Glen Cook - Octobers Baby

"Pull back the same distance, Dehner," Bragi ordered.

"The lady too, and it please you."

Ragnarson turned. She was putting her stubborn face on. "My Lady."

"Must I?"

"I think so."

Once they were alone, scant swordswings apart, Sir Farace asked, "Man to man? Not as Seneschal and Marshal?"

"All right."

"Can you beat us?"

"Easily. But I'll starve you out instead. I've talked to deserters. I know what's going on inside."

"Damned foreigners... Intrigues and magic. And greed. Destroyed an army and a King." He paused, spat. "I'd surrender. Save what I could. But I'm not His Majesty. The weaker he gets, the more he grows sure we can finish Kavelin if we'll just hold on till we get another sorcerer from Al Remish." He spat again. "He won't surrender. He might fight."

"You could sally, come over the hill, and surrender."

"No."

"I didn't think so. How bad is he?"

"Very. Healthy, he'd give you a battle. He fought

Tarlson to a draw once. Years ago. He wears the scar proudly."

"What happens if I kill him? In Volstokin?"

"You wouldn't notice the change. His brother, whom you defeated at Lake Berberich, succeeds. The war goes on."

"How, with Volstokin in ruins and threatened by famine?"

"The rumors are true?"

"I know bin Yousif."

"Why this confrontation?"

"This army's a nuisance. I've got more dangerous enemies to worry about. Suppose I grabbed Vodicka and threw him in a cell somewhere? Kept him in style, but didn't ransom him?"

"A regency. Probably the Queen Mother. His Majes­ty's brother, Jostrand, isn't that popular."

"And this infamous alliance with El Murid?"

"Dead. Dead as the Emperors in their graves."

"Then imprisonment might best serve both Volstokin and Kavelin."

"Perhaps."

"A gift to show my feeling that there should be peace between us. Anstokin moves with spring. They intend to take the provinces above Lake Berberich, all the way to the Galmiches."

Sir Farace grew pale. He started to say something, nodded. Then, "Of course. We should've anticipated it."

"Our sources are unimpeachable."

"I believe you. I'll talk to His Majesty, but I guarantee nothing. Good fortune."

"The same." He said it to Sir Farace's dwindling back.

v) Personal combat

"Well, what'd he say?" the Queen demanded. "We might work something out." "You won't attack?"

"Not if I can help it."

"But..."

"I didn't get this old fighting for fun. Let's get back to the woods. This wind's killing me."

While the others piled brush into a windbreak and got a fire going, and saw to the horses and weapons, Bragi and the Queen sat on a log and stared at Vodicka's encampment. Bragi was looking for weaknesses, she the gods knew what.

"Beckring," Ragnarson said presently. "Find Sir Andvbur. Tell him I need a crossbow, a pony or his runtiest horse, and a Cerny." The Cerny, a breed developed near that small city in Vorhangs, was a gigantic horse meant to bear the most heavily armored knights.

"Now what?" the Queen asked.

"Hedging my bets. That's another way you stay alive in this business."

"I don't understand."

"I just remembered. Haroun isn't the only guy who thinks his way. His whole race... Can you kill a man? If he's trying to kill you?"

"I don't know."

"Better think about it. Better be ready when the time comes." He began fiddling with his boots.

Beckring brought the animals and weapons just as a party left Vodicka's camp. Ragnarson explained as he hurried his people to the meeting point. He rode the Cerny, she the pony. The men crowded close so they could hear.

When the Volstokiners arrived, without Vodicka or Sir Farace, Ragnarson had the Cerny sideways to them with the Queen masked behind him. He presented his shield side.

Sir Farace had been replaced by an idiot, a terrified, drooling victim of some disease that had crippled both brain and body.

Ragnarson had anticipated the action. Vodicka had done the same in other wars. He ignored the man, concentrated on the "advisers."

They were too studiedly disinterested. He locked gazes with a hawk-nosed veteran who wore a mouth-corner scar that drew his lips into a permanent smirk.

Smirk-mouth's eyes flicked, for the scantest instant, to the man who was to provide his diversion...

Ragnarson spurred the Cerny. His right hand, already low, yanked the throwing knife from his boot, snapped it at Scar-mouth's throat. The Queen, no longer masked, discharged the crossbow into the chest of a second rider while all eyes remained on Bragi. His party produced their weapons and surrounded her. Before the startled Volstokiners, unprepared for their allies' treachery, recovered, Bragi had gotten round their flank. There he met a third adviser in a flurry of swordplay, unhorsed him, and faced the Volstokiners as they turned to run.

The mixup was brief. Bragi lost one man. The other party lost five before they surrendered.

Ragnarson dismounted, removed his ax from his wargear, separated Scar-mouth's head from his body. He handed it to the idiot. "Tell Vodicka this's the game I play with treachers. Tell him I say he's a coward, a baseborn whoreson who sends assassins after people he's too craven to face himself."

"We better get out of here," said one of Bragi's men.

"Yeah." He scrambled onto the Cerny.

While they watched Sir Andvbur's men skirmish with Volstokiners who had come out to aid their fellows, Bragi told the Queen, "You look ill. He would've killed you."

"It's not that. I've seen men die... The head..."

"Didn't give me any joy either. But gruesome doings sometimes save lives."

"I know. 1 understand. But that doesn't make me like it."

His own stomach was in poor shape.

The skirmishing died away. After transferring his gear to a fresh horse, Ragnarson mounted, said, "Time for the next phase." He took a Royal standard from a bearer, spurred downhill.''

He went at a trot, carefully studying the ground and distant ramparts. He went to a canter, then, at bowshot, to a gallop. Volstokiners watched in surprise as he spurred past their earthworks, shouting insults at Vodicka. A few desultory arrows reached for him.

One whirred past his nose. He laughed like one of the battle-crazy berserker heroes of his boyhood homeland. His hair and beard whipped with the speed of the horse's passage. He hadn't felt such exhilaration in years.

He stopped beyond bowshot and waited. Then his high spirits got the better of him. He made a second passage, this time planting the Queen's standard on a mound near Vodicka's gate.

"You're mad!" the Queen cried, when he returned for a fresh mount. "Completely insane!" But she was laughing. And there was a new, more promising sparkle in her eyes.

"He's got to come out now. Or admit he's a coward to his whole army."

"He'll come in full knight's regalia," said Sir Andvbur, who had grabbed an opportunity to put himself near the Queen. "You won't be able to handle him..."

His spirits still soared. "Watch me!" Despite the cold, he shed garments till he was down to basic Trolledyngjan war gear. He hung helmet, shield, and sword on his horse, then ran into the woods where a Guard's infantry company lay hidden. He returned with a long pike.

"What you got to do," he explained, "is outgut them. When they know you're easy meat, but you stand your ground and grin, they get nervous. And make mistakes."

He realized he was showing off, but what he saw in the Queen's eyes made rational behavior impossible.

He rode to the meeting point, dismounted, planted a fresh standard, walked twenty paces downslope, leaned on the pike.

Trumpets winded. The encampment gate opened. A knight came forth.

This time Ragnarson faced Vodicka. He continued leaning on the pike, motionless. The horseman trotted back and forth, getting the feel of the earth, then rode uphill and stopped a hundred yards away.