"And now," he told Sir Yarran, swinging his own horse and urging the stallion to a gallop, "we see how fast Golden Vale horses are!"
* * *
"They're up to something," Fahlthu heard someone say, and turned his head. "Master Brownsaddle" had appeared out of the chaos, like the proverbial bad kormak, and the knight glowered at him.
"Of course they are!" he snarled back. "They're trying to get out of the chamber pot they shoved their heads into! And," he continued in a grimmer voice, "to kill as many of my lads as they can in the process."
"That's not what I mean." Darnas Warshoe grimaced impatiently, cantering along at Fahlthu's side. "They started out fighting a serious rearguard—now they're galloping away like hares before hounds, when they must know our horses are fresher than theirs are."
"Do you always have to look for the crookedest possible answer to any question?" Fahlthu demanded disgustedly. "Did it ever occur to you that they may simply have had enough? That they've seen enough of their friends killed that they're breaking at last? Men who finally panic and rout seldom stop to think about whose horse is freshest!"
"Milord," Warshoe said as patiently as he could, "if they were going to panic, they should have done it at the outset. And if their morale's finally broken, why in all the gods' names did it happen simultaneously for their entire formation? Hasn't it been your experience that when a force routs, it usually at least begins breaking one subunit at a time?"
"And just how in Phrobus' name do you know they didn't start breaking that way?" Fahlthu demanded harshly. "I couldn't see through the solid top of a hill to watch the exact pattern of it—could you?"
Warshoe ground his teeth together and managed not to scream at the idiot. Gods above, this fool wouldn't have lasted three months in the King's Own! He's made his mind up about what's happening, and he's not about to let any inconvenient little facts interfere now.
"Milord," he tried once more, "what if it's a feigned retreat?"
"And what if it's Hirahim Lightfoot's long-lost mother?" Fahlthu shot back sarcastically. "No, Master Brownsaddle. You tend to your responsibilities—whatever they really are—and I'll tend to mine. And right now, mine are to go finish off an overconfident young whippersnapper who let guts and determination get the better of good sense!"
He urged his horse from a canter to a gallop, and Warshoe let his mount fall back. He watched Fahlthu spurring up the hill, waving his sword and shouting at his more laggardly men, and shook his head.
It was always possible Fahlthu's analysis was correct and Warshoe's was wrong. In that case, the cavalry commander had more than enough men to finish off Trianal and Yarran, and Warshoe could leave the brute labor up to him. Even if Fahlthu was wrong, it didn't necessarily follow that Trianal's plan—whatever it was—would succeed. But whether it did or not, Warshoe had no desire to find himself embroiled in the sort of melee that was going to ensue when Fahlthu finally closed for the kill. He was a specialist these days, not a common trooper. And if Fahlthu failed—or even if he succeeded, but Trianal himself escaped death—a specialist in the right place might accomplish more later on than all of Fahlthu's cavalrymen put together in the wrong place could manage now.
Or, for that matter, a specialist might be required to see to it that Fahlthu himself wasn't around to . . . discuss his orders with Lord Festian or Baron Tellian. It would be most inconvenient for Baron Cassan if the Golden Vale captain were to be taken alive, and Darnas Warshoe wasn't in the habit of inconveniencing his patron.
He smiled unpleasantly at the thought and began dropping back from the front ranks of the pursuit.
* * *
Trianal Bowmaster's entire body ached. He supposed that he'd probably been nearly this tired sometime before in his life; he just couldn't remember when.
He drew rein, and the stallion beneath him blew harshly, a deep, heaving sound of fatigue and gratitude. The warhorse's nostrils flared, patches of crusty lather splotched his dark shoulders and flanks, and Trianal could feel the powerful muscles quivering with exhaustion. He leaned forward, patting the coal-black neck and whispering endearments. If he and his surviving men were reeling with fatigue, their horses were even further spent, and every one of them owed his life to his mount.
Not that there were very many of them, he thought bitterly.
He turned and looked back. The enemy had pursued them doggedly for almost three hours now, and the sixty or so of his troopers who remained couldn't stay in front of them much longer. It was fortunate that they'd come so close to breaking contact when they fell back across the hills. That blessed pause while the enemy's main body came up had let them open the range still further. Even more important, it had allowed Trianal's battered troops to reorganize themselves on the fly. Holes in the chain of command had been plugged, formations had been beaten back into order, and his entire surviving force had emerged as a compact formation readily responsive to his bugle commands.
And it was as well that it had, because the grueling pursuit had been even more costly than he'd allowed himself to believe it might. Captain Steelsaber would not send any more messages for Trianal; he lay somewhere miles behind, with an arrow through the base of his throat, and eight of his troopers lay scattered along the track of their retreat with him. Nor had Trianal been able to stay out of the fray, whatever Sir Yarran would have preferred. One of his two saddle quivers was completely empty; the other contained his last five shafts, and at that, he had more arrows than most of his men.
The moment had come, he thought, looking back at the irregular lines of horsemen sweeping across the grass behind him. The sun was sliding down the western sky as the short, northern spring day wound towards twilight. There was no more than an hour and a half—two hours at the outside—of daylight left. Long enough for a fight to the finish before darkness let the weaker side escape, but only if the fight began soon.
