Sasha

Garys hooked the ball, but was hacked on the arm by Koenyg, and lost it again. A Tyree man took a hard block from Tyrblanc, giving Koenyg time to wheel about, but then Sasha careened across his front, spinning her mount across the ball's rolling path, and somehow using her horse's momentum to lean low and wide and rip the ball away from Koenyg's reach. She continued the spin, reversed the ball, and shot off, dodging one northerner and then another, Koenyg cursing in close pursuit.

Suddenly Jaryd was there, blocking the heir to the Lenay throne with a vigour some men might not have dared. 'Go Sasha!' Damon heard him yelling, as he followed in pursuit, and another rider came flying toward Jaryd from the side. It looked like an intercept, even though Jaryd did not have the ball… and Damon saw with a sudden chill through the sweaty heat that the interceptor was Pyter Pelyn.

'Jaryd, to your right!' Damon yelled. Jaryd swung about, raising an arm to block. Pyter's hook caught him about the shoulder and yanked him from the saddle. Jaryd fell with all the graceless horror of a man deliberately unhorsed, slammed hard into the turf and rolled repeatedly. Then he stopped, and did not move.

Damon swore, reined up alongside and dismounted, fearing the worstmany men had died on the lagand field, or become cripples for life. 'Jaryd!' He knelt at the lordling's side and listened against his lips… Jaryd was breathing, so that was a start. Then his eyelids fluttered and his legs moved. That was even better. About them, other horses had stopped, the game apparently suspended. Except for one horse, that he could hear galloping hard… yells of warning and anticipation came from the crowd.

Damon looked up to see Sasha tearing directly toward Pyter Pelyn. She'd seen it. That wasn't good. She hit him with a back-hook to the face, which sent him reeling from the saddle. That wasn't good either. Then Pyter's noble friends were after her, hooks raised with clear intent. Falcon Guardsmen set off in pursuit and a brawl erupted, horses jostling and men swinging. Three more nobles were quickly unhorsed-the Tyree nobility might have been a dab hand at lagand, but against Falcon Guardsmen they were little match in a fight.

Jaryd struggled to sit upright, wincing in pain. He tried to put weight upon his left arm and bit back a scream. Damon supported his weight, as Koenyg dismounted alongside. Nearby, the fight was breaking up. The adjudicator raised his red flag at Sasha. Sasha threw her hook at him, and would have dragged him physically from his horse had not a Guardsman intervened.

'I think it's broken,' Damon said wearily to Koenyg, feeling gently at Jaryd's arm.

'It's not,' Jaryd said fervently. 'I've broken bones before, this isn't as bad.' And nearly screamed again when he tried to move it.

'It's broken, you fool,' Koenyg told him, kneeling alongside. 'The way you came off, you're lucky it's not your neck.' Damon could understand Jaryd's reluctance to admit it. Many breaks reset cleanly, with good medicine, splints, binding and sometimes some skilled knifework. But some did not, and men would carry those deformed limbs to their grave.

'That shit pile Pyter,' Jaryd muttered, his face pale with pain. 'I'll duel him. Maybe he'll find some honour with a sword in his gut.'

'With that arm?' Koenyg snorted. Some more horses were riding now from the perimeter, no doubt with a healer astride, someone who knew how to move a man with broken bones.

'When I've recovered then,' Jaryd insisted. 'I'll kill him, you watch.'

'The road you're travelled,' Koenyg said sharply, 'you won't live that long. Take some advice from someone in a position to know, lad. You may not care for your own neck, but if you've any concern for your family, you'll apologise to Master Pyter and never talk to my wild sister again.'

'She's the one coming to my defence,' Jaryd retorted, breathlessly. 'You're telling me these… these honourless cowards are my true friends, and those who risk their own necks to ride at my side are my enemies?'

Koenyg shook his head in disgust and rose to his feet. 'If you don't know the answer to that question, Heir of Nyvar,' he said sourly, 'then I fear for not only your future, but your family's.'

The morning was overcast, with a blustery wind that blew grey, misting swirls along the valley's upper slopes. Lord Usyn Telgar, a man of the cold northern heights, did not mind the chill. He sipped hot tea from his tin cup, wrapped in his warmest fur cloak, and observed a sight of pure wonder.

