Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [167]
The men surrounded Jill, but they kept several yards away to give her room to maneuver once the fighting started. She rose in the stirrups and looked out over the field, where dust swirled in thick clouds. Nowec and Corbyn’s men fought gamely, riding in pairs with their horses nose to tail as they fended off the mobs around them. Jill saw a thick clot of fighting around Nowec with Peredyr in the middle of it. The noise was horrible; somehow she hadn’t expected that battle would be such a deafening, shrieking thing.
“There!” Sligyn screamed. “Just coming out the gates!”
His green shield trimmed with silver, Corbyn galloped out on a black horse with a squad of men behind him. With a yell, Rhodry waved his squad forward at the trot. All at once Rhodry started to laugh, a cold, fiendish delight straight out of the Dawntime. The squad leapt forward at the gallop and burst into the midst of the fighting. Jill felt like a leaf caught in a torrent as they wheeled, screaming and slashing, to face off with Corbyn’s men.
Up ahead, Rhodry was howling with berserk laughter, and Jill saw his sword swing up bloody in the sunlight. Through the dodging, shifting mass of men and horses, she could just see him, hard-pressed by two of Corbyn’s men while Sligyn tried to come in at his flank. All around men slashed and swore; horses reared as they tried to shove forward. All at once Rhodry’s laugh changed to a bubbling mirth that Jill instinctively knew meant he was in grave danger. She risked rising in the stirrups and saw Corbyn’s men parting ranks—and letting their lord through. Corbyn was going to make one last try on Rhodry’s life, and she was the only one who could stop him.
At that moment, Jill went berserk. A blood red haze flared up to tint the world; a war cry welled out of her mouth; she could no longer think. She swung Sunrise free of her startled squad and kicked him straight for Rhodry while she slashed and swung and went on shrieking. When a man on a chestnut wheeled to face her, Jill charged in, a battle of nerves that she won when he pulled aside out of her way. When Sunrise turned perfectly to follow, Jill got a good strike on the rider’s exposed side that drove him round in the saddle. Before he could parry, she slashed him across the face backhand. Screaming he fell forward under the hooves of his own horse.
As the chestnut stumbled and went down, Sunrise dodged without a word or touch from Jill, and she was through, falling into place at Rhodry’s left. Just ahead in the mob was Corbyn’s silver-trimmed shield. As she parried a blow from the side, Jill got a glimpse of Gorbyn’s face, sweat-streaked and snarling as he slashed at Sligyn. Sligyn dropped his sword and clung wounded to the saddle, an easy mark for Corbyn’s next strike. Jill howled and slapped Sligyn’s horse to make it dance back—out of the way barely in time. One of Sligyn’s men grabbed its reins and fled with his lord.
“Corbyn!” Jill screamed. “Your Wyrd’s riding for you!”
He heard her. She knew it from the way he tossed his head and turned her way. For all that she was covered with dust and sweat, he must have realized that she was a lass, too, because for the briefest of moments, he froze. Howling the foulest oaths she knew, Jill fended strikes from the side and pressed straight toward him. Suddenly he wrenched his horse’s head around and fled, shoving through his men. One of them wheeled directly in front of Jill to cover his retreat.
“Coward!”
Then Jill’s rage stole her voice. Hitting hard, slashing, barely remembering to parry, she drove for the rider ahead. All at once he broke and wrenched his horse around to gallop off as shamelessly as his lord. Sunrise leapt over a dead horse, and they were free of the mob. Under a pall of dust the battle, swirled across the meadow. Here and there were clots of fighting around one lord or another; single combats were scattered across the meadow; men rode aimlessly, nursing wounds. Far away the black horse carried Corbyn off at a comfortable trot.
“Bastard. Sunrise, catch him.”
The western hunter