The Fell Sword by Miles Cameron Page B

the little doe in her hindquarters. She tumbled, fell, and blood sprayed. But terror and wild determination fuelled her, and she rose and drove forward – right at the knight.
    Between his knees he could feel his horse’s nerves. Old Jack had failed as a warhorse because he shied at the tilt – and had done so over and over.
    ‘Always another chance to excel,’ muttered Ser John, and he lowered the spear point.
    The doe saw the horse and tried to turn, but her limbs failed her and she fell sprawling, and the boggles were on her.
    Ser John put the spurs to his horse, and the gelding leaped out from beneath the old tree.
    The doe screamed. One of the boggles already had her open and was dragging her guts out while another sank his four-way hinged mouth into her haunch. But the boggle with the throw-stick had a long knife. The thing made a keening noise, and wrenched his throwing spear from the dying deer.
    Ser John didn’t have time to ride him down, and he didn’t fancy facing the throwing spear without armour, so he rose in his stirrups and threw his own spear – a cloth yard of steel at the end of six feet of ash. It wasn’t a clean throw but it caught the boggle in the head as it pin-wheeled through the air, and the thing shrieked.
    Ser John drew his sword.
    His horse put its head down as he rode straight at the doe’s carcass.
    I’m avenging a dead deer, for Christ’s sake , he thought and then he was reining in, and four of them were dead. The one he’d knocked down with his hastily thrown spear was bubbling as the little things did when they were broken, their liquid innards emerging throught rents in the carapace as if under pressure.
    There was one missing.
    The horse shied. It all but threw him with a sidestep and a kick – he whirled his head and saw the creature, covered in ordure, emerge from within the doe’s guts, exploding up in a spray of blood and muscle tissue. But its claws went for the man.
    The horse kicked it – rear left, rear right. Ser John managed to keep his seat as the terrified horse then trampled the boggle which had been kicked clear of the carcass and lay in the dust of the old road.
    Ser John let the horse kick. It made both of them feel better.
    Then he checked his fish.
    Afternoon was tending to evening and the nun was in the kitchen with Phillippa’s mother. Phillippa went there to help – as darkness fell, the cleanliness of the manor house chimney and the kitchen chimney had taken on paramount importance, and Helewise and the nun agreed between them to delay dinner a little longer.
    There were birds’ nests in the chimneys, and raccoons in the chimney pots. Phillippa thought the task was better than finding more corpses, and she pitched in with a will, climbing the roof slates in the last light with Jenny Rose and shooing the raccoons out with a broom. They didn’t want to go – they looked at her over their shoulders as if to say ‘We just want a nice bit of chicken, and can’t we all be friends?’
    She caught the flicker of movement away off to the north, and held out a filthy hand to Jenny Rose. ‘Shush!’ she said.
    ‘Shush yourself!’ Jenny said, but then she saw Phillippa’s face and froze.
    ‘Hoof beats,’ they both said together.
    ‘Can I light the fire, dear?’ called her mother.
    ‘Yes, and there’s someone coming!’ she shouted back, her voice a little higher pitched than it needed to be.
    The nun was out the kitchen door in a moment, standing with her hands on her hips in the last real light. She turned all the way around, very slowly. Then she looked up at the roof. ‘What do you see, Phillippa?’ she asked.
    Phillippa made herself do just what the nun had done. She turned slowly, balanced on the peak of the roof.
    Jenny said, ‘Oh!’ and pointed. By the stream to the west of them, there was a flicker of light – beautiful pink light, and then another.
    ‘Faeries!’ said Jenny.
    ‘Blessed Virgin Mary,’ said Phillippa, who crossed