CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PROOF OF THE VINTAGE

CAZIO FOUGHT in a bloody blur, all sense of time lost. His arm was so tired that he’d had no choice but to switch to his left, and when that failed him, he went back to the right, but the rest hadn’t helped it much. His lungs flamed in his chest, and his legs wobbled beneath him. As he clumsily drew Acredo from his latest opponent, he saw another coming. He spun to face the foe and kept spinning, toppling to the bloody earth. The Sefry slashed at him with a curved sword, but Cazio kept rolling, then reversed direction and thrust Acredo out hopefully. The Sefry, probably nearly as tired as he was, obligingly ran onto the point. He slid down the blade and onto Cazio, gasping strange curses before setting off west.

Grunting, Cazio tried to push the dead weight off, but his body didn’t want to cooperate. He summoned the image of Austra, helpless in the carriage, and finally managed to roll the man off and stagger back to his feet, leaning on Acredo just in time to meet five more of the Sefry, who were spreading to surround him.

He heard someone behind him.

“It’s me,” z’Acatto’s voice said.

Cazio couldn’t help a tired grin as the old man’s back came against his.

“We’ll hold each other up,” the mestro said.

From that simple touch, Cazio felt a rush of strength he had no notion still lived in him. Acredo came up, fluid, almost with a life of its own. Steel rang behind him, and Cazio shouted hoarsely, parrying an attack and drilling his rapier through a yellow-eyed warrior.

“Glad I came?” z’Acatto grunted.

“I had the upper hand anyway,” Cazio said. “But I don’t mind the company.”

“That’s not the impression I had.”

Cazio thrust, parried a counter to his arm, and sent his enemy dancing back from his point.

“I sometimes speak too quickly,” Cazio admitted.

The two Sefry he faced came at him together. He bound the blade of the first to strike and ran through the other, then let go of the blade and punched the first man in the face. He reeled back, during which time Cazio withdrew Acredo and set it back to guard.

He heard z’Acatto grunt, and something stung Cazio’s back. He dispatched the staggering Sefry, then turned in time to parry a blow aimed at z’Acatto. The old man thrust into the foe’s belly, and suddenly they were alone. Around them the battle was nearly over, with z’Acatto’s men surrounding a small knot of the remaining Sefry.

Z’Acatto sat down hard, holding his side. Cazio saw blood spurting through his fingers, very dark, nearly black.

“I think,” z’Acatto grunted, “it’s time we drank that wine.”

“Let’s bind you up first,” Cazio said.

“No need for that.”

Cazio got a knife, cut a broad strip from a Sefry shirt, and started wrapping it tightly around z’Acatto’s torso. The wound was a puncture, very deep.

“Just get the damned wine,” the mestro said.

“Where is it?” Cazio asked, feeling the apple in his throat.

“In my saddle pack,” z’Acatto wheezed.

It took Cazio a while to find the horse, which wisely had moved away from the fighting.

He dug one of the bottles of Zo Buso Brato out and then raced back to where his swordmaster still sat waiting. His head was down, and for a moment Cazio thought he was too late, but then the old man lifted his arm, proffering a corkscrew.

“It might be vinegar,” Cazio cautioned, flopping down next to his mentor.

“Might be,” z’Acatto agreed. “I was saving it for when we got back to Vitellio, back to your house.”

“We can still wait.”

“We’ll have the other bottle there.”

“Fair enough,” Cazio agreed.

The cork came out in one piece, which was astonishing, considering its age. Cazio handed it to z’Acatto.

The older man took it weakly and smelled it.

“Needs to breathe,” he said. “Ah, well.” He tilted it back and took a sip, eyes closed, and smiled.

“That’s not too bad,” he murmured. “Try it.”

Cazio took the bottle and then hesitantly took a drink.

In an instant the battlefield was gone, and he felt the warm sun of Vitellio, smelled hay and rosemary, wild fennel, black cherry—but underneath that something enigmatic, as indescribable as an ideal sunset. Tears sprang in his eyes, unbidden.

“It’s perfect,” he said. “Perfect. Now I understand why you’ve been trying to find it for so long.” Z’Acatto’s only answer was the faint smile that remained on his face.

