Absolon Creed

by R.S. Ford

Genres: Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

A legendary soldier is the last line of defense between his city and monstrous chaos in this grimdark adventure from an unmissable voice in epic fantasy.

Bastion, the once-shining capital of Morrengard, teeters on the brink. Its grand spires are crumbling and its nobility fight over scraps, all while eldritch creatures stalk the streets. The only thing standing in the way of its utter destruction is the Order of Draken: a knightly order more brutal than the threats the city faces. And its most brutal champion… Absolon Creed.
 
When two nobles are found murdered in a manner most grotesque, suspicions arise about a traitor within the Order itself. Creed is tasked with investigating, and for his sins he is saddled with a partner: Guenivar Blackmere, a daughter of nobility and the Order's newest, and most untested, initiate. 
 
Together, they are plunged into Bastion's fetid underbelly, where warlocks rub elbows with corrupt nobles and necromancers cavort with the dead. Guenivar must learn fast or perish under Creed’s cold tutelage. Her mentor is quick to anger, and about as friendly as a cornered wolf, but that is the only way to survive these unforgiving streets.

But as the investigation deepens, Guenivar discovers a secret about him that could shatter everything she believed about the order and its heroes. While Creed himself must defeat the ghosts he's spent years trying to bury… before they bury Bastion itself.

Release date: September 8, 2026

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 512

Sample

Rain lashed the alley, spilling from gutters choked with filth. Rickety tenements loomed on either side, their shutters closed against the deluge as rats scurried in the shadows, keen to be out of the merciless downpour.

Absolon Creed walked with purpose, but what other way was there? Scarred plate was concealed beneath his crimson cloak, more black than red in the gloom of night. His arming sword, the blessed Hallowbane, hung at his hip, hilt intricately filigreed with thorns. Iron-shod boots splashed through the rainwater running in rivers across grimy cobbles, carrying that hulking frame relentlessly toward his destination.

His companion had a leaner, rangy look to him. Savaric was garbed in identical cloak and plate, but his blade was slimmer, more delicate, though no less deadly. At his shoulder he carried a crossbow. At his waist, rope and grapnels, for who knew what kind of monsters they might face on this hellish night.

Equally hellish, most likely, but then, that was why they were here. To stalk the very creatures that would prey on this city. To be a bulwark against the dark.

At last, they came to a tenement that leaned drunkenly against its neighbours. The informant’s intelligence had been precise: third floor, northeast corner, where a cabal of warlocks gathered to practise their foul craft. Creed double-checked the address he’d scratched on a scrap of parchment, then nodded grimly. “This is the one.”

“Welcoming,” Savaric muttered, eyeing the arcane glyphs carved into the wooden lintel.

Creed ignored the warnings, stepping up to the weathered door and pushing it open. A fetid smell hit him, worse than the stink of the streets. Biting back the bile it conjured in his throat, he crossed the threshold.

Inside was a narrow corridor, littered with refuse. Rats squeaked as they dined among the filth, the patter of their claws echoing along to the creak of floorboards beneath Creed’s feet. He reached a staircase, minding his footing lest his boot snap the brittle wood of the steps. When they ascended to the third floor, another corridor stretched before them, this one even ranker than the previous, but there was no sign of rats here. No sign of life at all.

The walls had been daubed with bloody sigils, the bones of rodents dangling from the ceiling on twine. The walls hung in tatters, scratches marring the plasterwork, as though something had been dragged along, clawing its defiance every inch. Creed could feel a miasma hanging in the air so intense it almost made his nose bleed.

“Something tells me we’re in the right place,” Savaric murmured.

Absolon ignored him, hand gripping the hilt of Hallowbane that little bit tighter.

At the end of the corridor, a single door barred the way. This one was etched with markings, arcane symbols scratched into the wood in intricate detail, the work of an artisan skilled in the way of the wytch. From beyond it came the unmistakable sound of multiple voices chanting in unison.

He met Savaric’s gaze. His companion nodded, crossbow already in hand.

Creed’s shoulder struck the door like a ram, sending it crashing open. “In the name of the Wormwood Throne, cease this heresy!”

The chamber beyond reeked of sulphur and spoiled meat. A dozen figures in moth-eaten robes whirled to face them, their chant faltering. At the room’s centre, a summoning circle had been etched into the floorboards with painstaking detail, its geometric patterns pulsing with eldritch power. Candles guttered at each cardinal point, their flames burning an unnatural green.

