That made him smile as he watched those ranks of men begin their careful ascent towards him. He had always thought he would die for those who fought alongside him. He had meant the Free but he was content enough for it to be these villagers. These people so like those who would have been his family and friends, had he never left them.
And perhaps he never should have left them. Perhaps he had only ever been fit for casting and raising nets, scaling and gutting fish. And now, today, perhaps he and everyone else atop this bleak mount was going to learn the truth of that.
He glanced back over his shoulder. Lorin was getting unsteadily to his feet, leaning heavily on a couple of the children, who were trying their best to help him.
‘They’re coming,’ Brennan called.
Lorin only nodded.
The slavers had learned from the day before. They were expecting arrows. It made them careful, made them work even harder to find approaches that offered some concealment or cover. Even in the grey light, though, the hill was not generous in that regard. Brennan found his targets, and took his shots.
One, two, three. The arrows whispered through the morning, thudded into their warm new homes. Marweh threw a couple of stones, her arm strengthened by sheer anger. As far as Brennan could tell, they hit no one. But they sowed a little more caution, a little more unease among the attackers.
The slavers spread out, stretching their lines further and further until they encompassed perhaps a third of the hill. And they kept climbing. Brennan could hear someone shouting-screaming almost-furious orders. Or it could have been simple abuse; he did not understand the words. The tyrant, he guessed, and he searched eagerly for what would have been a worthy target.
Once or twice, he thought he glimpsed that shining helm. The tyrant, if it was truly him, was keeping himself well to the rear. He clung to the shelter of boulders. Cowardice and cruelty often went hand in hand to Brennan’s way of thinking. He loosed a couple of arrows in the tyrant’s direction but they rattled harmlessly off stone.
‘Move round that way,’ he murmured to some of the villagers beside him. ‘Do what you can.’
They went without protest. A spear, a knife, a handful of rocks. Bare feet. Arms and legs enfeebled by thirst and hunger. What they could do would be little enough.
That was when Brennan set down his bow. This was going to be a slaughter. It was a tale with only one ending, unless he changed its course somehow. So he would try that. If he was going to surrender his life, he was going to do it trying to kill the tyrant. He could, if nothing else, draw as many of the slavers to him as possible. He could keep them from the summit for a little longer. Perhaps someone might escape.
‘Have you still got that knife Lorin gave you?’ he asked Marweh quietly.
She did. It was tucked into her belt. She gave it to him without protest, though she wore a slightly puzzled expression. He took it in his left hand, his sword in his right. He did not look at her. He was staring down, searching for the tyrant.
‘I know you don’t want to,’ he said, ‘and I know you have no food or water. I know it’s no kind of answer. But you should all perhaps make for the plains. Scatter. Me and Lorin, we’ll be staying here.’
‘They’d hunt us all down in an hour,’ Marweh said fiercely. ‘And any they missed, the sun’d kill in a day.’
‘I know,’ nodded Brennan. ‘I just thought you might want to consider it.’
And he lurched to his feet, more than a little stiff and unsteady because of his wounds, and ran.
He had last seen the tyrant perhaps two hundred paces down below. Near some stunted bushes. That was as good a place as any to head for, so he did. The rock was hard beneath his feet. He could feel the first real suggestion of the day’s heat on his face. For a moment or two, he felt good.
An arrow whispered past his ear. Another rang off stone. A third hit him, in his left shoulder. It twisted him about slightly and he almost fell. He was barely in control in any case. He was falling as much as running.
Slavers came to meet him, but they had not been ready for this. They had not foreseen this kind of madness. Brennan laughed. He battered one man aside with nothing more than weight and speed. Another barred his path with a crude wicker shield.
His body was making Brennan’s choices for him now. He simply watched. Let it carry him. His lead foot went up and he sprang into the air. Hit the top of that flimsy shield, smashing it back into the face of its wielder. He ran over the man, slashing down with his sword as he went. The blade hit something, but he did not see what.
His injured leg was far too weakened for such acrobatics, and he landed badly. He tumbled, scraping his forehead and hand on rough stone. The impact jarred the wound in his side. The arrow in his shoulder snapped. He gave a short, sharp cry of pain. Just one.
He staggered to his feet. Kept moving. Down, always down. He saw the flash of the early sun on metal. Might be the tyrant’s helmet.
Come on, he imagined himself shouting. Come to me. Bring your blades, bring your bodies.
There was a kind of mad delight in him.
They were coming to him, as his madness desired. Many of them. And mad delight could only carry him so far.
He parried a spear thrust with the flat of his sword. Lunged in behind it with the knife, turning it as it went into the slaver’s stomach. There was a glancing blow on his back. He spun, squatting and swinging low in the hope of catching a leg. He did. The blade hacked into a slaver’s knee and cut him down.
Brennan wheeled and staggered on. He was getting dizzy. Sweat or blood was on his face. He could hear running feet, converging on him.
Come to the lion, all you hounds, he thought. I’ll die with my teeth on your neck.
He caught a sword stroke on the hand-guard of his knife. Broke his attacker’s forearm with his own sword. His left arm had been numbed by the blow though, and his knife fell from his fingers. Someone tackled him, enfolding his hips in strong arms and lifting him bodily from the ground. Throwing him down.
Brennan kicked free and rolled. A spear sparked off the stone where he had been lying. He managed to get onto one knee and somehow caught the shaft of the spear with his left hand when it came in for a second thrust. He pulled at it and stretched out his sword for the slaver to meet its point with his belly.
As the man fell, Brennan could see half a dozen more coming up behind him. Axe and mace, sword and spear. All coming for him. He was of the Free, here at the end, he thought. But even for a man of the Free, there was a limit to what wonders could be performed.
Then Lorin came on his horse. Charging wildly downhill. Scattering and trampling slavers. Flailing about almost blindly with his sword. Men fell. Lorin swayed in his saddle. Someone must have strapped him in there, Brennan thought.
He tried to rise, to follow after Lorin as man and horse went plunging on madly down the hill, but his legs were barely his own to command any more. He slumped sideways, leaning on a boulder.
Lorin brushed aside an axeman. He cut down a fleeing archer. Then his great, frightful horse put a hoof in a crevice and broke its leg and fell.
It twisted, crashing down on its side with Lorin’s leg beneath it. It rolled onto its back, crushing him. So hard and fast had been its charge that it slid like that, grinding Lorin beneath it, for another few yards. When it came to a halt, the animal screamed and writhed, trying desperately to rise. Lorin was not moving.
Brennan staggered over to them. He plunged his sword into the horse’s neck, setting his full weight onto the pommel to drive it home. The animal died.
Brennan looked at Lorin. He was dead too of course. Brennan sat with his back to the great horse’s flank. He could barely breathe. His chest heaved, and the air it hauled in and out was not enough.