A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [158]
“Fair enough. We should probably be thinking about our enemies instead. Nevyn says they’re still a good bit away, camped by the road to the north.”
“Well, I take it the old man knows what he’s talking about.”
“He’s keeping a strict eye on them.” Halaberiel turned slightly, and in the leaping light from the beacon fire behind them Pertyc could see that he was close to laughing. “Nevyn says to me, ‘That bunch of bastards took me by surprise once, and I’ll be twice cursed if they do it again!’ The old man’s a marvel, isn’t he?”
“You could say that twice and only be half true.”
Long before dawn, Pertyc got his men up and positioned them by the glow of the Cannobaen light. The line of archers sat on the catwalks, hidden behind grain sacks stuffed with wet beach sand for want of a proper rampart. When he gave the signal, they would stand up, ready to attack, and hopefully, surprise the enemy good and proper. Pertyc took the position directly over the gates, but although he kept his bow out of sight, he leaned on the wall as if he were waiting to parley. As they waited, no one spoke, not even the elves. Slowly to the east the sky lightened; slowly the beacon fire paled and died away. Up on the tower, the lightkeeper gave a shout.
“Dust on the road, my lord. It’s coming fast.”
In a moment or two, Pertyc heard horses trotting along, a lot of horses. Leomyr, insolently unhelmed, riding easy in his saddle, led his warband of eighty men off the coast road and toward the dun. When they stopped, some hundred yards away and just out of bowshot, Leomyr had the gall to wave, all friendly like, before he rode a little closer and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Open your gates. Don’t be a fool, Badger! This is your chance to be king of Eldidd.”
“Eldidd already has a king. His name’s Aeryc.”
With a shrug, Leomyr turned in his saddle and began shouting orders to his men. By chance, most like, they kept out of range as part of the warband peeled off and ringed the dun round while the rest bunched behind Leomyr on the path up to the gates. Toward the rear of the line, men dismounted and hurried to a pair of pack mules. They brought down a ram—a rough-cut tree trunk tipped with iron, which Leomyr must have fetched from Dun Gwerbyn on his way. Obviously he’d never even considered that Pertyc would surrender. Eight men, dismounted but still in full armor, caught the handles of the ram and stood ready.
“One last chance,” Leomyr called to Pertyc. “Surrender?”
“You can shove that ram where you’ll enjoy it.”
Leomyr shrugged, settled his pot helm, then turned to wave his men forward. Slowly the line advanced, the armed riders escorting the ram with Leomyr off to one side shouting orders. The men moved cautiously, slowly, since they and Leomyr expected that at any moment the gates would burst open for a sally out. Pertyc smiled, judging distance. As the riders came closer, they drew their swords, but they kept looking up at the walls, as if they were puzzled.
“Pertyc, curse you,” Leomyr called out. “Won’t you even parley?”
“Here’s my parley.”
Pertyc raised his bow, aimed, and loosed, all in one smooth motion. The arrow sang as it flew, striking Leomyr in the shoulder. Pertyc grabbed another, nocked it, loosed again, and saw Leomyr reel in the saddle as the arrow bit through his mail and sank into his chest. With a shout the other archers rose, nocked, and loosed in a slippery whisper of arrows. Pertyc heard Halaberiel laugh aloud as his shot knocked another man clean off his mount.
“Try to spare the horses!” the banadar yelled in Deverrian, then howled out the same order in Elvish.
In the boiling panic that erupted out on the field, Leomyr tumbled over his horse’s neck to the ground. Horses screamed and reared; men shrieked and fell and rushed this way and that. The men carrying the ram threw it to the ground and raced for the road, but only two of them made it. Pertyc was only aware of the dance of it: loose, pull an arrow, nock and loose again, leaning effortlessly, picking a target, bracing himself as the last of the enemy