body like a scorpion’s, ready to snap forward and impale him. Its barbed tip dripped with noxious venom.

The wyvern – for it could be nothing else – was the grey-green colour of mountain rock, and the heavy blows that Calard had already landed upon its toughened hide oozed crimson. The foetid odour of the beast was strong.

Lowering its head, the wyvern bared its array of tusk-like teeth, each as long as Calard’s forearm. A bruised purple tongue, split at the ends, darted forth to taste the air. Calard saw the beast’s muscles tense as it prepared to launch itself at him. The knight lowered his centre of gravity, ready to spring.

The wyvern’s growl rose to a bloodcurdling roar, and its jaws yawned open as it lunged.

Calard threw himself to the left, moving towards the wyvern’s blind side as it bore down on him. Its jaws slammed shut behind him with force enough to snap a tree trunk. Calard uttered a wordless battle cry as he came to one knee and brought his sword around in an arc that connected solidly with the beast’s skull, snapping one of its tusks and digging deep into its reptilian flesh. It was like striking the mountain itself. The blow jarred up his arms painfully, and while blood gushed from the wound and he had undoubtedly chipped bone, Calard knew he had done little real damage.

Bellowing in pain, the beast swung its heavy head around, hooking one of its immense curving horns underneath Calard and hurling him into the cave wall ten feet away.

The air was blasted from his lungs as he hit first the wall then the ground, and he struggled for breath as he scrambled unsteadily to his feet. The wyvern’s barbed tail speared towards Calard’s face, and he swayed to the side at the last moment to avoid being impaled. The poisoned tip slammed into the wall, and cracks spread across the rock face.

Grunting with the effort, Calard brought his sword down on the wyvern’s tail. Even with all his strength, he was unable to hack through it, dense muscle and vertebrae stopping him from completely severing it. Hissing in pain, the beast pulled its tail back sharply, and Calard saw with grim satisfaction that the sting was hanging limp at its end, held on by gristle and skin.

The wyvern snapped at him again and Calard, his back to the wall, had little room to move. He threw himself desperately to the side, and though he avoided the deadly bite, it caught his trailing cape in its maw. With a wrench of its head it tore him from his feet, slinging him up towards the cave roof.

He hit the rock face first, breaking his nose with an agonising crack before dropping back to the floor. He crashed down onto his back and lay there unmoving for a moment, dazed, his sword slipping from numb fingers. Blood was smeared across his face, and he blinked, struggling to focus.

One of the wyvern’s winged forelimbs slammed down onto his breastplate with enough force to break bones, and he gasped as his armour strained beneath the weight. The beast lowered its head towards him, growling, and a thick rope of drool dripped from its maw. The stink of the beast’s breath was overpowering, like rancid meat and offal. It was all Calard could do not to gag.

Turning his head he saw his sword lying nearby, and he reached for it desperately. His fingers touched the pommel but it was just out of reach. All he succeeded in achieving was pushing it farther away.

The beast’s serpentine lips rippled, and its tongue darted forth to brush Calard’s face. He grimaced at its cold, repellent touch, sickly mucus smearing his cheek.

The wyvern stared down at him hungrily, its one good eye blazing with rage. That eye was the colour of an unfanned ember, glowing with dark intensity, and its pupil was nothing more than a sliver of blackness bisecting it. Calard could see himself reflected in the monster’s gaze.

‘Finish it,’ snarled Calard.

A sudden gust of wind brought a flurry of snow into the cave, and the wyvern’s attention was momentarily distracted, perhaps as fresh scents were carried to its nostrils on the wind. As it turned its head, Calard’s hand slipped to his belt, and he dragged his knife from its scabbard. The wyvern felt the movement and pressed down upon Calard harder, the metal of his breastplate groaning under the pressure, and swung its head back towards him. Calard rammed his knife into the claw pinning him to the ground, embedding the six inches of metal into the wyvern’s flesh, slicing through sinew and lodging it between bones.

Calard had been gifted the blade over a year earlier after saving a rich merchant and his daughter from the bloodthirsty intentions of an ogre in their employ. The blade was not of human origin, that Calard knew for certain; it was like no metal he had seen before. He suspected it had been crafted by the fey folk of Athel Loren.

The beast roared in agony, its flesh smoking from the wound as if the glittering blade were aflame, and it pulled away sharply. The pressure was released from Calard’s chest and he rolled towards his sword, fingers closing around its hilt.

The wyvern snarled as the flesh around the knife blistered, giving off a horrible stench of burning meat. It was shaking its foreleg, trying to dislodge the gleaming blade from between its metacarpals, having seemingly forgotten Calard.

The knight rose to his feet, hefting his bastard sword in front of him, and flicked his wet hair out of his eyes. Ignoring him, the wyvern gripped the knife between its teeth and pulled it free, tossing it away.

Calard darted forward, hefting his heavy blade over his shoulder, mouthing a prayer to the Lady. With a grunt of effort, he slammed it into the wyvern’s neck, striking with all the force he could muster. The blade hacked deep with a sickening wet sound, and the beast screeched as hot blood gushed from the wound, spraying across Calard and painting the cavern in a red torrent. The beast reared up on its hind legs, head thrashing from side to side, almost wrenching the sword from his hands.

As the beast staggered, its head collided with the cave wall, bringing down a tumble of rocks and dust, and Calard only barely managed to avoid being knocked from his feet by its wildly thrashing tail. Stepping in precariously close to its heaving bulk, he slashed a deep cut into its pallid underbelly, unleashing a flood of grotesque intestines. The unmistakeable shape of half-digested human bodies could be seen within the beast’s semi-transparent tract. Calard swallowed back his revulsion, stabbing into the wyvern’s stomach again and again.

The wyvern scrambled backwards, hind claws ripping up the cave floor, and snapped at Calard, who lurched out of the way and slashed with his sword. He severed the beast’s tongue, and it gave out a piteous yelp. Blood was still gushing from its neck in rhythmic spurts. There was so much blood on the floor and walls now that the cave resembled a slaughterhouse.

‘For the love of the Lady, just die!’ shouted Calard, lashing out at an open claw that reached for him, hacking deep into flesh and bone.

The beast was backtracking frantically now, dragging its thick intestinal ropes across the floor. It sounded like a wounded bear, a growling whine rumbling within its chest as it staggered farther back into the cave, but Calard had no intention of letting it escape. He followed it mercilessly, cutting and hacking with his blade.

The last of its lifeblood pumping from its neck, the wyvern launched itself at him one last time. Its mouth opened wide, and Calard knew he had not the speed or strength remaining to avoid it. Instead, he stepped forward, directly into the path of the gaping jaws and stabbed upwards.

The blade pierced the roof of the beast’s mouth as it closed upon him. Calard cried out as tusk-like teeth punched through his armour as if it were paper, but he maintained his hold on his blade, pushing it up into the monster’s brain.

With a final bellow, blood bubbling up its throat, the full weight of the wyvern’s head bore Calard to the ground. That head alone would have weighed as much as two Bretonnian warhorses and, for a panicked moment, Calard thought that was how he was to meet his fate, ignobly crushed to death by the monster he had just slain.

At last he dragged himself free and rose shakily to his feet. Breathing hard, he reversed the grip on his sword and dropped to one knee, closing his eyes as he placed his forehead against the crossbar of the hilt.

‘Lady of mercy, I dedicate this kill to your honour,’ he breathed, ‘and pray that in your wisdom you shall show me your favour.’

He remained there for many minutes, exhausted. After some time, he heard a sound behind him and he surged back to his feet and swung around, his sword at the ready.

There was a startled screech and his manservant, Chlod, jumped back in fear. The hunchbacked peasant slipped on the blood-slick rock floor and fell heavily.

‘It is just me, master!’ Chlod cried.

‘Stupid peasant,’ Calard said, shaking his head. ‘That’s a sure way of getting yourself killed.’

‘Sorry, master,’ said the filthy lowborn, dipping his head.

Calard sheathed his sword across his back and after a brief search he retrieved his knife. The blade was gleaming with a soft, inner light.

He staggered and almost fell as the pain of his injuries crashed in on him. His wounds needed tending; who knew what vile poisons would have been carried in the wyvern’s claws and bite.

Wearily, Calard moved towards the cave entrance.

‘Fetch your axe,’ he said to Chlod over his shoulder. ‘I want its head.’

There were cheers and clapping as Calard approached the snow-topped palisades encircling the mountain village, but he did not deign to raise his hand in response. He had cleaned his armour and skin as best he could in a mountain stream. The icy water had washed away the worst of the wyvern’s blood, but he was still covered in grime and dirt, the result of nearly five years on the road. He was unshaven, his cloak hung in tatters and his armour was in need of urgent repairs, but for all that he rode with his head held high, his nobility plain for all to see.

Though he was no cleaner than the stinking rabble that welcomed him as their avenger and saviour, he looked down his nose at them. They were classless outcasts, exiles and rascals living beyond the law, while he was a noble of Bretonnia, a questing knight of the Lady.

If the village had a name, Calard had not heard it, and nor did he care to. Located high in the peaks of the Grey Mountains, the soaring range that divided Bretonnia and the Empire, it overlooked the pass known colloquially as the Crooked Corridor. Calard was not sure if it fell officially on the Bretonnian or Empire side, but it hardly mattered; neither realm cared enough to claim it.

The people of this village were a bastard mix of intermingled backgrounds. They spoke a pidgin hybrid of Bretonnian and Reikspiel, and Calard was certain that the majority of them were nothing short of brigands. Doubtless they ambushed the caravans seeking to avoid paying the taxes of Axe Bite Pass and risking the Crooked Corridor. Calard did not know which was worse – the smugglers that used the pass, or the cutthroats that preyed upon them.

Nevertheless, the Lady had led him here and he had sworn to the self-appointed village burgomeister that he would see the beast dead. He felt the envious eyes upon him as he rode through the village gates, and while the wretched curs were undoubtedly pleased that he had vanquished the beast that had been plaguing their lands, he was still wary of the potential for robbery.

The villagers cleared a path for him, broad smiles splitting their faces as they whooped and applauded. His lip curling in distaste, Calard guided his proud Bretonnian warhorse through the press of unwashed bodies. The highly-trained animal snorted as the villagers pressed in around it.

‘I know,’ said Calard, patting its neck.

Behind Calard came Chlod, riding upon a dejected-looking mule. The malformed peasant waved cheerily and grinned his stupid lopsided grin. Dragged through the mud and snow-slush behind him was the wyvern’s head, drawing gasps and whispers from the villagers.

Calard guided his steed up towards the high point of the village, winding his way past dozens of shanty houses, all covered in a thick layer of snow. The burgomeister was standing out on the porch of his home, a structure that stood out as rich and ostentatious amongst the other hovels. Still, the house was little more than a shack, and Calard looked upon it with disdain. A hangman’s gallows protruded from the front stoop of the building, a grim reminder that this place was outside of Bretonnian and Empire law.

The burgomeister was a heavy-set, jowly man, and he stood on his porch with a broad grin on his face as he waited for Calard to draw near. He was surrounded by a handful of richly-dressed individuals, and his fat wife stood at his side.

‘The hero returns!’ declared the burgomeister, raising his arms high. ‘The beast is dead!’

The rest of the village had followed Calard and Chlod and stood now in a semi-circle around them at the foot of the burgomeister’s stoop. The crowd erupted into further cheering and clapping.

‘We shall have a feast this night in honour of this great deed!’ promised the burgomeister, eliciting another burst of applause.

The man spoke with a strong Parravonian accent, a noble’s accent, and Calard wondered briefly what the man had done to be living out here. Murdered a rival and been cast out? Run up debts from which he had fled? Been dishonoured in some sordid court intrigue? Whatever the answer, the man was an outcast, worthy only of Calard’s contempt.

The head of the wyvern was manhandled to the foot of the burgomeister’s stoop by five men, and a great cheer rose as ropes hauled it up upon the gallows. The ropes creaked under the immense weight, and it spun there in place, its one remaining eye bulging from its socket.

‘A bed shall be made up in my own house for our brave hero!’ declared the burgomeister. ‘We shall eat and drink well this night!’

More cheers sounded, but Calard raised a hand. The villagers fell silent.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘I cannot tarry. I must continue on my journey. All I require is a fresh supply of food and some dry tinder.’

There were mutters amongst the crowd at this, and Calard saw the burgomeister’s grin falter.

‘Night draws in, sir knight,’ said the man. He was still smiling but his smile no longer reached his eyes. ‘Let us show our gratitude. Be our guest of honour this evening. Please.’

‘No,’ said Calard, shaking his head. ‘I must decline. I need only some food and dry tinder, and I shall be on my way.’

‘Is my home not good enough for you, noble sir?’ snapped the burgomeister’s wife. ‘Are you worried it might not be seemly to consort with the likes of us?’

The burgomeister shushed his wife, and Calard curled his lip, not even attempting to hide his scorn.

‘Regretfully, my vows do not permit me to sleep in the same place two nights running,’ said Calard, his voice filled with anything but regret, ‘lest the Lady judge me idle in my quest. If it were not for my vows, I should gladly take up your kind offer, madam. Alas, it is not to be. I bid you goodbye.’

He turned his horse around, intending to leave the village and its honourless inhabitants behind him.

‘Come, peasant,’ he said to Chlod, clicking his fingers. Calard glanced back over his shoulder as he nudged his steed towards the village gates.

‘Food and dry tinder, thank you,’ he said. ‘I shall wait outside the palisades.’

With that, Calard rode from the village, uncaring of the venomous glares he was receiving.

The fire crackled and spat and the damp wood smoked heavily, filling the enclosed shelter with the scent of burning pine needles. It had been some two hours after the sun had set when Calard had called a halt, deeming it too dangerous to continue their descent in the darkness.

They had taken shelter in the lee of a rockfall just off the main path leading down towards the Crooked Corridor, and Chlod had quickly rigged up some additional protection in the event of the weather worsening. Under Calard’s watchful eye and with his thick tongue poking from the side of his mouth in concentration, the peasant had woven branches together to form a rough framework roof, over which he had laid a blanket of smaller twigs and pine needles. An oiled canvas sheet was strung up to form an entrance, and weighted down with rocks it formed an adequate barrier from the wind. There was enough room within the shelter to house both Calard’s horse and Chlod’s mule as well as the two men, and while the Bretonnian nobleman was not overly pleased at having to be in such close proximity to his manservant, he had a belly full of food and the fire was warm.

As exhausted as he was, sleep eluded Calard. Wrapped in a woollen blanket, cloak balled up into a pillow, he stared into the glowing fire, listening to its reassuring crackle and the howl of the wind. His horse whinnied softly and shifted its weight at the back of the shelter.

If the storm that had been threatening to break all week did not come, they should pass into the lowlands of Bretonnia within a day or so. It had been almost five years since Calard had taken up his questing vow, and just over four since he had last set foot in the land of his birth. He longed to hear Bretonnian voices, eat familiar food and drink a goblet of a fine Bordeleaux vintage. Too long had he been travelling through uncultured foreign lands.

In his relentless quest for the grail, Calard’s travels had taken him far from his beloved homeland. He had gone as far north as the frozen lands of Kislev, inhabited by its warlike savages, and as far to the south as Tilea, an amoral cesspit of intrigue and backstabbing where a warrior’s honour and sword sold to the highest bidder. In the east, he had travelled through the dwarf-patrolled passes of the Worlds Edge Mountains and looked out across the desolate Dark Lands beyond.

He had spent the better part of two years within the borders of the Empire, and had come to loathe the place and its citizens. There was no divide between the classes in the Empire, and even the lowest born cur could rise to the heights of power. How such a society could operate was beyond him.

Everywhere Calard went he saw dishonour and death, and through it all he steeled his soul, praying fervently to the Lady to lead him onwards, desperate to prove himself worthy. Visions and dreams of the grail haunted him, the holy chalice always appearing so close but just out of reach. In the Lady’s name Calard had done great and noble deeds across the length and breadth of the Old World, hoping against hope that with one such action his deity would favour him by manifesting before him.

It was said that only those questing knights of pure and noble intention would ever be blessed with a visitation from the Lady of the Lake, and of those, few were judged worthy. Fewer still survived imbibing the elixir held within the grail itself, for only the truest exemplars of Bretonnian knightly virtue, paladins with souls unsullied and free of taint, were able to drink it and live.

It felt like an age had passed since Calard had relinquished his rulership of Garamont, since he had symbolically set aside his lance and forsaken all else but his holy quest. Calard had named his nephew Orlando his heir, presenting the boy the Sword of Garamont, the ancient heirloom of his family’s rulership. Until his successful return, the boy was the ruling Castellan of Garamont. Orlando had been seven years of age when Calard had left; he wondered if he would even recognise the boy now.

Calard knew that he had left Garamont in good hands. He had requested that the Baron Montcadas act as regent for his lands until such a time as he returned – or Orlando came of age – and he trusted the man implicitly. Montcadas was a bear of a man, full of warmth, paternal wisdom and strength. He was also the terror of his enemies, fearless and unforgiving, roaring his challenge as he thundered into battle swinging his heavy morning star – or at least he had been before he had lost his sight. One of his eyes had been put out fighting the bloodthirsty beastmen of the wildwoods; he had lost the other in a tragic tourney accident. He yearned to hear Montcadas’s booming laughter and wise counsel again.

A part of Calard longed to walk the halls of Castle Garamont again, to ride the perimeter of his lands and see his own heraldry, a silver dragon rampant on a field of red and blue, flying from the parapets; but he reminded himself that it would not be the same as it had once been. It would not feel like home anymore.

His father, that stern and cold figure that had ruled over Garamont for nigh on forty years, was dead, having never accepted Calard into his heart. His stepmother, Calisse, hated him more than ever. And Bertelis was gone.

More than anything else, Calard missed his half-brother.

He felt a stab of guilt as he thought of Bertelis, and he wondered if he would ever see him again; and if he did, if his brother could possibly find it in his heart to forgive him.

The last time he had seen Bertelis had been within the shattered walls of Lyonesse, after the departure of the Norscan hordes that had besieged the island fastness. It had not been a happy time, and they had not parted on good terms. Calard burned with shame thinking back to that fateful day.

He had relived it so many times in the last five years. Even now he could hear that horrible sound as Elisabet’s head connected with the marble stairs. He saw again Bertelis’s face, aghast. Rationally, Calard had known that it was an accident, a tragic, awful accident, but he had allowed himself to be blinded by rage and grief.

His brother had begged his forgiveness, but Calard had turned his back on him.

‘I have no brother,’ he had said, his voice cold and empty. In the days afterwards, as he grieved, he regretted speaking those words but there had been no opportunity to make amends. He had not seen Bertelis since, nor even heard of his whereabouts, though not for want of trying.

Calard’s grim thoughts were interrupted as Chlod rolled over and began to snore loudly. Calard regarded the peasant with an expression of distaste, and swore under his breath. The ignorant wretch was curled into a ball, an idiotic smile on his face. Chlod clutched a regal blue scrap of cloth in his hands, one side lined with mink. Once, that scrap had been a part of the cloak worn by the holy grail knight Reolus. Even five years on, Calard could not believe the knight was dead.

Chlod muttered in his sleep, then giggled, and Calard swore again. He hated how sleep always came so easily to the peasant, while it took him hours to drift off. Even then, Calard’s sleep was restless and fraught with nightmares. Who knew what sort of dreams the ignorant peasant was having. Frankly, Calard did not wish to know, certain that they would be unwholesome and base. The little hunchback was an unpleasant fellow, seemingly bereft of conscience, but he had a certain animalistic cunning that had served Calard well on occasion over his years of servitude. His eagerness to please and sycophantic toadying were disgusting to behold, but Calard tolerated these.

The howling gale outside was picking up. The sound was mournful, almost like the roaring of great beasts was concealed within it. Calard shivered, and pulled his woollen blanket tightly around him.

Chlod passed wind loudly and grunted in his sleep before starting to snore once more. Calard tried to blot the noise out, but it was no use. In frustration and exasperation he sat up. Grabbing one of his heavy boots, he hurled it across the makeshift shelter, hitting Chlod square in the face.

The peasant awoke with a shout, jerking sharply. He blinked, looking around him fearfully.

‘You were snoring,’ said Calard.

‘Sorry, master,’ said Chlod.

‘Give me back my boot.’

The peasant scrambled from beneath his blanket and crawled across the shelter, holding Calard’s boot like a holy artefact. He spat on it and gave it a quick rub down with his shirtfront, making Calard grimace. Grinning like a simpleton, Chlod set the boot down carefully alongside its partner.

‘Can I get you anything, master? Water?’

‘No,’ said Calard, rolling away from Chlod. ‘I just want to sleep.’

He heard his manservant crawling back to his blanket, and bit down his frustration at the noise the peasant made, despite his trying to be quiet. The wind continued to howl outside, and again there came another sound, something like a howl.

‘What was that, master?’ said Chlod, his voice fearful.

‘Nothing. The wind. Go to sleep.’

‘I heard that there are beasts what live up here in the mountains,’ said Chlod. ‘Big shaggy cats with teeth like swords. Maybe they are out there now, hunting us.’

‘And I will throw you to them if you do not shut up,’ said Calard. ‘Now, I don’t want to hear another word from you until morning. Don’t let the fire die down overnight.’

‘Yes, master,’ said Chlod. Calard could still hear the fear in the peasant’s voice.

It took him another half an hour to fall asleep, dreaming of home, and of cats with teeth the size of swords, and then nothing.

Calard awoke instantly, knife in hand. Chlod was leaning over him, and the cold light of morning was penetrating the thatch of branches overhead.

Chlod’s eyes were fearful. He was fully dressed and had clearly been up for some time. It was remarkable that Calard had not woken earlier, for he was a light sleeper and would normally have been roused as soon as Chlod had stirred.

‘What is it?’ said Calard in irritation, wiping the last of the sleep from his eyes.

‘There’s people, master,’ said Chlod. ‘They’re armed, and they look like they are in a murderin’ mood.’

Calard threw off his blanket and sheathed his knife. He pulled on his boots, and picked up his bastard sword. He could hear voices, a dozen or more, the sound an angry murmur. He slid the scabbard from his blade and tossed it onto his blanket before kneeling briefly before his small triptych shrine to the Lady, closing his eyes and invoking her blessing. He then rose to his feet and stepped out into the morning glare, the fresh snow crunching beneath his boots.

There was a shout, and the first of the men appeared, pushing through the low branches of the pines outside Calard’s encampment. There were at least a score of them, he saw, and Chlod was right: they looked as though they were out for blood.

He recognised several of them as villagers from the day before. There were too many of them for him to defeat, he knew that, but he would be damned if he didn’t take several of them with him to the halls of Morr if they came at him.

They were scowling and muttering angrily, and they spread out as they closed in on him, cudgels, hatchets and daggers clenched tightly in their hands. Several of them had hunting bows in hand, arrows nocked to strings, and Calard’s disdain deepened – amongst the Bretonnian nobility, the bow was a coward’s weapon, fit only for hunting, or for peasants who had no comprehension of honour.

Calard walked out to meet the villagers, rolling his shoulders. He gripped his blade in both hands and set himself in a ready stance, ensuring that he could see each of the would-be brigands.

‘Is this how you thank those who do you a service?’ he said, his voice filled with scorn. ‘You wait until they leave your village and follow them to their camp, intent on murder and robbery?’

‘Honourless dog,’ said one of them, a brutish man with a thick beard.

‘I bet he ain’t even a knight,’ said another, his face twisted in anger. ‘Probably stole that armour off some poor dead bastard. Killed him, maybe.’

‘I’m gonna cut your heart out,’ said a third man, fingers tightly gripping a butcher’s knife. He had clearly been crying and his eyes burnt with rage and grief. ‘My Adela’s dead because of you!’

The first man, clutching a woodcutter’s axe in his hands, nodded. ‘He’ll pay for it, all right,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Calard, his voice low and menacing. ‘But come one step closer and you’re a dead man.’

‘So long as I take you with me, I don’t care,’ said the grieving man. He held his knife out in trembling hands. The man was no warrior – Calard saw that instantly.

‘Don’t, Pieter,’ said one of the others. ‘Let’s just kill him. Ain’t none of us have to get hurt.’

There were angry snarls of agreement, and Calard tensed as the strings of four bows were drawn back.

‘She was with child!’ shouted the grieving man, Pieter, quivering with rage. ‘And now she’s gone, and it’s all your fault!’

‘I have hurt no woman,’ said Calard, ‘and I will strike down any man who claims otherwise. I have done nothing but that which was asked of me.’

‘Nothing but lied to get a free feed, more like,’ sneered another of the men.

‘I am a knight of Bastonne. I do not lie,’ said Calard, eyes flashing.

‘Blood’s been shed, you bastard,’ snarled another man. ‘You’ll pay for what happened to Pieter’s woman.’

‘Enough,’ said Calard. ‘If it is your intention to rob and kill me, get on with it. You bore me.’

The archers tensed.

‘Hold!’ came a shout. ‘Hold!’

Calard saw the village burgomeister stomping through the snow from the main path, pushing his way through the angry mob. His face was flushed.

‘I knew you were nothing more than a brigand, you cur,’ said Calard. ‘I should have left you to your fate, to be devoured by the beast.’

The grieving man gave out a garbled scream and lurched forward with his knife. Expecting the attack, Calard slammed the flat of its blade against the man’s wrist, knocking the blade away. The man cried out and fell to his knees in the snow, gasping in pain. Startled by the sudden move, one of the bowmen loosed his arrow.

Calard was already moving, and the hastily taken shot glanced off his shoulder and struck a tree. Calard stepped forward, swinging his blade over his shoulder.

‘Hold, damn you!’ boomed the burgomeister, his voice filled with authority, giving the other bowmen pause.

‘What is going on?’ hissed Calard, not lowering his weapon.

‘I might well ask you the same thing,’ retorted the burgomeister.

‘Speak plainly,’ said Calard, ‘or your man here dies.’

‘We know that you did not kill the wyvern,’ said the burgomeister slowly.

‘Are you bereft of your senses?’ said Calard. ‘You hauled its head up on your damned gallows! You all saw it.’

‘I don’t know how you did it,’ said the burgomeister. ‘Sorcery, perhaps. What I don’t understand is why. You wanted no reward, only food and dry tinder. What do you gain from your deception?’

‘You’re insane,’ said Calard. ‘On my honour, I killed the beast. Tracked it to its lair and cut its head off. What is this? Some excuse so you can come down here to rob and kill me.’

‘If you killed it,’ said the burgomeister, ‘then why was its head gone this morning? And why was it seen flying above the peaks at dawn? If you slew the thing, how did it kill poor Pieter’s wife and destroy his home?’

‘You are mistaken,’ said Calard. ‘It must have been something else. Wolves, perhaps.’

‘It weren’t no wolves,’ said the burgomeister. ‘I saw it with my own eyes. It was the beast.’

‘I killed it,’ said Calard. ‘On the honour of my family name, I killed it.’

Calard was in a silent rage as he pulled his cloak tight around his neck, trying vainly to protect himself from the blizzard. The storm had finally broken, lashing Calard, Chlod and their steeds with gale force winds and snow, and though it could not have been even midday, it was as dark as twilight.

He could see no more than ten yards in front of him, such was the intensity of the snowstorm. At any moment, Calard expected to be blown off the side of the cliff, falling to his death. He knew they ought to turn back, for the path – little more than a goat track clinging precariously to the side of the mountain – was dangerous in the best of weather, let alone in this blizzard.

They had passed nothing that would have served as shelter in the last hour, and from what he could judge, they were only half a mile or so from the beast’s lair. Calard decided that their best bet was to press on, and to sit the storm out within the wyvern’s cave, as distasteful as the idea was.

For the last half an hour he had been leading his steed by its reins, forging on through the thickening blanket of snow. Their tracks were covered almost instantly, erasing all evidence of their passage.

Calard did not believe for a moment the villagers’ claim. He suspected that this was some ploy by the burgomeister, but for what purpose, he could not comprehend. He planned to return to the monster’s lair, find its corpse and journey back to the village with irrefutable evidence that he had done as he had pledged. He would not have his good name besmirched by mutterings of dishonour.

He leaned into the wind, his head lowered. His face was wrapped in woollen scarves so that only his eyes were exposed to the ruthless elements, and ice had formed a thick crust across his eyebrows.

He turned around, blinking through the blinding snow to see his manservant staggering behind with his mule. The peasant was tougher than he looked, but Calard didn’t think he would last long. Neither of them would. They needed to get to shelter, fast.

The path narrowed up ahead, and Calard pressed close to the cliff face as he edged his way forwards. The cliff dropped off into nothingness below. The Crooked Corridor, some two thousand feet down, was completely hidden in the storm. Calard was not sure what was worse – seeing the ground so far below, or seeing nothing but knowing the drop was there nonetheless.

A steep overhang jutted over the path as he trudged his way onwards, forcing Calard to duck his head to keep away from the cliff’s edge. His steed snorted in protest, pulling against him, but he calmed it and led it on. He recognised this location. They were close.

He emerged from the overhang, and snow pelted him. It was a struggle to keep moving, but he had no other choice. To stop was to die.

He heard a sound amid the gale – a roar? – and turned around, trying to discern its origination. Was it just the wind? Looking back the way he had come, he swore as he saw Chlod hanging over the cliff edge, clutching frantically for purchase. The only thing keeping him from falling were the reins of his mule, wrapped tightly around one hand. The obstinate beast’s head was down, its neck straining as the full weight of the peasant pulled at its mouth. Calard could see instantly that at any moment the beast would slip, and then both it and Chlod would disappear over the edge. Perhaps more importantly, the mule would take all of Calard’s possessions, which were strapped across its back, with it.

Mouthing a curse, Calard began to slide past his horse, moving to the peasant’s aid as quickly as was safe to do so. With his back to his towering warhorse, nothing but open space filled with swirling snow in front of him, he shimmied his way back. His feet were precariously close to the cliff edge, and he prayed silently to the Lady.

There came another roar in the storm, and a monstrous, winged creature appeared out of the blizzard.

It came from below, rising up the sheer cliff face with powerful beats of its immense wings. Its serpentine eyes blazed like embers, and Calard stared back in shock.

For a second he was sure that it was the same beast that he had already fought, but that was madness. No, he had killed that one, there could be no doubt of that; he’d cut its head off and put out one of its eyes. This beast had both its eyes, and its broad, heavy head was firmly attached to its muscular neck.

A second wyvern then, Calard thought. The mate of the first?

Buffeted by the strong winds and borne aloft upon its mighty wings, the beast lunged, huge mouth gaping. Calard’s horse reared, whinnying in terror, and he was knocked to the ground, scrambling frantically not to slip over the cliff edge.

The monster’s mouth clamped shut around his horse, and with a wrench of its neck it dragged the noble steed from the mountain path. One of its hooves clipped Calard’s shoulder, and he slid further over the cliff’s edge. The horse’s arterial blood sprayed, staining the snow, and the wyvern shook its head from side to side. Even through the gale, Calard heard the horrible snap as his steed’s spine was broken. The beast’s wings beat faster to compensate for the additional weight, and it dropped half a dozen feet. A sudden gust dragged it further out from the cliff face, and it disappeared in the storm.

Calard’s hand closed around a jutting rock and he gripped it tightly, forestalling his fall. His legs were dangling over the seemingly bottomless expanse. With a grunt of effort he hauled himself back onto the mountain path, clambering to his feet and unsheathing his sword. He turned and pressed his back against the cliff wall as the wyvern reappeared.

It descended on him, massive hind claws extended. Calard hacked with his sword double-handed, severing two talons, and the beast bellowed. Its other leg raked downwards, carving three furrows in the rock where Calard’s head had been a moment earlier.

The questing knight turned his face away as a shower of rock and snow struck him, and as the wyvern kicked at him again he threw himself further down the path. He landed on his chest in the snow, and slid half a dozen yards before coming to a halt, turning and rising to one knee, his sword at the ready.

The wyvern beat its wings and disappeared into the blizzard overhead once more, and Calard risked a glance back along the path. Chlod had clambered from the edge of the precipice, and was staring at him fearfully. The peasant shouted something that was swallowed by the roaring winds and pointed, and Calard glanced movement out of the corner of his eye.

The wyvern was coming down at him again, its wings buffeting him with wind and snow. Its tail stabbed for him and he slashed with his sword as it plunged for his chest, knocking it aside and carving deep into the bony sting.

The beast came in to land, one foreclaw clutching onto the cliff face for balance as it gripped the narrow path with its hind talons. One of them slipped off the edge, dislodging a landslide, but the beast regained its balance and began making its way towards him, moving crab-like along the narrow path with surprising dexterity.

Calard began backing up, seeking to get under the overhang, where the wyvern’s bulk would make it almost impossible for it to come at him. Seeing what he was doing, the wyvern hopped towards him faster, closing the distance in two bounds.

Its jaw snapped towards him, slamming shut less than half a foot away, and Calard slipped, falling to one knee. The beast hopped nearer, its foreclaw and left wing clutching at the cliff face, balancing itself as it leant upon its other wing.

Knowing that he couldn’t get away from the beast, Calard took the only other option that remained for him – he attacked.

With a shout, Calard leapt forward and slammed his sword into the beast’s wing, breaking several of the slender bones that fanned out from its claw. The beast roared, and brought its other wing around in a sharp arc. With no room to move, Calard was smashed into the cliff face by the force of the blow, striking the back of his head hard.

The beast grabbed him around the ankle with one of its foreclaws, dropping him to his back and pulling him through the snow. He fought it, kicking and struggling as he tried to bring his blade to bear, but he was dragged helplessly towards the wyvern.

He kicked the beast hard as its mouth opened, striking one of its tusk-like teeth. If the wyvern felt any pain it gave no indication, and it stretched its neck forward to bite him in half.

Calard managed to thrust the blade of his sword forward, and the beast stabbed itself in the gum as it strained towards him. Blood ran down the blade, and the wyvern hissed and pulled its head back. Calard managed to kick his foot from the monster’s grasp, and he scrambled back away from it as it lunged again.

Part of the cliff path gave way beneath the wyvern’s weight suddenly, and it scrabbled for purchase. Its body slammed into the path as a boulder slipped under its hind legs, and one foreclaw gripped the rock tightly, less than two feet from Calard’s position.

With a shout, he brought his sword down hard upon it, breaking bones.

With a roar, the wyvern lost its grip and fell, tumbling backwards over the precipice. Its left wing would not work properly, the wing-bones broken by Calard’s first strike, and the wyvern tumbled down the cliff face, unable to keep itself airborne. It was gone almost instantly, careening off the cliff face once before being swallowed by the blinding snow.

‘Is it dead, master?’ shouted Chlod in his ear, coming up behind him. Calard shrugged.

‘We must move on!’ he shouted. ‘We’ll be dead if we don’t find shelter.’

With that, Calard stumbled on, fighting through the blizzard, Chlod and his mule close behind.

If anything, the storm had worsened by the time they reached the cave, and they were exhausted and half-frozen as they staggered inside.

They moved to the back of the cavern in an effort to escape the biting winds. Calard couldn’t feel his fingers or his toes, and he had stopped shivering, which he knew was a bad sign. He felt incredibly tired, and the desire to just lie down on the floor and sleep was strong. The rational part of his mind knew that to do so was to die, but another part of him whispered that he would just close his eyes for a moment.

Chlod had collapsed on the ground, a huddled ball of misery, and Calard prodded him with his foot.

‘Fire,’ Calard managed on the third attempt, forming the word with difficulty; his lips were completely numb.

The peasant groaned something indecipherable, and Calard kicked him hard in the side. That got a reaction. The peasant’s face was blue, but the colour started to come back as he prepared a fire.

Ten minutes later, the peasant had a small blaze going, and they crouched over it, warming frozen hands. Calard’s fingers began to tingle painfully as sensation returned. He removed part of his armour, unhooking the iced-up greaves as he attempted to rub some warmth into his limbs.

With his body finally thawing, the firelight casting its orange glow across the interior of the cavern, Calard realised for the first time that the headless corpse of the wyvern was not here.

Frowning, he lifted a burning brand from the fire and stood up, turning on the spot.

This was most definitely where he had fought the beast; he could see evidence of the battle. Dark, rust-like patches marked the floor, and there were cracks in the wall where its monstrous sting had struck, but of the body itself there was no sign.

‘Devoured by scavengers?’ he said, speaking aloud.

‘Master?’ said Chlod, looking up from beside the fire, but Calard ignored him.

The questing knight frowned. It had been only yesterday when he had killed the beast. Surely no scavenger could have devoured it in that time, bones and all, leaving no evidence of it ever having been here except for the bloodstains on the floor. Not even the other wyvern could have eaten it in that time.

Thinking about the immense, crushing jaws of the wyverns, however, he could well believe that they would be fully capable of consuming bones. A brood of wyverns? There had been at least two of the creatures. Could there be more?

The thought was not comforting. The stink of the beast still lingered in the cave even if its body did not, a potent animal smell that made his stomach heave.

Holding his burning brand aloft, Calard ventured deeper into the cave. It went back further than he had thought, and as he advanced the flame of his torch sent flickering shadows across its uneven walls. There were bones scattered within naturally formed alcoves, and he knelt beside them, lifting them up for inspection. Most of them were human, but there were others that were shorter and denser. He found a shattered, fanged skull tucked away in a hollow.

‘Greenskin,’ he said, kicking the skull away.

There were strange markings on the walls, he realised, and he stepped up close to one of them, lifting his torch. Underneath a layer of rock dust and grime he could see that something had been daubed onto the walls. Frowning, he brushed his hand along the crumbling granite, revealing a crude depiction of a warrior: a warrior fighting a winged beast that was unmistakably a wyvern.

‘What in the name of the Lady?’ said Calard.

Stepping back, he saw the walls were covered in similar pictures. Everywhere he looked he saw depictions of wyverns. They were devouring people and shaggy mountain cattle, flying over crudely rendered mountains with blood dripping from their exaggerated teeth and stings. In many of the pictures, there was a solitary warrior fighting the beast. Sometimes this lone warrior stood victorious over the wyvern, his sword plunged into its heart, or its severed head lying at his feet. Sometimes the warrior lay dead at the beast’s feet.

Calard followed the images further back into the cave, intrigued and horrified.

Was this the remnant of some cult, venerating the Chaos beasts? Had there been wyverns in this area for hundreds, even thousands of years? Was there something here, in this cave, that drew them to it, like slivers of metal drawn to a lodestone?

The pictures led him further away from the entrance, and the howling of the wind outside faded. Soon, even the flame of Chlod’s fire had ebbed. Abruptly, the cave ended. The floor sloped downwards, hinting at a deeper cavern, and the images too followed this descent, but he could go no further, for the way was blocked by a pool of dark water.

Ice had formed a fragile crust around the edge of the pool, though its centre was clear. The water was black. Calard cracked the skin of ice with the heel of his boot; it was not thick. He stood there for some moments, wondering where the passage led, before shrugging and turning away. He was hungry and tired. He would have Chlod cook him a meal and then settle down to wait out the storm.

From behind him came a splash, and Calard looked around to see the surface of the black pool rippling.

His sword was drawn and at the ready, the heavy blade held two-handed; the flaming torch was left burning on the ground. His gaze flicked left and right, seeing movement everywhere in the shadows cast by his flaming brand, but his attention snapped back to the pool as it began to bubble, as if it were boiling.

Not taking his eyes off the pool, Calard moved towards the edge.

‘Master?’ called Chlod from some way back, his voice muffled and echoing off the walls. ‘Master?’

Calard ignored the peasant, gripping the hilt of his bastard sword tightly.

Something began to rise from the water; something large.

The tip of its wings emerged first, then its massive head breached the surface, water spraying out as it exhaled sharply from its nostrils and sucked in a deep breath.

Mouthing a curse, Calard saw that it was another wyvern, easily as big as the last two. Black water ran off its grey-green scales, and secondary eyelids flicked back from its hateful orbs. Its pupils contracted as it swung its head towards the bright light of Calard’s fallen torch, and it blinked in the glare.

This must have been where the foul things were originating from. Was there some foetid brood lair in a deeper cave, and this pool was the entrance?

He had been lucky to kill the others, he knew that. Weak and half-frozen, he knew that he would not be able to best this one if he allowed it to emerge from the water fully. It seemed not yet to have noticed him, and so Calard leapt forward as the monster began pulling itself out of the pool. Before the monster could react, he had plunged into the icy water and thrust the tip of his sword straight into one of its eye sockets.

The wyvern shrieked in agony and thrashed its head, ripping the blade out of Calard’s hands and knocking him backwards. Blood was running from the horrible wound, forming an oily film across the surface of the black pool. Bellowing deafeningly, the beast began retreating, dragging itself back the way it had come.

Calard heard Chlod arrive behind him, holding another flaming torch, and the peasant gasped as he saw the wyvern half-submerged in the cave pool. The beast was pulling itself back down the waterlogged cavern, first its curving back disappearing, then its wingtips. Finally, its head ducked under the water, taking Calard’s sword with it.

Determined not to let the beast escape, Calard sucked in a deep breath and dived under the water. His armour weighed him down considerably, and he struggled not to sink. The water was dark, though the flickering light of the torch allowed him to see the vague, shadowy form of the monster as it slipped away from him. In frustration, Calard came up, knowing that to go any deeper was to drown, weighed down as he was.

He swore loudly, and began wading to the water’s edge, unbuckling his breastplate as he did so.

The Lady had led him here for a reason. Perhaps that reason had not been to kill one wyvern, but to butcher the entire brood.

‘Fetch me wood, tinder and flint,’ he ordered Chlod. ‘Wrap it tightly in oilskins. I want it waterproof.’

Chlod’s eyes boggled. ‘Master, surely you are not…’ he began.

‘Do as I say, peasant,’ snapped Calard, before lowering himself to one knee and praying. ‘Quickly!’

He inspected Chlod’s work when he returned and, satisfied, he slung the bundle over his shoulder. He had stripped off his armour and was armed only with his knife, still glowing with a faint light of its own. Chlod was hopping from foot to foot, wringing his hands nervously.

‘Don’t go anywhere,’ said Calard. Then without further delay, he clenched the knife between his teeth and dived into the icy water once more. As far as he understood, wyverns breathed just as he did – or at least he hoped they did – and he judged that there must be air somewhere further along the submerged tunnel.

Kicking out strongly, he passed beneath the rock, and a moment of panic washed through him as he realised that he could not now merely swim to the surface to breathe. He continued on, deeper into the cavern.

His lungs began to burn, but he pushed on, swimming further. He continued on blindly into the darkness, his panic rising. He had gone too far to turn back now.

It took him a moment to realise that he could see light again, a red glare from up ahead, and he kicked towards it in desperation as the last of his air turned to poison in his lungs. There was a ruby glow infusing the water, originating further along the tunnel, and with a final burst of strength Calard kicked towards it.

He came up quickly, breaking the surface of the water and sucked in a deep breath.

He was blinded for a moment by the red light, and he blinked as his eyes adjusted to the glare, all the while treading water to keep afloat. There was a metallic taste that filled his mouth and nose, and his eyes were stinging.

‘Lady above,’ he breathed as he looked around.

He was no longer underground. He was no longer anywhere that even vaguely resembled the Grey Mountains bordering Bretonnia and the Empire.

A sky of fire burned overhead, and the heat was oppressive.

He was in hell.

His heart beating frantically, his mind reeling, Calard swam to the edge of the pool. The water had changed consistency, turning viscous, and he realised in horror that it was not water at all, but congealing blood.

He clambered up onto the gore-slick rocks that rimmed the blood-pool, removing the knife from between his teeth as the contents of his stomach rose into his throat. He doubled over and was violently ill.

Wiping his mouth, his mind rebelling, Calard straightened and turned in a slow circle, taking in his surroundings. A featureless, barren wasteland of red sand and rock spread out as far as the eye could see in every direction.

Rippling flames consumed the heavens, the sky burning from one horizon to the other, an inferno in constant flux.

It was ungodly hot, a merciless dry heat that scorched his lungs with every breath. The horizons shimmered with heat haze, and Calard could feel the moisture on him drying up, leaving a scab-like crust of blood across his skin.

‘Where in the name of the Lady am I?’ he breathed.

He heard laughter nearby, the mocking sound carried to him on the wind, and Calard spun around, his knife at the ready. There was no one there.

The Lady is dead, breathed a haggard voice and Calard jerked in shock, feeling the speaker’s breath in his ear. He turned, but again there was nothing there. Mocking laughter came at him from several sides as he looked around warily, eyes wide in fear.

We’re all dead, said a different voice.

‘Who are you?’ said Calard, his voice cracking.

You’ll soon be dead too, said another voice.

‘Show yourselves, cowards!’ said Calard.

The laughter assailed him from all sides at that, and he heard a multitude of mocking voices.

Show ourselves, he says! laughed one, rough and masculine.

If that is what you desire, said another, giggling.

You’ll be with us soon, said a woman’s voice, filled with sadness.

A deafening sound crashed in on Calard, filled with unholy screams of agony and madness. In that fraction of a second he saw figures all around him: loathsome, terrifying men and women, their flesh flayed and their muscles exposed to the elements. They stood around him in a numberless horde, eyeballs rolling loosely in their sockets, and bloodied hands clutched at him.

As quickly as it came, the vision was gone, taking with it the hellish taunting.

Calard cried out, his body shaking uncontrollably, the knife clasped in his sweaty hand quivering.

‘Lady of mercy, give me strength,’ he breathed.

I’m going to kill you, said a child’s voice in his ear.

Calard turned around on the spot and saw the bones.

He didn’t know how he had not seen them straight away. He was certain they had not been there before.

Beside the blood-pool was the immense skeleton of a wyvern. Calard made his way around the pool towards it, moving warily. There was not a scrap of flesh or skin left on it. The bones were as dry as tinder. It was as if it had been dead for centuries.

We are all dead, came a whispered voice behind him, and Calard’s hackles rose.

Calard’s sword was protruding from one of the empty eye sockets of the wyvern’s skull, and he moved towards it, stepping cautiously. He sheathed his knife at his waist before gingerly lifting his sword clear. It was exactly the same as it had been when he had last held it, and the weight of it was reassuring in his hands.

He turned around on the spot once more before coming to his decision.

He strapped his sword across his back alongside the roll of oiled leather that contained the wood and tinder that Chlod had prepared for him, and, suppressing the disgust that he felt, he began wading back into the blood-pool.

Taking a deep breath, readying himself for the difficult swim back, he dipped his head below the surface of the congealing gore. Diving down, kicking hard, he struck rock. In confusion, he felt around with his hands, thinking that perhaps he had risen up through a hole or a tunnel. Feeling around blindly, he could find no such entrance.

He rose to the surface of the pool, sucked in a searing breath and dived again. Over and over he dived, searching frantically for the way back. After half an hour he gave up, despairing. Pulling himself out of the quagmire of vital fluids, he cried his horror and anguish to the heavens. Laughter all around mocked him.

Calard sank to his knees in the red sand and prayed.

Chlod sat staring at the icy pool of water, biting his lip. It had been two days now since his master had disappeared beneath its surface. He must be dead, he thought.

He didn’t feel any particular grief at the thought, though it certainly made him reassess his options. During his time in Calard’s service, he had never wanted for food. Now he was alone again, he would be forced to fend for himself. Still, he had a mule, and enough supplies to last him a good week or two. He could always sell the mule if need be. Or eat it.

Chlod grinned. Things were working out rather well.

‘Well, that’s that then,’ he said to the ageing rat perched upon his knee, who twitched its nose in response. ‘I reckon we’ve given him enough time. He ain’t comin’ back, so it seems, so we’d best be off.’

Chlod had wanted to make sure that Calard would not return before he abandoned him. In the past five years, he had learnt enough of his master to know that he would not look kindly upon him had he returned to find his manservant departed with all the food. He would not have put it past him to track him down, no matter how long it took, just to see him hang.

Two days he’d waited. Chlod felt confident that Calard was not coming back.

With that decided, he stood up, shoving his pet back into the deep pocket on the front of his tunic.

Leading his mule, Chlod moved towards the cave entrance. He wouldn’t return to Bretonnia, he decided. He would travel back into the Empire, back to one of the enormous cities that he had visited with his former master – Altdorf perhaps.

He was feeling quite cheery as he strode out into the snow. The storm had died down the day before, and the air was crisp and clear. He breathed in deeply, savouring the near absolute silence.

The slight breeze changed direction, and his mule suddenly reared, nostrils flaring and ears flattening against its head.

‘Whoa!’ shouted Chlod, trying to calm the beast. Then his blood ran cold as he heard a low growl from nearby.

Chlod turned slowly to see a massive, shaggy-coated animal padding towards him. It was the size of a draught horse, and its fur was pale and thick. A mane the colour of virgin snow encircled its heavily-muscled neck, and a pair of curving teeth, each the length of a short sword, emerged from its snarling mouth.

A growl to his left announced the presence of a second cat, and he saw a third moving up to his right. He could see dark stripes upon the flanks of the snow-coloured predators, and their massive paws left deep indentations in the snow as they moved towards him.

Chlod turned tail and ran.

He heard his mule’s tortured scream as the cats bore it to the ground behind him. That scream was cut short, and Chlod dared not turn to see if they were now leaping for him. Expecting sabre teeth to close around his neck at any moment, Chlod fled back into the cave, the sound of crunching bones echoing around him.

