Miles fell away, empty but tense, the untenanted pastures fading back into unclaimed woodland on either hand, and the rutted track curved ahead of them. It bent around a thick stand of second growth timber, and Bahzell’s ears jerked suddenly up as a bird exploded from the treetops. It circled, chattering angrily down at something, then arced away with an irritated flap of its wings, and he reached up to grip Brandark’s shoulder. The Bloody Sword drew rein instantly and looked down at him.
“The bird?” he asked quietly, and Bahzell nodded, narrowed eyes measuring distances and angles.
“Aye. Something startled it, and whatever it was, it’s not coming on around the bend, now is it?”
“True.” Brandark shifted in the saddle, joining his friend’s survey of the terrain. The trees had closed in, turning the road into a passage a bare twenty yards wide, and he tugged on his long nose thoughtfully. “I imagine they’d like us to come around that bend all fat and happy,” he murmured.
“So they would. The question, I’m thinking, is how patient they are.”
“Well, there’s one way to find out.” Brandark trotted to the side of the road, and leaned out of the saddle to tie the other beasts’ leads to a convenient limb. Then he moved back to Bahzell’s side, turned his mount to face the bend once more, and rested his folded hands on his saddle pommel.
“I make it-what? A hundred fifty yards to the bend?”
“About that,” Bahzell agreed. “Maybe a mite closer to two hundred.”
“How many shots can you get off at that range?”
“Well,” Bahzell plucked idly at the tuft of his right ear, “if I get one off the instant I lay eye on them, and if they’re still after building their speed, I might make two before one of them tries to ride me down.”
“Oh, I don’t think they’ll do that.” Brandark smiled unpleasantly, nudging his mount with a toe, and the horse sidestepped closer to his friend.
The sun burned down, hot and still in the windless air, and Bahzell held the arbalest over his left forearm while he listened to the silence. He felt no particular temptation to mount his own horse or Brandark’s second beast. Not even he could respan an arbalest handily on horseback. Besides, a Horse Stealer’s size went far to redress the normal imbalance between a mounted man and one on foot . . . as Navahk had learned to its cost.
Minutes trickled past. Brandark’s horse stamped and blew, puzzled by the stillness, and Bahzell reached out his right hand to pat its shoulder, then returned it unhastily to the arbalest. He didn’t know how many men they faced, but Churnazh must have spread his strength thin to cover all possibilities, and he would have had no choice but to concentrate on the roads east to Hurgrum. Six men? Perhaps. Certainly no more than a dozen, and likely less, or they’d not be so coy about their tactics. Of course, even six would be more than enough if they were handled properly, but-
A shrill whistle split the air, and a cluster of mounted figures appeared round the bend. They advanced slowly, walking their horses, and Bahzell grinned as he saw their livery. Churnazh’s Guard, indeed, and not a regular cavalryman-or a lance-among them.
“Two shots, I’m thinking,” he murmured, and Brandark shook his head in disgust.
“It’s enough to make me feel embarrassed,” he murmured back. “No wonder you louts handled us so rudely.”
“Now, now, don’t be too harsh.” Bahzell watched the riders approach. Eight of them, and Brandark was right. If they meant business, they should have taken the two of them at the charge. “There’s naught but two of us, when all’s said. It might be they’re thinking we’d sooner surrender, being as we’re so outnumbered and all.”
“That’s even more embarrassing,” Brandark complained. “Gods, how could even Churnazh find officers that stupid?”
“He’s the knack for it,” Bahzell agreed, “and speaking of stupid-”
The arbalest leapt up to his shoulder, and suddenly icy eyes stared down it at the Guard captain who’d spurred his horse out in front of his men. The range was easily a hundred and twenty yards, but Bahzell saw the captain’s sudden tension, the way his horse’s head flared up as his hands tightened on the reins, and then the arbalest snapped.
The quarrel buzzed through the air, glittering in the sunlight with hornet speed, and the captain screamed and threw up his hands as it struck him in the chest. It ripped through his ring mail as if it were paper, exploding out his back in a grisly red spray, and his panicked horse reared wildly.
The dying hradani tumbled to the road, and his men froze for one stunned moment. Then someone shouted, and spurred heels dug deep.
The patrol came thundering up the road, but Bahzell’s hands were already moving with trained, flowing speed. He never took his eyes from the accelerating horsemen, but the goatsfoot snapped into place by feel alone, and his arm jerked. The string clicked back over the cog, and he dropped the iron lever. There’d be no time for a third shot, and letting it fall saved a precious fraction of a second. Steel rasped beside him as Brandark’s sword cleared the scabbard, and his friend’s horse bounded forward even as the second quarrel fitted to the string and the arbalest rose once more.
Hradani-even Bloody Swords-required big horses. They needed time to gather speed, and the closest was still fifty yards clear when Bahzell spotted the rank badge he’d searched for. The arbalest steadied, the string snapped, and the dead captain’s lieutenant folded forward with a bubbling shriek as the square-headed war bolt took him in the belly.
The remaining half dozen were up to a hard canter, closing on a gallop, and Brandark thundered to meet them as Bahzell dropped the arbalest and his own sword flashed free. He felt no sense of abandonment-the momentum of a cavalryman’s horse was his greatest weapon, and Brandark would have been a fool to take that charge standing-and his lips drew back in an ear-flattened grin as the guardsmen split and three of them came for him. They were in too tight, jostling one another in their eagerness to get at him.
It was almost too easy for someone who’d cut his teeth against the Sothōii. Three massive horses careered towards him, intent on riding him into red ruin, his very motionlessness only urging them on. And then, when they were barely thirty feet away, he leapt suddenly to his left, and his sword flashed.
A terrible shriek of equine agony filled the world, and the right-hand horseman catapulted from the saddle as sixty inches of razor-sharp steel took his mount across the knees. He landed on his head, his shout of panic cut off with the abrupt, sickening snap of his neck, and his horse went down, screaming and twisting while blood fountained from its truncated forelegs.
Bahzell took a precious second to cut the animal’s throat as he stepped across it into the road, and his eyes glittered as the other two guardsmen dragged their mounts to a sliding halt and gaped back at him. He took one hand from his sword and beckoned to them, and he could almost hear them snarl as he taunted them. His own fury rose to meet them, but he fought it down, strangling the incipient Rage, as they spurred back towards him.
The distance was too short for them to regain their previous speed, yet that made them almost more dangerous, for they wouldn’t override their mark this time. They were further apart, too, opening a gap between them and wary of another feint, and he watched them come, one ear cocked to the shouts and clash of steel behind him, listening for any sound of hooves from the rear.
There was none, and he leapt forward into the opening between them as they charged down on him again. It took them by surprise. The one on his right pulled further to the side, sword poised to unleash a deadly blow, but the maneuver slowed them, bringing them in separately and not together, and Bahzell was on the off side of the one to his left. The left-hand sword came over in a clumsy, cross-body slash that whistled harmlessly wide of a quick duck, and he pivoted to his own right, blade darting up to meet the more dangerous threat from that side.