M
örgain’s barbarians were distracted by the archers and turned toward the trees to find and slaughter them. Croy rushed his own soldiers into the middle of the barbarians, racing his horse directly into Mörgain’s teeth to keep her from countering the advance. His men struck fast and hard, as if they knew they would have only a moment’s grace before the barbarians recovered enough to counter them.
Bill hooks tore through stinking furs and the unwashed flesh beneath. Pikes impaled reavers whose backs were momentarily turned. For a moment the battle seemed already over, the men of Skrae making bloody inroads into the barbarian mass, striking down the bigger, better armed barbarians left and right.
It could not last, of course. The barbarians knew how to fight, and how to stay alive. They whirled about with axes and crudely forged iron swords, hewing arms and heads from civilized bodies, bellowing like bulls in their fury.
Croy’s serjeants screamed for his men to press the attack, to lose no momentum. Croy had no chance to see if they heeded the call. He was far too busy with Mörgain.
He drove his horse shoulder-to-shoulder with her mount and launched into a frenzied attack, trying to catch her off guard.
Mörgain just laughed.
She fought like no man he’d ever met. She was so fast she made him dizzy. She had no shield, but needed none—Fangbreaker flashed even in the dull light, spinning around to catch Ghostcutter every time Croy thought he saw an opportunity for an attack. Her massive sword possessed a fine balance no modern sword-maker could match, not even a dwarf—heavy as it was, it seemed to float in her hand like a wand.
Croy could barely lift his shield arm, but he had no choice but to use it to block as she recovered from his parry and took her own chances with sweeping strokes. Fangbreaker’s finely honed edge slashed deep cuts through his wooden shield, which was held together only by its iron rim.
He could almost hear Bikker, his former instructor in the arts of swordplay, speaking in his ear, pointing out all the chances he missed, all the openings she left. Yet he could not seem to take advantage of these lapses lest he leave himself open. One good cut from Fangbreaker would shear through even his steel armor and leave him bleeding.
Lift your shield arm, boy,
Bikker shouted at him.
Catch her point on your boss and swing—no, look out, parry—parry—parry!
He could not strike her without taking a cut himself. Her speed made it impossible. And he was already wounded. Yet if he didn’t strike soon, or at least break contact with Mörgain, he would be unable to command his men—unable to even look over and see how the battle fared.
Fangbreaker crashed against his shield with a mighty blow that made the boards flex inside their rim. One more blow like that would shatter it, he knew, and leave him defenseless.
No more time, boy. No more time for playing games
.
With his wounded arm, Croy thrust forward with the ruined shield. Normally one blocked at an angle, so one’s opponent’s blade would slide off the shield and off to the left. This time Croy shoved the shield straight into Mörgain’s attack.
The point of Fangbreaker sank through the wood, barely slowed as it sent a blast of splinters to tumble across Croy’s breastplate. The sword kept coming straight at his heart, and clanged against his armor.
Croy slipped his feet from his stirrups and then twisted sideways, his wounded arm wracked with pain as he forced his shoulder down, between the two horses. The animals shied apart as he fell toward the road surface, swinging his leg up and over his saddle.
Mörgain’s sword was trapped by the twisted iron rim of his shield. She had to either follow him down or let go of her blade. He prayed for the latter.
She chose the former.
Croy looked between the legs of the horses on his way down and saw something that revived much of his flagging strength. The men of Skrae were prevailing.
The barbarians must never have recovered from their initial surprise. They had moved fiercely to attack, but as individuals—each man choosing a foe from among the attackers and concentrating all his strength on a single enemy. The men of Skrae, on the other hand, seemed to actually remember the little training he’d given them and fought together as units, flanking and mobbing the barbarians. There were three of them for every one of Mörgain’s soldiers, and though any given barbarian might cut down two opponents, the third could still strike in return. The road was a heap of bleeding bodies, and most of them were dressed in fur.
He started to call for his serjeants to press the attack, but the breath was knocked out of him as Mörgain fell full on him, her death’s head face so close to his he could smell the paint she wore.
“Ha!” she gasped. “Is this what you wanted all along? To bed me? You should have just asked!”
