“Dahl Haas,” Elana snapped at a fifteen-year-old who had insinuated himself into the ranks. “Get off that horse! You want to play soldier, take Ragnar and a bow up in the watchtower.”
“But...”
“You want me to call your mother?”
“Oh, all right.” Gerda Haas was a dragon.
Elana herded Dahl inside, stopped at the weapons rack while he selected a bow. The strongest he could draw was her own.
“Take it,” she said. She took a rapier and dagger, weapons that had served her well. She had had a bit ofsuccess as an adventuress and hire-sword, herself. She added a light crossbow, returned to the horse left by Dahl.
She overtook the men at a barrow mound near the edge of the forest, not far from the head of a logging road which ran to the North Road.
In military matters Bevold was unimaginative. He and the others milled about, in the open, completely unready for action.
“Bevold!” she snapped, “Can’t you take me seriously? What’ll you do if fifty men come out of the woods?”
“Uh...”
“Get run over, that’s what. Put a half dozen bowmen on the barrow. Where’s Uthe Haas? You’re in charge. The rest of you get behind the barrow, out of sight.”
“Uh...” Bevold was getting red.
“Shut up!” She listened. From afar came the sound of hoofbeats. “Hear that? Let’s move. Uthe. You. You. Up. And nobody shoots till I say. We don’t know who’s coming.” She scrambled up the mound after Haas.
Lying in the grass, watching the road, she wondered what prehistoric people had built the barrows. They were scattered all along the Silverbind.
The hoofbeats drew closer. Why wasn’t she back at the house? She wasn’t young and stupid anymore. She should leave the killing and dying to those who thought it their birthright.
Too late to change her mind now. She rolled onto her back, readied the crossbow. She studied the clouds. She had not looked for castles and dragons in years. Childhood memories came, only to be interrupted when a rider burst from the forest.
She rolled to her stomach and studied him over the crossbow. He was wounded. A broken arrow protruded from his back. He clung weakly to a badly lathered horse. Neither appeared likely to survive the day. Both wore a thick coat of road dust. They had been running hard for a long time. The man’s scabbard was empty. He was otherwise unarmed.
She glimpsed his face as he thundered past. “Rolf!” she gasped. “Rolf Preshka!” Then, “Uthe, get ready.” While the bowmen thrust arrows in the mound for quick use, shewaved at Bevold. A lot of horses were coming. She had no idea who their riders might be, but Preshka’s enemies were her own.
Rolf had been her man before Bragi, though Ragnarson didn’t know the relationship’s depth. She still felt guilty when she remembered how she had hurt him. But his love, rare for the time, and especially for an Iwa Skolovdan, was the unjealous kind. The kind that, when at last she had set her heart, had caused him to help her snare Ragnarson.
Preshka, like Bragi, was a mercenary. After Elana’s marriage he had joined Ragnarson as second in command. When Bragi had gotten out, Preshka had joined the party that had beat its way in to the landgrant. But he had been unable to put down roots. Two years later, Bragi’s foster brother, Haaken Blackfang, and Reskird Kildragon had come by. Rolf had gone off with them, leaving a wife and child mystified and hurt.
In her own way, Elana cared for Preshka as much as her husband. Though their relationship had remained proper since her marriage, she missed him. He had been around so long that he had become a pillar of her universe.
Now he was home. And someone was trying to kill him.
III) Sons of the Disciple
A flash-flood of burnoosed horsemen roared from the wood. Elana had a moment to be startled by their appearance so far from’Hammad al Nakir, another to wonder at their numbers-there were forty or fifty, then it was time to fight. “Go!” she shrieked.
Her bowmen leapt up, loosed a flight that sent the leaders tumbling over their horses’ tails, caused tripping, screams, and confusion behind.
Bevold’s group swept round the mound, loosed a flight, abandoned their bows for swords. They crashedthe head of the line while confusion yet gripped their foes. In the first minute they looked likely to overwhelm the lot.
“The riders!” bellowed Uthe Haas. “Aim at the riders.”
