Mathilda spoke, her voice hot with anger. "You'd better let her go, Sir Joris."
The blue eyes flickered to her without the least particle of attention being diverted from Tiphaine. "This is a very bad woman, Princess," he said. "They both are. You'll understand when you're older."
The girl's temper overflowed and she stamped her foot, immediately regretting the gesture, face flushing brick red and burying her hands in her hair. "I'm nine, not four, you oaf-nearly ten! I'm old enough to remember your face and I'll see you broken on the wheel someday unless you let her go!"
Joris laughed, but there was the slightest edge of uncertainty in it. Rudi knew what he must do. He shouted as he ran in, and the bow was in his hands like a spear. Like a spear he thrust it up at the knight's face, aiming for his right eye. The response was automatic, when the shield was pinned immobile by the woman he held behind it; he cut backhanded at the threat to his face. The sword flicked out, the heavy blade moving with the blurring speed of a strong man's trained wrist and shoulder. It cracked through the tough yew and flashed within a fraction of an inch of Rudi's nose, even as the boy threw himself flat with a yell. That saved him, but it put him flat on his back as the longsword drew back to pin him to the ground like a butterfly on a board. What was left of the bow cracked uselessly against the shin-guard as he flailed it at the walking armored tower.
Skrinngg.
Tiphaine's sword came down across Rudi's body, like a slanting rafter. It bent under the impact of Joris' heavier blade, but the fine steel sprang back and the man's weapon buried itself in the dirt. Joris wrenched at it with desperate strength, and in the same instant used his shield in a slamming blow against her. That wasn't as effective as it might have been, with a suddenly screeching and madly clinging Delia on his arm, but Joris Stein was very strong. And with Tiphaine d'Ath at less than arm's reach he was striking for his life, as a man might lash out when he discovered an adder coiled under his pillow.
She had leapt headlong to cover Rudi's body, with no choice but to sacrifice balance. Now the double blow of shield and sword knocked her own blade from her hand, and sent her rolling half a dozen paces with Delia falling on her with a squawk.
Rudi lay on the ground, clutching as if it were his mother as well as the Mother. Black wings seemed to flap about him, gauzy as veils, more solid and vaster than worlds. A deep thudding came from the soil as the blade was wrenched free and rose to kill, like a great heart throbbing:
Crack.
The hooves would have killed an unarmored man. They hurt Joris Stein badly, even in the diamond instant of concentration, when every dream of for-tune and rank seemed to be glittering just beyond the point of his sword. He dropped as the great black mare reared again, her forefeet milling like a deadly circle of steel war-hammers, bugling out her challenge. Curled beneath his shield he felt the frame crack and the tough plywood shatter as the pile-driver feet stamped downward with half a ton of bone and muscle behind them, the loops coming free of the inner surface as it broke.
"Epona!"
Rudi shouted it, a trumpet-call of rage and joy. The horse dropped to all fours and trotted over to him, and he threw his arms around her neck, lost in the grassy scent as she nuzzled him against her side.
Tiphaine leapt even as the horse attacked, landed rolling and came erect with her sword back in her hand; she whipped it through a quick figure eight as Joris rose. Rudi took two steps back, leapt himself, grasped the big horse's mane and pulled himself over her withers. And shouted for sheer exhilaration as he felt her move beneath him: "Free! Free!"
Joris Stein had his own sword; he shook his ruined shield free and drew his dagger with his left hand, wincing a little as he forced the wrenched muscles to work. He dropped into stance.
"You know," Tiphaine said in that cool voice as she walked forward, "I never liked you, Joris. And you've just come onto my land, slaughtered my vassals, threatened to cut my girlfriend's throat and tried to kill a little kid I was ordered to guard."
She smiled a slow, stark smile. "But hey, you know what they say-all's well that ends well."
"I'll see you rot in Hell!"
"Undoubtedly. But we won't meet there today, I think. Usually it's just business, but I'm going to enjoy this. Let's get it on."
"Go, Epona, go!" Rudi called. "Find them!"
Astrid Larsson trotted up the hill. The wreckage of the fight was on either, side; men dead, men wounded and moaning or trying to patch their injuries. A trained eye could see how it had gone-the charge, the volley of crossbow bolts and then the savage running scrimmage up the winding pathway, the defenders failing one by one. For the last fifty yards it had been one defender, and her eyes went a little wide as she read the evidence of scuffed soil, bodies, sprays of blood on the trunks of the thinly scattered Douglas firs, a sword left where a desperate dying stroke had driven it into a trunk as deep as the blood-channel down the middle of the blade. The heavy iron scent of slaughter was as familiar as the sap and musty scuffed earth and duff of the forest floor. Eilir pointed with the tip of her bow, moving from one sign to another, and John Hordle's lips shaped a low whistle.
Then Astrid's head snapped up at the rapid thudding of hooves. It was very steep here for a horse, even one as agile as her Asfaloth or her soul-sister's Cele-broch; that was why they'd dismounted a ways back. Alleyne gave a shout of exultation as Epona halted and pawed the earth with one hoof, but the face of the titian-haired boy on her back was strained and set.
"Follow me," he said. "Quickly!"
"Wait-" Astrid said, but the big horse turned in place, graceful as a cat, and plunged away back uphill.
The four looked at each other. The rest of the Dunedain were beating the woods all around: and there was no choice at all. They bent their heads and ran up the forty-degree slope, banishing exhaustion by an act of will. The trees thinned still more, turning to an open meadow that tilted from steep hillside to sloping plateau, blue distance opening around them as they passed from the shadows of the trees into knee-high grass starred with flowers and dotted with prickly Oregon grape. There were more dead men, more wounded, and two figures that still fought-one in armor, the other in white linen and black leather, with pale hair swirling around her shoulders. As the Dunedain approached the armored man reeled back, his sword turning circles in the air as it flew away from a wrist half severed by a drawing cut.
The blond woman's sword moved with a speed that only those themselves experts could follow. The man screamed and screamed again.
"That's for finking out Lady Sandra," Tiphaine d'Ath said in a panting snarl as she struck in a blurring flurry, every blow lethal but none instantly so. "That's for risking the princess. That's for trying to kill Rudi. That's for hurting my girl, you son of a bitch!"
The man tottered and fell to his knees, moaning and clutching at his wrist.
"And this is for the character in that stupid fucking book!"
He tried to scream once more, but the sword transfixing his throat through leather and mail had cut the voice box, and his eyes alone spoke as the blood swelled through his mouth and clenched teeth in a growing tide. When the blade withdrew with a twist he fell and beat his mail gauntlets on the ground for an instant, then slumped limp. Grass and blue lupine waved in to hide most of the metal-clad shape.
Tiphaine d'Ath, Astrid thought, and felt herself smile as she raised her bow. Rudi back with us and you here to kill. This is a good day!
The Association warrior stood and let her breathing slow, eyes flicking from face to grim-held face, seeing implacable Fate in each. Then she spread her arms, sword and dagger held loosely, the spring breeze flicking wet elflocks of her pale hair around her face.