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By Root 882 0

and his men turned their horses and swung back to join them. Among the fleeing cavalrymen, one suddenly spun around and flung a long dagger like a javelin. It struck Gwivyr full in the back so hard that he dropped his sword and slumped forward. Although the horse reared, the tieryn managed to cling to its neck, but two spearmen sprang forward. As the horse came down, a Gel da’ Thae stabbed his spear with desperate force into Gwivyr’s back. With screams of rage the tieryn’s warband surrounded the attackers like hounds around a fox. Gerran could assume they’d cut them to pieces, just like the fox as well. Two men rode up to their lord’s horse, grabbed the reins and led him onward. Just as they passed Gerran by the spear worked its way loose with a gush of blood and fell, bouncing over the horse’s rump to the ground.

‘Get him back to the chirurgeons!’ Voran yelled.

Gerran glanced upriver and saw the horses coming—each mounted archer guided his horse with his knees while he led two riderless mounts. Another danger point: if the Horsekin rallied and charged back while the Deverry men were trying to mount up, they could reverse the tide of the battle. The Mountain Folk rushed forward to provide a barrier against a counter-charge, but none ever came.

Gerran grabbed the reins of the first horse he could reach and swung himself into the saddle. He could see Tieryn Cadryc nearby, safely mounted and swinging a bloody sword as he yelled orders. Prince Voran did the same, and the freshly horsed Deverry men formed a living wall around their position.

‘The dragons are harrying them!’ Newly mounted, Calonderiel rode back and forth, yelling the news at the top of his lungs. ‘Hold and stand!’

Gerran rose in his stirrups and looked downriver. He could see a distant cloud of dust and above it two flying specks that repeatedly swooped down and rose again. In but a few moments the specks became too small to see. When Voran blew his silver horn, Gerran sat back down and turned towards the prince.

‘Back to camp!’ the prince yelled. ‘We need to collect our wounded from the field.’

Their losses turned out to be light, not that the news surprised Gerran. Fresh orders spread through the camp, to get ready to move out south, where they’d fortify a new camp. Although a good many men grumbled at the thought of digging more ditches, Gerran understood the prince’s reasons and told them to every grumbler he overheard.

‘We’re a cursed long way from home, lads,’ he said. ‘We’ve got nowhere to retreat to if we lose our baggage train.’

Like dweomer the grumbling stopped.

It was near sunset before the army had dug itself into its new position some six miles closer to Zakh Gral. Although they found a good stretch of flat ground and some grazing for the horses, by that point the river bed had deepened into a gorge which hemmed them in on the east side. To the west, however, the scrubby forest had disappeared, replaced by a welter of recently cut stumps and debris—lopped branches, piles of leaves, the scrap wood trimmed away from felled logs, sheets of bark, dead brown ferns and shrubs, all left to lie in a carpet of decay.

‘They had to clear-cut a lot of timber to build Zakh Gral’s wooden walls,’ Salamander remarked. ‘At least the Horsekin can’t hide in the forest.’

‘True spoken,’ Gerran said, ‘but their infantry can mount a flank attack from all this open ground. We’ve got nowhere to go on the other side but down to the water.’

Salamander grunted in disappointment.

‘We’re not going to have a pleasant little ride to Zakh Gral,’ Gerran went on. ‘Keep those Westfolk eyes of yours open every step of the way.’

That night, the dragons promised to lair somewhere close by. With so many dead horses left behind by the fleeing cavalry, they had no need to go hunting for food. Just as well, Gerran thought. The first battle had gone too easily, as far as he was concerned, which left him suspecting that the Horsekin had some sort of plan or sneak attack in mind. Something nagged at him, some sort of present danger that so far at least, everyone had overlooked.