two wing-fluttering hens, one black, one white-and-black checked, tied by the feet to the pommel of his saddle. He brandished a sword, as did one of his mounted fellows. The third swung the spiked, fist-sized ball of an aspergillum-style morningstar on its chain about his helmeted head.
Zaranda winced; they were devilish things to defend against.
The riders showed cunning. Rather than rushing straight at the mounted interloper, they spurred their horses wide, hoping to pin her against the house and the semicircle of footmen. Zaranda just had time to wheel Goldie about and dart for safety.
But that was never her style.
'Head down, babe,' she murmured to her mare, and nudged her hard with her heels.
'You don't want me-'
'Gо!
The golden palomino mare put her head down and lunged forward-straight for the doorway of the flaming cottage. Zaranda laid her magic saber about her, looping left and right so that the blade formed wings that shimmered silver gossamer in the morning sun. Utterly astonished by her mad forward rush, the footmen broke to either side. She felt Crackletongue's enchanted steel bite flesh gratifyingly as she passed.
Then she laid her body forward along Goldie's arched neck, and the mare lunged into the building, trailing a despairing cry of 'Za-ran-daaa!' Smoke drooled upward over the lintel of the doorframe, caressing Zaranda's nose and eyes with stinging fingers. Then they were inside, hooves thumping on earth packed hard and soaked with beasts' blood in classic Tethyrian country fashion, dried into a smooth hard maroon surface like glazed tile and covered with rush straw. Flames ran like dancing rat spirals up the ornately carved posts that upheld the roof, and wound about the roof beams a handspan above Zaranda's unarmored back. She felt their heat, heard their lustful crackle, felt embers fall on the back of her neck, smelled her own hair start to burn.
As she hoped, there was a kitchen door. They burst through into the relative cool of open. Woman and mare released the breath they had been holding and filled their lungs with blessed clean air. Zaranda let go the reins, which she held only from long equestrian habit, to bat away the sparks lodged in Goldie's mane and her own hair.
'Aren't you getting too old for this, Randi?' gasped the mare.
Zaranda threw back her hair and laughed like a schoolgirl. 'No!'
Two horsemen appeared around the stone corner to Zaranda's left. Zaranda brought Goldie round to meet them. Then the sudden backward pivot of the mare's long ears alerted her that the third one had circled to take her from behind.
'Not so fast, buster,' Goldie said as the third horse, a white stallion, ran up on her. 'We hardly know each other.'
She launched a sudden savage kick with both rear feet. The stallion screamed and shied back as a steel-shod hoof gouged a divot from his shoulder. His rider, the man with the mace-on-a-stick, groaned and sagged, clutching his thigh. Goldie's other hoof had caught him square, with luck breaking the femur or at the least giving him a deep bone bruise and an excellent set of cramps.
With one foe out of the fight, however temporarily, Zaranda charged the other two. The rider on Zaranda's left sat a stubby little pony a hand shorter than Goldie, who wasn't as dainty as she effected to believe. Zaranda put her mare's shoulder right into the smaller beast's chest, rocking the pony back on its haunches and fouling its rider's sword strokes, while Zaranda traded ringing cuts with the man to her right.
The bandit swordsman had greater strength, but Zaranda was used to that. Though she was tall and strong, most men were stronger. Skill and speed were her edges. In an exchange that flashed with more than sunlight, she took a nick in the shoulder but left the man's right side in ribbons and his cheek laid open, streaming blood into a matted gray-flecked beard. Frantically, he sidestepped his horse away from the blade storm.
All this time Goldie had been driving the pony back, trying to force its rump against the house's stone flank, and grunting mightily to let Zaranda know how hard she was working. The rider, who had a gap in his teeth and a right eye that looked at random out across the bean-fields, finally hit the notion of yanking his mount's head to the right and trying to slide past the mare.
As he did so, he hacked cross-body at Zaranda's face, hoping to down her while her attention was on his comrade. 'Randi, duck!' shouted Goldie.
Zaranda threw herself to her right, letting her left foot slip from the stirrup, snagging the knee on the pommel to keep herself from leaving the saddle entirely. She whipped Crackletongue over and across her body, deflecting the broadsword so that it skimmed her rump and thunked into her saddle's cantle. With a backhand slash, she laid the man's face open. He screamed and dropped his sword, clutching his face with his hands.
With a bellow of triumph, the grizzle-bearded man spurred his horse at her, bringing his own blade up for the kill. A hissing sound, and he crossed his eyes to look at the bright, slim tip of Farlorn's rapier, which suddenly protruded from his breast. The blade slid inside him like a serpent's tongue, and out his back. He slumped from the saddle.
The cockeyed man had fallen to the grass beside the kitchen stoop and lay curled in a ball, sobbing.
Thanks,' said Zaranda with a nod to Farlorn. The bard grinned and saluted her with a flourish of his blade.
Zaranda looked at the man with the morningstar, who sat a wary ten yards off, massaging his thigh. 'Surrender, and we'll let you live,' she told him, 'as long as you're willing to answer a few questions.' The man grimaced in pain and licked greasy lips. 'Does that means just as long as I'm answering questions?' he asked.
'Zaranda,' a familiar voice called timidly from the farmhouse's far side. 'Could you, ah-could you show yourself, please?'
Zaranda turned and frowned at Farlorn. 'Father Pelletyr?' she said.
He shrugged. The morningstar man took advantage of their distraction to spur his horse away behind some apple trees covered with tiny green buds of fruit.
Farlorn dismounted to see to the man Zaranda had struck down. She rode Goldie back around the side of the cot, swinging well wide to avoid flames billowing from window and roof.
On the last grassy rise Zaranda and her comrades had crossed before hitting the farmhouse, a lone rider sat. He was a vast man, a good eight feet tall, astride a horse at least eighteen hands high and as broad as a beer-cart, which might have served a northern knight as a destrier but more likely was born to pull a plow. The man wore a hauberk of tarnished scale armor and, across one mountainous shoulder, bore a great double-bitted battle-axe with a six-foot helve. The restless wind made the hair of his topknot stream like a greasy black pennon.
Beside him, four ragged men on foot had Father Pelletyr by the arms. One of them held a knife blade, crusted with rust and ominous dark stains, against the cleric's throat.
4
'Zaranda,' the priest said apologetically, 'these gentlemen claim to be tax-collectors. If they're about their lawful business, it's wrong of us to interfere.'
Farlorn had emerged from behind the house on his dapple-fannied gray. He answered Zaranda's query-look with a shrug to indicate the man she'd struck was no longer an issue. Then he glanced up the rise, and a smile quirked his handsome lips.
'Our good father was always one for following instructions,'' he murmured.
'Who dares,' the monstrous rider bellowed, 'interfere with the servitors of Baron Pundar on their lawful business?'
'Zaranda Star dares that and more,' Zaranda declared. 'Especially since I happen to be Countess Morninggold. Father, this beast's misled you; this is still County Morninggold, and these men no more than looters- and murderers.'
She tossed her head haughtily, making her name-sake blaze flash in the sun. 'Who dares to name that hedge-robber Pundar of Little Consequence 'baron'- and to prey upon my people?'
The morningstar man with the injured leg had circled round and now rode up to join his apparent leader. He stopped and turned back to the house.
