Parliament of the Atlantic

Picture from Wikipedia

Bit of a delay getting this one out, my first instance of writers block since starting this. But I'm quite pleased with this daft story inspired by information passed on to me by my sister, Rebecca Lindsay,, zoology student of note. Thanks to her for checking my science and to Joseph Crouch for suggesting a tweak to the ending.
I think I'm going to do another chapter of Simon: Time Displaced Knight next week, but I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment. 

Anyway, please enjoy

Parliament of the Atlantic

Professor Barley had placed the subject in a tank about 4 feet square, which she had filled with water and placed on the deck of the Stoneking.  It was heavy enough to remain immobile as the ship, a former fishing trawler and now the Professor’s personal floating fiefdom, rolled in the mid-atlantic swell, gentle by the standards of the great ocean, but strong enough to send unsecured items, belonging to me and the other six interns rolling merrily around below decks, creating minor chaos.  At the top of the tank, a glass lid weighing approximately five kilos blocked the open top pretty much completely, except for a metal bar, wedged between the tank and the lid, with its end in the water. 

The object of this exercise was to observe the animal within the tank attempt to escape.  Professor Barley had wanted to extract a wager from one of us on the likelihood of that happening, though no one would take the bet, it looked very unlikely to us, but nobody was smart enough to bet against the Professor anymore.

The animal in the tank was currently languishing grumpily at the very bottom, lying flat against the glass, her skin flushed a sulky red, perhaps in protest at her confinement, rough handling, and the various containers she had been sloshed in and out of since blundering into one of our nets.  I walked over the deck to peer closely at the thing while she was still relatively still.  I wanted a good look at her skin if she decided to change colour, but mostly I found myself staring into her great big beautiful eyes.  They were filled with a life I hadn’t totally expected.  I’d been studying marine life at Miskatonic for the last three years to get my degree, and now I was filling up the summer before starting my masters with this internship.  In that time I had noticed the live specimens I had studied fell into two distinct categories, the blank stares of cute, dumb, little fish.  Or the blank stares of utterly terrifying ‘stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back’ type things that would bite you just to find out if you were worth eating. This was different, the octopus didn’t stare blankly at all, she looked at me, her eye moving around slightly as she took in the details of my form, my face, the sunglasses resting atop my head and my hair, its thick dark brown waves restrained in a ponytail for now, my khaki shorts and my Miskatonic Greek Council T-shirt. I still doubted she knew or understood what she was looking at, but she seemed to. I asked Professor Barley about that.

“You know Kayleigh, I wouldn’t like to say how much they comprehend about us, but I bet it’s more than you’d think. The whole point of this test is to show you how intelligent these animals are.”

“I thought we were supposed to be grossed out by a bit of sea snot squeezing through some tiny gap?” Juan Delray remarked from off to one side, his perpetual smirk creeping into his voice, not for the first time.  I rolled my eyes and made a loud ‘Tsk’ noise, this was involuntary, driven by my loathing for the man-child.

“You’re all postgrad marine biologists,” The professor said to the group, ignoring the tone of Delray’s interjection, “I should hope you understand how an octopus body works, no skeleton, very flexible, etcetera.  What we’re looking for here, is signs of her intelligence. Notice there isn’t actually a gap anywhere for her to get out of the tank, but she could use that little bar as a lever to make one.”

“Octopuses are amazing, but also terribly unlucky,” She continued, “Their intelligence, as a species is so great that they can solve complex puzzles and outwit pretty much any other creature in the sea, but their lives are brutally brief, the males die after mating and the females starve to death while caring for their eggs.  If they had evolved their way out of that, then they could have developed a society. One whose sophistication rivalled our own.”

Delray waddled over to the tank, hoisting his cargo pants back up over the crest of his globular hips, a task of sisyphusian proportions, then bent over, placing his lunar landscape of a face directly adjacent to the creature in the tank.  The two beings exchanged glances for a moment, then Delray rapped sharply on the glass with his meaty knuckle.

“Do something bitch!”

“Juan! Enough! We’ll talk about this afterwards,” Professor Barley admonished.

