Darkwalker on Moonshae - Douglas Niles [114]
The prince saw the hillside, the strip along the ditch, and the field where the riders had battled, covered with bodies of the dead and dying. He leaped from Avalon’s back to the side of the sister who had saved his life. Ignoring the blood that now coated the white horse, as well as the rider’s body, he released the belt that held her in the saddle and lowered her gently to the ground.
Carefully, he lifted the silver visor. Carina’s eyelids flickered once, as the prince stared in shock.
The slender, elfin face broke into a smile – the first that Tristan had seen there – and then Carina died. Gently, he laid the elf upon the grass, and Robyn and Keren joined them.
Next he sought Canthus, lying somewhere on the muddy battlefield. Night was falling rapidly, however, and he failed to locate the dog. The northmen prepared a camp only a few hundred yards away, and finally his companions persuaded him to pull his troops back to the relative security of their line.
Brigit joined them as they slowly rode toward the bloody ditch. She looked somber, and tears welled within her eyes. She spoke to Tristan with no trace of emotion, however.
“We’ve lost Carina, as you know. Aileen, I fear, will not live through the night. She has lost much blood, and the wound of the Bloodrider’s sword seems to fester unnaturally.”
“And the rest of the sisters?”
“They live, none of them seriously wounded.”
“The Ffolk fought well,” observed the bard. “But losses were very heavy… as if they had not had enough already.”
“We cannot fight here again,” said Robyn. “The carnage has been too great!”
“You’re right,” said the prince. He looked at the woods, where the northmen had withdrawn, and then toward the Corwell Road, where the tide of refugees was already slowing as most of the Ffolk had passed this point already.
“Still, we whipped them today, didn’t we?”
*****
The thick, black water bubbled slowly. Normally snow-white, the shanks around Kamerynn’s ankles trailed, black and grimy, along the muddy shore. At the outflow, the unicorn stepped carefully across the high log dam that maintained the level of the Darkwell.
The dam was small, perhaps half the height of Kamerynn, but the trunks that held it together measured a foot or more in girth. The Firbolgs had stacked several dozen of the felled trunks across the small stream that had flowed from the Moonwell, and then bolstered the dam with an earthen dike to either side.
Kamerynn’s keen eyes surveyed the nest of logs, finally selecting a weak point. He reared and struck the rotted timber with a backward kick.
Again and again, he pounded the log, finally splitting it. One half fell from the face of the dam, and Kamerynn kicked it aside. Selecting another timber, exposed by the loss of the first, he destroyed it, and then another.
The dam began to crumble. Great logs broke free, tumbling into the growing stream, and the rest of the timbers shifted violently. Kamerynn’s footholds rolled completely, and suddenly the unicorn’s forelegs slipped into the churning trunks. Bones snapped, as tons of wood crushed even the sturdy legs of the unicorn.
Black, polluted water splashed into Kamerynn’s face, choking and gagging him. The liquid seared like acid against the unicorn’s skin, destroying his eyes and driving him into a frenzy of pain.
But the weight of the logs held him down, and black water surrounded him, and soon he knew only blackness.
BOOK IV
XVI
HOME
A FLICKERING SHADOW DIPPED over the battlefield, rose, and dipped again. Darting low, the small shape swept from body to body, seeking one specific one. Finally, with a delighted chirp, the swallow settled to the ground next to the one it had sought.
The tiny bird hopped across the churned, muddy turf, to peck with concern at a shaggy ear. It tilted its head and focused black, shining eyes on the great black nostrils inches from its face. Again, it chirped, this time as it observed those nostrils flaring slightly with passing