When we finished preparing, we waited. Nobody had much to say, although after Whistler examined his sword, he sat with Bea.
I saw the horsemen coming well before midday. We watched them for ten minutes as they trotted in and out of sight crossing the grassy rolls. By the time they’d closed to shouting distance, I saw that Leddie was leading the column.
I bellowed, “We only have that one big tree for me to drop on you, General. If you wouldn’t mind, ride over there and wait under it. If that’s too much trouble, I can just stab you in the liver.”
Leddie laughed. In the harsh daylight, I saw that her face was mottled with horrible scars. “My master wants to talk to you, Bib. I don’t know why, because you’re as boring as dog shit. But I have his permission to cut your face off your skull so he can talk to that, which would probably be a hell of a lot more interesting.”
“Just come on over here and get killed, you long-winded sow!”
Leddie pointed at me. “That is what I am talking about! I predicted you’d say that. Sergeant! Give me that paper.”
The sergeant leaned over and handed Leddie a slip of parchment.
“I wrote it down right here!” Leddie yelled, waving the paper. “It says, ‘Come get killed.’ Bib, you’re not just boring—you’re predictable!”
I nodded at Pil. “This is useless. Go on.”
Pil drew her bow and fired. The arrow struck Leddie under her left eye and bounced off.
Leddie wiped her cheek and examined her fingers. “I apologize!” she shouted. “I wouldn’t have predicted that if I’d had until the end of the world. What the hell was that? Am I poisoned now? Am I so pretty you can’t stand to know I’m in the world?”
Pil fired again. The arrow zipped over Leddie’s head and then angled down, ramming through the column of soldiers like a wild boar. Three soldiers flew through the air, one of them cut in half and trailing guts. Two horses fell to the ground, and one of them didn’t move.
Everybody in Leddie’s force started screaming or yelling orders, and horses bucked or bolted, carrying half a dozen soldiers away on their wild mounts. Leddie was riding in a circle, bellowing and whacking people with the flat of her sword.
Whistler turned to me and shouted, “Maybe we should charge them. We’d kill half and never see the rest again.”
“No, that is foolish,” Halla said. “We would only kill one in three.”
Leddie and her sergeant were snappier than I expected in getting their men’s attention. A dozen dismounted. Pil’s next arrow whizzed over their heads, sounding like a thousand hornets, and three soldiers jumped out ahead of their mates to charge us on foot. Leddie yelled and gestured for them to come back, but they kept running toward us.
“Should I try again to kill her?” Pil asked. “This thing has to hit what I aim at eventually.”
“Go ahead,” Halla said.
Pil drew and fired. The arrow shot up in an arc and kept going. It probably landed on the other side of Leddie’s force.
The three charging soldiers reached the ditch and scrambled down into it. Halla and I killed the first two as they helped each other climb out, and I knocked Whistler aside to get the third.
Dismounted soldiers were shouting, stomping around, and drawing weapons, but no more of them charged.
“Are they going to try to starve us out?” Whistler said.
I shook my head, although I don’t know whether he saw me.
All at once, the soldiers became much quieter. There was less running around and banging into each other. Leddie bellowed, “Now!”
A wall of two dozen soldiers charged toward us.
I shouted, “Pil! Now!”
Pil fired twice. The first arrow struck a soldier in the chest, split him in two, and kept going, not hitting anybody else. The second plowed into the ground and left a furrow thirty feet long and two feet deep. She fired again as the first soldiers reached the ditch. The arrow slammed into the far side of the ditch and collapsed it, forming a handy ramp for the soldiers to run down.
“Shit!” Pil shouted. “Shit, shit, shit!”
Whistler, Halla, and I ran to meet the soldiers as they crawled out of the ditch. We killed the first three, but by then, four more had climbed out. I lost track of Whistler as I stepped back, facing three men. I gave one a deep cut on the wrist, dodged two cuts from a second man, and stabbed a third in the chest, not quite in the heart. I retreated again because four men had climbed up, and now I faced five soldiers, which was a ridiculous number of foes.
The five men fought awkwardly, being so tight together, but they sported an awful lot of sharp blades. I forced two together and tripped one, and I killed the one on the ground before retreating. Halla appeared behind them, near beheaded one with her spear, and disappeared off to my left.
A young man surprised me on my right and sliced me deep across the thigh. I blocked his second stroke and slashed his throat, then parried an attack from a tall, fat soldier. I thrust into his heart, felt something wet on my side, and glanced at it. At some point, I’d taken a deep, ragged cut at the left wrist, but numbness had kept me from feeling it.
I had just glanced at my wrist for an instant, but when I focused on my opponents again, somehow five soldiers faced me. I was breathing harder than I should have. I roared just to deny that I was tired and older than twenty-five. Two of the soldiers froze for a moment, but that’s all I needed