“I’ll tell them I did it,” Mery said. “I’ll tell them you weren’t even here.” Leoff shook his head and squeezed her shoulder. “No, Mery,” he said. “Don’t do that. It wouldn’t work, anyway.”

“I don’t want them to hurt you again,” she explained.

“They’re not going to hurt him,” Areana promised in a hushed and strained voice.

Yes they are, he thought. And they’ll hurt you, too. But if we can keep them from examining Mery, from noticing the wrongness about her, she might have a chance.

“Listen,” he began, but then the door opened.

It wasn’t a sacritor standing there or even Sir Ilzereik.

It was Neil MeqVren, Queen Muriele’s bodyguard.

It was like waking up in a strange room and not knowing how you got there. Leoff just stared, rubbing the bent fingers of his right hand on his opposite arm.

“You’re all right?” Neil asked.

Leoff plucked his voice from somewhere. “Sir Neil,” he said cautiously. “There are Hansan knights and warriors about. All over.”

“I know.” The young knight walked over to Areana and cut her bonds, then Leoff’s, and helped him up.

He only glanced at the dead men on the floor, then at Areana’s swollen face.

“Did anyone still living do that, lady?” he softly asked her.

“No,” Areana said.

“And your head, Cavaor?” he asked Leoff.

Leoff gestured at the dead. “It was one of them,” he said.

The knight nodded and seemed satisfied.

“What are you doing here?” Areana asked.

The answer came from an apparition near the door. Her hair was as white as milk, and she was so pale and handsome that at first Leoff thought she might be Saint Wyndoseibh herself, come drifting down from the moon on cobwebs to see them.

“We’ve come to meet Mery,” the White Lady said.

Neil watched the stars appear and listened as the hum and whirr of night sounds rose around him. He sat beneath an arbor, half an arrow shot from the composwer’s cottage.

Muriele was there, too, still wrapped in the linens from Berimund’s hideaway. She’d made most of the trip unceremoniously tied to the back of a horse, but once in Newland, they’d found a small wain for her to lie in state on.

She needed to be buried soon. They hadn’t had any salt to pack her in, and the scent of rot was starting to remark itself.

He noticed a slim shadow approaching.

“May I?” Alis’ voice inquired from the darkness.

He gestured toward a second bench.

“I’ve not much idea what they’re talking about in there,” she said. “But I got us this.” She held up a bottle of something. “Shall we have the wake?”

He searched for something to say, but there was too much in him to let anything come out right. He saw her tilt the bottle up, then down. She dabbed her lips and reached it toward him. He took it and pressed the glass lip against his own, held his breath, and took a mouthful. He almost didn’t manage to swallow it; his mouth told him it was poison and wanted it out.

When he swallowed it, however, his body began to thank him almost immediately.

He took another swallow—it was easier this time—and passed it back to her.

“Do you think it’s true?” he asked. “About Anne?”

“Which? That she slew forty thousand men with shinecraft or that she’s dead?”

“That she’s dead.”

“From what I can tell,” she said, “the news came from Eslen, not from Hansa. I don’t see what anyone there would have to gain from letting such a rumor circulate.”

“Well, that’s a full ship, then,” he said, taking the again proffered bottle and drinking more of the horrible stuff.

“Don’t start that,” Alis chided.

“I was guard to both of them.”

“And you did an amazing job. Without you they would have both been dead months ago.”

“Months ago, now. What’s the difference?”

“I don’t know. Does it make a difference if you live one year or eighty? Most people seem to think so.” She took the bottle and tugged at it hard. “Anyway, if anyone is to blame for Muriele’s death, it’s me.

You weren’t her only bodyguard, you know.”

He nodded, starting to feel the tide come up.

“So the question,” Alis said, “is what do you and I do now? I don’t think we’ll be much help to the princess and the composer and Mery in whatever it is they’re doing.”

“I reckon we find Robert,” Neil said.

“And that is excellent thinking,” Alis agreed. “How do we do that?”

“Brinna might be able to tell us where he is.”

“Ah, Brinna.” Alis’ voice became more sultry. “Now there’s an interesting subject. You have acquaintances in very interesting places. How is it you two grew so fond of each other so quickly?”

“Fond?”

“Oh, stop it. You don’t seem the woman conqueror on the face of it, but first Fastia, now the princess of Hansa who is also, ne’er you mind, one of the Faiths. That is quite a record.”