“Sentinels!” one of the warlocks shrieked. “The ritual! Complete the ritual!”

Chaos erupted as several warlocks scrambled for weapons while others took up the chant once again, desperate to finish what they’d started. The air itself seemed to writhe with half-formed energies, like a heat shimmer given malevolent purpose.

“Apologies for the interruption,” Savaric drawled, putting a crossbow bolt through the throat of a warlock reaching for a curved blade. “People just have no respect for the profane arts these days.”

Creed was already moving, Hallowbane singing as he brought it down on the nearest cultist, splitting the man from shoulder to sternum. Blood sprayed across the arcane symbols, making them hiss and smoke.

A warlock to his left raised a gnarled staff, mouth opening to voice some curse. Creed brought his pommel up, shattering the man’s jaw before the words could form. As the warlock crumpled, Creed reversed his grip and drove the blade through his chest, pinning him to the floorboards.

Behind, he heard the distinctive thwack of Savaric’s crossbow. A cultist who’d been scrambling for an adjoining room fell, a quarrel sprouting from between his shoulder blades. A swift crank of the windlass, and another bolt followed immediately after, catching a fleeing woman in the back of the skull as she reached for a weapon.

Creed wrenched Hallowbane free and turned to face three warlocks who’d found their courage, or perhaps it was just fanaticism. Either way, they came at him with ritual daggers, the blades inscribed with blasphemous runes. Creed’s sword swept horizontally, taking a warlock’s head clean off. A punch to another’s throat and he felt the man’s windpipe collapse beneath the impact. The last he caught by the robes, spinning him around and driving Hallowbane up through his rib cage. The warlock’s eyes went wide, blood frothing from his lips as he slid back off the blade.

Within moments, half the cabal lay dead or dying, the rest throwing down their ritual daggers in surrender.

All save one.

A single warlock remained at the circle’s edge, arms raised, voice rising to a fever pitch. Blood ran from his nose as he screamed the final syllables of the incantation, even as his fellow cultists begged him to stop.

“Vex’tharr mor’dun! Kethis dominar! By the Void’s hunger, I seal the compact!”

“Fool!” one of his fellows cried. “Without the proper bindings—”

The circle erupted in a pillar of writhing darkness. The warlock’s triumphant laugh became a scream as the energy meant to summon a daemon found no proper vessel… and chose him instead.

His body contorted, bones snapping and reforming with sickening cracks. Flesh bubbled and ran like wax, manifesting ropy tendrils that formed into tentacles, each ending in a gnashing mouth. Myriad eyes opened across his transforming mass, weeping ichor. What had been a man moments before became something far worse: a hybrid abomination of human and daemonic essence, neither one nor the other, bound by no pact nor purpose save ravenous hunger.

The beast that had been the lead warlock turned on his fellow cultists first. Tentacles lashed out, punching through flesh with ease. Absolon ducked a flailing tentacle as screams of terror filled the room and blood spattered the walls.

Then the creature fixed its many eyes on them, and when it spoke, its voice was a discordant choir of rage and madness. “Free… free… flesh and feast and—”

It lunged at them with terrifying speed. Creed brought Hallowbane up, hacking through a mass of writhing appendages and forcing the beast back. A bolt from Savaric’s crossbow, and the creature knew these last two foes would not be so easily devoured.

With a shriek that made the walls tremble, it crashed through the shuttered window in an explosion of wood and glass, fleeing into the storm-lashed night. Creed wasted no time, taking two strides before leaping after it. As his boots crunched down on the slate roof beyond, he heard Savaric scrambling after him. Through the rain he caught a fleeting glimpse of the beast in flight. The abomination moved with a sinuous grace, its twisted limbs propelling it up the sheer stone walls of the tenements and across the narrow, sagging rooftops.

Heart hammering, Creed vaulted over a rusted railing and onto a rickety balcony. It listed painfully before he reached a ladder at the other side and grasped it in his free hand. The iron groaned ominously under his weight, shuddering with each clomping step as he hauled himself up the rungs. Behind, Savaric matched his pace, desperately cranking his crossbow as he went.

The rooftops of the Warrens were a treacherous labyrinth of broken shingles, crumbling chimneys, and rotting gables. One slip and they’d be cast to the cobbles fifty feet below. Creed’s boots skidded on the rain-slick tiles and he leapt a narrow gap between buildings, his stomach lurching as he glimpsed the dizzying drop to the muck-choked alley beneath. He landed at the other side as deftly as he could, squinting through the rain as it soaked his hair and his cloak, anointing the sword he gripped in one hand. Familiar pain throbbed in his leather-strapped knee, but he ignored it as always.

