A Rough Knight

TW: blood, swearing.

The assassin Catherine Harper led Sir Danielle Longbow down corridors and stairs from the peaks of Afon Fos’ castle battlements into the city.

“We can save her if we hurry. There’s still time,” said the royal assassin to the knight who was trailing behind.

“How do you know?” Danielle cried out to the woman rushing ahead of her into the tight streets. Blackened stone topped with fresh grey granite from the mines of Leonor City loomed over them both as they ran.

Wind whistled through the stones, down the alleyways. Shutters banged with a menacing clatter.

“Because I can hear her fighting it.”

“What?” Sir Longbow’s face was pure confusion.

“Her thoughts. Their thoughts. We’re all connected. They’re telling us to give in. They want us to embrace it but she’s still fighting. We have to help her.” She pounded on a gate across the alley she’d run down then leapt up to grab the top. With a flick of her legs Catherine was gone.

“Wait up.” Danielle struggled to keep up with the assassin as Catherine ran at breakneck speed through the narrow streets.

Sir longbows caught up with Miss Harper outside a butcher’s stop with the shutters closed. On her knees tearing at her hair, a woman screamed for something to stop.

“Fight it,” Catherine said. “You need to fight it. Hold this.” The assassin passed the woman a silver coin. The stranger shrieked and threw the pure metal away, staring at a burn on her palm. “What’s your name?”

“Jenny. Jennifer Sadler.” The woman’s wide brown eyes reeked of madness. “It burned! How can a coin burn?”

Catherine clapped hands on Jenny’s shoulders. “It hurts because you were bitten by a harpy. You’re changing. You’ll be one of them unless you fight it. You need the silver to stop the change.” She pressed another coin into the raven haired woman’s hand. The smell of burning flesh accompanied the cries of pain.

“It hurts. I know it hurts, but you have to fight it. Can you hear the voices now?” The assassin clamped her hand around that of the woman holding the coin.

“I can’t. It’s burning me. Make it stop.” Pleading for mercy, Jennifer looked at Danielle. The knight’s stomach knotted with guilt. “Please,” begged the woman who already bore the marks of a hard life.

“Fight it,” Sir Longbow told the woman. “Catherine did.” Danielle caught the yellow eyes of the assassin. “Show her the scars. She has to know it can be done.”

“They’re coming,” Jenny sobbed, wild eyes staring up to the dark sky.

“Deny them,” Catherine implored the bitten woman. “You can do it. I did. The burns will heal. Their power over you will weaken.” Sir Longbow knew her friend was lying. The harpies called to the assassin as much as they ever had. She had grown stronger, her denials harder.

“Catherine beat this, look at her.” Sir Danielle held the woman.

Jenny looked into the yellow eyes of the assassin and shrieked. “NOOO! You’re one of them. I won’t. I won’t. You can’t have me.”

“Take the silver. It stops the transition.” Harper said. “Hold it now before your eyes change. It’s going to hurt. The agony will be terrible but you’ll beat it.” The silver ear studs Catherine wore might well have been aflame. Her skin turned an angry pink around them. Danielle could smell the flesh of the women cooking as it touched the silver. She felt for them as they suffered agony to save themselves from the change.

Jenny screamed, tears flowing as she held the coin. Danielle gave the woman another coin for her other hand.

“They’re coming,” Catherine’s yellow eyes were fearful as she turned to Sir Longbow. “Kill them. End this.”

“Where?” Danielle asked.

“Over the north west gate. Hurry. I’ll deal with this.” The face of the winged vampire bite survivor was twisting in agony but also transforming.”

“You need to leave the city,” said the knight. “Take her with you.”

Nodding, Catherine lifted Jenny easily in her arms.

The exhaustion in Jennifer’s eyes broke Danielle’s heart. Her determination was weakening. If the call of the red angels grew stronger she would succumb to it. They would have to kill her.

“Ride to Leonor,” Sir Longbow told her friend, putting a commanding tone into the words. “I’ll deal with the beasts.”

Danielle helped Catherine carry Jenny to the eastern bridge gate. Seeing that. Wailing and pleading for help, Jennifer Sadler held two coins that burnt her and sat atop Catherine’s horse. The assassin took the reins in one hand and wrapped the other around the survivor.

“Good luck,” yelled Catherine over the clip clopping of hooves on cobblestones as she rode away. “Don’t let them bite you.”

Sir Longbow rode north west through the city, glad that the streets had been emptied. Citizens had been warned to close and bar their doors and windows. Steel doors on every house and steel shutters meant the harpies could only attack the knights on the walls.

Screams jolted Danielle from her concentration on galloping. A knight fell from the sky, landing broken on the cobbled street before her. Her steed leapt across the body. Tying it up in the stable by the north west gate she bade the stable boy to close the door. His relief as the heavy door began to close was palpable.

Yelling from the wall top told Danielle where she was needed.

Somehow the monsters had known to plant ideas in Catherine’s mind. The bulk of Danielle’s Nameless Knights had been along the north western wall. They must have circled the city to find a weakness in the defenses.

