The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [89]
“Even woodcutters have their uses.”
Perryn merely shrugged. The restlessness of the horses was making him wonder if disaster lay ahead of them; sometimes animals could tell such things, in his experience. At last Graemyn blew his silver horn. As the first dawn silvered the sky, the gates swung open. With his sword raised high, the tieryn rode out, his personal warband clattering behind him, four abreast, the line snaking out and down the hill. Suddenly Perryn heard distant war cries, as if someone were racing to meet Graemyn beyond the walls. The men nearest the gates screamed in rage; the horns rang out to arm and charge. Naddryc had prepared a surprise of his own.
The ward turned into a shoving, shouting chaos as men dismounted, grabbing shields and helms, and rushed out the gates. Perryn swung down, then gave the gray one last pat.
“Farewell, and pray to Epona that we meet again.”
Then he ran after Nedd and out the gates. The battle was sweeping halfway up the hill, a raging, ragged swirl of men and riderless horses as Naddryc’s men struggled up while Graemyn’s tried to shove them back. In the dust pluming upward Perryn lost sight of Nedd almost at once. A burly fellow with an enemy blazon of blue and yellow on his shield charged him and swung in hard from the right. Perryn flung up his shield, caught the blow and thrust it away, then swung back, slapping his opponent hard on the thigh. Cursing, the man stumbled; Perryn got a hard cut on his sword arm. Bleeding, the man withdrew, feinting, parrying more than he swung. As he followed, Perryn realized that the enemy tide was ebbing back down the hill. Screaming war cries, Graemyn’s men swept after. We should hold this higher ground, Perryn thought. But it was too late, and no one would have taken orders from him, even if he’d tried to give them.
Down on the flat the battle re-formed itself into random knots and mobs of fighting. As Perryn ran toward the closest one, he suddenly heard laughter off to one side, a bubbling sort of chuckle that rose now and then to a howl over the smack and clang of swords striking shield and mail. It was such an eerie sound that for a moment he paused, looking this way and that to try to find the source. That brief curiosity cost him dear. At a shout behind him he turned to see three men running straight for him, and they all carried the blue-and-yellow shield. With a yelp of terror, Perryn flung up his shield and sword barely in time to parry the two hard blows that swung in on him.
Although the third man dodged past and ran on, the other two enemies closed in for a quick if dishonorable kill. As he desperately dodged and parried, Perryn heard the laughter again, shrieking, sobbing, ever louder, until all at once Rhodry lunged at the man attacking from the right and killed him with two quick slashes, back and forth with a gesture like waving away a fly. Gasping for breath, Perryn took a wild swing at the other blue-and-yellow, missed, nearly tripped, and regained his balance just in time to see the man fall, spitted in the back through the joining of his mail. Rhodry jerked his sword free with a shake to scatter the drops of blood.
“My thanks, silver dagger,” Perryn gasped.
For an answer Rhodry merely laughed, and his eyes were so glittering-wild that for a moment Perryn was afraid he’d turn on him. Yelling at the top of their lungs, five men from Nedd’s warband ran up and swept Rhodry and Perryn along toward a hard knot of fighting around Graemyn himself. Although Perryn tried to keep up, the entire line was swirling and breaking, falling back around him as Naddryc’s superior numbers began to tell. He got cut off as two of his allies shoved past him, running for their lives. When he ran for a man he thought was one of Nedd’s, the fellow swung his way and raised a shield marked with the red acorns of another enemy warband. Swearing, Perryn charged, but something struck him from behind.
Fire stabbed, then spread down his shoulder. All at once, his fingers were loosening on the sword’s hilt of their own will. He swirled