The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [211]
“They’re open!” he screamed with what air he had left. “The bastards meant it.”
Gerran paused to breathe and to let his men mass behind him. Through the gates he could see the silver wyrm making another pass, swooping low over the dun as if looking for stragglers. From the window-slits high in the broch, arrows flew and hissed through the air, but the dragon’s wings were making such a strong wind that they twisted and fell. With a roar like a river in flood Arzosah swept down from the clouds and joined her mate. Round and round the broch they flew, and the gusts from their powerful wings knocked the flying arrows every which way. They clubbed the air like giants drumming, pounding, pounding, pounding as they flew.
“Now, lads!” Gerran shouted. “Before the wyrms tire!”
With a shriek of war cries rising behind him, Gerran charged into the ward. At first arrows dropped feebly around him, but the wooden rain died away fast. He could see that the door to the great hall stood open. He knew that the first man through would die, but he saw no way out of plunging in. If he flinched now, the men behind him would as well, and if they were milling around the ward leaderless, they’d be easy prey for a sally. His entire life had swept him to this last charge. For the first time in that life Gerran howled a war cry.
“For the Red Wolf!”
He ran toward the open door, but well before he could reach the broch, men poured out of it, Lord Honelg and his captain, Rhwn, at their head. They’d chosen not to cower inside but to make one last charge of their own. Behind them came the villagers, armed with clubs, threshing flails, improvised pikes, any weapon they could grab now that their bows had failed them. The only armor that any of them wore were leather jerkins, and not many of them had those. Gerran felt a brief moment of pity, a moment cut short by the charge.
“Falcon!” Rhwn was heading straight for him. “You’re mine!”
The lines clashed in a crazed swirl of fighting. The poorly-armed villagers were slashing around them randomly, trying to get a clean strike on someone, anyone, while the swordsmen struggled to face off with an equal. Gerran ducked under a clumsy swing of a flail and managed to reach Rhwn. He got one solid strike on Rhwn’s shield and parried the answering blow just as a man fell against Rhwn from behind and shoved him half to the ground. Gerran stepped back to let him gain his feet. Rhwn steadied himself, then lunged forward with a hard swing of his blade from below. Gerran dodged, slashed, and cut him hard across the throat. Blood welled as his knees buckled, and he fell onto the cobbles. Gerran spun around, looking for another enemy.
All at once the shouts turned to screams from the villagers. Arrows hissed past him, but these weren’t coming down from the broch. The Westfolk archers had gained the walls. Gerran could hear Honelg’s men shouting Alshandra’s name in a last terrified chorus. He watched in something like horror as Westfolk arrows slithered through the air and struck home, bursting through good solid mail. Honelg’s men fell clawing at the death piercing their chests.
With a last roar the two dragons flew off. The Westfolk loosed shaft after shaft. Villagers in their futile bits of leather armor dropped and died or fell screaming, wounded and writhing as their hayforks and scythes clattered on the cobbles of the ward. Gerran took two steps toward the slaughter, then found himself remembering the villagers mowed down by Horsekin raiders. For a terrible moment he wondered if he were any different from the raiders, bringing death to men who couldn’t fight back, and he stayed where he was, merely watching.
Most of Honelg’s riders had already followed their captain into the Otherlands. A few held out, backs to the broch wall, but Ridvar’s men mobbed