Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [166]
“Good. I’m tired.”
“But I’ll have a horse here waiting. I want that archer.”
Lord Erddyr gladly gave Rhodry a warhorse, a sturdy-looking roan with a deep chest, who’d lost his rider in yesterday’s fighting. As Rhodry saddled it up, he could feel his berserker’s grin biting into his face. At last, he would be able to fight the kind of battle he knew rather than some misty thing of dweomer. Ah, Jill, Jill, he thought to himself, I wish to every god we could celebrate this victory together when the night comes! All at once, it occurred to him that just maybe they might, though in some great hall in the Otherlands. He laughed, making the roan toss up its head and dance a few steps.
“You’ve never carried a berserker before, have you, lad?” Rhodry patted its neck to soothe it. “Well, you won’t hear me over the battle noise.”
He left the roan in the charge of a carter, then returned to Arzosah. They took to the air just as the gwerbret drew up his men and led them out of camp. The dragon circled, making a lazy turn over the dun and town. Far below and tiny with the distance, Cadmar’s warband stood beside their horses at the south gate, ready to join the battle once the Horsekin had been cleared away. Behind them, in a disorganized mass, stood the town militia, ready to loot and dispatch the Horsekin wounded. Rhodry figured they’d earned every coin or trinket they could find. Arzosah passed over and flew on, swinging round over the northern hills, fluttering a moment, then starting her long glide down.
When she reached the Horsekin camp, she roared a signal for the battle to begin. In terror, the cavalry, already mounted, leapt forward and lunged for the gaps in the earthworks. Since the riders were urging them to run, the horses stayed sane this time, bursting out like arrows from a bow into the Deverry line. Dust plumed up as the two lines met in a howl of war cries, tearing the air. Arzosah leveled, then flew upward again, flapping hard and swinging toward the west. Over the river where Jill had died, she pivoted round and came at the Horsekin cavalry broadside. This time, panic broke out like the fires of the night before. Caught by the press of battle, the heavy chargers could neither run nor turn. Instead they reared, kicking and bucking, while the Deverry riders pressed forward on steady mounts.
Arzosah roared, dipping down, down, dangerously down. Rhodry could see the faces of the Horsekin warriors that scattered away from her, smell the acrid sweat of terrified horses as she skimmed the army. He felt a jolt, heard a shriek. Suddenly she swooped up, flapping hard to gain height, because in her claws she held a Horsekin warleader. Dressed in cloth of gold buckled over his armor, he screamed and writhed in her talons as they gained height, hundreds of yards now above the Horsekin line. His finery shredded and billowed round him while she rumbled in laughter.
“For my mate!” she hissed.
And dropped him. With a long shriek, he fell, spinning down and down, to land among his own men like a stone from a catapult. Rhodry heard the cavalry shriek in pure horror when he struck. Although he twisted round to look back, Arzosah was flying away from the battlefield, and he could see nothing.
“They’re sallying,” she called out. “I’ll land now.”
Rhodry twisted back and looked toward the dun. The gates were swinging open and Cadmar’s warband was racing out, four abreast. The dragon flew south until they found the carts and servants, waiting a safe distance away. Rhodry slid down from her back and ran to his new mount, the waiting roan.
“Watch out for that blasted archer!” Arzosah bellowed.
“I will.” He set his foot in the stirrup and mounted. “I know what a longbow can do.”
As they trotted that last mile back to the battlefield, Rhodry saw black smoke plume into the sky. So, they’d gained the Horsekin camp and fired it once again, had they? Fearing