Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [209]
I'd been right; there were seven of them. Volunteers, Selig's best, the fastest riders, the most skilled trackers. It was something, that it had taken them four days to catch us. The howling had stopped when we ceased to flee, and they rode silently out of the snows, dark and ominous. Seven. They halted before Joscelin, ranged in a semicircle. He stood alone, his sword hilt at shoulder-height, the blade angled across his body in the Cassiline defensive pose.
And then he threw it down, and clasped his hands in the air above his head.
"In Selig's name," he cried in passable Skaldic, "I surrender!"
I heard laughter, then a gust of wind came, and snow-devils obscured my vision. When it died, I saw four had dismounted and approached him on foot, swords drawn, and one battle-axe among them. Two riders hung back.
The third rode toward me.
Joscelin, hands clasped above his head, waited unmoving until the nearest Skaldi reached him, poking his chest with the tip of his sword.
Then he moved, and steel rang in the clearing as he swept the Skaldi blade away with one vambraced forearm, both daggers suddenly in his hands, moving as unexpectedly as the skirling winds. No one will ever write of the strange poetry of that battle, the Cassiline's ballet of snow and steel and death in the Skaldic hinterlands. Figures moved like wraiths in the snow-veiled clearing, only the clash of arms giving the deadly lie to their dance.
And the Skaldi rider approaching me drew nearer, until I shrank back against the rock and threw up my shield in defense.
It was Harald the Beardless, of Gunter's steading.
I stared, astonished; in two heartbeats, he was off his horse and inside the reach of my shield, wrapping one arm around me and setting the point of his dagger to my throat. "D'Angeline!" he cried, pitching his voice toward the battle. "Let be! I have the girl!" I struggled in his grip, and he tightened it. "Don't worry," he muttered under his breath. "I'll not do it, Selig wants you alive."
On the field, I could see one of the figures pause; Joscelin, it had to be. He had his sword back, and I knew it by the angle at which he wielded it. Two of the Skaldi were down, but as I watched, one of those still mounted spurred his horse forward, axe sweeping for a blow.
"Joscelin!" I filled my lungs to bursting with the shout, willing it to reach him. "Don't listen to him!"
Harald swore at me, clamping a hand over my mouth. I stamped on his foot and nearly broke free, but he regained his grip, shifting the dagger so I felt its edge. From the corner of my eye, I could see that Joscelin was down, rolling, but he fought still; the mounted Skaldi was slumping sideways in the saddle.
"I traded places with one of Selig's thanes to come after you," Harald hissed. "Don't make me harm you, D'Angeline! I mean to regain the honor of our steading with your return."
He held me hard against his side, my shoulders pinned, the shield awkward between us. Fumbling at my waist, I slid my hand out of my oversized mitten and felt the hilt of Trygve's dagger beneath me. I wrapped my fingers about it and eased it from its sheath.
Joscelin was on his feet again, dodging through the snow, quick and agile. If nothing else, he had learned to maneuver on this terrain, the hard way. Two Skaldi yet opposed him on foot, and one on horseback. None of them had ever been forced to run over miles of wasteland behind one of Gunter Arnlaugson's horses. The Cassiline sword flashed through the snow-laden air, and another of the unmounted Skaldi went down.
"Let me go, Harald," I said softly, twisting to gaze at his face. So young, the golden stubble of his first beard just thickening. Despite the cold, my hand was slippery with sweat, clenched about the hidden dagger hilt. "I am a free D'Angeline."
"Don't try to sway me!" He looked away