Ducking down behind a rock some way in, he turned, breathing hard, to see if the mountain cats were following him. One of the beasts came loping in after him. Its predatory gaze was fixed on his hiding place.

Chlod fled further into the cave, falling back as far as he was able. On the cat came, unhurried and following him inexorably. As it closed, it was joined by its pack, which instinctively fanned out to cut off any chance of escape. Chlod backed into the black pool of water.

‘Cats don’t like water,’ he murmured, hoping against hope that he was correct. Perhaps if he waded in deep enough they would leave him be. That faint hope was shattered as the biggest of the sabre-tusks came straight in after him, a deep growl rumbling within its chest.

Seeing no other option, Chlod sucked in a deep breath and turned his back on the sabre-tusks. He heard them roar, and then splash towards him, and with that he dived into the black water.

Calard’s eyes flicked open, the prayer dying on his lips as a shape rose from the blood-pool. In an instant he was on his feet, swinging his bastard sword up in readiness of attack.

At first he thought he was having another horrific vision, seeing again one of the daemonic things that whispered in his ear. It was covered from head to toe in blood, and its thick, malformed body struggled as it tried to pull itself clear of the foul, clinging gore. It looked straight at him, eyes wide and full of terror, and Calard lowered his guard a little.

‘Peasant?’ he said. ‘Is that you?’

‘Master!’ cried Chlod, dragging himself out of the blood-pool to fall at his feet. ‘Praise Ranald, I thought you were dead!’

We are all dead, whispered a voice in Calard’s ear, but if Chlod heard it too, he didn’t make any reaction.

‘Not yet,’ said Calard, answering both.

‘You’ve been gone so long, I was worried, and then there were these sabre-cats and they…’ His words trailed off as he seemed finally to register his surroundings, and his eyes went wide. The hunchbacked peasant looked around him in dawning horror, and a pitiful moan escaped his lips.

‘Gone so long?’ said Calard. ‘I’ve only been here for… what, an hour perhaps?’

‘An hour?’ said Chlod, looking up at him. The peasant shook his head. ‘You’ve been gone for two days, master.’

You are dead, said a voice. You just don’t know it.

‘Did you hear that?’ said Calard. Chlod was starting to shake, and tears were running down his cheeks. Calard could see that the peasant’s sanity was close to breaking.

‘Peasant!’ he snapped, and Chlod jerked, looking up at him with haunted eyes. ‘Did you hear that voice?’

‘Voice?’ said Chlod.

‘Never mind,’ said Calard.

‘What’s in there?’ said Chlod pointing.

‘What?’ said Calard. ‘There’s nothing there…’

His voice trailed off as he followed Chlod’s gesture and saw that there was something nearby, something that had not been there before. Or at least, something he had not seen.

It was a pile of large red boulders, about a hundred yards away, and it looked akin to an old burial cairn. A way in to the cairn was formed by two tall boulders that leant against each other, forming a crude portal. The inside was dark.

Calard wondered how he had not seen it before.

Your eyes are closed, said a voice in his ear. You blind yourself with lies, denying yourself, deluding yourself.

‘Oh, and Chlod doesn’t?’ said Calard aloud.

‘Master?’ said Chlod, eyes darting around to see whom Calard spoke with.

He is a simple creature. He knows what he is. His eyes are open. He does not try to be something he is not.

‘And I do?’ said Calard.

You are dead! said the voice vehemently, the words spoken with hatred.

Chlod was looking at Calard strangely. Ignoring him, Calard moved towards the cairn.

Did he lie to himself? Calard wondered as he made his progress across the searing red sand. He knew the answer, of course. He always had. For years he had tried to be something that he wasn’t. For years he had tried to live up to hopeless expectations: his father’s, his own.

He heard laughter then, filled with self-satisfaction, and Calard pushed the sound and his doubts away as he reached the cairn. This place was insidious, preying upon his mind. He must not let himself succumb to the voices.

With his sword drawn, he stepped inside the cairn.

A man was kneeling in front of a crude shrine, his back to Calard. He was dressed in plate armour, though it was battered and old, covered in a layer of red dust. His hair was long and lined with silver, and he wore a tattered cloak over one shoulder.

Calard held his sword tightly in his hands, standing over the vulnerable figure. He could cut him down so easily.

Do it, urged a voice, making him start.

The man looked normal enough, but Calard knew that nothing in this hellish realm could be trusted. He shuddered as he thought of the other visions he had already seen, the teeming hordes of skinless, hateful daemons that he still felt crowding in around him, just beyond the veil of reality. Was this figure one of them, merely in a guise that might make him lower his guard? If it turned around would its face be missing, nothing but red-raw exposed muscle and veins?

Calard clenched his teeth, his muscles tensing as the urge to cut the man down took a hold of him. This is no man, he thought. This is a daemon. His heart beat furiously in his chest, and he could hear the pumping of blood in his head, deafening him and blotting out rational thought.

Calard tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword as a savage madness took him, and he stepped forward to strike the man down, his face twisting into a snarl.

As he lifted his sword up for the killing blow, he was momentarily distracted by something glinting in the shadows. His gaze was drawn to a small icon standing upright upon the crude shrine before which the man knelt, and as his gaze focused on that pendant, the blood-fury that had claimed him receded.

With a shake of his head, Calard cleared the last vestiges of the savage rage that had almost overcome him. He lowered his sword, hearing disappointed murmurs and bitter whispering all around him, wondering if this was merely some new vision.

The icon was a small brass statuette attached to a necklace. It was perched upright, leaning upon a rock, and depicted a female figure, a large goblet held in her hands over her head.

‘The Lady of the Lake,’ he breathed, in awe.

Dead, said a voice in his ear.

The kneeling figure lurched to his feet at Calard’s voice, swinging a sword around in a gleaming arc. Calard’s own blade flashed, and the two swords came together with a sharp clash, and the two knights were locked together for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes.

The knight’s face was not that of some hateful daemon; it was the face of a man, though it had the hollow, haunted look of one that had seen more than his sanity was capable of enduring.

‘The goddess be praised,’ said the strange knight, his voice cracked and dry. He collapsed to his knees, and tears of relief ran down his ashen cheeks. ‘She has answered my prayers at last.’

Calard stood there, helpless and in shock, looking at a man who was undoubtedly a fellow knight of Bretonnia.

‘There is only the one beast, reborn time and time again,’ said the knight, his voice lifeless and hollow. His name was Orderic of Montforte and, like Calard, he was a questing knight, seeking the Lady’s blessing. His armour was of an antiquated style unfamiliar to Calard.

He sat with the knight upon a pair of rocks outside the crude cairn-like structure. Chlod knelt in the sand at Calard’s knee, shuddering and whimpering, glancing around him fearfully.

‘I… I cannot recall how many times it has risen,’ Orderic said. ‘A dozen times? A hundred? I don’t remember. It’s all a fog…’

The haunted knight’s voice trailed off and his eyes clouded over, lost in his vague memories. The knight seemed confused when Calard asked him how he had gotten here.

‘How long have you been here?’ said Calard, breaking the silence that had fallen between them as the knight tried to remember. Orderic jerked and looked at him in surprise, as if he had forgotten that he was not alone.

‘I… I don’t know. A while. There is no night here, so it is hard to judge. A week? A year? I don’t know… The Lady led me. Just as she led you.’

‘So it would seem,’ said Calard, looking around him warily. ‘But I cannot see why she would bring me here.’

‘I know why you came,’ said the knight vehemently. ‘She brought you here that you might relieve me of my vigil. It is your time now to stand guard over the beast, and to slay it when it next rises.’

‘What?’ said Calard. ‘No. That is not why I have been brought here. That can’t be the reason.’

‘You have to take up my vigil,’ said the knight. ‘I’ve been here too long. I… I am losing myself in this place.’

‘But I am embarked on the quest,’ said Calard.

‘As am I,’ said Orderic. ‘Though I was close to accepting defeat. I have been delayed here too long. Many nights have I prayed for someone to come to relieve me. Those prayers have now been answered.’

Calard bit his lip and looked down. The Lady had led him here. Was this her will? Was this then to be his fate, to take up the knight’s vigil, slowly losing himself to madness until another knight arrived to replace him? Was he to become a pale, haunted shell of a man like Orderic?

‘Why did you take up the quest?’ asked Orderic suddenly.

‘What?’ said Calard, frowning, as if the question was ludicrous. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Why did you take up the quest? I took it up for glory,’ said Orderic, laughing hollowly. ‘And this is where it led me. I realise now that I took up the quest for the wrong reason. The search for glory is not noble. That is why the Lady brought me here. This vigil has been my penance. What did you do to be brought here to this hell?’

‘I… I took up the quest to prove that my blood was free of taint,’ said Calard, surprised that he had never realised it in such simple terms before. ‘To prove it to myself, and to my knights. And to prove myself to my father. To make him proud.’

He realised how stupid that was as soon as he said it, for his father was dead and could never give him the acceptance he so craved.

‘You are questing for the wrong reason,’ said Orderic. ‘You will never reach your goal until your realise that reason.’

‘What is it?’ said Calard, but Orderic merely shrugged, smiling without warmth.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I have learnt that the quest is more than a feat of arms. It takes more than just killing a monster to be granted the Lady’s visitation. It is a quest of faith – of faith in the Lady, faith in your belief, faith in yourself.’

‘Faith in yourself,’ echoed Calard, brow creasing as he pondered the knight’s words.

‘You have to take up my vigil,’ said Orderic, pleading, desperate. ‘Please take up my vigil. I… I cannot go on any more.’

The knight’s gaze dropped, and he merely stared blankly into nothingness. Calard did not know what to say.

‘I have denied death for so long waiting for you to come,’ breathed the knight. ‘My quest is unfinished. I cannot die before it is completed. I cannot. Let me finish it.’

Roiling blood-red clouds rolled across the fiery heavens with unnatural speed, and Calard eyed them nervously as ruby lightning lit them from within. Chlod was rocking back and forth on his haunches, speaking softly to himself, and Orderic continued to merely stare into space. Things flickered at the edge of Calard’s vision, as if in agitation at the brewing storm, and the first drops of rain began to patter down onto the red desert sand.

The light shower grew heavier and Calard blinked as it began to run down his face, and only then did he realise that this was no normal rain.

‘Blood,’ said Calard in horror as warm rivulets ran down his armour and face.

‘It begins again…’ said Orderic, suddenly coming out of his stupor. He drew his sword as he rose wearily to his feet.

‘What is it?’ said Calard, standing and drawing his own blade.

‘The beast is reborn,’ said Orderic, moving in the direction of the blood-pool and the wyvern’s skeleton. His shoulders were slumped in defeat and exhaustion.

Chlod was still rocking to and fro on the ground, and Calard gave him a quick glance before hurrying after Orderic. As he got closer to the blood-pool, he could see that it was bubbling furiously. His eyes widened and he gripped the hilt of his sword tightly as he looked upon the skeleton of the wyvern.

Like a sponge, the porous, dry bones were sucking up the blood, and they were now a deep, bruised red. Sinew and muscle started forming across the skeleton. Ligaments and tendons pulled the bones together tightly, and internal organs formed within the beast’s abdomen. A massive heart grew within its chest cavity, and a spider web of veins and arteries spread across the rapidly regenerating musculature. That heart began to beat, then it was obscured as more muscle and flesh built up over it.

Still not yet fully formed, the wyvern rose from the ground, its red-raw body coiling sinuously, as yet unfleshed wings flexing.

The beast’s massive jaws opened in a silent challenge, its vocal chords not yet formed, and hateful eyes grew within their sockets. The wyvern clawed up the earth as it shuddered and writhed, as if in pain or ecstasy, and finally its green-grey skin began to spread across its flesh.

It all happened within the space of ten heartbeats, and by the time Calard and Orderic closed on it, it was fully regenerated. The beast was already wading into the bubbling pool, and the two knights broke into a run towards it.

‘It cannot be allowed to pass through!’ shouted Orderic, leaping into the pool. He landed knee-deep in blood, and began splashing towards the wyvern. Calard was only a step behind him. The beast swung its massive head around towards them as it registered their presence, and it let out a deafening screech.

Five minutes later, the beast was dead, and Calard and Orderic collapsed on the bank, exhausted and bloodied. The two knights had fought well together. As quickly as it had arrived, the blood shower had passed, the clouds streaking across the sky to disappear over the burning horizon.

Once again, the beast was nothing but bones, dry and brittle; its flesh had turned to dust as Calard had struck the fatal blow, his sword penetrating the wyvern’s heart. In the blink of an eye, the bones were back where Calard had first seen them. Indeed, the only evidence to show that he had not imagined the entire episode were the injuries that he and Orderic had sustained, and the blood on his blade, which the oppressive heat had already dried to flaking rust.

‘There must be a way to end this cycle,’ said Calard, wiping his blade clean. ‘Some way to put the beast to rest once and for all.’

Orderic merely shrugged.

What if there was no way to end the cycle? Was this to be his fate, then, to be stuck here in this nightmarish plane, fighting the beast every time it rose? He thought of the horror and slaughter that would result if the beast passed through the blood-pool, unleashing its fury upon the Old World. Could he in all sincerity turn away, and do nothing?

No, he realised. He could not. If this was what the Lady willed of him, then he would take up Orderic’s vigil. Perhaps it was penance for the tainted blood he suspected ran in his veins. Or perhaps it was as Orderic had suggested – punishment for taking up the quest for selfish reasons.

‘Faith in yourself,’ Calard muttered. He sighed and shook his head, his shoulders slumping.

You will be with us soon, whispered a voice.

Perhaps this was where he belonged.

Time had no meaning in this hell, and Calard could no longer gauge how long he and Chlod had been trapped there. The peasant had become completely non-communicative, merely rocking back and forth and muttering to himself.

At first, Orderic spoke with Calard about all manner of things, mundane and otherwise. Orderic talked of his homeland, Montforte, and of the things that he missed; the mountain air, the springtime, the endless blue sky.

‘And bluebells,’ he said with a shadow of a smile on his face. ‘I miss bluebells.’

Nevertheless, Orderic had slowly become quieter until he had slipped into a protracted silence, staring into nothingness. His eyes had become vacant and dead, and Calard had given up trying to speak with him. Was that what he would be like, given time? Was he to merely wait here until another came to take up his vigil?

He tried to sleep, but whenever he closed his eyes he saw the skinless daemons surrounding him. Waiting.

Calard took to patrolling the area but there was nothing to see from horizon to horizon, save the blood-pool and the cairn. While he walked, his mind whirled with jumbled thoughts. Was Orderic right? Was he questing for the wrong, selfish reasons? Had he blinded himself with falsehoods, trying to be what he was not?

A thought occurred to him. If Orderic killed the beast each time it arose, then why had he faced it in the Grey Mountains? He wanted to question Orderic, but the knight was completely unresponsive.

The fires of Chaos rolled across the heavens, and the red earth was scorching hot beneath his boots. Sometimes he thought he saw winged black things circling overhead, and at others voices whispered in his ears, telling him things he did not want to hear.

You are already dead, they hissed. You just don’t know it.

Calard probed the blood-pool, trying to find a way back to reality, but it was no use. He was becoming resigned to the idea of staying here in this hateful realm of Chaos, though the thought of doing so filled him with horror. Yet if it were the Lady’s will, what right had he to argue?

It was while testing the depths of the blood-pool that he found the body.

Sweating and breathing hard, his lungs burning, Calard heaved it onto the bank.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Orderic, his voice full of horror, making Calard jerk in shock; he had not heard the knight’s approach. Orderic was staring down at him, panic written on his face.

‘I found…’ started Calard, but his voice trailed off as he stared down at the skeletal remains that he had dredged up from the bottom of the pool.

It was the skeleton of a human, wearing antiquated plate armour. The armour looked familiar…

‘Lady wept,’ said Calard, looking between Orderic and the corpse. ‘You’re dead.’

Orderic was shaking his head in denial, his face a mask of confusion and fear.

‘No, no, no,’ he was saying, backing away, his expression gaunt.

‘The wyvern defeated you,’ said Calard, kneeling over the skeleton. He touched the thick hole in its breastplate, a hole larger than his fist. ‘Its sting punched through your chest. It must have killed you almost instantly.’

Orderic touched his own chest, where now there was a gaping hole, and his hand came away bloody.

‘It is this place,’ said Calard. ‘It’s brought you back, just like it does the wyvern.’

‘I am not dead’ shouted Orderic, clutching his head in his hands and sinking to his haunches.

Calard stood, shaking his head.

‘I’m sorry, Orderic,’ he said. ‘Your quest is over. You died. Let yourself go.’

‘No, no, you’re speaking lies! Daemon! Sorceror!’ said Orderic.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Calard, edging towards the blood-pool, away from the pitiful sight of the tortured knight.

He knew why the Lady had brought him here.

Calard did not know how much time had passed before the thunder began, and the blood clouds raced once more across the burning heavens. Orderic had disappeared. Calard hoped that the knight had finally moved on, his soul passing to Morr, but he knew that was not the case. The knight would never attain that while his body dwelt in this realm of Chaos.

Calard truly felt sorry for him, but had faith that he was doing the right thing. This was the reason the Lady had brought him here. It was not a test of arms as he had first thought. He had not been brought here to kill the wyvern, or at least not directly. No, he had been brought here to give Orderic his rest eternal.

He had removed the armour from the dead knight’s skeleton and bundled the bones up into a satchel, which he now slung over his back as the blood rain began to fall. Half carrying Chlod, he moved towards the bubbling pool.

The wyvern was in the process of reforming itself, glistening muscles building up over its skeleton, but this time Calard did not draw his sword. He merely waited as veins and sinew grew from blood, and grey-green skin encased its flesh. Fully reborn, it slipped into the bubbling pool.

‘What are you doing?’ yelled Orderic, reappearing suddenly, his sword drawn. ‘It will pass through! It must be stopped!’

‘No,’ said Calard, moving to intercept the knight, drawing his own blade. ‘It is the only way to get back to Bretonnia; the only way that you can attain peace.’

‘You would draw your blade against me?’ said Orderic. ‘You truly are a daemon!’

‘No,’ said Calard, sheathing his sword. ‘I will not fight you. If you wish to cut me down, do it, but I will not stand aside.’

For a moment, Calard thought the shade was going to do it, to run him through then and there, but Orderic relented, dropping to his knees.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Calard, ‘but this is the only way. May you soon find peace, Orderic of Montforte.’

He turned away, and moved quickly towards the blood-pool, dragging the whimpering peasant Chlod along with him. He reached its edge just as the wyvern disappeared beneath the bubbling surface, its spined tail flicking, and he shoved Chlod roughly into it. The peasant was babbling something indecipherable, and Calard was not sure if he had any real understanding of what was going on.

‘Dive!’ he shouted. ‘Dive, you stupid peasant!’

‘You would abandon me here?’ called Orderic, his voice filled with longing and despair, but Calard ignored the plaintive cry. ‘Don’t leave me here alone!’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said under his breath as he waded out into the blood-pool. Praying that this was going to work, he sucked in a deep breath and dived. He had no idea if Chlod was following.

He swam down and down. It was pitch-black, but he was swimming through water now rather than blood.

At last he came up, breaching the surface of the water and he breathed in deeply. The air was freezing, but he smiled broadly, overjoyed to be away from the burning hot otherworld. He was within the beast’s cavern lair, and he thanked the Lady. Still, the wyvern was loose, and more people would likely die if he did not hurry.

Chlod came up after him, half-drowned, spluttering and coughing, and Calard hauled him to the shallows.

‘Come, peasant!’ said Calard, hurrying towards the cave entrance.

He stepped out into the bright daylight, blinking against the glare. There was not a hint of cloud in the bright sky, and Calard smiled up at it, never more thankful to see it. The flaming heavens of that corrupted realm of Chaos had been driving him slowly insane.

The snows had all but gone, only patches of it remaining in the shadowed lee of pine trees and rocks. He shook his head, wondering how long they had been trapped in that hellish realm.

With Chlod in tow, Calard scrambled further up the mountain until he came to a glade within the pine trees. The view was spectacular, overlooking the mountains and down towards the lowlands of Bretonnia, towards Montforte. Bluebells spread out across the grass beneath the trees. It was a place that Orderic would have liked, he decided.

Calard dug a shallow grave and placed Orderic’s bones reverently within. Chlod offered to help, but Calard refused. This was something he had to do alone. He filled the grave with soil, and then spent the better part of the afternoon gathering and heaping stones on top of it in order that wolves and other scavengers did not dig it up.

Atop the burial mound, Calard erected a small tri-frame of pine branches. Around the top of it, he wound Orderic’s necklace, so that the little bronze statuette of the Lady hung above his resting place. It wasn’t much, but it seemed appropriate.

‘Be at peace, Orderic of Montforte,’ said Calard as he knelt before the grave.

The next day, weary and footsore, Calard and Chlod passed a pair of hunters, fresh kills draped across their shoulders. From those simple men, Calard heard a strange tale. They said that a wyvern had been seen abroad the day before, flying above the mountain peaks, but that it had turned to dust mid-flight, to be dispersed on the breeze.

‘What does it mean, master?’ said Chlod after they had bid farewell to the hunters. His eyes were still haunted from the sights he had seen in the Chaos otherworld.

‘It means that my task here is done,’ said Calard. ‘In life the wyvern defeated Orderic, yet he refused to accept death or failure. He became locked in an eternal loop, seeking always to defeat it; sometimes he would win, sometimes he would lose. Granted final rest, perhaps it too was allowed to move on, once and for all.’

Chlod’s brow furrowed, and he picked his nose.

‘Do wyverns go to Morr’s hall too, master?’ he said.

‘It is like speaking with an orc,’ said Calard, shaking his head. The peasant grinned and dribbled.

‘Where do we go now, master?’ Chlod said after a few minutes.

‘For now, homeward,’ Calard said. ‘After that? Wherever the Lady leads us.’

QUESTING KNIGHT

I

The silver moon of Mannslieb hung like a sickle blade in the clear night sky. Patches of snow shone brightly beneath it, and an icy wind whipped across the fields. Hunched against the biting gale, two riders were making their weary progress along a muddy road, passing overgrown, abandoned hovels and isolated clumps of woodland.

They travelled in silence, one behind the other, offering no conversation. The only sound accompanying them was the steady clomping of hooves, the jingle of tack and the ghostly whispering of the wind.

The lead rider drew his travel-stained cloak tighter around his shoulders as the wind picked up. His features were completely hidden in the deep shadow of his hood, yet his eyes glinted in the moonlight. His massive warhorse was over sixteen hands high at the shoulder, and he had a large sword. He rode in the languid manner of one who had spent his life on horseback.

The second rider looked decidedly awkward, slumped in the saddle of a mange-ridden mule. The plodding beast was a picture of misery, head hanging almost to the ground as it trudged through the mud, laden with heavy packs and chests. This rider was shivering, for while he too wore a cloak, it was threadbare and moth-eaten. His head was nodding towards his chest. Losing the battle to keep his eyes open, he pitched sidewards. He came awake with a muffled yelp, and after a brief, inelegant struggle, he hauled himself back upright.

‘I will not wait for you if you fall off again, Chlod,’ said the lead rider without turning. Chlod’s hood had fallen back, exposing his brutish head. His hair had been shaved short in a vain attempt to rid him of lice, and his eyes were piggish and uneven. He had only one ear, the other having been hacked off by a Norscan shaman years earlier, and his jutting jaw and heavy brow made him look like a simpleton. He glared at his master’s back, and pulled a grotesque face.

‘Make that face again, Chlod, and I will cut off your thumbs,’ said his master.

‘Sorry, my lord,’ said Chlod, knowing that it was not some idle threat.

They continued along in silence once more. Chlod blinked the sleep out of his eyes and concentrated on his surroundings. He thought they looked vaguely familiar, but it was hard to say under the cover of darkness, and besides, it had been many years since last he had set foot in Bretonnia.

‘Where are we, my lord?’ he said at last.

‘Home,’ came the reply.

It felt strange to say the word, thought Calard. Home.

Six long and difficult years had passed since he had left Castle Garamont. It felt like a lifetime. Six years ago he had taken up the grail quest, setting aside his lance and handing over the running of his castle and lands to his young cousin, Orlando, under the guidance of Baron Montcadas. Orlando had been just a boy when he had left, and by now he would be all but unrecognisable, on the cusp of manhood.

Calard had travelled the Old World and beyond seeking the Lady of the Lake, patron goddess of Bretonnia. Never in all that time had he spent more than a single night in one place, as per the decree of his oath, lest the Lady find him wanting.

Seeking the Lady’s divine favour, he had bested creatures foul and murderous in the forests of the Empire, championed the oppressed in the burning lands of Araby far to the south, and battled alongside dwarf thanes against screaming hordes of greenskins far beneath the Worlds Edge Mountains. He had fought in a dozen duels of honour, one against a monstrous ogre tyrant. He had battled trolls upon the frozen oblast of Kislev, rescued a nobleman’s daughter from sacrifice at the hands of cultists beneath Altdorf, and emerged victorious from the famed Dance of Blades in the cutthroat city of Sartosa, off the coast of Estalia. Always, he chased the elusive presence of the goddess, yet always she led him further on. Now, she had brought him back to his homeland.

For months, Calard’s dreams had been haunted by a recurring vision. Though he could not discern its full meaning, one thing was certain beyond any doubt; the goddess wished for him to return to Castle Garamont.

Calard reined his destrier in as he topped a tussocked rise. He drew his hood back. Gone was any hint of softness in his appearance, the years on the road having hardened his body and his mind. His eyes were dark and stern, and his cheeks rough with stubble. His hair was unwashed and hung past his shoulders, and his face was tanned. As alert and lean as a hunting wolf, he stared over the fields into the distance. His eyes narrowed.

‘Master?’ said Chlod, after a minute. ‘What is it? I see nothing.’

‘Exactly,’ said Calard. ‘Where are the lights of Castle Garamont? We should be able to see them on the horizon from here.’

The mighty fortress dominated the landscape for miles around, and its men-at-arms always kept its beacon fires burning through the hours of darkness. Nevertheless, the western horizon was ominously dark.

‘Perhaps someone forgot to light them?’ offered Chlod, but Calard shook his head.

‘There is something wrong here,’ he said, his eyes glinting fiercely in the moonlight. ‘I’ll move quicker alone. Follow after me, and keep to the road. Do not tarry.’ Chlod nodded.

With a flick of the reins Calard urged his destrier into a canter.

Mannslieb was just touching the horizon by the time he drew close. Dark and ominous, his family castle loomed above him. He circled around it in a wide arc, scouting for danger, but saw no sign of life other than a startled fox and a mated pair of ghost-owls hunting for prey. Calard’s expression was grim. The scent of ash filled the air, and several of the castle’s towers had collapsed. There were no sentries upon the walls, and no light in any of its windows. By all appearances, it was utterly abandoned, and had been left to ruin.

Nevertheless, Calard’s experience had taught him to be cautious, and he completed his wide circuit around the castle before he began his approach from the south, angling towards Garamont’s main gatehouse. Out of habit, he ensured that the wind was always in his face, so as to mask his scent from anything ahead.

The drawbridge was lowered and in a state of disrepair, and the rusted portcullis was up. Calard rode through the gatehouse into the courtyard beyond, staring around him at the ruin of his once great castle.

The keep was a burnt-out shell, its pale stone blackened with soot, and the wind howled mournfully through its empty halls. The stables were completely gone, with nothing but a few charred stumps and charcoal marking where they had stood. The north-east wall had partially collapsed, the debris scattered on the ground like grave markers.

Dismounting, Calard tied his warhorse to a fire-blackened post before climbing the stairs towards the keep. One of its doors was gone, while the other hung forlornly on one hinge, creaking in the breeze. Drawing his sword, he moved into the keep’s dark interior.

He passed through its empty halls, his expression betraying none of his surging emotions. The inside of the keep was now open to the sky, the upper floors completely gone, and the stars were visible high overhead. A few thick supporting beams remained intact, but even these were charred and looked as though they might fall at any moment. The grand stone staircase that rose from the main entrance hall still stood, rendered pointless now that it climbed nowhere, and its steps were thick with ash.

Bones and scraps of armour protruded from the debris in one hall, and these Calard inspected carefully, turning them over in his hands in an attempt to discern what tragedy had befallen his home. Chipped bone showed evidence of heavy sword blows, and as he prowled deeper into the ruin, he found more evidence that a great battle had taken place here some years earlier.

Without conscious thought, Calard found himself in a small annex off the western wing, where the castle’s shrine to the Lady was located. No divine power had protected it from the fire that had clearly ravaged the keep, and only a few jagged shards remained of its once beautiful stained-glass windows.

Something caught his eye, and Calard sheathed his sword and knelt before the fire-blackened altar. Half-buried amongst the rubble, a small statue of the Lady remained intact, lying on its side. It was covered in soot and chipped, but Calard picked it up and placed it reverently upon the altar. Closing his eyes, he began to pray.

There was noise outside and Calard was instantly on his feet, sword drawn. Moving silently and keeping to the shadows, he ghosted back through the ruined hall.

‘Master?’ called a voice.

‘Silence, fool,’ Calard hissed, stepping from the concealing darkness of the ruined keep.

‘What happened here, master?’ said Chlod. He half-climbed, half-fell from the saddle, and tied his mule to the post alongside Calard’s steed.

Calard’s eyes were locked on the ground at the peasant’s feet.

‘Stand still,’ he ordered.

‘What?’ said Chlod, turning in Calard’s direction.

‘Be still! Stop moving,’ said Calard, and the peasant froze. Calard moved forward, studying the ground intently. There were prints in the mud that he had not noticed earlier. ‘Back away over there,’ he said, gesturing.

‘Shall I prepare you some food, master?’ said Chlod, doing as he was bid.

‘Fine, but no fire,’ said Calard, not looking up. ‘It would be seen for miles around.’

Careful not disturb the tracks, Calard crouched and studied them intently. They were difficult to read, for the prints were old and crossed over themselves time and again. Nevertheless, after several minutes Calard had identified the tracks of nine separate individuals and their steeds. He judged that they had made camp here a week ago, perhaps two.

His eyes narrowed when he came across one particularly clear hoof-print. The depth of the track indicated a horse heavily burdened, and the mark of its shoe was clear. In the centre of the imprint was the blacksmith’s mark. Calard recognised the heraldic device instantly.

‘Sangasse,’ Calard spat.

Standing, Calard marched towards his waiting warhorse, and called for Chlod to make ready to depart.

‘Where do we go, master?’ said the peasant as he hurriedly began packing up his pots.

‘To visit an old neighbour,’ said Calard, his voice filled with rage.

II

‘Maloric!’

The sky glowed with pre-dawn light. The peasants of Sangasse had been awake for hours, working the muddy fields. Many of them had halted their work as Calard had passed by, leaning on hoes and muttering under their breath. Calard had ignored them, his head held high and his face a grim mask.

Though they were neighbours, no knight of Garamont had set foot on Sangasse lands for over six generations without blood being spilt. The border between the two powerful noble families had long been disputed, changing hands countless times over the centuries. As Calard had ridden towards the border, his anger had deepened, for it was clear that the Sangasse family had claimed much of Garamont’s land in his absence. By the time he arrived outside the gates of Castle Sangasse, a formidable bastion built atop a natural rocky bluff, his rage was incandescent.

‘Maloric!’ he bellowed again, wheeling his warhorse beneath him.

Nervous men-at-arms looked down from the castle walls at him. All of them were garbed in tabards bearing the heraldry of Maloric, the Earl of Sangasse. Maloric and Calard were of a similar age and had a long history of antagonism. Since childhood they had been raised to loathe one another, and even though they had fought side by side on dozens of occasions, even going so far as saving each other’s lives on the field of battle, they could never be anything but rivals.

Chlod licked his lips. Hundreds of bowmen were stationed along the walls, and a pair of mighty trebuchets were positioned atop the gatehouse. Scores of men-at-arms barred the way, shields locked together. Calard was undaunted, refusing to be intimidated by mere peasants.

‘Show yourself, Maloric!’ he shouted. ‘Calard, Castellan of Garamont demands it!’

At last, a young knight appeared atop the gatehouse. His hair was dishevelled and he was still blinking the sleep out of his eyes. Calard did not recognise him.

‘What is it you seek here, Garamont?’ called the knight.

‘Fetch your master, and be quick about it,’ shouted Calard. ‘I will not bandy words with you or any of Maloric’s lackeys.’

Chlod winced as the knight’s face reddened and several archers nocked arrows to strings.

‘Speak to me in such a tone again, Garamont, and you will be cut down where you stand,’ shouted back the knight. ‘Speak your piece quickly, or take your leave!’

‘I am a questing knight of the Lady,’ shouted Calard. ‘Any man who dares loose an arrow in my direction will be cursed by the goddess, as shall you if you give the order. Now be gone from my sight, I am done talking to you. I will speak to Maloric, and no one else. Fetch him from his bed if sleeping past dawn is his habit.’

His face flushed, the knight turned and disappeared from sight.

For long minutes, Calard and Chlod waited while men-at-arms and peasant bowmen shuffled their feet awkwardly. Chlod tried to shrink, making himself as inconspicuous as possible, while Calard paced back and forth before the gatehouse, his mount snorting and stamping its hooves in agitation.

Finally, the ranks of the men-at-arms in front parted, and an elderly knight appeared, his expression cold. This knight Calard recognised, though he could not recall his name. The knight bowed curtly, just low enough not to be openly discourteous.

‘The Earl of Sangasse and his lady bid you welcome, Calard of Garamont,’ said the knight. ‘My lord is currently sitting for breakfast, and asks that you join him.’

Calard dismounted, and a peasant ran forwards to take his reins.

‘Stay with the horses,’ he said to Chlod, before turning back towards the knight of Sangasse.

‘Lead on,’ said Calard.

The knight nodded, and turned on his heel, leading the way into Castle Sangasse.

‘Calard, what a pleasant surprise,’ said Maloric with a sardonic half-smile. ‘I thought you were dead.’

The earl was a lean man in his early thirties, handsome in an angular, sharp-featured way. His hair was pale and he sported a slender goatee beard. His clothes were finely made, and edged in silver. A long table laid with a spread fit for the king himself was before him. The rich aromas made Calard’s stomach knot, and he began to salivate despite himself; it had been weeks since he had eaten a meal not prepared by his manservant Chlod, who was a poor cook at best.

‘Sorry to disappoint, Maloric,’ said Calard, dragging his gaze from the food on display.

The Earl of Sangasse did not rise from his high-backed seat – a subtle insult that Calard did not fail to notice – and he looked Calard up and down.

‘My, my, you are quite a sight,’ said Maloric. ‘And what a stink! When was the last time you washed?’

‘One does not have much time for such luxuries when embarked on the quest, Maloric.’

‘Of course. I take it that you have still not yet been successful. It has been what, five years?’

‘Six.’

‘Six years,’ said Maloric, taking a swig of wine. ‘How time flies. Please, sit. No wait, I will send for a blanket. No offence, of course, but these chairs were imported from Cathay at not inconsiderable cost.’

‘I will stand, thank you,’ said Calard, coldly.

‘As you wish,’ said Maloric, shrugging. He gestured towards the food on the table. ‘Eat. Drink. You look half-starved.’

‘I did not come here to eat your food, nor to trade insults, Sangasse,’ said Calard.

‘Oh?’ said Maloric. ‘Then to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’

‘I have returned home to find my castle in ruin,’ said Calard, ‘and to suffer the insult of seeing Sangasse peasants tilling Garamont land. I have seen no sign of even one of my vassal knights, nor my appointed heir Orlando or his guardian, Baron Montcadas. I come here to call you to account for these transgressions, Maloric, and I swear by all that I hold holy that if you have done harm to my household, I will kill you.’

Holding Calard’s gaze, Maloric reached out and plucked a shelled quail’s egg from a silver plate. He popped it between his teeth and washed it down with another swig from his ornate goblet.

‘Are you done?’ said Maloric, dabbing at his lips with a silk napkin.

‘Long has Sangasse looked upon Garamont lands with envious eyes. I should have known that you would make a play for them in my absence,’ said Calard. ‘Did you murder Orlando with your own blade, Maloric, or did you have one of your knights do it for you?’

‘I am no murderer of children, and I would be well within my rights to demand justice for such an insult, offered in my own hall no less. However, you are clearly aggrieved and not in full control of yourself. What god did your family offend, Calard, to see it suffer so? Truly your bloodline is cursed.’

‘Do not speak of my family, Sangasse dog,’ said Calard.

‘I will forgive that this once, Garamont, for you speak in rashness and ignorance. But I warn you, do not fling your baseless insults and accusations in my direction again or I will not be so tolerant. I would not wish such a fate as your family has suffered on any noble son of Bastonne, even you, but my patience can be pushed only so far.’

‘I saw men garbed in the regalia of Sangasse patrolling Garamont lands,’ said Calard in an even voice, regathering some control of his temper. ‘And I know that your men have camped in the ruin of my castle. What explanation do you offer for this?’

‘I would not have an empty, unguarded land bordering my own,’ said Maloric. ‘Without a standing military force, Garamont would be a breeding ground for miscreants and outcasts, a haven for bandits and worse. I am merely ensuring the protection of my own lands by sending patrols into your homeland. I have annexed a portion of Garamont lands to pay for this additional militia, in lieu of recompense – for whom should I claim recompense from? As I said, I thought you dead.’

‘And what of my nephew and heir, Orlando? What has become of him?’

Before Maloric could answer, a side door to the chamber opened and a lady swept into the room, trailed by handmaidens. Rose-scented perfume wafted into the room in her wake.

‘You know my wife, Josephine,’ said Maloric.

‘Your wife?’ said Calard in shock.

The last time he had seen the Lady Josephine had been in the halls of Garamont. She was Baron Montcadas’s niece, and Calard had thought of her often during his long absence. On dark and lonely nights he had harboured romantic notions of marrying her on his return to Bretonnia, were she unwed. The old Baron Montcadas, who had always been more of a father than his own had ever been, had hoped to see the two of them wed years earlier, and had Calard not taken up the quest he believed they might have done. He had known her to be a warm-hearted and beautiful young woman, born of a wealthy and respectable noble family, and he had always found her company engaging.

‘Calard, we thought you were dead!’ said Josephine, rushing across to him. She hugged him tightly, tears in her gentle eyes.

‘You married Maloric?’ said Calard.

‘He is a good man,’ said Josephine, softly, ‘and a dutiful father.’

‘You... You have children?’ said Calard, stepping awkwardly away from her embrace.

‘You have been gone a long time,’ she said. There were dirty smudges on her silk dress, and Calard was suddenly conscious of his travel-worn appearance.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but she waved away his apology.

‘It is nothing.’

‘So you say,’ said Maloric, standing and moving to Josephine’s side. ‘I am the one who pays for these dresses. She has expensive taste,’ he said to Calard as he embraced his wife.

Calard turned away, his mind reeling. He helped himself to a goblet of wine and downed it in one draught.

When he turned back around, his face was an unreadable mask.

‘Have you heard from Bertelis?’ asked Josephine.

‘No,’ said Calard. ‘I hoped that you might have?’

Josephine shook her head sadly.

The last time Calard had seen his half-brother had been in Lyonesse, just months before he had taken up the quest, and he still carried the guilt over the last words they had exchanged. Calard had just witnessed the death of Elisabet, a noblewoman he had once loved. While he could see now that it had been an accident, at the time all he had seen was that she had died at his brother’s hand. Blinded by grief, he had spoken angrily, and his words haunted him still, six years on.

‘You are my brother no longer,’ he had said. Calard had had many nights to regret those words, but he feared that he would never have the opportunity to atone for them. Bertelis and he had parted ways soon after.

‘What happened to my home?’ said Calard, dragging himself back to the present. ‘Where is Orlando? Where is Montcadas?’

Fresh tears welled in Josephine’s eyes and Maloric’s expression darkened.

‘I’m sorry, Calard,’ Josephine said.

Calard stared at the empty plate in front of him. Despite its quality and his hunger, the food had been like ash in his mouth.

‘It was ablaze by the time my knights and I arrived,’ said Maloric. ‘There was nothing to be done. It burned solidly for two days, and it was a week before the embers cooled.’

‘The goddess must have been looking over me,’ said Josephine. ‘Only my two handmaidens, a stableboy and I escaped.’

‘How she didn’t break a leg leaping from her window, I’ll never know,’ said Maloric.

‘How could two knights have killed them all?’ asked Calard. ‘Fifteen of my vassal knights, as well as what, forty men-at-arms? Fifty? It is inconceivable. No two men could do that.’

‘They were no men,’ said Josephine. ‘Of that I am certain. They were daemons in knights’ bodies.’

‘You saw them, you said?’ said Calard.

‘Only from afar. I was in my chambers preparing for bed when I heard them arrive at the castle gates. It was late. I heard the voices of your knights welcome these newcomers, as if they knew them. Their voices were raised, not in alarm but in surprise, joy even. At first I thought maybe it was you, Calard, returning home, but I was mistaken. The screams started soon after that.’

Calard leaned forward, focused completely on Josephine’s words. Her face was pale and drawn, and her eyes misted over as she took herself back to that fateful night five years earlier.

‘I know this is hard,’ said Calard. Josephine composed herself before continuing.

‘I left my room and was coming down the stairs. There were bodies everywhere. The screams were deafening. I could see one of them clearly through the open doors of the main hall. He – it – was covered in blood, from head to toe, and it moved faster than any man should. I ran to Orlando’s room, but one of the monsters had already been there.’ She sobbed, and took a moment to contain herself before continuing. ‘He looked as though he was sleeping. His eyes were closed, but there was so much blood... The baron was there too. He died with a sword in his hand, blind as he was, the brave old fool. I ran to my room, and barricaded the door. I stayed there until I smelled smoke. The floor started to get hot. When the heat became unbearable I leapt from my window.’

‘The knight you saw,’ said Calard. ‘Did you see his heraldry?’

‘No,’ said Josephine. ‘But the devil was garbed in white.’

‘Dressed in white...’ breathed Calard. The vision that had been plaguing Calard for months sprang unbidden into his mind. The images were confusing, their meaning unclear, but he recalled again a shield of white lying discarded on the ground, splattered with blood. Bones and a skull, bleached white in the sun, were visible in the dead grass. A breeze picked up and black petals filled the air. Several flowers settled on the shield face, and only now did Calard recognise them for what they were.

‘This knight. His shield bore a black fleur-de-lys, didn’t it?’

‘It is possible,’ said Josephine, frowning, ‘but I could not be sure.’

‘I am certain,’ said Calard. ‘The Lady sent me a vision of black lilies falling upon a shield of white. She was telling me who did this.’

The lily was sacred to the Lady, and had been since the founding of Bretonnia. The tri-petalled symbol of the fleur-de-lys was a stylistic representation of the sacred flower, and while it had always been a sign of purity, the symbol had also been traditionally worn by the nobles of a house that was once proud and honourable, but had long fallen to darkness.

‘The goddess has shown me who has brought this ruination on my house that I might seek vengeance,’ said Calard, his eyes gleaming with conviction.

‘If you say so,’ said Maloric, putting his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

‘My path is clear,’ said Calard, standing. ‘I must leave.’

‘Leave?’ said Josephine, half-rising. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘If he wishes to chase foolish dreams, let him go,’ said Maloric, placing a hand on his wife’s arm.

‘But go where?’

‘The knight that you saw,’ said Calard. ‘I know who he is.’

‘Who?’ said Josephine.

‘A black fleur-de-lys against a white field. That is the heraldry of Merovech of Arlons.’

‘The knight that defeated your brother at the tournament in Lyonesse,’ said Maloric. ‘Am I right?’

‘You are.’

‘Arlons?’ said Josephine. ‘Where is that? I am not familiar with the name.’

‘I am not surprised,’ said Maloric, ‘for it is a cursed place. It lies within the borders of Mousillon.’

‘Mousillon,’ breathed Josephine, her eyes widening in horror.

‘And that is where I go,’ said Calard.

III

Mousillon, Realm of the Damned.

Chlod stared ahead with wide, unblinking eyes as the barge made steady progress across the black waters of the River Grismerie. His gaze was locked in the near distance, where a solid wall of fog rose up, linking the icy black water with the overcast sky, concealing the shores of Mousillon. The peasant shivered.

‘It is like the edge of the world,’ said Chlod. ‘And we are sailing straight towards it.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Calard. ‘It is fog, nothing more.’

He was turning a sword over in his hands, marvelling at its workmanship. The blade was flawless, gleaming silver and the pommel was beautifully crafted into the shape of a fleur-de-lys.

The Sword of Garamont was a priceless heirloom, and it had been in the family for generations. Said to have been blessed by the kiss of the Lady herself, Calard had presented it to his nephew Orlando when he had taken up his quest. He had feared it lost, stolen or destroyed when his castle was sacked, but such fears had been proven unfounded. Before he had left Sangasse three weeks earlier, Maloric had brought it to him, wrapped in velvet.

‘My men found it in the ruins,’ the Earl of Sangasse had said. ‘I thought it best not to leave it for scavengers.’

Miraculously, perhaps protected by the Lady’s blessing, the blade had survived the fire unscathed. Calard sheathed the sword, and buckled it around his waist.

They were approaching the midway point of the Grismerie, and the river’s black water was flowing fast and deep beneath them. Squat guard towers could be seen along the river bank in the distance behind them, on the Bastonne side of the Grismerie. Similar towers were positioned all along the many hundreds of miles of Mousillon’s borders. Funded by the king’s coffers, these bastions had been erected almost five hundred years earlier, and they stood as silent sentinels, ever watchful for a threat from Mousillon. At the first sign of trouble, the massive pyres atop the towers would be lit, one after another, spreading the word faster than an eagle could fly.

Calard’s horse whinnied and shuffled uneasily, hooves sounding sharply on the barge’s deck. Standing, Calard moved back to where the destrier was tethered and spoke to her in soothing tones, stroking her neck. Five surly boatmen worked the barge in silence, but Calard ignored them. Having settled his warhorse, he made his way towards the bow, where Chlod sat clutching the gunwale. The barge rocked gently to and fro, and Calard, unused to being on the water, kept a solid grip on the railing as he moved to the front of the barge.

‘No good will come of this,’ said Chlod. The peasant was clearly terrified.

The fog loomed hundreds of feet above them, like the sheer walls of a castle marking the midway point across the Grismerie. The hunch-backed peasant closed his eyes and muttered a prayer as the barge entered the murk.

A chill descended on them, its touch wet and cloying, and visibility was suddenly reduced to less than a few feet. The mist seemed to swallow up all sound, making even the lapping of water upon the hull of the barge sound strangely distant. The fog seeped in under Calard’s armour, making his skin wet and clammy, and he began to shiver.

Something ground against the underside of the barge, which began to rock back and forth alarmingly.

‘What was that?’ squeaked Chlod, eyes snapping open, fingernails digging into the wooden gunwale.

‘Big fish,’ said one of the grim-faced boatmen. Calard was unsure if the man was joking or not.

Within minutes, Calard was soaked to the skin, his hair clinging in long wet strands down his neck. The journey through the fog seemed to last an eternity. Strange noises echoed around them: creaks, groans and distant screams that Calard guessed were seabirds but sounded distinctly human. On more than one occasion he was convinced he heard whispering voices nearby, but saw nothing.

Chlod gave a yelp at one point, and Calard glared at him.

‘I felt someone breathing on my neck,’ said Chlod, his voice strained.

‘You imagined it,’ said Calard. ‘Be silent.’

Calard was starting to doubt the boatmen’s ability to guide the barge safely through the fog when the sound of gravel scraping against the hull signalled their arrival on the shores of Mousillon.

The riverbank appeared like a mirage through the fog as the barge came to a grinding halt in the shallows. The land was hidden in mist, but a narrow strip of black sand soon emerged forming a beach in front of them.

Clearly eager to be away, the boatmen unloaded the barge hastily. There was a brief struggle to get Chlod’s mule off the deck. The obstinate beast was reluctant to step ashore, and the struggle only ended after Calard slapped it hard on the flank. His own steed was equally uneasy, but did as it was bid with less complaint, stepping off the front of the vessel and splashing into the shallow black water. Without a word of farewell, the boatmen poled the barge off the river bank and were swallowed by the fog.

It was as dark as twilight, though it couldn’t have been an hour past midday. Looking around them, it seemed to Calard as if all colour had been bleached from the land. The sun had been shining through the clouds on the other side of the river, but it was nowhere to be seen here. The grass and vegetation was shrivelled and dead. A lone tree stood nearby, its trunk twisted. A raven perched on a leafless branch, watching them. Calard caught movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to face it, it was gone.

‘We’re never leaving here alive,’ said Chlod.

Somewhere in the mist, a wolf began to howl.

IV

Something was hunting them.

They had barely halted, riding steadily westwards through lonely, wind-swept landscapes and muddy fields filled with rotting crops. They had passed through a number of isolated peasant hamlets, but seen only glimpses of the inhabitants peeking out at them through barred windows.

The haunted realm had at first seemed to exist in a permanent state of twilight, but the shadows deepened as that twilight gave way to night. With no visible moon or star in the sky overhead, the darkness was soon all-consuming. Only far beneath the Worlds Edge Mountains had Calard experienced such utter blackness. Lighting torches, they continued on through that first, nightmarish night.

