About the time I thought I might die just from trying to run, the two riders closed with us at an angle. One charged Pil, who avoided a beheading by throwing herself onto the ground. The other charged me. I dropped the chains and breathed deep as I waited for him bare-handed. At the last moment, I ran toward the man, sort of amazed that my legs would obey. I barely avoided tripping on the chains, grabbed the man’s arm as he swung, and threw him out of the saddle. His horse ran on before I could grab it, so I drew my sword and stabbed him in the throat as he lay on the ground.
I turned, but the other soldier didn’t come around to attack again. He was riding away toward two of his comrades half a mile distant. I scanned to make sure there weren’t another eight or ten of the bastards about to run us down. I was panting like an old ox when Pil arrived and reached out to steady me, but I shook her off. Then I spotted Halla and Whistler galloping toward us from the bog, leading two horses without riders.
Halla and Whistler reached us before the three soldiers organized themselves to attack. I pulled myself into the saddle and held out my hand to Pil, but she ignored me and mounted the other horse. The four of us rode like the wind afire and reached the bog ahead of the soldiers.
Only patches and wisps of fog clung to the marshy ground, and they probably would have lain there even if I hadn’t fiddled with the weather. Whistler led Pil down a path between two swampy patches. Halla and I stayed behind on our horses and observed the riders. The three horsemen approached the marshy area with some caution, and we retreated into the swamp. They didn’t follow us, at least not yet.
Halla glared at me, frowning, and then turned away. “I couldn’t find you. You should not have called a fog if you wanted my help.”
“I didn’t need your goddamn help! Your gigantic ass would just have been in my way. I didn’t need rescuing at the end there, either. I could have killed another seven or eight of those rascals.” That was a damn lie, of course. Any one of those horsemen might have run me down or cut my head in half. Fighting a mounted man was a chancy business. I took a breath to yell at her some more, but I forgot what I was going to say.
We reached a narrow, uncertainly squishy stretch of dirt in the marsh, and we all dismounted. Halla peered back the way we came. “I will wait and kill them.”
“Not without me.” I knew it was a foolish statement the moment it left my mouth. To cover my foolishness, I did some more foolish things. I held up the chains and shook them. “I wish I’d discovered chain fighting when I was a boy. To hell with swords and axes.”
Halla stared at me. Whistler and Pil did too. Bea stood behind them, splashed with mud as if she’d fallen when everybody ran into the swamp.
I glanced down at my manacles and chains. “All of you can go to hell.” I crossed my arms to be defiant, which jangled the chains, so I dropped my arms again. I was just arguing to be contrary. Actually, I was sweating and felt like shit.
Whistler rubbed his mouth. “Bib, look at your arm. The other one.”
“I know it’s bloody! You always get bloody little cuts in a fight!”
He pointed. “No, farther down.”
Blood soaked my left arm and my left trousers leg past the knee. When I bent my head to examine it, I realized the top of my head was sore. Without thinking, I reached up to touch it, but before I got there, I encountered something that felt like the end of a belt.
“Bib, your scalp is hanging off. Not the whole thing!” Whistler hurried to add that part. “But it doesn’t look nice.”
I found myself sitting on the ground and wondering how I got there.
THIRTEEN
As I sat like a dim mule with my scalp dangling toward my left ear, Bea put her hand on my unbloodied shoulder. “Let me see it. I can fix it.” She swallowed and didn’t look too damned confident. “It must hurt.”
“Well . . . it didn’t much until you said something.”
When I had knocked down that tree to escape, a broad, sharp splinter must have smacked me on the skull. I reached up to touch the wound, but Bea pushed my hand back down.
Halla and Whistler walked back down the path to prepare an ambush for the soldiers.
“I’ll come too,” Pil said, adjusting her grip on her knife.
I pretended like I was going to stand up. “Hell no. You’ll just get killed.”
Pil glared at me. “Is that what all the sorcerers throughout history are saying? Or just you?”
“I am empowered to speak for them.”
“Isn’t this the right time to cut our enemies’ throats? It certainly seems like it. Their throats are going to be coming up that path, which sounds convenient to me.”
Halla stood behind Pil, leaning on her spear with her eyebrows raised at me. Pil was a sorcerer in her own right, and I had no business telling her not to go get killed. “Well . . . I wish you wouldn’t go.”
Pil ignored me and followed Halla back toward a bend in the path. Bea fussed over my scraped skull.
“Shit! Nobody listens to me.” I closed my eyes and pretended I was someplace with a big fire and