And it would, he told himself grimly. One way or the other, whether his desperate plan worked or not. His men's mounts were stumbling, and their quivers were empty. They were a beaten force, fleeing at the best pace their stumbling horses could still maintain while the reserve the enemy commander had pulled back and ruthlessly maintained gradually accelerated its pace. Its horses were scarcely what one could have called fresh, but despite their fatigue, they were far closer to that than the staggering creatures under Trianal's men, and they were pounding closer with every passing moment.
Trianal gazed at them for a moment longer, then sent the stallion back into motion. The big horse responded with a gallantry that made Trianal want to weep, but there was no time for that. His tattered survivors' wavering course was leading them directly towards a shallow river valley.
It wasn't much of a river—little more than a large creek, which normally disappeared entirely at the height of the summer. For now, it still chattered cheerfully in its shallow, gravel bed, singing with the strength which was the gift of the final rains of spring. Its valley was at least a bit more impressive than the "river" itself, if not a lot. It was little more than fifty yards across at its widest, narrower in most places than the ravine they'd followed that morning, but willows and short, brushy trees marked its course, drinking thirstily from the stream. The slope down into the streambed was shallower on this side, and steeper to the west, and Trianal could almost feel the triumph which suffused their pursuers as they realized what that steeper bank would mean for the exhausted horses they pursued.
Assuming that any of Trianal's men made it to the top of the far bank, they would at least have a long, gradual downslope on the far side. Not that it was likely any of them would make it up out of the valley before the pursuit caught up with them.
Trianal leaned forward into his horse's mane like a jockey, urging the stallion on with hands and voice, melding with the driving motion of the powerful, straining muscles between his thighs. Feeling the horse's gasping fight for air as the stallion's eyes blurred with exhaustion and he ran his mighty heart out at his rider's dem
and.
The sky was clear, yet for a moment anyone with the concentration to spare would have sworn that he'd heard thunder. Then it came again—a dull, rolling, throbbing sound, more sensed than heard . . . but not imagined. Never imagined.
Trianal looked up, his eyes wide with sudden hope, and then the western bank of the streambed disappeared under a line of galloping horses.
* * *
Sir Fahlthu didn't hear the thunder, but he saw it. Saw the rolling storm of cavalry coming straight at him. They must have had observers perched up there, waiting, timing the moment perfectly. He didn't know exactly how the terrain laid out beyond the river, but he knew it had to break downward to the west. It was the only way the oncoming troopers in the colors of Balthar and Glanharrow could have gotten their mounts all the way up to a full gallop without being seen.
How? he wondered almost calmly. How did the little bastard get word to them? They're still an hour's hard ride from Glanharrow Keep. How could they possibly get here in time—and with their horses rested this way?
And the fact that those horses were rested was painfully obvious as the charging horsemen came down the bank like an earthquake. The shallow water of the stream exploded in white wings of spray under the driving hoofs of their mounts, bugles sang wild and fierce, sounding the charge over the deep, hungry bay of voices shouting Trianal's name like a battle cry, and Fahlthu's pursuit slithered to a halt in broken bits and pieces.
Some of his men turned in a vain effort to flee back to the east, towards the illusory sanctuary of the Bogs. But they would never reach the safety of the swamps, and Fahlthu knew it. The tables had just been brutally reversed. However much fresher than Trianal's staggering mounts his horses might have been, they were nowhere near so fresh as the rested, galloping warhorses coming towards them. Warhorses under vengeful troopers who were also fresh . . . and who had full quivers.
He stared at his company's onrushing doom, watching the gryphons at its head—blue and white of Balthar, and the gray of Glanharrow—writhe and dance, and despair was bitter in his mouth. There was no point trying to surrender his men, not after the way they'd massacred Trianal's wounded, and he knew it. But it was impossible to escape that thunderous, vengeful wave, either, and he loosened his saber in its sheath.
He was still staring at the dancing gryphons when the arbalest bolt smashed through the backplate of his cuirass and shattered his spine.
* * *
Darnas Warshoe watched from his motionless warhorse as Fahlthu tumbled from the saddle. He grimaced in satisfaction, then dropped the heavy arbalest, wheeled his horse, and went racing away. He would miss the weapon, and only its long range had let him take the shot from so far behind the Golden Vale captain, but his horse would miss its weight even more, and at this particular moment, that was what mattered. Warshoe was far enough back to have an excellent chance of staying ahead of the pursuit until darkness, especially if overrunning the rest of Fahlthu's men slowed it up a bit.
He might have to run his horse to death to do it, he reflected philosophically, but new horses were easier to find than new heads.
* * *
Trianal sobbed for breath as the rolling-thunder onslaught crashed past him. It seemed in that moment as if there were literally thousands of armsmen in Balthar's blue and white and Glanharrow's gray. There weren't, of course. There were only the other six troops he'd brought from Hill Guard and the seven more in Lord Festian's service. Only thirteen troops—scarcely two hundred and sixty men—all told. But they might as well have been a thousand as their fresh, tight formation smashed into the men who'd pursued Trianal for so long behind a hurricane of arrows.
