Arrows flickered by, half seen. One banged off the chamfron over Epona's face, startling a snort out of her. Another slammed into his shield, punching through the sheet-metal cover and standing humming in the double thickness of bullhide and plywood beneath. It rocked him back in the saddle for an instant, and felt like a sharp rap with a hammer. The evil quiver of it ran into his hand through the grip.
With it came that little fillip of astonishment you always felt, that someone was trying to kill you. Then everything seemed to slow down, as it usually did in a fight-as if he were in a universe of amber honey, or the floating movements of a dream, with noise and danger and death something infinitely distant.
He slanted the lance down to the level over Epona's neck where her head pounded up and down with the convulsive effort of her gallop. A man on a pony was just ahead, wide staring blue eyes and a shock of sun bleached blond hair and a young faced spotted with zits, dropping his bow and reaching for the shete at his belt and trying to dodge all at once.
Too late. Rudi clenched thighs and braced his feet, hand and arm clamping his lance against his side at the last instant, putting nearly a ton-weight of gallop ing horse and man behind its narrow foot-long point. Epona swerved on her own to help place that point exactly where it needed to go.
Thud.
The massive impact slammed him back against the high cantle of the war saddle, his whole body feeling as if it flexed like a snapping whip… or as if only the armored shell that surrounded him kept parts of him from flying off and his spine breaking in two. The lance head crunched through meat and bone and out the other side of the Rover's body in a double spray of red and an other from his mouth and nose, flipping him into the air as his pony ran out from under him. There was a drag ging weight for an instant, then a hard crack as the lance shaft split across. Epona stumbled slightly, and gathered herself again.
Rudi clubbed the stump of the lance down on a head shaven save for a roach at the back. Wood cracked, or bone, or both; he couldn't tell which, but he let the bro ken shaft drop and swept out his longsword. He kept his head moving from side to side; a helmet hurt your pe ripheral vision and one with a visor killed it dead. Something coming at you when you couldn't quite see it could turn that literal really fast.
Dust and screaming men and wounded horses sound ing like women in a bad childbirth, and a flicker of steel half seen. He brought his shield up and around, slanting it above his head without blocking his vision. An ax filed down from an old tree chopper bounced off its curved surface and he stabbed beneath the shield's lower edge, across his own body from right to left. The ugly soft heavy resistance meant that the point had gone into a belly, and he twisted his wrist sharply as the speed of the horses dragged it free. The Rover already stank beyond belief of sour milk and rancid butter and old sweat, and the wound added to the smell as he shrieked and fell away.
An enemy to his right cut skillfully at his sword-side leg with a shete while he was occupied, striking hard enough to bruise his calf even through the spring steel greave that covered it, then froze for an instant with his mouth in an O of surprise as the curved slashing blade bounced away, vibrating in his hand and almost cutting into his own horse. Rudi smashed a backhanded cut at the man and sent him reeling away as the heavy knife-edged blade raked his shoulder and arm. A spray of blood followed the yard of edged metal, casting red drops through the air in a looping spray.
"Morrigu!"
Another Rover had been unhorsed and tried to roll under Epona's belly with a long knife. She used her speed and armored breast to knock him down, and then stamped on him as she galloped over, deliberately and hard. Rudi didn't have time to pay attention to the popping, crunching crackling sound that followed as the man's body was caught between those pile-driver hooves and the hard, hard ground, but some part of him knew he'd remember it later. He caught flickers of movement to either side: Rovers going down with lances in the chest or belly, cow ponies bowled over by the mas sive impact of the barded destriers and rolling right over their riders often as not. Then the swords were out, and the charge slowed into a melee.
"Morrigu!" he screamed again, stabbing and hacking and keeping Epona moving. "Morrigu!"
Ugly steel-in-meat sensations flowed up his arm, and the harder crack of an edge meeting bone. Epona aided him with hoof and teeth and battering weight, as if their bodies were one.
"Red Hag! Red Hag!"
A medley of war cries joined his: "Haro! Holy Mary for Portland!" and "Richland!" and "Lacho calad, drego Morn!" and "Face Gervais, face death!" all blending into a single stuttering roar under the sudden scrap-and-anvil sound of battle.
Ingolf's shete took half a face away, then cut back into a thigh. Mathilda hung back at Rudi's left, the big kite-shaped shield with its blazon of the Lidless Eye in crimson on black covering her from eyes to ankle, sword moving in economical chops and thrusts at anyone who tried to engage him. Odard slammed his sword into the back of a skull, nearly died as he tried to tug it free, then abandoned it and snatched the war-hammer that hung at his saddlebow and swung it in an arc that ended with a gruesome popping as the serrated steel head struck a rib cage…
Then the standard of the two horse tails was near Rudi. A young man bore it in his left hand and a war-pick in his right-cut down from an old pickax, spike on one side and narrow hammerhead on the other. Beside him was another Rover with a good steel helm shaped like an old-time football helmet, and metal and-leather armor on his body. That and the fine shete in his hand probably marked him as the chief of this band. A red beard streaked with a few strands of gray and powdered with dust fell down his chest. Ritva and Mary came in at him from the other side, one with the sword, the other thrusting overarm with her lance from behind.
The chief banged the lance head up with his shield and cut at the shaft in the same motion, cunningly aiming behind the metal lappets that guarded the wood for a foot below the business end. There was a crack and the top two feet of the weapon went twinkling away. The shete looped up in a backstroke that beat down the other twin's sword thrust in a shower of sparks, and then the press swept them away. Rudi's knees and balance set Epona at him; the banner bearer's horse was in the way, but the destrier's shoulder set the lighter pony back on its haunches with a thudding smash. The Rover chief pivoted his mount with effortless skill to avoid the rush and come in on Rudi's unshielded side.
The black wings beat behind Rudi, invisible, more solid than stone and vaster than worlds. He felt as if his blood had been replaced with something that scalded and froze at the same time, like boiling acid. Somewhere an eerie keening wail sounded, and he knew it was from his own throat. The shete floated out towards him, aimed at the vulnerable underside of his jaw. He ducked his head and cut at the Rover's thigh; the plate of metal-rimmed steerhide shed the blow.
Bang.
The shete glanced off the upper part of his visor, and then slid from the curved surface of his helm. Weight carried it upward, and the long point of Rudi's sword darted out like a frog's tongue striking for a fly. It went in under the chief's armpit, broke the links of the patch of mail there and ran another three inches into flesh.
Behind the wire grid face mask of the Rover's helm his eyes went wide and shocked at the sudden agony. His shield arm dropped useless to his side. Rudi stood in the stirrups and brought his longsword up and around and back until the point tapped his brigandine over his own kidney, then down with all the lashing power of arm and shoulders and gut. Hard leather and thin metal parted under the knife sharp edge of the heavy blade, and the chief was galloping away shrieking, with blood spouting from the ruined arm that hung by a few shreds of flesh and gristle and armor.