The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [190]
The unwounded man stared at Gerran, his mouth working. Gerran settled his helm and drew his sword, but the fellow made no move towards him, merely stared as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d lost his helm; a greyish-brown colour streaked his tangled mane of hair, and the tattooed skin around his eyes pouched in wrinkles. He wore no breastplate, either, though Gerran saw the marks on his leather jerkin that indicated where one had been.
‘You come back,’ the Horsekin said in stumbling Deverrian. ‘You come back from Deathworld.’ His voice failed.
‘What?’ Gerran was too surprised to say aught else.
‘You come back,’ he stammered. ‘Red hair. I remember.’
Suddenly Gerran understood. ‘You killed my father. I’m the son.’
The Horsekin let his wounded comrade slide down to sit behind the barrier of dead horses. He drew his falcata, took a step back, stooped without looking away from Gerran, and came up with a shield in his left hand. Gerran hoisted his own shield down from the saddle peak and slid his left arm into the straps. Every detail of the scene—the aging warrior, the dead horses, the blood and the spill of horse guts across the ground—glowed in a peculiar light, preternaturally sharp, edges drawn like lines bitten into metal.
Gerran walked around the dead horses. The warrior spun to face him, but he made no move to charge. Gerran hesitated briefly—the man had no helm, no real armour—but in his mind he heard his mother screaming over and over as men slid the bundled corpse of his father down from his saddle. He feinted in to the right side. The Horsekin turned, falcata ready, shield up for a parry. Gerran feinted again, then risked a quick dart forward. Just as Gerran hoped, the Horsekin stepped back, slipped in the spilled guts of his horse, and went down.
One quick stride, and Gerran stood over him, sword at the ready. The Horsekin tried to bring up his sword and drag his shield part-way over his chest, but Gerran kicked the shield away and struck, plunging his blade down into the man’s chest. Leather split, cartilage cracked, blood gushed. The Horsekin’s breath came in one last blood-flecked rattle.
‘If you see my da in the Otherlands,’ Gerran said. ‘Tell him I avenged him.’
He swung around and with a backhand strike cut the throat of the Horsekin with the broken leg.
‘And one for my mother,’ Gerran whispered. ‘Tell him that, too.’
Two menservants trotted up, slid the body of an unconscious man onto the wagon’s tailgate, then trotted off again. Ranadario stepped forward to grab the man’s legs and hold him down. A skinny lad, his brown hair plastered with blood and sweat, he lay so still that at first Dallandra thought he was dead, but his eyes flicked open, and his mouth moved with pain. His left arm lay at an impossible angle—two impossible angles, she realized, crushed twixt elbow and wrist, then mangled again twixt shoulder and elbow. She grabbed a knife from the array of supplies on the wagon bed and cut away the remains of his padded jerkin and shirt, both of them slippery with blood. Jagged pieces of bone stuck out of what was left of the muscles on his upper arm.
‘The arm’s going to have to come off,’ Dallandra said, ‘or you’ll die.’
His mouth framed soundless words that she took as meaning ‘well and good then’.
From close behind her she heard someone sob, just once, hastily stifled. She looked around and saw a skinny lass in a dirty dress staring at the wounded man.
‘He’s my brother Tarro,’ the lass said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Grab his good arm and hold it still,’ Dallandra said. ‘Think you can do that? You might get very sick from watching.