“I met her—we had met before,” Neil tried to explain.

“You said you had never been to Kaithbaurg before.”

“And I hadn’t. We met on a ship, in Vitellio. This isn’t the first time she’s run away from Hansa.”

“I don’t blame her,” Alis said. “Why did she go back?”

“She said she had a vision of Anne bringing ruin to the whole world.”

“Well, she was wrong about that, at least.”

“I suppose.”

“Well, if Anne is dead…” She sighed and handed him the bottle. “She was supposed to save us, or so I thought before I quit caring. The Faiths told us that.”

“Your order?”

“Yes. The Order of Saint Dare. There’s no point in keeping it secret now.”

“Brinna said that she and the other Faiths had been wrong. That’s all I know.” He took two drinks.

“Did you know Anne well?” Alis asked.

He took another pull. “I knew her. I wouldn’t say we were friends, exactly.”

“I barely knew her. I hardly knew Muriele until last year.”

“I don’t suppose mistresses and wives socialize that much.”

“No. But—” She closed her eyes. “Strong stuff.”

“Yes.”

“She helped me, Sir Neil. She took me in despite what I had been. I try not to love, because there’s nothing but heartbreak in it. But I loved her. I did.”

Her voice only barely quavered, but her face was wet in the moonlight.

“I know,” he said.

She sat that way a moment, staring at the bottle. Then she raised it. “To Robert,” she said. “He killed my king and lover, he killed my queen and friend. So to him, and his legs severed at the hip, and his arms cut from his shoulders, and all buried in different places—” She choked off into a sob.

He took the bottle. “To Robert,” he said, and drank.

The White Lady—Brinna, her name was—looked up from Leoff’s music. “Will this do it?” she asked.

Leoff regarded the strange woman for a moment. He was tired, his head hurt, and what he mostly wanted was to go to bed.

“I don’t know,” he finally said.

“Yes, he does,” Mery said.

He shot the girl a warning glance, but she just smiled at him.

“You don’t trust me?” Brinna asked.

“Milady, I don’t know you. I’ve been deceived before—often. It’s been a very long day, and I’m finding it hard to understand why you’re here. We had another visitor, you know, pretending to be a relative of Mery’s, and you remind me a lot of her.”

“That was one of my sisters,” Brinna said. “She might have dissembled about who she was, but everything else she told you is true. Like me, she was a seer. Like me, she knew that if anyone can mend the law of death, it’s you two. I’ve come to help.”

“How can you help?”

“I don’t know, but I felt called here.”

“That’s not too useful,” Leoff said.

Brinna leaned forward a bit. “I broke the law of death,” she said quietly. “I am responsible. Do you understand?”

Leoff exhaled and pushed his hand through his hair, wincing as he touched the sore spot. “No,” he said.

“I don’t really understand any of it.”

“It will work,” Mery insisted.

Leoff nodded. “I compose more with my heart than with my head, and my heart says it would work if it could be performed, which it can’t. That’s the problem, you see.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“You read music, yes?”

“Yes,” she said. “I can play the harp and lute. I can sing.”

“Then you notice that there are three voices, yes? The low, the middle, and the high.”

“Not unusual,” she said.

“No. Quite the norm. Except that if you look closely, you’ll see that there are two distinct lines in each voice.”

“I noticed that, too. But I’ve seen that before, too, in the Armaio of Roger Hlaivensen, for instance.”

“Very good,” Leoff said. “But here’s the difference. The second lines—the one with the strokes turned down—those have to be sung by…ah, well—by the dead.”

When she didn’t even blink at that, he went on. “The upturned lines are to be sung by the living, and for the piece to be done properly, all the singers must be able to hear one another. I can’t imagine any way for that to happen.”

But Mery and Brinna were looking at each other, both with the same odd smile on their faces.

“That’s no problem, is it, Mery?” Brinna said.

“No,” the girl replied.

“How soon can we perform it?” Brinna asked.

“Wait,” Leoff said. “What are you two talking about?”

“The dead can hear us through Mery,” Brinna explained. “You can hear the dead through me. You see? I am the last piece of your puzzle. Now I know why I’m here.”

“Mery?” Leoff turned his gaze on the girl, who merely nodded.

