Greg Keyes - The Born Queen

“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.

When the pain of the knife wound faded and she ceased to feel her body, Anne for some time knew nothing but confusion and the sudden pull of a current so compelling that she had no thought of resistance. She let it take her, knowing what it was, having seen the lives of men leak away into its dark waters.

For an instant she thought she was ready, but then from the very center of her climbed dark, delicious, corrupt rage. It informed everything that remained of her as she sought to strike out through the ragged wall of death at her killer, but here she learned the obvious but unspoken truth: Without a body in the lands of fate, no desire of her will could she obtain.

That was death. That was why the promise of her had forged an alliance with those who had gone before, to give all that rage and purpose, at last, a body again.

Now all that was failed and moot, and the chance would not come again.

She felt herself diminishing, melting, and knew that in time the very place she observed herself from would vanish. It wasn’t fair; this was her domain, her kingdom. She had nearly had complete control of it, and now it was eating her. What it spit out would invade the dreams of another, be used by another—probably Hespero.

She caught the strains of a song, and as she focused her attention on it, it began to swell, and her throat yearned to open and join its strange harmonies.