Ten catapults. Great, ungainly wooden contraptions, never before used in Lenay wars. The horses that had hauled them up the length of the valley now grazed somewhere behind the tent forest on the grassy slopes beside the Yumynis River. The catapults now sat in a line across grassy fields on this, the eastern side of the river, swarmed about with labouring men.

Facing the contraptions, a vast, dark stone wall spanned the width of the valley. It stood perhaps the height of five men-too tall for the ladders. More than half of the Hadryn army were cavalry, and not equipped for such obstacles. Thick buttresses reinforced the wall at even intervals, and two huge wooden doors with welded metal binding stood thirty strides from the river's edge on this eastern side. Beneath the wall, the river surged with a roar of foam and spray-the Udalyn had diverted the mighty Yumynis to flow through a narrow channel, above which spanned the wall's arch. It was more ingenuity than Usyn had expected of the pagans. But it would not help them.

A nearby catapult groaned and strained as men hauled the two great wheel-spokes, winding the rope tighter and tighter. Two men carried a heavy rock between them, muscles straining, and placed it into the sling. The release mechanism was checked and men moved away to a safer distance. An officer yelled the order and the firing rope was pulled-the catapult's safety catch released and the rope unwound with a squealing rush, hauling the long arm and sling skyward. Crack! The arm pulled up short, lurching the entire contraption nearly enough to topple it, and the huge rock continued onward, hurtling high and long toward the wall. A distant thud, as it shuddered the great wall doors, adding yet another white, splintered mark in its surface, before joining the growing pile on the earth before the doors.

A man arrived to stand at Usyn's side, a steaming cup in his hand. It was Yuan Heryd, similarly rugged against the cold, with the look of a man newly woken. Heryd had led much of the advance up the valley's length and was surely tired. It had taken a full day longer to sweep to the valley's end than Heryd had expected. Udalyn defences had been surprisingly sophisticated. The valley had many roads and trails that meandered along its steep sides, each successively higher than the last, as the slopes rose up from the broad valley floor. These were well forested, and dotted with cultivated fields, farmhouses, retaining walls, fences and watercourses.

The Udalyn had used all, in their defences. Major forces moving along the flat valley floor had confronted defended barricades blocking the best routes. Even when breached, a straight drive up the valley floor risked a flanking ambush from the height of a neighbouring slope. The valley slopes had had to be cleared at an equal pace, but that going proved even slower, as riders advancing along narrow, winding roads were shot with arrows, pelted with rocks from higher vantages, or unexpectedly ambushed by suicidally brave pagans leaping from cover to hack at horse and rider with indiscriminate abandon.

So ferocious had been their defences that, at times, Usyn had wondered if the Udalyn had made the worst miscalculation of all, and had tried to win the battle outright. The combined Hadryn companies and militia were not the untested rabble of a century ago-trade and exchanges with their lowlands Verenthane brothers had improved the quality of Hadryn horses, weapons, armour, tactics and fighting skills considerably. The Udalyn had discovered this to their loss, with barely a mailshirt or a crossbow between them. Hundreds had fallen, their bodies strewn across the roads and barricades of their precious valley.

But their sacrifice had served its purpose, as the valley cottages and farms had been emptied of both people and livestock by the time the Hadryn army had arrived. All now sheltered behind this, the great Udalyn wall, at the far northern end of the valley. Great walls of sheer rock loomed at the valley's end beyond the wall, broken only by the plummeting roar of the Yumynis Falls. The Udalyn were trapped in there. Getting them out was just a matter of time.

There was a squeal and crack as another catapult fired. 'A glorious sight, is it not?' Usyn said to Heryd, his eyes tracking the rock's flight through the air. Thud.

Heryd nodded. 'Aye, my Lord. Do you know your father's price for them?'

'Fifteen pieces each,' Usyn said smugly. 'Made and transported from Larosa itself. The Bacosh are truly masters of war. It would be a grand thing to campaign there.'

'Aye, it would, for such a holy cause.' Heryd's lips pursed, considering the great doors. 'The pagans build well. Doubtless those doors have been reinforced behind. We may splinter the timbers, yet not break through. Worse, we litter our approach with rocks. Men may trample each other in a crush, assaulting such a space under