“Fine,” he said, trying to resist the sudden dizzying hope. “If you say so.”

“How soon?”

“I can sing the middle part,” he said. “Areana can sing the upper. We need someone for the low.”

“Edwyn Mylton,” Areana said.

“Of course,” Leoff said cautiously. “He could do it. If he’s still in Haundwarpen and if we could get to him.”

“Haundwarpen is under siege,” Areana explained.

“No,” Brinna said. “Haundwarpen is fallen. But that’s actually good for us.”

“How so?”

“My brother is a prince of Hansa. They won’t stop him entering or leaving the city, and they won’t ask him questions. Not yet.”

“A pri—” He stopped. “Then you’re a princess of Hansa?”

She nodded.

“Then I really don’t understand,” he said.

“My brother and I are here at our peril,” she said. “Understand, it doesn’t matter who wins the war. If the barrier between life and death deteriorates further, all of our empires will be dust.”

“What do you mean,” Areana asked, “at your peril?”

“My brother tried to help your queen, and I am run away,” she said. “If we’re caught, we may well both be executed. That’s why we need to move quickly. At the moment, the army here recognizes my brother as their prince. But word from my father will reach here very soon, and we will be found, so all must go quickly.”

We’ll do the piece, his thoughts rushed. We’ll cure Mery.

He clung to that thought and shied from the next: Brinna was prepared to die, perhaps expected it, perhaps had seen it. That did not bode well for the rest of them.

“Well,” he said, “we’d best find Mylton, then, and get on with this.” CHAPTER EIGHT

REUNIONS STRANGE AND NATURAL

“WHAT NOW, sir?” Jan asked Cazio.

Cazio stared at the freshly turned earth and took a few deep breaths. The morning smelled clean despite the carnage.

“I don’t know,” he said. If Anne’s Sefry guards were traitors, Mother Uun probably was, too. If he took Austra to her, they might be walking right into the spider’s web.

But what else was there to do? Only in Eslen was he likely to find anyone who could help Austra.

“I’m still going on to Eslen,” he said. “Nothing’s changed about that.”

“I reckon we’ll be going with you, then,” the soldier said. “The empire is a month behind on our salary, and we’ve worked hard enough for it.”

Cazio shook his head. “From what I hear, you’ll only walk into slaughter. Go back and keep the duchess safe. I know she’ll pay you.”

“Can’t let you walk into slaughter alone,” the soldier replied.

“I won’t get in by fighting,” Cazio said, “with or without your help. I’ll have to use my wits somehow.”

“That’s a bloody shame,” Jan said. “You’re bound to come to a bad end that way.”

“Thanks for the confidence,” Cazio replied. “I think it’s for the best. You fellows will just draw a fight we can’t win. The two of us might be able to slip in the back way.” Jan held his gaze for a moment, then nodded and stuck out his hand. Cazio took it.

“The Cassro was a good man,” the soldier said.

“He was,” Cazio agreed.

“He raised a good man, too.”

They broke camp a bell later. The soldiers headed back to Glenchest, and Cazio and Austra were alone again.

It was along about midday that Cazio felt a strange, hot wind carrying an acrid scent he had smelled before, deep in the tunnels below Eslen. He drew Acredo and turned on the board, searching. There wasn’t much to see; the road was bounded on both sides by hedges and had been for nearly a league.

Until now he’d been enjoying the change from open landscape; he could almost pretend he was back in Vitellio, taking a tour of one of the grand trivii with z’Acatto, working up an appetite for pigeon with white beans and garlic and a thirst for a light vino verio.

Now he suddenly felt claustrophobic. The last time he’d come this way, it had been with an army, and they hadn’t much feared bandits; now he realized this would be a perfect place for them to hide, say, just around one of these bends, and wondered if he hadn’t dismissed Jan and the others too quickly.

Of course, that had nothing to do with what he had smelled, which he was beginning to think was an illusion, anyway, just a stray memory of one of the many horrible things he had experienced in the last two years or so.

He kept Acredo in hand as they went around the curve.

There was someone there, all right. It wasn’t a bandit.

“Fratir Stephen?” He drew back on the reins and brought the carriage to a halt.

“Casnar!” Stephen replied. “You’re a coachman now.”