The darkness was filled with the howling of wolves, the beat of heavy, leathery wings, and the rustle of unseen creatures in the undergrowth nearby. They dared not rest, and pushed on through the night. A multitude of eyes glinted in the torchlight, watching their progress. In a break in the ever-present fog, Calard glimpsed huge, black-furred wolves loping alongside the road, dogging their progress.

Wolves were not the only things stalking them. On more than one occasion Calard glimpsed hunched figures on the road behind them.

‘They’re back again,’ said Chlod, his voice strained as he looked back along the road.

‘They have been there for some time,’ Calard replied.

‘They are growing bolder.’

‘We need to find shelter,’ said Calard. ‘We cannot travel on through another night without rest, not hounded by those... things.’

They continued on in silence as the shadows deepened around them. Abruptly, the muddy road turned and veered over a small creek, angling straight into the dark forest they had so far been skirting. The wood was shadowy and threatening, its trees bloated and misshapen. Their trunks were rotten and covered in lichen and fungus.

‘Do we go in?’ asked Chlod.

‘It has to lead somewhere,’ said Calard. ‘And we have to keep moving.’

With a nudge, he urged his steed on. Its hooves sank into the marshy ground as it stepped down to the shallow creek. The water stank, and was covered in a film of scum. With a kick of encouragement, Calard’s warhorse leapt forward, clearing the stream and climbing the bank on the other side.

Chlod’s mule was incapable of such a leap and seemed reluctant to step into the foul waters. As Chlod kicked and swore at the stubborn beast, Calard’s gaze was drawn upwards by the ugly cawing of carrion birds.

More than a dozen corpses were strung up in the trees overhead, hanging from ropes and gibbets. They spun gently as black birds tore strips of flesh from the bodies.

Movement in the trees dragged his attention down from the grisly sight. Shadows were detaching themselves from the surrounding darkness, edging towards them.

Calard reached over his back and drew his massive bastard sword from its sheath, holding it one-handed.

‘Hurry up, peasant!’ he hissed.

Perhaps catching a scent of the hunters on the breeze, the mule lurched forwards suddenly, almost throwing Chlod from its back, and the peasant lost his grip on the reins.

‘Whoa!’ shouted Chlod, clinging on desperately as the mule set off down the roadway, ears flat against its skull.

Calard’s steed flared its nostrils and stamped its hooves, and he fought to keep it under control, guiding it skilfully with his knees as he took his sword in both hands. He heard something hiss nearby, the sound low and sibilant, and he kicked his steed into a canter. It needed no encouragement, and took after Chlod instantly.

Glancing back, Calard saw a pack of hunched creatures loping after them. He could not tell if they were human or beast, or some horrid blend of the two.

Something caught at his hair, scratching his neck, and Calard swung his sword with a cry. It was just a branch, and Calard swore, berating himself. Foul-smelling sap was dripping like blood from the tree, and it recoiled with a groan, twigs shivering.

‘Lady above,’ Calard breathed. The other trees seemed to lean in, branches reaching towards him. Ducking away from their snagging twigs, Calard urged his warhorse into a gallop.

Within a few heartbeats he had drawn alongside Chlod, still clinging vainly to his panicked mule, and he reached out and grabbed the beast’s wildly swinging reins. Calard forced the animal to slow its wild gallop. Behind him, the road was clear again.

It was half an hour before they escaped the grotesque wood, and Calard let out a breath that he didn’t realise he had been holding. Up ahead he saw a small farmhouse. Turning up a muddy path, he led the way towards it.

There was no sign of life at the farm other than a starving three-legged goat tethered to a rotten stump. The pitiful animal’s ribs were clearly visible beneath its stretched skin. It bleated frantically, pink tongue protruding as it strained on its chain.

Calard spied a small covered well, and slid from his saddle alongside it. He began drawing the bucket up from below, hauling it up on its thin rope. His horse was lathered in sweat, its mouth flecked with foam. Calard hoped the well-water was drinkable. He dragged the bucket over the lip of the well, and lifted it to his nose. Frowning, he brought it to his lips and took a swig. He spat it out instantly, coughing.

‘Bad?’ asked Chlod.

‘Bad,’ said Calard, throwing the bucket to the ground in disgust. It split like an overripe fruit, spilling its contents. His stomach churned as he saw bloated worms wriggling in the water.

A woman’s cry sounded nearby, high-pitched and in pain, and it was joined by voices raised in anger or excitement. The sounds were coming from around the side of the farmstead’s barn. Calard drew his sword and rode towards it.

A foetid stench assailed his nose as he approached the barn, something akin to rotting meat and excrement. Rounding the rotting structure, he saw a cluster of peasants gathered around a woman on the ground. They were beating her mercilessly with sticks, and Calard winced at the savagery of the attack. She screamed again, but was knocked back to the ground as she tried to rise. The peasants laughed cruelly, clearly enjoying their sport. Indignation and anger swelled in Calard, and with a yell, he kicked his steed forwards.

The peasants looked up in shock, then scattered. They took off over the fields, and Calard dragged on the reins, cutting short his pursuit.

‘Cowards,’ snarled Calard, shaking his head in disgust. He slid from his saddle, sheathed his sword and approached the woman.

She was sitting on the ground like a broken puppet, slumped forward over her splayed legs. Her hair was long and unkempt, hanging down over her face. Her thin shoulders heaved with each pained intake of breath.

‘They are gone,’ said Calard, stepping towards her. ‘They will trouble you no more.’

Her tattered peasant garb was ripped at the shoulder, exposing skin that was purple with bruises and cuts. The girl made no move to cover herself, and Calard averted his eyes out of modesty.

‘You are hurt,’ he said, stepping close.

Her head snapped up and Calard caught a glimpse of bloodshot eyes staring out through the girl’s tangle of matted hair. Thin lips drew back to expose filthy, jagged teeth, and as Calard recoiled in disgust she lashed out, seizing his forearm. Swearing, he tried to pull away, but the girl was surprisingly strong and held him in a vice-like grip.

With a feral hiss she slashed at him with her free hand, fingers curved like talons. Those fingers were long and bone-thin, their nails cracked and encrusted with filth. Instinctively, Calard turned his face away from the blow, a move that undoubtedly saved his eyes from being torn from their sockets. Still, he could not avoid the strike entirely, and her nails gouged four deep cuts across his cheek.

With a curse, Calard backhanded the feral peasant girl. She slammed heavily to the ground, losing her grip, and Calard backed away.

Scrambling onto all fours, the girl glared up at him, pure hatred burning in her eyes. An animalistic growl rumbled deep in her chest. Her teeth were bared and she began to crawl swiftly towards him, like a spider closing in on its prey.

Calard drew his bastard sword, and she hesitated. Sensing her indecision, he yelled loudly and took an aggressive step towards her.

With a hiss, the girl turned and fled. He watched her go, revulsion written on his face, but his head snapped around as he heard Chlod scream.

‘Master!’

Moving quickly, Calard hauled himself into the saddle of his warhorse. Rounding the front of the barn, he saw his manservant pointing wildly.

There were dozens of loping figures approaching the farm from across the muddy fields. Calard could not be sure if they were the same ones that had been following them, but he thought it likely. He saw instantly that there were too many of them to fight, and while the notion of fleeing from them made his face burn with shame, he knew that it would not serve the Lady’s purpose to die here, meaninglessly.

‘Forgive me, Lady,’ he whispered. ‘Peasant! We ride!’

Chlod’s mule bucked suddenly as the wind shifted, bringing with it the scent of the approaching hunters. The hunchbacked peasant fell backwards into the mud, and the mule took off over the fields.

Calard swore, and made to go after the beast, but dragged himself back as more of the hunched figures appeared, rising from concealment. They leapt on the mule like a pack of wild dogs, and it screamed in terror as it was dragged to the ground. They were peasants, he saw now, undernourished and filthy, and some of them appeared so devolved and inbred as to be barely human at all.

His steed tensed beneath him, stamping its hooves and snorting in agitation.

The starving peasants were running towards them now, closing the distance quickly. Their faces were twisted in ravenous hunger.

‘Keep back, or by the Lady’s name I will not stay my blade!’ roared Calard, holding his sword high. They came on undaunted, and he swore again.

Making his decision quickly, Calard rode forward and plucked Chlod from the ground by the scruff of his neck. He dumped him on the saddle behind him, and urged his destrier on.

If the warhorse was overburdened carrying two riders, it didn’t show, and within heartbeats they were riding hard up the muddy roadway. The starving peasants ran after them, but they were easily outpaced. Only once the hellish farmstead was several miles behind them did Calard rein the destrier in, patting her neck appreciatively.

Darkness closed in, bringing all its claustrophobic terrors with it, and so their second night in Mousillon began.

V

It was pitch-black as they approached the inn, yet it could only have been an hour after nightfall.

It was built like a fortress. It had few windows on its lowest level, and these were shuttered and barred. Fifteen-foot-high walls topped with spikes enclosed it completely. Braziers burned brightly in a vain attempt to keep the night at bay. A stout gatehouse was the only entrance to the compound, and to Calard’s trained eye it looked able to withstand all but the most concerted siege.

As they rode into the light, Calard pulled his hood down over his face. They were spotted as they approached the inn’s fortified gate; sentries levelled heavy crossbows in their direction. Calard knew that his armour would provide scant protection at this distance, but if he felt any unease, he did not show it.

‘Who goes there?’ called out one of the guards.

‘Travellers seeking a room,’ replied Calard.

‘The gates are sealed at nightfall, stranger,’ came the reply. ‘Move along.’

‘What now?’ said Chlod, eyeing the night with haunted eyes. Wolves howled in the distance and he shivered.

‘I’ll be damned if we’re spending the night out here,’ Calard said under his breath. ‘We have coin, peasant,’ he called out. ‘We are not paupers.’

‘How much?’ called down the guard.

‘Enough,’ said Calard.

‘Approach,’ ordered the guard.

Calard nudged his warhorse forward, noting the deep scratches and gouges in the front of the gate. The sign swinging above the arched gateway proclaimed the inn to be called Morr’s Rest. Below the sign was a carved icon of the god of death in his guise as the reaper. This carved wooden statuette clasped a foaming mug of ale in one skeletal hand, while in its other it held its more traditional sword. Calard frowned, uncomfortable at such disrespect, and he muttered a prayer of appeasement to the god of the underworld.

A hatch in the gate opened up, just large enough to show the pig-like face of a guard, squinting at them through a latticework of bars.

‘Show us the colour of your coin, stranger,’ he said.

Calard edged his steed closer and slid from the saddle. He drew a copper piece from his coin pouch and held it out.

‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ said the guard.

‘This is more than you deserve,’ said Calard. ‘Take it and open the gate.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said the guard, grinning smugly. ‘What else you got?’

Calard sighed.

‘Fine,’ he said, pulling a second pouch from beneath his travel worn tabard. This one was made of fine velvet, and the sentry’s small eyes lit up.

‘Closer,’ Calard said in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I’ve only got the one, so it will only do for you, not the other guards.’

The man leaned in close, licking his lips. Calard’s hand shot out, slipping through the bars to grab the guard around the back of the neck.

‘You should have taken the copper,’ said Calard in a low voice.

The guard’s eyes were bulging. Calard pulled him violently forwards, slamming his face against the bars. Before the guard could recover, Calard pressed the blade of a knife to his throat.

‘I have a new proposition. Open the gate and you live to see another dawn.’

The man tried to speak, but Calard pushed the knife more forcefully into the rolls of fat beneath his chin, drawing blood.

‘Nod your head if you agree,’ he said, eyes cold and dispassionate. ‘Gently.’

The man’s eyes were wide with fear, and he nodded his head slightly.

‘Good,’ said Calard.

‘Open it up,’ said the guard, his voice hoarse, and Calard heard the heavy bar being removed. He released the guard, his knife disappearing.

The gate swung wide.

‘Try anything before I leave, and I’ll gut you like the pig you are,’ Calard hissed, leaning in close to the shaken guard as he walked through.

Calard caught a snatch of the conversation behind him as he led his steed into the walled inn’s courtyard. He heard guards asking how much the gatekeeper had got. Calard glanced over his shoulder and caught the man’s eye.

‘Enough,’ he heard him say, looking away quickly.

The common room of Morr’s Rest was crowded and filled with smoke, and even the aroma of sawdust, ale and cooking meat was unable to fully conceal the stink of humanity and vomit within. Holy sigils and loops of garlic hung above all the doors and windows. Conversation stopped and heads turned as Calard stepped through the door.

He drew his hood down lower over his face under the scrutiny and took in the layout of the place at a glance. The drinkers themselves were a surly lot, their expressions ranging from suspicion to outright hostility. He glared at those whose gaze lingered on him too long, and one by one they turned back to their drinks, muttering darkly, and the hubbub of conversation resumed.

A more disreputable crowd of people Calard had rarely encountered, and he wondered wryly if he would be better off facing the creatures of the night. The patrons of Morr’s Rest scowled, bickered and spat as they gambled, drank and stuffed their faces with greasy stew and stale bread, laughing loudly at ribald jokes and groping the beleaguered serving girls as they squeezed from table to table. Calard kept one hand on the hilt of his sword as he pushed his way towards the bar, scanning for potential threats.

Most of the drinkers had the look of outlaws, brigands and vagabonds, though some of them might have been desperate merchants fallen on hard times or fleeing debtors. Nor were they all of low birth; many were knights, though few of them displayed their colours or heraldry. Outcasts and dispossessed nobles mostly, Calard guessed; knights who had fled to Mousillon in dishonour. Most were likely murderers, traitors and cowards, and Calard fought to keep the disdain off his face as he moved amongst them.

He bumped into one of these knights as he shouldered his way to the bar. The nobleman was tall, gaunt-featured and dressed in dark colours, and he had his hand on the hilt of his sword. He had a vicious scar across his throat, and his eyes were cold. Calard held the man’s gaze for a moment, before pushing past him and signalling the squint-eyed innkeeper for service. An ogre stood nearby, easily nine feet tall, its brutal face a mess of scars. It had a bored expression on its face, and its arms, as thick as tree trunks, were folded across its massive chest.

‘Keeps the rowdier ones in check,’ said the innkeeper. He wore a heavily stained apron over his obese gut. ‘What are you wanting?’

‘A room,’ said Calard, ‘and feed for my horse.’ He pushed a pair of coins across the bar and they disappeared in the blink of an eye.

‘One of the girls will bring you food and drink,’ said the innkeep, handing over a room key before turning to serve another patron. Calard grabbed the innkeeper by his arm and dragged him back.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ said Calard in low voice. ‘A noble by the name of Merovech.’

The innkeeper pulled his arm away, scowling. ‘You ain‘t from around here, are you?’ he said.

‘You know him?’ said Calard.

The innkeeper nodded.

‘Them’s his knights back there,’ he said, gesturing through the crowd. ‘Bastards’ll ruin me, drinking me dry and not paying a copper, but what can I do?’

Nodding his thanks, Calard found a secluded table in a dark corner and sat with his back against the wall. A bowl of gristly stew was brought to him along with a goblet of cheap wine, and he had some bread and water sent out to Chlod. He didn’t touch his food, and made only a pretence of drinking his wine, eyes locked on the knights that the innkeeper had identified.

There were six of them, drinking heavily, and their table was piled high with empty dishes and goblets. Calard saw that one of their number was the cold-eyed knight he had bumped into at the bar, though he sat apart from the others, distancing himself from their drunken excesses. These other five were being loud, obnoxious and aggressive, shouting and pounding their goblets on the table as they watched a puppet show under way upon the small stage at the back of the inn.

Macabre, gangly marionettes were re-enacting various events from history, and Calard’s attention was drawn to the performance as something caught his eye. He saw a puppet knight dressed in a white tabard, and his eyes narrowed. The puppet’s heraldry was unmistakable: a black fleur-de-lys on a white field. The knight’s face was white, as was his hair, and he wore a crown of rulership upon his head.

‘The duke invited all the nobles in Bretonnia to Mousillon, to celebrate his great victory!’ screeched the voice of the story’s narrator from behind the puppeteers’ screen. ‘The king himself came, and the Duke of Mousillon was proclaimed saviour of Bretonnia!’

A cheer erupted from the watching crowd as puppets representing the dukes of Bretonnia lifted the puppet of Duke Merovech high into the air.

‘However, the king was jealous of our beloved duke’s achievements,’ continued the narrator, ‘and he knew that Duke Merovech would make a far better king than himself. He began plotting our duke’s downfall.’

The crowd booed as the puppet of the king, carved to look like a drunken buffoon, rubbed its hands together in an evil, conspiratorial manner. Calard frowned. He knew this tale, but its telling was unlike any he had heard before: its perspective was skewed, its heroes and villains flipped.

The true tale was from a dark period in the history of Bretonnia, hundreds of years earlier, and it told the story of the last Duke of Mousillon, who was, by all reports, a butcher and murderer, a drinker of blood and an eater of children. However, in the puppet show being performed here, the sadistic duke was portrayed as a living saint, while the king and his loyal dukes were little more than jealous inbreds, conspiring against him.

The crowd cheered as the Duke of Mousillon uncovered the conspiracy against him, and thumped their tables as the puppets of their duke and the king drew swords against one another. The marionettes duelled, the skilled puppeteers making them fight with surprising believability, and the inn resounded to the clash of swords.

Cheers and laughter erupted as the king’s head was lopped from its shoulders, and those in the front row were sprayed with pig’s blood pumped up through the puppet’s severed neck. The marionette of the Duke of Mousillon lifted up a tiny goblet to catch the rain of blood, which it then drank down in one gulp, which was met with further cheers.

The curtain fell, and the narrator continued.

‘The traitor king was dead, but the jealous dukes turned against Mousillon.’

The curtain lifted again, showing the Duke of Mousillon and his knights battling against the other dukes.

‘Led by the treacherous Duke of Lyonesse,’ said the narrator, eliciting derisive hisses from the crowd, ‘they besieged Mousillon. Yet even heavily outnumbered, our lord could not be bested, not with his five trusted lieutenants beside him. Finally, the Duke of Lyonesse resorted to treachery.’

Boos and hisses greeted the appearance of a cloaked and hooded marionette that reared up behind the Duke of Mousillon and stabbed him to death. The deed done, the puppet threw off its disguise, revealing its identity as none other than the Duke of Lyonesse. The lights dimmed and the curtain fell.

The crowd booed loudly, but they hushed as the curtain rose one more time. The stage was unlit and bare but for a puppet reclined in death, wrapped in a shroud.

‘But before he died, our beloved duke swore an oath. He swore that he would return from beyond the grave and seek vengeance! He swore that Mousillon would be returned to its former glory, and that the rest of Bretonnia would pay for its betrayal!’

The death shroud was suddenly whisked away from the puppet-corpse and the figure of the Duke of Mousillon leapt up, a sword held in each hand.

‘Long live Duke Merovech!’ screeched the narrator, and the curtain fell for the last time.

Calard shook his head as the crowd cheered and banged their tables. His gaze settled on the knight that he had bumped into at the bar.

Perhaps sensing someone watching him, the knight looked up, but by the time he did, Calard had already gone.

VI

An hour later, the knight made his way up the narrow staircase to his room. He unlocked the door, which opened with a drawn-out creak. It was dark within, and he cursed. He had left a lamp burning low on the table within, but a draught must have blown it out. Leaving the door ajar so that he could see by the light in the hallway, he moved towards the table.

The door clicked shut abruptly, and darkness swallowed him. He spun around on his heel, reaching for his blade. It was half-drawn when the tip of a sword touched his throat, and he froze.

‘Sheathe it,’ said a voice from the darkness. The gaunt-featured knight scowled but did as he was bid. The shutters of a lamp were opened, and the knight squinted against the glare.

‘Sit,’ said Calard. He forced the knight back with the point of his sword, making him sink into a moth-eaten chair. To his credit, the dishonoured knight showed no fear. ‘Put your hands behind your head,’ Calard said. The knight gave Calard a long look.

‘You are making a mistake,’ the knight said, placing his hands casually behind his head. His voice was coarse, little more than a growl. Calard lifted the man’s chin with the point of his blade, exposing a jagged scar that reached across his throat from ear to ear.

‘Nice scar,’ said Calard.

‘I’m alive,’ growled the knight. ‘The same cannot be said for the whoreson who gave it to me.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Raben,’ said the knight. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘You are going to answer a few questions for me, Raben.’

‘You’re the one with the sword.’

‘You are one of Merovech’s knights?’

‘You already know the answer to that.’

‘Where is he, then?’

‘You honestly don’t know?’ said Raben.

‘If I did, I wouldn’t need you, outcast,’ said Calard.

‘Outcast, is it? Oh that hurts,’ said Raben.

‘Where?’ said Calard. A trickle of blood ran from Raben’s throat.

‘The ducal palace of Mousillon city,’ he said in his gravelly voice. ‘He does proclaim himself to be the long lost ruler of this realm, after all.’

‘The mad duke was killed centuries years ago,’ hissed Calard.

‘Who am I to dispute his claim?’ said Raben. ‘I’m just an outcast.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Is that it?’ said Raben. ‘Are we done?’

Calard lowered his sword, and the dispossessed knight let down his hands. Without warning, Calard slammed the heavy pommel of his sword into the side of Raben’s head. He fell sidewards from his chair and hit the floor, unconscious.

‘We are done,’ said Calard.

Chlod awoke with a start, his heart pounding. It took him a moment to remember where he was: the stable of Morr’s Rest. He lay there in the rotting hay, breathing hard. The sound came again – something like a heavy chunk of wood being dropped to the ground.

A shaft of torchlight seeped in from the courtyard outside through a knothole in the wall. Chlod squatted alongside it, squinting through the gap.

At first he saw nothing untoward. The courtyard of the inn was deserted. His eye swept the compound, and at last settled on the gatehouse. He frowned.

The shadows beneath the archway were dark, but even so he could see that the gate was open. The heavy locking bars were on the ground. Sealed, nothing short of a battering ram would be able to breach those gates, but they had been flung wide, an open invitation to the creatures beyond.

For a moment, Chlod half-considered a mad dash across the courtyard to lock the gates, for he knew well the horrors that lurked outside. However, he was no hero, and they would have been too heavy for him alone anyway. He stayed put, rooted in fear, staring at the gate in silent dread.

For long minutes he watched, barely daring to breathe. After what seemed an eternity, he saw a shadow appear, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose.

The dark shape hugged the ground, moving low. It paused at the edge of the torchlight, then edged forwards. Chlod saw a pallid face atop a scrawny, malnourished body. Bones were starkly visible beneath its skin. It sniffed the air like an animal, then hissed over its shoulder. Rising from the ground into a low crouch, the starving peasant padded warily into the courtyard of Morr’s Rest, hands twitching.

A second peasant came through behind the first, a filthy bearded man carrying a rusted plough blade. More followed. Chlod’s heart was hammering loudly in his chest, but he could not tear himself away from his spy-hole.

He froze as one of the peasants came within feet of him, separated only by the thin overlapping planks of the barn wall. This one was a foul creature, barely human at all. It came to a halt and cocked its head to one side, nostrils flaring. Chlod could make out the fine web of blue veins beneath its skin, and could smell its animal stink. It turned and stared straight at him. Chlod’s heart skipped a beat as it saw him. It grinned, exposing stained, jagged teeth.

Chlod fell away from the wall with a gasp, scrambling backwards. He heard footsteps inside the stable, and the horses and ponies began whinnying and kicking in their stalls. His master’s warhorse was trembling, ears flat against its skull.

A scream close by made him jump. It was cut short, ending in the strangled gargle of someone dying.

Chlod’s breathing was coming in frantic gasps, and his hands were shaking. Creeping forwards, he peered around the corner of the stall, looking out towards the entrance to the stables. He saw a handful of hunched peasants making their way up the aisle towards him. Their heads were low and swung from side to side, like dogs seeking a scent. He ducked back into the stall before he was seen.

‘Ranald, protect me,’ he said under his breath, invoking the trickster god of luck, benefactor of thieves, gamblers and ne’er-do-wells the Old World over. He turned around on the spot, undecided as to his best course of action. He considered hiding under the loose straw on the floor, but there wasn’t enough to adequately conceal him, and the peasants would surely sniff him out. He thought about mounting his master’s warhorse and riding free, but he doubted that he would have been able to haul himself up upon its back anyway, let alone ride it. And if he did somehow survive, his master would surely see him hang for sullying the noble beast.

He backed away into the far corner of the stall, edging past the powerful destrier. The horse’s muscles were twitching; it knew that predators approached. The feral peasants would be only yards away now, and Chlod bit his lip, indecision paralysing him.

A shadow appeared in the open stall gate, and the warhorse shuffled uneasily, snorting. Without thinking, Chlod slapped the horse hard on the rump.

‘Yah!’ he shouted, and the warhorse reared, smashing the stall gate to splinters. It leapt forwards, hooves clattering loudly, and Chlod glimpsed several figures throwing themselves aside. The destrier slipped on the cobblestones and half-fell, before righting itself and bolting for the courtyard.

Grabbing his spiked club from his meagre pile of belongings, Chlod dropped to hands and knees and started crawling frantically under the barriers separating the stalls. He heard the slapping feet of the feral peasants running up the aisle as he scrabbled through the rotten straw and horse manure.

He was almost trampled by an immense draught horse in one stall and barely avoided being kicked by a panicked pony in another. With a deep breath he hurled himself under the last barrier and scrambled to his feet, glancing behind him for signs of pursuit.

He nearly ran headlong into one of the peasants, who was crouched over the body of the stableboy. It was feeding, mouth caked with blood. Chlod could not halt his forward momentum, and bowled into the cannibalistic peasant. His knee cracked it in the face, and Chlod was sent sprawling on the ground at the stable’s entrance.

In a heartbeat he was back on his feet and running. He risked a glance behind him and saw the peasant stagger to its feet. It leapt after him, hair streaming wildly as it bounded along on all fours. More of the cannibalistic inbreds were streaming through the open gates, and Chlod saw right away that he had no chance of escape there. He angled his awkward, limping run towards the inn itself, knowing that his best chance of survival now lay with Calard.

‘Master!’ he screamed as he ran. ‘Master!’

At any moment he expected to be dragged down, but he made it across the courtyard and staggered up onto the inn’s covered stoop, breathing hard. He was just feet from the door when a weight landed on his back, bearing him to the ground. The air exploded from his lungs and he lost his grip on his spiked maul, which clattered out of reach.

He was pinned to the ground, and though he struggled desperately, he could not dislodge the hissing peasant. Bony hands grasped his skull, and he felt nails biting deep into his scalp. He screamed wordlessly, neck muscles straining to resist as his head was lifted high, then slammed down with brutal force. White hot pain blossomed. Dazed, Chlod registered his head being lifted again. In moments, his skull would be pulverised, his brain matter splattered across the stoop.

Blinking heavily, unable to focus, he vaguely saw the door to the inn swing open before him. He saw a shadow emerge, and a flash of silver.

Calard took the peasant’s head off with a double-handed sweep of his broadsword. The headless corpse slumped forwards over Chlod, blood pumping from its neck.

‘Up!’ shouted Calard, grabbing Chlod by back of his flea-ridden tunic and dragging him to his feet. His manservant’s legs were unsteady, unable yet to support his weight, and he flopped back to the ground, struggling to focus. Blood was dripping from his forehead. Swearing, Calard adjusted his grip on his manservant, then hurled him bodily through the door of the inn. He kicked the club through after him, then spun back to face the courtyard as three rabid peasants hurled themselves at him.

He cut the first down with a heavy blow that shattered its ribcage, and sliced the second from groin to sternum with the return sweep. The third leapt on him, scratching and biting, but he threw it off, sending it crashing into the wall of the inn. It dropped to its knees, and before it could recover Calard stepped in close and brought the pommel of his sword down onto its head, killing it instantly.

Seeing dozens of the creatures swarming across the courtyard towards him, Calard stepped back inside the inn and slammed the door shut. He threw his weight against it.

‘Chlod, the locks!’

A heavy impact struck the door, almost dislodging Calard. He gritted his teeth as his heels began sliding across the floor. The door was forced open a fraction, and claw-like hands reached around the edge.

Chlod picked up his spiked cudgel from the floor and bashed at the clutching hands, breaking bones and crushing fingers.

The door slammed shut and Chlod slid first the upper lock home, then the lower one. Breathing hard, Calard stepped away from the door, his sword levelled towards it. It shook violently, but held.

‘What in Morr’s name is going on?’ came a slurred a voice. Calard looked over his shoulder to see one of Merovech’s knights stumbling down the stairs, a drawn blade in his hands. He was clearly still the worse for wear from the night’s drinking, and he was followed by several of his comrades, all in various stages of dishevelment. Other guests of the inn were emerging from their rooms, their faces drawn and pale.

‘We are besieged,’ said Calard.

The banging at the door subsided, and Calard edged towards it, listening intently.

‘How did they get into the compound?’ said one of the knights.

‘Someone let them in, most likely,’ said Calard, glancing around. ‘The innkeeper would be my guess.’

‘What?’ said a voice. ‘Why would you say that?’

‘Do you see him here, or any of his staff?’ said Calard, gesturing around him. ‘They are probably all holed up in the gatehouse.’

‘The bastard’s sold us out to Mortis,’ growled one of Merovech’s knights. At mention of the name, Chlod whimpered.

Several of the other guests began to speak at once, their voices rising in panic.

‘Quiet,’ snapped Calard.

In the ensuing silence, they could all hear shuffling around the exterior of the inn. There were scuffling noises at the walls, and Calard looked up.

‘They are going for the second floor windows,’ shouted someone, and Calard quickly looked around him. There were over half a dozen armed men in the main room of the inn now.

‘You three,’ he said, jabbing a finger a cluster of men holding weapons. ‘Get upstairs and barricade the windows.’

‘I’ll be damned if I take orders from–’ snarled one of them, but Calard cut him off.

‘Do it!’ he thundered. The man looked like he was going to argue, but the others saw sense in Calard’s words, and hurried up the stairs. Calard gestured towards other men with his sword. ‘Get those tables on their sides to block the windows! You and you, help me slide this one in front of the door!’

Unseen by Calard, Raben staggered unsteadily down the stairs into the common room, one hand pressed to his temple. He had a sword in his hand, and his eyes burned with cold fury. He moved purposefully towards Calard as he heaved at a heavy oak table, positioning it to block the front door.

A shuttered window suddenly exploded inwards amid a shower of splinters, and feral peasants began clawing their way through, howling and braying like demented madmen. A table propped against another window was shoved aside, and more of the cannibalistic rabble began clambering inside.

‘For the Lady!’

Calard leapt forwards and brought his sword down on the head of the first peasant to scramble through, cleaving its skull down to the teeth, spraying blood.

He smashed another peasant back with the pommel of his sword, but dozens more were straining to get in. He could hear banging from upstairs, but that was soon drowned out by shouting, the clash of weapons and the sickly sound of blades hacking into flesh and bone.

Hands clawed for him and he stepped swiftly away from the door, slashing with his sword. A clutch of fingers dropped to the floor, twitching.

Chlod backed off, looking around frantically for an escape route. He ran behind the bar and tugged at the cellar door, but he could not lift it.

The front door was ripped off its hinges and tossed aside suddenly, and a flood of peasants streamed in, scrambling over the table slid up against it. Some carried crude clubs and rusted farm implements, while others seemed intent on killing with nothing more than tooth and claw.

Chlod dropped to the floor and crawled under the bar, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.

Calard found himself fighting side by side with Raben and two other men. Despite the knock Calard had given him, the outcast knight fought with poise and control. He was fast and deadly, his timing impeccable. Calard was careful not to turn his back on him.

The devolved peasants came on like a living tide, scrabbling over tables and sending chairs flying. For every one of their number that was cut down, two more squeezed through the windows and clambered through the gaping door, gradually forcing Calard and Raben back towards the bar.

The room was filled with the starving peasants’ stink, a mixture of sweat, rotting meat and wet soil.

It was not long before they started to attack down the inn’s stairs.

‘They’ve taken the upper floor,’ said Calard.

One of Raben’s knights was knocked to the ground and brained with what looked like a human thigh-bone.

‘This is hopeless,’ growled Raben. ‘There are too many of them!’

‘I have no intention of dying here,’ said Calard, kicking a twitching corpse off his blade. ‘The Lady is with me.’

Raben ran another peasant through, then spat derisively. ‘The Lady forsook this place long ago.’

One by one, the inn’s defenders were dragged down, their heads smashed in with sticks and their throats ripped out with blood-stained teeth. The peasants descended on them like starved beasts, and screams rang out from those not yet dead as the cannibals began their gory feast.

‘There must be another way out,’ shouted Calard, now fighting back to back with Raben.

Calard was wielding his bastard sword in one hand now, and had drawn the Sword of Garamont with his other.

A screeching, near naked peasant leapt at Calard from atop the bar, its body scrawny and malnourished. He cut it down in midair, and it fell in a bloody heap to the floor. Calard glanced around, getting a sense of their position within the common room.

‘The kitchen,’ he said, indicating towards it with a nod. ‘That’s our best chance. There must be a back door.’

Both Calard and Raben were splattered with blood, and while most of it was not their own, neither man was uninjured. Raben risked a quick glance back towards the kitchen. It was at least ten yards away, and they were now completely surrounded.

‘We won’t make it,’ said Raben.

‘Stay here and die then, damn you,’ said Calard.

With a roar, he forced the enemy back, swinging his swords around in a pair of deadly arcs. Taking advantage of the space he had created, he leapt atop the bar and ran along its length towards the back of the inn. Peasants reached for him but his blades sliced out, keeping them at bay. He leapt off the far end, slamming a pair of enemies to the floor. He came to his feet in the kitchen doorway, blades at the ready. The kitchen was disgustingly dirty, and rats scuttled in the shadows, but it was free of foes. He spotted a door on the far wall.

Glancing back into the common room, he saw Chlod emerge from beneath the bar, scurrying under tables towards him.

‘Quickly!’ Calard shouted. Peasants were close behind his manservant, their red-rimmed eyes wide.

Raben was standing alone, surrounded. He turned on the spot, holding his sword at the ready as peasants closed in around him, too many to hold off alone. Briefly, Calard’s gaze met Raben’s across the room. He saw the outcast mouth a curse. The peasants attacked as one but Raben had pre-empted them and was already moving. He swayed aside from a vicious blow and launched a lightning counter that took off an arm at the elbow.

Calard shoved Chlod into the kitchen.

‘Unlock the door!’ he ordered. Calard stepped back to give himself more room to swing as the enemy came at him. The first through the doorway was hacked almost in two as he cleaved it from shoulder-blade to armpit. He dragged his sword free and waited for the next to enter, but the peasants hung back, none willing to be his next victim. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Chlod at the back door, and began to edge towards him. The peasants came after him, spreading out, but they were wary now of his blade. There was a commotion behind the peasants, and he caught a glimpse of Raben barging his way through the press of bodies.

‘Wait,’ he ordered Chlod as he heard the bolts of the back door sliding open.

The knight burst into the room, but the leg of a chair wielded as a club struck him, and he stumbled. Three peasants were on him in an instant. Calard moved to his aid without hesitation. He hacked into the bare back of one of the peasants crouched over the outcast, severing its spine. He kicked another away, sending it flying face-first into a bench top, bringing a pile of dirty pots down with a crash. He slashed at another, and it reeled backwards with a screech, blood spraying from its neck. The peasants had now circled around them, filling the kitchen.

Calard gripped Raben under the arm and helped him to his feet. Blood was dripping from bite wounds on his cheek and neck. The outcast knight had lost his grip on his sword, and drew a slender knife from his boot.

‘You should have gone without me,’ said Raben. ‘I would have.’

‘And that is the difference between your kind and mine,’ said Calard.

The peasants came at them in a rush. Two died to Calard’s bastard sword and another to Raben’s stabbing knife before the two knights were overwhelmed.

Seeing his master disarmed and dragged to the ground, Chlod slid back the last bolt on the door in a rush and threw the door open. The cold night air washed in and without a backwards glance he bolted out into the darkness.

Before he had made two yards, a hand locked around his throat. His legs went out from under him, and he was hurled back into the kitchen. From the floor, he looked up to see a gaunt peasant appear in the doorway. His eyes widened as the figure came into the light.

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ said Chlod, scrambling backwards on his hands and knees.

The figure was covered in crude tattoos and wore a necklace of fingers around his scrawny neck. Splinters of bone had been pushed through the skin of his forearms. He looked down at Chlod and smiled, exposing stained teeth that had been filed to points.

Calard’s arms were wrenched behind his back and his wrists bound with tough, sinewy cord.

‘By all that is holy, I swear–’ said Calard, but his words were cut short as a hastily tied noose was looped around his neck. A foot between his shoulder blades pinned him down as it was yanked taut, making him gasp for breath.

Alongside him, Raben was suffering similar treatment, held face down on the floor while he was trussed up like a prize hog.

The tattooed leader of the peasant rabble barked something indecipherable in a repulsive, guttural tongue and Calard and Raben were dragged to their feet. Another barked order and they were hauled out into the night. The tattooed peasant followed, holding Chlod tightly around the back of the neck.

‘We’ve missed you, Chlod,’ he hissed.

VII

For over three hours they were dragged through stinking marshes and haunted forests by the loping parade of filthy, cannibalistic peasants. Their captives were not the feral brood’s only spoils; they had hastily ransacked the larder of Morr’s Rest, filling sacks with cheese and bread, meat and wineskins. Corpses had been hastily dismembered, and several of the sacks were now soaked through with blood, stuffed with human body parts.

They kept off the roads, hauled along paths overgrown with thorn-bushes and rushes. Occasionally they were forced into the open, scurrying across muddy fields filled with rotten crops, watched over by the silhouettes of scarecrows. Sometimes they could see lights in the distance, but their captors seemed keen to avoid areas of habitation, and veered away from them.

They trudged knee-deep through vast tracts of swampland, beset by great clouds of stinging midges. They climbed from this stinking morass as the ground rose, and their pace picked up again as they ran through an abandoned village that had been left to rot. The peasants seemed more at ease here, speaking amongst themselves in their low, ugly tongue. Calard was poked and prodded by peasants whose eyes gleamed with hunger.

Feet slapped loudly on the roadway, which rose steadily, winding its way through the dead village. Soon they were in the countryside again, leaving the decrepit houses behind them. They climbed upwards, the muddy roadway clinging to the steep sides of a hill. A crumbling, six foot wall ran alongside the high side of the road.

They turned through a decaying stone gateway overrun with thorn-bushes and ivy. An ancient gate hung on rusted hinges, and the procession of peasants passed through. Calard noted the hourglass carved atop the archway as he was bustled through beneath it.

‘A Garden of Morr,’ he said under his breath.

They rose above the cloying blanket of ever-present fog and Calard was afforded a clearer view of their surroundings. The graveyard reared up before them, clinging to a hilltop riddled with tombs and mausoleums. It was massive and sprawling, a veritable city of the dead; tens of thousands were likely buried here. The graves lowest on the hill were packed in tight and marked with cracked headstones and slabs worn smooth by the passage of time. Many had clearly been desecrated and dug up. Winged, skeletal statues being slowly strangled by ivy stood over some, while in other areas mass pit graves were commemorated with little more than crude epitaphs scratched into stone slabs. Large family mausoleums protruded from the hillside as they climbed higher, the richer tombs carved deep into the rock cliffs.

Black roses grew in abundance, their petals soft and velveteen, their deadly thorns curved and shining silver. They exuded a heady, sickly-sweet aroma.

Ravens perched in leafless, twisted trees clinging to the hillside, watching the procession. Images of death were everywhere, from carved hourglasses and black roses on tombs and opulent facades to extravagant sculptures depicting the god of the underworld, Morr, in his various guises

The peasants became more animated, cavorting and leaping, grinning and guffawing. More of the depraved creatures joined their group, though Calard had no idea where they had appeared from. Within the tombs themselves, perhaps.

Feeling eyes upon him, he looked up to see a child clinging to the base of a cracked, moss-covered statue. The child – he could not tell if it was a boy or a girl – was clearly starving, little more than a skeleton encased in skin, its head too big for its frail body. It stared at him with red-rimmed eyes and its flesh was covered in open sores. Something about the child’s intense gaze made his skin crawl. It hissed at him, baring small, pointed teeth.

Calard grimaced as his captors yanked at the noose around his neck, jerking him onward.

Ever higher they climbed, then down into the yawning mouth of one of the larger crypts. They passed under a lintel carved in the likeness of Morr, arms outspread as if in welcome. In was cold and dank in the low-ceilinged burial chamber, and it smelt of wet earth and things long dead. Roots hung from the rough-hewn roof, like grasping, skeletal arms.

A massive sculptured sarcophagus dominated the tomb. The heavy lid, carved to represent a serenely posed knight with arms crossed over his chest, lay cracked and discarded on the floor.

‘What is this?’ said Calard through clenched teeth as he was dragged towards the casket.

‘Get in,’ hissed one of the peasants.

He strained against his captors, fighting against them as they tried to haul him towards the open casket. Had they dragged him all this way just to bury him alive? He was far bigger than any of them, and they struggled to make him move, but his face began to turn purple as the noose around his neck tightened.

‘Enough,’ hissed one of them, breaking the deadlock by kicking Calard hard in the small of his back. He staggered forwards pushed up against the casket, and looked down into it, gasping for breath.

Bones and rotting cloth had been pushed roughly aside within the open casket, and he saw that a hole had been smashed in the bottom of the sarcophagus. He could feel a slight breeze coming up through the hole, bringing with it a foetid stench of decay.

One of the peasants crawled in, like a spider, and disappeared down the hole.

‘Bring them,’ came its voice, from the darkness.

‘Lady, protect your servant,’ breathed Calard.

The entire hill was riddled with tunnels, and they were dragged deep into the labyrinth. Chewed bones were strewn across the floor of these tunnels, and the way was lit by stinking candles burning in carved niches.

Faces crowded around to look upon these newcomers, from tiny children to ancient crones, and Calard realised that there must have been many hundreds of peasants eking out a horrid existence down here beneath the earth. What better place for them to call home than a graveyard, he thought darkly.

All of the inhabitants were starving. Their eyes were dull and lifeless, as if any hope that had ever dwelt there had long faded. Tiny, shrunken babes, too weak even to cry, were held to the bony chests of mothers unable to produce milk to feed them. Most of the peasants were stooped and hunched, their bodies and faces malformed and ugly from generations of inbreeding and malnutrition. Many were missing limbs, and more than a few bore evidence of leprosy and the wasting sickness. They were a pitiful bunch, and even Calard, who was generally inured to the fate of those of low birth, found himself disturbed. Hands covered in dirt reached for him as he was dragged deeper beneath the ground, touching his face and clothes in wonder.

The procession gathered a sizeable entourage as Calard, Raben and Chlod were led into the depths beneath the Garden of Morr. Every side-passage was filled with staring faces. Children ran behind them. As they descended further, the catacombs carved by the hands of men gave way to naturally formed caves, their walls slick with moisture.

At last they came to a rocky cavern at the dark heart of the hill. Hundreds of stubby candles lit the area with a flickering orange glow. It was cold and moist, and an acrid stink hung in the air. Looking up, Calard could see that the roof was a seething mass of furred shapes: bats.

Rock formations jutted up from the floor and hung from the ceiling. In places these had had come together, forming slick-sided columns. Drips fell from the ceiling like rain, causing ripples in milky pools of water that gathered in hollows.

Dozens of natural windows to other caverns, passages and nooks looked down into the chamber, each crowded with the graveyard’s inhabitants, who bustled for the best vantages.

Calard and Raben were dragged towards a natural stone platform in the centre of the cavern. An empty throne was carved into the rock at the centre of this platform. Hundreds of human skulls were piled up around it.

Seated on the roughly hewn steps below the throne was a figure that Calard at first mistook for a dusty corpse.

Almost imperceptibly, the skeletal figure raised its head to regard their approach. Thick matted clumps of grey hair hung down over an overly long, ashen face. That face was ancient; so deep were its lines that they looked as though they had been carved with a chisel. Clouded eyes glinted in deep sockets.

Calard and Raben were forced to their knees. Their weapons were tossed to the floor nearby, and the clatter they made reverberated sharply off the cavern walls. Chlod tried to hang back, his head low, but he was shoved forwards to stand alongside his master.

‘What have you been keeping from me, you little toad?’ said Calard out of the corner of his mouth. It was the first chance that he had to speak to Chlod since their capture. The hunchbacked manservant made no answer.

‘Quiet,’ said a voice, and Calard was cuffed across the side of the head.

‘How is it you are known here?’ hissed Calard. ‘Answer me!’

Still Chlod offered no explanation, and again Calard was struck, harder this time, knocking him to the ground.

A bone shard, as sharp as a dagger and three inches long, lay on the cavern floor just inches from his nose. He turned onto his side, wriggling, and as he was hauled back to his knees, he picked up the bone shard and secreted it in his clasped hands.

A hush descended over the cavern, broken only by the steady dripping of water. The figure on the steps regarded them in silence, his gaze inscrutable.

‘I demand that I be released,’ said Calard.

The grey man’s eyes bored into Calard, but he remained silent.

‘My purpose in this cursed land lies not with you, or your... people,’ said Calard. ‘Release me.’

The ashen-faced figure continued to regard him silently for a moment, then stood, his movements slow and deliberate. His limbs were too long and too thin, like an insect’s, and he seemed to unfold as he rose to his feet. His matted hair hung past his thin waist. He wore a threadbare robe of faded majesty, something that might have been worn by a noble lord in a bygone era. Delicate, moth-eaten lace hung from the cuffs of his sleeves like dusty spider webs.

With regal grace he moved in front of the two kneeling knights and the quaking figure of Chlod.

His hands were long and slender, his fingers like ivory needles. He gestured for the two knights to rise, and they were hauled roughly to their feet. Calard stood with his head held high, refusing to be cowed before this pauper king and his tattered court.

The grey man was frail and corpse-thin, and his back was slightly stooped, yet even so he towered over Calard. He walked around the three of them, appraising them.

He came to a halt in front of Chlod. The hunch-backed manservant flinched as the grey man reached out towards him. Thin fingers lifted Chlod’s chin until he was looking up into the ancient face. Tears ran down his face.

The skeletally gaunt figure began to laugh. The sound was deep and hollow.

‘It has been a long time,’ said the grey man, still chuckling. ‘Welcome home, Chlod.’

‘Home?’ hissed Calard, glancing sidewards at his manservant. All colour had drained from Chlod’s face.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ said the wasted old man, turning towards Calard. The ghost of a smile played at his ashen lips and the result was unsettling; he resembled nothing more than a grinning corpse.

‘I,’ said the deathly old man, ‘am Grandfather Mortis.’

‘Grandfather Mortis,’ said Calard, dryly.

‘The one and only,’ said the old man, giving Calard a mocking bow.

‘I am Calard of Garamont, a questing knight of Bastonne.’

‘Engaged on the quest, is it?’ said Mortis. ‘And this?’

‘Raben,’ said the outcast knight.

‘Just Raben?’

‘Just Raben.’

‘I see,’ said Mortis. He looked at Raben for moment, then turned away. He stretched his skeletal arms theatrically wide, fingers unfurling. ‘And these,’ he said, ‘these are my children. My loving, trustworthy children.’ He looked pointedly at Chlod, who shrank under his gaze.

‘Your children,’ said Calard, ‘are cannibalistic inbreds.’

‘In lean times, needs must, and so forth and so on,’ said Mortis with a shrug.

‘To eat the flesh of one’s fellow man is an abomination,’ said Calard. ‘These peasants would be better off dead.’

‘Keep your moral outrage, it means nothing here,’ said Mortis. ‘My children live, and that is itself a triumph in this gods-forsaken land.’

‘This is no life,’ said Calard, looking around him. ‘I’d sooner die that live like this.’

‘That is a most interesting notion,’ said Mortis. ‘There’s good meat on your bones.’

‘Are you going to kill us?’ said Chlod, tears still running down his face.

‘Kill you?’ said Mortis, reaching out a hand to stroke Chlod’s face. ‘These others, maybe. But you? Of course not, child! This is where you belong. All your sins will be forgiven, in time. You will be punished, of course, but you are home, and that is what matters.’

Turning from him, Mortis jabbed a finger towards Raben.

‘This is one of the duke’s knights,’ he said. ‘Why is it not dead?’

‘This knight is under my protection,’ said Calard. ‘He is not to be harmed.’

‘Is that so?’ said Mortis. ‘What are you doing here in Mousillon, Calard of Garamont? What brings you to our cursed realm?’

‘The Lady herself has led me here.’

‘Why?’

‘What does it matter?’ said Calard.

‘Curiosity,’ said Mortis. ‘Indulge an old man.’

‘I came to find someone,’ said Calard. ‘And when I do, I intend to kill him.’

Raben smirked at that.

‘You came here to kill him?’ he said. ‘You are more of a fool than I thought! He cannot be killed, not by one such as you.’

‘Any man can be killed,’ said Calard.

‘Merovech is no man,’ said Raben.

‘Man, fiend, devil; I care not,’ said Calard. ‘I will kill him.’

Mortis lashed out, grabbing Calard around the throat. His nails bit deep into his flesh, drawing blood.

‘Merovech?’ Mortis said, enunciating the name clearly so there could be no misunderstanding. ‘You came here to kill Duke Merovech?’

Before anyone could react, Calard’s hands were free, the tough cord falling away from his wrists. No one had noticed him cutting his bindings, and in the blink of an eye he had the razor-sharp bone shard he had retrieved from the ground pressed to Mortis’s neck.

