Something else took his eye. A fragment of movement, not among the trees but further round the flank of the hill. A lone figure was working its way around rocks, flitting in and out of sight. Moving towards the copse without much care for concealment. Brennan frowned and stared. He felt beads of sweat creeping down his face and the back of his neck.
It was Marweh. He was sure of it.
He rolled onto his back and looked across the top of the hill, searching for Lorin. He and Manadar were there, just coming up onto the summit, leading the three unhappy-looking horses.
‘Marweh’s there,’ Brennan called out softly.
Lorin dropped the reins and hurried to his side.
‘Where?’
Brennan pointed. ‘She’s making for the slavers. Doesn’t seem like they’ve seen her yet, but she’ll be there in a minute or two.’
Lorin hissed out between clenched teeth. He stared. He brushed the scar on his face with his fingertips. Then, resolved, he moved.
‘Let’s go,’ he snapped.
Brennan, surprised, did not follow him at once. Manadar too was caught somewhat off guard by the sudden urgency. Lorin snatched his horse’s lead from his hands and vaulted nimbly up into the saddle.
‘Had enough of all this sneaking and creeping about anyway,’ Lorin snarled, drawing his sword. ‘Nothing’s going to get settled until someone tests their fortune.’
Brennan scrambled to his feet and ran for his horse. Manadar was already swinging up onto his.
‘Hurry up!’ Lorin cried, edging forwards. ‘Yulan’s commands were to keep her from reaching the slavers, and to keep her alive. We’re about to fail in one for sure and the other most likely.’
He kicked his horse and it sprang forward and threw itself down the hillside.
Lorin shouted as he went: ‘Now it’s time to ride like you belong in the Free!’
X
When Brennan first came to the Free, Lorin had told him that two things, above all else, marked them out from other warriors and decided whether or not a man would last in their ranks. A ferocity of will that could override fear and adversity. And an unswerving commitment to hard labour; a recognition that life and death were not always decided in the moment of blade to blade clash, but often in the months and years of hard, constant practice and training that had gone before.
Every man of the Free spent countless hours in the saddle. Rudran trained them all, not just his beloved lancers, in the mastery of horses. In the space of a year, all that labour had turned Brennan from a merely competent rider into an accomplished one. Not a natural, but a passable imitation of one.
Flying down the side of that hill tested him almost to his limit. It was not the kind of ground anyone in their right mind would fling a horse down. In almost anyone else, it would be rank recklessness. For the Free, it was the kind of thing that won them battles and turned their deeds into stories. Brennan tried to hold onto that thought. But it was snatched away by the chaotic, furious demands of keeping him and his horse alive.
The animal slipped and slid, almost stumbling more than once. Brennan wrestled the reins this way and that, back and forth, trying to give their wild descent some kind of rhythm. He didn’t succeed in that but at least no bones were broken, no skulls cracked.
He risked a glance up now and again, trying to judge what awaited them below. It did not look overly promising. He glimpsed Marweh-the first, perhaps, to hear their approach-stopping and looking up. Pausing for a moment in some kind of indecision and then running for the trees. He glimpsed armed men at the edge of those trees. Men with spears and swords in hand. Faintly, above the clatter of horses’ hoofs and tumbling pebbles, he could hear shouting.
On and on, down and down, into the waiting furnace. Men ran out from the shelter of the trees, making for Marweh. Thinking, no doubt, that they could reach her first and gather her up into their less than loving embrace. Three mounted madmen, as likely to break their necks as anything else, must not yet seem an overwhelming threat.
That changed as soon as Lorin’s mount got a shallower slope beneath its hoofs. The hill began to level out into the plain, and horse and rider alike drew new strength from the easing. Lorin charged, not for Marweh but for the slavers rushing towards her. He thundered past her, and she swerved to one side and stumbled and fell. Brennan’s own horse sprang over her and he had a momentary vision of her prone form there beneath him, passing behind him.
Lorin was not here to capture or rescue one wayward slave, Brennan understood. They were going to war now. All or nothing, to be won or lost by strength of will and strength of steel.
The slavers understood as well, but too late to do anything much about it. A couple ran back towards the trees. Another couple set their spears to greet Lorin. One more loosed an arrow which skimmed past Lorin’s shoulder and flew within a hand’s breadth of Brennan’s cheek behind him. Brennan would have liked to send an arrow of his own back along that track, but he had his sword in his hand and that must be his tool for this labour.
Lorin swung his horse around the waiting spearmen without breaking its stride or shedding any speed. It was a small movement, just enough to make a spearpoint slice across his calf rather than punch into the horse’s breast. Enough to give Lorin the space for a wide, leaning slash of his sword which snapped the spearman’s head back and sent his leather cap spinning away. Then Lorin was past them and pounding remorselessly on.
The second spearman rose and began to turn, unnerved by the fact that Lorin was behind him now, and Brennan killed him with a single blow to the back of his neck. The blade went deep and he could sense the flesh and bone separating beneath it, but it came free easily enough as his horse carried him onward.
The archer was running. Brennan charged him down. The man was knocked flat, his bow flying loose from his hand. Brennan hauled his horse around and stretched down to hack once, twice at the fallen man. That was enough.
Lorin, with Manadar close behind him, had plunged in among the trees. Brennan could see swords rising and falling, and hear cries of alarm and anger. He looked for Marweh. She was on her knees, watching everything unfolding before her with an expression that was impossible to read. She did not, at least, look likely to be going anywhere quickly. Brennan urged his horse on and made for the copse.
It was hard and bloody work in there. The trees stood well apart, and the soft ground was all but clear of undergrowth or tangles. Still, it was not ideal for mounted men. Brennan, by instinct more than considered choice, jumped down and left his horse behind him.
‘There’s only three of them,’ he heard someone shouting. ‘Call the tyrant!’
Only three, Brennan thought. Three of the Free’s enough, if we are indeed worthy of the name. He heard a horn, ragged and trembling. Nothing like the graceful note the Orphanidon had blown. Just as ill-omened though. That, he supposed, was what calling the tyrant meant.
He followed the sound, sprinting through light and shadows. The man with the horn was not far. He had his back to Brennan. The sound of footsteps made him begin to turn. The slaver spun and flung the horn at Brennan’s head. Brennan ducked it and cut at the man’s weight-bearing leg. The blade nicked his thigh but did not cut away his support as Brennan had intended.
If the man had the kind of training and experience Brennan had, he might have lived longer. As it was, his instincts were bad. His clarity of thought about what it took to live and kill in such a moment came up short. He was right-handed, and had used that hand for the horn. His short, slightly curved sword was in his left hand. The wrong hand. His mistake was to try to change that. He made to pass the sword from one hand to another.