Cazio was momentarily at a loss for words. He didn’t know the fellow well, but he did know him, and the odds seemed against a chance meeting. And there was that other thing…

“Everyone thinks you’re dead, you know,” he said.

“I expect so,” Stephen replied. “The slinders did make off with me. But here I am, fit and well.” He did look well, Cazio thought, not dead at all. Although there was something about the way he spoke and carried himself that seemed very different.

“Well,” he said for lack of something better, “I’m glad you’re well. Did Aspar and Winna find you?”

“Were they trying?”

“Yes. They went after you. That was the last I saw or heard of them.” Stephen nodded, and his eyebrows pinched together for an instant. Then he smiled again.

“It’s good to have friends,” he said. “Where are you off to, Cazio?”

“Eslen,” he said, feeling guarded. The whole encounter seemed stranger every moment.

“You’re looking for help for Austra.”

Cazio shifted Acredo to a better grip. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“What are you talking about? You know me.”

“I knew Fratir Stephen. I’m not sure that’s who you are.”

“Oh, it’s me more or less,” the man said. “But like you, I’ve been through a lot. Walked a new faneway, gained new gifts. So yes, things are revealed to me that are denied most. I can put my gaze far from me.

But I’m not an espetureno or estrigo if that’s your fear.”

“But you aren’t here by coincidence.”

“No, I’m not.”

“What do you want, then?”

“To help you. To help Austra now and Anne later on.”

“Anne?” Cazio said. “How can you know where to find me and not know?”

“Know what?”

“Anne is dead.”

Stephen’s eyes widened with what appeared to be genuine disbelief, and for the first time his new cockiness seemed to fail him.

“How is that possible?” he said, speaking so low that Cazio could barely hear him. “There’s something going on here I’m missing. But if Anne is dead…”

He raised his voice. “We’ll sort that out later. Cazio, I can help Austra. But you have to come with me.”

“Come with you?”

“Get her,” Stephen said. “Him, too.”

Cazio jerked his head around to see who the fratir was talking to, but all he saw was a weird wavering, like the air above hot stones. Then something wrapped itself firmly around his waist and lifted him into the air. He shrieked involuntarily and stabbed his blade into the invisible thing, but then something grabbed Acredo and wrenched the blade from his grasp.

Then they were hurtling through the air, all three of them, born by the Kept, and there was nothing Cazio could do about it but curse and imagine what he was going to do to Stephen when he could get to him.

After a while, Cazio finally had to give in to the fact that he was enjoying himself, at least a little. He had wondered often what it might be like to fly, and once the initial terror had worn off, it was exciting. They were whisked over the poelen and canals, covering in a bell what would have taken him days in the carriage. Eslen appeared in the distance, a toy castle far below them.

“Hubris,” Stephen said. “It’s always the death of me. But I can’t turn my eye in every direction at once, can I? Especially with the others interfering.”

“What are you talking about?”

They plunged suddenly not toward Eslen but toward the dark necropolis south of it.

“But he doesn’t know about Austra,” Stephen went on. “That’ll be his undoing. He killed Anne for her power and didn’t find it because it all went to Austra. She walked the same faneway as Anne— after her. I would have known that if I had thought about it for six breaths.” Cazio tried to catch that thought. Austra did seem to have some of the same gifts as Anne. And the churchman—had he known somehow? Was his strange cutting of her connected to that? And did that have anything to do with what was wrong with Austra?

It had to, didn’t it?

“See,” Stephen whispered. “Hespero moves.”

Cazio’s attention was suddenly drawn to the several hundreds of men fighting in front of the gates of Eslen-of-Shadows, but he only had a glimpse of that before they rushed down into the city itself, over the lead streets and into a mausoleum as large as some mansions. The Kept settled them in front of it. The two guards at the door started toward him, but then their eyes glazed over, and they sat down rather suddenly.

Cazio suddenly found himself free. He started toward Stephen.

“Don’t,” Stephen said. “If you want Austra alive and well, don’t.” With that he swung open the doors.

Inside, on a large table, lay Anne. She was dressed in a black satin gown set with pearls, placed with her hands folded across her chest. Two women—one very young, the other a Sefry—and a man Cazio did not recognize were sitting with the body. The man stood as they entered and drew a broadsword.

