Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

Chulderic had sent out messengers to neighboring kings and governors, requesting assistance, but little was forthcoming. The news of Ban’s death was out now and it was believed that the fighting going on in Benwick was among his sons, squabbling for the wealth of the kingdom. Although that was untrue, kings and rulers who had been friends and allies to Ban were reluctant to commit their own resources to what they saw as a family squabble blown out of all proportion. There were too many other real enemies and invading Outlanders abroad in the land to permit anyone who was not directly involved in the Benwick wars to dilute his own forces.

One afternoon, in the second month of the struggle, when things were at their bleakest, we had been pursuing a band of Gunthar’s horsemen—Germanic mercenaries who had been celebrated as Roman auxiliary cavalry and magnificent horsemen for hundreds of years—and we had finally brought them to battle. It was an even match, too, all things considered. The Germans were mounted on their heavy, forest-bred horses, and there appeared to be two thirty-man squadrons in their party, which matched our own size. They had been riding far abroad on this occasion, raiding deep inside our holdings and penetrating right to the lakeside about ten miles north of the castle, where they had burned at least one village and hanged large numbers of helpless farmers, simply to encourage their neighbors to offer no help to us. We had received word of their presence two days earlier and had ridden to intercept them and put an end to their depredations, and it had taken us an entire day to find them and cut them off so that they had no choice but to fight us.

We came together head-on, in a wild, charging melee that seemed to have developed of its own accord. I had had some thought of splitting my squadron into two groups and spearing into the middle of the enemy formation, but before I could even begin to issue orders I saw them charging right toward us at the full gallop. We had no option other than to fight or run, and so we fought. I led my men directly toward the oncoming enemy, and by the time the two lines met, both sides were advancing at the full gallop.

I was unhorsed on the first pass because my mount went down, smitten in the neck by a hand ax, and I flew right over its head. I should have been killed then and there, for I was winded for a long time, but in the heat of the fighting no one paid me any attention and I was able to collect myself and find a riderless horse. It was a stallion, and it had no wish to be ridden any farther that day. Unfortunately, in a battle of wills between him and me, he was destined to lose. As I was trying to catch hold of his bridle, a rider came galloping by on his other side. He knew I was not one of his, but he was galloping hard and could not reach me from where he was, so he slashed at the horse, trying to disable it. His slash was ill timed, however, and poorly aimed because of his speed, so that instead of wounding or crippling the horse, the flat of his blade smacked against the beast’s rump, and the animal, already terrified out of its wits, erupted into a run. I went with it, for there was nothing else I could think to do. I twisted my fingers into its mane and ran alongside it in great, bounding strides until I grew confident enough to take my weight on my arms and raise both feet, then drop them back to earth and thrust myself up and back into a vaulting swing that landed me astride the horse’s back. Once there, and free of the press for a moment, since we had run far beyond the fighting, I brought him to a stop and gathered up the reins, and as I turned to ride back toward my command, I saw my cousin Samson.

He, too, had evidently managed to swing out of the scrabble of the fight, flanked as always by his two most faithful followers, Jan and Gurrit, a pair of loyal stalwarts who might have been twins, so similar did they appear to be at a casual glance, and who had appointed themselves as Samson’s personal bodyguards. I first saw him because his trio of riders were the only people moving in that area and my eye went to them automatically, assessing the potential danger there and recognizing Samson and his escorts immediately. They were angling back toward the crush of the main fight, riding close together in a tight arrowhead with Samson in the lead and Jan and Gurrit pressing hard on his flanks. It was clear to me in my first, sweeping glance along the line of their attack to their intended target that they were aiming to use the concerted weight of their horses to drive a wedge into the exposed right flank of the enemy formation, but it was equally clear that someone in the enemy ranks had already anticipated what they would do and was moving quickly to counter them, dispatching a group of five riders to interpose themselves between Samson and their own force and give their comrades time to close the weakness in their formation.

I was more than a hundred paces from where the two small groups would meet, but I put my spurs to my new horse and drove him hard toward the convergence point, knowing that I would be too late to take part in the clash of the meeting and feeling the dread of foreknowledge swelling in my chest and threatening to choke me. Three against five was not particularly great odds, but my store of optimism had been sadly depleted during the previous few weeks and I no longer held high expectations of anything other than defeat and disappointment.

Sure enough, while the two groups were yet separated by a gap of twenty paces or more, I saw one of the enemy swinging what appeared to be a slingshot of some kind over his head, and moments later one of Samson’s companions, I could not tell which, threw up his arms violently and toppled backward, the helmet sent flying from his head by the force of the enemy projectile. He had barely hit the ground when the two groups closed with a meaty collision of horseflesh and the clang of hard-swung weapons. Samson’s other man, the one on my side of the action, went down, hard, his arms outflung as he fell or was knocked sprawling from his mount. I was fifty paces distant now, galloping flat out, and I saw the blood spraying from the open slash in the falling man’s neck, spreading like a red fog as he went down.

Samson’s horse was rearing, turning on its hind legs as he hacked at the men surrounding him, making no visible impression on any of them. I howled in protest as I saw one of them, and then a second one, dance their horses clear of the tussle, leaving the uneven fight to their three companions while they distanced themselves slightly and took careful aim with short, heavy, wide-bladed spears. They threw together, and both missiles hit squarely, penetrating my cousin’s armor and piercing his back, their blades less than a handsbreadth apart. The two impacts, occurring almost simultaneously, knocked Samson forward at first, threatening to tip him over his horse’s ears, but he stopped himself from falling somehow, and then the combined weight of the two dragging spear shafts pulled him backward and unseated him. He fell in such a way that the butts of the spear shafts hit the ground first, the points driving forward through Samson’s chest. For a space of several heartbeats he hung suspended on the upright spears before they fell over backward.

I was screaming by that point, and almost among the men who had killed him. I saw them turning to face me, their faces registering surprise because until hearing my screams, they had not known I was coming at them. I aimed my horse directly at the two spear throwers, who were sitting side by side and had not yet had any opportunity to arm themselves in any other way. My horse hit the closest man’s mount with his shoulder and sent horse and rider flying, and I aimed a short, chopping stab of my spatha at the second man as I passed him, driving the point of my blade cleanly into the soft flesh under his chin. I felt the steel tip lodge against what could only have been his spine, killing him instantly as I swept by and turned in my saddle to allow the momentum of my passage to pull the tip of my sword free.