Brian Ruckley - Tyrant

He staggered to his feet. Kept moving. Down, always down. He saw the flash of the early sun on metal. Might be the tyrant’s helmet.

Come on , he imagined himself shouting. Come to me. Bring your blades, bring your bodies.

There was a kind of mad delight in him.

They were coming to him, as his madness desired. Many of them. And mad delight could only carry him so far.

He parried a spear thrust with the flat of his sword. Lunged in behind it with the knife, turning it as it went into the slaver’s stomach. There was a glancing blow on his back. He spun, squatting and swinging low in the hope of catching a leg. He did. The blade hacked into a slaver’s knee and cut him down.

Brennan wheeled and staggered on. He was getting dizzy. Sweat or blood was on his face. He could hear running feet, converging on him.

Come to the lion, all you hounds , he thought. I’ll die with my teeth on your neck.

He caught a sword stroke on the hand-guard of his knife. Broke his attacker’s forearm with his own sword. His left arm had been numbed by the blow though, and his knife fell from his fingers. Someone tackled him, enfolding his hips in strong arms and lifting him bodily from the ground. Throwing him down.

Brennan kicked free and rolled. A spear sparked off the stone where he had been lying. He managed to get onto one knee and somehow caught the shaft of the spear with his left hand when it came in for a second thrust. He pulled at it and stretched out his sword for the slaver to meet its point with his belly.

As the man fell, Brennan could see half a dozen more coming up behind him. Axe and mace, sword and spear. All coming for him. He was of the Free, here at the end, he thought. But even for a man of the Free, there was a limit to what wonders could be performed.

Then Lorin came on his horse. Charging wildly downhill. Scattering and trampling slavers. Flailing about almost blindly with his sword. Men fell. Lorin swayed in his saddle. Someone must have strapped him in there, Brennan thought.

He tried to rise, to follow after Lorin as man and horse went plunging on madly down the hill, but his legs were barely his own to command any more. He slumped sideways, leaning on a boulder.

Lorin brushed aside an axeman. He cut down a fleeing archer. Then his great, frightful horse put a hoof in a crevice and broke its leg and fell.

It twisted, crashing down on its side with Lorin’s leg beneath it. It rolled onto its back, crushing him. So hard and fast had been its charge that it slid like that, grinding Lorin beneath it, for another few yards. When it came to a halt, the animal screamed and writhed, trying desperately to rise. Lorin was not moving.

Brennan staggered over to them. He plunged his sword into the horse’s neck, setting his full weight onto the pommel to drive it home. The animal died.

Brennan looked at Lorin. He was dead too of course. Brennan sat with his back to the great horse’s flank. He could barely breathe. His chest heaved, and the air it hauled in and out was not enough.

And that, inevitably, was when the tyrant finally came to him. As he fought for breath, and his blood wetted the stone beneath him, and his body started to tremble, that was when the tyrant came. Brennan saw him advancing up the bare rock slope, a grimace that was half-grin, half-snarl on his face.

Cowardly as a vulture , Brennan thought. Come to pick at the broken carcass, now that others have done the hard breaking . The tyrant’s helmet shone, flicking shards of the morning sun this way and that. He held an old sword. Now that he was drawing near, Brennan could see that he had some kind of battered, dulled jerkin of chain over his breast. And pale, pale skin, like a drowned corpse.

Brennan had to lever himself up with his sword to regain his feet. It hurt a great deal. It was worth it for the passing shadow of surprise and hesitation that crossed the tyrant’s face. The man kept coming though. Brennan could guess what he saw before him: a bloodied, feeble victim. Closer to death than life. Easy.

Brennan took a couple of steps away from Lorin and his dead horse. Instinctively giving himself room to move, and to swing. Not that he had the strength to do much of either.

The slavers’ tyrant was muttering in a language Brennan did not understand. Cursing him perhaps, or promising him a painful death. Even had he understood, Brennan had nothing to say in reply.

He was not certain how long he could keep on his feet, so he went forward. No point in waiting. His sword felt heavier than it ever had before. He swung it though. He fought.

The tyrant was no trained warrior, no swordsman of skill or guile. But he was uninjured and angry, perhaps even desperate to recover some of the pride and authority that must have seeped away with the blood of his men on these barren slopes. Whatever the reason, he seemed to Brennan terribly strong, terribly fierce.

Every meeting of blades sent tremors through Brennan’s arm. Every step he took to avoid a thrust or swing felt unsteady. One of those thrusts caught him, slow-footed, and laid a cut across his upper arm but it was such a small wound among so many greater he had already taken that he barely noticed. And the tyrant paid for it. Brennan slashed under the slaver’s outstretched arm and landed a blow across his flank, his sword ringing on that vest of mail. There was not enough weight behind the stroke to do more than bruise and startle the tyrant, but it rocked him. It bought Brennan a few more heartbeats.

He felt light, as if his body or something within it was trying to rise away into the blue sky. There was a softness to his vision that took the hard edges off everything. He wondered, in a very detached way, whether this was what it felt like when life slowly loosed its hold upon a man.

The tyrant was shouting, his face contorted by anger. He rushed at Brennan, sword upraised. Brennan noticed absurdly that the man’s helmet had slipped just a little, slumping to an almost comical angle on his head. It made him want to smile.

He raised his sword to block the falling blade, and could do no more than turn it aside. He felt a glancing blow on his shoulder.

Enough , he thought. It was in the nature of the Free to find another way when things went awry. And never, ever to die easy. So be it.

He ducked his head and tackled the tyrant about the chest, trying to pin his arms to his flanks. The man was short and solidly built, but Brennan had the advantage of slightly higher ground, and of the reckless certainty that his cause was lost in any case. He bore the tyrant over backwards.

They landed heavily, locked together. Brennan’s sword sprang out of his blood-slicked grip. His hands, beneath the tyrant’s weight, rasped across the rough rock. For some reason that pain cut through where others had not, and he cried out as they rolled.

In that rolling they were somehow parted. Brennan came to rest face down, feeling warm stone against his cheek. He twisted his head. The sun’s glare all but blinded him. That and the wet smear of blood or sweat that he could feel spreading from his brow. Through it all he dimly saw a figure rising: the tyrant perhaps, though he could not be sure. He rolled onto his side, trying to get to his feet. There was nothing left though. No last store of strength to call upon.

Then the figure was gone. Or he could not see it any more at least. Brennan crawled-dragged himself, really-to a great boulder and managed to raise himself up on its face just enough that he could set his back to it. All the while, he expected the last blow to come.

He sat there, panting, and waited for it. He would have liked to do more, but he did not think he could. He did not think he could rise again.