He could not frame a proper reply. So instead he reared up and smashed his armored forehead into her nose. Bikker had taught him that move, too.
Mörgain rolled off of him and sat in the dust, wiping blood away from her upper lip. She looked stunned. Croy changed his grip on Ghostcutter’s hilt and readied himself for a swing.
Before his arm could lift, however, Mörgain’s eyes focused once more and with her free hand she punched him on the side of his head. His helmet rang like a bell and his head bounced around inside it. He felt like he’d been struck with a battering ram. His face flew sideways and for a moment he could see nothing but bursting light.
Bikker shouted in his head.
Get up, damn you. A man lying down is a dead man.
The words sounded like they were being shouted through a pipe, but Croy forced himself to get one foot down on the ground and lever himself up onto one knee, using Ghostcutter as a crutch.
When he could see again, Mörgain had Fangbreaker free of his ruined shield and was lifting it high over her head for a killing stroke. Croy wasn’t sure he had the strength to block that cut—not against a sword so heavy.
He never got to find out. As Mörgain howled for his blood, an arrow pierced the bicep of her sword arm. The thin shaft seemed to appear out of nothingness, but it hit with enough force to knock her sideways. Her blow came down and cut deep into the road surface, missing Croy by a good foot.
She hadn’t expected the swing to carry so far. She was off balance. Croy kicked her legs out from underneath her and scrambled to his own feet.
“Serjeants! Form your men—let no barbarian live!” he shouted.
The battle was nearly won. Only a few knots of reavers remained, fighting back-to-back now and holding the men of Skrae off as best they could. They could not hope to prevail for long against massed pikes. They might have been better fighters in every possible way, but they lacked the better weapons and better tactics of Skrae.
Had Easthull been right? Croy wondered. Maybe this was exactly what the Baron had planned. A humiliating victory over one of Mörg’s chief lieutenants, the very daughter of the Great Chieftain. If they carried this day, perhaps the clans would have no choice but to sue for peace—
“You will die!” Mörgain shouted, jumping up behind him. “Even if my men perish here, you will not live to see it, Sir Croy!”
Croy whirled around in a flawless arc, Ghostcutter’s point whistling through the air. Bikker would have been proud of his form, of his speed.
It didn’t hurt that Mörgain was bleeding copiously, or that the muscles of her sword arm had been injured. When Ghostcutter’s flat smacked against Fangbreaker with a resounding ring, Mörgain’s sword jumped from her hand and spun in the air. She tried to dive for it, to catch it before it hit the ground.
Croy could not allow that. He danced in through the follow-through of his strike and shoved Ghostcutter’s point into the hollow of Mörgain’s throat. Just short of piercing her skin.
“Ask for quarter now,” he told her, “and observe my mercy. You may have your life, if you surrender.”
Mörgain’s lips split in a defiant grin. Then she shoved two fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle so loud it made Croy wince backward and shut his eyes.
When he could open them again, she had grabbed Fangbreaker and scuttled away from him. “You think I fear death?” she mocked. “Death is my mother!”
Croy’s ears were still numb from her whistle. Yet he could distinctly hear something, a rumbling noise like an earthquake beginning. Soon he could make out individual voices in that roar—gibbering and wailing, and the chattering of teeth.
Out of the trees a horde of berserkers came for him.
S
pittle flecked their red-painted lips. They came running with blood in their eyes, flourishing axes high over their heads and biting their shields. Croy had seen them before, at the gate of Helstrow, but then he’d had a wall at his back and a gate to retreat behind. Now they surrounded him on all sides.
The few of Mörgain’s barbarians left on the road broke off from the combat and moved out of the road, making room for their reinforcements. The men of Skrae, perhaps heartened by their near victory, fell back into ragged formations, making tight squares bristling with pikestaffs. Not even a cavalry charge could break a properly formed pike square.
The berserkers were beyond awareness of the danger. They threw themselves on the points of the pikes, impaling themselves even as they slashed at the long hafts with their axes. Pikes exploded in bursts of splinters and the squares began to fall apart. The berserkers, jabbed in a dozen places, their wounds running bright red, did not even slow down. When a pike square broke, the berserkers leapt into the gap, hewing left and right with no concern for their own safety.
