Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [155]
~You see? So will all Chalion and Ibra bow before us.~ Joen’s voice dripped with satisfaction. Ista could see her green silk slippers, peeping from beneath her skirts, and Sordso’s polished boots. The boots shifted uneasily. In some dizzied distance, Ista could hear Goram’s low, choked, liquid sobbing. Blessedly, the injured horse’s screams had stopped; perhaps some merciful man had cut its throat. Perhaps some merciful man will cut mine.
~I admit,~ Princess Joen’s voice went on above Ista’s head, ~I do not understand the dead man . . . ~ The slippered footsteps shuffled through the gravel, approaching Arhys. Ista found herself unable to even moan. She could barely blink; a drop spun from one eyelash to plop into the dust before her nose.
From the slope above echoed sudden shouts. Ista’s head was turned the wrong way, looking out over the brim of the road into the valley beyond. Around and behind her, men’s booted feet suddenly scuffled. She heard a crossbow twang, and caught her breath in fear for Arhys. Hoofbeats. Many hoofbeats, pounding, scrambling, sliding down from the ridge above. A lunatic whoop in a suddenly dearly familiar voice.
Sordso gasped. His boots crunched across the gravel; grunting, he swung those green slippers up out of sight. The boots staggered past Ista’s face; nearby hooves scraped. Ista managed to turn her head a little more. The prince’s horse, with Joen in her elaborate dress clinging awkwardly to its saddle, was being towed forward at a sudden trot by a running bearer, who shot a look of fear over his shoulder, upslope.
A thump sounded. The invisible weight like a huge hand pressing Ista to the earth lessened. The rasp of Sordso’s sword being drawn from its scabbard sliced across her hearing, and she flinched, and at last jerked her head around the other way. Some crossbowman had been careless enough to take his eyes off Arhys for a moment, and the march was now locked in struggle with him. Several nearby bowmen had fired upward, and were frantically recocking. Arhys yanked a dagger from the sheath of the man he wrestled and flung him aside just in time to parry Sordso’s thrust. The thrust of steel, that is. A violet light collected in Sordso’s palm. He shoved it forward.
The searing purple line passed through Arhys’s body without effect, to bury itself in the soil beyond. Sordso yipped with surprise and scrambled frantically backward as a riposte from the dagger nearly swept his sword from his grip. The scramble became a run.
What seemed a very avalanche of horses overwhelmed them. The Jokonan bowmen were knocked aside, ridden down. Swords clanged and spears thrust, fiercely wielded by yelling men in gray-and-gold tabards. In front of Ista’s face, a set of hooves that seemed the size of dinner plates suddenly materialized, and danced. Three long equine legs were silk-white, the fourth soaked scarlet with blood.
“Got you that horse you were wanting,” Illvin’s voice, would-be laconic but for its gasping, sounded from above. Beyond the dinner plates, another set of hooves crunched and slid. And, more sharply, “Five gods! Is she hurt?”
“Ensorcelled, I think,” Arhys gasped back. He knelt beside Ista, gathered her up in cool, unliving, welcome hands. Heaved to his feet, and boosted her upward still farther, into his brother’s arms. She landed with a limp grunt, stomach down across Illvin’s lap.
Illvin cursed, and grabbed a thigh through her skirt to hold her there. He bellowed over his shoulder to