The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [204]
“Cazio!” someone shouted, and Stephen saw that the girl, Austra, was right behind Winna.
The man trying to stand near the princess glanced up at them. “Austra, Ne! Cuvertudo!” he shouted.
It was a modern dialect, not the Church language, but Stephen understood it well enough.
But the warning came too late. What remained of the monks and other fighting men had recovered from whatever torpor had afflicted them. They were rallying behind a man who wore the blue robe of a sacritor. Stephen counted eight bowmen, all monks of Mamres, and ten armed and armored men advancing on them.
Aspar raised his arm up in pointless defense, then flinched as an arrow hit the monk in the forehead with such force that it kicked his chin up toward the sky. Looking back, he saw that Leshya had made the shot from less then two yards away.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot,” she said flatly as the monk toppled like a felled poplar.
“Sceat,” Aspar managed weakly. He scrambled to his feet, reacquainting himself with his bow, only to find the string snapped.
He saw the men advancing on Stephen and the rest.
“We can still escape,” Leshya said. “Someone must know of what happened here.”
“It will take only one of us to tell it,” Aspar said. “And I maunt that’s you.” He swung himself up on Ogre. “Come on, lad,” he muttered.
Neil used what seemed the last of his strength to sprint to join the little group clustered around Anne. He placed himself with Cazio, squarely between her and their attackers. Cazio shot him a feeble grin and said something that sounded fatalistic.
“Right you are,” Neil replied, as the bows of the monks trained on them.
“Wait!” the sacritor called. “We need the princess and one of the swordsmen alive. Leave them, and the rest of you may go.”
Neil heard horse’s hooves behind him, and turned to see Aspar. The warriors were moving steadily closer.
Neil didn’t feel the need to dignify the ridiculous suggestion with a response. Apparently, no one else did either. He cut his eyes toward the archers, calculating whether he could get to even one of them before they killed him. Probably not, from what he had seen of their skill.
“Yah,” Aspar said, as if hearing his thoughts. “They’re good shots. But they aren’t getting any worse. We might as well go get them.”
“Wait,” Stephen said. “I hear horses, a lot of them, coming this way.”
“That’s not likely to be good news for us,” Aspar pointed out.
Stephen shook his head. “No, I think it might be.”
Aspar thought he heard horses, too, but he’d just noticed something else—a shadow moving at the tree line. When an arrow suddenly struck one of the archers in the back of the neck, he knew it was Leshya. The remaining monks turned as one and fired into the woods.
Aspar kicked Ogre into motion, determined to make what use he could of the distraction. He was halfway to them before they started firing. He saw black blurs, and a shaft thumped hard into his cuirass, driving though his shoulder and out the back, leaving him dimly curious as to how many pounds these fellows could pull. It didn’t hurt yet, though.
Another hit him along the cheek, cutting deep and taking part of his ear with it, and that hurt quite a lot. Then Ogre screamed and reared up, and Aspar floated for an instant before slamming into the ground.
Stubbornly, he pushed himself up, yanking out his throwing ax, determined to kill at least one of them before becoming porcupined.
But they weren’t paying attention to him anymore. Some twenty horsemen thundered out of the woods, armed and armored except for the fellow leading them, a young man in a fine-looking red doublet and white hose. He had his sword drawn.
“Anne!” the lad screamed. “Anne!”
He only got to shout it twice, for an arrow hit him high in the chest, and he did a backflip off the horse. The archers scattered with saint-touched speed, continuing to shoot at the horsemen. Aspar choose the nearest, threw his ax, and had the vast satisfaction of seeing it buried in the man’s skull before