She locked her eyes on the bankhar and willed it to submit.
A rumbling growl emerged from its huge chest.
She backed up out of the water and onto the sandbar.
One of the Mongols was riding straight for her. She could feel the terror rising in her chest, her heart hammering at the underside of her breastbone, booming in her ears.
The Mongol called out a word of command. The bankhar looked back at him, remembered who was boss, bounded into the water, and came up on the sandbar, close enough that he could have reached Cnan’s throat with a single lunge. Only some cautious instinct, a concern that Cnan was more than she seemed, prevented him from killing her then and there.
Her fear took charge. She knew she was about to die—if not ripped apart by the bankhar, then shot through and through by the Mongol following after or the two behind him. Her heart slammed with such force that she could feel it in the soles of her feet.
Her feet?
The dog looked beyond her suddenly, then crouched and quailed. A word of astonishment escaped from the Mongol’s lips.
Cnan swiveled in the water and mud just in time to see a colossus thundering up out of the river’s channel, over the crest of the little sandbar, then springing nearly over her head, hooves plowing the air. She fell to the ground more from vertigo than anything else and lost sight of it for a moment. Twisting about again, she saw the bankhar somersault backward, a red missile hurtling from its shoulders to tumble along the sandbar.
Stumbling in reeds and muck, catching herself and straightening, she identified the colossus: a man on a horse. The setting sun was on his back, and his armor shined in her eyes. His left hand held the steed’s reins; his right gripped a short staff whose head was lazily orbited by a fist-size lump of black iron studded with spikes. The spikes threw off a thick spray of the dog’s blood.
The bankhar had skidded to a halt and lay on its back, one hind leg jerking. Half its head was missing.
The interval between the bankhar and the lead Mongol was a long stone’s throw. Percival, in full gallop, took it in a few thundering hoof strikes. The iron ball, tracing an unhurried and inexorable path at the end of its taut chain, accelerated suddenly and passed without apparent loss of speed into the side of the Mongol’s face—for he was attempting to turn away—and out the back of his skull.
Percival studied the reeds. “A spare!” he remarked casually.
Dumbfounded, she realized he was addressing her.
“Should I…” she fumbled.
“No. Reach the other side of the river,” he said, and ignoring the two Mongols who were down at the river’s level, spurred his destrier forward hard and steered it directly toward what looked like a low place in the bank. The steed faltered, then understood, drove itself at the notch in the skyline, and attempted the leap. Its front hooves came up on the top. Its hind legs had to scrabble at the bank for a few anxious moments, peeling off shovelfuls of dusty earth. But then its massive hindquarters bucked up into the air, and it was on the lip of the scarp. With a cry of triumph or encouragement, Percival drove it hard to the left, headed, apparently, straight for the lone Mongol who had made it to the top earlier.
And then Cnan lost sight of him.
The two Mongols remaining on the sandbar were finally unlimbering their bows. She doubted that they could hit her from this distance if she kept moving and made use of cover, but one could never tell when a lucky shot might strike home, and so she was disinclined to wait around and see what happened. She completed the move she had been trying to make while fleeing the bankhar, sidestepping across the bar to the main channel of the river. She had to take her eyes away from the Mongols for a few moments as she picked her way over a slimy fallen log.
When she looked back, one of the Mongols was settling awkwardly to his knees, reaching up as if to make some adjustment in his helmet. Then she noticed a shaft going in one side of his neck, angled downward, and she concluded that an arrow fired from the other side of the river had struck him.
She turned, dove, and swam for a dozen strokes. The current was sweeping her downstream toward the concealed archer, but she reckoned that was not a bad thing, and so she did not fight it, putting all of her energy instead into crossing the channel.
When she felt the bank rising beneath her feet again, she turned to look, letting only the top few inches of her head jut out of the stream. Now came the same thunder in the earth that had preceded the demise of the bankhar, and sure enough, Percival’s head—and that of his warhorse—rose majestically above the edge of the bank. He had holstered the flail he’d used to such effect against the dog and the first Mongol, and now held a bloody lance in one hand and a teardrop-shaped shield in the other. Two arrows jutted from the shield, suggesting that the second Mongol had put up more of a fight. Thus encumbered, he let the horse find its own way down to the riverbank. Percival kept a sharp eye on the one surviving Mongol, who had sought cover in the reeds and was raising his bow. Percival was plainly visible from the bank’s top. With an easy plunge of his shield, the armored knight collected a third arrow that would have pierced his mount’s shoulder.
A shaft flew directly over Cnan’s head and arced downward into the reeds; a bowman on her side of the bank—she guessed it was Raphael—was hoping for a lucky shot.
The destrier crashed down into the reed bed, Percival leaning so far back that he was nearly supine on its hindquarters. After a few moments of staggering about and realigning, horse and rider were once again united, and Percival now did something that—hard as it was to believe—made Cnan feel sorry for the Mongol: he wheeled on the firmer, sandy bed and charged, lance fixed at a low angle.
The Mongol understood perfectly well what was about to happen. He leapt up and ran, zig-zagging along the bank, feet sending up silver spray. Like a million terrified victims who had been caught out in the open by the riders of the
The Mongol spun about at the last instant, screaming his rage, and chose the lance. Percival gave it to him, hefted until the man’s feet dangled, then rode on, torquing the corpse through the reeds until it slid off like a knotted rag. Glittering tails of spray from the horse’s hooves almost hid the gore.
Cnan turned away with a sick sensation in her stomach, then climbed into a cleft on the northern bank, where she suspected that Raphael was hiding in some gnarly scrub. And that was where she found him, though he had already turned his back to her and was clambering through loose soil toward the crest. As he neared the top, he slowed, crouched, and held out a cautioning hand, warning her not to pop her head up. Then he seemed to change his mind. He’d seen something from the crest that let him know they were all right. He vaulted onto flat ground, resumed his squat, and gave Cnan a hand up. From any of the others—with, as always, the exception of Percival— she would not have taken kindly to this gesture. She was perfectly capable…but something in Raphael’s manner always let her know that—between her and him—things were simple and fine, and so she slapped her hand into his and kicked against the bank with both feet until he’d hauled her over the top.
Below and behind them, Percival was collecting the Mongols’ horses, stringing them out on a line so that they could be led.
“Spares,” Cnan said.
“Good,” Raphael answered and nodded across the river: not along the main channel, but to the south bank, which Cnan, trapped in the low reeds, had not been able to see until now. The first thing she noticed was the reed-hung corpse of the Mongol whom Percival had run down and slain during his foray over the bank’s top. But then her eyes were drawn by movement farther off.
The hilltop where the main body of the Mongol force had gathered a while ago was now bare, but something like an avalanche or mudslide seemed to be flowing down its near side, throwing up a dusty plume that glowed like fire in the light of the setting sun.
They had been seen. The Mongols were coming for them.
“Gorgeous, in its way,” Raphael remarked dryly, “but I don’t recommend we marvel much longer. You, at any rate, are unlikely to take in any new or useful impressions.”
“What the hell are you doing then?” she snapped.
“I believe I shall tarry, in case Percival needs assistance. I may be able to help him manage the spares or slow the Mongols when they reach the bank’s edge.”
“Did you have anything in mind for me?”
“Look in on Eleazar.”
