Barb Hendee: Traitor to the Blood

Chap's jaws closed on dangling reins below the horse's jaw, but his head slammed into the side of the horse's face. The mount twisted, jerking sharply away from the impact. The sudden motion slung Chap under the horse's neck like a pendulum.

His body arced upward on the far side. The horse screamed in panic and jerked back the other way. Chap's momentum and weight snapped the reins in half, and the sudden release tossed him into the air.

Magiere saw Chap squirm to right himself. He came down, hitting the earth on his back with a yelp. The sudden release from the dog's weight threw the horse off balance, and it lost its footing. The rider leaped clear as the animal fell and skidded over the winter grass.

Magiere passed close to the older boy, who stood staring after his fleeing companion. When he started to go after the girl, Magiere grabbed the back of his coat, spun about, and flung him in the direction of the stream. He tumbled across the ground through a patch of lingering snow.

"Run, you idiot!" she shouted, not waiting to see if he obeyed.

The soldier that Chap had downed was on his feet again, running after the girl. Shouts and other sounds of flight and panic followed behind Magiere as she bolted after the girl and her pursuer. Earth-shuddering hooves grew louder behind her.

As the girl scurried toward the distant border stream, the soldier jerked a triangular battle dagger from a sheath on his hip. His horse mace was still gripped in his other hand. Magiere let hunger drive her, and then a familiar howl filled her ears.

Chap raced by on her right, heading back the way she had come. Magiere didn't break stride at the whinny of a horse behind her, and then the thunder of its hooves faltered. She glanced back once to see Chap clinging to its neck, trying to down it. There was no time to help him or watch the outcome, and she kept on. The soldier closed the gap on the fleeing girl, bur when he caught sight of Magiere, he slowed and turned to face her.

His dagger was too high, aimed at her face. He swung the mace, and Magiere caught it at the base of her falchion. When he thrust with the dagger, she slapped it upward with her free hand, then clenched her fist and struck.

The crack of Magiere's fist against his face was so loud it startled her. The force threw him backward off his feet, and he spun a full turn before landing on his back. She dropped on him, pinning his arms with her knees before he could roll away. Magiere gripped the falchion with both hands, its wide point posed above the soldier's chest.

And she froze.

He was young-too young. No more than a year or two beyond Geoffry, who'd helped serve in her tavern. His face was split across the cheekbone from her fist, and blood had smeared down to his jaw. No anger or fear showed in his eyes, not even resolve for his own death. He lay limp beneath her as if relieved that he no longer had to fight.

Mail vest and underpadding sagged on his thin frame, and were likely made for someone stouter. He wore no other armor, and his leggings were faded and overpatched. Dark rings of fatigue surrounded his young eyes, and his cheeks were sallow and sunken with hunger.

Yet he was here, killing women and children.

Magiere lashed out with her fist, cracking him across the jaw.

His body jerked once as his head whipped sideways, and then his eyes rolled as he went limp. There was no time to wonder what instinct made her to leave him alive. Magiere lunged to her feet and snatched up the horse mace, kicking the dagger out of reach.

The girl still fled for the border, now joined by the boy. Even the young soldier's mount had run off. Ahead of the fleeing children, riders harried the other refugees. Chap's angered howl carried across the field from among them.

Magiere turned away, searching the grassy field for any sign of Leesil.

Wynn shifted from one foot to the other behind the line of six archers upslope from the stream. Below, a matched number of pikemen stood their ground one pace back from the water's edge. Captain Stasi paced behind: them, speaking to each with a pat of a shoulder or a nod, but his voice was too low for Wynn to hear. She would have appreciated a few words of encouragement for herself.

At the far left end of the archers stood the priests, the Sluzhobnek Sutzits . Two stood back with their cowls down, a middle-aged woman and a young man. The younger shifted nervously like Wynn, while his mature companion remained as still as the third priest in front with his cowl still up. When the woman glanced toward Wynn, her cowled companion noticed and did likewise.

His features were hard to see, but Wynn made out the tuft of gray-white hair above his clean-shaven face. Though tall and straight, he moved slowly with the care of age as he gave her a polite nod and raised a hand in acknowledgment. Wynn returned the gesture, but her natural curiosity for all new things, particularly the people of this faraway land, remained dormant in the face of what lay before her. A distant scream pulled her gaze back across the stream.

"Hold until I say," shouted Captain Stasi to his men.

A scattered group of women and children raced across the field toward the stream's far slope. Behind and closing were riders with long maces swinging wildly. The archers startled Wynn as they drew and set their first arrows. Her mouth went dry.

She had been with Leesil and Magiere on the road for several moons, yet the fights she had seen were not like this. Waiting and watching was worse in this moment than scrambling through a dank forest trying to save herself from ambling creatures of the dead. War was practically unknown in her homeland of Malourne across the ocean. She felt alone among the soldiers, until the first child nearly tumbled down the far slope and into the stream.

A second refugee splashed into the water, a woman, wailing out for sanctuary.

One pikeman upended his lance and inched forward. His boot toe cracked the stream's fringe ice and sank into running water.

"Keep coming!" he shouted.

He leaned forward, stretching out a gloved hand toward the thin little girl, perhaps ten or eleven. She floundered as her patched skirt soaked in the cold water.

The eldest priest hobbled downslope. His two companions rushed by him as the mounted riders charged over the lip of the far slope. A second woman cradling an infant in a wool blanket waded into the stream, followed by two young boys. They veered right at the pounding of hooves closing behind them.

Wynn could not move. Breath caught in her dry throat.

"Hold the line," shouted Stasi, but he was already running along the shore toward the woman with the infant.

Wynn fixated upon the mother, no older than herself. The woman's mouth gaped from gasping air as she trudged to midstream. One of her boys hesitated at the far side, too afraid to wade in. The other clutched his mother's skirt from behind as he sank chest-deep and was pulled sideways behind her by the current.

The flicker of a hand ax tumbling through the air pulled Wynn's gaze skyward. She never saw where it came from, but she called out, "Captain… behind her!"

Captain Stasi charged into the stream halfway between a closing rider and the woman. He stretched upward with his shield. The ax, thrown from somewhere upslope, passed above the shield's edge and it struck the woman square in the back.

The young mother lurched, torso arching as she clutched the infant to her chest. Both boys cried out as she toppled facedown into the water, the infant trapped beneath her. Blood spread through her split sweater from the ax head embedded deep in her upper back.

Stasis voice rang out over the shouts of his men. "Let fly!"

Wynn cowered down beneath the thrum of bowstrings and arrows hissing through the air.