Nylan turned in the saddle and motioned to the archers. “Buretek…Ailsor.”
The two eased their mounts around Fuera’s gray and reined up.
“They’re on the way. Get your bows ready.”
Buretek gave a single sharp nod, Ailsor a sad and faint smile. Both unwrapped the longbows and took the covers off their quivers.
The low droning continued, accompanied by an intermittent series of creaks and sharper voices.
Nylan wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm, and bits of dried and sunburned skin stuck to the silver hair on the uncovered part of his arm. Sunburn-another occupational hazard.
The sound of the wagons increased, and Nylan stood in his stirrups, then motioned the archers forward, up beside him. “Won’t be long now.”
“Ser,” said Ailsor quietly.
The sun continued to burn into Nylan’s neck as they waited, as the white lancers neared the turn in the road.
He eased his mount forward to where Ailsor and Buretek would have a clear shot, wondering how long before they were seen. The two reined up and looked at him. Still, the lancers did not look uphill.
“Fire!” commanded Nylan.
Buretek and Ailsor began to loose their shafts. Several passed by the lancers unnoticed-until the first buried itself in a stained and soiled cream tunic. Even the civilized white lancers were having trouble with laundry, Nylan noted absently, wondering as he did why he’d noticed that.
“Barbarians!”
“Where?”
A Cyadoran stood up on one of the wagons and pointed toward the three Lornians. “There! After them!”
Nylan watched as the squad of lancers milled, then slowly formed, and began to ride toward the hilly rise.
“Just keep firing,” the silver-haired angel said. “Hold your mounts!” he ordered as he turned and looked back at Fuera, and those behind the young hothead, still half-concealed from the oncoming lancers. Couldn’t the idiot see that every shaft that struck left one less lancer able to fight-or fight well?
Dust rose from the north as Ayrlyn led the other two squads down on the three wagons from behind. Four of the remaining lancers turned toward the new threat, almost in slow motion, it seemed to Nylan. The fifth lancer reined up and studied the attack, and then spurred his mount out across the flat to the southeast-the only area where there were no Lornians.
“I’ll get him! I can get him,” said Fuera.
“Hold it!” Nylan snapped at the blond armsman. “The whites right in front of us.”
Fuera bared his teeth, but held his mount.
Nylan waited. Let the whites do some of the riding-uphill.
White lances out, the Cyadorans continued to canter toward the Lornian group, although three lancers had gone down, and another clutched his arm and trailed his squad, as if uncertain what to do.
A fifth looked stupidly down as an arrow slammed through his chest.
“Bows away!” Nylan told the two archers. “Fuera, you take the left; I’ll lead the right. Remember, angle from the sides. From the sides. They can’t move those lances like a blade.” He shut his mouth, realizing he was talking too much. If the training hadn’t taught them, talking right now wouldn’t do anything.
As soon as the silver-haired angel saw the two archers had sheathed their bows, he took the blade from his waist scabbard and lifted it. “Now!”
The mare jumped forward, and he lurched in the saddle before catching himself. A wry smile crossed his face-he still wasn’t totally used to leading charges while bouncing around in a saddle with a heavy iron blade in his hand.
Reflections and shimmers of light-always reflections-wavered off the small polished shields of the white lancers as they rode forward.
Nylan swung his group to the left so that they remained well uphill of the white lancers. He wanted to force the Cyadorans to look into the sun as well as climb to meet the Lornians. He hoped that would further tire the white mounts-but that meant that the glare from the damned shields would be even greater.
The smith glanced to his right and downhill where Fuera was almost level with the road and heading into the flat to the east.
With another gesture of the blade, Nylan turned downhill, and his half-squad followed.
Onward, on to another round of death…
The whites slowed, as if puzzled by attacks from two sides, and half the lances swung slowly uphill.
Before he really knew it, Nylan could see a long white lance seemingly moving toward him. He slipped aside the white lance with his short heavy blade, his eyes watering from the blast of reflected light from the shield-his success due to the “feel” that had come from Ryba’s intensive training-then struck laterally underneath the shaft. The blade sheared through the lancer’s torso and stuck, nearly wrenching the angel from the saddle before coming free.
Whhsttt…
The next lancer had dropped his lance, and Nylan had to flatten himself to avoid the sabre that threatened to take his arm. Before he could get his own blade up, he was through the column.
His head had begun to ache, his eyes to burn, and he had to guide the mare into a turn and back toward the fighting.
Another white shoved a jagged-tipped and shattered lance toward the angel, but Fuera’s blade knocked it down as the blond galloped past.
Nylan’s heavy short blade cut deeply into the white lancer’s shoulder near the neck. Blood seemed to fountain everywhere, momentarily, followed by the unseen rush of whiteness and pain that accompanied every death Nylan created.
The smith, half-blind and fighting the knives in his eyes and the pounding in his skull, kept his own blade in a semiguard position, and let the mare carry him back through the scramble to the uphill side of the road, where he reined up, temporarily alone.
Two deaths is enough…more than you can keep taking…But he felt guilty, even as he forced his eyes open, burning from both deaths and pitiless sunlight.
Most of the white lancers were down, and the white haze that only he and Ayrlyn seemed to see flooded the low area around the wagons and the remaining mounts of the Cyadorans.
A second white lancer galloped south as if his life depended on headlong flight, which it did, Nylan thought.
He turned and studied the area around the wagons, taking a deep breath of relief to see that Ayrlyn had reined up beside one of the stopped wagons.
After all the waiting and planning…and the skirmish seemed almost over before it had begun. He turned his mount downhill and northward, toward the three big wagons and their six horse teams.
“Ser?” The words were croaked, rather than spoken.
Nylan turned in the saddle.
Ailsor rode slowly toward Nylan, weaponless, blood streaking the right arm that held his left. “Ser…?”
Nylan reined up.
The archer’s face paled, and blanked, and he slumped across the neck of his mount.
Awkwardly, the angel sheathed his own blade, not bothering to clean it, and eased his mount beside Ailsor’s-too late. The archer was dead, his tunic soaked with blood. Nylan took a deep breath, knowing that he couldn’t have healed the other, not even had he reacted more quickly.
How many other Lornians had died? He surveyed the road and the grass flats. Only one other Lornian mount seemed riderless. Fuera and the others were stripping the bodies of weapons and anything else of value.
“Ser?” asked Wuerek, riding up and slowing, but not stopping. “Do we need to do graves?”
“No. At least two escaped, and we need to get out of here. Take all the spare mounts.”
“Good.”
“We need to bring back the bodies of our dead.” Nylan gestured toward the dead Ailsor.
“Yes, ser.” Wuerek’s voice was decidedly less enthusiastic, but Nylan didn’t care.