The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [202]
“Just four. The others went with the eastern squads. They had farther to travel.”
“Pick four guards—Westwind blades, if any are left—and have them come with us. Get the others to the beach as quickly as possible.”
He guides the black under the overhang. There’s no sense in staying in the gentle rain, and he doesn’t feel like expending effort to direct the dampness away from himself.
Megaera eases the chestnut beside him. “Is this really a good idea?”
“Probably not. But Lydya knows they’re in trouble, and I don’t know what else to do. I’m not sure that I could even handle the winds, not from any distance.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Each success costs more.”
“When do we stop paying?”
“Never.”
Neither speaks again until the four guards, each a Westwind blade, join them. Creslin urges the black forward. Megaera rides beside him, the guards two abreast behind them.
Through the mist that still descends, flowing out of the north, the six mounts carry them westward, past the lower fields, past the stone-lined ditches from the distant springs that now carry water to the keep and to the stone-paved reservoir that Klerris has added for the town.
They ride through the browning grass that fills the swale leading through the gap in the hills to the western beach. Creslin rises in the saddle, peering ahead.
All the way down the narrow trail, he surveys the battle on the white sands . . . except that it is scarcely a battle, with groups of Nordlans fighting guards and troopers. The Nordlans are larger in number. Splitting the Recluce forces had definitely not been a good idea, but Hyel or Shierra, or someone, had gone ahead while he and Megaera had still been destroying ships; they had probably thought that few survivors would escape, as was the case with the Hamorians.
Use of the winds—
“Don’t even think about it,” Megaera warns.
“Why not?”
“You couldn’t even see after the last storm. I wasn’t much better.”
“Ser? Lady?”
“. . . not a lady . . .” mutters Megaera under her breath.
“We’ll take the nearest group,” Creslin says, drawing the Westwind short sword from its harness. His heels touch Vola’s flanks; the black snorts but picks up her feet into a quick trot, which is the most Creslin wants over the rough ground above the dunes, where a half-squad holds the high sand against twice as many Nordlans.
The six mounted riders bear down on the Nordlans from the side, the sands muffling their approach.
Creslin strikes first, his blade flashing, and a Nordlan falls.
“The regents! The regents!”
The cry echoes across the sands, foaming like the still-high surf, but Creslin ignores it, his blade working furiously.
A flash of fire sears his left arm, but the blade completes its short arc and reverses.
“. . . the regents . . . the regents . . .”
Creslin wheels and cuts back across the dune, now merely hacking . . . but the hacking drops another man.
He pulls up as he realizes that no Nordlans stand on the high sand; only Hyel, Klerris, and their troopers are there.
A blond guard—the one who had suggested by use of their titles that action was necessary—is checking a narrow slash on one of Megaera’s arms.
“All right . . .” pants the redhead. “Let’s go!”
Creslin nods and urges Vola toward the largest group, fighting between the sand-mired stems of two Nordlan frigates. He feels the throbbing in Megaera’s arm, but he raises his blade nonetheless as he guides the mount toward the right-hand end of the fighting, where the Recluce soldiers are falling back.
“. . . the regents . . . regents . . .”
Almost in rhythm to the ragged chant, another man falls, and Creslin turns his horse.
Whpph . . .
A dart of red lashes his shoulder. His shoulder, not Megaera’s. Even before the full pain of the arrow strikes, he looks up. Almost a dozen archers stand braced on the forward railing of the far Nordlan vessel, having appeared from seemingly nowhere.
“Get the guy in silver and the redhead!”
Another slash of agony scores Creslin’s right arm, and he has to force his fingers to clutch his blade.
Megaera is weaponless, both of