“Don’t count your chickens, Uthe,” Elana replied from the grass. There was little she could do with her crossbow. “Take what you can get.” Haas, smelling a victory still far from certain, wanted the mounts as prizes.
They almost pulled it off. Half the enemy saddles were clear before they recovered.
The wild riders of Hammad al Nakir had never learned to handle the Itaskian arrow-storm. The appearance of Itaskian bow regiments had ordained their defeat during the wars. In a dozen major battles through Libiannin, Hellin Daimiel, Cardine, and the Lesser Kingdoms, countless fanatics had ridden into those cloth-yard swarms, through six hundred yards of death, and few had survived to hurl themselves upon the masking shieldmen.
But the commander here wasn’t awed. He seized the ground between Lif s men and the barrow, eliminating the screen Bevold could have provided, then sent everyone unhorsed to get the bows.
“Those are soldiers, not bandits,” Elana muttered. “El Murid’s men.” Royalist refugees from Hammad al Nakir were scattered throughout the western kingdoms, but they were adherents of Haroun’s. They would not be after Preshka. Assuming Rolf was still a friend of bin Yousif.
She got her chance to fight. Two quick shots with the crossbow, then the attackers arrived. Her first had deep, dark eyes and a scimitar nose. His eyes widened when he recognized her sex. He hesitated. Her rapier slipped through his guard. She had a moment before she engaged again.
The man had been middle-aged, certainly a survivor of the wars. If these were all veterans, they were El Murid’s best. Why such an investment to take one man, nearly a thousand miles from home?
Her next opponent was no gentleman. Neither was he a dainty fencer. He knew the limitations and liabilities of a rapier, tried to use the weight and strength of his saber to smash through. As he forced her back, she met his eyes over crashing blades. He could have been the twin of theman she had killed. The fires of fanaticism burned in his eyes, but, having endured the wars, were dampened. He no longer believed El Murid’s salvation could be delivered to the infidel with hammer blows. The Chosen, even in the grace and might of God, had to spread the faith with cunning and finesse. The idolaters were too numerous and bellicose.
The man wasn’t so much interested in killing her as in forcing her out of position. Without a shield, rapier-armed, and physically less powerful, she was the weak point in the defense box they had formed. Her chance lay in taking advantage of his effort.
She parried a feint, thrust short and low at his groin, backed a step before he unleashed the edge-blow meant to force her to do just that. She made no effort to parry. His blade slid past a fraction of an inch from her breast. Being a half-second ahead gave her time to thrust at his groin again before he returned to low guard. She scored.
His blocking stroke smashed into her blade near the hilt, bent it dangerously, forced it from the wound. Her own momentum took her to her knees. She used her impetus to prick the thigh of the attacker on her I opponent’s left. Then she had to get the rapier up to block her antagonist’s weak followup.
Instead of raining blows upon her while she was down, he used his greater strength to force his weapon down while he tried to knee her in the face. Again she let him have his way. With her left hand, beneath their locked blades, she used her dagger, going first for the big vein inside his left thigh, then the ligaments behind his knee. Neither blow was successful, but she hurt him. He backed off to let another man take his place.
The man she had pricked went down. Uthe grabbed the opportunity to force her inside the box. No gentlemanly gesture, she realized. She was becoming mo
re a liability than an asset.
Between and over the heads of the fighters, she tried to see how Bevold was doing.
Not well. He was trying to reach the mound, but his men had become hopelessly disorganized and it seemed unlikely any could push through. Half his saddles wereempty anyway. As she watched, Bevold himself suc-cumbed to a blow on the helmet.
And desert men by ones and twos continued to straggle from the forest. Soon they would send a detachment after Rolf.
She looked homeward to check Preshka’s progress. There was no sign of him, but she did see something that buoyed her spirits. Riders in the distance, only specks now, but coming fast, straight through the grainfields.
“Bragi!” she shrieked. “Bragi’s coming!”
Uthe and the others took it up as a war chant, vented a moment of wild ferocity on their enemies.
Elana felt something underfoot. She looked down. Her crossbow. She still had quarrels. She snatched it up, cocked and loaded it, looked for a target.
