Cold and soggy as the cabbage roll was, Lineas began to feel a bit more awake after eating half.
The food seemed to have a general good effect. Before long, Noddy said to Connar, “If you’re truly tired of riding the field, I’ll trade with you. I don’t mind.”
Connar sighed. “I’m not at all tired of it. Never mind what I said, Noddy. We’re not yet into Lightning Season, and you know how hard heat is on you. Let’s stay as we are.”
“I forgot about Lightning Season. Do they have it this far north? Ah, matters not. I’m content keeping on as we have.” A pause, then, “Have you reconsidered heading for the river? It might be cooler.”
Connar bit down on the flare of annoyance; he knew what would happen if Noddy saw Gannan prancing about with lances. “According to the map, this is the straightest line back to Larkadhe, and it will take us within reach of the cliffs where Great-Da Olavayir turned the tide of the battle with the Venn.”
Neit opened her mouth to interject a comment, but Noddy, unaware, exclaimed, “I’d like to see that! Let’s go that way.”
Neit sat back, unwilling to contradict Noddy before the entire escort.
Vanadei and Lineas noticed her frown. They knew she was the most traveled in this area, and as the sun slowly rose, they began to perceive why. Though a bird might be able to fly straight to Larkadhe, humans and horses had a succession of rocky ridges and forested cliffs to negotiate, the beginnings of the great mountains still shadowy in the thick haze.
Connar’s head throbbed as he scowled straight ahead, willing them to cover the distance faster, as huge chalk cliffs appeared behind the rocky hills. Noddy gazed northward, wondering if this was the very road their ancestor had ridden during the Venn war, and which of those ridges was the one they descended to wipe out the west end of the Venn invasion.
Lineas stared at the slowly roiling mist above the ridge, wondering if the silvery shades flickering in and out were ghosts, or some other...thing? Being? Living or dead, or did those two distinctions not matter to magical races?
Neit stirred uneasily, watching the horses’ ears, which twitched westward frequently enough to disturb her. The horses were a long way from panicking—everyone would notice that—but they smelled, or heard, something out there.
Twitch. It was like a signal, too swift for clumsy humans; these boys were excellent riders, but their horses were mere mounts, not partners in the way you were when you rode alone, watching everything.
Time to speak. Better to get yapped at than stay silent and walk into some kind of trouble. She fell out of line and rode up on Noddy’s other side as she said, “We’re too far north. Need to cut east as soon as we can. This is a bad area.”
“Bad?” Noddy squinted up at the ranks of mountains thrusting up northward; the rising sun had begun burning off the mist, throwing back a murderous glare. “Road, or riders? Should we send the scouts ahead, with whirtlers?” He whistled briefly, the sound of the signal arrows.
“Better a company,” she stated. “The distance looks short on the map, but it’s rough terrain to ride. This road here, it’s going to bend west by midday, taking you straight up the coast to the Nob. Nobody rides it with fewer than a full company. Those mountains that way are full of Bar Regren as well as all kinds of rough riders.”
“Bar Regren?” Noddy said.
“What the folk of the Nob peninsula call themselves. Don’t like Marlovans. Don’t like Idegans. Don’t like anyone but themselves—”
This time they all saw their horses’ ears twitch westward, and felt the subtle shift in the animals’ muscles that signified awareness.
“There’s no east road,” Connar said.
“There’s a trail on that ridge. See? Two by two, we can ride it.” Neit pointed into the hillock below the rising sun. They shaded their eyes, making out a winding pathway between clumps of birch and alder.
“Let’s do it.” Noddy raised his fist, then flattened his hand, fingers pointing eastward.
That’s when Fish yelled, “To the left!” at the same time as the scout riding a short ways in front whirled his horse, bellowing, “Ware west!”
Above the rocky ridge to the left, silhouettes popped up, at least a hundred of them. The breeze beginning to stir carried a guttural shout down the slope.
At the back of the column, Stick Tyavayir fumbled for his field glass, then dropped his hand as the silhouettes topped the ridge, roaring a war cry as they charged down the gradient.