Leaping up stairs, her armour clattered. She drew her sword. Her head turned both ways to find prey. A knight lay in a pool of blood on the stone. A bow held in the limp hand would serve the knight better, she reasoned. She put the soldier in the recovery position and relieved him of his quiver. Sheathing a sword she might never get to swing against winged beasts, Danielle notched an arrow, remembering the poisons she had prepared with Catherine in advance of the battle. She dribbled the stuff into the tip of the arrow, peering into the dark sky.

“There,” yelled a knight, voice still high with youth.

Sir Longbow followed the line of his outstretched arm to a flapping black shape in the dark red of the sky. Bowstring pulled tight to her ear, she aimed. Following the silhouette of the flapping thing that flitted between the shadows of dark clouds had her swearing. “Come on you fucker, show yourself.”

“That way,” said the young Nameless Knight. He pointed behind her to a far closer winged nightmare. Under the helmet it was hard to tell, but she was sure he was Sir Oakley, born of wood cutters.

Danielle swiveled, seeing a beast swooping down towards the battlements with outstretched arms, ready to rip a defender from the walls and drop them to their death. Sir Longbow loosed her arrow at the beast’s face. She hit it in the shoulder, causing it to veer away from its target who threw a spear. The arrow in the shoulder and spear in the abdomen had the thing wavering in the air until it ripped out the spear and threw it back.

The target of the spear crashed aside, hitting the stone with the sound of clanging pots and pans. Retrieving their spear, the knight raised it again, yelling up into the darkness.

Struck by another arrow in the leg, the harpy flapped higher and away from the city. The explosion of guns along the wall was followed by the red angel pirouetting into the moat. 

Danielle took no time to celebrate that small victory. Cries up and down the wall beckoned her to other fights. Other defenders were falling to their deaths in the darkness. The harpies would pay.

One knight lay on her back atop the wall, gripping her neck. The knight’s helmet lay nearby. Blood seeped from bites the woman had her hand to.

“You’ll live,” Danielle told Sir Narinda Novem. Pulling the knight to her feet, she checked the wound. “It’s not bleeding badly. Get your helmet back on and get back to the fight. We’ll deal with that after this is over.”

Nodding, Sir Novem donned her helmet again.

They ran down the wall to the west where the sounds of battle were loudest. Danielle notched an arrow as she ran, losing at a red angel as it ripped the helmet from a knight for another to bite. The creatures, as beautiful as terrible, had overwhelmed the defenders there. One chewed at the corpse of a man Sir Longbow could no longer identify. The street below the wall was strewn with dead or injured knights. Some had only survived by landing on their comrades.

Danielle’s arrow hit the harpy in the back of the head and yet the thing turned. Yellow eyes met hers as it smiled, teeth red with the blood of her soldiers. Dropping her bow, she drew her sword, edged with silver.

Death screamed in the skies. The cries of red angels were those of barn owls the size of bears. Monsters shrieked with primal fury on the wall. She drew her blade back then swung, slicing a horizontal arc across the impaled thing. The head toppled to the ground as the body went limp, spasming. She stabbed through the skull for good measure. Pulling her blade free with her boot on the dead creature’s forehead, she raised the blade to the rest of the nightmares of its flock.

Red feathers fluttered in the wind, shaken free from mighty wings. Faces turned to her. Arrows flew, catching some in the back as two advanced on her. With Sir Novem at her back, Danielle trusted the training of the Nameless Knights. “TO ME. RALLY TO ME,” she screamed.

Ducking under the swiping talon of the foremost harpy, she cut off one of the toes of the thing in flight. The flying vampire before her had its mouth open wide, clawed hands aimed at her throat.

Dodging out of the way of the talons she crashed into the battlements. Her blade cut the finger of the giant hand webbed with red feathers.

“Nooo.” The flap of wings and a thud turned Danielle’s head to Sir Novem, pinned beneath a harpy. An arrow hit the monster in the chest. It shrieked, chilling Sir Longbow’s blood.

She ran to the fellow knight.

Archers formed a wall to make a pincushion of the thing. A huge black form dropped from the sky with the speed of lightning, knocking knights from the wall. One, caught in the beast’s clutches stabbed its captor in the chest. It screamed. The pair spiraled into the granite wall of a granary.

Danielle lopped off both legs of the creature that had Sir Novem pinned. It turned, trying to lunge at Sir Longbow on its stumps. Swinging her sword with every ounce of strength she slammed it into the head of the harpy which was much bigger than Danielle had ever considered.

Reeling sideways from the blow, the dying beast fell off Narinda. Novem’s face was a red mess. Eyes closed, Danielle hoped she had passed out.

Other red vampires on the wall screamed, fighting with the defenders. Sir Longbow almost jumped out of her skin as another landed by the sword buried in the skull of a monster that was still twitching.

Standing in a pool of harpy blood the newcomer transformed from a giant bird legged woman into a knight.

Me? Danielle wondered.

The harpy turned woman bent to tug Sir Longbow’s sword free. Arrows whistled towards the blood soaked version of herself. The winged vampire swatted the missiles from the air with lazy ease.

