L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

Shalya echoed Saryn’s command, and, in moments, first squad was formed up on the ridgecrest, two deep.

Saryn judged that more than three squads’ worth of Jeranyi were urging their mounts up the gentle slope toward her and the guards, and that was with at least ten or more raiders cut down on the road. All had blades out, what looked to be sabres, rather than the longer and more cumbersome blades used by the Lornians.

“Forward!” ordered Shalya.

Against the first rush, the guards had the advantages of coming downhill and the surprise when the Jeranyi realized that they were facing women.

A single rider made toward Saryn, singling her out, possibly because she was on the flank of first squad and slightly back. Saryn turned the gelding into him at the last moment, using her momentum to beat down his blade and cut upward into his neck. She swung away and back uphill, stopping to survey the situation.

After the first flurry of blades, most of the raiders circled away, not without leaving another handful of dead. Saryn saw that the Jeranyi could have taken to the ridge and escaped down the trail, but not a single raider had taken that option.

Four of those who had flanked the guards swung back toward the main body, then saw her and charged. She urged the gelding toward the oncoming riders, releasing her first blade at the lead Jeranyi. Her senses and aim were true, and the raider went down, but the others kept coming. A second blade followed, and another raider fell.

Saryn swung the gelding to the leftmost of the riders, angling so that the other would collide if he followed, then ducked and back-cut as she passed the outermost rider. She could sense the wound, enough to incapacitate the man, but, once clear, she turned back, looking for the fourth rider, but he had ridden back to where the remaining, but still large, group of Jeranyi were forming up again-south of first squad on the ridge slope but at almost the same height.

As she watched, the Jeranyi formed into a tighter formation, a mounted wedge, just far enough down the hill that the Westwind force would have trouble seeing them against the rising sun.

Saryn glanced back. If first squad held, they might prevail, but the Jeranyi also had short blades for infighting, and the casualties on both sides would be high…and she had but a single blade left in her hand. What could she do?

The Jeranyi began to ride toward first squad, picking up speed.

Saryn turned the gelding toward them, and less than fifteen yards from the onrushing force, flung her remaining blade at the center rider-using her skills to accelerate and smooth the flow around the weapon…and to create a wedge of black-edged darkness that trailed from both sides of the blade, a wedge that linked invisible junctures in the air into an unseen black-framed whitish knife blade.

The Jeranyi’s savage grin turned to a rictus of terror in the instant before the heavy blade slammed through the hardened leather mail and into his chest. The two riders flanking him screamed, and all three mounts went down. So did those beyond them, and the entire center of the wedge was flattened into a pile of dead men and mounts.

Saryn found herself gaping…

Then a black void hammered her with emptiness and chill, shaking every sense and sinew in her frame. When that passed, she could barely see through the shimmering knives of light that flashed before her, then turned and stabbed through her eyes. While they left no wounds, the pain felt as intense as if they had, and it took every fragment of strength she had to hold herself in the saddle as she slowed the gelding.

The remaining riders turned their mounts and scattered downhill and both south and north along the road, except for a few who tried the marsh and found their mounts chest high in mud and water. Some rode right into the remaining Lornians. The others fled toward Sudara…and second squad.

As she stopped her mount, barely before running into the carnage she had created, Saryn shuddered in the saddle. After a moment, she turned and rode toward one of the nearest guards. “One of your blades, please?” Her voice cracked, and she hated that.

“Yes, ser.” The guard’s voice was filled with fear, but she immediately extended a blade, hilt first.

“After them!” Saryn forced strength into her voice, and she urged her mount forward and down toward the road into Suedara. The recruits of second squad would need all the help they could get.

“First squad! Forward!” ordered Shalya.

Saryn let the other guards pull slightly ahead of her over the quarter kay or so that it took to come up on the rear of the remaining Jeranyi, by then in a melee with second squad. She needed to be there, but she doubted that she could have lifted the borrowed blade for more than a single parry, if that.

She didn’t need to use it. Caught between the two Westwind squads and demoralized, the remaining Jeranyi had little chance for escape, and in less than another half glass, the only mounted riders remaining were those in the now-bloody gray of Westwind.

Saryn sheathed the blade and fumbled out her water bottle, mostly by feel, because she could only see intermittently through the lightknives that penetrated her vision. She drank slowly.

The water helped…if only slightly, enough that she realized she was flanked by Dyala and Kayli, both still holding drawn short swords.

“Are you all right, ser?”

“I will be.” I hope.

Saryn just forced herself to wait until she was certain there were no Jeranyi left in or around Suedara. Then she rode back south and out to where Shalya was supervising the recovery of weapons and mounts.

Once there, Saryn reined up short of the squad leader. “After you’ve taken care of the wounded, make sure that your squad recovers every single shaft and blade possible, including the damaged or broken ones. We’re going to need each one.”

“And the spoils, ser?”

“The standard,” replied Saryn. That meant half of all coins and jewelry to the Marshal-or Saryn, in this case-for supplies and the like and the other half split among the squad, with a double share to the squad leader. She’d varied the spoils occasionally, to compensate for the lack of coins among the guards, but from now on, she needed the standard…if not more. All weapons were for Westwind, to be used as Saryn deemed necessary.

With a nod to Shalya, Saryn eased the gelding toward Caeris and what remained of the Lornian squad, also recovering weapons and spoils. Dyala and Kayli flanked her as she rode.

From what Saryn had been able to sense during the fight, after she had used her white-darkness-expanded blade, less than a handful of riders had managed to ride over the ridge and take the back trail. Their tracks indicated-since Saryn could sense little-that they were not headed westward, though, but almost due south, toward Cardara and the lands of Lord Orsynn. Perhaps thirty or so had escaped her dark blade and fled toward Suedara and attacked third squad. None of those had escaped, although Saryn wasn’t exactly happy about the casualties.

“Commander.” Behind Caeris’s voice was something, not quite fear and not quite respect.

“Most of the Jeranyi are dead. Once you’ve completed matters here, please join up with us for the return to Nuelda.”

“We’re returning?”

“Less than a double handful of Jeranyi escaped. For the moment, I doubt that they will be any threat to Lord Jharyk’s folk.”

“Less than a…out of fivescore?”

“The rest are dead.”

“Yes, ser.”

Saryn wasn’t sure, not with her uncertain eyesight, but she thought the squad leader looked a trace pale. She smiled politely and turned the gelding back in the direction of Suedara.

More than two glasses later, Saryn’s combined force was back in formation and ready to ride. Given the size of the Jeranyi force and their reputation, the casualty numbers for her detachment wouldn’t have seemed that bad to the Lornians-nine dead, five of them Lornians, four of the junior recruit guards, and six wounded, none seriously enough not to ride, of which three were Lornians. The regency force had also ended up with nearly forty captured mounts and, according to the count of the squad leaders, some eighty-three dead Jeranyi. Unhappily, somewhere between ten and fifteen of the dead Jeranyi had merely been wounded in fighting second squad-until the locals got to them near the end of the skirmish.