Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

On a hot, airless morning the caravan assembled at the east gate. Jill kept Sunrise off to one side and watched as Seryl and Rhodry conferred about the line of march in the middle of a swirling, braying confusion. There were forty mules, laden with the king’s bounty, and fifteen muleteers, armed with quarterstaves, four guards with swords, and Seryl’s young manservant, Namydd. Rhodry disposed his men along the caravan, told Jill to ride at the head with the merchant, then took the dangerous rear guard for himself. After Seryl offered a prayer to Nwdd, god of traders, they ambled off under the hot sun while the mules brayed in protest. Ahead the mountains rose dark, streaked with pale stone, and as jagged as a mouthful of fangs.

With the heat and the steep road, it took the caravan a full day to travel ten miles. Climbing steadily, the road twisted and snaked through the rocky hills and thick stands of twisted pines that offered a thousand good places to lay an ambush. When the caravan made camp for the night, Jill tagged along as Rhodry set three men on guard. Although she offered to stand a turn on the watch herself, he turned her down. He did, however, pick out three muleteers to augment the watch, but even though he had Seryl’s authority behind him, the men turned as sullen as their mules.

“Listen, silver dagger,” one said, “you’re the one who’s paid to stay awake, not us.”

“You’ll get plenty of sleep in the Otherlands if we’re caught by bandits. Are you following my orders or not?”

“I’m not taking orders from scum like you.”

Rhodry punched him in the stomach with his right fist and clipped him under the jaw with his left. Jill admired the way the muleteer folded in half and hit the ground like a sack of grain. Rhodry glanced around at the gawking circle of his fellows.

“Who’s next to argue?”

They looked at the man on the ground, then at Rhodry.

“Well, now,” a man piped up, “I’ll take a turn on watch. When do you want us out there?”

After a peaceful night the caravan moved out about two hours after dawn and began its slow climb to the dangerous Cwm Pecl pass, where more than one caravan had been slaughtered by bandits. Once they were through, the danger would lessen, because Blaen, Gwerbret Cwm Pecl, kept patrols of riders on his side of the mountains.

“Now, bandits don’t usually attack royal caravans,” Seryl told Jill as they rode, “because they know the gwerbret will be out in force to hunt them down. After all, it’s his goods they’d be stealing.”

Yet Seryl didn’t truly look reassured by his own words. When just at noon they reached the pass, Jill decided that it lived up to its evil reputation. About ten miles long, it was a sheer-sided gap strewn with enormous boulders that forced the line into single file.

“It’s going to be hard on the stock,” Rhodry said. “But we’re not stopping until we’re through.”

Even the mules seemed to smell danger in the air, because they kept walking fast without a single blow or curse from the muleteers. Rhodry kept moving up and down the line, speaking to each guard in turn. After a few miles in, the road began to widen, but still it twisted through piles of fallen rock. Every time Jill glanced at Seryl, he merely nodded her way, then returned to watching the road ahead. Finally Rhodry came up beside them.

“Get back in line, good merchant. I’ll stay up here now.”

“Expecting trouble, silver dagger?”

He nodded, looking up at the boulder-strewn cliff top far above them.

“I’ve ridden in enough wars to smell trouble coming,” Rhodry said. “I smell it now.”

With a moan Seryl turned his horse out of line and headed back to a safer position. When Rhodry began unlacing his shield from his saddle peak, Jill did the same.

“Do I have any hope of convincing you to get back and stay out of this?” he said, pulling a javelin.

“None.” Jill glanced back and saw that he’d positioned all the guards directly behind them. “After I killed Corbyn, I never wanted to ride to war again, but by Epona herself, I’ll cursed well fight for my own life.”

He gave her a tight smile, as if he’d been expecting no less. For another mile the road snaked on, growing slightly wider. The dust they were raising hung in the windless air like a banner to announce that they were coming. Jill felt a cold like a lump of rock in the pit of her stomach. She knew what riding to battle meant. In her hand her sword winked bright, the blade that her father had given her. Oh, Da, she thought, it’s a good thing you taught me how to use it.

A little ways on, the road made a sharp turn, and Jill saw them, a pack of some twenty armed men, blocking the road about thirty feet ahead. Behind her the caravan turned into a shouting mob as the muleteers pulled the mules to a halt and tried to get through with their staves. With an automatic shout of his old war cry, “For Aberwyn!” Rhodry threw the javelin in his hand and drew his sword on the follow-round as the war dart arched up. Screaming, the bandits charged, but their leader’s horse staggered to its knees and fell with Rhodry’s javelin in its chest, rolling its rider under the hooves of his own men. Jill kicked Sunrise forward as Rhodry led his ragged handful of men out to meet the charge.

They were outnumbered, sure enough, but the pass was too narrow for the bandits to mob them with their superior strength. The enemy were poorly armed, too, mostly wearing tacked-together bits of leather and splint, with only here and there a bit of chain. They had also never faced a berserker like Rhodry, who howled and yelped with laughter as he slashed into them. In utter silence Jill faced off with one man, slashed under his clumsy strike, and caught him full on his unarmored chest. Blood welled up through his shirt as he fell over his horse’s neck. The horse beside him reared, trying to avoid the corpse, but her battle-trained Sunrise merely danced by and pressed on. As the rearing horse came down, Jill gave a good strike at its rider. She stabbed him in the side just next to the edge of his leather cuirass.

Suddenly she felt a hard blow on her back, turned by the mail, but it half knocked the breath out of her. She had gone in too far. Blindly she swung around and caught a second blow on her shield just barely in time. While Sunrise tried to turn in the pressing fray she slashed out, parrying more than striking. When she heard Rhodry’s demon laughter coming toward her, she fought even harder, swinging this way and that in the saddle, parrying every blow that came her way, while Sunrise dodged and bobbed and bit viciously at the horses round him. The laughter howled closer and closer, shrieking above the shouts and the war cries; then the man at her flank went down, his neck split by Rhodry’s sword. He was through, and they fought side by side, stabbing as they worked free of the pack. Suddenly a bandit pulled free and fled down the pass away from Rhodry’s god-touched laughter. Screaming, another followed. With all the typical courage of their kind, the bandits broke, shoving and jostling each other as they turned from the fight.

“Let them go!” Rhodry yelled. “Fighting behind!”

His laughter wailed again as they wheeled and charged back to the caravan, where a few bandits had broken through the line. Jill saw one of their young guards fighting desperately to keep between Seryl and a hard-slashing bandit. Just as Sunrise carried Jill up, the bandit killed the lad. With a howl of rage Jill avenged him with a stab in the back that knocked the swine off his horse. When the other bandits tried to flee, Rhodry and the last two guards pulled round to cut them down. Jill grabbed the reins of Seryl’s horse. His left arm was bleeding from a long slice, and he was slumped over his saddle peak.