A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [125]
The horse dodged too late, and the blow caught it on the side of the head. Staggering, it tried to rear, then stumbled, plowing into the enemy black and throwing Rhodry forward almost into his enemy’s lap. Rhodry flung up his shield and thrust as he felt the horse going down under him. With a shriek the enemy reeled back from a lucky gouge of the shield boss across his face, the blood running like a curtain from his eyes. When Rhodry stabbed at him, he missed and hit the black hard. In panic the black bucked up once and writhed, dumping his blinded rider, then pulled free to run away. Deprived of its support, Rhodry’s horse buckled to its knees. Rhodry threw his shield to avoid breaking his arm and rolled, falling across his struggling enemy. He heard hoofbeats and flung his arms over his head just as a horse leapt over the pair of them. Rhodry staggered to his feet and grabbed the wounded man by the shoulder.
“You’ve got to get up,” Rhodry yelled
His former enemy clung to him like a child. His sword in one hand, the other around the man’s waist, Rhodry staggered toward the open ground beyond the fighting. He had no idea why he was saving the man he’d just tried to kill, but he knew the reason somehow lay in their both being unhorsed, as vulnerable as weeds in a field. At last they reached a stand of trees. Rhodry shoved the blinded man down and told him to stay there, then ran back toward the battle. He had to find another horse. Suddenly he heard silver horns, cutting through the shouting—someone was calling a retreat. He didn’t know who. Sword in hand, Rhodry gasped for breath and tried to see through the smoke. A rider on a gray galloped straight for him: Renydd.
“We’re done for!” Renydd yelled. “Get up behind me.”
When Rhodry swung up behind him, Renydd spurred the gray hard, but all it could manage was a clumsy trot, sweating and foaming as it stumbled across the open ground. The horns sang through the smoke like ravens shrieking. When Rhodry choked on a sudden taste of smoke, he twisted round and saw fire creeping through the grass round the tents and heading their way. Off to their right, a poplar blazed like a sudden torch.
“Oh, by the hells,” Renydd snarled. “I hope it reaches the bastard’s dun and burns it for him!”
As they trotted for the road, three of Comerr’s men joined them on weary horses. Cursing, slapping the horses with the flats of their blades, the men rode on while the smoke spread out behind them as if it were sending claws to catch them. Ahead they saw a mob of men milling in confusion around a lord with a gold-trimmed shield.
“Erddyr, thank the gods,” Renydd said. “My lord! My Lord Erddyr!”
“Get over here, lad,” Erddyr yelled. “We’ve got a horse for that man behind you.”
Rhodry mounted a chestnut with a bleeding scratch down its neck and joined the pack, about fifty men, some of them wounded. As they made their slow retreat back to the dun of another ally, Degedd, Lord Comerr joined them with close to a hundred. A few at a time, stragglers caught up and joined their disorganized remnant of an army. At the top of a hill, the lords called a halt to let the horses rest—it was that or lose them. When Rhodry looked back, he saw no sign of pursuit. In the distance, the smoke pall slowly faded.
Just at sunset, they reached Degedd’s dun and mobbed into the ward, bleeding horses, bleeding men, all of them stinking of sweat and smoke and aching with shame. Yelling orders, Lord Degedd worked his way through the mob while he cradled a broken left wrist in his right hand. Rhodry and Renydd pulled a wounded man down from his saddle before he fainted and split his head on the cobbles. They carried him into the great hall, where Degedd’s lady and her women were already frantically at work, tending the wounded. The