“I need my blade,” Cazio told Stephen.

“Pick it up, then,” Stephen said.

Cazio turned and found it lying on the ground. Austra was still in the Kept’s invisible grip.

“By the saints, what is this?” the man shouted. “Demons!”

Stephen held up his hand. “Wait,” he said. “There’s no need for that.” This wasn’t what he had expected. This was where he had sensed the throne, not Anne, although it made perfect sense that she was down here, too.

He could feel the sedos force pulsing just where she was.

“How did she die?” he asked, a suspicion suddenly born in his mind.

“Stabbed,” the girl said, her eyes red from crying. “The Fratrex Prismo murdered her. There was so much blood…”

“Stabbed where?”

“Under the ribs, up into her heart,” the Sefry woman said. “Then her throat was cut.” Stephen stepped forward.

“No, by the saints,” the man shouted. “Who are you?” Stephen silenced him as he had the guards. It wouldn’t hurt him permanently, but his thoughts would be too disordered to allow him to, say, move his limbs.

He saw the line where Anne’s throat had been cut, but it was puckered and white.

Stephen felt a sort of coldness ringing in his ears.

It was a scar.

“Oh, screaming damned saints,” Stephen sighed.

Austra gave a sudden gasp behind him, and he felt a tremendous surge around him as the throne exploded into being.

And the throne, Anne Dare rose up, shining with unnatural light, her face so beautiful and terrible that Stephen couldn’t look on it.

It was the face from his Black Marys.

“Hespero,” she whispered, and then, at the top of her lungs, screamed the name.

She didn’t even glance at him, or Cazio, or any other person in the room.

“Qexqaneh,” she said, and Stephen suddenly felt his control of the Vhelny utterly dissolve and heard the demon laughter in his ears. All the hair on his body suddenly stood up, and then Anne was in the demon’s grip, flying, gone out of the crypt and into the darkling sky.

Aspar still could feel the geos in him when they entered the high valley where he first had seen the Briar King. He reckoned that meant Winna wasn’t there yet.

Maybe Leshya wasn’t bringing her there at all.

Sir Roger and his men were there, however, camped and entrenched around what appeared to be a lodge of some sort, though Aspar knew it had been formed from living trees. He’d been in it; it was where he had found the Briar King sleeping.

“I count seventeen,” Fend said. “Four of them Mamres knights.” Aspar nodded. “That’s what I see.”

“I don’t see your three friends.”

“No.”

“Always the conversationalist,” Fend said. “Well, let’s get this over with.”

“We’re not in a hurry,” Aspar said. “You just pointed out that Winna isn’t here yet. Why should we charge down to their defended positions?”

“You have a plan, then?”

“What happened to your basil-nix?”

“They’re really quite fragile creatures once you get past their gaze. That’s why I used it from a distance.

Harriot’s troops figured out what it was and poured arrows on it.” Aspar nodded.

“Was that your plan, to use the nix?”

“If we had it, sure.”

“What now, then?”

For answer, Aspar studied the distance and the play of the almost nonexistent breeze on the grass. Then he set a shaft to string and let it loose.

One of the churchmen pitched back, grasping at the arrow in his throat.

“Buggering saints!” Fend swore. “You’ve still got the eye, Aspar.”

“Now there are sixteen,” he said as the men below scrambled for cover behind the crude barriers they had erected.

“When they get tired of this,” Aspar said, “they’ll come up after us, fight on our ground. If Winna shows up before we’re finished, we can always make your mad charge.”

“We can’t take too long. The beasts will get hungry.”

“Send one or two down to hunt when it gets dark.”

“I like the way your mind works, Aspar,” Fend said.

We’ll soon change that, Aspar thought.

Fend sent an utin down that night. It didn’t come back, but the next morning Aspar counted two fewer men below. The Mamres monks were all still there, though, so it wasn’t as good a trade as might have been hoped for. Aspar watched through the day from the cover of the trees, looking for another opportunity to skewer someone, but the knight was being very cautious now.

Toward sundown, he felt it all starting to catch up with him and found himself almost dozing, his eyes unwilling to keep open.

He’d just closed them for a moment when he felt an odd turning. He looked down to see what was going on and realized that two of the Mamres monks and three mounted men were racing across the field toward the other entrance to the valley.