The cavern erupted in shouts and hisses. Hands tightened the noose around his neck, but Calard increased the pressure on the bone held to Mortis’s throat.

‘Call them off, or you die,’ hissed Calard.

The old man made a sound like he was clearing his throat, and the peasants drew back, tense and uneasy.

‘I am no friend of Duke Merovech’s, Calard of Garamont,’ said Mortis with a deathly grin. ‘And the enemy of one’s enemy is one’s friend, no?’

‘Merovech the Mad,’ said Mortis. ‘The fool is obsessed with regaining Mousillon’s lost prestige, and in doing so, eradicating all he sees as vermin. Namely my children and I. You don’t mind if I sit?’

Calard had the Sword of Garamont in his hand, its point levelled at Mortis’s skeletal chest. At Calard’s order, Chlod had released Raben from his bonds, and retrieved their weapons. His shield and bastard sword were strapped to his back, and behind him stood Raben, blade drawn, eyeing the hostile peasants warily. Chlod stood nearby, wringing his hands.

Mortis lowered himself onto the stone steps below the throne with a sigh. At a guess, Calard judged the old man to be perhaps ninety years of age. Still, as frail as the old man appeared, Calard was not about to underestimate him. His mind was clearly still as sharp as a razor, and he had but to speak the word and the onlooking peasants would tear them limb from limb.

‘Five years Merovech has waged war upon us. Always in that time, we have been protected by our lord,’ said Mortis, gesturing towards the empty throne. ‘But he is gone now, captured three nights past on the Shadow-Moors. Without him, we are lost.’

‘The ancient one is gone?’ gasped Chlod. Mortis nodded grimly.

‘You would be doing me a great favour if you succeeded in slaying the duke,’ said Mortis, his skeletal fingers drumming on the stone steps. ‘Though it would not be easily achieved.’

‘The Lady is with me,’ said Calard grimly. ‘The duke will die by my blade, you have my oath on it.’

‘Let’s just get out of here,’ said Raben over his shoulder.

Mortis’s fingers drummed upon the dusty stone surface of the steps.

‘Leave that one with us,’ he said, gesturing towards Raben, ‘and you are free to leave.’

Raben flashed Calard an alarmed look.

‘Take me with you,’ said Raben swiftly. ‘I’ll get you close to Merovech. You won’t get within a hundred yards of him without me.’

Calard considered his decision.

‘He comes with me,’ he said finally.

‘He is one of the duke’s sworn knights,’ said Mortis. ‘You think you can trust his word?’

‘Not for a moment,’ said Calard. ‘He is an outcast and has no honour, but he may prove useful.’

The sound of a bell tolling in the distance echoed down through the catacombs, and Mortis looked up.

The bats on the ceiling erupted into flight, the beat of their wings and their high-pitched cries deafening. They swirled around the cavern in a dense cloud, like a school of shoaling fish, then hurtled through an opening in the ceiling and were gone. The doleful bell continued to sound.

‘What is it?’ said Calard.

‘A warning. They have come to end it,’ said Mortis. The peasants all around began shouting and wailing, hissing and gnashing their teeth.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Raben. ‘We have to go!’

‘Merovech marches against us,’ said Mortis. ‘The Warren is no longer a safe haven.’

‘He is here?’ said Calard, eyes lighting up. ‘Merovech is here?’

‘He would not sully his hands in person,’ said Mortis, shaking his head.

‘How can you be sure?’ said Calard. ‘This could end now.’

‘He is not here,’ said Raben, firmly. ‘He waits at the palace. A victory banquet has been prepared to welcome back his captains in two nights’ time.’

‘And how would you know that?’ said Calard.

‘I was invited,’ said Raben with a sardonic smile.

‘Enough talk. We leave now,’ said Mortis.

‘We?’ said Calard.

‘I’ll get you inside the city,’ said Grandfather Mortis.

VIII

‘Gods, have you ever smelt anything fouler?’ growled Raben. Calard had to admit that he hadn’t. Even with a cloth anointed with perfumed oil tied around his mouth and nose, he could barely keep from gagging.

They were moving single file through a narrow sewer tunnel, choosing their steps carefully. Mortis’s peasants led the way, picking the safest and most direct route. Every surface was slick with filth, from the curving walls to the narrow shelf beneath their boots. Beside them was a foetid flow, barely moving and stagnant. Pale things wriggled within, making Calard’s stomach heave. They passed countless floating bodies, their flesh rotting and bloated.

The torches they carried filled the narrow tunnels with sickly black smoke. Spider webs crackled as they were consumed by flame, and rats the size of small dogs scurried into the darkness, where they stopped and stared back at these interlopers into their realm, eyes glittering like malignant red jewels.

They were beneath the walled city of Mousillon, drawing ever nearer their goal. It had taken them almost three days to get here, and Calard longed to see daylight and finally be away from Mortis and his repulsive brood.

At sluice junctions, places where the water flowed more swiftly, they encountered peasants fishing out bodies and floating junk with long poles. They clasped their muddy hats in their hands and bowed their heads respectfully as Grandfather Mortis passed by.

‘You were telling me of L’Anguille,’ Calard said to Raben. He was certain that the rebel knight was omitting many facts, but even so, he painted a bleak picture of the events leading to his becoming an outcast.

Raben sighed. ‘I slit the bastard’s throat. His death was quicker than he deserved.’

‘He was your liege lord, whom you were sworn to protect and serve,’ said Calard. They turned a corner, and rats scurried away from their light.

‘Earl Barahir was a debauched fiend and a murderer,’ said Raben. ‘He had no honour. He got what he deserved.’

Calard remained silent. In truth, he could not say that he would have done differently had he been in Raben’s place.

‘I was stripped of my land and titles and imprisoned. I did not resist, assured that my family would be spared if I gave myself in willingly. They were not,’ said Raben, bitterly. ‘My wife was flogged and forced into the fields with the twins. I was due to hang, but guilt over what I brought upon my wife and daughters consumed me. Bribing my gaoler, I escaped, but the pox had already done its work. Perhaps it was a blessing that they did not suffer long. My daughters would have been on the cusp of womanhood by now, had they lived.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Calard.

In the gloom, he saw Raben shrug.

‘And so you came to Mousillon?’ prompted Calard.

‘And so I came to Mousillon,’ said Raben. ‘I had nothing to live for, but not the courage to end it. I was hunted as an outlaw, but my pursuers dropped off once I came here. That was nine years ago.’

They continued along in silence for some time, until word was passed back along the line that they were nearing their destination.

‘Thank the Lady for small mercies,’ said Calard. Raben scoffed at his piety, and Calard glared at him.

‘What?’ said Raben, looking back at Calard. ‘Worship of the Lady is a sham. Just because one of our forefathers thought he saw some watery tart doesn’t mean–’

The outcast knight’s words were cut short as he slipped in an overflow of effluent. He would have fallen into the befouled waters had not Calard grabbed him under one arm and hauled him back, dumping him unceremoniously on the ground.

Even so, one of Raben’s boots broke the surface of the stinking flow. In the blink of an eye, a decaying corpse floating face down nearby lurched at him. Worms writhed in its throat as its mouth gaped open, and fingers that had rotted down to the bone latched onto Raben’s leg.

The outcast knight cried out in shock, kicking at the horrid dead thing. Calard’s sword carved into its head with a wet, squelching sound and it slipped back into the mire, releasing its grip. Raben scrambled back away from the edge and hauled himself to his feet, clearly shaken.

‘The dead do not rest easy in Mousillon,’ said Grandfather Mortis with an evil grin, materialising like a wraith out of the gloom. ‘Come. This is where we part ways.’

The heavy sewer grate was dragged aside, and Calard lifted himself up from the darkness, eyeing his surroundings. He was in a shadowy, refuse-strewn alley no more than three feet wide. Rats were feasting on the body of a dead cat nearby, and they hissed at him for interrupting their meal. The smell was hardly any better here than it was down in the sewer, but at least he was no longer below ground.

Calard turned and helped Raben out, then looked back down into the darkness.

‘Hurry, peasant,’ he said. ‘We have not got much time.’

Down at bottom of the rusted ladder, unseen by Calard, Grandfather Mortis had a tight hold of Chlod and was speaking to him in a low, threatening voice. The hunchbacked peasant’s face was pale.

‘Do this one thing and your past crimes will be forgotten,’ hissed Mortis.

Chlod nodded vigorously, and Mortis released him. Straightening, he stepped backwards and was swallowed by the darkness.

‘Do not fail me,’ came his deep, hollow voice.

Shaking, Chlod climbed up towards street level. Calard grabbed him by the shirt front and lifted him up the last few feet.

Calard had not wished to take the peasant with him, but Mortis had been insistent.

‘He is no longer yours to command,’ the old man had said. ‘He is mine, and mine alone. He is accompanying you to the palace.’

The idea of being abandoned beneath the city had not been an appealing one, for he doubted that he would have ever gotten out, and he had reluctantly agreed.

The sewer grate was dragged back into place, and Calard pulled his hood down low over his face.

‘Let’s end this,’ he said.

Never had Calard walked the streets of a city more wretched, threatening or foul.

Every building was dark and oppressive, and so twisted beyond its original construction that it looked as though it were contorted in silent agony. Timbers were warped and swollen with moisture, and brickwork was bulging and uneven. The foundations of some had sunk, while others had seemingly given up completely and collapsed in upon themselves.

The smell of rot was heavy in the air and mould covered every surface. A foetid yellow fog filled the streets, reducing visibility to little more than a dozen yards, deadening all sound. The ground was rutted and undulating, and refuse and filth were piled up high against the walls.

And they were not alone in this city of the damned.

Everywhere they walked they saw hundreds of downtrodden, desperate people, filthy and dressed in rags. From shuttered windows and dark alleyways, the inhabitants of Mousillon city watched their progress through the district of Old City. Lepers and crippled beggars clutched at them, holding out wooden bowls. Miserable, malformed street-sellers sat alongside carts filled with rotten produce, while others offered them such tempting treats as twitching toads on sticks and greasy bags of slugs.

Wasted children clutching butcher’s knives ran by them, giggling as they chased a terrified, scabby dog. Muscled brutes wearing leather masks were throwing fresh corpses onto a wagon piled high with the dead. Whores with bruises and open sores on their faces called out to them from doorways. Sickly smoke rose from shadowy dens where a man could lose himself if he had the coin and inclination.

Footpads, pickpockets and bruisers lurked in the shadows, but Calard and his companions were left well alone. It seemed that Mortis was as good as his word. The cadaverous old bastard had told them that they would be untouched, claiming that his word was law in the poorer districts of Mousillon. Calard had thought this just to be bluster, but he saw now that he had been mistaken. He had had no doubt in his mind that their throats would have already been slit and their bodies dumped in a back alley without Mortis’s patronage.

It took them the better part of an hour to wind their way through the slums. At last they came to a wide bridge lined with crumbling statues that crossed the River Grismerie. The smell of brine was strong, for the river opened up to the sea less than five miles to the west.

The river was wide and slow here, and it bisected the city, dividing it into two halves. To the south were the poorer and more populated districts, along with the sprawling docklands. On the north side was the old temple district, and beyond that, the ducal palace itself.

It was said that Mousillon had once been the pride of Bretonnia, its most bustling, wealthy and beautiful city. It had been home to Landuin, the finest knight to have ever lived, and was said to have been a place of beauty, culture and learning. How things changed, thought Calard.

Thousands of downward-pointing spikes protruded from the high walls lining the river, set several feet above the high-tide mark. Similar spikes adorned the legs of the mile-long bridge itself. Calard frowned.

‘They stop the city from being overrun,’ said Raben. ‘Look there.’

Following where the outcast pointed, Calard squinted through the gloom. A number of corpses were impaled on the rusting spikes. With a shudder, he saw that most of them were moving.

‘Come,’ said Raben. ‘This is our gate.’

A fortified gate barred entry to the north side of the city, and as they walked towards it, Calard saw armoured figures waiting for them. If Raben was going to betray him, this was his moment.

‘Just so we are clear, you’re on your own once we’re inside,’ said Raben under his breath, as if on cue.

‘Fine,’ said Calard.

‘And if by some miracle you succeed, I want full patronage. A title. And land. A castle by the sea would be nice.’

‘What?’ said Calard.

‘A little something to ensure that I don’t accidentally let the cat out of the bag, so to speak,’ said Raben.

‘For a moment, I was starting to think you risked showing something approaching honour,’ Calard snarled.

‘No fear of that,’ said Raben. Calard began to answer, but Raben interjected. ‘Careful now, they’re watching,’ he said. ‘You want to get near the duke, don’t you? One word from me, and your quest is over.’

They drew closer to the checkpoint, and Calard saw that there were more than twenty soldiers stationed here, armed with crossbows and halberds. The gates were closed and barred.

‘If we get through this, and you somehow prove to me that I would not regret it, I’ll see you are rewarded,’ said Calard. ‘I will offer you no more than that, but you have my word.’

‘Just keep silent then,’ said Raben as they came to a halt in front of the gate. He flashed a sardonic smile at Calard. ‘Trust me.’

‘You I know, but who are these?’ said the captain of the guard, eyeing Calard and Chlod suspiciously.

‘My second in command,’ said Raben, ‘and my servant. Let us through, captain. I don’t want to be any later than we already are.’

‘What’s his name?’ asked the captain, indicating Calard. ‘I don’t recognise him, and I’ve a gift for faces.’

Calard opened his mouth to speak, but Raben interceded.

‘Valacar,’ said Raben. ‘His name is Valacar.’

‘Why don’t he speak for himself?’ asked the captain.

‘He’s mute,’ said Raben in a deadpan voice, ignoring Calard’s stare.

‘He’s not on my list,’ said the captain. ‘And neither is your servant. My orders are strict. Ain‘t no one not on my list getting through this gate.’

‘Let me make this simple,’ Raben said, reaching out to put his arm around the captain’s shoulders. ‘The Duke Merovech is a close personal friend of mine, and he is expecting us to be there tonight. We are already late as it is, and if we are any later, I will make certain that I inform the duke personally exactly who it was that detained us. It’s Harol, isn’t it? That is your name, if I am not mistaken?’

‘You are not, sir,’ said the captain, swallowing heavily.

‘Are we done here, captain?’ said Raben, slapping the man hard on the shoulder.

‘We’re done. I’ll have a coach drop you at the palace right away, sir. Open them up!’

Raben released the captain, and gave Calard a wink as the gates yawned open.

‘Oh, and sir?’

‘Yes, captain?’ said Raben.

‘Enjoy the celebration.’

‘Oh, we will,’ said Raben with a smile.

IX

The coach rolled smoothly to a halt and its black lacquered doors swung open, seemingly of their own accord. A small set of steps unfolded with a clatter, and Calard and Raben stepped down from the plush, dark velvet interior.

Other coaches were lined up around the curve of the circular roadway inside the palace gates. Each was gleaming and magnificently opulent, and on every door was emblazoned a black fleur-de-lys upon a white shield. Hunched coachmen sat up front of each, garbed in flowing black robes, their faces hidden by dark hoods. Six immense horses were harnessed to each coach, their coats the colour of the midnight sky, and immaculate feathered plumes bobbed above their heads. Each horse stood unnaturally still, like statues.

Chlod had ridden up front with the driver, and he stood waiting for them, his face drained of colour and his eyes wide and unblinking.

Twelve-foot-high fences enclosed the palace, tipped with wickedly sharp silver points, each in the shape of a fleur-de-lys. Calard noted that there was a heavy guard presence. They stood at regular intervals around the palace exterior, utterly motionless, their features hidden in fully enclosed black plate armour of ancient design.

Grandiose stairs of red-veined black marble swept up before them, and Calard’s gaze rose towards the palace itself.

It was breathtaking in its scale and the sheer audacity of its darkly majestic design. It was oppressive and domineering, yet in places its architecture was as delicate as lace. Dozens of spires rose like needles above immense lead-plated domes, linked by a web of delicate buttresses. Hanging arches that seemed to defy all the laws of gravity stretched between knife-edged towers. Slender columns reared up to support heavy archways that concealed grand stained-glass windows in their shadows, the coloured glass glinting in the fractured moonlit straining to penetrate the clouds. Rainwater dripped from the gaping mouths of fanged gargoyles, and winged statues carved of black granite gazed down upon them in mute disdain.

Other late arrivals were hurrying past them up the steps. Flustered ladies garbed in velvet and adorned with precious jewels were being hastened towards the palace by knights wearing freshly laundered tabards over battered suits of armour.

Calard and Raben climbed briskly, their faces grim, while Chlod trotted along behind them in silence.

The palace’s entry hall was cavernous, the arched ceiling a hundred feet high. Statues of past dukes of Mousillon were arrayed on pedestals, each standing in heroic poses and dressed for war. Pre-eminent was a dramatic sculpture of Merovech himself, five times life size, carved from a block of faultless white marble. He stood gazing into the distance, hair flowing in a frozen wind, one foot upon the chest of a headless enemy. The expression he wore was one of noble arrogance.

Standing as still as any of the statues, dozens of guards were arrayed around the grand foyer, blocking access to closed doors and sweeping staircases that rose up to higher levels. The doors to the west wing had been thrown wide, and it was through here that Calard and Raben marched, following the other late arrivals.

Oil paintings lined the hallway, some of them almost twenty feet in height. Their frames were opulent and heavy, though many were fading and crumbling. Gaunt, unfriendly faces stared down at them from dark and somewhat disturbing portraits. Eyes seemed to follow them as they hurried by.

Turning a corner, Calard instinctively reached for his sword as they were suddenly surrounded by a swarm of pale, aristocratic courtiers, richly dressed as if for a masquerade ball. The ladies wore extravagant ball gowns and seemed to barely touch the ground as they glided across the floor upon the arms of their partners, who were garbed in strange, archaic fashion. All wore bizarre, grotesque masks, complete with devilish horns, jagged teeth and long, pointed noses. An icy chill seemed to penetrate Calard’s bones as the courtiers passed them in silence.

They moved deeper into the palace and could soon hear the ring of clashing swords. The harsh sound echoed through the cold halls, and as it got steadily louder, they could also make out polite clapping and the dull murmur of conversation.

Rounding a final corner, they approached a large, domed chamber. Hundreds of knights were gathered within, clustered in small groups and drinking wine.

‘Where is Chlod?’ said Calard suddenly, coming to a halt as they approached the entrance to the large room. Raben looked behind them. The peasant was nowhere to be seen. The outcast shrugged.

The clash of swords echoed loudly, and there was an enthusiastic cheer.

‘No matter,’ said Calard, and they moved within, slipping effortlessly into the crowd.

The chamber was even larger than it had at first appeared, and Calard guessed that there must have been in the realms of three hundred nobles gathered within. Massive pillars propped up the exquisitely painted domed ceiling, and dozens of alcoves and side-chambers were set off the main expanse.

A raised dais was positioned against the western wall, dominating the room. The statues of five ancient warriors were seated in high-backed thrones there, covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. They sat side by side beneath an immense window of stained glass that depicted them as they had been in life. The window was backlit with candles, and Calard frowned up at the scenes of depravity and wanton barbarism depicted there. They showed the warriors slaughtering men, women and children, cutting their hearts out and drinking their blood.

A tabernacle lit with candles was positioned centrally upon the altar in front of the old statues. A large chalice of silver and ebony was housed within, its shape formed in the likeness of serpentine wyrms twisting around one another.

Raben took a delicate crystal glass of claret from a tray, smiling and nodding to those he knew. Calard scanned the room, his gaze darting from face to face.

‘Take a drink,’ said Raben under his breath. ‘And try not to look quite so out of place.’

Calard saw the sense in Raben’s words and made a conscious effort to relax. They slipped through the crowd, angling towards the raised dais, and he nodded to several knights who turned to coldly regard him. They nodded in return and turned away in disinterest.

They approached the centre of the room, where the revellers were gathered most tightly. A circle some thirty feet in diameter was sunk into the centre of the chamber, positioned directly below the domed ceiling. Three circles of steps descended down to this sunken floor, which was carved with intricate spiralling designs.

Two knights were duelling in this combat circle, while more gathered knights and their ladies watched on, politely clapping and cheering when either knight scored a palpable hit. Calard hardly glanced at the two combatants as he pushed through the crowd, his gaze locking on a figure on the opposite side of the circle.

Merovech stood engrossed in the contest, arms folded across his chest. A full head taller than any other knight in the room, he was armoured in archaic, fluted armour of such dark metal it was virtually black, its edges serrated. His face was handsome and cruel, and as white as the palest marble. He appeared not to have aged at all from the last time Calard had seen him, six years earlier. His pure white hair was long and straight, hanging halfway down his back.

‘This is where I leave you,’ said Raben under his breath. ‘I wish you luck.’

Calard ignored him, completely focused on the duke. Raben backed away into the crowd, and was gone.

Moving slowly, like stalking a wolf, Calard closed the distance.

X

Chlod ran around the corner, breathing hard, and leaned back against the wall. His heart was thumping loudly, and he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to control his breathing. From beneath his shirt he pulled a rat skull attached to a string. Lifting it to his lips, he kissed it, whispering a prayer to Ranald, before tucking it back into place.

Glancing back around the corner, Chlod saw a pair of guards marching down the hallway towards him, their movements unhurried and perfectly synchronous. Each held a large double-handed sword, and was armoured head to toe in black plate armour.

Cursing under his breath, Chlod broke into an awkward run, moving as quickly as his ragged breath and uneven legs would allow. He ducked into a side-passage, and loped through a storage room packed to the ceiling with dusty casks and wooden pallets.

He was five levels below the ground. The nobility rarely came down here and the passages were narrow, cluttered and bereft of the opulent ornamentation of the upper levels. This was the domain of the duke’s servants, though Chlod had seen far fewer of them down here than he had imagined were needed to service the daily running of the palace.

Rounding a corner, he came upon the kitchens, which were utterly deserted. Rats and spiders scuttled across the floor, and everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. Chlod judged that no one had used them for decades. There were four kitchens all in all, connected by low arches, and there were enough ovens to feed an army.

Hearing the clomp of armoured feet behind him, Chlod bolted, running through the kitchens and passing through a host of empty walkthrough pantries.

A pair of closed double doors loomed ahead of him. A rotten chair and a desk were tucked into an alcove alongside them. A skeleton was slumped in the chair, a quill pen still clasped in its hand. Chlod could see what looked like a ledger upon on the sloped desk, its paper yellow with age. Neat handwriting could still be discerned on the pages. Evidently, this was the post of the larder-master, whose job it was to keep a tally of all goods taken in and out. Chlod had worked for a time in a middling-sized castle in Carcassonne, and he had made an art out of deceiving the larder-master there. It had been a good life, that, and he had not felt a moment’s remorse when the man had been hanged for the irregularities in this ledger.

A dark shadow seemed to hover around the skeleton slumped in the larder-master’s chair, and it coalesced into a roughly man-like shape as Chlod drew near. It solidified as he got closer, turning from an indistinguishable vague shape to that of a portly man with huge sideburns.

It opened its mouth to speak, but no words came out. It seemed angry, gesturing insistently at Chlod with its ghost quill, and it radiated a deadly chill. He had no wish to pass near this restless spirit, but he could already hear the sound of armoured boots closing in behind him.

Taking a deep breath, his blood running to ice in his veins, Chlod hurried to the double doors. The spirit became more agitated, shouting soundlessly at him and pointing at its ledger. The doors would not give, and he rattled them as he struggled to turn the rusted handles. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the two black-armoured guards marching towards him.

The shade of the larder-master was incandescent with rage, bellowing at him silently. It came out from behind its desk, separating completely from its skeleton, and hovered towards him. Chlod quaked, fighting with the double doors vigorously as panic set in.

The ghost reached for him. Chlod recoiled from its touch, but there was nowhere to go, and he was backed up against the closed doors. The shadowy form touched his face, and he screamed. It felt as though needles of ice were penetrating his skin, and the left side of his face went numb. He saw the ethereal shade of the larder-master smile.

The doors gave way behind him suddenly, ripping free of their hinges, and Chlod crashed through. Weevils and rot-worms writhed in the splintered chunks of rotten wood, and he scrambled backwards through the debris.

The shade stared down at him from the open doorway. Its image wavered, like a mirage, as the two black-armoured guards marched through it.

Chlod clambered to his feet and ran. He staggered through storerooms stacked with empty shelves and others hanging with meat hooks, until he came to the very back of the larder. Here, a heavy wooden crane was positioned above a large wooden trapdoor in the floor. A thick, corroded chain was spooled around the crane’s mechanism, and a massive hook hung at head height from the end of its length. The underside of a further trapdoor was positioned directly overhead, leading to the upper levels of the palace.

It was through these trapdoors that the palace’s stores were replenished. Branches of the Grismerie had been redirected beneath the palace in centuries past, and in times gone by, barges laden with produce were poled up the wide tunnels from upriver. Casks of wines, pallets stacked with meats and all manner of goods and foodstuffs from all across Bretonnia and beyond would have once been hauled directly into the palace from the canals below without the Mousillon nobility ever being forced to witness their arrival.

Chlod turned around on the spot, eyes darting around frantically for a way to release the trapdoor, before his eyes settled on a rusted lever set in the wall. A spider the size of his hand had constructed an intricate web between the lever and the stone wall, and it turned towards him, a myriad of eyes glinting in the darkness. He slapped it away, and took hold of the lever’s handle.

The lever was ancient and rusted, and had clearly not been used for decades. He planted one foot against the wall and bent his back against it, groaning with the exertion. It did not budge.

The guards closed towards him unerringly, hefting their heavy swords. They were less than ten yards away.

‘Come on!’ shouted Chlod, tugging frantically on the lever.

With a horrendous screeching of metal, the lever gave way and Chlod fell to the ground. There was a grinding of gears and the two halves of the trapdoor swung downwards, like the floor beneath a hangman’s noose. They struck the walls of the vertical shaft with a resounding boom, and at the same moment, the chain from the crane began to unspool. The heavy hook rocketed down into the darkness, and the sound of the chain unravelling was deafening.

A cloud of bats erupted from below, screeching and clawing. In their midst, eyes tinged red and their flesh covered in open sores and filth, the most devolved of Grandfather Mortis’s children burst from the darkness. A narrow staircase descended around the edge of the vertical shaft leading down to the canal fifty feet below, and dozens of wild-eyed, emaciated figures appeared, crawling over each other in their haste.

One of them was cut almost in two by a black-armoured guard, the heavy blow splitting him diagonally from shoulder to hip. Then the two armoured figures disappeared beneath the feral tide, borne to the ground with a crash.

The chain had come to a shuddering halt, and after a pause, it began to reverse, hauled back up by toothed cogs and immense counter-weights hidden behind the stone wall.

Chlod lay still, breathing heavily, as he watched the demise of the two guards. Rocks pounded their helmets until the metal buckled inwards, and knives were slid between gaps in their plate. Finally, the two armoured figures were still. One of their visors had been wrenched completely out of shape and torn loose, and Chlod hurriedly looked away as he saw what was contained within. If ever the suit of armour had ever been worn by a living man, that time was long past.

The chain continued to recoil, clunking loudly as each link was reeled in. Finally, the massive hook reappeared. Four iron rings had been attached to it, each hooked into smaller chains that were orange with rust. A loading pallet was hauled into view, carrying the smiling figure of Grandfather Mortis, who was standing with his arms raised above him like an ascendant god.

A cluster of filthy peasants manhandled the crane, swinging it away from the gaping trapdoor, and it settled to the floor with a final groan.

‘Excellent, excellent,’ said Mortis, stepping away from the platform and rubbing his skeletal hands together.

He moved towards Chlod, still lying against the wall, and lifted him gently to his feet. He stroked Chlod’s cheek with the back of one grey, wrinkled hand. ‘You have done well, my child,’ he said. ‘The sins of the past are forgiven.’

Grandfather Mortis continued to stroke Chlod’s cheek for a moment, then he grabbed him tightly around the neck, his thumbs pressing hard into his throat. Chlod gaped like a landed fish, his eyes boggling.

‘But don’t even think about leaving us again,’ said Mortis. ‘You belong with us, and I will not tolerate any disobedience from you again.’

From somewhere distant, there came a ferocious roar, booming up through the lower levels of the palace. Mortis released Chlod, a look of rapture upon his face, and Calard’s manservant fell to his knees, gasping for air.

‘Harken, my children!’ said Mortis, lifting a hand to his ear. ‘Hear the call of our beloved lord!

XI

His face a mask of grim resolve, Calard slipped through the braying crowd. His gaze did not waver from Merovech. Calard was some ten people back from the edge of the fighting circle, and was making his way steadily through the press, closing the distance to the albino duke. His fist was clenched tightly around the hilt of the Sword of Garamont, sheathed at his hip.

There was a grunt of pain and a splash of blood in the fighting circle below, and the crowd roared its approval. Merovech alone made no reaction, his expression cold and detached. Calard ignored the glances he received from knights and ladies as he pushed his way through the onlookers, drawing ever nearer the butcher responsible for the sacking of Castle Garamont.

‘Kill him!’ shouted a woman wearing a spidery lace ruff around her slender neck. Her powdered cheeks were flushed and her pupils dilated. Her cry was echoed by dozens of others, all crying out for blood.

Calard was now directly behind Merovech, and he began to work his way forwards, shouldering through the crowd.

The duke stood alone, aloof and distant from all those gathered around him. No one came within arm’s distance of his person, possibly out of respect, or perhaps more likely out of fear. Merovech was a motionless island amidst a braying sea of humanity, yet far from making him appear unthreatening or calm, his utter stillness was deeply unsettling. It set him apart from those around him, perhaps even more so than his alabaster countenance, making him appear inhuman and alien.

Calard’s gaze never wavered. Cold fury burned in his eyes. He was only yards away now, only seconds from attaining his vengeance. His whole being became utterly focused, his senses heightened to unsurpassed levels in anticipation of this final confrontation.

He could smell the sickly fragrance of the scented perfumes and oils worn by the courtiers, which did little to mask the excited sweat exuded by those watching the brutal contest below. He could taste the metallic tang of blood in the air. He could hear every grunt and grimace of the two duelling knights, the scrape of their boots upon the grooved floor of the killing circle, and the sharp clang of metal on metal. He could feel the reassuring weight of the Sword of Garamont beneath his grasp.

Calard stood directly behind the duke now. All he had to do was draw his blade and run the fiend through. No one, not Merovech nor any of his gathered knights would be able to stop him. He started drawing the Sword of Garamont before he regained control of himself.

Cutting an enemy down from behind, even a monster like Merovech, was an honourless, dog act, and one that would lessen him in his own eyes and the eyes of the Lady. And besides, Merovech was only one half of the murderous pair that had butchered his nephew and laid waste to his castle. Before Merovech died, he was honour bound to discover the identity of the second fiend, so that he too could be brought to justice.

The duel came to a sudden, brutal end. It was a shockingly one-sided affair, with one knight clearly toying with the other. Finally tiring of the game, he struck his opponent a vicious blow to the neck. The knight dropped to one knee, sword clattering from his grip.

Calard saw all this only dimly, the action taking place in his peripheral vision, his gaze still locked on Merovech.

The crowd hollered and stomped their feet, and Calard heard the fallen knight begging for mercy. The other knight turned his back on him, lifting his sword high into the air, accepting the roar of the crowd. The beaten warrior lowered his hand, and his head dropped in defeat. There was a lot of blood, but the wound was not fatal.

With inhuman speed and savagery, the victorious knight swung around suddenly, sword blade flashing. The defenceless knight was decapitated, and a fountain of blood erupted from the stump of his neck. The head bounced and rolled across the floor, coming to a halt against the lowest curved step of the killing circle. A surprised expression was etched upon its ashen face. For a second the headless corpse remained upright, blood spraying forth in rhythmic spurts, before it toppled forwards and was still. Blood continued to gush from the body, running into the spiralling grooves carved in the floor. The crowd cheered their approval.

The speed and savagery of the dishonourable blow dragged Calard’s attention briefly away from his foe.

He looked upon the face of the duel’s victor, and his blood ran cold.

It was his brother, Bertelis.

XII

Calard’s eyes widened in horror.

Bertelis stood alone in the circle, splattered in blood. His face bore an unhealthy pallor, and a cruel half-smile ghosted across his blue-tinged lips. He dropped to his knees before Duke Merovech.

‘For your honour, my lord,’ said Bertelis in a voice that made the hairs on the back of Calard’s neck stand on end. It was at once his brother’s voice, and it wasn’t, tinged with bitterness and cruelty.

Merovech laid his hand upon the back of Bertelis’s head as if in some dark benediction. They held the pose for a moment, then Merovech spoke.

‘Rise,’ he said, his voice cold and dispassionate.

Calard was frozen in place, staring at his brother.

The duke loosened one of his exquisite, tight-fitting leather gloves and pulled it free, exposing a hand as pale as virgin snow. He drew a slender dagger from his hip and placed it across his naked hand. His fingers closed tightly around the blade, and with a smooth, slow movement, he slid the dagger free. His blood shone brightly upon the blade.

Sheathing the knife, Merovech clicked his fingers and a goblet of wine was handed to him. He lifted his pale hand above the goblet, still clenched in a fist, and let his blood drip steadily into the wine. When the flow ceased, he handed the goblet to Bertelis, who accepted it with a look of hunger.

‘All of Mousillon salutes you, Bertelis, champion of champions,’ said Merovech.

Bertelis lifted the goblet high, then threw his head back and gulped back its contents. He shuddered in rapture, his eyes half-closed as he lowered the drinking vessel from his lips.

Calard groaned in horror as he watched his brother drink the wine infused with blood, shocked to the core of his being. Bertelis wiped a ruby drip from the corner of his mouth, and Duke Merovech stepped down into the centre of the duelling ring. He moved with a lion’s grace.

Bertelis had always been tall, standing half a head clear of Calard himself, but Merovech towered over him. He turned around on the spot, eyeing the gathered knights. His white features contrasted sharply with the black of his armour, and his red-tinged eyes glinted in the torchlight. All conversation had ceased in the chamber, and now all were gathered close in around the duelling pit to hear their master’s words.

‘Tonight is an auspicious night, my brothers,’ said Merovech, his voice booming out to fill the expansive hall. He began to stalk around the perimeter of the circle, like a caged beast. ‘Tonight is the dawning of a new era in Mousillon’s history. Once, our realm was the most powerful in all Bretonnia. Now we have a chance to reclaim that glory, you and I.’

Calard found himself captivated by Merovech, unable to tear his eyes away from him.

‘For seven hundred years I slumbered,’ said Merovech. ‘I awoke to find Mousillon a pale shadow of its glorious past, overrun with vermin, its lands annexed by its neighbours, its very name a by-word for despair and failure. But now, I have returned. Now, Mousillon will rise again. And you, my brothers, will rise with it.’

Merovech had returned to the centre of the circle and now he stopped his restless pacing. Calard could feel the excitement building amongst the onlookers.

‘Each of you has proven yourself worthy,’ said Merovech, ‘and so, I will grant you the greatest gift that you shall ever receive. Tonight, you become as gods among men, and together we shall take back what is rightfully ours. All of Bretonnia shall kneel before us, and the lands shall run red with blood.’

As if on cue, there came a grinding of gears and the turning of ancient mechanisms, and the domed ceiling overhead began to open, unfurling like the petals of a black rose under the midnight sky. The clouds were parting overhead, and the silver light of Mannslieb shone down into the expansive chamber. There were gasps from the crowd of onlookers, but it was not for this mechanical wonder, or the sight of the silver moon. No, those intakes of air were for the appearance of the second moon, Morrslieb, glowing malignant and green, that stared down at them like a baleful eye.

Merovech was standing with his arms raised to the heavens, bathing in Morrslieb’s sinister emerald glow.

‘It is time!’ bellowed the duke. ‘Bring forth the prisoner!’

Bound in heavy, ensorcelled chains and surrounded by armed guards, the prisoner was dragged up through the palace halls from the oubliette that had held it, far below. It bellowed its fury, the sound echoing deafeningly through the lower levels. Its massive body was a patchwork of burns, savage cuts and mottled bruises courtesy of the duke’s finest torturers. More than a score of muscle-bound wardens hauled upon the thick chains, straining and heaving to keep the prisoner moving. They wore black leather hoods over their heads, and were accompanied by an entourage of palace guards, silent, long-dead warriors enclosed in black plate armour.

The ambush hit them hard and fast. The battle took place halfway up a wide marble staircase, with the attackers striking simultaneously from above and below. The fight was brutal and bloody, and over within thirty heartbeats. The prisoner itself tore apart half a dozen of its gaolers, ripping them limb from limb in a gory explosion of rage and savagery.

Grandfather Mortis approached the prisoner warily, hands raised, as one might approach a wounded bear. His eyes were full of pity as he looked upon his lord’s tortured flesh.

Murmuring calming words, he laid a hand gently upon one of the prisoner’s immensely muscled shoulders. Its heavy head came up sharply, snarling, and Mortis jerked back. Its snarl descended into a low, warning rumble deep in its chest, and Mortis placed his hand back upon its shoulder. This time it accepted his touch.

‘It’s over,’ said Grandfather Mortis in a soothing voice. ‘It’s over.’

‘No,’ growled the prisoner, forming the words with some difficulty. Its mouth was built for tearing and ripping, not for speech. ‘It is time for vengeance.’

Calard saw the thrill of anticipation on Bertelis’s ungodly pale face, mirroring the expression of every onlooker. His brother grinned, exposing needle-sharp canines.

‘Blessed Lady of mercy,’ Calard breathed.

As if hearing his words, Bertelis’s head snapped around. For a second his eyes darted from face to face, searching for who had spoken, but then they settled on Calard. His grin widened, and he began to chuckle. With slow, unhurried movements he drew his sword and began walking towards Calard. The knights and ladies around the questing knight drew back away from him, leaving him isolated and exposed.

‘Hello, Calard,’ said Bertelis. ‘What a pleasant surprise this is.’

‘What has he done to you, my brother?’ said Calard, standing alone.

‘Nothing that I did not wish for,’ said Bertelis with a grin, loosening the muscles of his neck and shoulders languorously, like a cat stretching. ‘And it feels fantastic.’

‘Finish it quickly,’ hissed Merovech. ‘The time of the conjunction draws near.’

‘I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, brother,’ spat Bertelis, hefting his sword and moving purposefully across the killing circle.

Reluctantly, Calard drew the Sword of Garamont and stepped out to meet him. He swung his battered shield from his back and secured it on his left arm.

‘It does not have to be like this, brother,’ he said.

‘Oh, it does,’ said Bertelis. ‘It truly does.’

Bertelis struck with such savagery and speed that Calard was instantly fighting for his life, defending desperately as furious attack after attack rained down on him. It took all his concentration, skill and hard-earned experience just to survive the opening exchange, and such was the power and vitriol behind each blow that he was knocked physically backwards each time his sword met his brother’s.

He was given no opportunity to even consider launching a counter-attack, and his left arm was numb from the jarring blows he took on his shield. He was doing all he could to evade Bertelis’s furious assault, stepping off the line of attack and retreating hastily in an effort to put some distance between them. His brother came after him relentlessly, sword blade flashing as it sliced through the air again and again. Had any of those attacks struck home, they would have been fatal.

Calard knew that he was a vastly superior warrior now than he had been when he first took up the quest, six years earlier. The long years on the road had hardened him, forging him anew and honing his killer instincts to a razor’s edge. He was stronger, leaner and faster than he had been, and was confident enough in his own abilities to back himself against any man. Even so, he was struggling now with the pace of battle that Bertelis was setting, and struggling even more with his brother’s unprecedented strength and fury.

Calard and Bertelis had trained together since childhood, and both had been schooled by Gunthar, the old weapon master of Garamont. Growing up, their duels had always been evenly matched, though it had been obvious that Bertelis was the more gifted of the two, a natural swordsman with the perfect blend of strength, balance, speed and instinct. He had always relied too heavily on his natural-born talents, however, and in his youth had been a lax student, earning many stern words from Gunthar. In contrast, Calard had worked hard at his swordsmanship, rising hours before the rest of the household to hone his technique and strengthen his body. It was only after Gunthar’s death that Bertelis began taking his training more seriously, devoting himself to it with a focus bordering on obsession. Only then had he started to show his true potential.

It was clear now that Bertelis had eclipsed those expectations and taken them to a whole new level, reaching a plane that Calard had no hope of matching, and even less of competing with. Bertelis’s skill was bordering the sublime, and Calard could think of few – perhaps only the grail knight Reolus, Lady rest his soul – who could have equalled it. The speed of his blade was incomparable, and Calard had rarely crossed blades with one who struck with such power. It was overwhelming how far Bertelis’s blade skill had come in the last six years. Calard felt a child facing a master.

A blow thundered into his shield, wrenching it out of shape, and he winced. He slashed a riposte towards his brother’s neck, but it was batted aside with contemptuous ease. Bertelis grinned and stepped back, allowing Calard a moment to catch his breath. He realised that his brother was toying with him, just as he had his earlier opponent.

‘You have grown soft,’ said Bertelis.

‘Turn from this path, Bertelis,’ said Calard. ‘It leads you only to damnation.’

‘You drove me onto this path, brother,’ snapped Bertelis. ‘You turned your back on me!’

‘I was blinded by grief. I meant not what I said,’ said Calard.

‘It is too late for apologies,’ said Bertelis, and Calard knew he spoke the truth. There was a madness behind his eyes that Calard had never seen before, a simmering, insatiable rage that threatened to consume him. It was as if some wild beast had taken up residence in the flesh of his brother, directing his movements like a puppet.

‘You are no longer the brother I knew and loved,’ said Calard. His breath was ragged from the intensity of the fight, yet Bertelis appeared completely rested, barely having raised a sweat.

‘No,’ agreed Bertelis. ‘I am something far greater.’

‘Enough!’ hissed Duke Merovech from the edge of the killing circle. ‘Finish it, now!’

Calard’s gaze darted between the fiend that was once his brother and the pale, immortal figure of Duke Merovech. Realisation dawned.

‘It was you who sacked Garamont,’ he said, looking back at Bertelis. ‘It was you who killed Orlando and Montcadas, and butchered my knights.’

‘I would have killed you too,’ said Bertelis, ‘had you been there. Now, the cycle will be complete, and every tie to my former life will at last be severed.’

‘You are not my brother any longer. You are something else entirely.’ said Calard. Bertelis smiled in response, exposing needle-sharp canines.

‘My, you are quick, brother,’ he said. The smile dropped from his face. ‘And now, you die.’

For a moment the brothers regarded each other from opposite sides of the killing circle, before they began closing the distance, swords at the ready.

A deafening roar boomed through the cavernous chamber, echoing loudly and making the windows rattle in their frames. Calard could feel the reverberant sound in his bones. He looked up, the duel momentarily forgotten.

An arched balcony jutted out over the room, thirty feet overhead, and crouched upon its marble balustrade was a monster.

XIII

It was huge, easily six times the bulk of a man, and it resembled a monstrous gargoyle come to life. It was hunched, and black matted fur covered its massive shoulders. Immense talons carved furrows in the marble as it tensed its huge arms, bulging with sinew and muscle. It howled at the heavens again, the sound deeply affecting on some primal level, before turning its baleful gaze down into the chamber below.

Its head was huge and wide, a hideous blend of man, bat and wolf. Its lips drew back to expose a terrifying array of fangs, and its snarl rumbled deep in its powerful chest. Its canines were heavily pronounced, and each was easily six inches in length. Its eyes were those of a predator, burning with fury and hunger, and they locked on the pale figure of Duke Merovech, far below.

The monster howled again, spittle flying from its maw, and it launched from its eyrie. Powerful leg muscles propelled it downwards, and its huge taloned arms extended in front of it, veined membranes of skin unfurling from wrist to hip like vestigial wings.

It hurtled down, like a monstrous bird of prey dropping on its quarry, and shouts and screams erupted across the chamber. Calard heard the sound of weapons clashing along with cries of shock and pain, and through the dense crowd he spied the filth-encrusted forms of Grandfather Mortis’s children, leaping and howling as they attacked. Like a frenzied pack, they descended on the crowded chamber, and chaos erupted.

Duke Merovech hurled himself to one side as the monster struck. It slammed down into the floor with titanic force, sending cracks shooting out across the surface of the marble from the impact. Merovech rolled neatly to his feet, a sword in each hand.

People were running across the killing circle in panic, separating Calard and Bertelis. He saw his brother fighting his way through the crowd towards him, his face a mask of fury. A knight slammed into Calard, knocking him back a step, and a heavy blow to his arm knocked the Sword of Garamont from his grasp. The ancient heirloom clattered to the ground and was kicked away, spinning just out of reach.

Calard swore and dived after it. Someone tripped over him and fell sprawling, and he grunted as he was kicked and trampled, but he ensured that he kept his eyes locked on the holy sword. He reached for it, and his fingers grazed its hilt tantalisingly, but then it was kicked away again, this time disappearing into the crowd. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Bertelis storming towards him, hacking down knights, ladies and feral peasants alike, and he swore again.

Fighting back to his feet, he tore the shield from his arm and hurled it aside. He reached up over his back and yanked his hand-and-a-half sword from its scabbard as Bertelis drew close.

Had he been a fraction slower he would have been dead, and he only barely managed to block Bertelis’s blow slicing in at his neck. He was knocked back a step and Bertelis came after him.

He was completely outclassed, and they both knew it. Confident that Calard could not match him, Bertelis was now fighting well within his own limits, and his form was slipping. Calard’s anger swelled; he was determined to punish Bertelis for such arrogance, but knew he might only get one chance.

After a few more passes, Bertelis lunged. Calard sidestepped neatly, turning side-on to let Bertelis’s momentum take him past him. His brother’s blade slid by him, a hair’s-breadth from his throat. With a grunt of exertion, he rammed his sword’s heavy pommel into the side of Bertelis’s head, putting his whole armoured weight behind it.

The move was expertly delivered, his timing perfect, and it should have caved Bertelis’s skull in. His brother’s head snapped back, but he did not fall. Calard used the moment to step back, adopting a ready stance with his blade held high, its point levelled at Bertelis.

A trickle of blood ran from Bertelis’s temple, but he appeared otherwise unaffected by the blow. He reached up to the wound, and then licked the blood from his finger tips.

‘For that, I’m going to make this really hurt,’ said Bertelis.

Calard lunged at him and Bertelis danced out of the way. Calard turned, sweeping his blade overhead and bringing it crashing down in a heavy, diagonal strike. Bertelis parried it early and surged in under the blade to grab Calard by the throat. He moved so fast, he was little more than a blur. His grip was like iron. Up close, he looked barely human at all, his eyes glinting with fathomless hunger and madness, his skin almost translucent, his expression twisted and bestial.

‘Orlando’s blood was so sweet, so innocent,’ he hissed. ‘It was like nectar on my lips, sweeter than the finest wine.’

Bertelis lifted Calard off his feet, holding him aloft with one hand before tossing him aside like a child. Calard slammed into one of Merovech’s knights, bowling him over, and they fell in a tangled heap. Calard was up first, and as the knight grappled with him, he pummelled his elbow into the man’s face, dropping him instantly.

Calard staggered to his feet, dragging his sword up. Bertelis’s boot slammed down on it hard, snapping the blade halfway up its length, and Calard reeled back.

A knight lunged at him with a drawn sword, and Calard swayed to the side, avoiding the killing thrust. He stabbed the jagged end of his shattered sword into the man’s face, and he fell away with a strangled cry. Another knight swung at him from behind, but Calard sidestepped neatly. Grabbing the man’s arm as he came around, he pulled him off-balance, shoving him into Bertelis’s path.

Without blinking, Bertelis ran the knight through. He dragged his sword clear, and hurled the man aside.

Calard took a moment to survey his surroundings. The attack by Mortis’s feral brood had taken the knights by surprise, but they were fighting back now, gathering into tight huddles to support each other, and both sides were taking heavy casualties. Bodies were strewn across the chamber floor, and more than a few of the hunched peasants had dropped to the ground to feed, unable to restrain their hunger amid the sight and smell of so much blood.

He saw Mortis standing alone, up on the balcony where the monster had appeared, watching the mayhem unfold.

The immense beast and Duke Merovech had taken their fight up onto the raised dais where the five statues sat enthroned, separating themselves from the chaotic melee below.

The creature was bleeding from a dozen wounds, but it did not appear to be slowing. Merovech danced and weaved like a dervish, ducking under blows that would have torn him in half, twin blades flashing. He moved with preternatural speed, but the monster he fought was almost as quick, despite its bulk. As he watched, he saw the beast catch Merovech a glancing blow that sent the duke skittering across the dais like a rag doll, crashing into the central altar holding the huge, dark chalice with bone-jarring force.

The beast roared in victory and leapt after him, but Merovech recovered quickly, and rolled under the blade-like talons that hammered down towards him. As he came to his feet, both blades carved bloody furrows across the monster’s chest, and it hissed in pain.

Using the immense beast’s arm like a ladder, Merovech turned and leapt lightly up his enemy’s body, spinning both swords around in his hands so that they were pointed downwards, like daggers. Kicking off the beast’s chest, he turned in mid-air and plunged both swords into its neck.

The monster bellowed. Both swords were embedded to the hilt, and Calard could see their tips protruding from the back of its neck as it thrashed around in pain. It reached up and ripped both weapons free, hurling them away from it, and blood gushed from the wounds. Such a blow ought to have been fatal, but the beast merely shook its head and dropped to all fours, and began stalking towards the now unarmed Duke Merovech.