“Break and run!” Croy shouted. There was no cowardice in fleeing this madness. “Serjeants, disperse your men!”
It made no difference. Croy’s men could not hear him over the roaring of the berserkers.
He turned to see Mörgain leaping onto the back of her horse.
“They’ll slaughter friend and foe alike. Their fury can’t be quenched but by blood,” Mörgain told him. “If you’re wise, you’ll do as I do.”
Croy frowned at her. “You expect me to leave my men here to die?”
“I hope you will,” she told him. A strange wistful look came into her eyes. “I’d like to see you again. At the point of my sword or—otherwise.” Then she laughed and kicked her horse into a gallop. In a moment she was gone around a bend of the road.
Croy cursed in frustration and ran toward the fray. Ghostcutter tore through the spine of the first berserker he found, cutting the man’s back to ribbons. The berserker fell but his legs kept kicking at the dust as he tried to get up.
Another man with a red-painted face howled at Croy and swung at him with his axe. The blow could have chopped down a tree, but it was ill-timed. Croy ducked underneath it and ran the easterner through the heart.
The berserkers died like anyone else. They just took longer to realize what had happened. Croy laid low two more before he’d reached the first pike square. “You, men, get out of here,” he screamed at his own soldiers. “You only have one chance!”
As the serjeant smote and bellowed at his men to obey their orders, one by one the men of Skrae broke for the trees. Many of them were caught by berserkers but a few escaped. Unfortunately that left Croy alone with a pair of berserkers who had no other target for their wrath.
They moved fast, though not nearly with the speed of Mörgain. Croy turned their headlong recklessness against them, tripping one as he stepped inside the reach of another. Ghostcutter rose and fell as he slew them. They made no attempt to parry. Croy paused only a moment to make sure they were dead and would not come biting at his ankles.
Suddenly another berserker was right next to him. A wicked axe blade came down on the side of Croy’s helmet. It bounced off but it left his head ringing, and his helmet slid to the side so he could no longer see out of the eyeslits. Blind and deaf, Croy jabbed straight out with Ghostcutter and tore the helmet off with his free hand.
Two more berserkers faced him. They were still ten yards away. More than enough time to think of how to dispatch them. Or just enough time to try to break up another doomed pike square. Croy sought the nearest group of his own soldiers—
—and found none.
Maybe they’d been smart enough to break and run without waiting for his command. He saw mounds of bodies, though, and this time he recognized most of the dead faces. Nowhere on the road could he see men of Skrae still standing. What he did see was red-painted faces and rolling, bloodshot eyes.
He was alone, with at least thirty berserkers.
Croy no longer had a duty to dispatch. Without men, he had no orders to carry out. He raced for his horse as fast as his legs could carry him. Jumping up onto its back, he gave it a sharp jab with his spurs and grabbed up the reins as he tried desperately not to fall off.
As fast as his horse could run, though, the berserkers gave chase. They ran after him, whooping and brandishing their weapons, covered in blood. Croy felt like he was in some terrible dream where no matter how fast he rode he would never get away.
Little by little, though, he gained ground. His horse panted for breath as its hooves flashed on the dusty road. He leaned forward into the charge, to avoid the naked tree branches that flashed by overhead. He was going to make it. He was—
A berserker leapt from the side of the road and grabbed onto his saddle. The man’s legs dragged behind him on the ground but his hands clutched with white knuckles at Croy’s tack.
Croy stared down into eyes gone wholly to madness. He saw anger there, only anger—anger at the world, at the gods, at anything that could bleed. The berserker grabbed at the reins with his teeth and started chewing through them.
Croy didn’t have time to cry out in surprise. He lifted Ghostcutter high and brought its pommel down hard enough to smash in the berserker’s skull. The madman’s hands finally released the saddle, and the body fell away.
Easthull, Croy thought. He must go at once to the manor. The Baron, the king, the princess were there. He needed to move them somewhere else, perhaps far to the west. Perhaps as far as Ness.
There was no time to waste.