Knight's Shadow (The Greatcoats) by Sebastien de Castell

Author:Sebastien de Castell [de Castell, Sebastien]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781848668126
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
Published: 2015-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

Garniol

My horse was showing signs of exhaustion when the winding road finally reached the hilltop overlooking the village of Garniol. ‘We can’t all be Fey Horses,’ I told him, sympathising with the beast’s plight. He’d served me well these past weeks but I wished it was Monster with me. She never tired, especially when in pursuit, and I couldn’t deny that Aline sending her away had been nagging at me. There had been a strange sort of sympathy between the two broken creatures and I suppose I’d hoped the one might help cure the other.

‘Come on, old man,’ Dariana said, and I realised that no matter how hard I tried to hide my symptoms from the others, Dariana always took note – and she invariably commented on it.

‘Don’t tease him,’ Valiana said. ‘Falcio’s not old. He’s battling a poison that would have killed anyone else long before now.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, a little annoyed that an eighteen-year-old girl felt the need to come to my defence, and also because ‘battling’ suggested there was a fight that might be won – as if I just needed to try harder to stave off my otherwise inevitable death.

Saint Birgid, if I have to die, please don’t let it be in shitty little Garniol. I had been here before, twice, and I remembered it as being a simple place, bigger than most of the villages around and yet still smaller than a proper town, which served only to ensure its residents were poor, insular and self-righteous. It wasn’t just that they didn’t take kindly to Greatcoats; they’d never seen fit to forge bonds with the neighbouring towns either. Maybe that’s why the Knights we were pursuing had chosen to attack it.

‘I don’t see any fires,’ Kest said. ‘It looks quiet.’

‘That’s because you’re blind,’ Brasti said, standing in his stirrups and shielding his eyes with one hand as he peered down at Garniol.

From this distance, I could just make out groups of houses, and little streets that all led into a large central square. The people looked like blurry ants to me, but something was glinting in the light of the sun.

‘What do you see?’ I asked Brasti.

‘I see twenty-five – no, thirty Knights in armour. There are scattered mobs of villagers. The Knights are moving together, in formation. They’ve got kite-shields.’ He leaned so far forward on his horse I thought he might tip over. ‘Damn. The bloody villagers don’t know how to fight. The Knights haven’t attacked yet; they’re just driving the villagers over to one side of the square.’

‘How long before they start to clash?’ I asked.

‘The way they’re moving? I’d say we’ve got maybe ten minutes before the blood starts flowing.’

‘What are the villagers fighting with?’

‘Farming implements, mostly, from what I can tell – no, hold on . . . there’s a fair number of proper swords too. Some spears, and a few people have got hunting bows. Hells – why aren’t they fighting together? The archers are firing straight

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