After dismissing the rest of the runners, Ned turned back to Colonel Biffle. “Well, sir, if that doesn’t shift Leonidas off his sacred behind, to the seven hells with me if I know what would.” Biffle clapped his hands together, as if admiring a stage performance. In a way, Ned knew he’d just delivered a performance. “What does it say about a man when you’ve got to trick him into doing what he’s supposed to do anyhow?” he asked, and answered his own question: “It says the bastard isn’t worth the paper he’s printed on, that’s what.”
“Yes, sir,” Biffle agreed. “Now-are you really going to move forward before you find out whether Leonidas will come with you?”
“You bet I am,” Ned replied without the least hesitation. Colonel Biffle looked worried. Ned set a hand on his shoulder. “Now don’t you fret about a thing, Biff. The good part of riding unicorns is that we can get out of a fight as fast and easy as we can get into one. If we run into more southrons than we can handle, and if Leonidas still hasn’t woken up, we’ll pull back again, that’s all.”
Now Biffle’s face showed relief. “That’s better, sir. That’s a hells of a lot better. We can’t lick Guildenstern all by our lonesome.”
“I wasn’t finished,” Ned said. “The other thing is, if the footsoldiers don’t follow, the Lion God won’t feast on the blood of the lamb. He’ll taste Leonidas’ blood, you see if he doesn’t.”
From any other man, that might have been a joke. Colonel Biffle didn’t act as if he thought Ned were joking, which was just as well, for Ned meant every word. Biffle said, “Don’t be hasty, sir. If the priesthood curses you, half your riders will desert.”
“Ah, but what a fine bunch of devils the other half would be,” Ned replied, now with a charming grin. “Besides, I’m hoping it won’t come to that. Let’s get mounted up, Colonel, and we’ll find out, eh?”
At his command, the trumpeters blew advance. The unicorns rode south and east over a little wooden bridge, their hooves drumming on the timbers. Looking back over his shoulder at the troopers who followed him, Ned of the Forest nodded to himself. He already had a pretty fine bunch of devils. The southrons had found that out on a number of fields. Now he intended to teach them another lesson.
“We’re going to find Guildenstern’s men,” he called to the unicorn-riders. “We’re going to find ’em, we’re going to smash through ’em, we’re going to get between them and Rising Rock, and we’re going to break their army all to flinders. How’s that sound, boys?”
The unicorn-riders whooped. They growled like wolves and roared like lions. For a heady moment, Ned felt as if they could beat Guildenstern’s army to flinders all by themselves. Steady down. He deliberately made the mental command stern. Thinking you could do more than you really could was as dangerous as not thinking you could do enough.
They hadn’t gone much more than a mile when shouts of alarm and crossbow bolts hissing through the air announced they’d found the foe-and that the foe had found them. Ned grimaced. It wasn’t an ideal place for a fight: the road ran through dense forest, in which a man couldn’t see very far. But Ned didn’t hesitate. If this was where King Avram’s men were, this was where he’d hit them.
“Dismount!” he shouted, and the trumpeters echoed his commands. “Form line of battle and forward!”
Colonel Biffle said, “Leonidas had better come after us now.” He cocked his head to one side. “Unless I’m plumb daft, we’ve run into a lot of southrons here.”
“I’d say you’re right,” Ned agreed. “Well, this here is what we came for. Ride on up the road with me a ways, Colonel, why don’t you? We’ll just see what we’ve got.” Without waiting to find out whether Biffle followed, he spurred his unicorn on.
Biffle didn’t hesitate. No man under Ned’s command hesitated when ordered to ride with him. On they went-and collided headlong with a squad of southron cavalry trotting north down the road to see what sort of force they’d just bumped into.
Ned’s saber flew into his left hand before he was consciously aware of reaching for it. Where a more prudent man would have drawn back, he howled curses and galloped toward the enemy. Their startled cries became shouts of pain when he slashed two of them out of the saddle in quick succession. His unicorn, a well-trained beast, plunged its horn into the side of another southron’s mount. The wounded animal let out a scream like a woman in torment and bucketed off, carrying its rider out of the fight.
Colonel Biffle traded swordstrokes with a southron, then slashed his shoulder to the bone. That was enough for the unicorn-riders in gray. They fled back up the road they had ridden down so confidently. But as they fled, one turned back and shot a crossbow over his shoulder.
The quarrel caught Ned of the Forest in the right upper arm. He cursed foully as blood began soaking his sleeve. It wasn’t a bad wound; he could still open and close his right hand. But he felt dizzy and weak and more than a little sick. It might not have been a bad wound, but no wound was a good one.
“You all right, Lord Ned?” Colonel Biffle asked anxiously.
“Just a scratch,” Ned answered. But his voice gave him away-he sounded woozy, even to himself. It was more than a scratch, even if the bolt had only torn a gouge in his arm rather than piercing him through and through. Angry at himself for showing weakness, he tried to make light of it: “I’m fine.”
Biffle shook his head. “You don’t look fine, sir, and you don’t sound so fine, either. Let me bind that up for you, and you take a drink of this here while I’m doing it.” Like a lot of officers, he carried a flask on his belt. He handed it to Ned.
“I don’t know…” Ned was rarely irresolute, but he hesitated here. He hardly ever drank spirits, and despised drunkards with all his soul.
“It’s medicine, sir,” Colonel Biffle said firmly as he got to work on Ned’s arm. “It’ll put the heart back in you. You need it, by the gods. You’re green around the gills. Nothing to be ashamed of-any man who gets wounded looks that way.”
“All right.” Ned yielded. “Here, you’ll have to pull the stopper out.” Colonel Biffle briefly paused in his work, took the flask from Ned, and then gave it back to him. Still unhappy, Ned raised it to his lips and took a long pull. He almost spat the mouthful out into the dirt of the roadway. After he’d choked it down, he wheezed, “Gods, that’s foul! How can you stand to drink it?”
Biffle looked affronted. “Them’s prime Franklin sipping spirits, Lord Ned. You won’t find better anywhere in Detina. Take another slug. It’ll do you good.”
“It tastes nasty enough-it must be strong medicine,” Ned said, and forced himself to drink again. Flames ran down his throat. They exploded like a firepot in his belly, spreading heat all through him. The wound still hurt, but Ned felt himself once more, or at least better able to carry on. He gave the flask back to Biffle. “Thank you, Colonel. I reckon that did some good.”
“Fine,” Biffle said. “I’ve got you just about patched here, too.”
“Thank you kindly,” Ned of the Forest repeated. Thinking of firepots made him raise his voice to a battlefield shout: “Captain Watson! Come here-I want you!”
“Coming, sir!” The officer who headed Ned’s field catapults was a fresh-faced boy who couldn’t yet have twenty summers. When he’d reported to the unicorn-riders, Ned had thought some capricious fellow over in Nonesuch was playing a joke on him.
But Viscount Watson always got the dart- and stone-throwers up to the very front of the fight, and any officer who did that had little to complain of from Ned of the Forest.
Ned pointed toward the trees not all that far away, from which the southrons were still shooting at him. “I want your engines to pound those bastards. Pound them, do you hear me? They’re here in numbers, and we’ve got to shift ’em.”