“Can you see it?” Savaric called after him.

Absolon didn’t answer as his old eyes did their best to penetrate the dark.

There. The daemon scuttling onward, its mess of limbs splayed out like a monstrous spider, leaving smears of ichor in its wake. Without a word, Absolon followed relentlessly, heedless of the danger of the rooftops. They could not let their quarry escape, for who knew what vile horrors it might unleash on the people of Bastion were it allowed to evade them.

The wind screamed across the rooftops, threatening to tear the crimson cloak from his shoulders. Absolon vaulted a crumbling chimney stack, feeling the decaying bricks give way behind him. As he reached the apex of the roof, he could see the skeletal spires of the Godfane District looming to his left, where the old nobility rotted in their decaying towers. To the right, the fetid smoke stink of the Foundry Quarter cut the air, despite the gale that blew across his path. Ahead he could see the daemon scuttling through this maze of decay, squeezing through gaps that seemed to widen at its approach as though the very architecture of the city bent to accommodate its passing.

Still he ran on in pursuit, lungs burning with each ragged breath, muscles screaming in protest beneath the weight of his armour. He could feel the old wound in his knee throbbing in time with his pounding heart, but he pushed the pain aside, gritting his teeth as he forced his battered body to keep moving.

As they neared the edge of the Warrens, the ramshackle tenements gave way to the looming stone bulk of the Old City, where they might lose the thing in a maze of abandoned towers and crumbling dungeons.

He glanced to Savaric. “If it reaches the boundary, we’ll never find it.”

Overhead a jagged bolt of lightning split the sky, thunder booming a moment later. The flash illuminated their quarry—a roiling mass of darkness scuttling along a steeply pitched roof.

Savaric hefted the crossbow to his shoulder in one smooth motion. The arms of the weapon were inscribed with holy runes that flared as he slotted a blessed quarrel and took aim.

“A little faith, old friend,” he replied, as he tracked the beast for a split second, then loosed.

The daemon moved in a lightning-quick blur, but Savaric’s aim was true. The quarrel punched into the meat of the thing’s hide, a long tether of woven silksteel unspooling behind it. The thing shrieked, a sound like nails on slate as it thrashed in a rage, but it was held fast.

Savaric gripped the line in his gauntleted hands, wrenching hard and stopping the thing as it squirmed in its desperation. Creed closed the distance, bounding across the slick tiles of the roof with the sureness of a mountain lion.

The daemon twisted to face him, its numerous eyes blazing with fire. Absolon raised Hallowbane before him, showing the creature the object of its doom. It answered his gesture with a scream that was equal parts hatred and terror, as though it recognised the blade that had banished so many of its kind back to the darkness. Then it spoke, its voice a grotesque harmony: “It rises… from beneath… the old bones waken… you cannot stop what has already begun…”

“Enough of your ravings,” Creed growled.

With no way to run, the daemon lunged at him, its bifurcated maw snapping and snarling with fury. He ducked a wild swing of its tentacles and brought his blade down in a whistling arc. The consecrated steel struck with a meaty thunk, biting deep into the daemon’s flesh, and it threw back its head to loose a wail, disturbingly human in its raw anguish.

Savaric drew up alongside Creed, sword now in hand. His blade struck true, impaling the foul thing, and causing it to howl with ever greater torment. Together they hacked, blades flashing in the night, ichor spraying with each blow, until the rooftop grew slick with it, and all the while, the rain sheeted down like tears from a mournful god.

When it was over, the broken husk of the daemon was nothing but butchered meat, fast dissolving into a puddle of hissing fluid. The stench of it seared Absolon’s nostrils, but he had long ago grown used to that stink.

The restless dance of a lone candle cast shadows on the walls as he woke with a groan. He still ached from the previous night’s exertions, pain settling deep into his bones as he hauled himself upright. The thin pallet offered little comfort to his hulking frame, but Absolon had tried to sleep in a comfortable bed before. It simply had not felt right, and sleep had eluded him. Part of his penance, perhaps? Or just another curse laid upon him?

Blinking in the gloom, his gaze fell upon the neat stack of parchment on his desk that should have detailed the previous night’s events in that dank hovel. His quill lay untouched, the ink long since dried in its well, the words unwritten. It was a lapse in his duty, but one that seemed to hold less importance the older he got. And what might he say that would shed light on matters? A cabal of sorcerers raising creatures from beyond, but only one of many. A phenomenon that was growing more common, a tide that could never be stemmed.