“Just getting the ball rolling Professor,” he said, before turning to his accomplice, Billy Matheson, and sharing a loathsome grin, both making a strange snorting laugh.  As he turned back to the octopus, she moved suddenly, flying at the side of the tank, tentacles first, as if to attack.  Though the glass prevented it and left her splayed across the side of the tank with her suckers and beak working furiously.  The professor threw down her clipboard in frustration,

“Fucking hell Juan! She’s too agitated to do anything now,” then she said to the group, “Ok, better make it chow time everybody, we’ll have another try at this tomorrow, while Mr Delray assists all with an extra turn on net-mending duty.”  The students filed out to the sound of Juan’s spluttering protests, I was last to go, watching the poor creature in the tank as the Professor and a couple of the regular crew attempted to recapture her, gently, and return her to the small tank she’s been kept in previously, there were tentacles everywhere as she flailed about, confused and frightened.  In that moment I felt truly sorry for this creature, supposedly so clever, being kept in a box for us to study.

That night I lay awake in my cramped bunk in the crew quarters, listening to the others snores, grunts and sleeping murmurs.  Delray wasn’t there, his net-mending would keep him out on deck for another few hours, which gave me no small amount of satisfaction.  However all I could think about was that octopus, alone and frightened in the tank.  In her eyes I had glimpsed something, the more I ruminated on it, the more I became convinced she could understand everything that was happening, that she felt shame and despair at being reduced to a specimen to be examined and tested. In the end I decided I would release her.  The little tank she had been moved to had a lock on it, I resolved to sneak into the main cabin, where all the specimens, living and…not living were kept in various boxes and bags, stacked nearly to the ceiling, pop the lock on the octopus’ box and walk away.  Plausible deniability would be my defence after that.

I got out of my cot, pulling on my dressing gown and pushing my feet into my slippers, shaped like the gaping maws of two great whites, and tiptoed out of the room, and down the tiny corridor to the main cabin.  I had to take special care to steady myself against the roll of the boat, bracing my arms on either wall. 

I pulled up short with a start as I edged round the corner into the cabin, there was a pair of feet sticking out from behind a pile of boxes and packing crates, one foot was bare and one had a sock pulled half off, they were twitching and convulsing silently, as if their owner was having some form of seizure.

“Hello? Are you ok? Who’s there?” I ran over behind the stack, and then, I’m not proud of myself here, I screamed like a victim in a slasher movie. 

The person prone on the floor was Juan Delray, I only knew this by his faded Rush t-shirt.  His face was totally obscured by his assailant, the octopus. 

How she had got herself wrapped completely over his head I never knew, but her slimy, pliant body made a perfect seal, bulging outwards occasionally as beneath her, Delray struggled to breathe.

I stood, frozen to the spot, utterly horrified as the creature completed her act of murder, her skin changing from angry red to a light blue, the colour an octopus turns when satisfied and contented.  Delray shuddered his last and was still.  In that moment I understood the motives of the creature on the floor. 

Revenge.

She had understood Juan’s cruel mockery and planned a strike of her own, I saw now her box, the lock broken and the lid pushed open, creating a tiny crack which had allowed her to escape.  The fridge, which stood in the small nook that constituted the galley, was open, its yellow light giving a sickly hue to the scene.  Delray must have come in from his net mending and sought himself a midnight snack, one he would now never eat.

The octopus slithered off Delray’s head.  Removed from the water her body lay almost totally flat, a gelatinous pancake of tentacular malice, eyes poking up from the slowly moving mass, looking around, while the arms stretched out across the floor, feeling, searching for their next target.

Still unable to shake my limbs from the terror inspired torpor, I felt a tentacle brush my feet, thinking soon this sea creature would envelop me, cutting off my air as she did to Juan a moment ago, but she moved on, instead hauling herself up a table leg, onto the keyboard of the ship’s main PC.  Facebook was open on the screen and the action of her questing arms depressed keys, spelling a series of random characters in the ‘what’s on your mind box’, before another arm pressed the backspace and deleted everything.  With torturous slowness, she pulled her whole body up onto the desk, and arranged all her arms so they snaked over the keyboard.  One by one, characters appeared in the box once again.

“moar cCuming. yOo pEritty.  go Naow.”

