In an instant the Toledo blade whipped the Russian sword up, and in a blitz of a movement skewered its unfortunate wielder, the steel passing through his body as if it were a knitting needle poking through a square of jelly.
‘Wheel about, boy, wheel about! We must retreat, we are outnumbered!’ shouted Captain Liversage, who had managed to find William in the madness of the battle.
‘You saved my life sir, you saved my life!’ William managed to gasp.
‘There’s no time to talk, Gisborne!’ Liversage bellowed, his formerly ostentatious uniform now hacked, tattered and discoloured with patches of blood and mud. ‘Wheel your horse about and follow me! We must retreat! All is lost!’
Captain Liversage’s voice was hoarse with urgency and his eyes were wild, the whites of them shining with life and madness against the drab hues of the battlefield. Without any further words the captain spun his horse about and kicked him into a gallop, riding down and bowling over two dismounted Russian troops who made a half-hearted attempt to block his path. William wheeled River King around, ducking simultaneously under a clumsy sabre slash from a panicking young enemy cavalryman, who promptly fell off his horse in the aftermath of his overeager attack.
William’s primary driving instinct had shifted from fight to flight, and fly he did, steering his horse left and right in a madcap slalom course, ducking and dashing between the blurs of enemy horses and men. Somewhere along the way a heavy impact slammed into his left arm, just above the elbow, and another slapped his right thigh as he galloped past a Russian who was wielding a sabre. Then another blow pummelled his left thigh, and one more lashed his ribs. The thumps and bumps did not concern him, however, for escape was his primary objective, and it was all he could do to keep his eyes on the fleeing figure of Captain Liversage, leading the way as he steamed through the drifts of gunpowder smoke and the heaving masses of horses and enemy troops.
A guttural shout in Russian blasted into his ear from his left, and William turned and saw a Russian officer galloping alongside him. The man was tall, long-limbed and extraordinarily pale; an albino with skin white as sun-bleached bone. In the half-light and billows of smoke his eyes gleamed with an unearthly brightness, and a demon’s grin pared the skin of his long face open, the perimeter of the wound punctuated by two thin, tightly drawn lips. He shouted something in Russian at William again as he raced alongside him and then he laughed metallically; it was obvious that he was the hunter and William the quarry. In his right hand he gripped a lance, and with a wicked grin and a shout he thrust it with deadly precision at William’s throat. Utterly gripped in the panic of the flight, William only just managed to deflect the blow with his sabre, and it was all he could do to hang on to River King and try to outstrip the Russian officer, with only a cursory concern now given to evading the other attacks delivered by the Russian troops he was speeding past.
The albino officer lunged again with his lance, and once more William managed, with a desperate effort, to turn away the strike. Now the officer kicked his mount on with a sharp shout, and his horse, who was far fresher than the exhausted River King, was easily able to pass and then cut in front of them.
As the officer manoeuvred himself in front of William, forcing him to veer left, he swivelled around in his saddle and attempted to deliver one more vicious thrust. This time William could not deflect the blow, as all his attention was focused on keeping River King under control, but due to the speed of the swerving horses the Russian’s aim was imprecise, and the point of the lance merely grazed William’s scalp.
The shock of the steel scraping his skull and freeing a wash of blood – blood that quickly warmed his head and left ear with its fast-flowing earthward passage – was enough to spur some fight back into William. With a howl of vengeful rage and adrenalin-mandated strength he slashed at the albino’s lance haft, which was already heavily splintered and damaged, and succeeded in cutting it clean in two. He then ducked and tugged harshly on River King’s reins, steering the horse in an unexpected swing to the right, and, counterattacking, he aimed a furious horizontal slash at the Russian officer’s midsection as he passed him.
His surprised opponent evaded the whistling sabre blade, but with reflexes as quick as any cat’s he countered with the stump of his severed lance haft, walloping William on the side of the head. The heavy wood struck William’s skull and detonated a percussive flash of light behind his eyes. He slumped in his saddle, stunned and semi-conscious from the impact, but beneath him River King continued to run, breathing hard and sweating out froth from the exertion and madness of the flight.
An overeager Russian private galloping in on a chestnut mare lunged out at William with his sabre, but the man’s horse collided with that of the albino officer’s, and both men flew off their mounts, tumbling to the ground as William and River King sped away. The officer cursed at the clumsy trooper and shouted with frustration as he saw his quarry escaping into the haze of smoke and massed bodies, both living and dead.
After a few moments of pell-mell racing, William began to become more cognisant of his surroundings as he came out of the daze brought on by the blow to his head. As his vision started to come into clearer focus, he saw that
