Richard Baker: Avenger

Kara galloped closer to Marstel’s standard, Kolton and his men guarding her back. Ahead of her she spied the old lord in his half-plate, ringed by his own bodyguards and captains. She drew back her arm, readying a murderous saber slash for the false harmach, but only five yards short of her goal Marstel glanced away from the main press and noticed her closing in on his standard. “Guards!” he shouted, backing his horse away. “To me! To me!”

A Council Guard spurred his horse into Kara’s path, blocking her way. With a quick nudge of her knees, she crouched low in the saddle and let the big mare strike the soldier’s mount chest-to-flank and overturn the other horse. The guard fell under his mount and vanished, but the impact spun Dancer half around and carried her several strides away. By the time Kara recovered and righted herself, Marstel was out of reach, and the mercenary captain Edelmark stood in her way, mounted on a heavy charger with his sword bared.

“Come on, you spellscarred bitch!” he shouted at her. “I want to see if you’re as good as they say!”

Kara narrowed her eyes. Six months earlier Edelmark had led the surprise assault that carried Griffonwatch with the aid of Rhovann’s magic, and she’d heard plenty of tales of his brutality as the leader of Marstel’s soldiers. He had much to answer for. “Good,” she replied. “I was afraid you might surrender.”

With a shout, she spurred Dancer to meet him. He parried her first cut, countered with a cut at her face that she passed over her head, and recovered in time to block as she cut at the back of his neck. Then she was by him, wheeling Dancer around to make another pass while he struggled to turn his own horse to meet her again. Kara spurred up behind him on his left, and Edelmark twisted in his saddle with a vile curse to guard his back. His mail shirt saved him from a wicked slash across the shoulder blades, and before Kara could land a better-aimed blow he spurred his horse out of her reach. Once again Kara and Dancer darted up behind him on left, and this time Edelmark turned left in front of her and stood up in his stirrups. He hacked down at her with fury in his eyes as their mounts tangled together in the middle of the press. The Mulmasterite mercenary was stronger than she was; instead of trying to halt his attacks with pure strength of arm she deflected them to one side or the other, ducking away from each in turn.

“Stand still, damn you!” he snarled. Again he hacked down at her, and Kara met his heavy cut with a turn of her wrist, deflecting it to her left. Before he could recover, she flicked her saber’s point out in a quick, deadly arc that gashed him across the eyes. Edelmark shrieked and clutched at his face; she leaned forward and ran him through the armpit as blood streamed down his face. The captain slumped slowly over his saddlehorn as his charger bolted away from her.

“Well fought, m’lady!” Kendurkkel Ironthane called. The dwarf stood astride a dismembered runehelm a few yards away, a heavy axe in his fist. “I never had much likin’ for that one!”

Kara grinned at Ironthane, and paused to take stock of the fighting. She noticed that she had the taste of blood in her mouth, and her jaw ached; somewhere in the furious play of swords she’d had her own gauntlet bashed back into her mouth and hadn’t even noticed. The sky to the east was definitely growing lighter, and the rain had slackened to a gray morning drizzle. All around her, the Council Guard was breaking apart and fleeing in disorder, pursued here and there by shouting bands of Shieldsworn. Without the runehelms to back them up, Marstel’s thugs were no match for her own soldiers; the Shieldsworn were better armed, better trained, and buoyed by the sudden reversal. “I didn’t think they’d break so soon,” she muttered aloud.

The dwarf gave the runehelm at his feet one sharp kick to make sure it was done for, and shouldered his axe. He pointed east over the moors, where Marstel and the survivors of his standard guards galloped back toward Hulburg. “Th’ sight o’ their lord and master riding for his life was no’ so good for their morale.”

“Let’s not make light of the work ahead, Master Ironthane. We’ve got a long hard day ahead of us still.” Kara glanced around, trying to get the measure of the fight. The Council Guard might be broken, but she’d still have to dig the Jannarsks, the Verunas, and the Iron Ring out of their fortified compounds, and there were the Cinderfists and the Tailings mobs to deal with too. Finally, she’d have to take Griffonwatch, although that was a job best undertaken with the sort of magic Sarth or Geran might command. “It’s not over until we’ve got control of the castle, and Marstel and his wizard are in our pockets.”

Ironthane snorted. “Well, I see no wizard at hand, but ye might catch Marstel if ye’re quick about it.”

“After them!” Kara shouted, and spurred Dancer in pursuit. Wester and Ironthane could manage the business of finishing the Council Guards who didn’t flee. Kolton, Vossen, and the rest of her small band of guards and messengers-now less than twenty strong-followed her. It wasn’t much, but it was almost all of the mounted troops she had. In fifty yards Kara and her riders broke free of the chaos and galloped onto the trail leading back to Hulburg, only a couple of hundred yards behind Marstel.

Marstel looked once over his shoulder at her; fear and fury flickered across his features, and the old lord hunched lower over his horse’s neck and spurred it on. For a half mile or more the false harmach and his guards fled before Kara. But then a company of another twenty armsmen dressed in black armor with black cloaks came up from the east, joining Marstel and his small company. The riders in black quickly surrounded Marstel and the captains remaining with him, reinforcing them.

“What in the world?” Kara murmured, drawing up her reins. The black-clad warriors rode under a dark banner-a banner on which fluttered the gray and gold insignia of Vaasa. At the head of the Vaasan company rode a tall man in plate armor with a crimson cloak and the horned helm of a Warlock Knight. She waited a few moments while Marstel spoke with the knight, her jaw clenched in frustration; as much as she wanted to go straight after Marstel, she simply didn’t have the numbers with the Vaasans taking up positions around the old lord and his surviving guards. It seemed that there was something to the reports of Vaasan aid to Marstel after all. Warlock Knights had been involved with the Bloody Skull horde somehow; was this some new plot of theirs, or were they simply taking advantage of the opportunity offered by chaos in Hulburg?

Marstel spared Kara one more glare of fury and contempt, and then he and his Vaasan escort rode off back toward Hulburg, cantering eastward along the trail leading past the old abbey.

“Should we pursue?” Sergeant Kolton asked by her side.

Kara scowled, considering the question. She needed to speak to Geran, the sooner the better; the appearance of the Warlock Knights was not something they’d expected. “Not when they’ve got more riders here than we do,” she finally answered. “We’ll send a couple of scouts to keep an eye on them and make sure they’re headed for home, and we’ll wait for more of our Shieldsworn before we press them.”

Wheeling Dancer around, she left Marstel and his Vaasan companions to their own devices, and hurried back to rejoin the fighting around the foot of the hill.

15 Ches, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)

The gray light of morning seemed to rush in on Geran from an immeasurable distance, as if he were falling through pure blackness into a tiny circle of luminescence. He glimpsed the dim shapes of great copper vats and cluttered worktables racing past him; his head whirled with a maddening sense of tremendous velocity when all his reason told him that he had to be standing still. Then, suddenly, he and Rhovann no longer tumbled through shadow, but instead stood and swayed in a diagram of silver runes that gleamed on the floor of a cluttered conjury-the old trophy hall of the Hulmasters, now filled with Rhovann’s devices and arcane apparatuses. And Rhovann’s silver hand was still locked around his throat.