Suddenly, she dropped from the desk and slid across the room, squeezing under the door which lead out to the main weatherdeck with a sudden burst of terrifying speed. The letters spelt out by the creature on the computer lurked at the back of my mind, I still considered them to be random characters, glimpsed in a hurry and not considered further.  I ran to the door and threw it open looking out onto the deck, lit by floodlights in the darkness.  The octopus was pulling herself up over the rail at the edge of the deck,  I imagine our eyes met again as she sat, draped over the rail like a wet towel, then she dropped into the sea, regaining her true shape in the supporting embrace of the water and disappeared into the abyss, powered by a jet of water.

I leant over the rail, trying to get a glimpse of her as she receded, and was nearly thrown from the ship as there was a great crash, and the groaning sound of metal under stress.  The ship lurched violently, and seemed to have stopped suddenly, as if the anchor had been dropped and caught on something immovable. 

I saw more shapes in the water now, approaching from the blackness, they seemed to surround the boat, thin at first, moving swiftly and in formation.  Then as one they spread their bodies to slow down, tentacles now visible and their skins changing from pale blue to deepest red.

I wanted to warn the others, but there was barely time before they slithered up the sides of the boat and infiltrated through every tiny nook and cranny.  I watched from the lifeboat I had commandeered as the lights all over the Stoneking went out, and listened, agonized over the screams of the crew and my fellow interns, which fell silent shockingly quickly.  As I gunned the lifeboat’s engine and sped in the direction I reckoned the eastern seaboard must be, I saw the boat begin to settle astern, disappearing under the waves, perhaps they had made a hole in it somehow?
In the madness of that night it seems silly to recall, that a glowing plume of tentacled flotsam seemed to rise, in two great pillars.  Taller even than the main faculty building at Miskatonic, embracing the floating tomb called Stoneking.

Simon: Time Displaced Knight

Part One

A few days ago I was chatting with my friend and he struck on the idea for a character called Simon: Time Displaced Knight. I was inspired and promptly wrote this the next day. This might be a one off or a John Carter of Mars style serial. I've already got a few notions of what to do next but who knows?I'm notoriously unreliable, so this may stand alone.

“Dammit boss! Them folks stink worse than a sack ‘o possums!”
“As usual Finnegan, I have no idea what that word means.”

I let my head loll to the left in sheer exasperation as we rode along the dirt track, the trees to either side were arranged in neat rows, as was the way in this part of France, though the pleasing aesthetic was somewhat spoiled by the mouldering corpses of Frankish soldiers, beheaded en masse and thrown from the road, presumably to keep the way clear for the English army I was tracking.

Since being expelled from my father’s household in Limoges I had sought to make my way in the world as a Knight Errant, or less romantically, a sellsword. Though success had not been forthcoming, as Father had sent heralds far and wide, letting it be known that Sir Guillame D’Avanché would look unkindly on any lord who gave his wayward son employment, presumably hoping to drive me back into the loving, and utterly suffocating bosom of my family. If that was his hope I planned to leave him sorely disappointed, I would pledge my sword and lance to the hated English instead, they were known to hire mercenaries to bolster their ranks, and Father, who had tilted against them at Crécy, would no doubt spit feathers when he heard.

As we trotted round a corner I had hoped to see a plume of smoke above the trees, a sign that we neared the English encampment, and might reach it before night fully descended, but there was only the darkening sky of a summer evening, and a straight stretch of road, and more corpses. Finnegan chose this moment of slight despondency on my part to resume his nonsensical soliloquy,

“Well sir, far as ah can reckon, though ah ain’t never seen one with mah own eyes, a possum is a small, kinda stinky creature, with four, or perhaps five legs, and a great eye in the centre o’ his head, usually to be found playin’ a banjo on his front porch.”

I leant right forward in the saddle so as I could peer, upside down, straight into Finnegan’s eyes.

“Where, by the name of all that’s holy, do you get this nonsense? Do you make it up? Or did someone else in Father’s stable fill your head with it?”

“Shucks Sir, Ah ain’t never had much o’ that imagination, ah’m just a horse.”