A raucous squawk pierced the chamber’s stillness. Absolon turned to regard the large black crow perched in her wrought-iron cage, wise eyes glinting in the meagre light.

“Morning, Victarine,” he murmured.

The bird cocked her head, watching intently as Absolon crossed the room. He reached into a small pouch hanging by the cage, withdrawing a handful of dried corn. Victarine hopped from foot to foot in anticipation, letting out a soft caw. As he slipped the kernels through the bars, the crow’s beak darted out to pluck them from his fingers with surprising delicacy.

“You are most welcome,” Absolon offered, a faint smile tugging at his lips.

He had found her five winters past, huddled in the shadow of the northern garrison wall, a broken thing, feathers slick with ice and blood. Her wing had been shattered, whether by some predator or misadventure he never knew. By rights, he should have left her to the cruel mercies of nature. It was not, after all, his place to interfere with such things when there was so much unnatural horror to focus his attention on. And yet… he had gathered her up in his crimson cloak, carried her through the streets to his personal chambers, and spent long hours tending to that mangled wing. Weeks had passed, and slowly she had mended. The time to open his window and set her to flight came. But when he did so, beckoning the creature toward the open window and freedom, she had stubbornly refused it. So he had chosen to keep her. Better she remain caged and safe than exposed once more to the vagaries of this damnable city.

He glanced across the chamber as he fed the corvid, taking in the mementos that cluttered every surface, those tangible reminders of his decades of service to the Wormwood Throne. Medals for valour gleamed within their display case. Swords and daggers of vanquished foes hung upon the walls, their blades still keen even after so many years. Dented plate, helms, gauntlets, trophies from a hundred hard-fought battles, rested on stands. The mounted heads of fell beasts leered from the shadows, their glass eyes reflecting the guttering candlelight. And there, in a place of pride above the hearth, hung the gold-fringed flags of Akarnian regiments vanquished during the War of Legions.

The sight of those banners tugged at something unbidden and a rush of memory sent him staggering…

The mud of the Eastenmarch dragged at his boots like hungry claws, trying to pull him down into its foul depths. Thick smoke choked the air, stinging his eyes even through the narrow slits of his helm. His breath came in ragged gasps, each one tasting of ash. He gripped his sword tighter, the blessed steel offering little reassurance as he staggered forward into the murk.

Through the choking fog ahead, the banners of Akarnus Imperia snapped in the hot wind, their blood-red silk bearing the black Iron Crown. Sudden fire as their sorcery painted the sky in diabolic hues. He was alone here, cut off from his brothers, surrounded by the dead.

Then a sound that made his blood run chill. The howl of the Wraith Guard, the Iron Queen’s chosen, like the screech of bone on steel, echoing across the field. They were coming. Towering shapes in baroque armour, moving with an unnatural grace that belied their bulk.

The air grew colder, frost forming on the plates of his armour…

His hands palsied, corn scattering across the floor. Cursing under his breath, Absolon stooped to gather the spilled kernels, losing his balance, falling to one knee…

The tunnels beneath Karholt wound endlessly into darkness. His torch cast wild shadows on the damp stone walls as something chittered in the blackness. The stink of corruption was overwhelming, a stench of rotting meat and something worse, something chemical and base.

Then they lurched from the dark, those twisted things that were once men, flesh warped by alchemy. His blade sang as they rushed forward, and around him, his brothers screamed and died, their voices joining the chorus of the damned that haunted those accursed depths…

“Enough,” he growled, forcing himself up onto unsteady feet.

Victarine cawed softly from her cage, as if sensing his distress, and he drew in a shuddering breath, steadying himself.

Suddenly in need of air, he moved to the narrow window, to look out over the sprawl of Bastion. The city that had once stood as a monolith of hope and defiance against the encroaching dark now crumbled under the weight of its own decay. The twisting streets and crooked spires were cloaked in shadow, the only light coming from the occasional lantern flickering in a distant window, feeble against the night. At least from this lofty perch, a personal apartment that was the privilege of his rank, Absolon was spared the fetid stink that clung to the lower precincts. Small mercies, but he would take what he could get.