Just then the man on Uthe’s left, growing too enthusiastic, broke the shield wall. An enemy took instant advantage. He paid the price of his foolishness. The man to his left fell as well.
That two-man hole, for the seconds it existed, loomed ominous. Elana put a bolt into a man trying to open it wider, clubbed a second with the crossbow, bought time for the gap to close.
A square then, with Elana cramped inside, too crowded to do anything but jab with her dagger.
Why was Bragi taking so long?
Only a minute had passed since she had spotted the riders, but it seemed an age. What good help that arrived too late?
IV) To ride against time
This time there was no lack of motivation in Ragnarson’s ride. He didn’t have to pretend he was racing El Murid. When Elana’s messenger met him on the road, he took only a moment to order the man on to Mocker’s for reinforcements. He began galloping.
The horse was fresh but incapable of carrying such aheavy rider so hard so long. It collapsed a mile north of his northernmost sentry post. There was no flogging the animal on. Carrying only his weapons, he ran. That was difficult. His legs were stiff and his thighs were chafed from two hard days in the saddle.
It never occurred to him that Elana might have sent her message before danger was actually upon her. He expected to be too late to do anything but count the dead. But he ran.
By the time he reached the lookout post he was almost as winded as the abandoned horse. Out of shape, he thought, as he staggered the last hundred yards, lungs afire.
The sentry remained on duty. He ran to meet Ragnarson. “Bragi, what happened?”
“Horse foundered,” he gasped. “What’s going on, Chotty?”
“Your wife got up excited. Put out sentries. Sent Flay to get you. But nothing happened till a minute ago.”
“What?” His guts were about to come up. All this action after last night’s beer.
“South call. The wolf.”
“Uhn. Any others?” They reached the man’s hiding place. He had only one horse.
“No.”
“No ideas?”
“No.”
He had a vague notion of his own, inferences drawn on yesterday’s mysteries. “Got your horn? Get up behind me here. She can carry us to the house.”
As they rode, Ragnarson sounded the horn, alternat-ing his personal blast with those for the greathouse. Anyone not already in a fight would meet him there.
He found a few men there ahead of him, saw a half dozen more coming. Good. Now, where was Elana?
Gerda Haas came from the house.
“Where’s Elana?”
“Crazy fool you married, Ragnarson. Like I told Uthe when you did, you’ll get nothing but trouble from that one.”
“Gerda.”
“Ah, then, she rode off with Uthe and Bevold and the others. South. Took my Dahl’s horse, she did, just like...”
“How many?”
“Counting her ladyship and the sentries already down there, nineteen I’d guess.”
Then all the help he could hope for was already in sight.
Ragnar came running round Gerda, but the old dragon was quick. She caught his collar before he got out of reach. “You stay inside when you’re told.”
“Papa?”
“Inside, Ragnar. If he gives you any trouble, whack him. And I’ll whack him again when I get back. Where’s Dahl?”
“In the tower.” She scooped Ragnar up and brushed the tears from his eyes. The boy was unaccustomed to shortness from his father.
“Toke,” Ragnarson ordered, “get some horses for me and Chotty. Dahl! Dahl Haas!” He bellowed to the watch-tower, “What you see?”
“Eh?”
“Come on, boy. Can you see anything?”
“Lot of dust down by the barrow. Maybe a big fight. Can’t tell. Too far.”
The barrow lay near the tip of a long finger of cleared land pointing south, with the millstream and lumbering road meandering down it. He had been clearing that direction because the logs could be floated to the mill. It was two miles from the house to the barrow.
“Horsemen?” Bragi called.
“Maybe. Like I said, a lot of dust.”
“How long?”
“Only a couple minutes.”
“Uhn.” Bad. Must be something besides, a gang of bandits. H is people could take care of that with a flight of arrows.
Toke came round the house with the horses. The women had started saddling them when he and Chotty had come in sight. “All right, everybody that can use one, get a lance. Gerda, get some shields.” He was wearing a mail shirt already-a habit when he traveled-so neededwaste no time donning that. “And for god’s sake, something to drink.”