Silently I cursed again at being afflicted with the most stupid of all Father’s horses for my mount. Cloudesly Shovel, my brother’s great black destrier, would have been my first choice, but in the gloom of my midnight departure, he and Finnegan had looked much alike. The crucial difference being that Cloudesly Shovel had been educated since a foal on the fine art of conversation, literature, history and could sing several hymnals and epic poems from memory. Finnegan meanwhile, had never mastered much more than how to spit into an upturned bascinet from 10 yards distant, and howling some incoherent song of his own invention, which mostly repeated more of his nonsense words, such as ‘railroad’ and ‘Mississippi’.

“Forget it, keep an eye out for a spot free of bodies will you, we must make camp soon.”

“yesum.”

A little way up the road the press of corpses among the trees grew in intensity, about a mile along from where I had spotted the first body, the distribution spoke of a force being caught on the march and fleeing before their assailants, innumerable hoof prints on the road revealing the English men to be mounted, chasing down the fleeing Frenchmen along the track, catching them one by one, until finally, here, their main body elected to make a stand, the great wash of blood on the road a testament to their end. Carefully I negotiated this unfortunate and messy scene. Technically, I suppose these men were my countrymen, but in those feudal days loyalty rarely stretched beyond the people sworn to one’s own lord, and the distant, little known king in far off Paris. War, with the English, and sometimes small rebellious parts of France, was part of daily life, and ostensibly the profession of my class, I was no stranger to death.

I jumped down from Finnegan’s back and stepped off the road, into a patch of wood mercifully clear of bodies, and busied myself with gathering kindling and preparing a fire. An action I had performed many times before and did automatically, my mind a blank. Before I was fully aware of it I was sitting, staring into the flames of a new campfire, it’s warmth seeping into my bones, and soothing my few, minor aches from the road. Finnegan was busying himself cropping down every visible bit of grass and weed with an alacrity and determination he displayed nowhere else.

Suddenly his ears twitched and he raised his head, peering past me into the blackness of the deep wood, his expression unreadable, even for a horse.

“Boss? There’s something over yonder, some sorta ghost light. s’got me about ready to soil ma britches.”

I turned to look in the direction he was indicating and indeed saw a glow emanating from through the trees. It was like no other light I had seen in my life, neither the brilliant pure white of daylight nor the warm orange of candle or firelight, but a strange blue, waxing and waning in intensity like a heartbeat as I watched.

“Can you hear that Boss?”

Finnegan whispered from behind me. I could hear nothing and held my hand up to him for silence, though now he was clearly growing agitated, I could hear his hooves stamping and scuffing the ground and his breath coming stronger and stronger.

“They’re screamin’! So many people, them folks’re killin’ them all! They need our help!”

Before I could react I was thrown sideways and cracked my head against a tree, the sharp branches reaching out and entangling me, tearing my surcoat as I pulled away. Finnegan had barged me aside and run straight for the hellish light, in less than a second it’s glare had consumed him. I cried out and ran after him, stumbling and crashing from tree to tree in my haste to keep pace with my mount. Insane, ill-mannered excuse for a warhorse he may have been, but I was no knight without him.

Shortly I came upon the source of the light, though beyond the fact it was the source of the light I am at a loss to describe it further. All aspects of it were concealed in totality by the blinding light issuing forth. I looked down upon this bizarre scene from atop a small hillock, down which Finnegan was galloping headlong. Heedless of my cries and entreaties he made for the object, the light surrounded him and he was lost to it. Rather than being obscured as before he seemed to have now passed a threshold, as if moving through a doorway. I shouted his name. Getting no response, I continued my pursuit and ran, as he had, straight into the light.

The ground suddenly dropped away and I fell forwards. The drop was a few feet only, but in full armour as I was this was enough for me to stumble. Arresting my fall with my hands I plunged them directly into dry, dusty earth, which was kicked up into my face. Spluttering and groaning from my fall I managed to turn over and get into a sitting position, not an easy task in armour, and looked about.

Several things struck me at once, I was no longer in a wood, the temperature was much warmer, and it was no longer night. I was however still near a road, or rather I had landed in a ditch adjacent to a dusty track. Finnegan was pacing back and forth across said track like an expectant equine father, muttering incessantly about innocent folks in danger, but seemingly less convinced now about where he should go and what he should do about it. Everything here was the colour of old paper, flat and featureless, save for a great, snowcapped mountain looming over us down the road, and a collection of small, distant shapes that could only be a city, though in many ways unlike any city I had ever beheld before.