‘Your master’s going to die,’ said Calard as Bertelis closed the distance between them.

‘I think not,’ said his brother. ‘That devolved varghulf is no match for him.’

Bertelis lunged, feinting high and coming in low with a brutal attack intended to disembowel him. Calard saw it coming, and dropped his guard to block the vicious attack, but Bertelis had already shifted the angle of his attack once more.

Spinning on his heel, Bertelis turned quickly, his head whipping around and his body following. His sword slashed across Calard’s shoulder, striking just under his pauldron. The blow hacked through his chainmail and padding, and bit deep into flesh before striking bone.

Calard gasped, and his shattered sword-blade dropped from his hands. He fell to one knee, and Bertelis loomed above him, his blade slick with blood.

‘Goodbye, brother,’ said Bertelis, drawing his sword back for the killing thrust.

A knight burst from the crowd nearby. He had a sword in each hand, and he shouted at the top of his lungs as he charged.

‘Calard!’ Raben cried, tossing one of the blades towards him.

Calard caught the sword, his fingers closing around the familiar hilt.

Raben swung a two-handed blow at Bertelis, who turned and blocked the attack with one of his own. Dropping to one knee, Bertelis slashed from right to left across Raben’s stomach, carving through his chain hauberk and the muscle beneath, then rose and kicked the outcast away.

With a snarl, Bertelis rounded on Calard, but his eyes went wide as the Sword of Garamont impaled him.

Calard was on his feet now, and he grunted with effort as gave his sword another shove, ramming it up into Bertelis’s body.

Blood gushed from the fatal wound, and Bertelis’s face became increasingly gaunt, as if all the moisture in his body was being sucked out of him. His features became ever more skeletal and inhuman as his translucent flesh withered, his lips drawing back to expose his savage fangs. Calard stepped back, a look of disgust on his face, and slid his blade free.

The Sword of Garamont was glowing with an aura of white light, and Calard looked upon it in wonder. Bertelis’s blood spattered off it, leaving the blade spotless. The shimmering radiance felt like sunlight on Calard’s face, and despite the mayhem surrounding him, he felt a sense of calm and assurance envelop him.

Bertelis fell to his knees, blood pooling beneath him. His flesh continued to shrink upon his skull, until he looked barely human at all. His hands had withered to little more than talons, and their veins, purple and blue, stood out sharply. He glared up at Calard then. Hatred and fury burnt in his eyes, but also fear. He hissed like a cornered animal, teeth bared, as if he were devolving before Calard’s eyes.

The luminosity of the sword in Calard’s hands intensified, glowing hot and pure, and Bertelis’s skin began to blacken and blister beneath its glare. He held his hands up, shielding his eyes, and they too began to burn. A pitiful wail emitted from his throat.

‘Lady, give him peace,’ murmured Calard, clasping his sword in both hands. Without pause, he stepped forwards and beheaded the creature that had once been Bertelis.

Raben was lying on the ground nearby, clutching at his stomach, and he smiled wryly as his gaze met Calard’s.

‘Thank you,’ said Calard.

Raben grunted. ‘That was your brother?’ he said, indicating towards Bertelis’s corpse with his chin.

‘No,’ said Calard. ‘My brother died a long time ago.’

A roar of pain and fury dragged Calard’s attention up towards the raised dais. The immense, loathsome beast that Bertelis had called a varghulf was down, blood pooling beneath it. Its flesh was slashed and torn, hanging from it in bloody tatters.

Duke Merovech stood before it, sword in hand. His other blade was still embedded in the varghulf’s flesh. He too was injured. One of his pauldrons had been ripped away, exposing his shoulder, which was covered in blood. Four bloody rents were carved through his breastplate. Nevertheless, Duke Merovech stood victorious, and Calard shook his head in wonderment. Could nothing kill him?

The varghulf’s powerful legs bunched for one final spring, but it was never given the chance. Duke Merovech hurled his sword aside and leapt towards his enemy with a blood-curdling battle cry, hands extended like claws. He grabbed the immense creature by the head, grappling with it, and with a roar of effort, he wrenched it upwards, exposing its neck.

Merovech’s fangs flashed, and he tore into the varghulf’s neck. The creature fought against him, but its strength was gone. For long moments Merovech drank, glutting himself before pulling away. His mouth and chin were caked in blood.

Duke Merovech dragged the immense weight of the varghulf across the dais floor, until he reached the altar. With one hand, he grabbed the chalice from altar’s tabernacle. He glanced heavenward. The green moon of Morrslieb was eclipsing Mannslieb now, like a repulsive, burning pupil in a silver iris. Apparently satisfied, Merovech forced the varghulf’s neck back, and lowered his mouth to its neck once more. This time he did not feed, but rather tore. He ripped open its throat, and the last of its blood began to gush forth.

Grandfather Mortis clutched unsteadily at the railing of the balcony as he watched his beloved lord and master slain. His children were being butchered down below, their will to fight evaporating as they too registered that their master was no more.

He staggered back, casting his eyes from the sickening sight of his master’s body defiled. A took a deep, shuddering breath, and turned away.

A heavy spiked cudgel smashed one of his kneecaps to splinters, and he fell to the ground with a cry of pain and shock.

Chlod stood over him, and the old man gaped up at him.

‘Fifteen years I was your slave, one of your cursed children,’ said Chlod. ‘I’ll not be that again.’

The hunchbacked peasant spat in Mortis’s face, making the old man flinch. That merely enraged Chlod more, and he slammed his spiked cudgel into Mortis’s side. Ribs snapped like dry twigs.

‘Fifteen years I stole and murdered for you, you old bastard,’ said Chlod. ‘Fifteen years you starved me. How many times did I feel the touch of your switch, hmm? How many bones did you break? How many scars did you leave?’

He made to strike Mortis again, and the old man recoiled, his face twisted in agony.

‘Who has the power now?’ said Chlod.

‘I took you in, you wretched ingrate,’ hissed Mortis between clenched teeth. ‘I fed you! I clothed you! I! Without me you’d be dead! You’d be nothing! I made you what you are!’

‘You did at that,’ said Chlod. ‘Do you like what you see?’

Chlod brought his spiked cudgel down again and again, and as loud as Mortis’s screams were, no one came to his aid. He continued his brutal attack even after Mortis had ceased screaming, even after he was far beyond recognisable.

Finally, Chlod stopped his relentless assault. He was breathing heavily, and tears were running down his face. He was completely covered in blood, and chunks of skin and hair clung to the spikes of his club.

He spat down on the bloodied corpse, then turned away.

Calard knelt by Raben, and gently drew back the outcast’s arm to see the extent of his injuries.

‘How’s it look?’ said Raben. His face was pale.

‘It’s a scratch,’ said Calard. ‘You’ll be whoring again in a week, mark my words.’

‘Liar,’ said Raben, with a sardonic smile.

‘You’ll survive,’ said Calard, more seriously. ‘Though you’ll have a scar to rival that one,’ he said, indicating the jagged old wound that crossed Raben’s throat.

‘Ladies don’t like a man that’s too pretty,’ said Raben.

‘Well, you certainly aren’t that,’ said Calard, casting a wary eye around them.

There were few left standing, in truth. It seemed that both sides had practically annihilated the other, though from the looks of things, there were far more of Mortis’s people dead than Merovech’s.

Looking back up towards the dais, he saw that Merovech had filled the chalice with the varghulf’s blood. Now he stood, letting the massive creature’s head drop lifelessly to the floor. The vampire duke moved towards the first of the throned statues. He raised the chalice above it, and tipped it slightly, allowing a trickle of frothing blood to drip onto the statue’s head. Red rivulets ran down over its face, removing centuries of dust and grime. Calard’s heart skipped a beat as the statue’s eyes flicked open.

It turned its face up towards the stream of blood, its mouth opening wide, showing off impressively elongated canines. Its tongue lapped at the flow, and Calard saw its throat moving as it swallowed.

‘That’s not good,’ said Raben.

Merovech righted the chalice, and the enthroned creature returned to its former position. The duke moved on to the next in line, but Calard’s gaze was locked on the first.

Calard took a few steps towards the dais, his face resolute. He knew he stood little chance against Merovech alone, even without with his newly awoken allies. Nevertheless, he had sworn an oath, and would see Merovech dead or die in the attempt.

‘Calard,’ called Raben, and he looked back. ‘Don’t throw your life away.’

‘This is something I have to do,’ Calard said. He swung back around. His step faltered as the holy light radiating from the Sword of Garamont dimmed, then died altogether. He halted, looking down at it.

What did it mean? Did the Lady disapprove of his actions? But how could she? Was it not she who had led him here?

Three of the ‘statues’ had come awake now, and were on their feet, blinking and stretching their necks like men awakening from a deep slumber. Each was as tall as Merovech himself, and all of them were garbed in similar, barbed armour.

Calard stood stock still, indecision plaguing him.

‘Lady, give me a sign,’ he whispered. ‘Show me what it is you wish of me.’

A blinding flash exploded in Calard’s mind, sending him crashing to his knees, his eyes tightly closed. He gasped at the searing pain in his temples, clutching his head in his hands.

A bewildering flash of images assailed him, overwhelming in their intensity and their power.

It was over in an instant, the pain gone as if it had never been, but the images were seared forever into his mind’s eye.

‘As you will it, Lady, so shall it be done,’ he whispered.

‘Calard?’ called Raben, straining to see him.

‘We have to go,’ said Calard, turning his back on the dais, where all five of Merovech’s vampiric lieutenants how now arisen.

Calard hurried to Raben’s side.

‘We have to go,’ he said again.

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Raben.

‘Put your arm around me,’ said Calard, and then he lifted Raben to his feet. The outcast knight groaned in pain, but did not cry out. Together, they staggered across a floor littered with the dead, making their way towards the chamber’s exit. The few of Merovech’s knights that still stood paid them no heed, staring in wonder at the duke and his newly arisen entourage.

At the door of the chamber they paused, glancing back within.

The scene was one of utter devastation. Hundreds of bodies were sprawled across the marble floor. Many were not yet dead, and the ground rippled with movement. Their cries and moans were pitiful. Blood was splattered up the walls, and more than a few of the bodies had been partially devoured. The corpse of the monstrous varghulf lay motionless upon the dais. Merovech descended the stairs of the raised platform, flanked by the five lieutenants that had served him seven hundred years earlier.

The few living knights still standing in the room dropped to their knees before Merovech. The duke ignored them, walking past with barely a glance. His companions, however, circled them like wolves. As one, they closed in, and began to feed.

Merovech dropped to one knee alongside Bertelis’s headless corpse, and Calard thought he saw something approaching sorrow ghost across the duke’s features as he placed a hand upon his brother’s chest. Then Merovech raised his head, looking down the length of the chamber directly at Calard. He stood, and began walking towards them.

‘We have to leave,’ said Raben.

Calard nodded, and supporting the outcast’s weight, hurried from the room.

They almost collided with Chlod as he came bowling down a wide set of stairs. The peasant was covered from head to toe in blood.

No words were spoken, and after a brief pause, Chlod moved forward to help support Raben. The outcast threw his arm over his shoulder and the three of them began making their way from the palace of Mousillon.

‘Gods, peasant,’ said Calard. ‘You stink.’

Drained of blood, the corpse was dropped unceremoniously to the ground. The vampire’s flesh was flushed, and its mouth and chin was stained with congealing gore.

Nothing living moved within the great hall. Every corpse has been bled dry to satiate the thirst of the duke’s newly risen lieutenants.

It would not be long now, Merovech knew.

Within the hour, the first of the drained knights stirred and rose unsteadily to its feet, staggering like a newborn colt. Darkness lingered in its eyes, and its lips curled back to reveal newly formed canines. More knights stirred as they awoke to darkness, and Merovech smiled.

‘Welcome, brothers,’ he said, spreading his arms wide. ‘Welcome to damnation.’

GRAIL KNIGHT

I

Twilight deepened, slowly giving way to dusk. As the sun slipped over the western horizon, its last rays reflected off Calard of Garamont’s armour. Then it was gone, and darkness descended over the land.

The ground was rough and overgrown, and a creeping mist hung low over the land. Patches of snow resisted the encroachment of spring, yet blooming wildflowers spoke of its imminent arrival. There were no roads in this wilderness, and Calard’s progress was slow. Ten miles behind him the rolling landscape gave way to the verdant pastures and farmlands of Quenelles, but here on the borders, the land was left untouched by human hand. The early ancestors of the Bretonnians had learnt that lesson well in centuries past.

Calard guided his armoured warhorse up a steep ridge, picking a path through the heather and scratching gorse. The sides dropped off sharply, and the sheer slopes were strewn with rocks before disappearing into mist.

His hair was long and unkempt and his cheeks unshaven, yet he radiated an undeniable nobility, and his battle-worn appearance demanded respect. His right hand rested on the pommel of the ornate sword at his hip, a priceless family heirloom said to have been blessed by the Lady herself. A second, much larger sword was strapped across his back. It was a practical blade, heavy and devoid of ornamentation, and was quite capable of cutting a man in half with a single blow.

At the peak of the hill, Calard reined in his dappled grey destrier, staring to the east. From his vantage atop the ridge, the land spread out before him like a map.

His gaze was drawn to the vast tract of primal forest dominating the view, now less than a mile distant. It extended before him like an endless dark ocean, its fathomless depths harbouring untold secrets and hidden dangers. Even this far off he could feel the power of the forest, a strange and ethereal miasma that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

This was the Forest of Loren, a place of nightmare and dream, magic and mystery.

Its densely wooded edge resembled the soaring wall of some grand arboreal fortress, extending north and south as far as the eye could see. No tree strayed beyond its stark border, not even the tiniest sapling, as if an invisible force held it at bay. He knew that eventually the forest gave way to the foothills of the Grey Mountains, but from here it looked as though it went on forever. Low cloud obscured the highest treetops, and the canopy disappeared into haze only a few miles in.

Impenetrable, dark and heady with ancient magic, the Forest of Loren had long resonated in the hearts and minds of every son and daughter of Bretonnia. From childhood they were raised on stories of the fabled realm, tales of capricious beings of inhuman beauty and trees that came to life, of mischievous trickster spirits and malicious forest creatures that ensnared the unwary. On any given night one could hear the stories of the fey being told in hushed tones across Bretonnia, from the campfires of the lowliest peasants, to the grand halls of the king himself.

Few dared breach the borders of the ancient forest, and of those that did, fewer still returned. Those that managed to find their way out were more often than not discovered wandering its edges come dawn, babbling incoherently, their sanity shredded.

Indeed, if even a fraction of the tales surrounding these wildwoods were true then it was a place to be approached only with great caution.

Nevertheless, Calard felt no fear, for it was the will of the Lady, the patron goddess of Bretonnia, that he was here.

The first stars were appearing, like tiny pinpricks in the roof of the world. Brightest of all was the evening star, hanging low in the eastern sky above the forest. Known as the Lady’s Grace, it was the first star to appear and the last to depart come morning.

‘As you lead me, Lady, so shall I follow.’

For a moment longer Calard lingered atop the rocky bluff, breathing in the full spectacle before him. He could see a slender pinnacle of stone on the threshold. The evening star blinked above it, like a beacon.

‘Forward, Galibor,’ he said, urging his steed with a gentle kick. He rode down the ridge, towards the guiding evening star and the looming Forest of Loren.

Twenty feet high and carved with elegant, spiralling runes, the waystone marked the very edge of the forest. Ivy clung to its smooth surface, and Calard felt a strange tingling sensation on his skin in its presence.

Galibor stamped the ground, nostrils flaring. Calard could feel the warhorse’s powerful muscles tensing, and he gripped the reins firmly.

Calard had ridden the destrier’s grandsire, Gringolet, as a young knight errant, and so knew the horse’s pedigree. The warhorse was feisty and bellicose in nature, and though she had only recently come into his possession, he had been assured that she was fearless in battle. He had no reason to doubt this, and knew that it was unusual for the destrier to display such unease as she now did.

‘Be calm, brave one,’ he said, stroking its neck.

The warhorse relaxed under his trained hands, though he could still feel her agitation. Indeed, he felt a measure of it himself.

As a boy, Calard had been taught never to stare directly at a deer or boar when hunting, for the animal would instinctively feel a hunter’s gaze upon it. Calard felt that same odd sensation of being watched now, a crawling feeling in the back of his mind. He felt vulnerable, like prey locked in the sights of some unseen predator.

Tearing his gaze away from the waystone, he scanned the treeline. Shadows lurked within, but he could see no threat. Mist coiled from the gloom, insubstantial tendrils reaching out towards him. It wound around the legs of his destrier, which pawed the ground again, snorting.

‘There’s nothing there,’ said Calard, as much to convince himself as his horse.

He dismounted, and took a few steps towards the waystone. Mighty oaks towered over him, their thick branches straining to breach whatever force held them at bay. It was cold in the shadow of the forest; an icy chill seemed to radiate up from the dark soil underfoot. A vague feeling of menace pulsed from within the forest depths, as if it resented his proximity to its border. Since he was a boy he had dreamed of the day when he would see the fabled realm, but standing now in its presence as night drew in, he wondered if his desire had been a foolish one.

The previous night he had been a guest in the halls of Lord Eldecar of Toucon, an elderly nobleman of Quenelles, and a feast had been laid on in his honour. His quest precluded him for lingering though, and the entire hall had fallen silent when Calard had spoken his intention.

‘If I have caused offence, it was unintentional, and I apologise,’ Calard had said, unsure if he had broken some local protocol.

Eldecar had waved away his apology, but his eyebrows were knotted in concern.

‘No, of course not,’ Eldecar had said, finally breaking the awkward silence, ‘but you do know, sir knight, that it is the eve of the vernal tide?’

Calard had frowned and shrugged.

‘You have not lived your life in the shadow of the forest, so can be forgiven for not understanding,’ said Eldecar. ‘Even in Bastonne, you must have heard tell of the wild hunt?’

‘When the barriers to the otherworld fall, and the faerie court rides across the night sky? Surely that is merely superstition?’

Eldecar’s expression remained grim.

‘As old as I am, I would cut down any man that called me coward,’ said Eldecar, ‘and yet I would not dare venture out of doors after nightfall on the Spring Equinox. Nor would any sane man of Quenelles.’

‘It is by the Lady’s will that I must go,’ said Calard. ‘My faith shall be my shield against any fey witchery.’

‘Then I shall pray for your soul, Calard of Garamont.’

The words came back to Calard now as he stood at the edge of the forest, and an involuntary shiver passed up his spine.

‘Superstitions, nothing more.’

Walking towards the slender stone marker, he drew the Sword of Garamont. Reversing his grip on the ancient weapon, he plunged its blade into the moist earth. Dropping to one knee, he pressed his forehead against the fleur-de-lys hilt of his blessed sword.

‘You have called, my Lady, and I have answered,’ he said. ‘Grant me the vision to know what it is you would have me do, and I shall gladly do it.’

Falling silent, Calard remained motionless, eyes closed in prayer. As his breathing evened out and deepened, he felt a profound sense of peace descend over him. All his concerns and doubts washed away.

It was not long before he felt a presence nearby. Opening his eyes, his saw a majestic stag at the very edge of the forest, watching him. It was huge, larger even than Galibor, and its branching antlers were easily ten feet from tip to tip. Its thick winter coat shone, ghost-like amidst the shadows of the forest.

Never had Calard seen such a regal creature, and he scarce dared to breathe, unsure if it was real or imagined.

With unhurried movements it walked into the forest. About ten paces in it stopped and turned to stare back at him. Its intent was clear; it wanted him to follow.

Was this the Lady’s will, or some trick of the forest, attempting to lure him within its borders?

Not for the first time Calard felt the desire to ride from this place, to join the king and face the undead legions of Mousillon that were marching, even now, against his homeland. Surely that was where he belonged?

He shook his head to throw off these doubts. No, the Lady had brought him here for a reason, and he was honour bound to see that through to the end.

Rising, he sheathed his sword and took the reins of his steed. Galibor did not resist as he led her towards the edge of the forest, though he could feel her trembling. He paused at the tree-line. The stag continued to look back towards him, waiting.

‘Blessed Lady, protect your servant,’ he said, and entered the forest.

II

A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold passed through Calard as he crossed the threshold of Athel Loren. The air felt instantly different, clear and crisp like a mid-winter morning, and the temperature dropped markedly. The biting chill filled his lungs, bringing with it the rich scent of the forest – a heady mix of soil, rain, rotting leaves and other less identifiable but not unpleasant aromas. His breath fogged the air. A low mist coiled around the twisted roots of the trees.

Movement flickered on the periphery of Calard’s vision, and unseen things rustled in the undergrowth. He heard fluttering and chattering in the boughs overhead, and a tumble of twigs, dead foliage and disturbed snow fell around him, but he was not quick enough to locate the source.

Massive oaks reared up, their trunks gnarled and old, their limbs heavy with lichen. Stars flickered in and out of view overhead, obscured by the criss-crossing canopy of skeletal branches. No new leaves or buds were in evidence; it seemed that winter still reigned here.

The forest was painted monochrome in the deepening twilight, as if all colour and life had been leeched away in the winter months. The leafless trees were the colour of unyielding stone, and the blanket of ferns were shining silver, as if their fronds had been dipped in molten metal. It was a coldly beautiful realm, ghostly and silent.

The white stag waited for him close by, half obscured by the low fog. It regarded him steadily, only turning and leading the way further into the forest once it was sure that Calard was following.

While the creature moved effortlessly through the woodland, Calard stumbled over rocks and roots, and twigs scratched at his face and caught in his hair. It was as if the forest were purposefully making his progress difficult, hindering his every step. Even as he discounted the notion as foolish, his foot caught between a tangle of roots that seemed to tighten around his leg like a trap. He fell to his knees with a curse. He thought he heard high-pitched, childish laughter from nearby, but it was gone in an instant, and might have been nothing more than a trick of the wind.

A glint of metal in the undergrowth caught his eye. Disentangling himself from the grasping roots, he parted the ferns for a clearer view.

A corpse lay encoiled beneath the roots of a broad oak. It appeared to be slowly dragging it down into the earth, as if swallowing it whole, yet even half-buried Calard saw enough to recognise a knight of Bretonnia.

The knight was long dead, his armour rusted and encrusted with dirt. There was not a skerrick of flesh left upon his skull, though tufts of matted reddish hair still clung to his scalp and chin.

A slender arrow protruded from his left eye-socket.

A hand on the hilt of his sword, Calard scanned the area for danger. Beams of silver moonlight speared down through the canopy, lending the forest a dream-like quality. Shadows danced around him and the trees creaked and strained like ships at sea, though there was no wind to stir their branches.

Briefly, he considered digging the corpse free in order to give it a proper burial, for no knight of Bretonnia deserved such ignominy in death. He discounted the notion with some reluctance – the roots of the tree were wrapped tight, and would not easily relinquish their prize. He spoke a brief prayer, willing the knight’s spirit on to Morr’s kingdom.

Looking back the way he had come, Calard expected to see the waystone marking the forest’s edge and the open land beyond. He had ventured no more than twenty yards into the woods, after all. The way behind him now looked as impenetrable as the way forward.

‘What in the name of the Lady?’

He turned around on the spot, wondering if he had somehow lost his bearings. The forest stretched out in every direction, dark and claustrophobic. Its edge was nowhere to be seen. Calard’s brow furrowed. He didn’t recognise a single tree or rock that looked familiar, nothing providing any clue to the way back out.

The white stag too was gone. Forcing back his rising unease, Calard scoured the ground in a wide arc, but could not find its tracks. It had disappeared without a trace, as if it had been nothing but an apparition all along.

Recalling the tales that spoke of the forest luring the unwary within its boundaries, and the inevitably grim fate that awaited them, Calard cursed himself for a fool. He had been so certain that it was the Lady’s will that he followed the noble creature, but now, alone and lost in the Forest of Loren as night descended, he was not so sure.

Calard turned back. Perhaps it was just some trick of the light, he thought, and he would stumble out of the forest any moment.

The woods became increasingly dense and oppressive the further he went, and within minutes he knew that this was not the way back. It was getting colder as well, the isolated patches of snow on the ground becoming an ever-thickening layer that crunched beneath his boots.

Turning back in the face of this unnatural winter, Calard retraced his steps, intending to return to the corpse of the knight and pick another direction.

Thankfully, the snowfall thinned as he backtracked. But there was still no sign he had passed this way before.

Calard was an accomplished tracker and huntsman, and had lived for long periods in the wilds of the Old World. He was self-reliant and comfortable in such situations, confident in his own abilities. But here in the shadowy realm of Athel Loren he felt like a child lost in the woods, vulnerable and unsure which way to turn. His usually faultless sense of direction had deserted him, but he trusted his instincts enough to know that this was not some failing on his part, but rather that something was actively working to disorient him. It was as if the forest itself were conspiring to confound his senses.

He clambered over a half-buried log, but the way in front was blocked by an impenetrable tangle of branches. He turned back, intending to take a different route.

Impossibly, the log he had just climbed over had disappeared. Even his footprints were gone – the snow behind him was pristine.

‘This is madness.’

He heard a whisper of laughter behind him and turned quickly, searching. The forest was utterly still, giving nothing away.

Silence descended like a shroud, oppressive and all encompassing.

There was not a hint of movement in the undergrowth or in the canopy overhead, as if time itself was frozen. There was no breeze to cause even a ripple of movement or break the illusion. The air was charged with tension. It was the deceptive lull that came before a raging tempest was unleashed.

As silently as he was able, Calard drew his sword.

He forced himself to breathe evenly, emptying his mind of doubt and forcing the tension from his limbs. Whatever was coming would do so whether he wished it or not, and he would face it free of anxiety and hesitation.

Over the course of the last seven years he had battled hulking trolls in the blizzards of the northlands, and tracked and killed the dread Jabberslythe of Ostwald in the forests of the Empire. He had been hunted by pallid, blind ogre-kin through the labyrinths beneath the Mountains of Mourn and emerged triumphant, and had slain – several times – a monstrous wyvern that refused to stay dead. Most recently he had journeyed into the nightmare realm of Mousillon and fought the restless dead. He had been faced his own brother, twisted into a hateful vampiric creature of the night, and had not faltered, delivering him into Morr’s care.

And having quite literally travelled to hell and back – the burning heavens in the Realm of Chaos still haunted him – there were few things in the world that could truly unnerve him.

As he turned, his gaze swept across something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

A motionless figure was watching him, bathed in moonlight.

It was a knight, encased in ornate plate mail of archaic design. Utterly motionless, it stood atop a rocky outcrop that rose above the groundcover of snow and ferns. The towering figure was tinged the greenish-grey of weather-beaten rock, and Calard might have mistaken it for a statue but for the unnatural light of its eyes, burning coldly within the darkness of its helm.

Calard’s heart began to pound.

It was the Green Knight.

III

Calard stood frozen, his heart thumping.

The knight staring balefully down at him was a figure from myth and legend, and while it was the fervent hope of every boy and young knight of Bretonnia to face this supernatural avenger, few believed that they would ever be so blessed.

Calard had seen the Green Knight depicted a thousand times, in plays, illustrated manuscripts and stained glass, yet nothing could have prepared him for the reality.

Feared and revered in equal measure, some said that the Green Knight was the immortal spirit of Gilles the Uniter himself, founder of Bretonnia, and that he served the Lady even in death. Few claimed to have glimpsed the potent spectre, and those that did spoke little of their encounter.

It was said that the ancient being may appear to a questing knight nearing the conclusion of his ordeal, challenging him in order to test his resolve. Calard’s mouth went dry as he dared to think that perhaps this was his time.

The Green Knight’s gauntleted hands rested upon a broad-bladed sword – the Dolorous Blade – embedded in the earth before it. How many souls deemed unworthy had been cut down by that infamous weapon?

For years Calard had longed to face this potent being, but now that he did, he found himself transfixed, scarcely able to breathe. He felt a trembling thrill in his gut such as he had not experienced since he was a young knight errant. Sweat trickled down his back, despite the cold. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword, and he forced himself to take a slow breath.

All the while, the Green Knight remained motionless, eyes searing through Calard’s soul, stripping him bare. Fog seeped up from the ground and billowed around the ethereal champion like a cloak.

In one smooth motion, the mythical figure drew its sword from the earth, and began to advance towards him.

Mist rolled out around the Green Knight, rushing towards Calard like a tide. It crashed over him in a soundless wave, and he was instantly chilled. Behind him, Galibor whinnied and reared, but Calard did not turn, unable to tear his gaze from the spectre bearing down on him.

Everything but this supernatural foe faded from view. The fog thickened, and the forest became vague and indistinct, then disappeared altogether. For a moment Calard heard haunting music, the refrain impossibly beautiful. He heard lyrical, inhuman voices rising in song, the sound so emotive and filled with longing that tears came unbidden to Calard’s eyes.

Roiling eddies of vapour curled and billowed around him on a sudden breeze. The Green Knight advanced, wading through the suffocating mist towards Calard, yet as it thickened, the distance between them seemed to grow. Calard hastened his pace towards his opponent, but the fog closed in.

The otherworldly figure was becoming increasingly hard to discern. Its terrible eyes and burning blade were growing faint, like the lights of a ship pulling away from port in the dead of night.

‘No,’ said Calard, hastening his step as he felt his opportunity to face the potent spirit slipping away. ‘No!’

Calard ran, straining to keep the Green Knight in view, but within heartbeats the spectre was gone, subsumed by the heavy fog. Calard was alone, adrift in a sea of nothingness.

He edged forwards, sword and shield at the ready, half expecting the Green Knight to loom up at any moment and cut him down. His steps were halting as he felt his way forward, wary of pitfalls and rocks.

The fog muffled all sound, but after a few moments, Calard realised that he could hear something: a dull roar, akin to rolling thunder or the pounding of waves on distant shores. It was impossible to gauge the direction that the sound came from, and with no point of reference, he quickly lost his bearings.

For long minutes Calard advanced blindly. The sound of rushing water echoed around him, and soft spray wet his cheeks. He was stepping through ankle-deep water. Tiny rapids swirled as it rushed over his boots.

He thought he saw something taking shape before him, a vague dancing light in the distance that might have been a lantern or torch. Again he heard that ethereal, haunting music. The light bobbed and weaved, mesmerising and strangely alluring, as if calling to him. Calard took an involuntary step towards it before he dragged himself back, recalling the tales of malevolent will-o-the-wisps leading unwary travellers to their doom.

No sooner had the thought registered than the dancing light disappeared. The fog began to retreat, rising like a curtain to reveal his surroundings.

Calard took a hasty step backwards as the forest took shape around him. He was standing on the edge of a cliff, hundreds of feet high. One more step forwards, and he would have walked out over the edge.

His senses reeled at the drop; he was looking down on the forest canopy below. It extended far into the distance, treetops glittering beneath the silver moon of Mannslieb.

Turning, he surveyed his surroundings. A second waterfall fell from above, crashing down over a sheer cliff face into a deep pool. The water’s surface was turbulent, and shimmered like liquid metal. The roar of the falls was deafening, and spray filled the air, glistening like rippling veils of diamond dust. Galibor stood nearby, drinking from the pool.

Trudging through the shallow water, Calard climbed the banks of the pool and peered into the forest. He could see no more than ten yards; it was almost impenetrable.

The sky was clear, allowing Calard to regain his bearings. He shook his head in wonder. From what he could make out, he was many miles from the forest border, closer in fact to the Grey Mountains in the east than the western fringes of Loren. He was also many miles to the north of where he would have expected to be. Still, a day and a night of travel should see him to the northern edge of the forest.

He whistled, and Galibor’s eyes swivelled. The warhorse looked at him.

‘Come,’ Calard said, and the warhorse cantered obediently through the shallow water to its master.

Calard took Galibor’s reins, readying to enter the forest. He looked over his shoulder one last time, at the clouds of vapour coming off the waterfall.

Before he turned away, Calard saw something come over the falls. It disappeared from view a moment later, swallowed by the raging torrent, but for a brief few seconds he saw it clearly as it fell. It was a body, arms and legs flailing as it tumbled.

IV

Without hesitation, Calard plunged into the icy pool. The body had disappeared beneath the thunderous white water, but he waded in deep, fighting the strong currents. He was not certain anyone could have survived that drop, and when they didn’t surface, he began to fear they had become snagged by rocks or already been carried past him and over the second falls.

Calard ducked under the surface, but it was hard to see anything. As he came up, he glimpsed the body surging facedown towards the drop of the second falls. Risking being swept away himself, Calard launched himself towards it, and caught the figure under one arm.

For a moment he was locked in an impasse with the surging waters. He was unwilling to let go, yet unable to drag it to safety. Groaning with effort, he managed to pull it from the swift moving current and haul it into the shallows. By the time he got it to shore, his chest was heaving and he was soaked to the skin.

It was a man, clothed in little more than a loin-cloth of woven grass and twigs and a heavy cloak of tawny feathers. He was lean and slender, his limbs long and powerful. Broad antlers like those of a stag protruded from a helmet of dark leather, and hair the colour of sand hung past his waist, tied in intricate plaits and knots. Dozens of necklaces, torcs and bracelets encircled his neck and arms, and a huge hunting horn hung across his back. His pallid skin was covered in swirling tattoos and war paint. Lacerations criss-crossed his flesh, as if he had been whipped to the brink of death.

Calard rolled the figure over, shifting the massive hunting horn strapped across his back so he could lie flat. For a moment he stared at the man’s pale face in shock and wonder. His features were angular and long, and tall, pointed ears poked through his tangle of hair. The face was handsome, in a fashion, yet unutterably inhuman.

Many in Bretonnia spoke openly of their disbelief in those known as the fey – the woodland elves said to dwell within the Forest of Loren – yet here before Calard’s eyes was evidence of their existence.

Calard dropped to his knees and pressed one ear to the elf’s chest. The heartbeat was weak and faltering. The elf’s chest was not rising and falling. By holding his hand before his mouth he nose confirmed the elf was not breathing.

Gripping the slender figure’s jaw in one hand, Calard leant down and breathed air into the elf’s lungs.

After several breaths, the elf jolted convulsively. He coughed up a lungful of water, and his eyes flicked open. They were large and almond shaped, and the irises were golden.

‘Noth athel’marekh, taneth’url aran,’ said the elf, struggling and failing to rise. When he saw Calard, his eyes widened. He reached for a weapon, but the scabbard at his waist was empty.

‘I mean you no harm,’ said Calard, showing his palms.

The elf cocked his head to one side, studying the questing knight with narrowed eyes.

A piercing scream tore through the air, and Calard reached for his weapon. It was not human, nor was it the cry of any bird or beast. It was cruel, seething with malice, and the promise of pain.

The elf snarled, and using the water-slick rocks to help him, he dragged himself upright, gritting his teeth against the pain of his wounds. He couldn’t stand unsupported, but he searched the forest edges. Calard was surprised the elf was even alive considering his wounds.

‘Drycha noth Kournos athos,’ said the elf, spitting the words out like a curse. His strength deserted him, and his eyes rolled backwards. Without a sound, he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

Moving to him, Calard pressed his fingers to the elf’s throat. The heartbeat was erratic, and the skin was an unhealthy shade of blue. If his wounds were not tended soon, and warmth restored to his body, then the elf would surely not see out the night.

Another horrid cry echoed through the trees. This scream was nearer, and though it was hard to gauge, Calard judged it to be perhaps half a league away. It was followed almost instantly by another scream, slightly further off, coming from yet a third direction. It was the sound of predators coordinating a hunt, in the manner of a wolf pack, though these were no wolves; this was something infinitely more dangerous. Another cry sounded, closer still, and Calard realised that he was already surrounded.

Calard lifted the elf onto his shoulder, surprised at how light he was. He draped him over the warhorse’s saddle, and gripped Galibor by the bridle.

They needed shelter, and fast – somewhere to hide from whatever was hunting them, and a place where he could tend the elf’s injuries. Keeping close to the sheer rock face, Calard guided his warhorse back into the forest, judging the best chance they had was to find a hollow or an overhang in the cliff wall. There were dozens of cracks in the cliff face, but few extended far, and none offered much in the way of protection from the biting wind or prying eyes.

Another scream sounded, louder than any so far. The hunters were closing in fast.

Calard spied one crack in the cliff wall that looked marginally wider than the others, and in growing desperation, he scrambled forward to investigate, guiding Galibor towards the narrow chasm. It was barely wide enough for the armoured warhorse, but he pressed on, praying to the Lady. Water dripped down the sheer sides of this natural ravine, and ferns clung to its sides.

The passage narrowed, and Calard feared that he would have to turn back. Galibor snorted in displeasure, but did not resist as Calard continued on. After twenty paces, the ravine became a tunnel, a narrow passage delving deeper into the rock.

Sliding back past Galibor, Calard used a fallen branch to cover their tracks, obscuring their prints in the snow as best he could before leading the way deeper into the dark.

The roar of the waterfall echoed up through the tunnel, becoming louder the further they went. While the first few steps were through near total darkness, the way ahead brightened steadily; clusters of glowing crystal clung to the rock walls, radiating a pale phosphorescent glow.

Calard paused beside one of these formations. It was a mass of dagger-like shards, many as long as his forearm. The blue-white illumination they emitted pulsed like a heart-beat. Peering closely, he saw tiny spider-like creatures patrolling the crystal formation, swarming industriously, like bees within a hive. Their bodies were pearlescent and chitinous, and they too pulsed with inner luminosity.

Moving on, the crystal formations became ever more complex and impressive, until the winding tunnel opened to a broad, light-filled cavern. It was like walking into a cathedral of glass.

Grand pillars of crystal rose from floor to ceiling, and huge formations hung down like delicate chandeliers, glimmering coldly.

A hushed roar echoed through the cavern, and Calard wandered through its halls, awestruck, leading Galibor and the unconscious elf. He came to a gaping aperture, like a vast arched window, though in place of glass was a shimmering veil of water. They were behind the waterfall.

Others had recently used this place as a campsite. In a hollow in the floor he found ashes and charcoal, and in a nook in the wall was a pile of dry tinder and wood. Several low shelves extended from the walls around this fire pit, and pallets of tightly bound leaves upon them indicated that they were used as bedding.

He had no way of knowing who used this place as a refuge, nor if they would return, but he cast away any concern and thanked the Lady for leading him here. Easing the unconscious elf from Galibor’s saddle, he lowered him onto one of the pallets. His skin was cold and grey, and blood was leaking from his wounds. His heart beat was fluttering and faint, and his breathing shallow. Knowing he needed warmth, Calard set to building a fire.

Within minutes he had a blaze roaring, and turned his attentions to the elf’s injuries.

His tattooed flesh was covered in scratches and raking cuts. The majority of these wounds were focussed on his upper body and torso. There were few marks upon his back, suggesting the elf had been facing his assailant. His hands and forearms were shredded, as though he had tried to ward off the attacks.

Dozens of hooked thorns, some several inches long, were embedded in his body. They leaked a pungent, sticky green sap.

Some of the lacerations were superficial – no doubt painful, but not life threatening – but many were deep enough for serious concern. Calard winced as he probed at one particularly vicious injury.

Broken ribs protruded like snapped twigs from a serrated gash in the elf’s side, and blood was flowing steadily from it. Left untended, he would certainly bleed to death. But even if the flow was stemmed survival was not certain.

Of greatest concern was a noxious discolouration surrounding each laceration. It spread out beneath the skin like the roots of a tree. These malign, creeping tendrils were dark-green in colour; poisoned.

Without delay, Calard set to removing the barbs. He concentrated his efforts on the serious torso wound first, cleaning and stitching it up as best he could. In a small bowl he ground up a mixture of herbs that he’d collected on his travels, mixing it with the last remnants of honey from a clay jar he had procured in the Empire six months earlier. The herbs were medicinal in nature, and combined with honey would aid in preventing infection. Calard applied the sticky poultice to the elf’s jagged wound. Cutting strips from a spare tunic, he bound it in place.

For an hour he ministered to the elf’s wounds. His patient cried out in his restless slumber, but his words were indecipherable. Several times he awoke, but his eyes were glazed and unfocussed, and he didn’t register Calard’s presence.

Still wearing his horned headdress, the elf projected a savage nobility even in unconsciousness. The inhuman cast to his features was emphasised by the cold light emitted by the walls, making his flesh appear luminous. It was impossible to guess his age – he might have twenty or two hundred and twenty – for the fey were thought to be long lived, perhaps even immortal. The span of their lives, so it was said, outstripped even those of dwarfen kind.

The cavern was warm now, the fire burning strong. Judging that he could do little more for the elf, Calard saw to his warhorse. He brushed her down and checked her legs and hooves for injury. Only when his steed was fed and watered did Calard allow himself to relax. He leaned his broadsword and shield against the wall and settled down upon one of the cave’s pallets. The Sword of Garamont sat across his lap. Its familiar weight was comforting. He watched the waterfall as he ate a meal of salted beef, and his mind drifted.

It had been seven years since he had set aside his lance and taken up the quest. Swearing his vow before the goddess, he had relinquished all his material wealth and instated his young cousin Orlando as his regent under the trusted guidance of Baron Montcadas. With nothing in the world to his name but that which he wore or was carried by Chlod, his manservant, Calard had ridden from Castle Garamont determined to succeed in his quest or die in the attempt.

The years on the road had hardened him, like a sword tempered in the forge. Through all the trials and hardships set against him he had emerged triumphant, and with every passing month his mind, body and soul had been strengthened.

Now, he prayed, his journey was coming to an end.

The vision had struck with all the force of a thunder bolt, taking his breath away and dropping him to his knees in the midst of battle. It has lasted just seconds, but the blinding series of images had been forever seared in his mind. Even now, he could see it whenever he closed his eyes.

He could not yet fathom the vision’s full meaning, but he had faith that all would become clear. The Lady had wished for him to follow the evening star into the east – and that had brought him here.

As loath as he had been to depart the cursed realm of Mousillon while the fiend Duke Merovech still walked, he could no more disobey the Lady’s command than choose for his heart to stop beating. And while he knew that even now Merovech and his blood-sucking seneschals were marching against Bretonnia at the head of a vast undead army, he could not ride to join the knights of the king until he had done as the Lady bid him.

Two others had ridden with Calard from the cursed realm; Chlod, his hunchbacked manservant, and Raben, a dishonoured rogue of a knight embarked upon the difficult road to redemption. Pursued by the nightmarish hounds of Duke Merovech, the three had fled Mousillon.

Knowing that haste was of the highest priority and that the path he now travelled was his alone, Calard had bid his companions farewell at Mousillon’s border and ridden hard into the east.

Chlod he had foresworn into Raben’s service, and the pair had ridden north into Lyonesse to raise the alarm. They had each seen the threat that Merovech posed, having glimpsed in the distance the army he had raised – literally – as they had fled the city. Thousands upon thousands of long dead warriors stood in serried ranks on the blasted fields to the north of Mousillon.

Calard’s gaze settled on the ashen-faced elf lying before the fire.

The Lady had led him here to save this warrior, of that he was certain. But why? Whatever the reason, he prayed that the elf would live to see the dawn. His fate was in the hands of the gods now.

The noise of the waterfall was soothing, and lulled by the sound of rushing water and the play of firelight on the crystal walls, Calard drifted into a fugue-like half-sleep. He imagined he saw slender women in the waterfall, staring in at him from the rushing waters, their naked flesh the colour of the ocean. He heard them singing, filling the crystal sanctuary with their hypnotic song.

The fire was low when he jolted awake.

The elf stood before him, holding Calard’s broadsword in a two-handed grip, the tip levelled at his throat. His golden eyes were unblinking.

The Sword of Garamont was still sheathed across Calard’s lap. With some effort he restrained himself from drawing it. He could see by the elf’s balanced stance that he was a warrior; he would be run through before he had the Sword of Garamont even half drawn.

Making no sudden or threatening moves, Calard lifted the sheathed sword from his lap and placed it beside him, flat on the pallet. He leant back against the stone wall and placed his hands behind his head.

‘Well?’ he said, his gaze steady. ‘What now?’

The elf’s eyes narrowed.

‘Aleth kegh-mon aeleth’os tark’a Loec-noth,’ said the elf. The cadence of his speech was lyrical, each unfamiliar word precisely enunciated and tinged with hostility.

‘If you were going to kill me, you would have done it by now.’

Calard could see that the elf was weak, though he was trying his best to conceal it. His limbs were lathered in sweat, and blood was leaking from several of his bindings.

The Bretonnian bastard sword was heavy, and Calard could see that the elf was straining to keep it aloft. It looked overly large and crude in his hands, which were surely used to more elegant weapons.

‘There is a poison in your flesh,’ said Calard. ‘You need healing. What was it that caused your injuries?’

‘Dae’eth Shael-Mara, noth,’ spat the elf.

‘You don’t understand me, do you?’ said Calard.

‘Kaelan noth kegh-mon,’ spat the elf.

They stared at each other for a time, neither willing to make a move. Calard shivered. The fire had reduced itself to embers, and the cavern was cold. Moving slowly, he reached for more wood.

The elf hissed through his teeth and tensed, the tip of the sword hovering like the barbed tail of a scorpion, ready to strike.

Moving cautiously, Calard lifted a chunk of wood from the pile and tossed it onto the embers. Tongues of flame rose almost instantly, licking at the dry, crackling timber.

Leaning forward, he poked at the fire, and a flurry of glowing cinders drifted into the air, dancing and crackling. Over the glow of the flames, he saw the elf sway as he fought to stay conscious. The tip of the sword wavered and dipped.

Seeing his opening, Calard flicked a scoop of embers up at the elf. In the same movement he sprang to his feet and leapt the fire pit, intending to slam the elf from his feet with his shoulder before he had a chance to strike.

Even in his weakened state the elf was far quicker than Calard had anticipated. Before he had cleared the fire pit the elf had already spun out of the way, side-stepping the tumble of glowing coals and bringing the heavy bastard sword around in a lethal arc that sliced for Calard’s neck. The blow was not a casual one; it was a killing stroke.

Calard threw himself to the side, and the blade hissed past, missing him by inches. Still turning, the elf launched himself into the air like a dancer, using his momentum to bring the bastard sword around for a second strike. The elf moved with exquisite balance, and Calard felt clumsy and heavy as he reeled back, trying to put some distance between them.

He cursed himself for misjudging the situation; he had been sure that he could disarm the elf without any harm coming to either of them.

The elf landed in a low crouch. His breathing was laboured, and a growing red stain could be seen on the bindings around his chest. The wound in his side had re-opened.

The elf’s strength was fading. His golden eyes were clouded and his legs shook. Determined to end things quickly, before the elf regathered himself, Calard surged forward. But the elf was not done yet, and he swung at the questing knight as he came at him.

The elf’s speed was not what it had been at the start of the fight, and Calard caught the blade against the inside of his left vambrace, and while it cut deep, shearing through plate metal and the chainmail links beneath, it barely scratched his forearm. He grappled with the slender elf, and the two of them fought for control of the bastard sword.

The elf was Calard’s equal in height, yet was far slighter of frame. There was a wiry strength in the elf’s limbs, though, that defied his fragile appearance, and for a moment the pair were locked together, eye to eye.

Calard slammed his forehead into his opponent’s face, breaking the stalemate. The elf’s legs buckled, and the heavy bastard sword fell from his grasp with a clatter. Calard kicked it aside and muscled the elf to the ground, pinning him face down with a knee in the small of his back. The elf struggled against him, then went limp.

Calard lifted him from the ground and put him on one of the low palettes. The elf’s breathing was shallow, his heartbeat arrythmic. Calard loosened the blood-soaked bindings. The deep wound had reopened, and Calard worked to staunch the flow. There was little that he could do to halt the spread of the insidious poison, however, and he was shocked to see that the sickness had already advanced in the last hour. The vein-like tendrils under the skin were now creeping towards the elf’s heart.

Calard swore. Without a healer, the elf would die, but he felt certain that he would never find his way back here if he left to search for help.

Calard’s eye fell upon the curved hunting-horn that he’d removed from around the elf’s shoulders. If the elf had friends nearby, they might be able to help. Calard took up the horn and moved towards the passage leading back out to the forest.

A faltering voice gave him pause.

‘No,’ said the elf. ‘You will draw the Shael-Mara to us.’

‘You speak Breton?’ said Calard.

‘Some.’

‘How did you come to learn it?’

‘One of... your people dwelled... for a time within the Halls of... Anaereth... my home.’

‘How long ago was that?’ said Calard in wonder. The elf spoke an archaic form of his language that had not been used in hundreds of years.

‘Many seasons.’

‘My name is Calard of Garamont, My quest for the Lady’s chalice brought me here, to your forested realm. It was she who led me to you.’

‘Then you are a fool,’ said the elf. ‘The forest... will claim you. You’ll not... see your lands again.’

‘Are you a seer?’

The wounded fey warrior glared at him, golden eyes blazing.

‘I do not... need to be a seer... to know the fate that awaits you.’

‘What is your name, elf?’

‘I am Cythaeros Mithra’kinn’daek of the Shenti’ae Arahain kindred,’ said the elf.

‘The Lady led me to your side, Cythaeros,’ said Calard, forming the elf’s name with some difficulty. ‘It was by her will that you were saved.’

The elven warrior was about to speak, but was interrupted by a fit of coughing. Blood flecked his lips when it had passed.

