The bandit swordsman had greater strength, but Zaranda was used to that. Though she was tall and strong, most men were stronger. Skill and speed were her edges. In an exchange that flashed with more than sunlight, she took a nick in the shoulder but left the man's right side in ribbons and his cheek laid open, streaming blood into a matted gray-flecked beard. Frantically, he sidestepped his horse away from the blade storm.
All this time Goldie had been driving the pony back, trying to force its rump against the house's stone flank, and grunting mightily to let Zaranda know how hard she was working. The rider, who had a gap in his teeth and a right eye that looked at random out across the bean-fields, finally hit the notion of yanking his mount's head to the right and trying to slide past the mare.
As he did so, he hacked cross-body at Zaranda's face, hoping to down her while her attention was on his com-rade. "Randi, duck!" shouted Goldie.
Zaranda threw herself to her right, letting her left foot slip from the stirrup, snagging the knee on the pommel to keep herself from leaving the saddle en-tirely. She whipped Crackletongue over and across her body, deflecting the broadsword so that it skimmed her rump and thunked into her saddle's cantle. With a backhand slash, she laid the man's face open. He screamed and dropped his sword, clutching his face with his hands.
With a bellow of triumph, the grizzle-bearded man spurred his horse at her, bringing his own blade up for the kill. A hissing sound, and he crossed his eyes to look at the bright, slim tip of Farlorn's rapier, which sud-denly protruded from his breast. The blade slid inside him like a serpent's tongue, and out his back. He slumped from the saddle.
The cockeyed man had fallen to the grass beside the kitchen stoop and lay curled in a ball, sobbing.
"Thanks," said Zaranda with a nod to Farlorn. The bard grinned and saluted her with a flourish of his blade.
Zaranda looked at the man with the morningstar, who sat a wary ten yards off, massaging his thigh. "Surrender, and we'll let you live," she told him, "as long as you're willing to answer a few questions."
The man grimaced in pain and licked greasy lips. "Does that means just as long as I'm answering ques-tions?" he asked.
"Zaranda," a familiar voice called timidly from the farmhouse's far side. "Could you, ah—could you show yourself, please?"
Zaranda turned and frowned at Farlorn. "Father Pelletyr?" she said. He shrugged. The morningstar man took advantage of their distraction to spur his horse away behind some apple trees covered with tiny green buds of fruit.
Farlorn dismounted to see to the man Zaranda had struck down. She rode Goldie back around the side of the cot, swinging well wide to avoid flames billowing from window and roof.
On the last grassy rise Zaranda and her comrades had crossed before hitting the farmhouse, a lone rider sat. He was a vast man, a good eight feet tall, astride a horse at least eighteen hands high and as broad as a beer-cart, which might have served a northern knight as a destrier but more likely was born to pull a plow. The man wore a hauberk of tarnished scale armor and, across one mountainous shoulder, bore a great double-bitted battle-axe with a six-foot helve. The restless wind made the hair of his topknot stream like a greasy black pennon.
Beside him, four ragged men on foot had Father Pel-letyr by the arms. One of them held a knife blade, crusted with rust and ominous dark stains, against the cleric's throat.
4
"Zaranda," the priest said apologetically, "these gen-tlemen claim to be tax-collectors. If they're about their lawful business, it's wrong of us to interfere."
Farlorn had emerged from behind the house on his dapple-fannied gray. He answered Zaranda's query-look with a shrug to indicate the man she'd struck was no longer an issue. Then he glanced up the rise, and a smile quirked his handsome lips.
"Our good father was always one for following in-structions," he murmured.
"Who dares," the monstrous rider bellowed, "inter-fere with the servitors of Baron Pundar on their lawful business?"
"Zaranda Star dares that and more," Zaranda de-clared. "Especially since I happen to be Countess Morn-inggold. Father, this beast's misled you; this is still County Morninggold, and these men no more than loot-ers—and murderers."
She tossed her head haughtily, making her name-sake blaze flash in the sun. "Who dares to name that hedge-robber Pundar of Little Consequence 'baron'— and to prey upon my people?"
The morningstar man with the injured leg had cir-cled round and now rode up to join his apparent leader. He stopped and turned back to the house. "Pundar is too a baron," he called through cupped hands. "He has a piece of paper from the capital that proves it!"
"The capital?" Zaranda said, half to herself. "Since when is there a capital in Tethyr?"
"Why, Zazesspur— ow!"
The giant man had ridden a few steps forward and with a great backhanded clout knocked the morn-ingstar man from the saddle.
"I do the talking here," he roared. "I am Togrev the Magnificent, lord high commander of the armed forces of Pundaria! We claim these lands by ancient right, as approved and attested by Zazesspur."
Zaranda and Farlorn had begun to ride forward. They could see the house's front now. Two of the foot-men lay in unmoving lumps in the pigsty; the other four stood with hands up, looking nervously at Stillhawk, who stood covering them with an arrow nocked.
"By rights," Zaranda told Togrev, "we should hang the lot of you as the murderous bandit scum you are."
"You forget," the lord high commander said, and ges-tured with a black-nailed hand. A few feet from the cap-tive cleric the little ass had its head down, cropping obliviously at the sweet spring grass. "I have your priest."
"For all the good that does you," Zaranda said. "It's poor practice to negotiate for hostages, and as a rule I won't do it."
Father Pelletyr squirmed his right arm free enough to touch himself four times on the breast in the sign of the rack on which Ilmater suffered. Then he crossed his hands before his breast as if they were bound and rolled his eyes heavenward, accepting. The cleric had a notable reluctance to face physical danger, but this was martyrdom, which made all the difference in the world.
"However," Zaranda said, stopping her horse twenty yards downslope from the huge man, "somebody needs to be left alive to tell that mound of ankheg droppings Pundar that if he troubles my people again he'll wake some fine spring night with a fireball in his lap."
"And who would cast such a fireball?" demanded Togrev in an avalanche rumble.
"I would."
The morningstar man had rolled over and was sit-ting in the grass and rubbing the back of his neck. "She's a witch, Togrev," he said. "She knows all kind of wild magics. Beware her spells."
"Listen to the man," Zaranda said.
The huge man frowned at her. His brows beetled im-pressively. "Half-ogre, by the smell of him," Goldie mut-tered as the wind backed. "Ick."
"What will you do, then?" Togrev demanded.
"Kill you in single combat."
"You want me to fight that?" Goldie demanded in a whisper, nodding at the gigantic plowhorse. "He's as clumsy as a barrel of boulders, but if he ever connects, sweet Sune preserve me!"
Togrev frowned more impressively still, as if there were something here he didn't quite get. "Why should I go along with that?" he asked after a few heartbeats.
"Because if you don't, we'll slaughter you and all your men, and I'll whistle up a wind elemental to drop your head in Pundar's pigsty with a note attached."
"When did you learn to summon elementals?" Farlorn hissed out the side of his mouth in elf-speech, which half-ogres as a rule didn't understand.