Or began a charge. As the princes and their escort ripped free their swords, they took in details of the enemy: most on foot, some riding, a variety of weapons and armoring, mostly chain mail. And a ragged, jolting mess of a charge making it clear that whoever these attackers were, they had never actually drilled charging down a rocky incline. Two fell, and a horse stumbled.
But another hundred topped the ridge, and another.
Noddy turned to Connar who shouted, “Stick! Line!”
Stick Tyavayir had begun to gallop up the column toward them to get orders. When he heard that, he wheeled his horse so fast the animal reared, forelegs pawing the air as he roared “Line!”
The trumpeter blew the chord reinforcing the order, and adding the quick double blast that meant west as the escort formed up shield to shield in front, back row tightening bow strings.
Connar and Noddy watched the enemy leader, a big, gray-bearded fellow bellowing at the front of a pack.
“Vanadei, what’s he saying?” Connar demanded.
“Two languages.” Vanadei squinted. “One I don’t know. The other’s dialect—something little-king....”
“‘Princes first, kill the rest, catch the horses,’” Neit translated, her gaze unwavering on the advancing menace as she quickly looped up her long braids to get them out of her way. “Can’t speak Bar Regren, but I know North-Tongue.”
No game, then. The sense of unreality vanished, hearts beating hard. Noddy’s big mount sidled under him as he watched Connar.
Connar kept his gaze on the attackers, heartbeat crowding his throat. Just like drill, just like drill. “Wait for it, wait....”
The column stilled, except for gazes twitching between the bellowing, roaring enemies and the princes.
“Arrows ready,” Connar called, when the foremost attackers reached a hundred paces.
“Arrows ready,” Stick snapped, and the trumpet tooted a single note. Bows creaked as the company loosened their arrows in their quivers with a practiced motion, drew and aimed.
Stick watched Connar, who waited until the advancing wedge was fifty paces away, then flung up two fingers, meaning one shot, one man. And brought his hand down.
Arrows zipped through the air in a blur. Most found targets—four arrows dropping one man, while the man next to him got none—others clattered off various types of shield. The enemy wavered, until those coming behind forced the front ones onward, leaping over the fallen.
As Stick roared, “Shoot!” and bows twanged, Lineas’s shaking hands clenched on her knife hilts. Like Neit, she carried no shield. Unlike Neit, all she had for a weapon was her knives; Neit carried a sword as well as knives in forearm hilts. Lineas felt exposed. Her stomach roiled, and she wished she hadn’t eaten.
Stick gave the signal for shoot at will.
“Noddy.” Connar spoke without moving his gaze from the advance party. “When I say, charge. Take out the leader.”
Noddy said, “Keth?”
Kethedrend, the banner scout behind Lineas, had already loosened the ties on the heir’s banner in case. With a swift motion he wound the banner around one arm and chucked the lance past Lineas’s mount’s hindquarters.
Noddy slung his shield back on its saddle hook and caught the heavy wood out of the air with the ease of long habit. He locked his heels down, and muttered, “Say when.”
The graybeard, a huge man wearing chain mail over his clothes, raised a thick wooden shield studded with spikes, a spear clutched in his armpit, point too high, as he force
d his horse into a gallop, fifteen paces, ten—
“Now.”
Noddy’s big horse, which had performed this drill countless times, sprang into a gallop. The lance came down, the two animals charged the last distance. Graybeard aimed his shield—then screamed as the sharp iron of the lance head shattered the shield and drove through his body.
The enemy wavered in shock, then roared in rage and closed with the Marlovans.
Lineas had drilled with horseback fighting six years before, as part of her training as princess’s first runner, but not since. Most of her training had been in hand-to-hand defense on foot. All her focus narrowed to the big, sweating, roaring man coming at her as her heart thundered frantically. Slash! Whoosh! Too slow—too weak—her breath clawed her throat as she blocked and twisted, blocked, twisted, blocked.
Awareness widened in lightning flashes: they wanted her out of the way; they wanted to kill the princes.
