P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

Yet doubts arose: what could a single rider do, even on such a mount as Death’s-head? To make a sacrifice was one thing; to make a fool of oneself while doing so was another, and to what end?

Moreover, despite her suspicions, what could have possessed the Master to risk his person after so long lurking in the shadows—not that he was really in the light now with night roiling over his head, slashed by distant lightning. If he was here, he must think that there was no real risk. He meant to smash through the cadets and seize the camp before the Host could arrive to defend it. Meanwhile, he must believe that his puppet Prince Ton had overthrown King Krothen to become the Host’s paymaster. To whom did the Host belong then, if not to him?

Jame didn’t think it would be that simple, but the Master of Knorth was arrogant enough to believe that it was.

Thus her thoughts and emotions churned, underlaid with an unspoken fear: was she simply afraid?

The Karnids had seen them. They came on at a gallop that made the earth shake, Iron-jaw thundering before them with sparks under his hooves where steel met rock. Thousands of swords cleared their scabbards and flashed back the dawn light from under the boiling clouds of night.

In the next hour, we may all die.

At the very least, she might buy them some time.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Spare. “He was Lord Knorth before he betrayed us all. This is house business.”

With that, she put her heels to the rathorn’s sides and he bolted forward, almost leaving her in midair.

They passed through the gap, hearing the cries behind them as the cadets formed ranks. They would hold their position as long as they could, but not follow, nor did Jame expect them to. The rathorn’s hooves devoured the ground. She felt his back arch with each stride while the wind tore at her loosened hair.

Her shield was slung across her back. She slipped it down onto her left arm, truly feeling its weight for the first time. The rhi-sar lashings might be light, but the ironwood backing was not.

Iron-jaw lunged toward her. Jame remembered meeting him in the soulscape, how he had nearly run down the foal that had been Death’s-head, how she had grabbed his thick neck, swung up, and plunged her nails into his eye. Sure enough, the right socket was a scarred cavity weeping thick, dark blood. Blind on that side . . .

The space between the two equines was closing rapidly. Trinity, were they going to crash head on? The haunt was larger and heavier than the young rathorn, his hooves the size of platters. He loomed over them like a gray cliff.

At the last moment, Death’s-head swerved to the right. As they hurtled past each other, the rathorn slashed at the haunt and its rider hammered down with a battle axe on Jame’s raised shield.

Jame thought for a moment that he had broken her arm, but he had only driven the shield back to her shoulder, momentarily numbing it.

Death’s-head turned faster than the haunt could and surged up on his right side. Jame finally remembered to draw her sword, but how was she supposed to manage it, the shield, and the rathorn all at once?

Have you ever fought in that armor? Spare had asked. I thought not.

Ah, well. Death’s-head would do as he wanted. As always, he was her primary weapon.

She took the reins in her fingertips behind the shield. The haunt’s rider hammered down on it again, chipping its ironwood rim. She could see the glint of his eyes on either side of his nasal guard and hear the hollow boom of laughter within his helm.

Iron-jaw turned to the left. Death’s-head, following him, almost ran into a wall of rearing, lunging thorns. Jame saw that the black mares surrounded them in a circle, around which the Karnids streamed to throw themselves against the front rank of cadets. To either side, they were dismounting and swarming up the rocky slope to the north and the mountain spur to the south, to be met above by Gorbel’s and Timmon’s forces respectively. She glimpsed the Caineron Lordan in his black armor methodically chopping at cheche -covered heads as they rose to his level. On the other side, the Ardeth fought in a shimmer of gold, backlit by the rising sun.

Jame reined in Death’s-head who, surprisingly, obeyed. Iron-jaw plunged ahead of them. Coming up on the haunt’s left from behind, Jame saw the gleam of white ribs where the rathorn’s nasal tusk had ripped open his side but not noticeably slowed him. She slashed at his hindquarters. He screamed in pain and rage. Jame shot past, and again pulled hard to the left to avoid the mares. Their wicked black heads snaked out to snap at the rathorn’s barded flanks as he passed.

Iron-jaw cut to the inside and drew up level where he rammed his shoulder into his lighter opponent, lifting the rathorn off his feet. Jame was thrown up onto Death’s-head’s neck and only kept her seat by clinging to it. The gray haunt rounded on them. His head shot over the rathorn’s as he tried to pin the white equine to his chest, the better to kick him to death with his steel-shod fore hooves. Ropes of slaver swung from his mouth into Jame’s face. His white eye rolled at her. She stabbed at it, and the haunt reared back with a squeal, letting the rathorn drop. No fool although dead, he had already lost half of his sight to her.

Somehow Jame stayed in the saddle and Death’s-head regained his feet, stumbling but not falling.

Meanwhile, the haunt nearly toppled over backward into the ring of shrieking mares. His rider was still off balance when he thudded down. The other’s shield had jerked up. Jame came in to the left and hacked at the exposed wrist. The rider’s gauntlet flew off, taking the shield with it . . . and his hand too? Where the vambrace ended, there was nothing.

. . . a hand, reaching out between red ribbons to claim her, her knife chopping frantically at it . . .

I cost him that, Jame thought. It is Gerridon after all.

The reality of it almost took her breath away. Whatever she had suspected, to find herself actually at sword’s point with the Master of Knorth seemed too fantastic to believe. Scrollsmen would sing about this encounter, however it ended, for he was a creature of legend. But then so was she. Jamethiel Priest’s-bane, daughter of Ganth Gray Lord and the Dream-weaver, sister of Torisen Black Lord, Lordan of Ivory . . .

“Ha!” she said, and slashed at him again.

He turned in his saddle to meet her blade with the edge of his axe. With a flick of his wrist, he disarmed her.

Jame dropped her shield, kicked free from her stirrups, and threw herself at him. The axe’s return stroke hissed over her head. She felt his strength as she grappled with him, but also his unsettled mass shifting. Then they were both in the air, falling, she on top, his hot breath roaring in her ear. Jame twisted to lead with the spike set on her left shoulder guard. She thought she heard a startled cry just before she crashed down on him. The rhi-sar tooth scraped against the nasal guard, then plunged into the helmet’s eye slit. The next instant her weight slammed into the steel shell, and something snapped.

The impact took away both Jame’s breath and, for a moment, her wits. She regained the latter to find herself lying on her back, staring up at the ragged sky. What had happened? Where was Gerridon? Silence spread about her, the clash of arms and more distant cries dying away one by one. Was she going deaf? What had broken? Sweet Trinity, not her neck . . .

Hooves scraped the ground close by, and she found herself looking up the length of two black, slender, equine legs. The thorn’s head descended. It sniffed at her, stirring the lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes, and bared its fangs behind curling lips. Like Death’s-head, it was a carnivore and had carrion breath. Would the rathorn ivory at her throat protect her? Then it sneezed in her face and stretched its neck to prod something that lay beside her with a nasal tusk. Metal rattled. The thorn snorted and withdrew.