“Did Ash promise that you would be immortal?” Gavin asked. His right hand reached out and gave Bess’s neck an affectionate pat. The black, fiery sword spat and crackled. It felt like a feather in his hand; beautifully balanced, but more than that. He was more than a little afraid of it, but at this moment, it was his hope of victory.

“Ready, my sweet?” he asked his horse. The trumpet sounded again. Darkness was falling.

He just touched his spurs to Bess’s flanks and she leaped forward up the bridge.

Gavin leaned forward a little, against the slope of the bridge, sword held, blade down, on his left side, where the monster couldn’t see it. His horse was passing the thing on his right.

Its axe swept up.

Gavin cut up. The thing’s head was as far from the ground as his own, and his rising cut met the axe at the haft as it descended.

Hartmut’s sword cut through the haft like a true sword through a twig. He wasn’t at a gallop so in the same tempo his sword cut back down the same line, the simplest of re-attacks.

The horned man twisted, sweeping up the haft and slamming it into Gavin’s right side under his arm; the blow rocked Gavin, the force was terrible . . .

. . . but not as terrible as the force of a mounted lance. His armour held; he shrugged off the blow and turned Bess, even in the tight confines of the bridge.

One long, spiked antler fell to the bridge with the sound of breaking crystal.

“Immortal?” Gavin asked. His sword licked out, faster than thought, fastidious as a house cat.

The other antler fell.

The denuded monster roared with anger and cut at Gavin with his staff.

Bess danced.

Gavin cut the monster’s staff at his hand. Fingers sprayed like blood and the shaft fell to the bridge. Bess planted one steel-shod hoof on the thing’s chest, and then another, one, two, like the punches of a veteran boxer. Her hooves did the thing no damage, but her blows knocked it back. It stumbled, and the Knight of the Order who’d been thrown against the bridge put the butt of his broken lance between its legs as it struggled for balance, and it fell, back, over the wall at the edge of the bridge.

The knights roared.

Gavin pointed the sword over the bridge and Bess blew into a canter, the leap of a jousting horse; Gavin took a long moment to recover his seat, and then the daemon shaman was headless, slumping to the ground, and Bess was trampling bogglins.

Gregario’s trumpet was closer.

The Order’s knights began to come over the bridge; there were perhaps fifty left, or fewer, and behind them his reserve, the knights of Albinkirk.