At first she only blocked, but desperation drove her to strike back, though she couldn’t make herself kill. But she could slice tendons, and here was the inside of a wrist as a cudgel whizzed past her head. Her left hand ripped across that wrist, sending the man howling as the cudgel dropped from nerveless fingers—and he was muscled away by another with a sword, as a man on foot darted at her from the other side.
She sliced down to the right, then threw her weight into a slash to the left, binding the sword and using her whole body to force the blow just off her shoulder. She nearly fell, and wrenched herself upright as a sword blurred toward her head from the right.
Crash! Clang! Vanadei’s horse plunged between Lineas and her attacker, giving her a heartbeat to recover her balance—to look—Noddy striking a horizontal blow with the lance that knocked two men off their horses, splintering the wood. He tossed it away. Next blink there he was, a sword in his right hand, his shield in his left, battering another enemy. Connar swung from the shoulders, his sword making a downward sweep the steel was a glinting blur. A man’s head spun away, an arc of dark splash through the air.
Shadows boiled the edge of her vision.
“Watch out!” Neit shouted.
Lineas turned her head, and raised her knife to block a wooden pole descending to force her off her horse. She twisted—the wood smashed against her forearm—white pain sheeted through her. She fell back on the horse, her good hand scrabbling at the saddle. She caught the edge of the pad in a death grip and fought for consciousness.
A clang a hand’s breadth over her head shocked her into alertness as Noddy fought off steel blades slicing over her head, deadly with both sword and shield. A warm splash hit her face, and she tasted the tang of someone’s blood. Her stomach revolted violently, and for an agonizing eternity she struggled against the deadly giddiness as nausea clawed its way up her throat. She whispered the Waste Spell over and over, trying to spit out the horrible acid taste.
A hand jerked her reins and pulled her horse out of the fray. Lineas could not use her left arm. Both her knives were gone as Neit crowded up on her right, bleeding from her shoulder and a thigh.
“Wake up. Wake up—are you awake? Good girl. Go get help.”
“What?” Lineas tried to talk but no sound came out.
“We’re too far for whirtlers. Ride over that ridge yonder, you’ll find the river. Gannan and a good part of the new recruits in Lindeth West Company are there, drilling. Get them. Lineas, do you hear me? Go, go, go!”
Lineas righted herself, catching the reins with her right hand an instant before Neit smacked the horse’s rump. “Go!”
Lineas bent over the horse’s neck. “Don’t faint, don’t faint, don’t faint,” she muttered over and over as she concentrated fiercely on the winding trail that Neit had indicated.
The will doesn’t always win over the body; she slipped into fugue, but old drill and habit kept her in the saddle until she found herself leaning backward instead of forward. The horse was now picking its way down a goat trail.
Lineas lifted her aching head. Silver water gleamed in the sunlight as the river flowed toward the sea. On the bank, dust hid a myriad of figures...fugue again, then she found herself surrounded by gray-coated riders.
And there was Gannan. Who once, as a little boy, tried to get everyone to call her Pimple. The stray thought somehow steadied her, and she gulped in air. “Attack,” she said. “The princes—”
Gannan took in her blood-splattered robe, her broken arm that was already swelling, and her chalk-white face under the freckles.
“How many enemies?” Gannan snapped. Though he’d only been captain of a riding—nine riders—for two months, many of the other young men had been with him at the academy, and they’d gladly followed him for this exercise.
She shook her head. “More than us.”
“Which direction did they come from?”
Lineas uttered a disjointed report, miserably aware that she was making little sense, but Gannan turned away and issued a stream of orders, then added, “And somebody bind that up.”
He pointed at Lineas’s arm. Once again little stars shimmered across her vision, shadows roiling at the sides. When she’d fought that back, a fellow younger than she said, “Hold out your arm.”
What followed hurt nearly as much as the original break, but he got it set, bound it across her stomach, and then said, “You’ll do now. I’d better catch up with my riding.” And he galloped away.
She looked wearily at the dust of Gannan’s company vanishing around a bend.
