Joel Shepherd - Sasha

In the gloom ahead, faded of colour, he saw the shape of a banner, leaning on the body of a dead horse. He limped over and found a tangled mess of bodies, Hadryn and not. One of the Hadryn was gasping, trying to live, propped against the dead horse's side. Most of his entrails were in his lap. A sergeant in Yethulyn Bears colours lay with his head split open. Jaryd limped past them, searching the bodies with his eyes. The desperate story of their fight revealed itself in their final, fallen forms. Here a desperate, heroic defence. There a defiant charge. Men had fallen from their horses and fought on the ground. One of the dead Hadryn had deep bite-marks through his hand and glove, the familiar curve of human teeth. Desperate fighting indeed.

Another dead horse, a dappled grey. This one, Jaryd saw as he limped around the dead animal's head, had a rider trapped beneath it, caught by the right leg. The horse's head was half-severed by a single blow. The horse must have fallen hard and taken its rider down with it, even harder. The rider had that look, splayed on his right side, an arm outstretched, twisted and halfconscious. Like a man who had fallen from a great height onto hard ground. His clothes were lordly, over his mail, with decorated stitching on his leather gloves and silver embroidery on his belt.

Banners. He'd charged this way, seeking banners. Lordly banners. Jaryd took another two steps. The half-conscious man seemed to register the boots before him and looked up, his helm askew. "Help me!" demanded a thin, anguished voice. "Help me, I'm hurt!"

A northern accent. A familiar, petulant tone. Now he remembered. "There's many hurt, Lord Usyn," said Jaryd, hoarsely. "Help yourself."

Usyn stared up at him. Perhaps the darkening overcast remained bright enough for silhouette, because the Great Lord of Hadryn's eyes seemed to widen with recognition. `Jaryd Nyvar!" He sounded almost relieved. "Master Jaryd, you must… you must help me up. My father was on good terms with your own. You are heir to the great lordship of Tyree. Great lords should always conduct themselves with honour, even in battle."

"And with what honour have you conducted this battle, Lord Usyn?" Jaryd asked. In the distance, trumpets blared again. "I saw the bodies in Ymoth. You attempt the slaughter of an entire Lenay people, and you speak to me of honour?" The fury was with him again. They were all the same, these nobles. His so-called peers and comrades. Everything he'd ever aspired to be, it was all a lie.

"You would stand there and snarl at me, while I lie wounded?" Usyn looked about, desperately, and found his sword on the ground nearby. He snatched it, and tried wriggling free from the horse's weight… and nearly screamed. "Have you…" he gasped, desperately. "Have you no honour?"

"My father and brother are dead," Jaryd said tonelessly. "Family Nyvar is no more. We were betrayed. If that is the honour of Verenthane nobility, then no, Lord Usyn, I have no honour. I reject your honour. I am a man already dead, and I have no fear of anything any longer."

"You would kill me?" Usyn asked. There was fear in his voice, a high, thin quaver. "Like this? Defenceless? I am not your enemy! Why

… why do you ride with these… these people! You have the blood of the chosen in your veins! The nobility of Lenayin! The masters of the land!"

"The nobility of Lenayin slew a ten-year-old boy for daring to be frightened. Your honour is horseshit. Or worse. At least horseshit has uses."

"I didn't do it!" Usyn screamed. "I didn't kill your damn brother! You can't… you can't accuse me of… "

"Of vanity? Of power lust? Of murder? Of massacres and hatred? I know only too well what you are, and what you've done, Usyn. I know because I was once of your kind. I've been so stupid, and so blind, that I didn't realise what they'd do until it was too late. For that, I deserve death. And if I do, I'm quite certain you deserve worse. Look about you."

Some men were groaning, amidst the tangles of wheat. A little further, someone was sobbing. Torchlights now moved across the fields, riders searching for wounded.

Usyn was crying, Jaryd saw with surprise. He'd thought him many things, but not a coward. Yet it did not surprise him too greatly. They were all hypocrites and fakes, all the nobility.

"I just…" Usyn sobbed, his face contorted, "… wanted to be worthy of my father! I… I wanted to be a great lord of Hadryn! I wanted him to be proud of me, and… and I want to see my sister again, and…"

He lashed his blade in sudden fury at Jaryd's leg. Jaryd leaped back, with the barest moment to spare, and hurled his sword point-first for Usyn's throat. It struck, and Usyn died with a horrid gurgling, drowning fast in his own spurting blood.

Jaryd turned away, unable to face the sight. He put his good hand to his head and stared across the battlefield, to where the tips of the northern mountains continued to glow, long after the light had fled the land below.

In a clump of wheat nearby, he heard a man coughing. He walked and found it was a Goeren-yai villager, with a bloodied face and a sword thrust through his side. Not deep, though. He might yet live. Jaryd sheathed his borrowed sword and managed to haul the man upright with one arm, long enough to dump him over one shoulder. Then he stood, muscles, ribs and leg shrieking protest, and began limping toward the river.

Dusk was falling as the army reformed behind a defensive line. No counterattack came, and masses of riders began falling back to rest their horses and water them at the river. Others searched for fallen comrades. Sofy helped with the wounded, and Sasha joined her, being horseless for the moment.

The wounds were terrible. Soldiers bound bloody gashes with rolls of coarse cloth, stripping spare shirts for further bandages. Men bore terrible, disfiguring injury with a courage that defied words, biting back screams. Goeren-yai recited spirit chants, and Verenthanes holy verses. Others acted as healers, administering herbs and pastes for wounds as were available. Others brought full waterskins from the river. Men died upon the ruined fields of grain. Others lived, and suffered.

When Errollyn arrived Sasha felt horribly guilty at the relief she felt to be summoned away from that patch of bloody, hellish ground. She climbed up behind him, leaving Sofy to attend the wounded amidst the lines of flaming torches men were planting in the ground to ward the approaching night. Her little sister moved from man to man, holding each hand in turn, assuring those in delirium that it was indeed the Princess Sofy who attended them, and that they would not die alone. Errollyn then touched heels to his horse, asking nothing more than a walk of the weary animal, heading for the masses of horses by the river.

Sasha rested her cheek wearily against his back. "I thought perhaps I'd lost you," she murmured.

"And I you," Errollyn replied. Torchlight lit the fields, sentries standing with light aflame, guiding the way. "I didn't see you fall, there was too much happening." Sasha felt him heave a deep breath. "I hope to never have to do anything like that again."

A Lenay man would never admit to fear. It did not surprise her that Errollyn would. He was so… straightforward. For a serrin, anyhow.

"Take this sword," he said then. "We cannot have a commander without a sword."

He pulled a serrin blade in its scabbard from a binding alongside his saddle and handed it to her. Sasha pulled the blade a short way from its sheath and examined the edge. It was every bit the deadly, unblemished edge that her old blade had been. Even without fully drawing it, she could see that its balance would be perfect.

"Whose is it?" Sasha asked.

"It's Tassi's," said Errollyn.

"But… oh no, I couldn't just take her…"