Where mounts were reined in, hard.
The two forces then regarded each other in a stony silence that for many breaths was broken only by the snorting of their head-tossing mounts. One band numbered eight in all; the heir of Hammerhand and seven knights, three of them riding with visors down, as if expecting war.
The other mustered twelve: the Lyrose heir and his two younger brothers, three bowmen whose saddle-slung crossbows were only a few turns shy of full, firing-ready tension, and six knights.
"Well, now," Eldred Lyrose said at last, flashing a brief and mirthless smile, "it seems the forest yields up stranger game at our every hunt. Ready bows."
His eyes never left the Hammerhands as he spoke those last words, so calmly that two of his bowmen did not at first take them as an order, and had to scramble to join the third in cranking windlasses to bring their bows to full, straining tension.
"Do you customarily hunt in full armor, Eldred?" the Hammerhand heir asked coolly, making a casual gesture that brought swords sliding out of scabbards in hissing unison amid the Hammerhands behind him.
"It seems I scour out vermin when full-armored, Dravvan," Eldred Lyrose replied softly, and raised his riding whip to point at Dravvan Hammerhand.
"Bowmen, scour me this talkative one," he announced with a smile, then added, "Fire at will."
Three crossbows loosed their quarrels in a triple crash-and Dravvan Hammerhand's head spun bloodily around on his shoulders, neck broken and skull shattered by three heavy war-quarrels bursting into it in eager unison.
There were gasps from the Hammerhands and shouts of glee from the Lyroses-ere the foremost Hammerhand knights spurred forward with furious bellows of "Fell magic! Slay them! Slay them all!"
Eldred Lyrose's casual manner vanished in an instant as he spurred his horse off the trail and out of the way, seeking to circle around behind the Lyrose warband as he snatched at the helm bobbing on his saddle.
"Kill me yon Hammerhands!" he shouted as he rode. "Let not a one of them-"
A low-hanging bough swept him out of his saddle into a startled landing among the dead leaves. The rest of his words would have been drowned out anyway in the loud tumult of snorting horses, shouting men, and ringing clangs of furiously-swung swords clashing with each other and rebounding off armor. Horses reared, lashing out with hooves and crying their displeasure, as men fought to find room enough among the trees to swing their blades.
Dravvan rarely rode anywhere without his bodyguard, three strong and serpent-swift veterans. They led a charge, aghast at Dravvan's death and the impossible manner of it-his armor should have stopped that bowfire! — and it so happened the spot where the Hammerhands had halted upon seeing their rivals afforded them space enough to spur their horses, whereas the riders of Lyrose were hampered by trailside trees.
So it befell that one Lyrose knight, in less than the time it took him to draw breath again after roaring out his mirthful approval of Dravvan Hammerhand's fate, was driven from his saddle by the sheer force of the sword cuts seeking his face. Head ringing, he fetched up against a tree, dazed and stumbling, and was ridden down and trampled ere he could raise his blade with any strength.
The bowman behind him, helmless and in lighter armor bearing weaker iron-warding spells, was promptly rendered faceless by a deep-biting Hammerhand blade. He hadn't even started to topple from his saddle ere swords were slashing out across it, to hew the crossbow held by his nearest fellow into ruin.
Then the Hammerhand bodyguards were in among the Lyrose, hacking and thrusting at wild will, dealing death viciously with no thought for their own safety.
That savagery won them two more kills before a Lyrose blade first drew blood. The wounded Hammerhand bodyguard, reeling in his saddle and beset from all sides, caught sight of the running Eldred Lyrose-and spurred his mount right at the terrified Lyrose heir.
He was dead with three Lyrose swords in him before his snorting, plunging mount reached the oldest son of Lord Magrandar Lyrose. Yet his screaming, pain-seared warhorse, sides slashed by Lyrose blades and the dead man on his back falling hard and heavily down to the left to batter against trees and drag the saddle painfully awry, charged right through Eldred Lyrose, hooves thudding hard. On it galloped, fleeing wildly through the trees deeper into the Raurklor, leaving a trampled, groaning man thrashing feebly in its wake.
Swords were swinging in earnest now, everywhere, as the Hammerhand bodyguards sought vengeance and above all the deaths of the bowmen, and the Lyrose knights eagerly sought to carry out their lordling's orders.
Riding just behind the Lyrose heir were his two brothers: cruel Horondeir, a loud, fair-haired burly giant with a grin on his face and his sword drawn, and sly, quiet Pelmard.
Horondeir had fairly crowed at the sight of the new war-quarrels working so well-downing the Hammerhand heir, too! Now his gleeful bellows had given way to grunts of effort as he fought for his very life, surrounded by thrusting Hammerhand blades. Pelmard was nowhere to be seen.
Save by Eldred, who had time for one glimpse of his younger brother grinning down at him ere the hooves of Pelmard Lyrose's warhorse crashed down on his skull, twice and thrice. Pelmard deftly reined it around to return to the battle, its hooves dancing hard atop his brother.
Only one Lyrose knight saw what had happened, and Pelmard smiled a tight smile and drove his sword right through that man's opening mouth, before it could so much as exclaim a word. He spurred on, and that killing went unseen in the swirling fray.
"Back!" he shouted, pulling his horse wide of the trail, deeper into the trees. "To me, men of Lyrose!"
He was well content. The enspelled war-quarrels gifted to House Lyrose by the wizard Malraun had been everything the wizard had promised them to be, his cruel older brother was dead, and oafish Horondeir was doomed to die, too, if he didn't get clear of the busily-hacking Hammerhands. The Lyrose knights had been hastening to Horondeir's aid, but if his own rallying-cry drew them off just long enough…
"Over here!" he shouted again. "To me, Lyrose!"
He couldn't even see Horondeir, who was somewhere in the heart of a great knot of milling armored men on horseback, all of them plying their swords like madmen at a farm-reaping. Some of those men were screaming. A Lyrose knight fell from his saddle, one uselessly-dangling arm bouncing free as his corpse landed. Then a Hammerhand knight went down, falling on his face without a sound atop the fallen man of Lyrose.
One of the screams ended suddenly, and something wet and heavy flew out of the fray to thump and roll past Pelmard. His horse shied away, almost braining him on a tree, and he had to fight with his reins before he dared look down at the grisly thing again.
It had stopped facing him, staring up at him in unseeing horror, its mouth agape. The head of his brother Horondeir.
Then the fray was whirling around, and Pelmard realized in horror that Hammerhand knights were coming for him.
Desperately he clawed the head of his horse around and raked its sides with his spurs. "Home!" he shouted. "Home, Jhallon!"
A flung dagger bounced off his shoulder to spin tauntingly in the air before him, just for a moment. Then Jhallon, ears laid back, was racing through the trees as swift as any arrow, heading for a brown ribbon in the trees before them. That ribbon was the trail, winding its way through the trees. The trail back to Lyraunt.
Pelmard Lyrose let go of his sword and clung with both hands to the raised, flared front of his saddle, as the thunder of hooves rose behind him.
Either some Lyrose knights had won free, or the Hammerhands were still after him. Just now, with tree after dark tree seeming to leap past him in an endless whirl, he didn't dare try to look back.