One man and horse went down in a squealing, screaming, hoof-flailing tangle, while Bili took a ringing swordcut on the side of his helm in passing. Still shrilling his challenge, Mahvros came to a rearing halt, pivoted, and returned to savage the downed horse and rider, while Bili axed the other man out of the saddle with a single, businesslike stroke. The stallion was able to experience the brief elation of feeling manribs splinter under his hooves, before Bili urged him back toward the bridge.
Scores of hooves were pounding close behind him, when he cleared the last of the trees to see Ahndee and Klairuhnz, their blades gleaming, sitting their mounts knee-to-knee, a few paces onto the span. Three yards behind them, the trooper had uncased and strung his short bow, nocked an arrow, and calmly awaited the appearance of a target.
“Bili!” shouted Ahndee exuberantly. “Sun and Wind be thanked! We’d thought you slain.” He started to back his gelding, that Bili might have his place.
But Bili signed him to stay, positioning Mahvros a little ahead of the others. “This will be better,” he stated shortly, not seeing the smile they exchanged at his automatic assumption of command.
The trooper proved himself an expert archer, putting his shaft cleanly into the eye of the first pursuer to gallop out of the forest. His second arrow pinned an unarmored thigh to a saddletree. He nocked a third, drew … and his bowstring snapped! Cursing sulfurously in several languages, he cast away the now useless hornbow, drew his saber, and ranged up close behind Ahndee.
The next four attackers took a brief moment to form up, then launched a charge, apparently expecting their prey to remain in place and wait their pleasure. They did not live long enough to recover from the countercharge!
The leading attacker held up his shield to fend off Bili’s axe, while he aimed a hacking cut at Mahvros’s thick neck. The stout target crumpled like wet paper and the axeblade bit completely through, deep into the arm beneath, the force of the buffet hurling the man down to a singularly messy death, amid the stamping hooves.
Mahvros roughly shouldered the riderless horse aside, while Bili glanced around, seeking another opponent. At that very moment Ahndee was thrusting the watered-steel blade of his broadsword deep into the vitals of his adversary and Klairuhnz was obviously more than a match for his shaggy opponent. But the Freefighter had troubles aplenty. First his bowstring, and now his saber had broken, leaving him but a bare foot of pointless blade. With this stub, he was fighting a desperate defensive action.
In one mighty leap, Mahvros was alongside the ruffian’s mount. Shortening his grip on his axe, Bili jammed the spike into a side made vulnerable by a wide gap between the breast and back plates of an ill-fitting cuirass. Shrieking a curse, the mortally wounded man turned in his saddle to rain a swift succession of swordcuts on Bili’s helm and shoulders. While the Pitzburk turned every blow, Bili was unable to retaliate, his axe being almost useless at such breast-to-breast encounters.
Unexpectedly, the man hunched and began to gag and retch, spewing up quantities of frothy-pink blood. At this, the Freefighter reined closer, used his piece of saber to slash the dying man’s swordknot, then neatly decapitated the brigand with his own antique blade.
They had almost regained the bridge when the van of the main force caught up to them. First to fall was the rearmed Freefighter, his scaleshirt unable to protect bis back from a nailstudded club.
Bili’s better armor turned a determined spearthurst, before he axed an arm from his spearman. Then he turned Mahvros and, straightening his arms, swung his bloody axe in several wide arcs before him. He struck nothing, but did achieve the desired effect of momentarily halting most of the oncoming force and granting Ahndee and Klairuhnz a few precious moments to regain the bridge.
Bili failed to see the man who galloped in from his left, but Mahvros did not.
With the speed of a striking serpent, he swung about and sank his big teeth into the flesh of the smaller horse. The little mare was not a warhorse, and she had no slightest intention of remaining in proximity to a huge, maddened stallion. Taking the bit firmly in her teeth, she raced back into the forest, bearing her shouting, cursing, reinsawing rider only as far as the low-hanging branch, which swept him from her back and stretched him senseless on the sward.
Mahvros’s forehooves were already booming on the bridgetimbers when a hardflung throwingaxe caromed off Bili’s helm, nearly deafening him and filling his head with a tight red-blackness shot with dazzling-white stars. Only instinct kept him in the saddle; Mahvros, well-trained and intelligent animal that he was, continued on to the proper place, then wheeled about just ahead of Ahndee and Klairuhnz.
Reaching forward, Ahndee grabbed Bill’s limp arm and shook him. “Are you all right, Bili? Are you hurt?” he shouted anxiously.
Then he turned to Klairuhnz. “Your help, My Lord, he’s all but unconscious. Let’s get him behind us, ere those bastards cut him down.”
Bili could hear all and could feel movements on either side of him, but neither his lips nor his limbs would obey him. Fuzzily, he pondered on why Vahrohneeskos Ahndee would have addressed a mere roving bard as his lord.
Holding at the bridge where a flank attack was impossible had been a good idea. The blades of Ahndee and Klairuhnz wove a deadly pattern, effectively barring their foemen access to the dazed and helpless Bili, now drooping in his saddle. Thanks to the narrowness of the span, only two men at a time could attack the defenders, thus nullifying their numerical superiority. On a man-to-man basis, the ill-armed crew were no match for experienced warriors. The length of the bridge, from the forest side to the center, was soon goreslimed and littered with dropped weapons and hacked, hoofmarked corpses.
But the repeated assaults had taken other toll. Ahndee sat in agony, his left arm uselessly dangling at his side. He had used its armored surface to ward off a direct blow from a huge and weighty club, while he slashed the clubman’s unprotected throat. He was certain that the concussion of that blow had broken the arm. Klairuhnz’s horse now lay dead and the Bard stood astride the body. He had hopefully mindspoken Mahvros, but the stallion’s refusal had been final. He had been promised dire consequences should he attempt to either unseat Mahvros’s hurt brother or take his place on the big black.
Bili regained his senses just in time to see Klairuhnz sustain a vicious cut on the side of his neck and fall, blood spurting over his shoulderplates. Roaring “UP HARZBURK!” through force of habit, Bili kneed Mahvros forward and plugged the gap, admonishing the horse not to step on the fallen man. A swing of his axe crushed both the helmet and the skull of Klairuhnz’s killer. As the man pitched from his saddle, Bili belatedly recognized the face. It was that of Hofos, Komees Hari’s majordomo!
Then there were two more enemy horsemen on the bridge before him. But this time it was Ahndee who was reeling on his kak, unable to do more than offer a rapidly weakening defense. Bili disliked attacking a horse, but the circumstances left him no option. He rammed his axe spike into the rolling eye of his opponent’s mount, and in the brief respite afforded him while the death-agonized beast proceeded to buck its rider over the low railing and into the cold creek, he swung his axe into the unarmored chest of Ahndee’s adversary. Deep went that fearsome blade, biting through hide jerkin and shirt and skin and flesh and bone and into the quivering heart itself!
Someone in the decreasing group between the bridge and the forest cast a javelin and Mahvros took it in the thick muscles of his off shoulder. He screamed his pain and shock and would have reared, had Bill’s mindspeak not restrained him. Grimly, the young man dismounted and gently withdrew the blessedly unbarbed head. Backing the big horse, he turned him, beaming, “Go back to the hall, Mahvros.”