A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [55]
Loushoond's next words were lost in a yelp as the staggering, bleeding Baron Brightpennant smashed through his guard and sent a gem-adorned baronial sword spinning away. Loushoond stumbled back, moaning in fear. "Slay them!" he shrieked wildly.
"Best ask Ornentar to do that," Craer called, leaping over a blade to roll and spring up under a man's guard and drive a dagger into a throat from inches away. "Tarlagar doesn't know what it takes, remember?"
Three knights leaped forward, blades flashing. Steel clashed and rang-and Glarsimber Belklarravus groaned, reeled back with a blade in his side, and fell.
The wolf-spider sprang forward over him, but six or seven armaragors surged to meet it, shouting eagerly to each other, and Sarasper was forced to dart away again.
"Hawk!" Craer snapped. "Brightpennant's down!"
"On my way," Hawkril growled, parrying with such force that his foe staggered away, cursing. "On my way!"
With a roar the hulking armaragor hewed down a man, kicked another in the codpiece hard enough to lift the man right off the ground, and ducked past a third knight.
"Aid!" the man he'd kicked gasped, writhing on the corpse-strewn ground. "Aid!"
"Now, Hawk!" Craer called reprovingly, as his swordbrother reached Glarsimber and took up a stance over the fallen, groaning baron. "You kicked Tarlagar himself, and forgot to use the boot with the toe-blade! Again! That must make a dozen barons you've forgotten to slay this year alone!"
"Fall back!" Baron Ornentar snapped, striding forward to stand by Tarlagar and gesturing to his men to help the stumbling Loushoond to his side. "Shield ring, around us three-now!"
Hawkril roared again and slashed so hard at a knight that the man reeled back, slipped-and then fell, his neck broken by Sarasper's pounce. The wolf-spider scuttled away again before any other armaragor could reach him with a blade-through renewed roars from Ornentar for his men to form a shield ring.
Craer shot a glance over his shoulder, shook his head, and called, "Hawk! Embra!"
His friend was large and heavy-armored, but not stupid. "Carry to the boat?"
"Precisely," the procurer agreed, snatching up belt-daggers from dead knights like a madman. "Glarsimber first, hey?"
"And who'll entertain our ambitious barons?"
"Sarasper and the most handsome overduke, of course."
"Ah, that would be Embra," Hawkril growled, snatching up Bright-pennant and lumbering over bodies at what might, given good footing and distance enough, become a run. "I suppose you meant to say the most clever-tongued overduke."
"Ah, yes," Craer agreed, as the armaragors rushed forward and he was forced to hurl half a dozen daggers with snake-swift speed. "I suppose I did."
Sarasper pounced on one knight, rolled, and sprang away again, leaving the man bleeding from a huge bite on his neck. The other armaragors lost their sudden enthusiasm, and-under the lash of a steady stream of curses from Ornentar-returned to their defensive ring.
Hawkril skidded to a halt at the splintered edge of the dock, and almost fell. "That's the best boat left, lad?"
"Y-yes," Raulin panted, paddling clumsily in the water with an oar. "It has the Lady Embra in it, see, and-"
"That would make it the best craft, yes," Hawkril agreed gravely, shooting a glance back down the dock to see if anyone was charging towards him, as he knelt to lower Glarsimber's heavy body into Raulin's anxious grasp.
No one was coming, and Craer's stream of brightly mocking comments hadn't abated, so Hawkril tucked the blood-dripping baron under one arm and swung himself down into the water, wrestling Brightpennant aboard the boat and heaving himself towards another, larger boat in a desperate, wallowing splash.
The new boat tipped alarmingly as he forced its rail down and rolled over it into the bottom, seeing the sky for a few alarming moments ere the craft righted itself,