for one blow, but to keep striking again and again.
So her hand blurred as she buried the dagger into the monster again, again, again. And suddenly she realized that Fallion had lunged forward and was plunging his own long knife into the tympanum on the strengi-saat’s other side. The strengi-saat was lunging toward her, trying to take her in its mouth, and distantly she became aware of Fallion shouting, “Get away from her! Get away!”
Fallion edged his body between Rhianna and the monster. He was simultaneously trying to drive it off and to defend her, as he’d sworn.
So few people had ever kept their word to Rhianna that she stopped to stare at Fallion, her mouth falling open with a little startled “Oh!”
The creature cried out, appearing astonished at Fallion’s ferocious assault, wrenched back, and then Borenson was on it, burying his warhammer into its back.
The beast sprung into the air, flung itself backward over the boat, and then lay splashing in the water.
Rhianna crouched, hot blood dripping onto her hand, her heart pounding so hard that she was afraid that she would die. She gaped at Fallion, who grinned wickedly and wiped his blade clean on his tunic.
Mist came to Rhianna’s eyes as she peered at him.
Here is someone I can trust, she told herself.
Hadissa suddenly pulled himself over the gunwales, and plopped in a sopping heap in the bottom of the boat. The boat rocked just a little. Then he stood, crouching like a dancer, waiting to see if more of the monsters would come.
Myrrima took an oar and righted the boat. There was a roar of rapids ahead, and she aimed the boat toward a dark V of water. No one spoke. Everyone listened. Only the wind hissed through the branches of the pines.
Rhianna reached down, felt her stomach to make sure that she hadn’t ripped her stitches open. When she found a warm dot of blood, she pushed herself to the back of the shelter and tried to hold still.
Don’t sleep, she told herself. Don’t let yourself sleep. Sleeping is stupid. People die when they let themselves get caught asleep.
But she dared to close her eyes.
Fallion is watching for me, she told herself.
10
Every man is born and every man dies. The important thing is to celebrate all of the moments in between.
Asgaroth had hardly escaped into the woods when Chancellor Waggit brought his mounted troops onto the commons, just inside Castle Coorm. He knew that he would have to break the siege and send men into the woods to hunt Asgaroth’s troops. But he dared not have his men charge into the darkness, and so he waited for dawn, a dawn that refused to come.
Instead, thick clouds drew across the heavens, like a slab of gray slate, blotting out the light. Sodden curtains of rain began to fall, adding to the gloom.
When dawn came, it seemed almost as dark as midnight, and the field was too muddy for the horses to make a safe charge.
But Waggit had no choice. He had to act soon. So he left three hundred men to guard the castle walls, and let the drawbridge fall amid the rattle of chains and the groaning of hinges.
Then a thousand lancers rode out in an ordered line, the horses walking slowly, followed by two thousand archers with their steel bows.
The air was thick with water. It caught in the lungs and ran down the back of one’s throat.
Sounds became elusive. The creaking of leather, the plod of horses’ hooves, muffled coughs, the soft clanking of oiled armor beneath surcoats- all such sounds seemed to become elusive, like rabbits leaping through the brush from the beagles, their white tails flashing as they dodged through tufts of gorse.
And so the lancers took to the gray field, and the archers marched out behind them.
Off in the distance, up the gentle rolling hills of the village, warhorns blew, and through a curtain of rain Waggit could make out the shadows of men flitting away from stone cottages, racing behind high hedges toward the woods.
Waggit chuckled. Asgaroth’s men had no stomach for a fight, he could see. They would make a hunt of it, their men fading into the trees and sniping with arrows from thickets where the horses could not charge.
There would be no easy way to get to them. The sodden weather wouldn’t allow him to put fire to the woods.
So, he told himself, we’ll hunt them, man to man.
Waggit suspected that his men outnumbered Asgaroth’s, but he couldn’t be certain.
He’d see their number soon enough.
He raised his horn to his lips. It was an ancient thing; the ebony mouthpiece smelled of lacquer, sour ale, and the previous owner’s rotting teeth. He blew with his might, a long wailing burst that made the horn tremble beneath his palm.
His troops began advancing slowly, and suddenly the rain pelted, becoming a gray veil that blocked out the hills ahead.
Riding forward, Waggit turned his mount, sent the charge south, and hurried his pace, racing blind, his horse’s hooves churning up mud.
He was alone with his thoughts, and fear rose to his throat. He would be glad when this day was done, glad to ride home to his wife and sit beside a roaring fire with his daughter on his knee. He conjured a scene where Farion giggled as he sang to her and fried hazelnuts in butter and sea salt over the open hearth, while their yellow kitten crept about, trying to see what they were up to.
That is the way it will be, he thought.
He could not face any other alternative.
And all too soon, they came out of the rain. Ahead lay a stone fence, with a high hedge that blocked his way to the right and left; barring the road ahead was an old sheep gate made of wooden poles. Beyond, a lonely-looking road stretched through sodden woods.
Asgaroth’s soldiers guarded the road. Waggit could see warriors of Inter-nook hunching down behind the gate in their sealskin coats, horned helms making them look laughably like cattle, their huge battle-axes at the ready. Others hid behind the stone fence to the right and left of the gate, their bows drawn.
“Clear them out!” Waggit shouted to his men. “Clear them out!”
Holding a shield in his left hand, and a black lance in the crook of his right arm, he nodded sharply so that the visor of his helm dropped. He spurred his mount.
Arrows began flying past as he raced toward the gate. One blurred toward his chest, and only luck let him angle his shield to catch it on the edge, sending it ricocheting into the sky. Another glanced off of his epaulet, and a third struck his mount near the throat, shattering in the barding, and the broken shaft went flying into his leg.
Waggit heard horses scream and men grunt in surprise behind him as arrows took them.
Then his own archers began firing back, sending a hail that blackened the skies.
Ahead, some of the axmen roared in anger as arrows plunged into them. Waggit saw one huge axman, his golden hair flowing down his shoulders in braids, pull an arrow from his gut, shake it in the air, then lick the blood from it, as if to mock the attacker’s petty efforts. At the last, he bit the arrow in two and spat it out, then shouldered his ax, eyes blazing as he held his post.
That man is mine, Waggit thought.
