Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [143]
The weight of their horses’ slow charge pulled a couple of the Horsekin riders straight through the Deverry line. Riding hard, Yraen galloped for a man on a black coming straight for him. As Yraen wheeled his horse, he got a glimpse of blue and purple tattoos on the chin and jaw below an iron helmet with a long nasal bar. They swung, parried, trading blow for blow while he swore and yelled and Yraen stayed silent, flicking away the enemy’s saber with his heavier broadsword until, in frustration, the man tried a hard side slash that left his right unguarded. Yraen caught the strike on his shield and slashed in to catch him solidly on the right arm. Blood welled through his mail as the bone snapped. Grunting in pain, he dropped the saber and tried to turn his horse. Yraen hesitated for the briefest of moments—normally he would have slashed at the mount, but the caparison baffled him. Instead, he risked a reach and a stab, caught the Horsekin warrior on the back, but his blade slid off heavy mail, turned so easily that he went sick with dread. He pulled back and let the man go, not out of fear for his own life, but for the battle, for the war.
Yraen glanced round and tried for an overview of the Deverry line. They were being pushed back. He knew it more by instinct than by sight as he paused his blowing horse. He rose in the stirrups and looked round, but in the dust and chaos he could get no clear view of the battle. All he could tell was that the center of the line had fallen back and now made a desperate sort of stand close to the rise of hill behind them.
“Ah, shit!”
Yraen sat back, kicked his horse to a lope, and headed for the fighting. Again, instinct more than sight made him glance up at the sky. Like a winged stone, the dragon was dropping down. He felt rather than heard himself laugh and let his horse first slow to a walk, then amble to a stop, while he watched the dragon dive with her wings swept back straight for the thick of the Horsekin line. Yraen could imagine her roaring, but he heard nothing over the battle noise and the sudden whinnies of terrified horses. She leveled off, skimming over the cavalry with huge beats of her wings, while below her the enemy horses went mad.
Kicking, neighing, bucking, rearing, shrieking with that ghastly sound a horse only makes in agony—the Horsekin line broke, turned into a whirlpool of yelling riders and frenzied horses. Yraen had no time to wonder why his horse—why all the Deverry horses—treated the dragon with complete indifference. Screaming war cries, the Deverry line reformed and charged, slamming into the flank of chaos, as Arzosah flew upward, swung round in a turn, and dived again. As Yraen trotted forward, looking for a gap through which he could reach the front line, he could see Horsekin riders thrown, Horsekin lying trampled or desperately trying to get to their feet and run while Deverry men cut them down with the slash of a sword. Alien horns called out, sounding a retreat. The Horsekin who could control their horses turned and fled, charging for the gaps in their earthworks, where foot soldiers waited with spears to cover their retreat.
Deverry riders followed, slashing, harrying, killing where they could. Yraen rode down one unmounted cavalryman and killed him with a blow across the back of the neck before the Horsekin could turn and fight. He charged past the corpse, realized he’d gone too far, and pulled his horse’s head round fast, peeling off to the east as the earthwork rose in front of him. He got a quick impression of a fringe of long spears as he swung past, then circled back to the safety of his own line.
The west and south of the field was theirs. On silver horns, the captains were sounding the signal to hold and stand as the Horsekin fled behind their circling earthworks to the north and east. Since Yraen could see the gwerbret’s banner planted over it, he could guess that Drwmyc’s warband had captured the half-finished ditch and mound to the southwest, lying some distance from the base of the