“It’s a full moon,” said Danielle. The thing should have been stuck in its monstrous form.

“I know,” said the yellow eyed warrior, mimicking the knight’s voice. She winked.

“What are you?” Danielle asked, pulling the sword from Sir Narinda Novem’s scabbard.

The smile looked like hers but showed teeth that would have made more sense in a snake’s mouth. Holding Danielle’s sword with the point aimed at Sir Longbow’s heart, she advanced.

“Join us,” said the advancing vampire warrior. Her voice was a thousand death screams. She lunged aiming for Danielle’s eye. Sir Longbow parried the stab aside eyes following the sword spun around and clapped her on the side of the head. The ringing in her helmet sent her staggering.

A red angel fell to a spear behind them. The Nameless Knights were gaining the upper hand. Sir Longbow attacked, trying to put the thing on the back foot. She wanted to keep it from attacking as it had superior skill with a sword.

“Join us,” said the leader of the harpies. Every voice of the monster flock echoed the words. Seeming to know where everything behind it lay without looking, the harpy stepped up onto the corpse of the headless thing Danielle had killed. Sir Longbow aimed a slash at its legs as it stabbed towards her face again. She ducked to the side as it leaped over her swipe and over her, landing behind her.

Danielle took the stab on the plate of her pauldron. The blade slid away, scratching the armour but nothing more. The monstrous woman seemed made of liquid more than muscle as her body flowed into a kick that knocked Sir Longbow against the battlements again. Tripping on the arm of the headless harpy Danielle fell hard.

A volley of arrows sailed towards the faux Danielle. All were knocked from the air or dodged.

“Who are you?” Sir Longbow asked, putting her emphasis on the first word.

The creature transformed into a high lady in a fine silk dress of a style Danielle had never seen before. Conservative sleeves covered all but the tips of the fingers, tight fitting at the arms but slitted for movement to the upper thigh on both sides.

“I am Queen Lilena Redwing,” her yellow eyes glittered gold. She stabbed as she spun, nudging Danielle’s borrowed sword aside. The attack scratched along the right side of the knight’s helmet. She smacked the other sword away and rolled across the stone to give herself space as more arrows interrupted the harpy queen’s attack. Her skin was the reddish brown of leather not finished with the dying process.

Sir Longbow found her feet as silver tipped spears advanced. There were no other harpies to come to Queen Redwing’s aid.

Sir Novem groaned between them, coming round. The red vampire grabbed Narinda by her hair and hauled her up. Danielle held up a hand. The blade reforged from the steel of Sir Longbow’s father’s sword hovered at Narinda’s throat. The point poked beneath the chainmail collar.

“If you want to live, it’s time to go,” Sir Longbow told the beast.

Queen Lilena Redwing glanced at the walls of spears advancing from both sides. A wall of archers stood behind the spearmen.

“Time to go,” the flying vampire repeated in her hideous voice. “Are you coming with me?” She bent her head to screech into Narinda’s ear.

“Never,” said Sir Novem, holding onto the red hand that was a fist in her black hair.

“Time to go then.” Queen Lilena’s smile was vengeful as she stabbed Narinda in the throat and leapt into the air in a single motion. She dropped her captive and transformed into a harpy bigger than the others had been.

Sir Novem fell, clutching at her throat as the red spilled out into the night. Danielle dropped her weapon and dived to put pressure on Narinda’s wound.

“Solasaich,” Sir Longbow screamed as the Nameless Knights sent a volley of arrows at the fleeing harpy.

Danielle’s family sword began to glow green in Queen Lilena’s hand. The distraction cost her the moment she needed to deflect the arrows which flew at her as one. Six struck her in the torso and leg.

The glowing sword spun from the beast's hands, down into the water of the river which circled Afon Fos.

Danielle ripped at the bindings of Sir Novem’s armour. She needed the chainmail hood removed to get at the stab wound. She knew from experience and the wisdom of her healer wife that saving Narinda required haste.

Platemail pulled aside, Danielle kept one hand on the hole in Sir Novem’s neck to staunch the flow of blood while pulling off the hood.

“Medic,” Sir Longbow looked about. “I need a needle and thread.”

“He was taken, Sir,” said one of the knights.

“Then give me your black powder and a torch.” Danielle had a handkerchief pressed to the wound but the blood flow was so much that the cloth was completely red.

A confused soldier handed her a pre packed sachet of gunpowder. Sir Longbow tried to wipe away the blood and pinch the skin of the wound together. She told the man to pour a pinch of gunpowder on the wound before the blood made it useless. She touched the torch to the powder in the wound. The flash, smoke and burns were her reward.

“Have I saved her? Or finished her off?” Danielle wondered aloud. The wound had become a mangled burn. It wasn’t bleeding anymore.

“Find a cart. Take her back to Leonor. Keep her warm and steady.” Sir Longbow remembered Narinda’s bites. “Make sure she has silver touching her skin at all times. She was bitten.”

“Yes sir.” Sir Novem was taken away on a stretcher.

“Fuck.” Danielle knelt with her head in her hands on the cold stone of the wall.