"We did it!"
It took him a moment to realize that that exultant scream of triumph had come from his own throat, and when he did, his face blazed with humiliation. But even as he cursed the outburst as a sign of his own youthful lack of maturity, he heard someone laughing uproariously. He turned his head with a glare, and found himself face to face with Sir Yarran. Somehow, the older knight had managed—along with Trianal's standard-bearer and bugler—to cling to Trianal like a cocklebur, and now his face wore an enormous grin.
"Aye, we did, lad—you did." Yarran shook his head. "Truth to tell, lad—I mean, Milord—I thought you'd maybe one chance in three of pulling it off. But you did. You actually did!"
Yes, I did—we did, Trianal thought, gazing back the way they'd come at the swirling cloud of death as the relief force rampaged through their exhausted pursuers like a battering ram. He brought the stallion down from a hard gallop to a walk, and he could hear bugles, screams, even the crash and clash of steel.
We did it. But we only managed it because of the carrier pigeons, and my own estimate of the odds was lower than yours, Yarran. Gods, how I wish they'd been some way for Lord Festian to tell us he'd received the message in time!
"Let's get the men together and the horses cooled, Sir Yarran," he said, meeting his mentor's eyes, and the older man nodded with almost paternal pride.
"Aye, Milord," he said. "Let's be doing that."
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Bahzell stepped up onto the mounting block and clambered into the saddle on Walsharno's back.
He still felt ridiculous.
Someone his height wasn't supposed to need a mounting block—an outsized mounting block—just to get him high enough to cram a toe into the stirrup. And a champion of Tomanâk wasn't supposed to heave himself into the saddle as if he had only the vaguest notion of how it was supposed to work. And, to top it all off, Bahzell Bahnakson wasn't accustomed to looking (and feeling) clumsy, whatever he might be doing.
a mellow voice said in the back of his brain. The voice was much deeper than Brandark's, but it carried an acerbic tartness that reminded Bahzell strongly, one might almost say painfully, of the Bloody Sword.
"And aren't you the fine one to be giving advice?" he muttered. "You, with all four feet on the ground! I'm after being a hradani, not a blasted sideshow acrobat!"
"You'll be finding more than enough to agree with you there, my lad," Bahzell assured him even as he settled fully into the saddle. "But while we've the topic of staying put before us, it's happier I'd be if I were after having more to hang onto up here."
Walsharno said tartly.
"All very well for you to be saying!" Bahzell shot back with a grin, knowing Walsharno could taste his humor as if it were the stallion's own.
Walsharno continued,
"Ah, well, it might be as there's a mite of sense in that," Bahzell acknowledged with a chuckle. "But seeing as how you're the one who's after doing the steering and all, would you be so very kind as to be moving off sharpish now?"
Walsharno snorted, and Bahzell felt powerful muscles twitch under him. That deliberate, preliminary twitch was the only notice he received before the courser bucked . . . playfully, he thought. At least it was sufficient warning for him to tighten his knees, grab the high cantle of his war saddle with both hands, and hang on as the stallion landed with sufficient energy to jar his teeth. The sight of two tons of "horse" arching its back and kicking up its heels was one which had to be seen to be believed, and his spine felt an inch shorter when Walsharno finished with him.
"Oh, aye, you might be saying that," Bahzell assured him, still clinging to the cantle like grim death, just in case.
the stallion said silently, then moved off as sedately
as a child's first pony.
The hradani heard the courser's silent laugh somewhere deep in his mind, and shared it. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to do, although he'd never imagined he might be that close to another living creature. He understood now why every wind rider called every other wind rider "brother," regardless of birth or rank, for anyone who had shared the intensity of communication with a courser had been forever set apart.
In Bahzell's case, his conversations with Tomanâk had, in an odd sort of way, provided a kind of preliminary training for the bond with Walsharno. It wasn't the same, of course, and yet there were undeniable similarities. More importantly, perhaps, Tomanâk had accustomed Bahzell to the idea that he wouldn't always be alone inside his own skull.
Walsharno agreed sardonically, following Bahzell's thoughts.
"You just be keeping your comments to yourself," Bahzell told him, and Walsharno snorted another laugh.
Bahzell laughed with him, despite the grim reality behind their departure from Warm Springs. He couldn't help it as he tasted the stallion's vibrant personality and strength and felt the way they fused with his own. He knew how desperate a struggle lay before them, yet he had never felt more magnificently alive, except perhaps, in a very different way, in those rare moments when a portion of Tomanâk's power and personality flowed through him. And with that sense of shared strength and power came the knowledge, the absolute certainty, that he would never face this danger—or any danger, any loss—alone again.
"So, you're ready, Longshanks," a familiar voice observed dryly as Walsharno carried him out of the stable yard.
Bahzell looked across at Brandark, whose warhorse looked oddly shrunken, almost toylike, from the Horse Stealer's perch. Even he wasn't accustomed to looking down at a warhorse.