walls.
Sword flashed, taking off the back of a farmer’s head. Havok ran down another, trampling the shrieking woman under his hoofs. The gate boomed as it shut.
Karsa angled Havok to the left of it, eyes on the wall as he leaned forward. A crossbow quarrel flitted past, striking the furrowed ground ten paces to his right. Another whistled over his head.
No lowlander horse could clear this wall, but Havok stood at twenty-six hands-almost twice the height and mass of the lowlander breeds-and, muscles bunching, legs gathering, the huge destrier leapt, sailing over the wall effortlessly.
To crash, front hoofs first, onto the sloped roof of a shack. Slate tiles exploded, wood beams snapped. The small structure collapsed beneath them, chickens scattering, as Havok stumbled, legs clawing for purchase, then surged forward onto the muddy cart ruts of the street beyond.
Another building, this one stone-walled, reared up before them. Havok slewed to the right. A figure suddenly appeared at the building’s entrance, a round face, eyes wide. Karsa’s crossover chop split the lowlander’s skull where he stood just beyond the threshold, spinning him in place before his legs folded beneath him.
Hoofs pounding, Havok swept Karsa down the street towards’ the gate. He could hear slaughter in the fields and the road beyond-most of the workers had been trapped outside the town, it seemed. A dozen guards had succeeded in dropping a bar and had begun fanning out to take defensive positions when the warleader burst upon them.
Iron helm crunched, was torn from the dying child’s head as if biting at the blade as it was dragged free. A back-handed slash separated another child’s arm and shoulder from his body. Trampling a third guard, Havok pivoted, flinging his hindquarters around to strike a fourth child, sending him flying to crash up against the gate, sword spinning away.
A longsword-its blade as puny as a long knife’s to Karsa’s eyes-struck his leather-armoured thigh, cutting through two, perhaps three of the hardened layers, before bouncing away. Karsa drove his sword’s pommel into the lowlander’s face, felt bone crack. A kick sent the child reeling. Figures were scattering in panic from his path. Laughing, Karsa drove Havok forward.
He cut down another guard, whilst the others raced down the street.
Something punched the Teblor’s back, then a brief, stinging blossom of pain. Reaching over, Karsa dragged the quarrel free and flung it away. He dropped down from the horse, eyes on the barred gate. Metal latches had been locked over the bar, holding the thick plank in place.
Taking three strides back, Karsa lowered one shoulder, then charged it.
The iron pins holding the hinges between blocks of mortared stone burst free with the impact, sending the entire gate toppling outward. The tower on Karsa’s right groaned and sagged suddenly. Voices cried out inside it. The stone wall began to fold.
Cursing, the Teblor scrambled back towards the street as the entire tower collapsed in an explosion of dust.
Through the swirling white cloud, Bairoth rode, threads of blood and gore whipping from his bloodsword, his mount leaping to clear the rubble. The dogs followed, and with them Delum and his horse. Blood smeared Delum Thord’s mouth, and Karsa realized, with a faint ripple of shock, that the warrior had torn out a farmer’s throat with his own teeth, as would a dog.
Hoofs spraying mud, Bairoth reined in.
Karsa swung himself back onto Havok, twisted the destrier round to face down the street.
A square of pikemen approached at a trot, their long-poled weapons wavering, iron blades glinting in the morning light. They were still thirty paces distant.
A quarrel glanced off the rump of Bairoth’s horse, coming from a nearby upper floor window.
From somewhere outside the wall came the sound of galloping horses.
Bairoth grunted. ‘Our withdrawal shall be contested, Warleader.’
‘Withdrawal?’ Karsa laughed. He jutted his chin towards the advancing pikemen. ‘There can be no more than thirty, and children with long spears are still children, Bairoth Gild. Come, let us scatter them!’
With a curse, Bairoth unlimbered his bear skull bolas. ‘Precede me, then, Karsa Orlong, to hide my preparation.’
Baring his teeth in fierce pleasure, Karsa urged Havok forward. The dogs fanned out to either side, Delum positioning himself on the war-leader’s far right.
Ahead, the pikes slowly lowered, hovering at chest height as the square halted to plant their weapons.
Upper floor windows on the street opened then, and faces appeared, looking down to witness what would come.
‘Urugal!’ Karsa bellowed as he drove Havok into a charge. ‘Witness!’ Behind him he heard Bairoth riding just as hard, and within that clash of sounds rose the whirring flow of the grey bear skull, round and round, and round again.
Ten paces from the readied pikes, and Bairoth roared. Karsa ducked low, pitching Havok to the left even as he slowed the beast’s savage charge.
Something massive and hissing whipped past him, and Karsa twisted to see the huge bolas strike the square of soldiers.
Deadly chaos. Three of the five rows on the ground. Piercing screams.
Then the dogs were among them, followed by Delum’s horse.
Wheeling his destrier once again, Karsa closed on the shattered square, arriving in time to be alongside Bairoth as the two Teblor rode into the press. Batting aside the occasional, floundering pike, they slaughtered the children the dogs had not already taken down, in the passage of twenty heartbeats.
‘Warleader!’
Dragging his bloodsword from the last victim, Karsa turned at Bairoth’s bellow.
Another square of soldiers, this time flanked by crossbowmen. Fifty, perhaps sixty in all, at the street’s far end.
Scowling, Karsa glanced back towards the gate. Twenty mounted children, heavily armoured in plate and chain, were slowly emerging through the dust; more on foot, some armed with short bows, others with double- bladed axes, swords or javelins.
‘Lead me, Warleader!’
Karsa glared at Bairoth. ‘And so I shall, Bairoth Gild!’ He swung Havok about. ‘This side passage, down to the shoreline-we shall ride around our pursuers. Tell me, Bairoth Gild, have we slain enough children for you?’
‘Aye, Karsa Orlong.’
‘Then follow!’
The side passage was a street almost as wide as the main one, and it led straight down to the lake. Dwellings, trader stores and warehouses lined it. Shadowy figures were visible in windows, in doorways and at alley mouths as the Teblor raiders thundered past. The street ended twenty paces before the shoreline. The intervening space, through which a wide, wood-planked loadway ran down to the docks and piers, was filled with heaps of detritus, dominant among them a huge pile of bleached bones, from which poles rose, skulls affixed to their tops.
Teblor skulls.
Amidst this stretch of rubbish, squalid huts and tents filled every clear patch, and scores of children had emerged from them, bristling with weapons, their rough clothing bedecked with Teblor charms and scalps, their hard eyes watching the warriors approach as they began readying long-handled axes, two-handed swords, thick- shafted halberds, whilst yet others strung robust, recurved bows and nocked over-long, barbed arrows-which they began to draw, taking swift aim.
Bairoth’s roar was half horror, half rage as he sent his destrier charging towards these silent, deadly children.
Arrows flashed.
Bairoth’s horse screamed, stumbled, then crashed to the ground. Bairoth tumbled, his sword spinning away through the air as he struck, then broke through, a sapling-walled hut.
More arrows flew.
Karsa shifted Havok sharply, watched an arrow hiss past his thigh, then he was among the first of the