His gaze drifted to the distant harbour, where once proud galleons and merchantmen from every corner of the world had crowded the wharves like preening peacocks. In those days, the air had been thick with the cry of gulls, the crack of canvas, and the creak of timber. Spices from the Spinward Archipelago, silks from the city states of Ten Thousand Bells, scholarly texts from the libraries of Nyx had all flowed through Bastion’s streets, lifeblood through its veins. The Great Market had been a riot of colour and sound, its amphitheatres alive with the debate of philosophers and the tales of wandering bards.

Now the harbour lay half empty, its waters choked with silt and sewage. What few ships still dared to make berth brought only rotting grain and livestock barely worth the butchering. The market squares had grown quiet, their once-bustling arcades home only to cutpurses and beggars. The libraries gathered dust, their treasured volumes sold off to pay for the tools of war.

And at the heart of it all sat King Kronos, withered and ancient upon his throne of wormwood and iron. The crown weighed heavy on that weathered brow, its golden thorns a mockery of the power it once represented. Or so they said. Absolon had served his king faithfully for as long as he could remember, but never once set eyes upon the man.

Like the city itself, the king was a relic of faded glory, his grip on the realm as brittle as autumn leaves. The nobility danced their courtly measures in the halls of power, sharing whispered schemes behind painted fans, while the kingdom slowly crumbled around them.

And Absolon had watched it happen, year by year, campaign by campaign. Each time he returned from the continent, the decay had spread a little further, like mites in old timber.

A shot of pain in his knee drew a sudden hiss from his lips. The old wound, a parting gift from some nameless horror in the wastes of Akarnus Imperia, still bothersome with the turn of the weather. He limped back to the bed, leaning down to massage the aching joint through the worn fabric of his breeches. His fingers traced the thick ridge of scar tissue, memories of that desperate battle threatening to surge to the fore of his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the spectres of the past back into the depths where they could no longer plague him.

When he opened them once more, he found himself staring at his own image in the tarnished mirror that hung on the far wall. The man who looked back at him was still hale despite the march of years, his frame lean and hard from a life of combat. Silvery threads wound through the dark locks that framed his angular face, and a latticework of scars crisscrossed the weathered skin, telling a tale of survival against all odds.

There was an old familiar weariness in those eyes, the resignation that his best years were behind him. The fire that had once driven him to surmount the seemingly impossible guttered low these days, starved of the unshakeable conviction that had fuelled his youth. How long had it been since he last felt the rapturous thrill of righteous purpose? His service to Morrengard stretched behind him like a distant, winding road, but the path ahead grew ever shorter. There would be no gentle decline, no quiet repose upon a small patch of land. He would fight until he fell, as so many of his fellows had before him. It was the only end he could expect.

He regarded the small side table and the polished wooden case atop it. Reaching over, Absolon flipped open the lid to reveal the last gleaming phial inside. The sight of it quickened his pulse and set his nerves jangling with anticipation. With reverent care, he withdrew the glass cylinder, eyes fixed on the glowing blue liquid within.

Lixir. His lifeblood, in these waning years.

Absolon snapped off the thin glass nub of the phial before placing it to his lips. A slight pause, a savouring of the moment, before he tipped back his head and let it trickle down his throat, feeling the icy rush as the azure fluid surged into his system.

A shuddering gasp escaped him as the lixir worked its sorcery, the dull throb of old injuries fading to a distant echo. But as always, the relief was short-lived. All too soon, the agony would return, forcing him to partake again and again until his veins ran more with alchemical venom than his own blood. A cruel mistress, lixir, but her kiss was harder to resist with each new day.

Unbidden, more visions swam before him as he slumped back against the headboard. The faces of fallen comrades, tattered and faded battle standards lying trampled in the muck, and the forces of the Imperia surged forward. The towering spires of Bastion, once so proud and inviolate, crumbling to rubble under the onslaught of Akarnian sorcery. Morrengard, a guttering flame in the gathering dark, poised on the knife’s edge of annihilation…

With a growl, Absolon wrenched himself back to the present. He could not afford such maudlin rumination. Morrengard still stood, and so long as he drew breath, he would fight to ensure it remained so. He was a Knight Sentinel, a shield against the rising tide of shadow. He would not falter now. Would not countenance despair.

The sudden rap against his chamber door had Absolon reaching for the dagger beneath his pillow before conscious thought could intervene. He froze, heart hammering against his ribs as the familiar surroundings of his quarters swam back into focus. He was safe here, high in the Northern District, far from the roiling morass of the lower city, but old habits died hard.

Sliding from the bed, Absolon crossed to the door. The worn leather grip of the dagger was a comfort against his palm as he positioned himself to the side, ready to strike were an intruder to burst in.

