R. Salvatore - The Dame

Farmer Grees pointed down at his foot, which was heavily bandaged, but showing blood through the wrap. “All of us here been taking hits and can’t keep up.”

“And when you heard of the southern flank, you hesitated more,” Bannagran remarked, and Grees and many others shifted uncomfortably.

“Good fortune that you did,” Bannagran said even as Erolis started to launch another accusation. “And good fortune that you are rested.” He turned to his charioteers. “We go south, and these men will run behind us. We’ll cut the enemy off along the road.” Turning back to Farmer Grees, he instructed, “Your men come in behind us and turn fast to the east. Our enemies will be in rout and retreating, so run among them and kill them.”

“What of them that’s already crossed the road?”

“The chariots will hold the road,” Bannagran declared, loud enough for all to hear. He snapped the reins and his team leaped off, rambling across an open field to the road running south beyond.

“For the Bear of Honce!” he heard more than one man cry enthusiastically behind him. He hated that nickname, hated being compared to some animal, but he couldn’t deny its power to rally men, and he surely needed that energy and hope at this time.

Flames hungrily ate the thatched roofs, billowing thick black smoke into the air. Men, women, and children screamed and rushed about in stark terror as horsemen weaved through the village, launching torches onto the roofs, launching spears at the pursued, or just running down the smaller ones and trampling them under hoof.

Prince Milwellis of Palmaristown kept his horse running and couldn’t stop laughing at the frenzy before him. This village, of no name worth remembering, had sent some men to the north to… to what, Milwellis still wondered. To parlay? To defend? In either case, they had utterly failed, since Milwellis, eager to be the first to Yansinchester, the target city of King Yeslnik’s diversion to the coast, just sent his large force swarming over them and into their village.

Out of the corner of his eye, Milwellis noted a man darting behind the corner of a building. He kicked his mount into a short gallop, spinning around the corner, spear ready, to find the man huddled with his back against the stone, his hands open and defensively against his chest and belly.

“Oh please, good sir, please don’t kill me!” he cried. “I’m with no one, not Ethelbert. Just a fisherman, I am.”

“Be at ease, good man,” Milwellis said and lowered his spear across his lap.

The man straightened, his arms going down by his sides. “We’re just simple folk,” he started to say.

“Then no real loss,” Milwellis interjected. He thrust his spear into the man’s gut. The fisherman shrieked and doubled over as Milwellis tore his barbed weapon back out, taking along the man’s entrails.

“I would carve the crest of Palmaristown in your forehead for your treachery against King Yeslnik, fool!” the merciless prince shouted as the man crumbled to his knees. “But I haven’t the time!”

The fisherman fell flat on the ground, and Milwellis whirled his horse about, stomping over him as he went back to the fun at the village center.

A large group moving east-to-west,” Erolis confirmed from his perch up in a tree. “Slipping in behind Yeslnik’s line as they spearhead east.”

“Heartbeats?” Bannagran asked from his chariot below.

“Hundreds, five hundred, perhaps.”

Bannagran nodded and motioned his man down from the tree (and since the wind carried great bite this day, Erolis was more than happy to follow that order.

“You follow as swiftly as you can,” Bannagran commanded Grees and the fifty other footmen he had rounded up. “We will turn them and send them running, and the quicker you are among them, the more confusion they will find. So, for your own lives, warriors, run!”

As soon as Erolis stepped up into his chariot, Bannagran set his own off along the road, the other nine quickly sweeping up in his wake. Bannagran kept the pace measured for a short while, trying to gauge his timing for maximum effect at the enemy crossing point.

As usual, his instincts proved perfect, and when he set his team into a full charge along the last span to the enemy crossing, more than three dozen warriors from various villages of the Mantis Arm were within striking distance of the road.

Bannagran’s armored team and chariot roared down at the Ethelbert soldiers. The warrior led with a series of spear throws, plucking them from the stand before him, launching them with precision and great power, all the while aiming his team at the largest concentration. A couple threw spears back his way, but they were more concerned with trying to get out of Bannagran’s path, and their missiles proved ineffective.

Men rushed about wildly, and some broke. Some who thought they had dodged the brunt of the charging horse team found their legs literally cut from under them by the great jagged blades protruding from Bannagran’s wheels.

Screams echoed east and west of the road, including cries of alarm that the Bear of Honce had come. And from the north, where the other nine charioteers similarly pounded into Ethelbert’s forces, the fifty footmen howled and hollered and ran on at full speed.

The road was cleared in moments. Bannagran pulled his team up to the side, took up shield and spear, and leaped away. None could stand before him. Indeed, his enemies knew him and shouted his name in terror as they broke and fled before him.

All that Bannagran had hoped came to fruition in short order. The concentration of enemies moving to flank the southern end of Yeslnik’s line fell apart almost at once, and those who managed to escape the catastrophe ran back the way they had come, to the east.

Bannagran and his nine fellows gave short chase, launching spears, inciting further terror. Grees and the others swept by, cheering their leader, the great Bannagran, who had arrived to turn certain disaster into victory yet again.

“To your chariots,” Bannagran ordered the nine. “Those who have already crossed the road will try to strike at us from the west. They are caught alone!”

As predicted, the peninsula warriors did come on from the west, trying to break through to secure their reinforcements. But this was Bannagran, the Bear of Honce, the hero of Pryd, the hero of Yeslnik’s Honce. Their spears were met by brutal and unforgiving charges of chariots. At one point Bannagran even grabbed a handful of javelins, leaped from his chariot, and chased after a group of five who ran back to the west.

Not fast enough for one, who caught a spear in the back, and then another, who took one in the back of the thigh, and then a third, whom Bannagran hit with a flying tackle, burying him in the dirt.

Just before Bannagran cut that one’s throat open with the serrated edge of his short sword, the man cried, “I surrender! Oh, but it’s not my war! I’ve children!”

Bannagran held his slash, stood up straight, and hoisted the man to his feet beside him. He looked back to the man he had hit in the leg, thrashing on the ground, and to Erolis, closing in for the kill.

“All quarter!” Bannagran called, and Erolis nodded. “These, too, are men of Honce!”

“Hail King Yeslnik!” Erolis called back.

Bannagran scowled at his prisoner.

“Hail King Yeslnik!” the terrified man answered, and Bannagran nodded grimly and pulled him back toward the road.

Soon after, Grees and the others returned, full of cheer and bluster. “We ran them off for good!” the farmer asserted. “And many’re down.”

“Well done,” Bannagran congratulated him. “Now we turn west and quickly. Those out there are cut off from their allies and families, and they know it.”