As a small boy, my father had taken me and my brother with him to Paris, to see The King. To my infantile mind Paris was the biggest city ever built, sitting like a great beast spreading across both sides of the river Seine and the great island in the middle, swallowing up people and animals and supplies and shitting out culture, art, government and money! I had never forgotten the sights and the feeling of awe at the size and my own insignificance at my nation’s capital. Paris would have fit comfortably into one of the sprawls of huts that had leaked from this city’s walls onto the surrounding plain. Even from this great distance I could see, but only dimly comprehend the enormous size of it.

It was also, every inch of it, burnt.

The work was long done and no smoke rose into the air, but everywhere I looked the buildings, from the small huts to larger halls and fanes to some unfamiliar faith were black and charred, many without roofs and with beams reaching into the sky like broken fingers on a charred corpse. Of the strange light that seemed to have brought us here, or people in that city, there was no sign, though we were very distant, perhaps too distant to say for sure. Finnegan seemed to have settled down somewhat now, enough so that he responded when I called him.

“Help me up will you?”

I tried to ask fairly gently, as I did want him to spook him any further. his head was hanging low to the ground, his flanks quivering as he breathed, he seemed very tired of a sudden, but he turned his head to acknowledge me and walked over.

“S...sorry Sir Simon,” He said apologetically, “Ah cain’t rightly say ah got’s any notion where we’re at now. Ah reckon s’all mah fault boss.”

He was standing over me now, with his reins dangling down within my reach, I grasped them in both hands and Finnegan walked backwards, pulling me gradually to my feet.

“It is your fault, but I don’t blame you, moon touched beast that you are.” As I regained my feet I scratched Finnegan behind his ears to reassure him, “Now come on, lets see what can be found around here eh?” and perhaps where here was. The obvious course of action was to investigate the city, being the only sign of civilisation in view, so we began walking towards it, for now I went on foot, leading Finnegan by his bridle, saving his strength after the strange occurances in the woods.

It took at least an hour's walk before we seemed to be any closer to anything, further shocking me with the size of the features I was attempting to reach. Somewhat perversely, the mountain seemed to be getting nearer at a faster rate than the city itself, I struggle to understand this, peering at it, shielding my eyes from the harsh sun, which sat more or less directly above me. It occurred to me then that I had already travelled for a full day before this, and had been settling down to make camp and sleep, but now faced many more hours trudge before I could realistically stop safely, no wonder Finnegan had tired so easily.

Suddenly something shifted in my perspective as I peered at the mountain, in much the way the ‘Trompe-l'œil’ illustrated manuscripts Father Phillippe produced could sometimes appear as one thing, a leaping salmon for instance, before you realised it was Christ crucified all along. The object that had appeared to be a vast snowcapped mountain, looming behind the city, was actually much smaller, and much much nearer than I had thought. I mounted Finnegan and we galloped over. As we approached I felt a sickness and a tightening of my guts, a few dozen dead soldiers, born and trained to combat and well versed in what to expect, was nothing to cry about, but this was more than the tiny machinations of men, this was The Wrath of God made manifest. The white mountain was made entirely of bones. I knew it was the bones of every man, woman and child that had lived in this dead city, perhaps millions of souls, hewn like wheat and stacked like some grotesque hay bale. As we approached the surface of the road became softer, sodden and greasy with the putrefaction of a populace, running down the sides of the mounds in black torrents. Finnegan picked up his feet like he was on parade, desperate to avoid touching the foul substances leeching into the landscape. He was muttering again now, these were the people whose screams he had somehow heard and we had rushed here to save, yet they had been dead for many years. I was deeply unmanned by this sight, but Finnegan seemed to be losing his grip, skittering sideways, his eyes wide and mad like a young colt not yet trained to battle readiness. I jumped from the saddle and sank ankle deep into the muck, breaking a crust and releasing vile humours into the air. This cause Finnegan to rear up and kick out in such great distress that he seemed to have lost his higher faculties for a time. Luckily I managed to grab his reins and prevent him bolting, bogged down as I was becoming I could never have caught him. I whispered the secret words of my family’s stable hands into the horses ear, the effect was instantaneous and place him into a trance. I placed my hands either side of Finnegan’s head and looked deep into his eyes.