While he waited he looked around. Elana had done well. All the livestock had been herded into the cellars, the heavy slitted shutters were over the windows, the building had been soaked with water against fire, and no one was outside who had no need to be.
A girl Dahl’s age brought him a quart of milk. Ugh. But this was no time for ale or beer. Beer made him sweat, especially across his brow, and he needed no perspiration in his eyes during a fight.
“Lock up after us,” he told Gerda as he swung into the saddle and accepted shield, ax, and lance from another of the women. “Helmet? Where’s my damned helmet?” He had left it with the foundered horse. “Somebody find me a helmet.” To Gerda again, “If we’re not back, don’t give up. Mocker’s on his way.”
The girl who had brought him the milk returned with a helmet. Ragnarson groaned. It was gold-and silver-chased with high, spread silver wings at the sides, a noble’s dress helmet that he had plundered years ago. But she was right. It was the only thing around that would fit his head. If he weren’t so cheap, he’d have a spare. He disappeared into the thing, glared around, daring someone to laugh.
No one did. The situation was too grim.
“Dahl, what’s happening?”
“Same as before.”
Everyone was mounted, armed, ready. “Let’s go.”
He wasted no time. He rode straight for the barrow, over sprouting wheat.
V) Sometimes you bite the bear, and sometimes the bear bites you
Even while still a long way away, Ragnarson saw that the situation was grim. There were four or five men on the barrow, afoot, surrounded. As many more were below, on horseback, hard-pressed. Men from both sides, unhorsed, were fighting on the ground. There were more attackers than defenders, and those professionals by their look. He couldn’t see Elana. Fear snapped at his heart like the sudden bite of a bear trap.
He was not afraid of the fighting-much; a truly fearless man was a fool and certain to die young-but of losing Elana. They had an odd, open marriage. Outsiders sometimes thought there was no love between them, but their interdependence went beyond love. Without one another, neither would have been a complete person.
He slowed the pace briefly, signaled his lancers into line abreast. Those who could
n’t handle a lance stayed back with their bows.
Some cavalry charge, Ragnarson thought. Six lances. In Libiannin Greyfells had commanded fourteen thou-sand horses and ten thousand bows, plus spearmen and mercenaries.
But every battle was the big one to the men involved. Scope and scale had no meaning when your life was on the line. It came down to you and the man you had to kill before he could kill you.
The foreigners weren’t expecting more company. Indeed, a freehold this size should have had fewer men about, but Ragnarson’s land wasn’t a freehold (in the sense that he had been enfiefed and owed the Crown a military obligation), and many of his hangers-on weren’t married.
The attackers noticed his approach only after he was less than a quarter-mile distant. They had hardly begun to sort themselves out when he struck.
Ragnarson presented his lance, swung his shield across his body, gripped his reins in his lance hand. His shield was a round one, in the Trolledyngjan style, and not fit for a horseman. He paid the price almost immediately.
As his lancehead entered the breast of his first opponent, a glancing saber stroke slashed his unshielded left thigh. The sudden pain distracted him. He lost his. lance as the man he had slain went over his horse’s tail.
Then his mount smashed into two others, momentarily trapping him. He couldn’t drag out his sword. He clawed at the Trolledyngjan ax slung across his back whilewarding off swordstrokes with his shield, began chopping kindling from the nearest unfamiliar target.
A progression of dark faces appeared before him, men his own age with deep-set, dark eyes and heavy aquiline noses, like a parade of bin Yousif s. Desert men. But not Haroun’s Royalists. What were they doing this far from Hammad al Nakir?
Three opponents he demolished with his berserk, overpowering attack, then, with a sinking in his stomach, felt his mount going down. Someone had slashed her hamstrings. He had to hurl ax and shield away as he leapt to avoid being pinned beneath. The jump threw him face-first into someone’s boot and stirrup. A swordstroke proved the small battle-worth of his fancy helmet. A wing came off. A dent so deep that the metal bruised his scalp left him half-unconscious. On hands and knees, with hooves stamping all around, he lifted his visor to heave the milk he had drunk.