The princes’ escort was holding its own, though barely; fired by the sight of their princes fighting like madmen, the wing fought savagely. But they were outnumbered four to one, with more enemies cresting the ridge. It was beginning to look bleak, which maddened Connar into launching into the thickest groups of enemies, laying about with sword and long knife, his lips drawn back over white teeth in a savage grin. Those nearest flogged tired bodies into renewed effort at seeing their prince slaughtering enemies at either side, backed by his older brother, who was slower, but powerful enough to knock attackers right out of the saddle.
But sheer numbers began to press tightly around them—
Then trumpet notes from behind, and Gannan’s young lancers burst between clumps of alder and charged. Heads turned, terror striking into the Bar Regren at the high, harrowing shriek Yip! yip! yip! a heartbeat before the lances smashed that tight-packed mass into bloody wreckage.
What Gannan lacked in imagination he made up for in strength and skill. His company thundered from both sides in the academy’s much-used two-prong flank attack, Gannan—filled with angry joy—in the lead. All his life he’d longed for the chance to prove himself, and here it was.
Though Gannan’s scratch company was only equipped with practice lances—that is, regular lances, but without sharpened steel tips—a blow from one of those at full gallop was lethal enough. Their attack was so fast and savage that most of the surviving Bar Regren fled, leaving a cluster of them caught between the Marlovans. These threw their weapons down, hands high.
Gannan was ready to strike them all down, too, but caught himself up when Noddy raised his hand, fingers open, and Stick Tyavayir shouted, “Fall back!”
The trumpet blew the halt.
Hard-reined habit squelched bloodlust, barely: no one wanted to be caught in action after orders, and the trumpet patterns they had responded to for over a decade were as good as spoken commands.
Gannan’s company joined the remains of Stick’s escort in circling what was left of the attackers. What now? The question semaphored between the young captains. There was little provision traditionally for the taking of prisoners. In battle Marlovans fought until either everyone was dead or driven off. But here were these men standing with their weapons at their feet, faces stricken with terror.
Stick turned to the princes, question in his blood-splashed, bony face, his expressive mouth a thin white line. Connar was poised to cut the enemies down where they stood, but Noddy—after two months
in Yvana Hall—said, “They will stand trial. That’s the law.”
Puzzled looks turned his way. Law. Like orders, that was a powerful word. Everyone knew what happened if you ignored orders. “Do we march ‘em back to Lindeth, or go on to Larkadhe?” one of Gannan’s captains asked.
Connar’s mind had leaped from law to executions, deliberate and drawn out. Lindeth was Nermand’s command, but Larkadhe belonged to them. He smiled. “Larkadhe. We’d just have to come back, wouldn’t we? Why should we sweat back here for their convenience?”
Bleeding from three nasty wounds, Stick tried to count how many of his men—every one of them known to him, and some he’d grown up with—lay on the ground, he hoped wounded, probably dead. Fury rose in him, and he met Connar’s grim, humorless smile with one of his own. Then he turned his head. “Fall in,” he said to his men, swaying in the saddle, then jerking upright.
As his runner urged his mount near so he could bind the worst of his captain’s wounds, Gannan roared at the prisoners, “March.”
Vanadei said in an undervoice to Noddy, “Shall I find Lineas? She went for Gannan, but she was riding with a broken arm, and I don’t see her anywhere.”
Noddy opened his hand. The young medic got the nod from Gannan, and cut out a couple of ridings to see to the wounded and Disappear the dead. At a twirled finger in the air, another riding began rounding up all the riderless horses.
Vanadei left them to it. He rode up the path that Neit had sent Lineas along. Mindful of his horse, as they hadn’t brought remounts for so short a journey, he took it slow, figuring he’d encounter her along the trail.
She wasn’t there.
He rode all the way to the riverbank, and looked around in dismay at the pocks made by West Company’s horse hooves during their drill. There was no chance of finding her horse’s prints in that mess.
He peered along the river, which was mostly hidden beyond the bend by several different types of willow. Complicated terrain. In the other direction, the river widened out from the bend as it headed toward the sea, the slope gentle as it led down toward the ocean. But she wouldn’t go that way, surely?
Time of Daughters II Page 9