‘You said I would draw something to us if I used this horn,’ said Calard, handing the curved instrument to the elf. ‘What is out there? What manner of creature is hunting you?’

‘The Shael-Mara,’ said Cythaeros, taking the hunting horn and clutching it to his chest like a talisman. ‘Handmaidens of Winter. They will... be searching.’

‘Handmaidens of Winter?’

‘Betrayers... Pawns of the branchwraith, Drycha.’

Calard’s frowned, and he was about to voice his questions when he saw that Cythaeros had slipped into unconsciousness. He settled down next to him, wondering what the best course of action was.

With a gasp, the elf awoke again. He sat upright, grabbing Calard’s arm, his eyes shining with fever.

‘The compact... must be met. The King... in-the-Wood must rise.’

‘Lie back,’ said Calard. ‘Your wounds.’

‘No,’ said Cythaeros, his voice a hoarse whisper, but he sunk back onto the pallet, his strength waning. His eyes began to close.

Calard could see he was fading fast. He leant in close, taking hold of the elf by his shoulders.

‘There is a poison in you that is beyond my abilities to halt,’ said Calard. ‘You are in need of healing. Where are your people?’

‘The forest,’ breathed Cythaeros. ‘Take me… into… the forest.’

V

Snow crunched underfoot as Calard delved deeper into Athel Loren. He eyed his surroundings with both wariness and wonder, one hand resting upon the pommel of the Sword of Garamont. Cythaeros was slumped unconscious astride his armoured warhorse. Calard had tied him into the saddle to ensure that he did not slip sidewards, but he glanced back regularly to ensure he was still in place.

The elf’s condition was steadily worsening. It was still some hours before dawn, and Calard was unsure that he would ever regain consciousness. He needed help soon if he stood any chance of living.

Only hours ago, the forest had seemed impenetrable, dark and full of claustrophobic menace; now it was bright, and filled with space and air. Where before the forest had appeared to resent Calard’s presence, turning him around and hindering him at every step, now it opened up before him, as if hurrying him on. Though he did not know where he was going, he took this as a good sign.

As he walked, Calard’s gaze constantly drifted upwards. Immense trees rose all around him, soaring impossibly high, their silver-barked trunks glistening. Their scale was breathtaking, and he doubted their like existed anywhere in the world but here. Never would he have believed that any tree could grow so tall or straight; each must have been easily five-hundred feet tall. They were like vast pillars holding up the ceiling of the world.

The quality of the light was magical, with moonlight lancing down through the canopy above. Pristine, untouched snow glittered like crystal.

In the hours since leaving the safety of the cave, Calard had neither seen nor heard any sign of pursuit. Still, he remained alert, knowing that danger was assuredly all around, even if he could not perceive it.

Despite the unnatural winter, Calard glimpsed an abundance of life within the forest. He guessed it had been here before, but only now was he seeing it – or being allowed to see it.

Owls swooped through the trees, and rabbits and mink padded across the snow, oblivious to the danger above. He heard a lone fox barking in the distance, and glimpsed a pair of hawks roosting in the branches overheard. He saw a herd of deer grazing far away, though none of them came close to matching the sheer magnificence of the white hart that had led Calard into the forest. From afar, he saw the shuffling form of a great bear woken early from its winter slumber.

Once, Calard caught a glimpse of a huge white cat stalking through the trees some way off. Its body was sleek and powerful, and its ears were sharp and pointed like knives. It turned to regard him, violet eyes flashing in the moonlight, before melting with unhurried grace into the forest like a phantom.

All of those creatures were similar to ones Calard had seen outside the forest, yet there was something about them that was strange, an otherworldly quality that set them apart.

Other creatures were less familiar.

A host of glowing sprites had descended around him at one point. From a distance they looked like fireflies, but as they came close, he had seen that they were something altogether different.

Each was a tiny being of light, perfectly formed and held aloft by diaphanous, gossamer wings. They were curious of him, darting in close to look at him, then speeding away again when he turned towards them. They were irritating, however, tying knots in his hair and pulling Galibor’s ears, all the while filling the air with their high-pitched giggles. Calard had swatted at them as they flitted around him.

Most of them had soon grown bored and departed, but one of the tiny spirits stayed with him. He had given up trying to drive it off. At first it had darted frenetically, sticking out its tongue as he waved it away, but it appeared content now to sit on his shoulder, chattering away in its shrill, indecipherable voice.

Even the tiny sprite had finally fallen silent, however, and a reverential hush descended upon the forest. It began to snow. Each heavy flake fell in slow motion, descending with tranquil grace. The crunching of snow and the jangle of tack were the only sounds.

The attack came without warning.

Calard glanced back over his shoulder to ensure Cythaeros was still in the saddle, and a slender loop of rope slipped over his head. Before he had a chance to react, the rope was yanked tight around his neck and he was hauled into the air, legs kicking uselessly beneath him.

Struggling for breath, Calard clutched at the constricting noose, trying fruitlessly to get his fingers beneath the rope and ease its tension. It was crushing his windpipe, and his vision began to waver. The glowing sprite that had attached itself to him was flying frantically around him, tears of light falling down its cheeks.

As he spun helplessly ten feet above the ground, Calard saw shadowy figures in the branches of the trees. Their faces were hidden beneath deep hoods, and each levelled a nocked bow.

White spots were appearing before Calard’s eyes, and he fumbled for his knife. The glowing sprite’s tiny hands guided him, and his fingers finally closed around the hilt. He drew it quickly and slashed through the choking rope.

Hitting the ground hard, Calard ripped off the noose, gasping. He staggered to his feet and drew the Sword of Garamont. A dozen figures armed with bows had risen from concealment beneath the snow around him. The sprite hovered at his shoulder, spitting and glaring at these newcomers. Glancing up, Calard saw that easily the same number as were on the ground were crouched in the branches overhead, arrows trained upon him.

‘Wood elves,’ said Calard.

The fey beings were slender and tall, clad in heavy cloaks the colour of winter. Most had their faces covered, leaving only their almond-shaped eyes exposed, glittering beneath their shadowed hoods. Their expressions gave away nothing.

One of them dropped from the branches overhead, landing lightly. The wood elf pushed the hood back from his face, revealing a strong, masculine profile, and ashen skin. He wore a curving black half-mask, and delicate tattoos in dark green were stencilled across his flesh.

His hair was gleaming black and tied in a series of braids. He moved with the supple grace of a dancer, and barely left an impression in the snow as he strode towards Calard. He halted ten paces away, and while his bow was lowered, he kept an arrow nocked to the string. His eyes were like chips of ice. Calard was in no doubt that the elf would kill him at the slightest provocation.

With slow and deliberate motions, Calard sheathed the Sword of Garamont.

‘I found one of your people – Cythaeros,’ Calard said, gesturing towards the unconscious elf. ‘He is hurt. I have done what I can for him, but he needs a healer.’

The elf barked an order but did not take his eyes off Calard. One of the hooded sentinels stepped forwards, easing the tension from its bowstring, and moved to the side of the Bretonnian warhorse. The elf was a woman, though she was garbed identically to her companions. She spoke softly under her breath, and placed a gentle hand upon Galibor’s nose. The proud warhorse accepted her touch, nuzzling into it.

The elven warrior-woman glanced in Calard’s direction. He saw disdain in her eyes, before she turned her attention towards the unconscious figure of Cythaeros slumped in Galibor’s saddle.

The leader of the elves spoke, his tone questioning. Calard saw the female warrior’s eyes widen as she lifted the wounded elf’s chin and looked upon his face.

She looked sharply at Calard.

‘Doth kail’enaeth,’ she said in a sharp voice. ‘Cythaeros Mithra’kinn’daek, Kournos-dae!’

Several of the elves began to speak at once, but they were silenced by the one Calard took to be their leader.

‘Kaela’Anara, vish’nu,’ he said.

The air shimmered and, as if a veil were parting, the white hart that had led Calard into the forest stepped into the moonlight, seemingly from nowhere.

‘Not a delusion of the mind, then,’ breathed Calard.

The proud creature walked towards him with unhurried majesty. Its broad rack of antlers gleamed. A rider sat astride the stag’s shoulders, a lady bedecked in a gown of overlapping gossamer layers, each so delicate that they appeared to float in the air.

A veil concealed her face, held in place by a circlet of ivy around her brow. A gentle aura surrounded the lady.

Cythaeros was lowered from Galibor’s saddle by a pair of elves. Calard made to help them, but the leader of the elves hissed between his teeth, raising his bow, and Calard froze.

The veiled lady slipped from the back of her mount. Although he could not see her eyes, hidden as they were, he could feel her gaze upon him, making his skin prickle. She was a sorceress then, Calard surmised; he had felt the strange, creeping sensation before.

Cythaeros was carried towards the white stag, which lowered itself in the snow to receive him. It had no bridle, reins or saddle and knelt of its own volition. The unconscious elf was placed over its broad back, leaning forward into its thick mane, and the veiled lady climbed behind him, putting her arms around his waist.

Calard’s gaze returned to the leader of the elves, and he realised that he now stood alone. Those elves that had been nearest to him had rejoined their brethren. They now encircled him, silent, their expressions cold. Hooded and cloaked, the elves all looked as one: grim and unforgiving.

‘If I have broken any law through my intrusion into your realm, then I apologise,’ said Calard.

The elves were silent, staring with unblinking eyes.

‘You have your man back,’ said Calard, gesturing towards Cythaeros. ‘My task here is done. I ask that I be allowed to leave safely, so I can join my kin in fighting the darkness assailing my lands.’

Still the elves made no response.

‘It doesn’t have to be this way,’ said Calard, grasping the hilt of his sword.

The elven leader raised his powerful, recurved bow and drew back the string, arrow levelled at Calard’s chest. At this range, it would drive straight through his breastplate.

‘It is not the will of the Lady that I die here,’ Calard said.

The elven warleader’s eyes narrowed, but he did not loose his arrow.

Confronted with the prospect of being ignobly cut down by a coward’s weapon, Calard felt nothing but calm. It was as though a blindfold had been lifted from his eyes, a weight removed from his soul.

‘Lady of mercy,’ he whispered, ‘show me the path, and I shall walk it.’

A single black feather drifted into view, falling slowly between the elven leader and Calard, like a tainted snowflake.

The ugly cawing of crows sounded nearby, shattering the silence. The tiny sprite at Calard’s shoulder gave out a shriek, and blinked out of existence. Further off, Calard heard an inhuman scream, infused with bitterness and savagery.

As if that hateful cry were its cue, an icy wind howled through the forest. Branches whipped back and forth in the wake of the sudden tempest, and Calard’s tattered cloak rippled out behind him. Something was coming, and he readied his blade, his eyes slits against the gale.

The Handmaidens of Winter had found them.

VI

Riding on the wind of the storm, crows erupted from the forest depths. Calard heard them long before he saw them, moving fast and flying in a dense black cloud. They dipped and dived through the branches, moving at tremendous speed, coming straight for the elves and Calard.

‘Shael-Mara!’ shouted the elven warleader, arrow still pointing at Calard. Without warning, he loosed.

Calard did not flinch, even as the arrow came towards him. It hissed by his ear, missing him by less than an inch, and he heard it thud home somewhere behind him, accompanied by a feral howl of pain and anger.

Glancing over his shoulder, Calard saw a figure pinned to a tree some thirty feet away. It was thrashing like some deranged marionette as it sought to free itself. It screeched horribly, sounding more like some monstrous bird of prey than anything even vaguely elven or human.

Seeing that the elves were ignoring him completely, Calard drew the Sword of Garamont and swung the battered shield off his back. It was painted red and blue with a resplendent silver dragon rampant emblazoned upon its face, but that paint was now faded and scratched, the bare metal underneath shining through. It was heavily battle-worn, covered in dents, evidence of the countless battles he had survived. As the flock of birds hurled themselves towards him, their cries deafening, he secured the shield on his left arm and readied himself for their onslaught.

They were big, more the size of ravens than crows, yet sleeker than any Calard had seen before. Their bodies appeared elongated for speed and manoeuvrability, perfectly adapted to a life beneath the forest canopy. They were not at all slowed by the dense foliage, spinning and weaving through the skeletal branches with enviable grace and swiftness. Their black feathers had a blue sheen to them, he saw now, and their beaks and talons gleamed like daggers. A dozen were felled by arrows, but the rest came on, screaming and cawing.

Seeing that they were not swerving from their course, Calard ducked behind his shield, protecting his eyes. The flock broke upon him like the tide, flowing either side of him. He was momentarily blinded, surrounded by their blurred, black-feathered shapes. He felt several impacts upon his armour, as if he were being pelted with rocks, and he wondered if what he felt were stabbing beaks, or claws. There was a sharp pain in the side of his neck and the birds were past him. They reformed into a single mass, wheeling to make another pass.

Calard dislodged a tiny splinter that had been embedded in his neck.

‘What in the name of the Lady?’ he said, examining it between his fingers.

It was less than an inch in length, and as thin a blade of grass. It looked like a tiny sliver of slate, but its tip was barbed like a hunting spear, albeit on a miniscule scale. A bead of blood dripped from the tip.

The flock of crows came at him again, filling the air with ugly cries and the flapping of wings. It was all but impossible to focus on any of the darting birds, so swiftly did they move, but Calard caught a momentary glimpse of a tiny figure that blinked into existence, perched on the neck of one of the crows as it hurtled by.

He saw it only briefly, but in that moment he discerned savage glowing eyes glaring out of a pinched face the size of Calard’s thumbnail. Its features were pointed and as black as coal. It wore a red cap, and it snarled at him, exposing a plethora of tiny fangs. It hurled a tiny barbed dart towards his eyes before blinking out of sight, disappearing completely. It was only reflex that saved Calard from being blinded; the dart hit him on the cheek as he jerked away.

He lashed out, striking air. The birds darted around the weapon like smoke.

He brushed the dart from his cheek and plucked out another that had struck him in the chin. More were stuck in his cloak and between the links in his chainmail hauberk.

The wounds weren’t deep, but they were already beginning to throb. Calard’s vision swam, and he staggered.

Poisoned.

The birds came at him again. This time the flock did not pass over, but instead swirled around him in a blinding whirlwind, a cyclone of feathers and stabbing beaks. In his peripheral vision, Calard saw dozens of tiny red-capped imps, their faces twisted in savage glee as they attacked him with poisoned shot. Most of the barrage pinged off his armour, but other darts stabbed into the exposed flesh of his neck and face.

From out of nowhere, the tiny glowing sprite that had adopted Calard blinked back into existence, darting forward to rip one of the red-caps from its mount. The two diminutive nature-spirits tumbled through the air, fighting tooth and nail.

Calard lashed out around him, feeling fragile bodies break against his shield, wings and slender bones snap like dry twigs. More were cut down by his blade, leaving a flutter of blood-specked feathers in its wake.

The veiled lady appeared unaffected by the mayhem erupting around her, an oasis of calm in the maelstrom. Elves were falling in around her, forming a bodyguard to protect her and the unconscious elven warrior from harm.

Galibor reared, hooves flailing as the crows whirled around her. Calard fought his way through the swirling cloud of feathers to grab the warhorse’s reins. The steed’s eyes were wide in fear, but she calmed under Calard’s firm hold.

An elf fell from above and hit the ground hard nearby. Calard saw the elf’s face was peppered with tiny barbed darts. He was already convulsing as the poison spread though his veins.

More arrows skewered several of the hateful carrion birds and the flock splintered. Calard swatted at them as they hurtled by him. Darts bounced off his armour, but then the birds were gone, disappearing into the forest. The tiny glowing sprite returned to him victorious. One of its wings was tattered, but it smiled and puffed out its chest.

Calard’s lips and fingertips felt numb, and his throat was so dry that it was hard to swallow. The colours of the forest seemed too bright, and the trees rippled and wavered like reflections in a lake’s surface disturbed by a hurled rock. Blinking, his vision began to return to normal – thankfully, his armour had protected him from the worst of the arboreal barrage.

Inhuman screams erupted around the glade, dangerously close. The elves were scanning the area, bow-strings taut, still ignoring Calard. Evidently, the crows were only the vanguard of whatever was now closing in.

Snow was falling more heavily now, making it difficult to see. Stalking figures lurked at the edge of the questing knight’s vision, but he could make out little of their appearance except their outline, and even that was vague and shifting.

Galibor whinnied, and Calard held her reins tightly.

Snow fell silently as they waited for the attack to come. When it finally did, it was shocking in its speed and ferocity.

Figures darted forwards and were met with a veritable storm of arrows, hissing like angry wasps as they sliced between the trees. Dozens of figures rushed from the shadows. They moved with preternatural speed, snarling and hissing like wildcats.

Calard was about to haul himself into Galibor’s saddle when he felt an icy breath on the back of his neck, and he spun around, sword raised to strike.

Like a wood-carving come spontaneously to life, a nymph was emerging from the trunk of the tree directly behind him. Struck by her naked beauty, Calard’s jaw dropped, and he held his blow.

The creature’s skin was the silver-grey of the tree’s bark. Her features were fine and perfectly formed, with high cheek-bones, youthful, full lips and wide-spaced eyes that remained closed as if in slumber. Silken hair filled with leaves and ivy fell around her shoulders as she pulled herself free and stepped out onto the snow.

Calard stared open-mouthed at this captivating nature spirit, but as its eyes flicked open, the spell of its allure was broken.

Its elongated orbs were black and filled with cruelty. As its lascivious lips parted, beetles, worms, centipedes and other nameless crawling things writhed forth.

Calard recoiled, and a sudden change came upon the nymph. Youthful features melted away, bark-like skin shrivelling and peeling back to expose a face of nightmare. Flakes of bark clung to its hollow cheeks, and its hair became a tangle of dead sticks and dry leaves. Swirling patterns were carved in its wooden flesh.

Slender elven limbs became twisted and gnarled, and its delicate hands elongated, distending into sharp, branch-like talons. Its back became hunched and stick-like ribs protruded from its emaciated, bark-flesh.

The creature resembled some ancient, spiteful crone of thorn and briar, as if the worst aspects of the winter forest had come to life and been granted physical form.

The entire transformation took place in the blink of an eye, and with a piercing scream the hellish dryad lunged at Calard, talons extended.

Calard lurched backwards, swinging his sword for its neck. The hideous creature came straight at him, raising one arm to deflect the blow. It was like striking a hunk of wood, and Calard’s blade stuck fast.

The creature’s features melted back to those of a beautiful maiden, and it licked its lips before shifting back to its horrific war-aspect. It slashed Calard’s face, and while he turned away from the blow, avoiding the worst of it, its twig-like claws sliced across his left cheek.

The wound was stinging, but Calard ignored it and planted one boot in the hollow of the dryad’s chest, shoving it back as he yanked his blade free. He felt dry stick-ribs snapping beneath his boot, and his sword came loose. Foul-smelling sap dripped from the blade. The creature recovered quickly and leapt at him again, seeking to drive its branch-like talons through his face.

An arrow struck it as it came at him, knocking the dryad out of the air. It tumbled in the snow, screeching as it sought to dislodge the shaft embedded deep in its head. Stepping in close, Calard brought his sword blade crashing down upon its crown, and its skull came apart like a sodden log filled with worm-rot, splattering woodchips and crawling things.

The dryad collapsed in upon itself, reduced to a stinking pile of rotting timber, sticks and mouldering leaf-mulch. Calard stepped away, covering his nose and mouth with the back of his hand.

Dozens of the feral dryads were among the elves now, darting forward to impale them upon branch-limbs and tear them apart. Elves screamed, and blood showered the snow.

Arrows sliced through the gloom, launched at a prodigious rate, and Calard saw scores of dryads scythed down. Still more of the vile nymphs were appearing, stepping out of the trees, their beauteous, temptress forms becoming twisted and vile as soon as they manifested fully.

The fight was equally as savage in the forest vaults as on the ground. Dryads were leaping from tree to tree, chasing elves that were running along the branches, loosing arrows as they went.

Sensing movement behind him, Calard turned. A hissing dryad was reaching for him, whipping vine-like tendrils around his sword arm.

With his free hand, Calard drew his broadsword from his back and brought it slicing around towards the side of the creature’s head. It caught the blow mid-strike. Calard’s muscles strained, but the dryad was stronger, forcing his arm painfully backwards. It drew him in towards it, and the tangle of roots that were its hair reached towards him, like leeches questing for blood.

He tried to fight it, but the horrid crone of winter was too powerful for him, and he was dragged into its embrace. Its mouth opened, exposing a feral array of predator’s teeth and writhing bugs, and the stink of rotting wood-mulch and worms filled his nostrils.

The dryad jerked, and an arrowhead burst from its chest. The tip of the arrow was just inches from Calard’s own chest. The dryad, refusing to give up its grip on him even in death, dragged him towards it.

Another arrow struck the dryad, this time in the back of its head. It collapsed, reduced to a lifeless husk that Calard kicked away in disgust.

The warleader of the elves stood behind it, lowering his bow, and Calard gave him a nod of thanks. The warrior turned away to rejoin the fight, barking orders to his warriors.

Dozens of dryads had been cut down, yet still more were emerging from the shadows, bursting from the trees. Reading the battlefield, Calard could see that this was not a fight that could be won.

The elves were pulling back, smoothly loosing arrows as they retreated. Those overhead vaulted from branch to branch, moving almost as fast as those below, raining shafts down upon the baleful creatures.

Calard ran to Galibor’s side, and hauled himself into the saddle. He could see the white stag galloping through the deep snow, surrounded by an escort of winter-clad elves.

Urging Galibor into a gallop, Calard set off in pursuit. Trees streaked by, and glancing sidewards he saw the forms of winter dryads matching his speed, leaping and bounding like horrid puppets of wood come to life.

The warhorse pounded through the snow, relishing the sudden release of energy. Calard tensed his muscles and leant forward in the saddle as Galibor leapt a fallen log. The sense of speed was exhilarating. He was amazed at how swift the elves were – he was having difficulty keeping pace with them, and they were travelling on foot. They darted through the trees like shadows.

He saw the elven warleader throw a glance in his direction. The grim warrior mouthed what might have been a curse.

Calard couldn’t suppress a wild grin. With a shout of encouragement, Calard urged Galibor on.

VII

The ride through the forest was like a dream. Calard urged Galibor between the towering silver-barked trees for hours, ducking low-hanging branches and leaning forward in the saddle as the mighty warhorse leapt fallen logs, red and blue caparison rippling.

With cloaks billowing out behind them, the elves incredibly kept pace with them. For the time being they appeared to tolerate Calard, though they did not even so much as acknowledge his presence.

The white hart was tireless and swift, galloping ever onward, leading a twisting and turning path through the forest. Huge firs gave way to glades of leafless birchwood and yew, which in turn gave way to wintery oaks and ash.

They passed crumbling ruins overrun with ferns and twisted roots, and Calard marvelled at a pale stone tower that rose like a needle, disappearing into the canopy. They passed through a grand archway created by two enormous trees whose trunks had came together and entwined around each other, like lovers. At one point Calard glimpsed a wide and fast-flowing river, half-hidden by banks of weeping willow, but the stag’s path veered away from this, turning what might have been north, or south; Calard’s sense of direction was completely befuddled.

On the occasions when the canopy opened up, he glimpsed the constellations overhead, but far from allowing him to regain his bearings, he became ever more confused. At some points, it seemed as though the silver moon Mannslieb was higher in the sky than it had been previously, as if they were going backwards in time, and at other times he could not even recognise the flickering celestial formations. For one who prided himself on his knowledge of the astral bodies of the heavens, and had navigated his way across the Old World by their guiding light, Calard found this perhaps more disturbing than any of the other wonders he had seen that night.

Through water-slick ravines and narrow canyons they travelled, always at speed, as if the dryad hunters were still snapping at their heels, though Calard had seen no sign of them for many hours. The screams of the Handmaidens of Winter could be heard on occasion, echoing in the distance.

They passed an immense green-grey statue of a bare-chested elf – easily a hundred feet tall – with cloven hooves and the horns of a stag jutting from its brow. It was carved from a rocky spur jutting up beside an icy spring, and covered in ivy and lichen. Calard saw each of the elven warriors avert their eyes as they passed by, making a gesture of warding, or perhaps of respect.

Thousands of glowing sprites joined them for a time, emerging from the boles of trees and from beneath fern-fronds. The tiny pixie that had attached itself to Calard hovered at his shoulder, tattered wings a blur of movement. She was garbed in glowing plate armour in mimicry of Calard’s own, and she wore a serious expression upon her tiny, pinched face. She clutched a miniscule lance under one arm, a ribbon-like pennant fluttering from its tip, and on her left arm carried a shield with the device of a man spewing forth a torrent of leaves and ivy from his mouth.

Finally, the white stag eased its relentless pace and drew to a halt in a protected glade along the banks of a frozen river. The elves spread out, many of them ghosting back into the trees. Others took up positions nearby, leaping lightly atop snow-covered boulders where they crouched, bows in hands, watchful for danger. As soon as they were still they became virtually invisible; even those in the open were almost impossible to see once their cloaks were drawn around their shoulders and their hoods lowered.

The white stag knelt in the snow, allowing the veiled lady to slip from its shoulders. Cythaeros was eased off its back by the leader of the elven warparty and laid gently upon the leader’s cloak, which he had spread out upon the ground in the lee of a stand of rocks. The wounded elf still wore his antlered headdress.

Calard reined in Galibor, and slipped from the saddle. He moved towards the elven leader, who was kneeling beside Cythaeros, inspecting his wounds.

‘How is he?’ he said as he approached.

His words were ignored, but Calard could see that the green-black tendrils beneath the unconscious warrior’s skin had spread. His eyes were sunken and surrounded by dark rings. He still clutched his large, curved hunting horn to his chest, even in unconsciousness.

For a moment Calard was unsure if the elf was still breathing, and he feared that the frantic ride had killed him. Then he saw the faintest of breaths misting the air around the elf’s nose. For now at least, the elf lived.

‘I will pray for him,’ said Calard. The elven warleader grunted in what might have been acquiescence, and Calard moved around to stand at the feet of the injured warrior.

He drew the Sword of Garamont and reversed his grip on the hilt before driving its point into the snow and kneeling before it. Ignoring the pixie kneeling in the snow alongside him, mimicking his every move, he closed his eyes.

Lost in prayer, he did not hear the veiled lady approach.

‘He is the Morning Star,’ she said in fluent Breton, interrupting his communion.

Her voice was strange, like three voices overlapping and speaking as one, yet he recognised it – it was the voice that had spoken in his mind just before he had seen the Green Knight.

Calard kissed the fleur-de-lys crossbar of his sword, and pushed himself back to his feet.

The veiled lady stood nearby, looking down upon the unconscious elf. Of the elven warleader, there was no sign. The white hart and Galibor stood together, drinking melt-water from the lake.

‘The Lady of the Lake would not have brought me to him if he were not important,’ said Calard, sheathing his blade.

‘We are all of us important,’ said the lady in her trinity of voices. ‘And yet as insignificant as leaves on the wind.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Calard, to which the lady merely shrugged.

‘Those creatures,’ he went on, seeing that she was not going to offer any further explanation, ‘what were they?’

‘The Shael-Mara,’ said the veiled lady. ‘Handmaidens of Winter. Dryads. They are furies, as twisted and bitter as their mistress.’

‘Are they... daemons?’ said Calard, realising only now that the sky was brightening. Dawn was close at hand.

‘In a sense,’ said the lady. ‘They are of the forest. They are the forest.’

‘But the fey and the forest, are they not bound to each other? Why would the forest seek to harm its elven protectors?’

The veiled lady laughed at that, the sound strange and unearthly.

‘Have you never thought that perhaps it is not the elves that protect the forest from intruders, but rather that they protect intruders from the forest?’

‘Is that true?’

‘Yes. And no.’

Calard shook his head in exasperation.

‘He is dying, isn’t he?’ he said, looking down at Cythaeros, whom the lady had called the Morning Star.

‘He is.’

‘Is it not in your power to save him, lady?’

‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘but I cannot.’

‘Why? You said he was important.’

‘He is of the highest importance, but it is not allowed,’ said the veiled lady.

‘And what of me?’ said Calard.

‘You will do what is right for you to do.’

‘And that is?’

‘The path you walk is yours to choose freely.’

‘My place is in Bretonnia,’ said Calard.

‘A great darkness has risen. It threatens to engulf your homeland in eternal twilight,’ said the lady. ‘I see a black grail, overflowing with blood.’

‘Merovech,’ said Calard.

‘The same,’ said the lady. ‘His legions are on the march.’

‘Have you the gift of far-sight, lady? Can you see how far from Couronne Merovech is?’

‘He is close,’ whispered the lady. ‘He will cross the Sannez within days.’

‘How can that be?’ said Calard in shock. ‘It would take him months to march through Lyonesse and L’Anguille!’

‘Time flows differently within the bounds of Athel Loren,’ said the lady. ‘It is like the river that you call the Upper Grismerie, and the Asrai call Frostwater – in places it runs swift and deep, while in other places it slows and pools, barely moving at all. Months have passed in the realms beyond the forest’s borders since you stepped foot within its bounds, Calard of Garamont.’

‘Months?’ said Calard. ‘My place is alongside the armies of the king! I must be away!’

One of the elves standing sentinel cried a warning.

‘They come,’ said the veiled lady.

The forest seethed with movement in every direction. They were surrounded.

The warleader was shouting orders, and the elves formed a pocket of resistance upon the banks of the frozen river, facing outwards. He ushered the veiled lady into the protective cordon, and she remounted the proud white stag. Calard too slipped through the semi-circular arc of elves, who were preparing themselves for a final, last stand. They knelt in the snow, arranging their arrows point first in the ground within easy reach, and readied their bows.

The sky was growing brighter. Dawn was less than an hour away.

Forest spirits in all manner of forms were emerging from the forest on all sides, and the ground resounded to the rhythmic step of immense, as yet unseen, creatures of wood and branch drew near.

Mounting Galibor, Calard turned the warhorse and moved into the wood elf battleline, ready to do his part in the coming battle.

‘No,’ said the ebony-haired elven warleader, his face stern.

‘I would fight alongside you and your kin, elf,’ said Calard.

‘No,’ repeated the elf, shaking his head. ‘You are needed elsewhere.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The King-in-the-Wood must be reborn come the first rays of dawn, lest the compact be broken,’ said the veiled lady. ‘We must away.’

‘How?’

‘Over the ice,’ she said.

Calard turned in the saddle to look across the frozen river.

‘Then we all go,’ he said. ‘I will not flee like some craven coward while others fight my battles for me.’

‘No,’ snapped the elven warleader, his eyes hard. ‘It will not hold the weight of us all. Go!’

The white hart was already stepping out onto the frozen lake. The ice groaned beneath its hooves, and cracks began to appear.

‘This is madness,’ said Calard.

The creatures of the dark forest were starting their advance now, and the elves began to launch their first arrows high into the air. Each warrior had loosed three arrows before the first had even struck home, all with unerring accuracy.

‘Head towards the rising sun,’ said the pale warleader. ‘The Oak of Ages is near. Now go!’

Calard glanced along the line of elves. Each of them knew that they would die here, yet they remained stoic and calm, showing no fear. Cold and defiant, their leader flicked his braided black hair over his shoulder, and turned his gaze towards Calard.

‘Go, kegh-mon,’ he said. ‘May Kournos guide you.’

‘Fight well,’ said Calard, before turning Galibor towards the ice. The white hart was standing twenty feet out on the ice, waiting for him.

‘Go!’ snapped the elven leader, ‘Now!’

Calard nodded, and guided Galibor onto the ice. It shifted beneath Galibor’s armoured weight, and Calard swore. The mighty warhorse resisted him, trying to step back onto solid land. With a firm hand, Calard urged Galibor forward, stepping out fully onto the ice, praying that it would hold.

The ice groaned, and he saw deep arcing cracks spreading across its surface. Swearing again, he kicked Galibor forward, racing the reaching cracks. The white hart began to gallop towards the centre of the frozen river, and Calard guided Galibor to follow.

He saw the huge, curved hunting horn drop from Cythaeros’s lifeless fingers, falling onto the ice, unnoticed by the veiled lady. Calard made to ride on, then swore to himself and hauled on his reins, dragging Galibor to a halt.

The sounds of the battle echoed out across the lake but the shore was hidden in mist. Deep cracks in the ice were reaching towards him, as if in pursuit.

Calard slid from the saddle and dropped to the ice, which groaned alarmingly beneath him. Spider-web cracks were already appearing beneath his heels. Stooping, he picked up the hunting horn and swung back into the saddle as larger cracks began to appear.

With a yell, he kicked Gringolet forward, even as the ice began to break up behind him. He raced to catch up with the white stag, the biting wind making his face sting.

The sounds of the battle echoed out across the lake behind them. Calard turned to look back, but the shore was hidden in mist.

The sky ahead of them was steadily lightening with the dawn, and the pair turned their steeds towards the rising sun.

Without knowing exactly why, compelled by some sudden, wild instinct, Calard drew in a deep breath and raised Cythaeros’s curved hunting horn to his lips.

A deafening blast issued forth, the note deeply resonant and sonorous. The sound boomed out across the lake of ice like a shockwave, before bouncing back moments later, reverberating off the distant tree-line and cliffs. Calard’s ears were still ringing when he heard an answering horn in the distance.

Cythaeros stirred, raising his head briefly, golden eyes blinking. He mouthed a few words of elvish, before he slumped forward one more, unconscious.

‘The Wild Riders come,’ said the veiled lady.

‘Wild Riders?’ said Calard.

‘The Untamed,’ said the veiled lady. ‘The Pyremasters. The Hounds of Kournos.’

‘Are they friend or foe?’ said Calard, and even though the wind whipped his words away from him, he was confident that she heard him.

‘Neither, and both. They are dangerous, but they will see us safely on our path.’

‘Where? What path?’

‘The Oak of Ages.’

VIII

Racing the rising sun, Calard leant over the neck of his powerful warhorse, urging her on. She was tired, but galloped hard through the wilderness alongside the majestic white stag.

It had grown steadily colder the nearer they came to the Oak of Ages. Frost had formed upon Calard’s eyebrows and unkempt beard, and he pulled his cloak around his shoulders, shivering. He kicked the ice off his stirrups, and brushed snow from his shoulders.

He could sense that this was an old part of the forest, and he suspected that it had been here long before the birth of the Bretonni, perhaps even before the elves.

Oaks large enough to hold small villages aloft within their branches rose above them, their gnarled limbs thick and heavy.

An icy mist hugged the ground, despite the imminent daylight.

Calard could not have said when the Wild Riders arrived. One moment they had been alone, the next they were surrounded by a great ethereal host of savage, unearthly warriors. It was as if they had materialised from within the mist itself, like wraiths or vengeful phantoms. At first Calard was unsure if they were truly beings of flesh and blood, or merely echoes of warriors long dead. Certainly they were more forest spirit than elf.

Tall and proud, they rode snorting steeds as ferocious and untamed as themselves. Naked from the waist up but for sweeping fur cloaks, they appeared oblivious to the cold. Their torsos and arms were covered in intricate tattoos and war-paint that baffled the eye. The painted designs were in flux, shifting and writhing across their flesh, forming ever more complex patterns and swirling knot-work.

Their flesh was tinged green, and their eyes blazed with fey light and callous savagery. Curving horns like those of young bucks protruded from their temples, revealing their animalistic nature, and they bared their teeth at Calard like wolves. Their mane-like hair was braided and long, filled with sticks and ivy and bones.

They carried spears and swords bound in runes and blood, and scorned the use of saddles and bridles. Skulls and severed heads hung from their belts, and bones and teeth were strung upon necklaces of sinew.

They radiated a ghostly inner light, as if moonlight were trapped within their flesh, and they exuded an untamed fury that threatened to be unleashed at any moment.

In some ways, the power emanating from the otherworldy beings was similar to that he had felt in the presence of the grail knight Reolus, though this power was far less refined, wilder and less unpredictable, and certainly more dangerous.

As if hearing his thoughts, one of the Wild Riders turned and grinned savagely at Calard, white fire flaring in his predatory eyes. He saw the warrior’s muscles twitch, as if he were restraining the urge to lash out. The tattoos upon the warrior’s chest and arms writhed like constricting serpents.

Transfixed by the gaze of the savage rider, Calard found his heart beating faster, and his breath quickening. Images of blood and destruction filled his mind, and he felt a sudden urge to howl at the moon and let his baser instincts overwhelm him.

He wanted to run with the wolves, to join the hunt and hear the plaintive cry of the quarry as it was run down. He wanted to experience the joy that came as the prey was caught and torn apart in a glorious frenzy. He wanted to rip and rend at flesh. He wanted to taste hot blood in his mouth.

Calard blinked and turned away, severing eye contact with the grinning, fierce warrior. Breathing hard, he mouthed a prayer to the Lady and clutched at the fleur-de-lys pendant around his neck. The barbarous creature laughed at his resistance to its savage nature.

Others had joined their ride towards the Oak of Ages. Painted warriors with their hair stiffened into garish spikes ran alongside them, throwing themselves into acrobatic leaps and somersaults to the frenzied beat of drums, and immense warhawks the size of draught horses corkscrewed and dove through the branches overhead. Incredibly, elves were crouched upon the shoulders of these great hunting birds, and Calard marvelled at their preternatural skill and balance to stay mounted as their feathered steeds spiralled through the canopy.

Cloaked archers darted through the shadows, and ranks of elves bedecked in curving, leaf-shaped armour and carrying slender, twin-bladed spears jogged through the snow.

Calard could not guess how many warriors had joined them. For all he knew, the entire forest was marching with them.

If Calard had felt in awe of the Forest of Loren beforehand, that paled in comparison to what he felt as they drew near their final destination. His breath caught in his throat. Surely few men of human birth had ever set eyes upon what he did now.

It was tree of such scale that if defied belief. Every oak, ash and fir he had seen thus far was dwarfed by this arboreal titan, and he was left in no doubt that this was the Oak of Ages, their destination and goal.

A thousand men could have stretched out their arms around the bole of the ancient tree without ever touching fingertips, and he felt certain that had it been somehow transported to the very centre of Couronne its branches would spread from one side of the city to the other. It was larger than any castle in the known world and as high as a mountain, its upper reaches lost in the clouds. Even its lowest branches soared above every other tree in the area, casting them in shadow. Snow was heaped upon its bare branches, and ice encased its ancient gnarled trunk. Slender waystones carved with elegant runes that glowed with fey green light surrounded the immense oak.

Without any doubt, Calard knew that he stood in the presence of one of the oldest and largest living things in the world, and he felt humbled. The air was freezing here, and Calard realised that this was the source of the unnatural winter that had engulfed the forest.

The white hart came to a halt, and Calard and the savage wild riders fell in behind it. An expectant hush descended.

A mighty arch was set into the bole of the gargantuan grandfather oak, a shadowed gateway large enough for fifty knights to ride through side by side with room to spare. Icicles hung from the arch like the teeth of a dragon, ready to clamp down on any who dared pass beneath. Mist rolled out from this darkened entrance into the tree’s secret depths.

Calard felt a strange tingling sensation across his flesh as he gazed upon the yawning archway. It prickled at his skin, and he tasted an acidic, metallic tang upon his tongue.

‘Sorcery,’ he muttered, drawing his sword.

The Wild Riders evidently felt these magicks at work as well, for they snarled and bared their teeth, brandishing weapons. Their horses stamped their hooves and tossed their heads in agitation, manes thrashing from side to side.

The knotted bark and gnarled wood of the Oak of Ages began to shift and warp, frozen branches contorting and twisting as if the tree were in silent agony. Ice cracked and fell from its flanks in great sheets, and snow tumbled from immense branches. An angry murmur rippled through the elven ranks.

The ground trembled, and roots as thick as tree-trunks burst from the ground in front of the white stag, throwing up a wave of snow and sodden earth, forcing it back. The roots of the Oak of Ages rose into the air, coiling and twining together into one thick, rope-like stem. It climbed twenty, thirty, forty feet straight upwards, and its tip bulged like a rapidly growing rose-bud the size of a small house. The petals of this bulging bud curled back, revealing a single figure. Icy fog spilled around it, falling towards the ground like a waterfall. It was a creature at once alluringly feminine and horrifying in aspect.

‘Drycha,’ spat one of the Wild Riders, and the name was repeated a hundred times around the glade, spoken with hatred and venom.

An ancient creature of malice and bile, she nevertheless had the body of a goddess. Her naked flesh was silvery-green and thick hair of tangled roots and dead leaves coiled down her back, writhing like a nest of vipers. Her slender arms became elongated branches at the elbows, and her hands were blade-like talons, each the length of a short sword.

Her inhuman features were exquisitely beautiful, yet disturbing. Her eyes were large and sharply elongated, and they shone with green light and murder.

The roots of the Oak of Ages coiled around her legs, twisting around her calves and thighs, encircling her slender waist. The roots retracted, and Drycha was lowered to the ground. She came to rest before the arched entrance into the frozen heart of the Oak of Ages, and the roots disappeared beneath the earth.

She regarded the white stag and the warriors arrayed against her with undisguised disdain. Her luscious green-tinged lips curled in a sneer.

‘Begone, elvenfools,’ the malicious forest spirit hissed, the words spiralling around in Calard’s mind. ‘Athel Loren no longer welcomes your presence.’

Her whispering, insidious voice made a chill ripple down Calard’s spine. It was the sibilant voice of a serpent, filled with bitterness and poison. Her words were spoken in the lilting, musical tongue of the elves, yet he found he could understand them.

‘The King-in-the-Wood is ash and dust, and his consort-queen lies sleeping, locked in winter’s embrace,’ continued Drycha. ‘Too long have those of elvenkind kept the forest imprisoned, and it rages to be free. Come the first rays of dawn, it will be.’

Calard could feel the mounting fury of the Wild Riders, a rising anger that threatened to erupt at any moment.

Alone, the veiled lady seemed unaffected. She slid from the back of the majestic white hart, and began to walk out to meet Drycha. The malign forest spirit regarded her with hatred, her talons flexing and her tangle of hair writhing.

‘Stand aside, Drycha of the deep forest,’ said the veiled lady, coming to a halt twenty feet away from the branchwraith. ‘The Equerries of Kurnous have come, as they have on the eve of the vernal equinox since the Winter of Woe, so long past. They bring with them He-Who-Would-Be-King, the Morningstar, and you have no right to bar their progress. There is still time for the offering to be made, and for the forest to be appeased.’

‘You are not of this place, mortal being,’ hissed Drycha. ‘You have no authority here, no right to speak or act. Dawn approaches. The offering is too late.’

As she spoke, Drycha began to walk backwards, hips swaying. She allowed her war-aspect to come upon her, and her face twisted into that of a murderous hag, her features becoming cracked and wooden and sharp, matching the vile darkness of her soul.

She stepped back into the shadow of the archway of the Oak of Ages, her glowing green eyes shining in the gloom.

‘The dawn rises, red and bloody, and the compact remains unfulfilled,’ Drycha hissed. ‘The time of the Asrai is over.’

She raised her hands into the air, and an icy tempest billowed around her. She stretched her splayed talons towards the elves, and a storm of ice and frost blasted across the glade to engulf the veiled lady and the elven war-host arrayed behind her. Calard cried out as the veiled lady disappeared in the tempest. The temperature plummeted, and he was forced to shield his face as the howling blizzard crashed over him.

Elves were sent sprawling, their cries ripped away by the gale and their faces sliced by ice. Horses reared in panic and many lost their footing as the tornado raged around them, blinding and deafening.

As abruptly as it had come, the wind died away, and Calard saw the veiled lady still standing, untouched in the centre of the glade. Of Drycha, there was no sign, but he became aware of thousands of pairs of eyes twinkling in the shadow behind the Oak of Ages.

The darkened forest came alive, rippling with movement. A host from the deepest wildwoods came forth, a bewildering array of creatures united by hatred.

Flocks of crows took roost within the branches of the Oak of Ages, cawing and bickering, the red-caps perched upon their feathered backs waving tiny spears and bows.

Dryads emerged from the gloom to take up position before the great tree, their claws twitching in eagerness, eyes flashing. Some were ready for war, their features twisted into horrific masks of deadwood and briar, while others appeared as elven nymphs, their skin tinged green, their bodies youthful and deceiving.

Behind them came behemoths of wood and bracken, hulking monsters infused with the life-force of malevolent forest spirits. Some resembled uprooted husks of dead trees, while others appeared as little more than sodden piles of rotting wood and fallen branches crudely pulled together to form a vaguely humanoid form. Most were more than eight feet tall, while some were closer to twenty. Ivy and lichen clung to them, and many had ferns and brightly coloured fungus growing from their hunched backs. Crude parodies of men, they lumbered forward to smash and destroy, driven on by Drycha’s hatred.

Clouds of shimmering sprites flitted between the boughs, hissing and spitting as they brandished tiny weapons, glittering wings beating fast. Others rode owls, weasels or large, powdery-winged moths while some merely swarmed across the snow, leaping and cavorting between the legs of their larger kin. Glowing will-o’-the-wisps bobbed and weaved through the air, and tiny beings that seemed to be made of nothing more than leaf and thorn stomped forward, black eyes glittering with the promise of violence. Spider-like beasts of bramble and sticks crept through the branches overhead, sap-like venom dripping from clicking mandibles. White-furred wolves slunk through the shadows, snarling and baring their teeth.

The sheer range of wildwood creatures that surrounded the Oak of Ages was staggering. Calard even glimpsed a small band of elves among the dark forest’s ranks, outcasts who had blackened their faces with soot and bore twisted spider-web tattoos upon their flesh.

Towering over them all strode a creature fifty feet tall, an ancient and twisted oak come to life, its gnarled hide blackened by fire. Roots burrowed into the earth as each immense leg came crashing down into the snow, making the ground shudder and shake, and huge branch-arms capable of pounding a castle to dust swung heavily at its sides. Clusters of vindictive spites hid within the knots and hollows that pocked its charred bark-flesh, and a gaping maw filled with splinter-like teeth opened halfway up the monster’s trunk. Above this vicious mouth, a pair of tiny, deep set eyes blinked.

‘Ancient Coeddil walks among us, freed from the glamourweave’s prison,’ came Drycha’s voice, hissing forth from within the Oak of Ages. ‘Know fear, petty lordling mortals; the time of reckoning is come.’

With a booming roar, the gigantic tree-lord, Coeddil, thrust its arms into the ground. The earth shivered and bulged, as if things were burrowing beneath it, shooting towards Calard and the elven host. A heartbeat later, and a forest of roots burst up through the snow. They whipped around the legs of elves and horses alike, gripping tight and pulling them down.

They clutched at the white stag, reaching up to ensnare the kingly beast and its riders. White light flared and the clawing tendrils turned to ash, falling harmlessly to the ground.

Others were not so protected, and there were shouts of pain and fear as elves were yanked down by the clutching vines. Calard saw a dozen Wild Riders fall as their steeds were dragged to the ground, whinnying in panic. They fell hard, and were instantly covered by a tangle of roots that wrapped around arms, bodies and necks. The savage warriors strained against the living bindings, but could do little as they were dragged to their graves beneath the icy soil.

Galibor reared to avoid a cluster of worm-like tendrils that burst up through the snow beneath her, and Calard slashed at them as they coiled upwards, reaching blindly.

‘Ride!’ shouted the veiled lady.

Dozens of hunting horns echoed across the glade, and the elves surged forward to meet the dark host of forest spirits in battle, whooping and howling as they charged. Arrows darkened the sky, which was now the subtle grey-blue of pre-dawn, and formations of warhawk riders screamed down through the canopy from above, the huge hunting birds tucking their wings in tight. Painted elven warriors cart-wheeled forwards, their dance of blades both elegant and deadly, and fur-cloaked elves ran to join the fray, spinning their double-bladed staff-spears deftly.

The white stag galloped forward, surrounded by wild riders, and Calard felt himself pulled along with them. The veiled lady turned, and he felt her eyes boring into him, even though her face was obscured by her veil.

The branchwraith Drycha must be expelled from the Oak of Ages before the king-to-be can be reborn, she said, her strange triad of voices speaking in his mind. Yet such is the geas that Drycha has woven upon the oak that no forest born creature nor one of elven blood can enter.

‘This is my task,’ said Calard. ‘This is why the Lady brought me here.’

Perhaps, brother.

Calard’s eyes widened.

‘Anara?’

‘Ride, Calard!’ cried the veiled lady, his twin sister, and the white stag leapt forwards.

The battle was savage, each side fighting with fury and passion.

Dryads cut down elves and impaled them upon their blade-like limbs, while others were ripped apart by towering monsters of the forest. Slender warriors were pounded into the ground by heavy wooden arms and set upon by swarms of dark faeries, wings fluttering and knives glittering. Ancient Coeddil sent elves flying with each sweep of his massive arms, and he dragged dozens more to their deaths, his clawing roots reaching up beneath them to ensnare them.

Through the confusion, the unearthly wild riders cleared a path for Calard and the white stag, selling their lives dearly. They were only fifty yards from the immense tree when Calard spurred Galibor on, breaking free of the entourage of savage warriors, riding hard for the shadowy archway.

Dryads screamed their fury and leapt into his path, their raking talons slashing at him, but he cut them down and was past them, galloping on.

He kicked Galibor into a leap, and they sailed through the huge archway. A wave of vertigo assailed him, and he felt his skin tingle strangely.

