The Ruby Knight

she shuddered. ‘I’ve never seen one, but the Styric magician who taught me how to counter it described it to me. Its body is segmented, very pale and very thin. At this stage, its outer skin has not yet completely hardened, and it oozes out a kind of ichor from between its segments to protect the skin from contact with the air. It has crab-like claws, and its face is horrible beyond belief.’
    ‘Ichor? What’s that?’
    ‘Slime,’ she replied shortly. ‘It’s in its larval stage – sort of like a caterpillar or a worm, although not quite. When it reaches adulthood, its body hardens and darkens and its wings emerge. Not even Azash can control an adult. All they’re concerned with at that stage is reproducing. Set a pair of adults loose, and they’d turn the entire world into a hive and feed every living creature on earth to their young. Azash keeps a pair for breeding purposes in a place from which they can’t escape. When one of the larvae he uses as Seekers approaches adulthood, he has it killed.’
    ‘Working for Azash has its risks, doesn’t it? But I’ve never seen any kind of insect that looks like that.’
    ‘Normal rules don’t apply to the creatures who serve Azash.’ She looked at Sparhawk, her expression agonized. ‘Do we really have to do this?’ she asked him.
    ‘I’m afraid we do,’ he replied. ‘There’s no other way.’
    They sat on the damp forest loam, waiting for Tynian to return. Kalten went to one of the pack saddles and cut large slabs from a cheese and a loaf of bread with his dagger. ‘This takes care of my turn at cooking, right?’ he said to Ulath.
    ‘I’ll think about that,’ Ulath grunted.
    The sky overhead was still cloudy, and birds drowsed among the dark green cedar boughs that filled the wood with their fragrance. Once, a deer approached them, stepping delicately along a forest trail. One of the horses snorted, and the deer bounded away, his white tail flashing and his velvet-covered antlers flaring above his head. It was peaceful here, but Sparhawk pushed that peace from his mind, steeling himself for the task ahead.
    Tynian returned. ‘There’s one group of soldiers stationed a few hundred yards north of us,’ he reported quietly. ‘All the others are out of sight.’
    ‘Good,’ Sparhawk said, rising to his feet. ‘We might as well get started. Sephrenia, you stay here with Talen and Flute.’
    ‘What’s the plan?’ Tynian asked.
    ‘No plan,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘We’re just going to ride out there and eliminate that patrol. Then we’ll ride on to Lake Randera.’
    ‘It has a certain direct charm,’ Tynian agreed.
    ‘Remember, all of you,’ Sparhawk went on, ‘they won’t react to wounds the way normal people would. Make sure of them so they won’t come at you from behind when you move on to the next one. Let’s go.’
    The fight was short and brutal. As soon as Sparhawk and the others burst from the wood in a thundering charge, the blank-faced church soldiers drove their horses across the grassy field towards them, their swords aloft. When the two parties were perhaps fifty paces apart, Sparhawk, Kalten, Tynian and Ulath lowered their lances and set themselves. The shock of the impact was terrific. The soldier Sparhawk struck was picked out of his saddle by the lance that drove through his chest and emerged from his back. Sparhawk reined Faran in sharply to avoid breaking his lance. He pulled it free of the body and then charged on. His lance broke off in the body of another soldier. He discarded it and drew his sword. He lopped an arm off a third soldier then drove the point of his sword through the man’s throat. Ulath had broken his lance on the first soldier he attacked but then had driven the broken end into the body of another. Then the big Genidian had reverted to his axe. He smoothly brained yet another soldier. Tynian had driven his lance through another soldier’s belly and had finished him with his sword and moved on to another. Kalten’s lance had shattered against a soldier’s shield, and he was being hard-pressed by two others until Berit rode in and chopped the top off one of their heads with his axe. Kalten finished the other with a broad stroke. The remaining soldiers were milling around in confusion, their venom-numbed minds unable to react quickly enough to the assault by the Knights of the Church. Sparhawk and his companions crushed them together in a tangle and methodically butchered them.
    Kalten swung