He had thrust his sword back into its scabbard when he broke into a gallop. Now he drew it again, keeping a grip on the reins with his left hand. His eyes scanned the country ahead, looking for a good spot to turn and fight. If he could wipe out one of the groups, it might make the others a little more cautious.
A hundred yards ahead a rocky outcropping jutted from the valley wall, reaching almost to the edge of the trees. Between the rock and the trees was a space barely fifty feet wide. That was as narrow a passage as he was likely to find.
As the golden horse thundered through the gap, Blade pulled its head around to the right. It swung in along the outcropping, invisible to the men thundering up behind it. Almost at the foot of the cliff, Blade pulled the horse back around to the left, in a complete half-circle. He raised his sword as the horse thundered back toward the gap, picking up speed on the slight downslope,
He came down like a whirlwind on the four leaders almost before they saw him, certainly before they could react. His sword slashed downward, shearing completely through one man's neck. The spouting blood drenched his horse, and it panicked, rearing up and blundering into the horse beside it. The second rider yelled in pain as his leg was caught between the two horses. Then he yelled again as Bade chopped him in half.
The golden horse reared. Blade had guessed right. It was a trained warhorse. Its iron-shod hooves crashed into the ribs of a third man's horse. The other horse stopped so suddenly, its rider kept right on going, over its head and on to the ground with a thud. The fourth man drew rein, turned, and headed back for the safety of his comrades. Blade dug his heels in and the golden horse was off again.
Two were dead, one down, and one scared off. But there were still fifteen-odd left, and they showed no sign of giving up the pursuit. More stones whistled past Blade's head. More of the enemy were now using slings. All of the stones seemed to be aimed at him. By crouching low and bobbing and weaving in the saddle, he escaped with only a graze or two. He wondered why they didn't aim at the golden horse, a target far larger and more vulnerable than he was. One stone breaking a leg, and they would have him cold. Perhaps there was some taboo against killing a horse?
The pursuit went on. Blade's brief counterattack had made his pursuers more cautious. The advance group was now hanging further back than before. But this cut both ways. They could not suddenly put on a spurt and overwhelm Blade. But he could not suddenly stop and turn on them. It was down to a straight endurance race, with all the odds in favor of the men behind him.
They covered several more miles before Blade felt the golden horse begin to falter. Its flanks were going in and out like a bellows, foam was thick on its muzzle, and its breath sounded in his ears above the pounding of its hooves. He turned and threw yet another look back at his pursuers. There were five in the lead group now, and their leader was pointing at the golden horse and gesticulating wildly to his followers. Blade would have given a good deal to know what the man was saying. Two more sling shots whizzed past him, one smacking his arm hard enough to leave a red welt.
Then suddenly all five men behind him were spurring their horses on even faster than before. The gap closed rapidly. As they saw it do so, the other horsemen began to cheer and spur their horses on also.
Blade's mouth set in a hard line, and he licked his dust-coated lips. They would be up with him within minutes and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. The golden horse was almost spent. It was a miracle that it had not fallen in its tracks long before this. It was flesh and blood, not a machine.
And when the pursuers came up with him, there was nothing he could do to save himself, either. There were fifteen of them, and he could kill only so many before going down. It looked as if on this thirteenth trip his luck was finally going to run out. Well, he could at least turn and face them, take some of them with him, and not give them an easy shot at his exposed back.
He clenched his left fist and reined the horse in abruptly. It had strength left to rear and neigh in protest, hooves flailing the air, mouth open. The sudden halt brought the men behind Blade up with him before they could rein in their own horses. They shot past him at nearly full speed, too busy sawing frantically at the reins to have a chance to get their swords out. But Blade's sword was already out, and the sun flashed from the steel as it whistled out in a deadly arc.
If the man after him had qualms about killing his horse, Blade had no qualms about killing theirs. His first stroke smashed down across the muzzle of the leader's horse. The horse went down, sending its rider crashing onto the ground. Before he could rise, one of his followers, rode fulltilt over him. His screams of pain and terror were drowned out by the thunder of hooves. As the second man's horse reared, pawing the air with blood-spattered hooves, Blade swung his sword. It came down on the man's right arm, and the arm jumped into the air and fell to the ground, trailing blood. The man screamed and toppled off the other side of his panic-stricken horse.
Another man rode at Blade and this one had his sword out. Blade struck overhand, and his longer arm and greater strength did the job. The descending sword smashed through the other man's guard and split his face apart like a melon. Blade let the momentum of the heavy sword carry it down and around and back up again. It was up in time to guard against a sideways slash from a fourth man. Blade replied with a similar slash. The man jerked his body sideways and for a moment lost control of his horse. It crashed into Blade's, the shock nearly unseating both riders. But it was the enemy horseman whose sword went flying from his grip. And it was Blade who brought his sword down on the man's head, slicing through the hat as though it were paper, deep into the skull.
The remaining horsemen had now come up, and milled around Blade. The pile of dead or dying man and horses on the blood-spattered ground was enough to keep them from approaching too closely. And they were too closely packed for anyone to wind up a sling for a proper throw. Blade watched them and their wary, cautious expressions with rising hopes. For some reason these people did not dare to simply ride in slashing, to cut him and his horse into pieces by sheer weight of numbers.
But he was still surprised when one of them hailed him. The rolling, clicking gutturals the man was using were as comprehensible to Blade as English. That was no surprise. By now he was used to the computer altering his brain as it sent him into each new Dimension, so that he understood the new language at once. It was the fact of his being hailed at all that surprised him.
«Hail, rider of the Golden Steed,» the man said. «You are not Chief Nurash. We see this now. We have no quarrel with you. Give us the Golden Steed, and you shall be free to go.»
«Indeed, I am not Chief Nurash,» said Blade sharply. «But the Golden Steed is mine. It has already cost you eight men to get this close to me. It will cost you more before I die. And you will not get the Golden Steed even then.» He drew his knife and held it to the side of the horse's neck. «I will kill it before I let you have it.»
The horsemen glared at him, and there were muttered curses and remarks.
«Better it die than the Pendari get it.»
«But what about our treaty with…»