That's arrows! she thought exultantly as she hear the distinctive whssst. Then: Careful. It might be rovers or deserters or bandits.
The Cutters knew her hostage value. Ordinary desert scum wouldn't.
Kuttner's mouth was open to shout when the noise came out of the west; horses in shocked fear, and then men.
"See to it!" he snapped.
The Cutter officer was already moving, whistling sharply for his horse. The superbly trained animal trotted over to its master; he grabbed the horn of the saddle and swung up with a skipping vault as it went by, his feet finding the stirrups. A part of her grudgingly admired the horsemanship; the man's leather-and-mail armor was lighter than a Western knight's panoply, but it was still a formidable display.
Kuttner stayed on his feet, the heavy slightly curved sword that Easterners called a shete-derived from the tool, but lengthened in blade and hilt-in his hand. His one blue eye probed the darkness. From it came the officer's bark:
"There can't be more than five or six of them! Ai! " That was pain, and the voice was tight when it went on: " Get them, you gutless sons of apostate whores! No, don't bother shooting, you idiot-you can't see them! Blades out, swing wide to either side and charge!"
Kuttner's head whipped to the east; there was sound from that direction too, the rumble of hooves building to a gallop, and then a mingled crash and clatter of weapons and a cry of "Jesu-Maria!" and "USA!" And then, even better: "A rescue! A rescue!"
"Kill the prisoners!" the Cutter leader barked, and ran towards the sound.
Mathilda felt ice crawl up her spine and pool like water in her gut. She'd been lying with her legs curled up; now she lashed out with both her feet. They were bound at the ankle, but she had her boots on. They just barely touched the overlapping plates of leather armor that covered the guard's legs like chaps. He hissed in anger and drew his shete, raising it for a chop. Beside him his comrade did likewise.
That was a mistake. Odard had managed to writhe around and get his feet beneath him. The young Baron of Gervais bounced forward like a jack-in-the-box, his mailed shoulder hitting the second man in the side like a football tackle and sending him lurching into the first. That delayed them an instant as they staggered and found their footing again, but they both turned to chop at the young nobleman as he sprawled before them with an involuntary grunt of pain as he crashed to the ground.
That was a mistake, too. A patch of the night seemed to rise behind them, and something flashed through the starlight-a black hardwood dowel, linked to the one in Ritva Havel's right hand by a short length of chain. It whipped around one Cutter's neck with blurring speed; the free handle slapped into her other palm, and she wrenched her crossed wrists apart with explosive force.
The Cutter spasmed as the huge leverage crushed his larynx and snapped his spine like a pecan in a pair of nutcrackers. The shete that flew out of his hand struck Mathilda in the stomach, edge-on, hard enough to hurt even through the titanium mail of her hauberk and the padded gambeson beneath. She grabbed it with both bound hands and cut the rawhide thongs around her boots with one quick upward jerk; it was good steel, and knife-sharp. Then she jammed the flat of the blade between her knees and slipped her wrists over to saw at those bonds.
All that took seconds. That was time enough for the other guard to cut backhanded at Ritva. The broad point of the shete slashed sagebrush from her war cloak, but she was throwing herself backwards in a full summersault as the blow spent itself on air, hitting the toggle of the cloak, and drawing her slender longsword as she did.
"Lacho Calad! Drego Morn!"
The Dunedain war cry split the night: Flame light! Flee night! But half a dozen Cutters were closing in, on horse and on foot.
Mathilda paused just long enough to slash through Odard's bonds; he was wheezing from the awkward impact of his fall, but doggedly trying to get back on his feet. Then she picked up one of the Cutter shields and stepped to put herself back-to-back with Ritva.
"Haro, Portland!" she shouted. "Holy Mary for Portland!"
And Mary help me, I'm as stiff as an arthritic old lady! she thought desperately.
She raised the clumsy, point-heavy shete and tried to ignore the pins and needles in her arms; this one was far too heavy for her wrists, anyway. It wobbled a little despite her best effort, and she whipped it through a figure eight to loosen her cramped arm and shoulder.
"Mary's over trying to save Ingolf's fool neck," Ritva said, and laughed.
"Morrigu!" Rudi shouted, and thrust his bow through the carrying loops on the bandolier that held his quiver. "At them, Mackenzies!"
All two of us, he thought. Three if you count the dog!
He swept out his longsword in the same motion and snatched the buckler with his left hand, making a fist on the grip inside the hollow of the little soup-plate-sized steel shield.
"I've got your back, Chief!" Edain called, and followed as he ran forward, Garbh at his heels growling like millstones.
The Cutters were all looking back over their shoulders at the sound of a second attack from who-knew-where when Rudi ran out of the night, and he thought they were probably wondering whether to shit or go blind. The crucial thing was not to let them get their balance back and their wits about them…
Then he was in among them, and time slowed. Vision flashed and blurred, expanding and shrinking at the same time-threats, blades and bows, and targets, joints and faces, everything else not really seen at all. It was the gift of the Crow Goddess, only to be called upon in extremity.
A jarring thump as he dodged in under a lance-point and cut into the inside of a man's elbow, where there was a gap between the mail on his upper arm and the leather vambrace on his forearm. The man rode on, shrieking and looking in disbelief at the spouting stump where his arm had been.
Rudi whirled away with dark drops spinning from the edge, and chopped into the hock of a horse. It screamed stunning-loud, rearing and pitching over backwards and bringing another down with it. A cloth-yard shaft went whirrt over his head and into a mounted archer's chest and the shaft he had meant for Rudi disappeared into the night. Another's arrow went wide as Garbh locked her fangs in the nose of the horse-archer's mount and sent it into a rearing, bucking frenzy.
Two men coming at him on foot. A thrusting lunge as he ran, and his point went under the brim of a helmet and crunched through the thin bone at the bridge of a nose and crack into a brainpan. His buckler stopped a full-armed cut, the force of it jarring the little shield back until the edge of the shete just touched his shoulder; then the Cutter was staggering off balance and the boss punched back into his jaw, and bone crumbling under it like candy cane in a careless grip…
"Ingolf! Move, man, move!"
Father Ignatius abandoned the sword jammed tight in bone and spurred his horse forward, jerking his war-hammer free where it hung by its thong at his saddlebow. Godfrey's armored shoulder struck the Cutter who'd been about to chop down the dazed-looking man manacled to the yoke, but even in the dimness Ingolf's battered face looked blank and his eyes were haunted pits. The destrier reared and crow-hopped on its hind legs as the cleric slugged it to a desperate halt and wheeled it around.
Then in the midst of the melee the warrior-priest's eyes went wide. Mary Havel was fighting sword-and-shield against a short one-eyed man Ignatius recognized from descriptions, but that wasn't what made him stare.