“Enough now. Peace. Be at peace my brave gelding. A man once cut off your balls, is this truly worse than that?”

That got through to him, he laughed, then shuddered as the fright passed over him.

“Ah was awful afeared boss, t’aint right to do that to folks. And it ain’t right to put yerself in a fellas head neither!” he had turned to shout admonishment at the boneheap. “‘Specially when there ain’t nuthin’ to be done for ya” he worked his lips for a second and spat onto the roadside. “Lets get away boss, ain’t no good to be done here.”

“We’ll head into the city for now,” I decided, “ I am bone tired, we must rest awhile before we try to leave, perhaps find some food.”

Finnegan shook his head as we walked side by side toward the city. “T’aint nuthin’ here sir, them’s that done this devilry took all the stuff worth tookin’. Then they did that,” Indicating the bones, “and put the whole dang place to fire.”

“How do you know so much about it? how could you hear those people before?” “Ah don’t have the first earthly idea boss, Ah can…” He paused cocking his head and searching for the right word. “Remember? But Ah don’t remember remembrin’ afore now. Don’t make no sense.” He looked up at the walls “Zhongdu! biggest, finest, damnedest best city inna world! They had a Emp-er-or, and fancy clothes and booze and purty wimmin and everythang you could want.”

His eyes had grown bright as he said this, as if he really did remember all these things, who can say if it was true or not, but Finnegan, the mad gelding, believed with all his heart. As we approached the gates, long since collapsed and broken, but still offering an entrance I saw a lone rider approaching from many miles distant, galloping like the very devil was at his heels. Behind him was a cloud of dust I had assumed he had kicked it up himself but now I saw it was far too large for that. He turned in the saddle, raising a small bow he held and firing back into the dust. I was impressed, Horse archers were known, but rare in my home, most travelled west from far off Hungary, and now I looked I saw the man had something of that race about him, in his clothes and wargear, for he must be a warrior. I mounted Finnegan and we galloped just inside the gate, to observe matters largely unseen. No sooner had we reached cover than the rider’s pursuers emerged from the dust, there were at least two hundred, maybe more and at their head was a truly terrifying figure. His dark brown, almost red hair flowed long down his back and blew wild in the wind of his passage, mingling with his equally long beard. His clothes were those of a savage, animal skins and furs, but he waved a great curved sword about his head, a shining weapon with a golden hilt, a sword fit for a king, he was screaming, I think with delight at the chase, and in that moment I hoped never to find myself in the position of that one lone rider.

As one his men raised their own bows and fired, though the fire was slightly staggered, as each man waited until his horse was at the apex of his gallop, with all four feet in the air, before loosing his arrow. The poor soul fleeing them died instantly, riddled with shafts and bleeding into the dust. Upon getting a good look at the leader of this company, Finnegan again shifted nervously under me,

“Boss! that’s him!” he said in a stage whisper I was sure the men across the plain would hear.

“Quiet! who is he?” I whispered back.

“He’s the murderer of this place, The thief o’ the world, The Great Khan! So mean he’d fight a rattler and give it the first bite! We gotta run, or we’re dead meat boss!”

He made to move off, I gave a sharp tug on the reins.

“No! They’ll catch us by God! I don’t like the look of those arrows.”

“Yer wearin’ yer boiler plate ain’cha? them bows is only little things, a mite too weak to pierce yer armour, and they ain’t brung their bodkins. What Ah wouldn’t give fer a colt .45 about now.”

Finnegan made to run off again but still I restrained him, It was possible the riders might simply leave now their quarry was dead. As far as I could tell they weren’t aware of us. Finnegan remained agitated however, insistent to be off. I threatened him with the spurs if he didn’t behave.

“You wouldn’t dare buckaroo.”

“Test me, then, you are the steed, I, the rider. I make the decisions here.” I held my leg out at a great angle , the pointed spurs glinting in the sun, a threat should he make any more noise or attempts to run. he looked round at me in the saddle as much as his head would allow.

