“Mahvros still can fight, Brother!” the black balked stubbornly.
“I know that my brother can still fight.” Bili mindspoke with as much patience as he could show. “But that wound is deep. If I stayed on your back, you might be permanently crippled.” Thinking quickly, he added, “Besides, the other man can fight no longer and must be returned to the hall. A horse of your intelligence is needed to keep this stupid gelding moving, yet see that it does not move too fast so that the man falls off.”
Bili was not exaggerating. Ahndee had dropped both sword and reins, and nothing save the high cantle and pommel of his war kak were keeping his limp, unconscious body on his horse. Bili grasped the grey’s bridle, faced him about, slapped his rump, and shouted. Even so, the grey made to stop at the end of the bridge, but a sharp nip of Mahvros’s yellow teeth changed his mind.
Laying down both axe and javelin, Bili grasped Klairuhnz under the arms and dragged him back from the windrow of the dead men and horses, propping him against the rail. Odd, he thought vaguely, I think he’s still alive. He should be well dead, by now, considering where the sword caught him….
Striding back, he picked up the short, heavy dart, drew back his brawny arm, then chose a target and made a running cast. One of the men with only a breastplate was adjusting his stirrup when the missile took him in the small of the back, tearing through his guts and far enough out from his belly to prick his horse when he stumbled against its flank. Scream of horse almost drowned out scream of man. The riderless mount galloped for the forest and most of the remaining ruffians made move to follow.
But a big, spikebearded man headed them off and, beating at them with the flat of a broadsword, drove them back and commenced to harangue them. Bili, leaning on his gory axe amid the dead men whom he expected to soon join, could pick out words or detached phrases of the angrily shouted monologue, despite the fact that he had not heard Old Ehleeneekos spoken in ten years.
“… cowards … to fear only one, dismounted man … creatures of filth … gotten on filtheating sows by spineless cur dogs … gain your freedom? … lead all men to the True Faith? … treasure and women? … Salvation… killing heathens…”
Bili shook his head, hoping to clear it of the remaining dizziness. A true product of his race and upbringing, he had no fear of death. He was a bit sorry that it was to come so early in his life, but then every warrior faced his last battle sooner or later. He would have liked to have seen his father and his sweet mothers just once more, but it would rejoice them when they learned that he had fallen in honor, his foemen’s blood clotting his axe from spikepoint to butt. And his brother Djehf, six months his junior, would certainly make a good Chief and Thoheeks of Morguhn, maybe even a better one than he would have made.
“DIRTMEN!” He shouted derisively at the band of ruffians. “Rapists of ewes and she-goats! Your fellow bastards here are lonely. Are you going to come join them, or are you going home to bugger your own infant sons? That’s an old Ehleen custom, isn’t it? Along with eating dung?”
He carried on in the same vein, each succeeding insult more repugnant and offensive than its predecessor. Their leader wisely held his tongue, hoping that Bill’s sneering contumely would arouse an aggressive spark in his battered band where his own oration had failed.
At length, one of the tatterdemalions was stung to the quick. Shouting maniacally, waving his aged saber, he spurred his horse at the lone figure on the bridge. Bili stood his ground; to the watching men it appeared that he was certain to be ridden down. But Bili had positioned himself cunningly, and he judged the oncoming rider to be something less than an accomplished horseman.
The horse had to jump in order to clear the two dead horses blocking the direct route to the axeman. Before the rider could recover enough of his balance to use his sword, Bili had let his axe go to swing by its wrist thong, grabbed a sandaled foot and a thick, hairy leg, and heaved him over the other side of his mount!
Dropping his sword and squalling in terror, the Ehleen clawed frantically for a grip on the bridgerail. He missed and commenced a despairing howl which was abruptly terminated when his hurtling body struck the swiftflowing water. He had been one of the “lucky ones,” arrayed in an almost complete set of threequarter plate. Since he could not swim anyway, he sank like a stone.
But Bili had not watched. No sooner was the man out of the saddle, than he who had unseated him was in it, trying to turn the unsettled and unfamiliar annual in tune to meet the fresh attackers he could hear pounding up. Hear … but not see, for once more the sick, tight dizziness was attempting to claim his senses. When at last he got the skittish horse facing the forest, it was to dimly perceive the backs of the motley pack of skulkers pound-ing toward the forest, a small shower of arrows falling amongst them, the shafts glinting as they crossed a vagrant beam of moonlight.
Bili’s brain told his arm to lift the axe, his legs to urge the new horse on in pursuit of the fleeing ruffians … vainly. His legs might have ceased to exist, while his axe now seemed to weigh tons. The weight was just too much and he let it go, then pitched out of the lowcut saddle to land on the narrow railing above the deep, icy water.
Hari and Drehkos caught the senseless body just in time to prevent Bili from joining his latest victim on the bed of the stream. While Komees Djeen led his men on the trail of the fleeing force, the brothers bore the Thoheek’s son to where Vaskos and his orderly, Frahnkos, were tending Ahndee. When Bili’s battered helmet was removed, it was found to be filled with both old and fresh blood from a nasty scalp wound. Nor was that the extent of his hurts. Once his body lay prone, a stream of blood crept from the top of his left boot, and examination revealed a deep stab in the side of the calf. Also, as was usual for a man who had fought for any length of time in plate, the skin surfaces of his muscular body from shoulders to knees were one vast bruise, while his clothing dripped of sweat.
Vaskos’s gentle probing had early established that Ahndee’s left radius was broken. It was a clean break, however, and had been more or less immobilized by the tight-fitting armguard which had encased it. The broken arm did not disturb the Keeleeohstos and his orderly. What did was not visible until more armor was stripped off. Both the left elbow and shoulder had been sprung from their sockets! So employing rough-and-ready battle-field expedients between them, the officer and the soldier snapped the two joints back into place, then set and splintered the forearm.
Poor Ahndee recovered brief, screaming consciousness, but quickly and mercifully lapsed back into insensibility.
Upon Komees Djeen’s return, it was decided that since a physician was known to be in residence to attend the ailing Thoheeks, the wounded men would be borne to Morguhn Hall, guarded by him and his troopers, while the remainder of the party returned to Horse Hall with the captured weapons, gear, and horses, most of which Hari recognized as his anyway. The broken, bloody corpses would be fetched in after sunrise.
None of Komees Djeen’s faithful Freefighters made mention of the armored man they had found wandering the forest in a daze, nor did the old Strahteegos for he had recognized his prisoner as Komees Hari’s valet, Kreestofohros.
It was a long, slow journey, for horse litters could not move so rapidly as riders. Dawn was paling the sky ere the van pounded their saberpommels on the thick, barred gates of Morguhn Hall.