“They’re here!” Aspar shouted. He stood, took aim, and let go. One of the horsemen pitched off.

Something went streaking by him. He saw it was Fend on the wairwulf. The remaining utin loped along behind him.

Aspar fired again, missing a Mamres monk, but his third arrow found its mark in the man’s leg, and he went rolling down. He had one more shot before they were out of range, and that hit another horseman.

Grim, let Fend and his be enough, he thought. But Winna had Leshya and Ehawk, too.

The other nine men were charging up the hill. Seven knights and two Mamres monks against him, the Vaix, and a greffyn.

Aspar gritted his teeth and drew the cord, wishing he had more than five arrows left. But if wishes weighed anything, he’d have a heavy pack right now.

The first one hit a knight and skipped off his armor, but the second one punched right through his breastplate, and now they were eight.

From the corner of his eye he saw the greffyn bounding down the hill. Three of the knights turned their lances against it. The Mamres monks came on, dodging his next two arrows, but then the strange Sefry met them with his glistering feysword, and things went too quickly for him to follow even if he had had time to, which he didn’t, because three armored mounted men were coming up on him fast.

Aspar shot his last arrow from four kingsyards away at the knight on his far left, and it went through the fellow’s armor as if it were cambric. He dropped his spear and slumped forward, and Aspar let fall the bow and ran as hard and fast as he could, putting the now masterless horse between himself and the other two mounted men. He grasped the spear as one of his pursuers dropped his lance, drew sword, and wheeled to meet the holter.

Aspar caught him in midturn, ramming the sharp point into the armpit joint. The fellow hollered and went windmilling off his horse. The other fellow had ridden out a little farther and was turning for a proper charge. Aspar just then recognized that it was Harriot himself.

Aspar grasped for the reins of the horse, but it galloped off, leaving him no mount or cover.

The fellow he had just knocked off was moving feebly, but it looked like it would take him a bit to get up, if he did at all.

Aspar reminded himself that most men on foot killed by knights died with holes in the back of the skull, and it was a good thing, because his legs were telling him to run as Harriot’s charger hurtled at him.

Grimly, he set the butt of the lance on his foot, pointed the spear tip at the horse’s breast, and braced for the impact.

Harriot shifted his grip and threw the lance, turning his mount an instant later. It thunked into the earth two handsbreadths from Aspar. Aspar wheeled, keeping the spear ready for the next pass.

The knight drew his sword, dismounted, took down a shield, and came on.

That’s smart, Aspar thought. All he needs to do is get past my point, and I’m no real spearman.

He caught a blur at the edge of his vision and saw it was one of the Mamres monks.

Well, good try, he thought.

But suddenly the greffyn was there, too, barreling at the monk from his right. They went off in a tangle.

Harriot charged during the distraction.

Aspar thrust the spear into the shield so hard that it stuck and then ran to the side, turning the fellow half around before he let go of the shaft and drew his ax and dirk. Put off balance by the unwieldy weapon lodged in his shield and by Aspar’s maneuver, the knight had to fight to get his sword arm back around.

He didn’t make it before Aspar smashed into the shield at waist level so that Harriot went back and down, landing with a muffled clang.

Aspar hit his helmet with the blunt side of his ax, and it rang like a bell. He hit it again, then shoved it up to reveal the white throat underneath and finished the job with his dirk.

He stood, panting.

The Vaix was just picking himself up a little farther down the hill.

The greffyn was bloodying its beak in the stomach of the Mamres knight.

Far below, he saw Fend and the wairwulf approaching Winna, Leshya, and Ehawk.

Please let me be right about this, Aspar said, but then he had no more time for doubt as the Vaix started for him.

Aspar did what he had planned, the only thing he could do.

He ran as fast as his legs could carry him toward his mount. A glance back showed the Sefry gaining even with his wounded leg, even with new blood showing all over him.

He made it to the horse, swung up, and kicked it into motion. The Sefry gave a hoarse cry and leaped at them, landing on his bad leg, which buckled. He threw the feysword at Aspar. It went turning by his head and cut through a young pine tree.

Then the yards were growing between them, and each glance back showed the Vaix farther behind, then gone.

Aspar didn’t stop or even slow until after nightfall, when he reckoned he was at least a league and a half away.