Robert Adams - The Death of a Legend

Bili’s mind strayed back to his memory of the first of those attacks, the sole saving grace of which had been to teach a few sorely needed lessons to the generally brave but stubborn and ill-disciplined lowland nobility.

As the van of the column of nobles and Freefighters strung out along the length of a relatively straight stretch of road, the brush-grown slopes to either side erupted a deadly sleet of arrows and darts—a sleet doubly deadly in that many of the Freefighters, who as professionals should have known better, had aped their noble employers in removing helmets and loosing the laces of scaleshirts and gambesons to let air to their profusely sweating bodies.

And so, while men on the road shouted and screamed and died or fought to control wounded and frenzied or terrifiedly shrieking horses, a yelling double rank of armored horsemen, presenting lances and spears, waving swords and axes, careered down the steep road shoulders to strike both flanks in a ringing flurry of steel and sharp death.

From the very onset, it was obvious that the noblemen were the preferred targets of the shrewdly effective ambush, for most of the point troop of Freefighter cavalry had been permitted to pass unmolested between the brushy jaws of the trap and now were milling on the narrow roadway as they tried to wheel about. Nor was the plight of the Red Eagle Troop improved when the rebel archers began to range them; the seemingly sentient shafts sought out every bared head, sank into vitals ill protected by loosened jazerans or pricked horses into a rearing, bucking, screaming chaos.

Then, abruptly, the rain of feathered agonies slackened as the most of the hidden bowmen turned their weapons toward the second troop, which was rounding the hill at the gallop, with the Rampant Blackfoot Banner snapping above the heads of the leading files.

Bili had had no time to uncase his famous axe, so he had drawn his broadsword and snapped down his visor in a single, practiced movement, grasping the handle of the small target hung from his pommel knob at the same time he dropped Mahvros’ reins over that knob.

For his part, the blood-hungry black stallion screamed a joyous challenge, and his fine head darted, snakelike, to sink his big yellow teeth into the neck of the first enemy mount to come within range. The bitten gelding was a hunter with no scintilla of war training and no slightest intention of being further savaged by a raging stallion; sidling, he proceeded to buck off his rider just in time for the unhorsed rebel to be ridden down by the second wave of rebel attackers. Roaring, from force of long habit, “UP! UP HARZBURK!” and then belatedly, “MORGUHN! A MORGUHN! UP THE RED EAGLE!” Bili stood in his stirrups, his brawny arm swinging the heavy sword with such skill and force that its wide blade severed the head from a lance and the head from its wielder in one single figure-eight stroke.

For a brief moment he wondered how so large a mounted force had remained unobserved by both vanguards and flank guards. Then his every thought was of dealing death and avoiding death, and all the world for him became the familiar tumult and chaotic kaleidoscope of battle—the earsplitting clash of steel on steel, the marrow-deep shock of blows struck and blows received, the blinking of cascades of salt sweat from eyes, while gasping for fresh breath within the stifling confines of the helm.

The warhorse, Mahvros, was in his chosen element and could not have been happier, as he lashed out with steel-shod hooves, tore at horseflesh and manflesh with big, square teeth, used his superior height and weight to deadly effect against the rebels’ mounts, few of which shared his training or ferocity. Bili traded hacks and parries with briefly appearing and quickly disappearing opponents, while the air about him was unceasingly rent by mindless screams of man and horse, by death shrieks and shouted warcries, and rapidly became noisome with the stink of spilled blood, horse sweat and man sweat, and thick with choking dust rising up from the churning, stamping hooves.

Instinctively, Bili would shift his weight in order to help Mahvros retain his footing on the body-littered roadway, often leaning sideways to strike around the stallion’s chain-armored neck and withers as the savage black horse reared to make more deadly use of his fearsome forehooves.

Up the road, beyond the trap, Captain Pawl Raikuh and Sergeant Geros Lahvoheetos, closely followed by the man bearing the Red Eagle Banner and Geros’ squad—not a man of whom was wounded, thanks in no small part to the strict discipline enforced by the young sergeant, which had seen all helms in place and secured and all jazerans fully laced up—had forced a path to the arrow-raked tail of the chaotic jumble their troop was become. They had collected more un-wounded troopers on still-sound horses along the way.

Raikuh, season veteran that he was, took the time to form his force of survivors into road-spanning files behind him, Lieutenant Krahndahl, Sergeant Lahvoheetos and the big Lainzburker standardbearer. Then, waving his sword and shouting, “MORGUHN! UP MORGUHN!” he led a crashing charge into the melee broiling ahead. Twenty yards out from the fierce fight, the standardbearer uttered a single, sharp cry and reeled back against his cantle, the thick shaft of a war dart wobbling out of an eyesocket. Both Geros and Bohreegahd Krahndahl snatched at the dipping banner, but it was the young sergeant’s hand which closed about the ashwood shaft and jerked it free of the grasp of the dead man.

And then they were upon the enemy, and Geros could never after recall more than bits and pieces of that gory and terrifying mosaic of blood and slaughter. But when someone commenced to furiously shake at his left arm and pound a mailed fist on his jazeran, he awoke—

shocked to notice that his clean, oiled and carefully honed sword was now hacked and dulled along both edges and running fresh blood from tip to quill ions; moreover, the blood had splashed and fouled his entire right side and even his horse housings.

“… and rally!” That voice. Captain Raikuh’s, he suddenly realized it was, and shouting directly in his ear. “Steel damn you, man! Raise the banner! Raise the fucking thing and shout, ‘Up Morguhn’ and ‘Rally to the Red Eagle.’ Do it, you son of a bitch! Do it now, or I’ll put steel in you!”

Shaking his ringing head and dropping his gory sword to dangle by the knot, he gripped the shaft in both hands, stuck it at arm’s length above his head and sent his high tenor voice out to pierce the hellish din.

“Up Morguhn! Up Morguhn! Duke Bili! All Rally! Rally to the Red Eagle! Up Morguhn!”

A blade smashed against the back of his jazeran, but he faithfully continued to follow his officer’s orders, wobbling the heavy, ill-balanced banner and shouting the rallying cry over and over again. From the corner of one eye, he caught the flash of the captain’s steel as Raikuh cut down the reckless Vawnee who had attacked the standardman.

At first in slow dribbles, then in an increasing, steel-sheathed flood, the scattered noblemen and Freefighters fought their way out of the press to gather about the eagle banner. No more blades hacked at Oeros, for he and Raikuh now were surrounded by a circle of steel, an ever-widening circle the sharp edges of which hacked and stabbed and slashed at the enveloping Vawnee ambushers.

Thoheeks Bili jerked loose the wristknot and threw down a broken sword, then hurriedly uncased and grasped his huge double axe. “Raikuh, Krahndahl!” he shouted hoarsely. “See the standard’s guarded. We’re going to run those bastards back to their kennels!”

The rebels did not long maintain a stand against the now-organized gentry and mercenaries; they broke and streamed back northward on an obviously predetermined course. They were pursued hotly, Bili of Morguhn in the van, coldly axing any rebel he came near out of the saddle. But when the surviving rebels disappeared among an expanse of gullies and dry creekbeds, Bili wisely halted the pursuit Then the mixed band picked a weary but wary way back toward the littered, blood-muddy road.