The Robber Knight's Secret

08. The Devil at War

"Yes, Milord!"

"Dismissed!"

The man almost fell over his feet in his attempt to get away. Hartung turned back, just in time to see the red knight decapitate three soldiers with a single blow of his sword—the sword he was holding in his left hand, because his right was already busy stabbing people with the lance.

The devil curse him! That kind of ambidextrous control was nearly impossible to achieve—let alone the strength needed to hold a fourteen feet lance with one hand while fighting with the other. Over and over, Hartung asked himself the question to which he could find no answer: who was this man?

"If I could only beat it out of him!" he snarled. "I'd beat him into a bloody pulp until he begged me to tell him!"

At least he would try. Apart from Falkenstein himself, Hartung was the best fighter in the entire domain of the Margrave. But something about the way that red fiend mauled his way through steel and flesh alike sent a chill to his very bones. It looked as if he didn't fear pain or death. Hartung wanted to look away. He wanted to ride back up the forest path and see whether the archers were coming. But he couldn't turn away from the gory spectacle, so he watched, in horrified fascination.

It wasn't until the enemy knight was within a few dozen yards of his goal that Hartung noticed that the red devil's rampage was far from random. He was fighting his way through—no, hacking his way through—the tightly-packed mass of soldiers towards a very specific target: Sir Gregor.

Sir Gregor seemed to have noticed this fact at the exact same moment. He motioned to the men around him, and they sprang back, clearing a path for the red knight and looking only too glad to be out of his way.

"No, you fool! Don't!" Hartung shouted. "Don't be so cursedly heroic, damn you! Your men need a leader, not a hero!"

But either Gregor didn't hear him or he didn't care. Somehow, somewhere on the madness of the battlefield he had gotten hold of his lost lance again. He lowered it now, so it pointed directly at the chest of the red knight. The crimson warrior mirrored his movement.

Around them, the battle seemed to slow as the two knights urged their horses forward. Everyone was still fighting, still hacking and slashing and screaming, but out of the corner of their eyes, they all seemed to be watching as their leaders charged each other. Hartung stepped forward to the very edge of the water, onto the crumbling remains of the bridge. He could feel the stone shift and groan under his feet, but he didn't care. He grabbed the remains of the railing and held tight, praying with all his might.

"Come on, Gregor! Come on! You can do it!" Sir Gregor was an excellent tournament fighter. He even surpassed Hartung in the joust, and had unseated him twice during the last tournament at Falkenstein Castle. Maybe this red knight wasn't as good at jousting as he was at slaughtering common soldiers. Maybe Gregor would manage to skewer him and settle this once and for all. Maybe—

There was an almighty crash and Sir Gregor flew backwards through the air, hitting the stone remants of the bridge and rolling a few feet before he came to rest just at the edge of the water. He did not rise again.

With a bestial roar that made Hartung think of the monsters in the fairytales his mother had told him as a little boy, the red knight raised his lance towards the sky. The tip was coated in the same color as his armor now—fresh and glistening in the harsh sunlight.

From hundreds of blood-thirsty throats, a chant rose up over the battle: "Sir-Reu-ben! Sir-Reu-ben! Sir-Reu-ben!"

Hartung tried to loosen his grip on the stone railings. His fingers had already gone numb, and wouldn't open.

"Well," he murmured, "at least we now know the name of the one we have to thank for all this."

He remained standing there, watching, while the red knight methodically went about killing every single one of his men on the other bank who was still standing. Some cool and logical part of Hartung's mind, which was always busy analyzing things from a commander's perspective, noticed that the peasant soldiers who had come to reinforce the original sixty Luntberg men had moved in from all sides: first from the front, to focus the enemy's attention, than from the flanks to take him by surprise. The same cool, analytical part of Hartung's mind congratulated the mysterious Sir Reuben on his command of battlefield tactics. The not-so-analytical part of Hartung's mind, however, wanted to rip Sir Reuben into little bloody pieces.

Again and again, Hartung had to stop the men who were with him on this side of the river from throwing knives or daggers across the rushing water. It was a useless effort and waste of weapons, as he himself had discovered. They could only wait for the archers. But where were they? His body full of tension, he turned away from the river to watch the distant forest. Still no sign of them. What was taking them so long? To be sure, the main force of the army was some distance away, but he had told them to hurry!

Then, suddenly, it came—the long awayited cry: "Archers! Form up!"

Finally! With a sigh, Hartung looked up—then froze.

Wait just a minute! That can't be right, can it?

The call had come not from this side of the river, but from the opposite bank. From the enemy.

Abruptly, he whirled around, and there they were: a company of archers, arrayed along the river. The red knight sat on his black stallion right beside them. He raised his arm.

"Ready your bows!"

Holy mother of...

"Nock! Mark! Draw!"

"Duck!" Hartung roared and flung himself down behind what remained of the bridge's railing.

"Loose!"

The bellowed command in the red knight's deep voice was followed by the sizzling noise of flying arrows. Several groans and wet thuds told Hartung that quite a few of them had found their mark. One of the arrows hit Hartung's horse. The poor animal screamed in pain and half-galloped, half limped away.

Sir Hartung looked from his wounded horse, to his men, scrambling back, away from the river, to the gigantic figure of the red knight, just visible above the stone ruins behind which Hartung was hiding. And then, Sir Hartung von Ehrsfeld did something he had never once in his life done before.

"Retreat!" he shouted. "Everybody, retreat now!"

And he ran.

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Greetings, Milords and Ladies,

I am retreating too-into the coolest room I can find in the cellar ;-) It is sweltering hot over here. Sorry if the chapter is a little shorter than usual, but my brain does not function very well in the heat.

Wishing that there were ventilators in the middle ages ;)

Sir Rob