The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [213]
Head ringing, he rose grimly to his feet, put the tip of Battlehound on the man’s throat, and leaned.
He had no idea how long they had been fighting, but the early culling had been done. He and the eight men he had left standing were pitted against perhaps twenty warriors with sword and shield and perhaps another five defenders on the wall who had the proper angle to shoot at them. Reinforcements trying to reach them across the causeway were still being ground up by concentrated missile fire from the waerd’s engines.
He dropped down among the bodies and held his shield over his head, trying to catch his breath. The defenders were being smart and conservative, staying in the gap rather than rushing out of it.
Neil glanced around at his men. Most were doing as he was, trying for a rest despite the rain of death from above.
He reached to feel his shoulder, found an arrow jutting there, and broke it off. That sent a sharp, almost sweet jag of pain through his battle-numbed body.
He glanced at the young knight Sir Edhmon, who crouched only a kingsyard away. The lad was bloody head to toe, but he still had two arms and two legs. He didn’t look frightened anymore. In fact, he didn’t look much of anything except tired.
But when he glanced at Neil, he tried to grin. Then his expression changed, and his eyes focused elsewhere.
For a moment Neil feared a wound had caught up with him, for those who died often saw the Tier de Sem as they left the world.
But Edhmon wasn’t looking beyond the mortal sky; he was staring over Neil’s shoulder, off to sea.
Neil followed his gaze as a fresh rain of arrows fell. He was greeted by a wondrous sight.
Sails, hundreds of them. And though the distance was great, it was not too great to see the swan banner of Liery flying on the leading wave steeds.
Neil closed his eyes and lowered his head, praying to Saint Lier to give him the strength he needed. Then he lifted his eyes and felt a sort of thunder enter his voice.
“All right, lads,” he cried, swearing he heard not his own voice but his father’s exhorting the clan to battle at Hrungrete. “There’s Sir Fail and the fleet that’ll put the usurper to his heels if we do our jobs. If we don’t, those proud ships will be shattered, and their crews will go down to the draugs, because I know Fail well enough to tell you he’ll try to get through, no matter the odds, whether Thornrath is in Bloody Robert’s hands or no.
“It’s not far we’ve got to go. We’re eight against twenty. That’s hardly more than two apiece. Saint Neuden loves odds like that. We’re all going to die lads, today or some other. The only question is, will you die with your sword rusting in a sheath or swinging in your hand?”
With that he rose, bellowing the raven war cry of the MeqVrens, and the other seven leapt up with him, some shouting, some praying aloud to the battle saints. Sir Edhmon was silent, but his face held a grim joy that Neil recognized as his own.
They marshaled shoulder to shoulder and charged up the slope.
There was no great shock of contact this time; the shields bumped together, and the defenders pushed back, cutting over their rims. Neil waited for the blow, and when it hit the edge of his battle board, he hooked his sword arm up and over the weapon. Edhmon saw that and cut the arm Neil held thus trapped, half severing it.
“Hold the line steady!” Neil shouted. The warrior in him wanted to surge over the fallen man, deeper into the defenders, but with numbers against them, that would be foolish. Their line was their only defense.
One of the largest men Neil had ever seen pushed into the enemy force from behind. He was a head and a half taller than the rest of them, with a wild yellow mane and tattoos that marked him as a Weihand. He carried a sword longer than some men were tall, wielding it with both hands.
As Neil watched helplessly, the giant reached over his own men, grabbed Sir Call by the plume of his