“Speak your name and purpose,” he called.

“Squire Jennick, my lord,” came the muffled reply, reedy with poorly concealed nervousness. “I bear a message from the Citadel.”

Absolon’s brow furrowed. A missive from the Valenspire could mean dire news.

Blade still in hand, he cracked the door open just wide enough to glimpse the youth standing in the torchlit corridor beyond. Scrawny and coltish, with the downy hint of his first beard upon his cheeks, he looked barely old enough for the position, but he wore the blue-and-black livery of a squire in service to the Order, the snarling dragon-head sigil of Draken emblazoned upon his leather brigandine.

“What is the message, squire?”

The boy regarded Absolon with something akin to awe before hastily lowering his gaze. “The Grand Master summons you and Savaric Frost to appear before him at the Citadel with all haste, my lord. He bade me convey the urgency of his request, and that he must speak to you both of a matter most grave.”

A direct summons from Sinon Mor himself could only mean trouble of the direst sort. “I shall depart within the hour. See that the tower’s stablemaster has a horse readied.”

A hint of a smile flickered across the squire’s face. “I have already seen it done, my lord. Your steed awaits you in the courtyard, provisioned for the journey to the Valenspire.”

Arching an eyebrow at the boy’s presumptuousness, Absolon simply nodded. “Then you have my thanks, Squire Jennick.”

Though the boy shifted nervously from foot to foot, there was something in the set of his jaw, a determination behind those wide eyes that gave Absolon pause. He had seen such a look before, in other young faces—some now cold in the ground, others transformed by years of hardship into men he scarcely recognised. It provoked an unusual sense of curiosity within him.

“How long have you served as a squire, boy?” Absolon asked, studying the youth more carefully.

“Three years, my lord. I was assigned to the garrison after…” Jennick swallowed hard. “After my predecessor fell during the riots in the Lower Ward.”

Absolon remembered those riots. The starving folk driven to desperation, the streets running with blood. They’d lost a squire and two knights that day.

“Randyll Tace,” he said quietly. “That was his name. Don’t forget it, boy.”

“No, my lord. I won’t.” Jennick’s voice wavered slightly. “He… he was my cousin. That’s partly why I requested this posting. I wanted to serve where he fell. To honour his memory.”

Something stirred in Absolon. Respect, perhaps, at the boy’s honouring of his kin. He remembered feeling like that once, young and earnest, driven by ideals of duty and sacrifice. Before the world had ground those notions to dust.

“A noble sentiment,” he said, more gruffly than he intended. “But remember this, boy: Honour won’t shield you from what’s waiting once you say your vows. Only vigilance. Only steel.”

“Yes, my lord.” Jennick straightened, chin lifting. “I… I hope to prove myself worthy of the position. To become a hero of Morrengard, just as you are.”

“What makes you think I’m a hero?”

The boy blinked in confusion. “Because… the tales they tell of you, my lord. Your victories in the field, your…”

“Don’t believe everything you hear, lad. Tales are for children. Best not put too much stock in them.”

“I won’t, my lord. Thank you.”

“Very good, Squire Jennick. Dismissed.”

He shut the door perhaps a touch more firmly than was necessary, the sound echoing through the quiet chamber. Victarine let out a grumbling squawk of protest at the disturbance, fluffing her ink-black feathers in irritation. Absolon paid her no heed as he strode to the armour stand in the corner, mind racing with the possibilities of what new threat might have arisen to warrant the personal attention of the Grand Master himself.

In the wavering light of the candle, his battle-scarred reflection stared back at him from the burnished surface of his plate. The armour of a Knight Sentinel was as much a part of him as the flesh it protected, and he ran a reverent hand over the blackened steel, fingertips tracing the intricate etching of the dragon-head sigil upon the breastplate. How many times had he donned this harness, wondering if it would be the last? How much blood, both his own and his foes’, had bathed this metal, consecrating its surface? It alone had borne witness to every desperate battle, every agonising loss and hard-won victory. And now he would don it again, but first…

He moved to his bed, grabbing the leather sheath where it lay discarded. Sitting, he struggled to fit the support over his left leg and slide it to his knee. Then he tightened the laces with a grunt and tied them off. It would allow him to walk without any telltale limp, but did little for the nagging ache.

Now for the rest.

With practised efficiency, Absolon began the task of armouring himself. The ritual performed now as it had always been—gambeson first, then cuisses and greaves, breastplate and backplate, pauldro