Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

“Now!” Dannyn yelled, forgetting his horn. “Get ‘em!”

Like a sweep of arrows the ranks broke free of cover and charged the enemy line. Javelin points winked in the sun as they showered down on the Eldidd line—except at the front, where a lucky hit might rob them of the prince. As the raiders swirled to meet them, the first troop hit, swords in hand, near the vanguard. A whirling chaos of men and horses, the battle spread out on either side of the road.

“For the prince!” Dannyn yelled.

Howling a war cry, Dannyn charged for the head of the line, his picked men streaming after. When Gweniver tried to yell, her voice broke into laughter. This time it was so cold, so hollow, that she knew it was the Goddess, using her voice, using her body, speaking and fighting through Her priestess. Ahead, in the rising dust, ten Eldidd men were galloping to meet them. When she saw a dragon shield rimmed with silver and set with jewels, she knew that the prince’s gallantry was playing into their hands.

“Ricco!” she yelled. “There he is!”

The laughter grabbed her voice as the two packs broke into each other, spreading out and wheeling their horses round. She made a slash at an Eldidd horse, nicked it, and saw bright blood on her sword point. The entire world suddenly flared a hazy red. Laughing and howling, she slashed, pressed her horse forward, struck again, and parried a clumsy answering strike. Through the red haze she saw her enemy’s terror-struck face as he parried and struck in return while her laughter rose like the chant she’d heard in her mind. His very fear made her hate him. She feinted, got him to reach out too far, then risked a dangerous thrust and cut him across the face. Blood welled and wiped his fear from her sight. She let him fall, then thrust on forward to Ricyn’s side.

Outnumbered as they were, the Eldidd men clustered round their prince and desperately tried to fend the Cerrmor squad away from him. Gweniver saw Dannyn pressing in from the rear, fighting a man who threw himself in the way to block his path to the prince. In two quick cuts Dannyn killed first the horse, then the rider, and surged farther in, yet all the time he fought he was silent, his mouth a little slack as if all this slaughter bored him. As the group round the prince tried to re-form, Gweniver had her chance. She slammed into an Eldidd man from the side and killed him through the joining of his mail at his armpit. Her laughter rose to a banshee shriek as she turned on the raider beside him.

The silver shield swung to meet her as the pure-white horse carried its prince to the hopeless charge. Gweniver saw his cornflower-blue eyes, cold and determined, as he swung cleanly at her. The blow was so hard and so well placed that it cracked her shield in half, but she swung from underneath and caught his gauntleted wrist with the flat of her blade. With a yelp he dropped the sword. His dead-white face told her that his wrist was broken. From the side Dannyn swung with his shield and smacked him on the side of the head. Stunned, gasping, the prince reeled in the saddle. Gweniver sheathed her sword and grabbed the silver rim of the shield, forcing him to swing around toward her. At that moment Ricyn grabbed the reins of the milk-white horse, and the prince was trapped.

“Well played!” Dannyn yelled. “Get him away!”

His eyes drunken with shock and pain, the prince suddenly grabbed at the dagger in his belt with his left hand, but Gweniver got it before him.

“No suicides,” she said. “Ever have a fancy to see Cerrmor, lad?”

Dannyn and the rest of his men wrenched their horses round and rode back to the battle, which was screaming and swirling behind them. Dagwyn falling in with them, Gweniver and Ricyn took the prince in the opposite direction down the road and paused in the shade of a tree.

“Get that gauntlet off him, Ricco,” Gweniver said. “If his wrist swells in there, it’ll take a blacksmith to cut the wretched thing free.”

The prince pulled off his helm with his left hand and threw it hard into the dirt. When he looked at her with tear-filled eyes, she realized that he was some years younger than she. As Ricyn pulled off the gauntlet, he grunted, biting his lower lip so hard that it bled. All at once Gweniver felt a cold shudder down her back: danger. With a yell she turned in the saddle and saw Eldidd men galloping straight for them, a squad of some ten riders with Cerrmor men right behind them, but Eldidd had the lead by a couple of lengths.

“Ah, shit!” Dagwyn said. “They must have seen the prince’s cursed horse!”

Gweniver wrenched her horse around, then drew her sword as she charged straight toward the oncoming riders. Howling with laughter, she saw the blood-red mist come down again. The two men in the lead swung right around her and headed toward the prince. She started to turn, but another dragon shield was riding straight for her. Her laughter rose to a wail as she threw every cautious lesson aside and lunged, leaning dangerously in her saddle, stabbing with no thought of parrying. Her cracked shield fell away under the man’s blow, but the Goddess guided her sword. She thrust so hard that his mail split. As he slid dead from the saddle, she turned her horse. All she could think of was Ricyn, back there outnumbered.

By then the Cerrmor men had caught up, and in a howling charge they swept toward the prince. Gweniver could see the white horse, rearing and bucking under its helpless rider. Swords flashed, and she heard Ricyn’s war cry as she charged into the mob.

“Ricco! Dagwyn!” she yelled. “I’m here!”

It was ridiculous, maybe, but Dagwyn yelled back a war cry and fought like a fiend. Nose to tail, he and Ricyn were parrying more than cutting, desperately trying to stay mounted in a mob of Eldidd swords. Gweniver slashed one enemy across the back, swung in the saddle, and barely parried a strike from the side. She heard Cerrmor voices behind her, around her, but she thrust on, laughing, always laughing, swinging hard, feeling blows glance off her mail, striking in return, until she’d fought her way to Ricyn’s side. His horse was dying under him, and his face ran with blood.

“Get up behind me!” she yelled.

Ricyn threw himself clear of the saddle as his horse went down. She blindly slashed and fended as he scrambled up behind her, the horse snorting and dancing under them. An Eldidd man charged in, then screamed, twisted, as a Cerrmor strike got him from the rear. Swearing at the top of his lungs, Dannyn shoved his way through the mob and grabbed the reins of the prince’s white horse. The little eddy of death ebbed as the Cerrmor men chased the last of the raiders down the road.

Suddenly Gweniver felt the Goddess leave her. She slumped in the saddle, looked dazed around, then wept like a child who falls asleep in its mother’s lap only to wake up alone in a strange bed.

“By the hells!” Dannyn snapped. “Are you cut?”

“I’m not. One minute the Goddess had Her hands on me, but the next, She’d gone.”

“I saw Her,” Ricyn said, his voice faint. “When you ride into a fight, Gwen, you are the Goddess.”

She twisted around to look at him. He had one hand pressed over the bloody cut on his face, and his eyes were narrow with pain. The quiet conviction in his voice was frightening.

“I mean it,” Ricyn said. “You are the Goddess to me.”

Some four weeks after she’d ridden out untried, Gweniver came back to Dun Cerrmor a warrior. Since he wanted to keep most of the army on the Eldidd border for a while, Dannyn had sent her and her warband back as an escort for their royal prize, who turned out to be Prince Mael of Aberwyn, the youngest son of the dragon throne. When she rode into the ward and looked at the towering broch complex, she realized that she belonged there. It was no longer overwhelming, because its splendor meant nothing more than a place to live between campaigns. She acknowledged the swarm of servants and pages with a small nod, then dismounted and helped Ricyn cut the captured prince’s ankles free from his saddle. Just as Mael was dismounting, Saddar the councillor hurried over and bowed. The prince stood stiffly, looking at both councillor and dun with a small, contemptuous smile.