“Sir Simon, we gotta burn the breeze now, or they will find us, they’re coming in here to check for survivors.”

“How could you know? you claim to have much knowledge you should not have. Until proven otherwise I shall trust my own eyes and ears first Finnegan.”

The riders out on the plain had now stripped the dead man of all his possessions, and put his wounded horse out of its misery. They also seemed to be butchering the poor animal as if they planned to eat it later, perhaps they did. Presently they turned towards the city and rode straight for us at a gentle trot, as soon as they did Finnegan protested yet again.

“Tarnation! that does it, we’re goin’.”

He made to gallop away and no pulling on the reins would stop him, in desperation I kicked hard with the spurs. but for my effort I simply made my poor frightened horse neigh loudly in pain. Naturally the riders heard this and immediately began to gallop at full speed for the city. The decision made for us now, we too galloped out of the gate and back down the road we had come from, away from our new enemies.

“Sorry bout that boss, but we’re committed now, nuthin’ fer it but to buckle to and get away.”
I patted his neck as we rode,

“Save your breath, it’s fine, just get us away from here.” I leant forward and held on for dear life as we rode.

This land, open and flat as it was, was perfect country for horsemen, not a fence or hedgerow for a hundred miles in any direction. I quickly realised this would be our downfall. Finnegan was a warhorse, trained to carry a knight in armour across battlefields, while wearing armour plates of his own. He was not currently weighed down by them, only his everyday tackle and so could run faster than I expected, but he was also halfway blown from earlier in the day. Our only hope of escape would have been to find somewhere to lose our pursuers and hide, but on this wide open land, all they had to do was keep up the chase on their small, light, very fast horses and eventually they would gain on us. I unslung my shield from across my back, and drew my sword in preparation for that moment. It was a cheap thing, that sword, bought to replace the one my father had broken in front of me the day before I left. I regretted having no lance then, for if I had I would have turned about and charged these foreigners down, and perhaps put the fear of god into a few of them before I was slain.

Our pursuers grew ragged now, the stronger ones began to leave others behind and gain on us gradually. The first of the arrows fell, many missed but some found their mark bouncing off my breast plate or sticking, ineffectually in my surcoat. I wondered why they were not targeting Finnegan, my best guess being they coveted him as a remount for their king, this Khan, and were confident they would not need to, that they could ride me down without hurting the horse. The two fastest riders were coming up alongside us now, one on either side, one on the right with a curved blade like his king’s, the other, almost close enough to reach out and touch me, standing up in the saddle with a drawn bow, levelled at my unprotected head. By a miracle I caught his arrow on my shield, then rather than chance my luck a second time I flung my shield at him. It caught him in the throat and sent the man falling off his horse into the dust, those following rode over him without a second glance.

Finnegan was going for the horse of the other man, baring his teeth to try and bite, though his opponent was doing the same, but seemed unable to respond to the traditional warhorse taunting.

“Get back ye bastard! Yer uglier’n a burnt boot! If yer brains were dynamite there woulna be enough ta blow yer nose!”
Perhaps he didn’t speak our language.

I thrust my blade straight forward, but the swordsman knocked it aside with a lightning parry at the last moment, so all I did was tear a rent in his fur coat with the tip of my sword. He swung at me himself with a great arc, meaning to strike off my head, I didn’t have time to fence with him forever, so I tried my favourite trick from my days in the melee at tournament. I tossed my sword up and caught it in my left hand, holding the reins and blade in one hand, and grabbed the other man’s swinging sword arm by the wrist, and with one sharp tug pulled him from the saddle. As I did another arrow shot past me, missing my face by inches. It was the Khan, he was at the head of his men now, staring at me with such intensity, as if he could set me on fire with his mind. We were running out of tricks, and time.

“I think this is it Finnegan, well done lad, you’re the best horse I could ask for.”

I moved my sword back to my right hand, preparing to turn around and die meeting my foes head on, when suddenly Finnegan swerved to the left, galloping with a fresh burst of speed right across the face of the mass of men and horses following. I had no clue what he was doing until we leapt. Ahead of us was that Ghost Light once again, it had reappeared and was already enveloping us before I was even aware of it. The last I knew of the Khan and his men was a shout of rage in an unknown tongue, fading into the distance.