Then he was falling, surrounded by blinding, icy mist, and then... nothing.

IX

With a gasp, Calard awoke.

He lay upon a plush four-poster bed and could hear birds singing their morning chorus outside. Sunlight streamed through arched windows, and the scent of spring wafted through the high-ceilinged bed-chamber borne on a warm breeze.

He swung his legs from the bed and looked around in confusion. An open chest at the foot of his bed was overflowing with clothes – his clothes – and a half-eaten meal of quail and duck lay on silver platters on a side-table. His armour hung from a wooden stand in one corner of the room, and his sword leant against the unlit fireplace.

He was within his bed-chamber in Garamont. He was home.

Strange, half-remembered images flickered through his mind. He saw a forest filled with malign spirits, and trees that walked like men. He saw one of the fey folk, with slanted golden eyes and pointed ears, and he shivered, remembering an unnatural winter that had blanketed the land in snow.

His dreams were fading fast, dissipating like lake mist under a rising sun. He knew there was something important he had to do, something important that he had to remember, but he could not recall what it was.

With a sigh, he pushed himself to his feet and padded towards his washbasin. The familiar sounds of the castle reached his ears. He could hear peasants in the fields, and the clatter of pots and pans from the kitchens downstairs. He heard weapons clashing and a yeoman bellowing orders as he put his men-at-arms through their training drills, and he could hear the rhythmic clang of a blacksmith’s hammer upon an anvil. He heard a dog barking, and from somewhere, he heard a washer woman singing tunelessly as she went about her chores.

Calard filled the basin with a jug of water and splashed cold water across his face. He looked at himself in the mirror. His face was smooth and youthful.

The door burst open, and he turned to see his brother Bertelis stagger into the room. He threw himself down upon Calard’s bed, groaning theatrically.

‘I’ll never drink again,’ said Bertelis. ‘What a night!’

Calard grinned.

‘My head feels like it is going to explode,’ said Bertelis. ‘Make it stop!’

‘I had the strangest dreams,’ said Calard, turning back to his wash basin and staring into the mirror. His reflection seemed almost like a stranger...

‘Oh?’ said Bertelis. ‘Did you dream you could beat me at the joust? Because that would be strange.’

‘No,’ said Calard. ‘I was embarked on the quest. My clothes were torn and covered in dirt, and my armour battered and worn. I had a beard, and my hair was long and streaked with grey. I was tired. So tired.’

Bertelis snorted.

‘You have such boring fantasies, my brother,’ he said. ‘Now mine, on the other hand...’

‘I came home after many years of questing, but Garamont was in ruin,’ said Calard. ‘And Elisabet was dead. You killed her, my brother. It was an accident, but I was angry and grief-stricken. A distance grew between us, and you left. I had not seen you for many years.’

‘Enough, Calard,’ said Bertelis, sitting up. ‘As you can see, Garamont is as intact as it ever was. I am here, and Elisabet is alive and well. The wedding is next week, after all.’

‘The wedding?’ said Calard.

Bertelis laughed.

‘Your wedding, yes, you dolt,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you forgot.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Calard.

‘Forget the dream. This is all that is real,’ said Bertelis, gesturing around the room. ‘This is all that you need.’

‘I... I think I went to Mousillon, in my nightmare,’ said Calard. ‘Yes, it is coming back to me now.’

‘Ranald’s balls, man! It was a dream, nothing more. Forget it!’

Calard could not understand why his brother was getting so angry, but he gave it little thought. He shivered, casting his mind back, struggling to latch onto the elusive memories. It had all been so real.

‘Merovech,’ he whispered. ‘Duke Merovech the Mad. He had returned. He had raised an army of the living dead, and was preparing to launch an attack against the king. A great battle was coming. I wanted to fight, but something called me away – a vision, I think. It led me far away, to the haunted forest of Loren...’

‘Enough!’ snapped Bertelis. ‘I don’t want to hear it, brother.’

‘You were there in Mousillon, brother,’ said Calard, frowning as he remembered. ‘You were there, but you were not yourself. You were... You were–’

‘I was what, brother?’ said Bertelis, his voice hostile and cold.

‘Dead,’ said Calard, flatly.

‘Yes, dead,’ said Bertelis. ‘You killed me, remember?’

He was suddenly standing close behind Calard, though he made no reflection in the mirror. The hair on the back of Calard’s neck stood on end. This wasn’t his brother at all, Calard realised.

‘You cast me aside, brother,’ said Bertelis. ‘You cast me aside to assuage your own guilt. You drove me to into Merovech’s arms. It was your fault. And then you killed me. Now it is your time to die.’

Calard had a blade in his hands, and he spun around as the thing masquerading as his brother attacked.

He saw a horrific snarling face that seemed to be carved from wood coming at him, and the scent of rotting leaves filled his nose. Blade-like talons lashed for his face, but he fended them off with the Sword of Garamont, which blazed with white light.

He felt the blade bite deep into woody flesh, and the creature screeched. Claws raked across his face. He was knocked flying by the strength behind the blow and hit the ground hard. For a moment he thought he felt snow beneath his hands. Blood was running down his cheek, but he pushed himself back to his feet, bringing his blade around to defend himself.

His attacker was gone, and a cold wind was blowing through the blackened ruins of Castle Garamont.

‘What in the name of the Lady?’ he whispered, turning around on the spot.

He stood within his old bedchamber, but its walls had crumbled. The sky was dark overhead.

A movement behind him made his spin. A figure came forward from the shadows, and Calard’s eyes widened in horror.

‘No,’ he said.

The figure glided into the moonlight, looking up at him with pleading, sorrowful eyes.

It was Elisabet, the young noblewoman whom he had given his heart to so long ago, and who had betrayed him. Her face was pale, and she was dressed in a flowing mortuary shroud that billowed around her. She reached for him, silently imploring for forgiveness.

‘You’re dead,’ said Calard, backing away.

She nodded sadly, and blood began to flow down the side of her head, gushing from the wound in her temple, where her skull had cracked. He remembered the horrible sound as she hit the cold marble steps of Lyonesse. The blood began to soak her flowing gown, making it cling to her body. Tears ran down her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Calard as he backed away further, only stopping when he was pressed up against the fire-blackened wall.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again as she drifted towards him. Her feet were hovering an inch above the ground. In trembling hands, he lifted the Sword of Garamont before him.

‘Her death is on your conscience,’ said a hollow, familiar voice.

‘Father?’ said Calard, looking around.

His surroundings had shifted again, and he found himself standing within the crypt below his family castle. Garbed in the deathly robes, his father stood motionless, staring at him with cold, dead eyes. His skin was grey.

‘That poor, restless spirit wanders lost in the between worlds because of you,’ said the former castellan of Garamont, Calard’s father.

‘She was poisoning you, father,’ said Calard.

‘Not a bad likeness,’ said Lutheure, glancing down at the carved stone sarcophagus that held his own remains. The marble top had been crafted to look as Lutheure had in his prime, strong and proud, arms crossed upon his broad, armoured chest. ‘She did what she thought was the best thing for her, and for you. She didn’t deserve the cruelty that befell her.’

‘It was not my fault, father,’ said Calard.

‘You are no son of mine,’ said Lutheure. ‘Not anymore. I had but one son I could be proud of, and you destroyed him. Had I not been so weak, I would have strangled you at birth, you and that witch of a sister. I should have seen your mother burn in the cleansing flames. Her tainted bloodline has destroyed Garamont.’

‘No,’ said Calard.

‘If you had any courage yourself, you would have taken your own life,’ said Lutheure. ‘But in your craven cowardice, you could not even do that.’

‘Father, please,’ said Calard.

Again, his surroundings shifted. He stood outside the ruin of Castle Garamont, only now the shades of a hundred knights and peasants stood amongst the devastation, staring at him forlornly. They were as insubstantial as mist, and their eyes were filled with accusation.

‘They all died because of you,’ came his father’s voice. ‘If you had been here, doing your duty, they would yet live.’

‘I was embarked upon the quest,’ said Calard weakly.

‘You swore an oath to protect them. Your place was here.’

Two figures pressed through the crowd of restless spirits, and Calard felt his heart wrench.

A slender adolescent, little more than a boy, led a barrel-chested bear of a man towards him. The youngster had wavy, shoulder-length hair and was garbed in the rich clothes of a nobleman. His face was honest and open, and he had a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. The older man had a thick beard that was running to grey, and wore a scarf tied over his eyes.

The boy was Calard’s heir, his nephew Orlando, whom he had named castelan of Garamont when he had set aside his duties to take up the quest. He had been a child when last he had seen him. The older figure was Baron Montcadas, who had pledged to look after Orlando while Calard was away. Both had been slain in one bloody night, a night that had seen Castle Garamont razed to the ground.

‘You never came back,’ said Orlando. His voice was empty, as if all his youthful joy and mirth had been sucked out of him. ‘You should have been here.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Calard. ‘I never meant for any of this to happen.’

‘Your empty platitudes don’t count for anything here, lad,’ said Montcadas in his rumbling voice. ‘This boy was an innocent. His blood stains your hands.’

Calard clenched his eyes shut, despairing, feeling the weight of guilt pressing down upon him. When he opened his eyes, his surroundings were once again altered.

He stood within a chirurgeon’s tent, surrounded by the dead and dying. Laid out upon a table before him was the corpse of a grey-haired knight. His armour was rent in dozens of places, and tattered chainmail hung where it had been sundered. Broken spear-tips protruded from his body, and an axe was still embedded deep in the flesh above his hip.

‘Gunthar,’ said Calard, staring down at the body of his old weapon master and friend.

Gunthar had been more of a father to him than Lutheure ever had. The guilt of Gunthar’s death still plagued him.

Foolishly, Calard had become embroiled in a challenge with Maloric of Sangasse when he had been just a young knight errant. Maloric had appointed a champion, as was his right – Ganelon, a murderous knight that had never been bested. Calard knew that he could never win, but Gunthar had stepped in as his own champion, and though he had slain Ganelon, he had been fatally wounded in the process.

Gunthar’s lifeless head rolled to the side and his eyes flickered open.

‘I died that you might live, Calard,’ he said, ‘but you have brought nothing but dishonour upon your household.’

Tears of shame rose to Calard’s eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

He stood on an island, surrounded by fog. He could hear the roar of the ocean, crashing against the rocks just off the coast. The pebbled beach was strewn with corpses of knights and savage Norscans.

Amidst the devastation walked a single figure; a knight, tall and proud, striding towards Calard. A regal blue cloaked whipped behind him, and his blue tabard was edged in silver. His armour was ornate, and he wore a tall unicorn-crested helm, surrounded by candles. None of them were lit.

‘Reolus,’ he said.

‘He was the best of men, the most chivalrous and noble of paladins,’ said a voice behind him. He didn’t need to turn to see who it was that was speaking; he recognised his sister Anara’s voice. ‘He was my lover and companion, and he died needlessly.’

‘He died an honourable death,’ said Calard, eyes locked on the silent figure of the grail knight making his steady progress towards him.

‘There is nothing honourable about death,’ said Anara. ‘We are born alone and we die alone. Death cares not whether we are good and noble and just in our brief time upon this world, nor if we are murdering savages. We are all just dirt in the ground in the end. You say he died a noble death. It means nothing. He is still dead, and the world is the poorer for it. His death was meaningless. It changed nothing.’

‘He did not believe that.’

Reolus came to a halt before Calard, who dropped to one knee, bowing his head.

The ocean boomed, and sea birds screamed.

‘He died because of you, my brother,’ said Anara.

‘No,’ said Calard, shaking his head.

‘Think of it, brother. There would have been no war with the Norscans had you died in place of Gunthar, on the fields of Bordeleaux, as things should have played out. It should have been you who fell beneath Ganelon’s blade. Elisabet would have ceased poisoning our father – he would have lived to see grandsons taught under Gunthar’s tutorage. Action and consequence.’

‘Grandsons?’ said Calard.

‘Bertelis’s children,’ said Anara. ‘They would have grown up to be strong and proud, with none of our mother’s taint in their blood.’

‘You could not know any of this would come to pass,’ said Calard.

‘I am a prophetess of the Lady, my brother. I speak the truth. Had you died in Gunthar’s place, Garamont would have flourished. The Lady Elisabet would have had no reason to seek out the witch-crone Haegtesse. She would have mourned your death, but lived a happy, fulfilled life. She would have grown old gracefully and passed away peacefully in her sleep, without regrets. Without her, the Norscan warlord Styrbjorn would never have come to our shores. He and his kinsmen would have perished in a meaningless feud with a neighbouring tribe, and his name would have been forgotten.’

‘Stop,’ said Calard. ‘Please stop.’

Anara ignored him, stepping in close to continue her tirade.

‘No daemon-child would have been spawned in Elisabet’s womb. There would have been no war fought in Lyonesse to save her. Tens of thousands of lives would have been spared. That unborn child meant everything to the Norscan warlord – when you stole Elisabet from him, he would have torn the world apart to get her back. And in a noble attempt to save further bloodshed, my Reolus accepted the Skaeling’s challenge – and paid the ultimate price.’

Calard was shaking his head, trying to blot out his sister’s voice.

‘Action and consequence, my brother,’ said Anara. ‘He died because of you. They all died because of you.’

Calard found himself upon a windswept plain beneath a featureless heaven, utterly devoid of colour. The dead stood in serried ranks as far as the eye could see, motionless. They were all there: his father, Elisabet, Gunthar, Reolus, Orlando, Montcadas, and tens of thousands of others. They stood in silence, staring, and the weight of accusation crushed down upon him. Bertelis stood nearest of all. Calard could not look him in the eye.

‘It should have been you,’ they said as one.

Without knowing how, Calard found himself holding the Sword of Garamont reversed in his hands, its point touching his throat. Tears were running freely down his cheeks. All he had to do was press forward, and all this pain, all this misery would end. A moment of pain, and then... nothing. All his guilt would be washed away, like a leaf on a stream...

‘Do it, my brother,’ urged Bertelis.

‘Prove that you are indeed my son,’ said Lutheure. ‘Finish it now!’

‘Do it!’ brayed a thousand deafening voices.

Calard tensed, closing his eyes as he prepared to end his own life.

‘Lady of mercy, forgive me,’ he breathed. ‘I have failed you.’

An unpleasant, cloying scent gave him pause. An earthy smell of rotting woodwork and leaf-mulch filled his nostrils, confusing him for a moment.

‘Do it!’ screamed the army of the dead, but Calard ignored them as his memories flooded back and the illusions woven by the branchwraith Drycha began to unravel around him.

He remembered that it was the Lady that had led him to the Forest of Loren, and that is was by her divine will that he was here at this place, at this moment in time.

Calard’s eyes flicked open and he surged to his feet. The Sword of Garamont burst into white flame, and he heard Drycha scream in frustration.

The illusion of the endless plain of the underworld shattered like crystal beneath a hammer, and the frozen heart of the Oak of Ages was revealed.

It was unlike anything Calard could have imagined. He stood within a vast, subterranean hall, a magical, frozen realm that stretched in all directions. Spheres of light bobbed gently through the air, radiating a diffuse glow akin to predawn. The earthen roof curved far overhead, and the vast roots of the Oak of Ages hung down low, entwined together to form pillars that came down to the ground. Other roots wove down the sloping, distant walls, forming archways leading off into other halls, deep beneath the forest.

The strange realm was like a small version of the world above. The crust of snow crunched beneath Calard’s boots as he turned, gazing around in wonder. Gently sloping hills rose to meet the walls on every side, forming a natural valley in the centre of the otherworldy hall. A wide, frozen lake spread out in this depression, its surface mirror-like and gleaming, and in its centre rose a small island.

Calard found himself drawn towards the lake. Sheathing the Sword of Garamont, he began to walk, trudging through the powdery snow. His eyes were locked on the island. It was lightly wooded, its trees leafless and barren, and a winding path led to a low rocky headland jutting out from the ice.

The snow was knee-deep, but Calard picked up his pace, urged on by some ethereal impulse. He hurried down the powdery slope, passing through icy woods. The land levelled out as he came to the lake’s edge, and without delay he stepped out upon its frozen surface.

The air was cold and crisp and still as he reached the island. He climbed a twisting path through ice-shawled trees, and passed through a stone archway carved with ivy and spiralling runes. He walked slowly out onto the low rocky headland, the highest point on the little island.

A circular dais was situated there, and it was to this that Calard was drawn. He hardly dared breathe as he approached. An elegantly designed stone plinth was carved into the dais, and lying upon it was a goddess.

Tall and slender, and so coldly beautiful that it made Calard’s heart ache, the elven goddess slumbered. She might have been carved from marble, so perfect was her countenance and so porcelain-pale was her skin. Her hair was the deep blue-black of a midnight sky, matching her dress that spilt down the sides of the altar on which she lay and spread out over the dais. Frozen leaves encircled her slender waist and brow, and tendrils of ivy wound around her flawless, alabaster arms. Frost glittered upon her cheeks, and ice-crystals had formed upon her eye-lashes.

She was a vision of ethereal perfection, a frozen deity locked in the deathly sleep of winter.

Calard felt the presence of Drycha before he saw her. She ghosted up behind him, materialising like vapour. He tensed, grip tightening around the Sword of Garamont, and turned to face her.

He saw her talons hastily retract, and she came towards him wearing her most appealing form. Her emerald eyes were unblinking. She passed through the archway, moving with unhurried, feline grace, slender fingers trailing across the carved stone.

She was naked. All that protected her modesty was the serpentine flow of her hair, wrapping around her willowy form. Filled with twigs and ivy, her hair was like a living mass, caressing her body. Her feet were bare yet she walked through the snow as if untouched by the cold.

Calard felt no lust or desire stir within him as he watched the otherworldy creature approach. She was physical perfection beyond any earthly being, but nevertheless, he remained unaffected. He knew what vileness lurked beneath her veneer of beauty and grace.

‘You should not be here, mortal,’ said Drycha. Her voice was throaty and seductive. ‘This is a sacred place.’

‘You are the source of this unnatural winter,’ said Calard. ‘Can you keep spring at bay forever? Will your goddess not be displeased with you for having imprisoned her so?’

‘She is no goddess. And with the compact sundered, she will be no faerie queen, either. You are not of the forest, and have no understanding of what you speak,’ said Drycha, stalking closer, eyes glittering. Her hair began to writhe.

‘I know enough to know that your heart is rotten,’ said Calard.

‘I walked this earth long before the birth of your short-lived race,’ snarled Drycha, her full lips curling. ‘And I shall walk it still when you and all your wretched kind are but a forgotten memory.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Calard.

‘I remember the arrival of the elves, long before they became the Asrai,’ continued Drycha. ‘I watched as they first ventured into the green. They were so full of fear. I laughed as their blood was spilt upon the forest floor. I screamed my fury when our fate became entwined with theirs. It was a mistake, but their time among us has come to an end.’

Drycha paced back and forth before Calard, and her voice grew bitter. Her fingers elongated into thorny claws, and her hair whipped around her.

‘It was foolishness to have ever granted them the aegis of the forest. It was wrong to have put such faith in them. What could they offer us? We did not need their protection; they needed ours. We did not fear the bearded mountainfolk and their axes, nor the savage greenskins and their fire – it was the elves who needed us.’

Calard watched Drycha warily, his hand still clasped around the hilt of his sword. He had witnessed the speed and agility of Drycha’s handmaidens, and knew that she could turn on him in an instant. He would not be taken unawares.

‘They were ever weak-willed beings, filled with slyness and tricks. It was wrong to have trusted them as we did. They ingratiated themselves with us, taking from us what knowledge could be gleaned, giving back little. They stole our magicks and our secrets. They caged us, fencing us in with their wicked stones. The forest rages to be free,’ said Drycha, ‘and with the foolish compact between elf and forest finally annulled it shall be unleashed, and the world shall tremble.’

Drycha ceased her pacing. She stared at Calard with unmasked venom, her hands clenching.

‘Leave this place, mortal,’ said Drycha, her voice filled with ice. ‘You are not welcome here. This is none of your concern.’

‘No,’ said Calard. ‘It is by the Lady’s will that I am here, and I shall not fail her.’

‘I know all your hopes and desires, mortal,’ said Drycha. ‘Nothing is hidden from me. I can give you what it is you want. I can guide you along the darkling paths that wend and twine. You can stand alongside your kinsmen to face the darkness that threatens, even now.’

‘No,’ said Calard.

‘Would you like to see the battle for your homeland? It is already underway. Why are you here, when that is where you ought to be? Is that not part of your duty? Is that not part of your sworn oath? “To defend the honour and life of the king, above your own”?’

‘Get out of my head,’ said Calard.

‘The dead surround the stone prison you call Couronne, even now. The battle has been raging for many hours – its outcome hangs in the balance.’

‘Silence, witch,’ said Calard.

‘I do not lie, Calard of Garamont,’ hissed Drycha. ‘The battle is close to lost.’

‘I do not believe you,’ he said.

‘Look there,’ said Drycha, pointing.

‘I see nothing,’ said Calard.

‘Look again, Calard of Garamont.’

A wave of vertigo passed over him, but soon he realised that he could see something. The carved stone archway was dark now. He ought to have been able to see the trees and snow through it, but as he blinked he saw that it led into a shadowy tunnel. Torches burst into life, lighting the way. The passageway stretched on and on, and at its end he could just make out...

‘Couronne!’

He could see the towering outer walls of Bretonnia’s capital, pennants fluttering in a wind Calard could not feel. Stormy skies roiled above the white towers and battlements, and lightning flashed. Tens of thousands of warriors were embroiled in desperate battle, and Calard’s eyes widened. Scores of trebuchets were firing from atop Couronne’s walls, hurling great chunks of masonry into the endless horde, and the sky was dark with arrows. Thousand-strong formations of knights sallied forth in glorious charges, only to be surrounded and dragged down by the endless ranks of the dead.

Calard’s breath caught in his throat. He was witnessing the death of his nation.

‘How...?’ he gasped.

‘You know in your heart that what you see is true,’ said Drycha, and he did, though he railed against it. ‘Go. Join your people. Die with them. That is your wish, is it not?’

‘What difference could I make?’ said Calard, despairing. ‘What effect could I alone have on the battle’s outcome?’

‘Go or stay, the choice is yours.’

The tunnel stretched out before him, and he thought he could hear the sound of the distant battle. That was where he ought to be, fighting and dying in the defence of his king. That was his duty.

It was with considerable reluctance that he turned away.

‘No,’ he said. ‘My place is here.’

‘Then you are a fool,’ said Drycha. ‘I’ll flay the skin from your bones and feed your entrails to the ban-sidhe. An eternity of torment awaits you.’

‘You are a pitiful creature,’ Calard said. ‘You are nothing but a slave to malice and resentment, consumed with bitterness and poison. Your heart is rotten. You bring nothing but shame to this ancient and magical forest. You failed to destroy me with your lies and your illusions. Your threats mean nothing to me. You fear me, or why would you bother with temptations? You fear me, and you know that my path is true.’

Drycha’s alluring beauty sloughed away, replaced with a mask of vileness and fury. Her cracked, wooden lips slid back to reveal green needle-like teeth and oily black gums, and her slender, nubile body became a wasted cadaver of wood and thorn. She leapt at him, fingers fusing into points, and drew her branch-like arms back to impale him.

Calard had drawn the Sword of Garmont as soon as the change had come upon her. The light of the Lady filled him, guiding his arm and eliminating all doubt.

He stepped in to meet her as she hurtled through the air towards him, and taking hold of his sword in both hands, he thrust it up into her body, skewering her upon its flaming blade. The blow stopped her momentum dead, and she hung there transfixed, her face inches from his own. Black, sap-like ichor slid down over the hilt of his sword.

‘It is over,’ said Calard.

‘Only for you,’ hissed the branchwraith, breathing the stink of wormwood and rot into his face.

Calard looked down, frowning. Both of the branchwraith’s thorn-ridged arms had punched through his breastplate.

Drycha’s blade-edged arms had driven straight through him, and three feet of their lengths protruded from his back. He felt no pain, but blood was flowing freely from the twin wounds in his chest. It looked incredibly bright and vibrant as it ran down his armoured body and legs.

For a moment the two were locked together – Drycha impaled and held aloft by Calard’s sword, and he run through by her. Then she slid her arms free, gnarled talons becoming slender elven hands, thorned bark becoming smooth skin. Her slender arms were coated in gore, from fingertip to elbow, and Calard gasped as they were extracted from his body. Blood gushed from his wounds in a torrent, and choking red foam rose in his throat.

The white flame of his sword flickered and died as he relinquished his grasp upon the grip, and Drycha fell. She dropped to her knees in the snow, now wearing her elven form. Calard’s blade was still embedded to the hilt in her belly, and she seized it in both hands, attempting to pull it free. Still, even through her pain, she smiled cruelly at Calard, enjoying his suffering.

Calard staggered, his lifeblood rushing from his body. His wounds were mortal. He tried to speak but blood filled his throat, making his words incomprehensible. Dimly, he registered that Drycha had become as insubstantial as mist, her eyes glittering as she faded away, leaving the Sword of Garamont lying on the ground. He tried to move to towards it, but reeled, stumbling and falling in the snow. He hauled himself back to his feet, determined to retrieve the blade, but staggered over the edge of the low headland. Turning as he fell, he reached forlornly towards the sleeping goddess.

Cold air rushed by him. He hit the ice hard and lay there on his back, blood pooling beneath him.

He knew he had to get up, but he felt so tired. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open. He lay there on the ice, his lifeblood forming an ever-widening circle around him. He didn’t feel cold, and while dimly he knew that was a bad sign, he could not muster the energy to rise.

Calard turned his head, struggling to maintain consciousness.

He could see the plinth on which the goddess slept, and a ghost of smile touched his blue lips. He blinked, seeing a second figure standing beside her, but he was having trouble focussing and could not make it out. It wasn’t Drycha, for she was gone. He had banished her from this realm. It looked as though the second figure had horns. No, he realised a moment later, it was a helmet. Cythaeros.

He saw the elven warrior kneel down besides the sleeping goddess, kissing her ice-cold lips.

A sudden transformation came upon Calard’s surroundings. The unnatural winter broke, and spring began to flourish. Grass-shoots and saplings pressed up through the rapidly diminishing crust of snow, and buds sprouted and unfurled upon the branches of the trees. Bluebells burst into spontaneous colour, and butterflies filled the air. The ice beneath Calard melted, and he plunged into the lake below.

The weight of his armour dragged him down, and he had not the strength to fight his descent. He felt no fear or regret as he watched the sparkling light of the surface receding above him. Ribbon-like strands of weed waved serenely around him, and the light began to fade. He felt utterly at peace as he settled gently to the bottom of the lake.

A thin trail of bubbles trickled from his mouth, then stopped.

X

Cool hands were upon him, and he felt himself rising up through the water. He didn’t want to wake; he wanted to stay in the silence at the bottom of the lake.

He tried to struggle, but there was no strength in his limbs, and despite his efforts, the gentle hands dragged him up to the surface.

Calard was on his hands and knees, coughing up lungfuls of water. He sucked in deep breaths, and slowly regained his senses. Two savage holes were punched through his breastplate, but the flesh beneath was unscathed, even unscarred.

He rose to his feet. He was on the banks of the lake, within a small glade overrun with bluebells, surrounded by mist.

The Green Knight loomed out of the dense fog. The immortal spirit’s eyes flared, and its huge blade sang through the air as it sliced towards him.

Had that mighty sword struck it would have cloven him in two. Calard jumped back to avoid the blow, narrowly avoiding being cut down.

He reached for the Sword of Garamont but found the scabbard at his waist empty. The Green Knight swung again, and Calard hurled himself to the side to avoid being decapitated.

Reaching over his back, Calard drew his heavy bastard sword. The Green Knight came at him again, and he readied to block the fey spirit’s next attack. Calard held the blade in two hands, yet even so he was brought to his knees by the force of the blow. Desperately, he regained his footing and brought his blade around to block yet another attack, this one coming around at him in a lethal arc, striking at his mid-section.

The blow shuddered up his arms, and he was knocked back two steps. The Green Knight came on relentlessly, allowing no time to recover. There was no subtlety or guile to the unearthly warrior’s assault. He came on without pause and without remorse, delivering a tireless barrage of attacks. Each blow was delivered with staggering power, and any one of them would have felled Calard had it landed.

The fey knight stood over a head taller than Calard, and each strike sent him reeling. His hands were numb from the jarring blows, and he had no time to even consider launching a riposte.

The roiling mist continued to build. All that existed was the two of them. Nothing else mattered.

Calard frantically backtracked, using all his skill and battle-honed instincts to stay alive for another few seconds. His arms were tiring, the bastard sword in his hands a leaden weight. By contrast, the Green Knight was indefatigable.

Finally, Calard found an opening. He deflected a heavy overhead blow, letting his foe’s dimly green-glowing blade slide down the length of his sword before whipping it around to parry a low attack. Sidestepping neatly, Calard spun around the immortal spirit’s next blow and slammed his bastard sword into his neck, putting his whole body weight behind the strike.

His blade landed between archaic plate armour, sliding between helmet and gorget and cutting through the links of chainmail beneath – but it sank no further. It was as if the immortal spirit’s flesh were made of iron, and the force of the blow rang up both of Calard’s arms.

The Green Knight backhanded Calard across the jaw and he hit the ground hard, spitting blood. Scrambling, he threw himself aside to avoid the Dolorous Blade as it came again. The weapon embedded itself in the ground, and Calard staggered upright.

His arms were aching, and he backed off, panic clawing its way into his heart. He had put everything he had behind that blow, and its timing was perfect. Had he struck any mortal foe, their head would have sailed into the air, hacked clean from their shoulders, but onwards the Green Knight came, unharmed.

Clearing his mind, Calard pushed his fear aside and invoked the name of his goddess. Pale fire flickered along the edge of his bastard sword, and he felt fresh vigour infuse his limbs.

With a cry, Calard threw himself at the unyielding knight, thrusting and slashing. He feinted high and came in low, swinging his heavy sword around in murderous arcs. Every blow was met by the Dolorous Blade, and sparks flew as enchanted metal came together again and again.

Calard and the Green Knight battled toe-to-toe, trading blows, neither giving ground. Infused with the holy light of the Lady, Calard was able to match the fury and power of his foe, and for a time it seemed that the battle might rage on forever, a never-ending duel within the mists. Time lost all meaning. All that existed was the contest. Neither warrior was able to overcome the other, and their blades were a blur as they cut and thrust.

No end was in sight, but understanding came upon Calard in a rush.

‘This is not a test of prowess,’ he said under his breath, shaking his head that he had not realised it earlier.

He parried an attack slicing in towards his neck and reversed the grip on his blade suddenly, holding it like dagger in both hands, blade pointed downwards. With a sudden thrust, he drove it into the earth, and knelt on one knee. He lowered his head, exposing the back of his neck, and closed his eyes. He felt the Green Knight step in close, raising his sword for the fatal blow.

‘I offer my life to the service of the Lady,’ said Calard.

The Dolorous Blade came slicing down upon his neck... and stopped. The sword’s edge was cold against his skin. Then it was whisked away, and the Green Knight stepped aside.

Opening his eyes, Calard saw the mists part before him, opening up a passage through the fog. A beauteous figure rose from waters of the lake, wreathed in light and garlanded with ivy and lilies. No ripple marred the lake’s surface as she emerged. Her hair was long and the colour of sunlight, so bright that it made tears run unashamedly down Calard’s cheeks. No power in the world could have made him turn away from this holy vision.

The Lady of the Lake floated towards Calard, her bare feet inches above the surface of the water. White lilies fell like rain from her hair, tumbling down to float upon the surface of the lake behind her. She was garbed in layers of flowing gossamer, and she smiled as she came towards him, holding aloft a chalice overflowing with water.

The goddess drifted near to the lake’s edge, scant yards from where Calard knelt and wept. Her eyes sparkled like autumn leaves, filled with gold and amber and bronze, and she held the grail out towards him. Like sunlight in liquid form, water spilled from the holy chalice.

Barely daring to breathe, Calard rose to his feet and stepped into the shallows to meet his goddess. Light spilled from every pore of her being, warming his face, and with faltering hands, he reached out and took the chalice.

It was heavy, and he felt a strange tingle run up his arms. Looking down into the magical grail’s fathomless depths he saw silent images of his past and future mirrored there, playing out before him. He drew the chalice up towards his lips, but he hesitated for a moment before drinking.

It was said that only those pure of heart and devoid of any hint of taint upon their soul could drink from the Lady’s grail and live.

Drawing in a deep and shuddering breath, Calard lifted the golden chalice to his lips and drank.

XI

The battle beyond the Oak of Ages had been fierce and brutal. Sunlight revealed the corpses of elves scattered around the glade. Their blood was soaking into the sacred soil now that the snows had melted. The dead were being gathered up by their kinsmen, laid upon shields and biers of woven branches and carried away into the forest.

Mouldering piles of sticks and leaves marked where Drycha’s handmaidens had fallen. No one moved to disperse them. Clusters of rotting logs, bones and deadwood were all that remained of the tree-kin that had marched to battle, abandoned by their animating spirits as soon as the unnatural winter had broken. A handful of larger shapes were scattered around the glade – leafless dead trees that had a short time before been guided by malign intent, smashing aside elves and horses with every sweep of their wooden branches. Now they were hollow and motionless, empty husks that would soon collapse in upon themselves and be forgotten.

The vicious carrion birds, winter wolves and other rancorous creatures that had emerged from the wildwoods to join the slaughter had been scattered, slinking back into the darker reaches of the forest to lick their wounds.

Hunting horns echoed in the distance as the Wild Riders pursued the last remnants of Drycha’s host, hounding them back into the shadows, slaughtering any too slow to outpace them.

Colour had returned to Athel Loren, and the forest was flourishing with new life. Birds and butterflies filled the branches, and an abundance of flowers burst open, turning their faces towards the rising sun. Ivy-vines crept up the trunks of trees like serpents, growing rapidly. Ferns blanketed the ground, their fronds waving gently in the spring breeze.

New leaves had sprouted from the fingers of the mighty Oak of Ages, and it stretched its branches upwards, reaching towards the sun. Squirrels bounded along its limbs, and swarms of sprites and pixies spiralled through its branches. Great eagles screeched a greeting to the spring from their eyries in the oak’s upper reaches, and flights of warhawks wheeled above the canopy, elven riders perfectly balanced upon their shoulders. Dozens of their kind had been slain in the battle, and they bore their dead off towards the distant mountains, clutched in their mighty talons.

The majestic white stag had fallen too, pierced by the blade-arms of a dozen dryads. The Lady Anara, her veil now removed from his face, knelt upon the forest floor just beyond the immense arched entrance to the Oak of Ages, cradling the mighty beast’s head in her lap.

She looked up as a shadow fell upon her. Tears were running down her heart-shaped face.

‘Hello, sister,’ said Calard, looking down upon her as he emerged from the Oak of Ages.

His eyes flickered with holy witchfire, and he was surrounded by a vague halo of light, as if the early morning sunlight were drawn to him. He stood taller than he had before, and the faint lines around his eyes had been smoothed away. The effect did not look young so much as ageless, and his eyes spoke of things unknown to mortal men.

‘The Lady’s light burns strong within you, my brother,’ said Anara. ‘You have drunk from the grail.’

‘I have,’ said Calard, nodding. ‘We are both eternal servants of the Lady now. Our lives are no longer our own.’

‘Father would have been proud.’

‘He would,’ agreed Calard, a hint of a smile touching his lips.

A hush descended upon the clearing. Every elf dropped to their knees as one, bowing their heads in honour and reverence.

Calard turned and sank to one knee, bowing his head down low.

‘Rise, Calard of Garamont,’ said a gentle, musical voice.

Calard lifted his gaze and looked upon the two godly beings emerging from the Oak of Ages.

They walked together, glowing with fey light. The one who had spoken was the goddess that been sleeping upon the stone dais, though her icy countenance was now filled with the warmth of spring, and her midnight black hair was now golden, like honey or sunlight. Inhumanly slender, she moved with effortless grace and poise, radiating calm and serenity.

She stood several heads taller than Calard, yet her features were fine and beauteous, and she wore a regal tiara of silver and ivy, a large green stone glistening at its centre. A tall staff of pale wood was held in her right hand, and she walked with her left arm resting upon that of her companion, her consort-king.

He was a towering figure of grace and elemental power, striding bare-chested at his queen’s side. He stood almost twelve feet tall, and his flesh was the green of new forest growth. His skin was inscribed with swirling patterns, and his legs were furred, his feet hooved. A huge rack of antlers rose from his temples. A hunting spear of gigantic proportions was clasped in his hand, thumping the ground with each step, and a large curved hunting horn that Calard recognised instantly hung over his back. He glared across the forest glade, his eyes filled with fury and rage.

‘My Lady Ariel,’ said Anara. ‘My Lord Orion.’

In every way, the pair were each other’s opposite. Where Ariel reflected tranquillity and peace, everything about Orion spoke of violence and aggression.

‘Athel Loren owes you a debt of gratitude,’ said Ariel, addressing Calard directly. ‘Ancient Coeddil has been banished back to the darkness of the eastern fold, and winter has given way to spring. Balance has been restored.’

Calard bowed low.

Orion stepped away from Ariel’s side then, and he strode towards Calard, his eyes filled with untamed fury. He stalked around the newly risen grail knight, staring fiercely down upon him.

‘I remember you,’ said Orion. His voice was deep and powerful, resounding with authority and magic.

Calard looked into the face of the vengeful god and saw something familiar there.

‘Cythaeros?’ he said.

Orion tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing.

‘The one who bore that name is gone,’ said Orion, ‘yet something of him remains within me. His memories and thoughts linger on.’

Orion’s gold-flecked eyes were untamed and dangerous, and for a moment it seemed he might lash out, but the moment passed and the living god turned away, stalking back to rejoin his queen.

‘Is there any boon that we may offer by way of thanks for your service?’ said Ariel.

‘I ask for nothing but the wisdom of your counsel, lady of the forest,’ said Calard, his voice unwavering despite the unblinking stare of Orion upon him. ‘Drycha spoke of a great darkness besieging my homeland. She said that the battle for Couronne was already underway, and that the blood of my king had been spilled. I fear there was no falsity in her words, yet I would know the truth.’

‘Drycha spoke the truth, Calard of Garamont,’ said Ariel. ‘The battle balances on a knife’s edge.’

Calard nodded his thanks, though his expression darkened.

Orion gestured, and Calard’s warhorse, Galibor, was brought forward by an elven attendant. The loyal steed nuzzled at him, and he stroked her nose, still frowning as he thought of the battle underway at Couronne, many weeks ride away.

Another elf came forth, holding in his arms a lance wrapped in rich cloth.

‘You asked for no boon, yet I would not have you leave our realm empty handed,’ said Ariel.

Calard took the proffered lance in both hands, marvelling at the artistry of its design. It was crafted from pale wood inlaid in silver, and its curving vamplate guard had been carved in the likeness of a dragon’s head. He felt potent magicks stir within it as he held it, and he marvelled at its lightness and strength.

‘Her name is Elith-Anar – the Dawn Spirit,’ said Ariel. ‘She was brought to the forest long ago, from distant Ulthuan. She will serve you well, Calard of Garamont.’

‘Lady of the forest, this is too much,’ said Calard.

‘Take it, with thanks,’ said Ariel, smiling. She turned her gaze towards Anara, still seated upon the ground, cradling the noble head of the slain white stag. ‘You have made your decision, cousin of the forest?’

‘I have,’ said Anara.

‘You are not coming back, are you?’ said Calard. Anara shook her head.

‘My place is here, now,’ she said. ‘There is nothing for me beyond the forest any longer.’

Ariel turned towards her consort-king, laying a slender hand upon his heavily muscled, green-tinged arm.

‘It is time, my love,’ she said, and Orion nodded, his eyes blazing with witch-light.

He dragged free his large, curling hunting horn, and lifted it high into the air. As if with an afterthought, he glanced down at Calard, pausing before he sounded the mighty horn.

‘Will you ride with me, Calard of Garamont?’ he said. ‘Will you join the Wild Hunt?’

‘I will, my lord,’ said Calard.

Orion gave him a savage grin, and lifted the horn to his lips.

XII

Booming thunder rolled across the heavens like the war-drums of the gods, and wind and rain lashed the battlefield. Jagged spears of lightning struck down through the roiling clouds, and with each blinding flash, the full extent of the desperate battle raging before Couronne’s mighty walls was revealed.

The plains before Couronne were choked with the living dead, their endless ranks extending as far as the eye could see. The mass charnel graves of Mousillon had been emptied, the corpses of those slain by plague, pestilence and war exhumed and raised to cursed unlife. They shambled forward in endless ranks, impelled by the will of their vampiric master to rend and maim. Many were nothing more than skeletons clad in the tattered remains of tabards and scraps of rusted armour, while others, the more recently deceased, were walking cadavers, their flesh rotting and pallid. Some clutched the swords and spears they had borne in life but others carried no weapons at all, slaughtering the living with nothing more than filth-encrusted nails and rotten teeth.

Great clouds of arrows were launched from thousands of bowmen positioned along the battlements, but they made no visible dent in the endless horde. Mighty trebuchets hurled huge chunks of masonry high into the air, spinning end over end through the driving rain before smashing down into the foe, crushing hundreds as they bounced through the densely packed ranks. They marched on through the quagmire of mud and blood, knowing nothing of panic or fear.

Ten-thousand men-at-arms bearing the king’s colours were locked in desperate battle before the gates of Couronne, and the screams of the dying and horrible wet sound of blades hacking into flesh rose to those stationed along the city’s walls. Yeoman wardens and foot-knights bellowed their commands, desperately trying to maintain order as the terrifying horde came at them again and again, clambering over the bodies of the fallen.

The two armies had been locked in brutal conflict for nearly six hours, and the Bretonnians were close to breaking. Exhaustion and the horror of their undead foe was taking its toll, and the resolve of even the staunchest warriors was beginning to crack.

Trumpets sounded as dozens of lance formations of knights that had gathered from all over Bretonnia charged yet again into the enemy ranks. Young Knights Errant rode at the fore, still hungering for glory, desperate to prove themselves. They carved through the undead, scything down hundreds with lance and sword, while countless more were crushed beneath the flashing hooves of their heavy warhorses.

The knights kicked their steeds on, desperate to maintain their momentum. To become bogged down in combat was death; with their impetus lost, the brave knights would become quickly surrounded and overwhelmed. One by one, the knightly formations faltered, ground down by the sheer number of foes pressing in against them. They laid about them, shattering skulls and chopping at reaching hands, yet were being dragged from their saddles and set upon by the ravening hordes. Their steeds screamed in fear as they too were pulled down into the mud, disappearing beneath the tumble of undead bodies clamouring to feast on living flesh.

Above the battling armies, great swarms of bats wheeled and dived through the lashing rain and clouds of arrows. They descended on the living, latching onto any exposed flesh to feed, biting and clawing. Some of these creatures were immense, bearing fully barded warhorses to the ground before wrapping leathery wings around their prey and draining them of blood.

At the centre of the fighting, Duke Merovech of Mousillon and his elite cadre of vampire knights, his seneschals, carved a swathe through the Bretonnian lines, butchering everyone that stood against them. Mounted on black warhorses with eyes that glowed like coals, they thundered forwards, smashing knights from their saddles, cutting down Bretonnia’s finest with contemptuous ease. More knights pressed in to halt their rampage, but all fell before their murderous wrath.

Faster and stronger than any mortal man, these vampire knights fought with callous ferocity. Their eyes were red-rimmed and savage, their slitted pupils dilating as their bloodlust surged. They struck with such force that shields shattered beneath their axes and blades. Their lances punched straight through armoured breastplates, lifting warriors from the saddle and tossing them aside like children.

Merovech fought like a daemon, lips pulled back to expose his elongated canines. Blood splattered across his snow-white face as he hacked a questing knight’s head from his shoulders and thundered on, driving his heavily armoured nightmare towards the immense gates of Couronne. He slashed left and right, killing with every stroke.

The centre of the Bretonnian battle-line was buckling inward, threatening to break at any moment. Desperate to hold the line, reserve companies of knights charged forward to bolster the defences, but the line continued to strain.

A shadow descended from above, and King Louen Leoncoeur joined the fray.

Mounted on ferocious hippogryph, the king landed amongst the vampire knights, smashing several aside with the force of his impact, stopping their momentum dead. One of the deathly pale knights was impaled upon his glittering lance, and two more were killed in the blink of an eye, ripped savagely apart by his beast. Gore stained the hippogryph’s six-inch claws and dripped from the curved tip of its beak. It screeched a deafening challenge, talons clawing up the ground. The king hurled his lance aside and drew his ancestral sword, its blade shining like the sun.

A dozen knights each mounted upon the back of a snorting royal pegasus landed with their king, flailing hooves and well-aimed lance strikes smashing more of the enemy warriors from their saddles. One of them unfurled the king’s standard, and a cheer rose from the Bretonnian ranks as the king’s resplendent heraldry was revealed.

Leoncoeur slew the first of the dark knights that came at him, taking its attack upon his sacred lion shield and driving his blade through the vampire’s chest. He swayed back in the saddle to avoid the thrust of another foe, and his lightning riposte took the undead knight in the face.

Leaping forward, the king’s hippogryph bore another vampire knight to the ground, pinning it down beneath its eagle-taloned fore-limbs, claws biting deep into plate armour. The hippogryph tore the vampire’s throat open, spraying blood and almost decapitating the undead creature.

With a deft twist of his blade, the king turned aside a serrated blade thrusting towards his heart. The vampire’s fangs were bared, its eyes little more than glittering points. It hissed and recoiled from the blinding light of the king’s sword, its face blistering as if in direct sunlight. Leoncoeur’s blade struck down onto the vampire’s head, carving through its helm and skull. With a twist, he freed his weapon and cast his fiery gaze around him, seeking the next foe.

A lance thrust into the chest of the king’s hippogryph, the blow delivered with such power and force that it drove up through armour and muscle, pushing deep into the mighty creature’s body, seeking its heart.

Every soldier stationed upon the walls of Couronne watched as with a final, piercing cry the king’s royal hippogryph fell, collapsing in a heap upon the muddy plains. The rain continued to pelt down, and lightning flashed, throwing the terrible figure of Merovech into stark relief as he loomed over the king from the saddle of his nightmarish steed. Leoncoeur was pinned beneath the bulk of his slain mount, and he was unable to rise. He glared up at the vampire lord, mouthing a curse. The vampire duke smiled, exposing his elongated fangs. He swung himself from the saddle of his infernal steed, and drew a massive serrated sword, stepping forward to deliver the killing blow.

‘The king! The king!’ roared the royal battle-standard bearer, and knights surged forward to protect their liege-lord. They were met with the fury of Merovech and his warriors, and a desperate melee erupted. Dozens of loyal knights pushed forward, interposing themselves before their king and the murderous vampire knights, selling their lives dearly. Merovech began to laugh as he killed, the hideous sound booming out across the battlefield.

The outcome of the battle balanced on a knife’s edge. Merovech hacked down the knights standing between him and the king. He slammed his mighty sword into the standard bearer’s neck, the blade biting through armour, bone and flesh, and the king’s banner fell.

Knights and men-at-arms all the way along the battlefront saw that resplendent tapestry fall, and their resolve shattered.

It began as a trickle, one man-at-arms turning to flee from the overwhelming horde, but soon became an uncontrollable torrent. The panic was infectious, and soon thousands of peasant soldiers were turning and fleeing back towards the gates of Couronne, trampling each other in their haste to escape, ignoring the barking orders of nobles and yeomen to hold. The rout became unstoppable, gaining numbers with every passing second. It surged blindly, and the undead poured over their lines.

‘The king lives!’ roared a dark-featured knight, lifting the royal banner from the ground, but only those nearby heard his cry. His voice was lost in the tumult of panicked voices, and word of the king’s fall continued to spread.

Trumpets sounded the retreat, and the Bretonnian army turned to quit the field, Merovech’s sinister laugh echoing over the battlefield.

A resounding clarion horn sounded suddenly, echoing across the heavens, drowning out even the rumble of thunder and the terrible clashing of weapons. It was the sound of the hunt, and it came from the east, behind the undead army. Those soldiers upon the battlements turned their gaze, while those on the ground paused in their flight, necks craning to see what was happening.

Against the horizon the storm clouds broke, and sunlight speared down through the gap. The deafening hunting horn sounded again, and an army emerged from the woodlands behind the forces of Mousillon. With a mighty horned figure leading the charge, this newly arrived army streamed from the tree-line and surged down the hillside to smash into the enemy’s rear.

A murmur rippled across the Bretonnian ranks.

‘The fey,’ said voices filled with awe. ‘The fey have come to aid us!’

Orion led the charge, the deafening resonance of his hunting horn still echoing across the heavens. The mighty horned god of the hunt bounded down the hill towards the army of the dead, as fast as the swiftest elven steed, launching arrows from an immense bow as he ran. Each shaft was the length of a man and struck with titanic force, skewering half a dozen of the living dead with every shot.

Calard stormed down the hill alongside the living god, white fire flickering up the length of his magical elven lance, Elith-Anar. His heart was filled with rage as he saw the vast undead army besieging Couronne, and his eyes blazed with holy fire. He kicked his noble steed Galibor on to match the speed of the furious god of the woods, lowering his lance as he neared the enemy battle line.

