Head ringing, he rose grimly to his feet, put the tip of Battlehound on the man’s throat, and leaned.
He had no idea how long they had been fighting, but the early culling had been done. He and the eight men he had left standing were pitted against perhaps twenty warriors with sword and shield and perhaps another five defenders on the wall who had the proper angle to shoot at them. Reinforcements trying to reach them across the causeway were still being ground up by concentrated missile fire from the waerd’s engines.
He dropped down among the bodies and held his shield over his head, trying to catch his breath. The defenders were being smart and conservative, staying in the gap rather than rushing out of it.
Neil glanced around at his men. Most were doing as he was, trying for a rest despite the rain of death from above.
He reached to feel his shoulder, found an arrow jutting there, and broke it off. That sent a sharp, almost sweet jag of pain through his battle-numbed body.
He glanced at the young knight Sir Edhmon, who crouched only a kingsyard away. The lad was bloody head to toe, but he still had two arms and two legs. He didn’t look frightened anymore. In fact, he didn’t look much of anything except tired.
But when he glanced at Neil, he tried to grin. Then his expression changed, and his eyes focused elsewhere.
For a moment Neil feared a wound had caught up with him, for those who died often saw the Tier de Sem as they left the world.
But Edhmon wasn’t looking beyond the mortal sky; he was staring over Neil’s shoulder, off to sea.
Neil followed his gaze as a fresh rain of arrows fell. He was greeted by a wondrous sight.
Sails, hundreds of them. And though the distance was great, it was not too great to see the swan banner of Liery flying on the leading wave steeds.
Neil closed his eyes and lowered his head, praying to Saint Lier to give him the strength he needed. Then he lifted his eyes and felt a sort of thunder enter his voice.
“All right, lads,” he cried, swearing he heard not his own voice but his father’s exhorting the clan to battle at Hrungrete. “There’s Sir Fail and the fleet that’ll put the usurper to his heels if we do our jobs. If we don’t, those proud ships will be shattered, and their crews will go down to the draugs, because I know Fail well enough to tell you he’ll try to get through, no matter the odds, whether Thornrath is in Bloody Robert’s hands or no.
“It’s not far we’ve got to go. We’re eight against twenty. That’s hardly more than two apiece. Saint Neuden loves odds like that. We’re all going to die lads, today or some other. The only question is, will you die with your sword rusting in a sheath or swinging in your hand?”
With that he rose, bellowing the raven war cry of the MeqVrens, and the other seven leapt up with him, some shouting, some praying aloud to the battle saints. Sir Edhmon was silent, but his face held a grim joy that Neil recognized as his own.
They marshaled shoulder to shoulder and charged up the slope.
There was no great shock of contact this time; the shields bumped together, and the defenders pushed back, cutting over their rims. Neil waited for the blow, and when it hit the edge of his battle board, he hooked his sword arm up and over the weapon. Edhmon saw that and cut the arm Neil held thus trapped, half severing it.
“Hold the line steady!” Neil shouted. The warrior in him wanted to surge over the fallen man, deeper into the defenders, but with numbers against them, that would be foolish. Their line was their only defense.
One of the largest men Neil had ever seen pushed into the enemy force from behind. He was a head and a half taller than the rest of them, with a wild yellow mane and tattoos that marked him as a Weihand. He carried a sword longer than some men were tall, wielding it with both hands.
As Neil watched helplessly, the giant reached over his own men, grabbed Sir Call by the plume of his helmet, and yanked him through the shield wall, where the Weihand’s comrades hacked him to pieces.
With a roar of impotent rage, Neil slammed his shield into the man in front of him and beat at his head once, twice, thrice. The third time the shield dropped, and Battlehound slammed into his helm so hard that blood sprayed from his nose.
He pointed his sword at the giant and raised his voice above the din.
“Weihander! Thein athei was goth at mein piken!” he roared.
The result was remarkable: The giant’s face, already red, went perfectly livid. He charged toward Neil, disrupting the shield line he was supposed to be defending.
“What did you say?” Sir Edhmon shouted, panting heavily.
“I’ll tell you when you’re old enough,” Neil shot back. “But saints forgive me for insulting a woman I’ve never met.”
Before the Weihander could reach him, a new man filled the line in front of him and let his shield drop a little, perhaps as a ruse. Neil jerked his own shield up and then quickly chopped back down so that the pointed bottom of the board caught on the top of his foe’s guard and brought him down on one knee. Neil then clubbed the back of his head with Battlehound’s hilt.
Howling, the warrior charged into him, and they both went sliding down the rocky slope made by the fall of the waerd wall. Neil hit him again but couldn’t get the leverage he needed for a lethal blow; his arms and legs felt as if they’d been poured of lead.
He dropped his sword and felt for the dagger at his waist. He found it but discovered his foe had had the same idea a moment earlier as he felt the point of a dirk scrabble against his breastplate. Cursing, he fought his weapon free, but the moment had been enough; his breath went cold as steel slid through the joint on his side and between his ribs.
Choking back his scream, Neil plunged his knife under the back lip of the man’s helmet and into the base of his skull. His foe made a sound like a short laugh, jerked, then stopped moving.
Grunting, Neil pushed the limp corpse off him and tried to stand, but he hadn’t managed that when the giant reached him. He got his shield up in time to catch a blow from the fellow’s huge sword. It struck like thunder, and something in the shield cracked.
The giant cocked his weapon for another try, and Neil straightened and struck him under the chin with what remained of his shield. The Weihand stumbled back and fell.
Unfortunately, so did Neil.
Gasping, he threw off the board and retrieved Battlehound. A few kingsyards away, the Weihand rose to meet him.
Neil glanced back at the gap and saw Edhmon and four others still standing; the waerd defenders seemed to have all fallen. Sir Edhmon was starting down the slope toward the giant.
“No!” Neil shouted. “Stay together; find the siege engines. They’ll be lightly guarded. Stay together; make sure you get at least one of them! Then move on.”
The Weihand glanced at Edhmon and the others, then grinned fiercely at Neil.
“What’s your name?” he asked the giant.
His enemy paused. “Slautwulf Thvairheison.”
“Slautwulf, I apologize twice. Once for what I said about your mother, the second for killing you.”
“Just the first will do,” Slautwulf said, hefting his sword. “Silly bugger. You can hardly lift your weapon.”
Neil pressed his left hand over the hole in his side, but he knew there wasn’t any point; he couldn’t stop the blood.
Slautwulf charged then, his greatsword arcing out to cut Neil in half. Neil intended to outdistance the blow by a hairsbreadth, then rush in during the backswing, but he stumbled in the retreat, almost losing his footing entirely. The stroke missed by a decent margin, though, and the Weihand came again.
This time Neil narrowly avoided the stroke, then charged in as he’d planned. Slautwulf, however, anticipated that. Rather than trying to swing the blade again when he didn’t have time, he brought the hilt down on Neil’s helm. Neil let his legs go and collapsed, bending with the blow as much as he could, tumbling forward and thrusting Battlehound upward with all his might. He lay on his back with Slautwulf’s surprised face peering down at him.