David Zindell - Black Jade

'No!' I said to him. 'We can escape them yet! Let's ride!'

I urged Altaru to a gallop; it gladdened my heart to see Bemossed push his gelding to match this pace. He and Littlefoot both seemed near to collapse, but they managed to negotiate the easy slope down the backside of the hill. Another and larger hill rose up before us. I led the way around it, through a broad, grassy trough, and I dared to hope that the sight of our enemy would inspire us to a speed great enough to leave them behind.

But it was not to be. Just as I rounded the hill, I came upon a stream cutting through a gully. Altaru jumped across it almost without breaking stride. Just as I turned in my saddle to warn Bemossed of this unexpected obstacle, though, he seized hold of Littlefoots reins in confusion. Littlefoot planted his hooves in the grass, stopping up short of the stream. Bemossed, completely unprepared for his horse's sudden balk, went flying headfirst from his saddle through the air. His momentum carried him clear across the stream, where he struck the ground with a sickening impact. He threw up his hands to protect his head, and I heard bones break. It was something of a miracle that Atara's horse and those of the children, following close behind him, managed to jump the stream without trampling him.

We all gathered around Bemossed near the edge of the gully and dismounted. Bemossed stood up bravely, holding his drooping arm in his hand. He winced in pain as Master Juwain quickly examined it, but did not utter even a murmur of complaint

'Both bones in your forearm are broken,' Master Juwain announced. 'Not badly, I think, but they must be set. and your arm wrapped.'

'Not here!' Kane growled out. 'There is no time!'

'He can't ride like this,' Master Juwain said.

'He can hardly ride as it is,' Kane snapped. 'But ride he must.'

'All right,' I said. 'Then he'll ride with me.'

I mounted Altaru, and then helped Maram and Kane as they fairly flung Bemossed up onto Altaru's back behind me. I told Bemossed to wrap his good arm around my waist and to hold on tightly. Then I whispered to my great, black stallion, 'All right, old friend, you must run quickly now — quicker than you ever have before!'

Altaru, however, although the strongest of horses and a fury of speed over short distances, had never had the wind for long races. With Bemossed's weight added to mine, Altaru sprang forward with a great surge of determination that could not last very long. We galloped for a while over the lumpy, grassy ground. The breath snorted from his huge nostrils, and I felt an agony of fire building within the great, bunching muscles of his flanks and legs. I feared that he would run so hard that his heart might burst. I wanted to weep at the valor of this great-spirited being.

I heard the horses of my companions pounding after us and Bemossed's tormented breath exploding in my ear. I felt his arm tight around my belly, but trembling with the effort to keep holding on. I knew his strength was failing, as was Altaru's. After a couple of miles, my horse's pace slowed to barely a gallop. His whole body seemed to knot and quiver with a burning agony. I did not know how he kept on running.

We came out into a bowl of thick grass surrounded by hills, to its center stood an old cottage, or rather, its ruins. It had no roof and only three good walls: the fourth wall, facing us, had crumbled in places, and its doorway lacked a door. I pointed Altaru straight toward this hole in the wall's mortared stone. And Maram cried out in protest to me: 'What are you doing? The pass lies that way!' He pointed off past the right of the house. 'We won't make it — not this way!' I called back to him. 'We must make a stand, here.'

He didn't argue with me, nor did anyone else. I drew up in front of the cottage and waited as my friends joined me and dismounted. Kane and Maram helped Bemossed down from Altaru's back; then I rode him through the doorway into the cottage. Kane took charge of getting the other horses and everyone inside. I dismounted, too, and began walking around the cottage's single room. Piles of old leaves and bits of stone littered its packed-earth floor. Three of its walls, as I had thought, seemed to be in good enough repair. They stood a good seven feet high. The southern wall, however, had crumbled down to a height of four feet along much of its length. It was no castle that I had chosen for us to defend, but the best protection we could hope to find.

While Master Juwain and Liljana worked to set Bemossed's arm and wrap it, Kane unholstered his bow and began sticking arrows down into the dirt floor. So did I, and so did Maram. He moved with speed but without conviction or hope. I heard him mutter to himself, 'Ah, Maram, my old friend, this is madness — this is surely the end.'

'How many times have you said that?' I asked him, pushing an arrow down into the rain-softened earth.

'I don't know,' he grumbled. 'But sooner or later, I'll be right.'

I looked out over the crumbled section of wall for the approach of our enemy. I said, 'We survived the siege of Khaisham, didn't we?'

'By a miracle, we did. But here we have no escape tunnel.' 'Then we'll have to find a different way to escape.' Behind us, near the cottage's north wall, Estrella tried to quiet the horses. She and Daj had tethered them to an old beam that lay on the floor there; other than it and some splinters from an old window frame, the cottage seemed to have been stripped of wood and all its furnishings.

'This is not so bad a place,' I told Maram. 'Not nearly so bad as Argattha, where we fought off a hundred men.'

'But there we had Ymiru with us, and we wore armor, too. And Atara had her other sight.'

He turned toward Atara, who was busy stringing her great horn bow. She kept her arrows in the quiver slung on her back. I felt her waiting desperately for her second sight to return.

'We will win,' I told Maram.

'Against two hundred knights?'

'Yes,' I said.

'How, Val?'

I looked out over the low section of the wall toward the gap in the hills to the south. And I told him, 'I don't know, but we will win.'

My words did not convince him. I wasn't sure that I could even convince myself. I saw Kane's jaws working with all the tension of a steel trap, and I sensed that even my grim-faced friend had rarely found himself in such a desperate situation.

There came a grinding snap as Master Juwain set the bones of Bemossed's arm. Bemossed gave a gasp, and his face contorted with pain. He said nothing. I saw little hope in his eyes, and I wondered if he regretted coming away with us. I felt a tightness in his throat; a sense of doom seemed to grip him in an ironclad fist. I couldn't help thinking of what Master Matai had said about the Maitreya: that his star would burn brightly but not long.

A few moments later, Lord Mansarian rode his white stallion through the gap in the hills to the south. The green peacock feathers of his shiny bronze helm fluttered in the breeze. Four or five of his companies of Red Capes thundered behind him. Lord Mansarian led them to a point in the grassy bowl about four hundred yards away: just outside the range of our arrows. He drew up his men in long lines facing the cottage. I caught a flash of a white-haired man wearing a red robe, and I knew that this must be one of the Red Priests. Another priest — Salmelu, I guessed — sat on his horse next to a man covered from head to knee with a gray traveling cloak. I could not see if he wore armor beneath it. I could not see his face, but the acid burning my throat told me that this must be Morjin.

'Damn him!' Kane muttered. He stood next to me behind the crumbled section of wall. 'Damn his blood!'

Daj came up to us, and craned his head over the wall to look upon our enemy. He gripped his little sword in his hand, and he said, 'Why do they wait there? Why don't they surround the house?'