The wild hunt thundered forward in the wake of their enraged king. All manner of creature, elf and forest spirit had been caught up in the rampaging hunt, unable to resist the bestial call of their lord. All were filled with Orion’s insatiable bloodlust.

Painted in swirling warpaint, unearthly wild riders howled at the heavens as they galloped hard, leaning eagerly forward over the necks of their elven steeds, faerie-fire blazing in their eyes. Vengeful dryads wearing their war-aspect darted forwards, snarling and spitting, their limbs elongated into killing spikes and barbed talons. Lumbering tree-kin made the ground shake as they pounded forwards, emerging from the forest, their deep reverberating hoots akin to brazen war-horns.

Wolves, stags, boars and wildcats had all responded to the king-in-the-wood’s clarion call, and they flowed behind him, gathering pace and numbers, driven mad by the enraged king’s fury. Clouds of black-feathered crows, eagles and owls flew at his shoulder, wickedly sharp beaks and talons ready to rip and gouge.

Elves borne upon the backs of horses and warhawks streamed from the woods, spear-tips glittering. Others ran forward on foot, launching arrows as they came, their faces masks of animalistic fury.

Amongst the panoply flew vast clouds of spites, some riding upon the shoulders of birds or beasts, others flying through the air, borne aloft upon flickering, crystalline wings. Garbed in shining armour and with a tiny lance clasped under its arm, one diminutive sprite flew at Calard’s shoulder, adding her own high-pitched war-cry to the din of roars and shouts.

Even the branchwraith Drycha had joined the hunt, focussing all her malice now upon the legions of the undead.

The hunt slammed into the rear of the undead legions, Orion scattering the walking dead before him. The forest lord did not slow his pace, thundering through the undead ranks, smashing dozens into the air with each sweep of his mighty barbed hunting spear. Calard galloped hard at his side, the enemy falling in droves beneath the thrust of his lance and the cut of his sword. Others were brutally knocked aside by Galibor’s armoured bulk, or crushed beneath the warhorse’s hooves.

The wild hunt charged into the enemy with untamed savagery, an unstoppable tide that swept through the army before them. On they rode, butchering and slaughtering, driving a wedge deep into the heart of Mousillon’s ranks.

Skeletal men-at-arms clutching rusted polearms were smashed aside, their bones shattered, their skulls trampled into the mud. Fighting side-by-side, elves and dryads and wolves and sprites ploughed through the enemy, cutting, hacking, biting and clawing, leaving the wreckage of their fury in their wake.

Calard fought like the holy paladin of the Lady that he was, flames coruscating from his sword, his eyes flaring with fey light. He alone remained unaffected by the fury infusing the others that rode with Orion, yet he was no less dangerous for that. His every blow brought ruin upon the enemies of Bretonnia. He could feel the power of the grail pounding through his veins.

The enemy fell before him like wheat beneath a scythe. He foresaw the strike of every spear and rusted sword moments before it happened, and he turned them aside effortlessly, countering with devastating blows that splintered bones and shattered blades.

He saw the battle standard of the king through the press of battle, and his eyes narrowed. Sensing his intent, Orion glanced in his direction. His face was a mask of bestial savagery, yet there was nobility there. He nodded his horned head towards Calard in acknowledgement, and for a moment, he saw the young elven warrior, Cythaeros, in the living god’s features. Calard bowed his head to the forest king, then, guiding Galibor with his knees, he veered away from the ride of the wild hunt, angling towards the king’s banner.

He saw Merovech then, looming over the stricken figure of the king, and with a shout, he urged his warhorse into one last burst of speed. The undead fell before him as he galloped towards his reviled foe. He was a shining light spearing through the darkness and the driving rain.

‘Merovech!’ roared Calard, his voice suffused with the power of the Lady.

Unholy seneschals moved to interpose themselves between him and their dark lord. Their eyes were filled with hatred, but there was fear there too – the shining light of the goddess Calard exuded was anathema to these creatures of the night, and it caused them pain even to look upon him.

Garbed in archaic armour of ancient design, each was a mighty warrior and dark champion in their own right, but even so, they could not hope to slow Calard’s furious charge. He plunged the elven lance Elith-Anar through the chest of one, skewering its blackened heart and hurling the blood-sucking fiend from its saddle. His sword flashed, and a dragon-helmed head flew into the air, mouth locked in a silent scream.

‘Merovech!’ he bellowed again, and another dark knight fell beneath his blade. He batted aside a vicious swinging broadsword, and his lightning riposte stabbed deep into the face of a further seneschal, the white flame flickering up the Sword of Garamont’s blade making the devil’s flesh blacken and blister.

The fell duke of Mousillon swung towards him, turning away from the fallen Bretonnian king, still trapped under the weight of his steed.

His face was the white of untouched snow, his expression arrogant and dismissive. His hair too was like alabaster, hanging down his black-armoured back. He held his jagged sword loosely. The blade would have taken a strong man to lift it two-handed, yet the undead warrior drew a second blade as Calard bore down on him, twirling the twin-blades.

Calard had seen the vampire lord fight; he knew of his ungodly speed, and the brutal power that was contained within him.

‘Lady guide my blow,’ he breathed, readying his lance.

Time seemed to slow.

Galloping at full speed, Calard saw every detail of his foe in the moment before they clashed. He saw the aristocratic disdain in Merovech’s eyes, eyes that gleamed like a wolf’s, reflecting back at Calard the holy light that surrounded him. He saw the dimly glowing runes along the length of the vampire’s swords, and he saw each individual raindrop coming down, splashing off his enemy’s fluted black armour.

He saw the king looking up at him, and he saw Raben, the disenfranchised knight that he had fought alongside in cursed Mousillon, holding the king’s banner high. Even more of a surprise, he saw his erstwhile man-servant, the hunchbacked wretch Chlod, in the thick of the fighting, battling fiercely at Raben’s side with his heavy, nail-studded club.

Calard rose in the saddle to deliver the strike. Elith-Anar speared towards the vampire’s chest, but with preternatural speed, one of Merovech’s blades swung up to deflect it with an elegant circular parry. With the smallest twist of the wrist, Calard caused the tip of his elven lance to roll around the vampire’s blade, avoiding the deflection. Merovech’s other blade came up, but in a display of skill and speed that surpassed even the vampire lord’s abilities, Calard again rolled his wrist, and the flaming tip of Elith-Anar flicked around his second blade.

The lancetip took Merovech in the throat, punching out the back of his neck in an explosion of dark blood. Calard released his grip on the lance and continued on past the vampire as it fell to its knees.

Hauling on the reins, Calard brought Galibor back around sharply. Dark blood pooled beneath the vampire, and his eyes registered the creature’s shock. He tried to speak, but nothing emerged from his mouth but a splatter of blood. Calard swung from the saddle of his warhorse, and stormed towards the Duke of Mousillon, the Sword of Garamont blazing in his hand.

The vampire tore the lance from its throat and rose to meet him. Merovech had lost one of his swords; the other one he gripped in both hands. He hissed, and hurled himself at Calard.

The Sword of Garamont came up, smashing Merovech’s sword aside. Calard’s allowed his momentum to carry him around, so that he had his back turned to his enemy. With a movement so fast it was little more than a blur, he spun his sword around so that he was holding it in a downward, dagger-like grip, left hand resting upon the pommel. He surged backwards, driving his sword into Merovech’s chest.

The blade slid deep, only halting when the hilt was pressed against the vampire’s breastplate.

‘It is over,’ breathed Calard.

The vampire’s mouth opened wide in final, soundless scream. His flesh began to wither and blacken, like parchment beneath a candle-flame.

Calard wrenched his sword free, and the creature that had been Merovech fell to the ground, collapsing to grave-dust. The entire army of the dead dropped, the dark magic binding and animating them dissipating. The rain ceased, and a howling wind began to clear the sky.

Knights leapt forward to aid the king, while others, bloodied and battle-weary, gazed around them blankly, not yet comprehending that the battle was over. Chlod was staring at Calard in slack-jawed astonishment.

‘You took your time,’ said Raben with a wry smile.

Freed at last from the weight of his slain hippogryph mount, King Louen Leoncouer was helped to his feet, and Calard dropped to his knees, a move that was mirrored by every warrior on the field. Chlod was still staring open mouthed at Calard, and had to be dragged to his knees.

‘Rise,’ said the king, and Calard lifted his head. Leoncouer nodded, and he stood.

‘What is your name?’ said the king.

‘Calard of Garamont,’ he answered, holding his head high. ‘Grail Knight of Bretonnia.’

Epilogue

A lone knight knelt in prayer upon the rocky beach as thousands of Norse longships ploughed towards the shore. An icy gale was blowing down from the Chaos, filling the vessels’ sails, driving these barbaric warriors of the Dark Gods towards the Bretonnian coastline.

One of the ships, larger than the rest and its sail painted with ruinous sigils, pulled ahead of the pack, its dark iron ram slicing through the waves as it drove onwards. Heavily armoured huskarls hauled on the longship’s oars, to the beat of a brazen war drum.

The longship rose upon the crest of a wave, but the steersman knew his trade, and the vessel was kept straight, hurtling towards the beach. Even as it ground ashore, driving a furrow through the black stones of the beach, the lone knight did not rise from his prayer. Nor did he so much as lift his head as the horn-helmed huskarls dragged the longship up the beach.

A huge fire-blackened throne was set into the stern of the longship, and from it rose a giant of a man, silver-haired and fork-bearded. He was the warlord Styrbjorn, High Jarl of the Skaelings, and while he looked perhaps sixty, he was in truth far, far older. Nevertheless, his arms were still strong and thick, and his battle-fury as potent as ever. Twin axes were strapped across his back, and he nodded as he saw the lone knight awaiting him upon the beach, as if he had expected him.

Only when this towering warrior approached did the knight rise to his feet.

An old hunched shaman cloaked in matted fur stood at the Norscan’s side. He spat on the ground at the Bretonnian knight’s feet.

‘It is good that you are here,’ said High Jarl Styrbjorn, his words translated by his shaman, who spoke Breton in a thick but recognisable accent.

‘I said that I would be waiting,’ said Calard of Garamont, his eyes shining with the light of the Lady, ‘and I am not a man who breaks his word.’

For more than fifty years Calard had fought the enemies of Bretonnia as a grail Knight, and his deeds and exploits were renowned across the lands. Nevertheless, his face was as unlined as it had been since the day he had supped from the grail, and there was no hint of silver in his hair.

Over the past half a decade he had seen sights that few men ever dreamed of, and had mourned the death of many brave and honourable men.

He thought of his old friends often, though they had long since passed over into Morr’s eternal realm: Raben, who had risen to become a respected nobleman before he had disappeared seeking the grail in the arid sands of Nehekhara; the Empire nobleman, Dieter Weschler, who had married his Bretonnian mistress in something of a scandal and gone on to become an extremely wealthy and powerful political attaché in the king’s court; and even his lowly manservant Chlod, who had risen far beyond anyone’s expectations.

The High Jarl’s gaze wandered past Calard, surveying the vast Bretonnian army that waited on the grasslands beyond the beach. Thousands of knights and peasant men-at-arms were gathered there, watching and waiting, just as behind the jarl waited his own army, blooded in decades of brutal warfare.

The icy wind continued to howl from the north, and thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed. It was a good omen.

‘The eyes of my gods are upon us,’ said High Jarl Styrbjorn.

‘And the goddess of this land is with me,’ said Calard. ‘Let us finish this, Norscan.’

‘As you wish,’ said Styrbjorn. He turned and waved one of his men forwards.

Calard watched the warrior approach, his expression grim. He was not as large as some of the Norscan huskarls, but he was no less impressive for that. His skin had a strange coppery sheen to it, and his eyes were disconcerting, black with silver irises. He stared at Calard unblinkingly.

Calard could feel the daemon writhing within this warrior’s flesh, but more disturbing still was the fact that he could see the features of Elisabet, the woman he had once loved, reflected in the creature’s face.

This was the offspring of Stybjorn and Elisabet, the daemon-child for which so many had died.

‘Fight well, my son,’ said Styrbjorn, stepping aside.

The daemon came towards Calard, unsheathing the massive double-handed cleaver from a scabbard strapped across his back. Dark flames rippled along the length of the blade.

Calard drew the Sword of Garamont and stepped out to meet him, his own sword wreathed in pale fire.

‘Lady guide my blade,’ murmured Calard.

Thunder rumbled across the heavens, and under the watchful gaze of the Bretonnian and Norse armies, the two champions of the gods came together.

About the Author

Anthony Reynolds is the author of the Horus Heresy novella The Purge, audio drama Khârn: The Eightfold Path and short stories ‘Scions of the Storm’ and ‘Dark Heart’. In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, he has written the Space Marine Battles novel Khârn: Eater of Worlds, alongside the audio drama Chosen of Khorne, also featuring Khârn. He has also penned the Word Bearers trilogy and many short stories. Hailing from Australia, he is currently settled on the west coast of the United States.

An extract from Gotrek & Felix: The First Omnibus.

Damn all manling coach drivers and all manling women,’ Gotrek Gurnisson muttered, adding a curse in dwarfish.

‘You did have to insult the lady Isolde, didn’t you?’ Felix Jaeger said peevishly. ‘As things are, we’re lucky they didn’t just shoot us. If you can call it “lucky” to be dumped in the Reikwald on Geheimnisnacht Eve.’

‘We paid for our passage. We were just as entitled to sit inside as her. The drivers were unmanly cowards,’ Gotrek grumbled. ‘They refused to meet me hand to hand. I would not have minded being spitted on steel, but being blasted with buckshot is no death for a Trollslayer.’

Felix shook his head. He could see that one of his companion’s black moods was coming on. There would be no arguing with him and Felix had plenty of other things to worry about. The sun was setting, giving the mist-covered forest a ruddy hue.

Long shadows danced eerily and brought to mind too many frightening tales of the horrors to be found under the canopy of trees.

He wiped his nose with the edge of his cloak, then pulled the Sudenland wool tight about him. He sniffed and looked at the sky where Morrslieb and Mannslieb, the lesser and greater moons, were already visible. Morrslieb seemed to be giving off a faint greenish glow. It wasn’t a good sign.

‘I think I have a fever coming on,’ Felix said. The Trollslayer looked up at him and chuckled contemptuously. In the last rays of the dying sun, his nose-chain was a bloody arc running from nostril to earlobe.

‘Yours is a weak race,’ Gotrek said. ‘The only fever I feel this eve is the battle-fever. It sings in my head.’

He turned and glared out into the darkness of the woods. ‘Come out, little beastmen!’ he bellowed. ‘I have a gift for you.’

He laughed loudly and ran his thumb along the edge of the blade of his great two-handed axe. Felix saw that it drew blood. Gotrek began to suck his thumb.

‘Sigmar preserve us, be quiet!’ Felix hissed. ‘Who knows what lurks out there on a night like this?’

Gotrek glared at him. Felix could see the glint of insane violence appear in his eyes. Instinctively Felix’s hand strayed nearer to the pommel of his sword.

‘Give me no orders, manling! I am of the Elder Race and am beholden only to the Kings Under the Mountain, exile though I be.’

Felix bowed formally. He was well schooled in the use of the sword. The scars on his face showed that he had fought several duels in his student days. He had once killed a man and so ended a promising academic career. But still he did not relish the thought of fighting the Trollslayer. The tip of Gotrek’s crested hair came only to the level of Felix’s chest, but the dwarf outweighed him and his bulk was all muscle. And Felix had seen Gotrek use that axe.

The dwarf took the bow as an apology and turned once more to the darkness. ‘Come out!’ he shouted. ‘I care not if all the powers of evil walk the woods this night. I will face any challenger.’

The dwarf was working himself up to a pitch of fury. During the time of their acquaintance Felix had noticed that the Trollslayer’s long periods of brooding were often followed by brief explosions of rage. It was one of the things about his companion that fascinated Felix. He knew that Gotrek had become a Trollslayer to atone for some crime. He was sworn to seek death in unequal combat with fearsome monsters. He seemed bitter to the point of madness – yet he kept to his oath.

Perhaps, thought Felix, I too would go mad if I had been driven into exile among strangers not even of my own race. He felt some sympathy for the crazed dwarf. Felix knew what it was like to be driven from home under a cloud. The duel with Wolfgang Krassner had caused quite a scandal.

At that moment, however, the dwarf seemed bent on getting them both killed, and he wanted no part of it. Felix continued to plod along the road, casting an occasional worried glance at the bright full moons. Behind him the ranting continued.

‘Are there no warriors among you? Come feel my axe. She thirsts!’

Only a madman would so tempt fate and the dark powers on Geheimnisnacht, Night of Mystery, in the darkest reaches of the forest, Felix decided.

He could make out chanting in the flinty, guttural tongue of the Mountain Dwarfs, then once more in Reikspiel, he heard: ‘Send me a champion!’

For a second there was silence. Condensation from the clammy mist ran down his brow. Then – from far, far off – the sound of galloping horses rang out in the quiet night.

What has that maniac done, Felix thought, has he offended one of the Old Powers? Have they sent their daemon riders to carry us off?

Felix stepped off the road. He shuddered as wet leaves fondled his face. They felt like dead men’s fingers. The thunder of hooves came closer, moving with hellish speed along the forest road. Surely only a supernatural being could keep such breakneck pace on the winding forest road? He felt his hand shake as he unsheathed his sword.

I was foolish to follow Gotrek, he thought. Now I’ll never get the poem finished. He could hear the loud neighing of horses, the cracking of a whip and mighty wheels turning.

‘Good!’ Gotrek roared. His voice drifted from the trail behind. ‘Good!’

There was a loud bellowing and four immense jet black horses drawing an equally black coach hurtled past. Felix saw the wheels bounce as they hit a rut in the road. He could just make out a black-cloaked driver. He shrank back into the bushes.

He heard the sound of feet coming closer. The bushes were pulled aside. Before him stood Gotrek, looking madder and wilder than ever. His crest was matted, brown mud was smeared over his tattooed body and his studded leather jerkin was ripped and torn.

‘The snotling-fondlers tried to run me over!’ he yelled. ‘Let’s get after them!’

He turned and headed up the muddy road at a fast trot. Felix noted that Gotrek was singing happily in Khazalid.

Further down the Bogenhafen road the pair found the Standing Stones Inn. The windows were shuttered and no lights showed. They could hear a neighing from the stables but when they checked there was no coach, black or otherwise, only some skittish ponies and a peddler’s cart.

‘We’ve lost the coach. Might as well get a bed for the night,’ Felix suggested. He looked warily at the smaller moon, Morrslieb. The sickly green glow was stronger. ‘I do not like being abroad under this evil light.’

‘You are feeble, manling. Cowardly too.’

‘They’ll have ale.’

‘On the other hand, some of your suggestions are not without merit. Watery though human beer is, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Felix said. Gotrek failed to spot the note of irony in his voice.

The inn was not fortified but the walls were thick, and when they tried the door they found it was barred. Gotrek began to bang it with the butt of his axe-shaft. There was no response.

‘I can smell humans within,’ Gotrek said. Felix wondered how he could smell anything over his own stench. Gotrek never washed and his hair was matted with animal fat to keep his red-dyed crest in place.

‘They’ll have locked themselves in. Nobody goes abroad on Geheimnisnacht. Unless they’re witches or daemon-lovers.’

‘The black coach was abroad,’ Gotrek said.

‘Its occupants were up to no good. The windows were curtained and the coach bore no crest of arms.’

‘My throat is too dry to discuss such details. Come on, open up in there or I’ll take my axe to the door!’

Felix thought he heard movement within. He pressed an ear to the door. He could make out the mutter of voices and what sounded like weeping.

‘Unless you want me to chop through your head, manling, I suggest you stand aside,’ Gotrek said to Felix.

‘Just a moment. I say: you inside! Open up! My friend has a very large axe and a very short temper. I suggest you do as he says or lose your door.’

‘What was that about “short”?’ Gotrek said touchily.

From behind the door came a thin, quavering cry. ‘In the name of Sigmar, begone, you daemons of the pit!’

‘Right, that’s it,’ Gotrek snapped. ‘I’ve had enough.’

He drew his axe back in a huge arc. Felix saw the runes on its blade gleam in the Morrslieb light. He leapt aside.

‘In the name of Sigmar!’ Felix shouted. ‘You cannot exorcise us. We are simple, weary travellers.’

The axe bit into the door with a chunking sound. Splinters of wood flew from it. Gotrek turned to Felix and grinned evilly up at him. Felix noted the missing teeth.

‘Shoddily made, these manling doors,’ Gotrek said.

‘I suggest you open up while you still have a door,’ Felix called.

‘Wait,’ the quavering voice said. ‘That door cost me five crowns from Jurgen the carpenter.’

The door was unlatched. It opened. A tall, thin man with a sad face framed by lank, white hair stood there. He had a stout club in one hand. Behind him stood an old woman who held a saucer that contained a guttering candle.

‘You will not need your weapon, sir. We require only a bed for the night,’ Felix said.

‘And ale,’ the dwarf grunted.

‘And ale,’ Felix agreed.

‘Lots of ale,’ Gotrek said. Felix looked at the old man and shrugged helplessly.

Inside, the inn had a low common room. The bar was made of planks stretched across two barrels. From the corner, three armed men who looked like travelling peddlers watched them warily. They each had daggers drawn. The shadows hid their faces but they seemed worried.

The innkeeper hustled the pair inside and slid the bars back into place. ‘Can you pay, Herr Doktor?’ he asked nervously. Felix could see the man’s Adam’s apple moving.

‘I am not a professor, I am a poet,’ he said, producing his thin pouch and counting out his few remaining gold coins. ‘But I can pay.’

‘Food,’ Gotrek said. ‘And ale.’

At this the old woman burst into tears. Felix stared at her.

‘The hag is discomfited,’ Gotrek said.

The old man nodded. ‘Our Gunter is missing, on this of all nights.’

‘Get me some ale,’ Gotrek said. The innkeeper backed off. Gotrek got up and stumped over to where the peddlers were sitting. They regarded him warily.

‘Do any of you know about a black coach drawn by four black horses?’ Gotrek asked.

‘You have seen the black coach?’ one of the peddlers asked. The fear was evident in his voice.

‘Seen it? The bloody thing nearly ran me over.’ A man gasped. Felix heard the sound of a ladle being dropped. He saw the innkeeper stoop to pick it up and begin refilling the tankard.

‘You are lucky then,’ the fattest and most prosperous-looking peddler said. ‘Some say the coach is driven by daemons. I have heard it passes here on Geheimnisnacht every year. Some say it carries wee children from Altdorf who are sacrificed at the Darkstone Ring.’

Gotrek looked at him with interest. Felix did not like the way this was developing.

‘Surely that is only a legend,’ he said.

‘No, sir,’ the innkeeper shouted. ‘Every year we hear the thunder of its passing. Two years ago Gunter looked out and saw it, a black coach just as you describe.’

At the mention of Gunter’s name the old woman began to cry again. The innkeeper brought stew and two great steins of ale.

‘Bring beer for my companion too,’ Gotrek said. The landlord went off for another stein.

‘Who is Gunter?’ Felix asked when he returned. There was another wail from the old woman.

‘More ale,’ Gotrek said. The landlord looked in astonishment at the empty flagons.

‘Take mine,’ Felix said. ‘Now, mein host, who is Gunter?’

‘And why does the old hag howl at the very mention of his name?’ Gotrek asked, wiping his mouth on his mud-encrusted arm.

‘Gunter is our son. He went out to chop wood this afternoon. He has not returned.’

‘Gunter is a good boy,’ the old woman sniffled. ‘How will we survive without him?’

‘Perhaps he is simply lost in the woods?’

‘Impossible,’ the innkeeper said. ‘Gunter knows the woods round here like I know the hairs on my hand. He should have been home hours ago. I fear the coven has taken him, as a sacrifice.’

‘It’s just like Lotte Hauptmann’s daughter, Ingrid,’ the fat peddler said. The innkeeper shot him a dirty look.

‘I want no tales told of our son’s betrothed,’ he said.

‘Let the man speak,’ Gotrek said. The peddler looked at him gratefully.

‘The same thing happened last year, in Hartzroch, just down the road. Goodwife Hauptmann looked in on her teenage daughter Ingrid just after sunset. She thought she heard banging coming from her daughter’s room. The girl was gone, snatched by who-knows-what sorcerous power from her bed in a locked house. The next day the hue and cry went up. We found Ingrid. She was covered in bruises and in a terrible state.’

He looked at them to make sure he had their attention. ‘You asked her what happened?’ Felix said.

‘Aye, sir. It seems she had been carried off by daemons, wild things of the wood, to Darkstone Ring. There the coven waited with evil creatures from the forests. They made to sacrifice her at the altar but she broke free from her captors and invoked the good name of blessed Sigmar. While they reeled she fled. They pursued her but could not overtake her.’

‘That was lucky,’ Felix said dryly.

‘There is no need to mock, Herr Doktor. We made our way to the stones and we did find all sorts of tracks in the disturbed earth. Including those of humans and beasts and cloven-hoofed daemons. And a yearling infant gutted like a pig upon the altar.’

‘Cloven-hoofed daemons?’ Gotrek asked. Felix didn’t like the look of interest in his eye. The peddler nodded.

‘I would not venture up to Darkstone Ring tonight,’ the peddler said. ‘Not for all the gold in Altdorf.’

‘It would be a task fit for a hero,’ Gotrek said, looking meaningfully at Felix. Felix was shocked.

‘Surely you cannot mean–’

‘What better task for a Trollslayer than to face these daemons on their sacred night? It would be a mighty death.’

‘It would be a stupid death,’ Felix muttered.

‘What was that?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You are coming, aren’t you?’ Gotrek said menacingly. He was rubbing his thumb along the blade of his axe. Felix noticed that it was bleeding again.

He nodded slowly. ‘An oath is an oath.’

The dwarf slapped him upon the back with such force that he thought his ribs would break. ‘Sometimes, manling, I think you must have dwarf blood in you. Not that any of the Elder race would stoop to such a mixed marriage, of course.’

He stomped back to his ale.

‘Of course,’ his companion said, glaring at his back.

Felix fumbled in his pack for his mail shirt. He noticed that the innkeeper and his wife and the peddlers were looking at him. Their eyes held something that looked close to awe. Gotrek sat near the fire drinking ale and grumbling in dwarfish.

‘You’re not really going with him?’ the fat peddler whispered. Felix nodded.

‘Why?’

‘He saved my life. I owe him a debt.’ Felix thought it best not to mention the circumstances under which Gotrek had saved him.

‘I pulled the manling out from under the hooves of the Emperor’s cavalry,’ Gotrek shouted.

Felix cursed bitterly. The Trollslayer has the hearing of a wild beast as well as the brains of one, he thought to himself, continuing to pull on the mail shirt.

‘Aye. The manling thought it clever to put his case to the Emperor with petitions and protest marches. Old Karl Franz chose to respond, quite sensibly, with cavalry charges.’

The peddlers were starting to back away.

‘An insurrectionist,’ Felix heard one mutter.

Felix felt his face flush. ‘It was yet another cruel and unjust tax. A silver piece for every window, indeed. To make it worse, all the fat merchants bricked up their windows and the Altdorf militia went around knocking holes in the side of poor folks’ hovels. We were right to speak out.’

‘There’s a reward for the capture of insurrectionists,’ the peddler said. ‘A big reward.’

Felix stared at him. ‘Of course, the Imperial cavalry were no match for my companion’s axe,’ he said. ‘Such carnage! Heads, legs, arms everywhere. He stood on a pile of bodies.’

‘They called for archers,’ Gotrek said. ‘We departed down a back alley. Being spitted from afar would have been an unseemly death.’

The fat peddler looked at his companions then at Gotrek, then at Felix, then back at his companions. ‘A sensible man keeps out of politics,’ he said to the man who had talked of rewards. He looked at Felix. ‘No offence, sir.’

‘None taken,’ Felix said. ‘You are absolutely correct.’

‘Insurrectionist or no,’ the old woman said, ‘may Sigmar bless you if you bring my little Gunter back.’

‘He is not little, Lise,’ the innkeeper said. ‘He is a strapping young man. Still, I hope you bring my son back. I am old and I need him to chop the wood and shoe the horses and lift the kegs and–’

‘I am touched by your paternal concern, sir,’ Felix interrupted. He pulled his leather cap down on his head.

Gotrek got up and looked at him. He beat his chest with one meaty hand. ‘Armour is for women and girly elves,’ he said.

‘Perhaps I had best wear it, Gotrek. If I am to return alive with the tale of your deeds – as I did, after all, swear to do.’

‘You have a point, manling. And remember that is not all you swore to do.’ He turned to the innkeeper. ‘How will we find the Darkstone Ring?’

Felix felt his mouth go dry. He fought to keep his hands from shaking.

‘There is a trail. It runs from the road. I will take you to its start.’

‘Good,’ Gotrek said. ‘This is too good an opportunity to miss. Tonight I will atone my sins and stand among the Iron Halls of my fathers. Great Grungni willing.’

He made a peculiar sign over his chest with his clenched right hand. ‘Come, manling, let us go.’ He strode out the door.

Felix picked up his pack. At the doorway the old woman stopped him and pressed something into his hand. ‘Please, sir,’ she said. ‘Take this. It is a charm to Sigmar. It will protect you. My little Gunter wears its twin.’

And much good it’s done him, Felix was about to say, but the expression on her face stopped him. It held fear, concern and perhaps hope. He was touched.

‘I’ll do my best, frau.’

Outside, the sky was bright with the green witchlight of the moons. Felix opened his hand. In it was a small iron hammer on a fine-linked chain. He shrugged and hung it round his neck. Gotrek and the old man were already moving down the road. He had to run to catch up.

‘What do you think these are, manling?’ Gotrek said, bending close to the ground. Ahead of them, the road continued on towards Hartzroch and Bogenhafen. Felix leaned on the league marker. This was the edge of the trail. Felix hoped the innkeeper had returned home safely.

‘Tracks,’ he said. ‘Going north.’

‘Very good, manling. They are coach tracks and they take the trail north to the Darkstone Ring.’

‘The black coach?’ Felix said.

‘I hope so. What a glorious night! All my prayers are answered. A chance to atone and to get revenge on the swine who nearly ran me over.’ Gotrek cackled gleefully but Felix could sense a change in him. He seemed tense, as if suspecting that his hour of destiny were arriving and he would meet it badly. He seemed unusually talkative.

‘A coach? Does this coven consist of noblemen, manling? Is your Empire so very corrupt?’

Felix shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It may have a noble leader. The members are most likely local folk. They say the taint of Chaos runs deep in these out of the way places.’

Gotrek shook his head and for the first time ever he looked dismayed. ‘I could weep for the folly of your people, manling. To be so corrupted that your rulers could sell themselves over to the powers of darkness, that is a terrible thing.’

‘Not all men are so,’ Felix said angrily. ‘True, some seek easy power or the pleasures of the flesh, but they are few. Most people keep the faith. Anyway, the Elder Race are not so pure. I have heard tales of whole armies of dwarfs dedicated to the Ruinous Powers.’

Gotrek gave a low angry growl and spat on the ground. Felix gripped the hilt of his sword tighter. He wondered whether he had pushed the Trollslayer too far.

‘You are correct,’ Gotrek said, his voice soft and cold. ‘We do not lightly talk about such things. We have vowed eternal war against the abominations you mention and their dark masters.’

‘As have my own people. We have our witch hunts and our laws.’

Gotrek shook his head. ‘Your people do not understand. They are soft and decadent and live far from the war. They do not understand the terrible things which gnaw at the roots of the world and seek to undermine us all. Witch hunts? Hah!’ He spat on the ground. ‘Laws! There is only one way to meet the threat of Chaos.’

He brandished his axe meaningfully.

They trudged wearily through the forest. Overhead, the moons gleamed feverishly. Morrslieb had become ever brighter, and now its green glow stained the sky. A light mist had gathered and the terrain they moved through was bleak and wild. Rocks broke through the turf like plague spots breaking through the skin of the world.

Sometimes Felix thought he could hear great wings passing overhead, but when he looked up he could see only the glow in the sky. The mist distorted and spread so that it looked as though they walked along the bed of some infernal sea.

There was a sense of wrongness about this place, Felix decided. The air tasted foul and the hairs on the nape of his neck constantly prickled. Back when he had been a boy in Altdorf he had sat in his father’s house and watched the sky grow black with menacing clouds. Then had come the most monstrous storm in living memory. Now he felt the same sense of anticipation. Mighty forces were gathering close to here, he was certain. He felt like an insect crawling over the body of a giant that could at any moment awake and crush him.

Even Gotrek seemed oppressed. He had fallen silent and did not even mumble to himself as he usually did. Now and again he would stop and motion for Felix to stand quiet, then he would stand and sniff the air. Felix could see that his whole body tensed as if he strained with every nerve to catch the slightest trace of something. Then they would move on.

Felix’s muscles all felt tight with tension. He wished he had not come. Surely, he told himself, my obligation to the dwarf does not mean I must face certain death. Perhaps I can slip away in the mist.

He gritted his teeth. He prided himself on being an honourable man, and the debt he owed the dwarf was real. The dwarf had risked his life to save him. Granted, at the time he had not known Gotrek was seeking death, courting it as a man courts a desirable lady. It still left him under an obligation.

He remembered the riotous drunken evening in the taverns of the Maze when they had sworn blood-brothership in that curious dwarfish rite and he had agreed to help Gotrek in his quest.

Gotrek wished his name remembered and his deeds recalled. When he had found out that Felix was a poet, the dwarf had asked Felix to accompany him. At the time, in the warm glow of beery camaraderie, it had seemed a splendid idea. The Trollslayer’s doomed quest had struck Felix as excellent material for an epic poem, one that would make him famous.

Little did I know, Felix thought, that it would lead to this. Hunting for monsters on Geheimnisnacht. He smiled ironically. It was easy to sing of brave deeds in the taverns and playhalls where horror was a thing conjured by the words of skilled craftsmen. Out here, though, it was different. His bowels felt loose with fear and the oppressive atmosphere made him want to run screaming.

Still, he tried to console himself, this is fit subject matter for a poem. If only I live to write it.

The woods became deeper and more tangled. The trees took on the aspect of twisted, uncanny beings. Felix felt as if they were watching him. He tried to dismiss the thought as fantasy but the mist and the ghastly moonlight only stimulated his imagination. He felt as if every pool of shadow contained a monster.

Felix looked down at the dwarf. Gotrek’s face held a mixture of anticipation and fear. Felix had thought him immune to terror but now he realised it was not so. A ferocious will drove him to seek his doom. Feeling that his own death might be near at hand, Felix asked a question that he had long been afraid to utter.

‘Herr Trollslayer, what was it you did that you must atone for? What crime drives you to punish yourself so?’

Gotrek looked up to him, then turned his head to gaze off into the night. Felix watched the cable-like muscles of his neck ripple like serpents as he did so.

‘If another man asked me that question I would slaughter him. I make allowances for your youth and ignorance and the friendship rite we have undergone. Such a death would make me a kin-slayer. That is a terrible crime. Such crimes we do not talk about.’

Felix had not realised the dwarf was so attached to him. Gotrek looked up at him as if expecting a response.

‘I understand,’ Felix said.

‘Do you, manling? Do you really?’ The Trollslayer’s voice was as harsh as stones breaking.

Felix smiled ruefully. In that moment he saw the gap that separated man from dwarf. He would never understand their strange taboos, their obsession with oaths and order and pride. He could not see what would drive the Trollslayer to carry out his self-imposed death sentence.

‘Your people are too harsh with themselves,’ he said.

‘Yours are too soft,’ the Trollslayer replied. They fell into silence. Both were startled by a quiet, mad laugh. Felix turned, whipping up his blade into the guard position. Gotrek raised his axe.

Out of the mists something shambled. Once it had been a man, Felix decided. The outline was still there. It was as if some mad god held the creature close to a daemonic fire until flesh dripped and ran, then had left it to set in a new and abhorrent form.

‘This night we will dance,’ it said, in a high-pitched voice that held no hint of sanity. ‘Dance and touch.’

It reached out gently to Felix and stroked his arm. Felix recoiled in horror as fingers like clumps of maggots rose towards his face.

‘This night at the stone we will dance and touch and rub.’ It made as if to embrace him. It smiled, showing short, pointed teeth. Felix stood quietly. He felt like a spectator, distanced from the event that was happening. He pulled back and put the point of his sword against the thing’s chest.

‘Come no closer,’ Felix warned. The thing smiled. Its mouth seemed to grow wider, it showed more small sharp teeth. Its lips rolled back until the bottom half of the face seemed all wet glistening gum and the jaw sank lower like that of a snake. It pushed forward against the sword until beads of blood glistened on its chest. It gave a gurgling, idiotic laugh.

‘Dance and touch and rub and eat,’ it said, and with inhuman swiftness it writhed around the sword and leapt for Felix.

Swift as it was, the Trollslayer was swifter. In mid-leap his axe caught its neck. The head rolled into the night; a red fountain gushed.

This is not happening, thought Felix.

‘What was that? A daemon?’ Gotrek asked. Felix could hear the excitement in his voice.

‘I think it was once a man,’ Felix said. ‘One of the tainted ones marked by Chaos. They are abandoned at birth.’

‘That one spoke your tongue.’

‘Sometimes the taint does not show till they are older. Relatives think they are sick and protect them till they make their way to the woods and vanish.’

‘Their kin protect such abominations?’

‘It happens. We don’t talk about it. It is hard to turn your back on people you love even if they change.’

The dwarf stared at him in disbelief, then shook his head.

‘Too soft,’ he said. ‘Too soft.’

The air was still. Sometimes Felix thought he sensed presences moving in the trees about him and froze nervously, peering into the mist, searching for moving shadows. The encounter with the tainted one had brought home to him the danger of the situation. He felt within him a great fear and a great anger.

Part of the anger was directed at himself for feeling the fear. He was sick and ashamed. He decided that whatever happened he would not repeat his error, standing like a sheep to be slaughtered.

‘What was that?’ Gotrek asked. Felix looked at him.

‘Can’t you hear it, manling? Listen! It sounds like chanting.’ Felix strained to catch the sound but heard nothing. ‘We are close, now. Very close.’

They pushed on in silence. As they trudged through the mist Gotrek became ever more cautious and left the trail, using the long grass for cover. Felix joined him.

Now he could hear the chanting. It sounded as though it was coming from scores of throats. Some of the voices were human, others were deep and bestial. There were male voices and female voices mingled with the slow beat of a drum, the clash of cymbals and discordant piping.

Felix could make out one word only, repeated over and over until it was driven into his consciousness. The word was ‘Slaanesh’.

Felix shuddered. Slaanesh, dark lord of unspeakable pleasures. It was a name that conjured up the worst depths of depravity. It was whispered in the drug dens and vice houses of Altdorf by those so jaded that they sought pleasures beyond human understanding. It was a name associated with corruption and excess and the dark underbelly of Imperial society. For those who followed Slaanesh no stimulation was too bizarre, no pleasure forbidden.

‘The mist covers us,’ Felix whispered to the Trollslayer.

‘Hist! Be quiet. We must get closer.’

They crept forward slowly. The long wet grass dragged at Felix’s body, and soon he was damp. Ahead he could see beacons burning in the dark. The scent of blazing wood and cloying sickly-sweet incense filled the air. He looked around, hoping that no latecomer would blunder into them. He felt absurdly exposed.

Inch by inch they advanced. Gotrek dragged his battleaxe along behind him and once Felix touched its sharp blade with his fingers. He cut himself and fought back a desire to scream out.

They reached the edge of the long grass and found themselves staring at a crude ring of six obscenely-shaped stones amid which stood a monolithic slab. The stones glowed greenly with the light of some luminous fungus. On top of each was a brazier which gave off clouds of smoke. Beams of pallid, green moonlight illuminated a hellish scene.

Within the ring danced six humans, masked and garbed in long cloaks. The cloaks were thrown back over one shoulder revealing naked bodies, both male and female. On one hand the revellers each wore finger cymbals which they clashed, in the other they carried switches of birch with which they each lashed the dancer in front.

‘Ygrak tu amat Slaanesh!’ they cried.

Felix could see that some of the bodies were marked by bruises. The dancers seemed to feel no pain. Perhaps it was the narcotic effect of the incense.

Around the stone ring lolled figures of horror. The drummer was a huge man with the head of a stag and cloven hooves. Near him sat a piper with the head of a dog and hands with suckered fingers. A large crowd of tainted women and men writhed on the ground nearby.

Some of their bodies were subtly distorted: men who were tall with thin, pin heads; short, fat women with three eyes and three breasts. Others were barely recognisable as once having been human. There were scale-covered man-serpents and wolf-headed furred beasts mingling with things that were all teeth and mouth and other orifices. Felix could barely breathe. He watched the entire proceeding with mounting fear.

The drums beat faster, the rhythmic chanting increased in pace, the piping became ever louder and more discordant as the dancers became more frenzied, lashing themselves and their companions until bloody weals became visible. Then there was a clash of cymbals and all fell silent.

Felix thought they had been spotted, and he froze. The smoke of the incense filled his nostrils and seemed to amplify all his senses. He felt even more remote and disconnected from reality. There was a sharp, stabbing pain in his side. He was startled to realise that Gotrek had elbowed him in the ribs. He was pointing to something beyond the stone ring.

Felix struggled to see what loomed in the mist. Then he realised that it was the black coach. In the sudden, shocking silence he heard its door swing open. He held his breath and waited to see what would emerge.

A figure seemed to take shape out of the mist. It was tall and masked, and garbed in layered cloaks of many pastel colours. It moved with calm authority and in its arms it carried something swaddled in brocade cloth. Felix looked at Gotrek but he was watching the unfolding scene with fanatical intensity. Felix wondered if the dwarf had lost his nerve at this late hour.

The newcomer stepped forward into the stone circle.

‘Amak tu amat Slaanesh!’ it cried, raising its bundle on high. Felix could see that it was a child, though whether living or dead he could not tell.

‘Ygrak tu amat Slaanesh! Tzarkol taen amat Slaanesh!’ The crowd responded ecstatically.

The cloaked man stared out at the surrounding faces, and it seemed to Felix that the stranger gazed straight at him with calm, brown eyes. He wondered if the coven-master knew they were there and was playing with them.

‘Amak tu Slaanesh!’ the man cried in a clear voice.

‘Amak klessa! Amat Slaanesh!’ responded the crowd. It was clear to Felix that some evil ritual had begun. As the rite progressed, the coven-master moved closer to the altar with slow ceremonial steps. Felix felt his mouth go dry. He licked his lips. Gotrek watched the events as if hypnotised.

The child was placed on the altar with a thunderous rumble of drum beats. Now the six dancers each stood beside a pillar, legs astride it, clutching at the stone suggestively. As the ritual progressed they ground themselves against the pillars with slow sinuous movements.

From within his robes the master produced a long wavy-bladed knife. Felix wondered whether the dwarf was going to do something. He could hardly bear to watch.

Slowly the knife was raised, high over the cultist’s head. Felix forced himself to look. An ominous presence hovered over the scene. Mist and incense seemed to be clotting together and congealing, and within the cloud Felix thought he could make out a grotesque form writhe and begin to materialise. Felix could bear the tension no longer.

‘No!’ he shouted.

He and the Trollslayer emerged from the long grass and marched shoulder-to-shoulder towards the stone ring. At first the cultists didn’t seem to notice them, but finally the demented drumming stopped and the chanting faded and the cult-master turned to glare at them, astonished.

For a moment everyone stared. No one seemed to understand what was happening. Then the cult-master pointed the knife at them and screamed; ‘Kill the interlopers!’

The revellers moved forward in a wave. Felix felt something tug at his leg and then a sharp pain. When he looked down he saw a creature, half woman, half serpent, gnawing at his ankle. He kicked out, pulling his leg free and stabbed down with his sword.

A shock passed up his arm as the blade hit bone. He began to run, following in the wake of Gotrek who was hacking his way towards the altar. The mighty double-bladed axe rose and fell rhythmically and left a trail of red ruin in its path. The cultists seemed drugged and slow to respond but, horrifyingly, they showed no fear. Men and women, tainted and untainted, threw themselves towards the intruders with no thought for their own lives.

Felix hacked and stabbed at anyone who came close. He put his blade under the ribs and into the heart of a dog-faced man who leapt at him. As he tried to tug his blade free a woman with claws and a man with mucous-covered skin leapt on him. Their weight bore him over, knocking the wind from him.

He felt the woman’s talons scratch at his face as he put his foot under her stomach and kicked her off. Blood rolled down into his eyes from the cuts. The man had fallen badly, but leapt to grab his throat. Felix fumbled for his dagger with his left hand while he caught the man’s throat with his right. The man writhed. He was difficult to grip because of his coating of slime. His own hands tightened inexorably on Felix’s throat in return and he rubbed himself against Felix, panting with pleasure.

Blackness threatened to overcome the poet. Little silver points flared before his eyes. He felt an overwhelming urge to relax and fall forward into the darkness. Somewhere far away he heard Gotrek’s bellowed war-cry. With an effort of will Felix jerked his dagger clear of its scabbard and plunged it into his assailant’s ribs. The creature stiffened and grinned, revealing rows of eel-like teeth. He gave an ecstatic moan even as he died.

‘Slaanesh, take me,’ the man shrieked. ‘Ah, the pain, the lovely pain!’

Felix pulled himself to his feet just as the clawed woman rose to hers. He lashed out with his boot, connected with her jaw. There was a crunch, and she fell backwards. Felix shook his head to clear the blood from his eyes.

The majority of the cultists had concentrated on Gotrek. This had kept Felix alive. The dwarf was trying to hack his way towards the heart of the stone circle. Even as he moved, the press of bodies against him slowed him down. Felix could see that he bled from dozens of small cuts.

The ferocious energy of the dwarf was terrible to see. He frothed at the mouth and ranted as he chopped, sending limbs and heads everywhere. He was covered in a filthy matting of gore, but in spite of his sheer ferocity Felix could tell the fight was going against Gotrek. Even as he watched, a cloaked reveller hit the dwarf with a club and Gotrek went down under a wave of bodies. So he has met his doom, thought Felix, just as he desired.

Beyond the ruck of the melee, the cult-master had regained his composure. Once more he began to chant, and raised the dagger on high. The terrible shape that had been forming from the mist seemed once again to coalesce.

Felix had a premonition that if it took on full substance they were doomed. He could not fight his way through the bodies that surrounded the Trollslayer. For a long moment he watched the curve-bladed knife reflecting the Morrslieb light.

Then he drew back his own dagger. ‘Sigmar guide my hand,’ he prayed and threw. The blade flew straight and true to the throat of the High Priest, hitting beneath the mask where flesh was exposed. With a gurgle, the cult-master toppled backwards.

A long whine of frustration filled the air and the mist seemed to evaporate. The shape within the mist vanished. As one, the cultists looked up in shock. The tainted ones turned to stare at him. Felix found himself confronted by the mad glare of dozens of unfriendly eyes. He stood immobile and very, very afraid. The silence was deathly.

Then there was an almighty roar and Gotrek emerged from amidst the pile of bodies, pummelling about him with ham-sized fists. He reached down and from somewhere retrieved his axe. He shortened his grip on the haft and laid about him with its shaft. Felix scooped up his own sword and ran to join him. They fought through the crush until they were back to back.

The cultists, filled with fear at the loss of their leader, began to flee into the night and mist. Soon Felix and Gotrek stood alone under the shadows of the Darkstone Ring.

Gotrek looked at Felix balefully, blood clotted in his crested hair. In the witch-light he looked daemonic. ‘I am robbed of a mighty death, manling.’

He raised his axe menacingly. Felix wondered if he were still berserk and about to chop him down in spite of their binding oath. Gotrek began to advance slowly towards him. Then the dwarf grinned. ‘It would seem the gods preserve me for a greater doom yet.’

He planted his axe hilt first into the ground and began to laugh until the tears ran down his face. Having exhausted his laughter, he turned to the altar and picked up the infant. ‘It lives,’ he said.

Felix began to inspect the corpses of the cloaked cultists. He unmasked them. The first one was a blonde-haired girl covered in weals and bruises. The second was a young man. He had an amulet in the shape of a hammer hanging almost mockingly round his neck.

‘I don’t think we’ll be going back to the inn,’ Felix said sadly.

One local tale tells of an infant found on the steps of the temple of Shallya in Hartzroch. It was wrapped in a blood-soaked cloak of Sudenland wool, a pouch of gold lay nearby, and a steel amulet in the shape of a hammer was round its neck. The priestess swore she saw a black coach thundering away in the dawn light.

The natives of Hartzroch tell another and darker tale of how Ingrid Hauptmann and Gunter, the innkeeper’s son, were slain in some horrific sacrifice to the Dark Powers. The road wardens who found the corpses up by the Darkstone Ring agreed it must have been a terrible rite. The bodies looked as if they had been chopped up with an axe wielded by a daemon.

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A Black Library Publication

Knight Errant first published in 2008.
Knight of the Realm first published in 2009.
Rest Eternal first published in the anthology Death and Dishonour in 2010.
Questing Knight first published in the anthology Hammer and Bolter #1 in 2010.
Grail Knight first published in Knights of Bretonnia omnibus in 2011.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1,D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Stepan Alekseev.
Map by Nuala Kinrade.

Knights of Bretonnia © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Knights of Bretonnia, Warhammer Chronicles, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-80026-606-3

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.