The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [49]
Someone else-Gloun-shrieked and ran.
"To me!" Bloodblade shouted, silencing the warrior who was crying doom and discovering wizards with one mighty blow of a mailed fist. "We mustn't-"
Even as the man whose jaw he'd broken reeled and fell, leaving behind only wine-dark blood dripping from his gauntlet, the man who led the ragtag warriors saw that half a dozen of them now were pelting away through the woods, and the others were wavering. A stone sword struck the ground hard enough to set the nearest trees rustling, and the man who'd rolled frantically aside from its strike shrieked like a terrified child and scrambled up through a bush, to race blindly away into the night.
To the Dark One with stealth now-and with standing and fighting, too! "To the castle!" Bloodblade cried, pointing ahead into the dark trees and seeing the faint glows of moonlit glades in the distance. "Charge!"
No one waited to question his orders this time. Duthjack's blades whirled away from striding stone warriors with ragged cries of horror, and ran. Fear made their feet fly, fear kept them crashing crazily through shrubs and sliding across wet flowerbeds where prudence would otherwise have made them creep and skulk-and in a very short, gasping time, they were pounding along paths and across bowers increasingly open to the cool silver moonlight, and leaving the trees behind.
"Not such a wondrous idea," someone lamented, as they raced along. "If the king has more wizards than a baron, we're-"
Bloodblade swerved and lashed out at that babbling warrior with all the force of his running feet, taking him to the ground in a vicious two-handed smash into the man's face. He felt something give under his gauntlets as they bounced on the ground together. Rolling away from fresh wetness, he found his feet again, and ran on. This had not been a wondrous idea, no…
Six or seven stone knights were striding patiently along through the trees after them, swords raised. Gods! They had to find the mage compelling these things, whoever he was, and fast. If only the Blackgult ranks had yielded up a few more good bowmen, th- But no. That sort of thinking was for fireside blustering, not staying alive while kingslaying. Sendrith "Bloodblade" Duthjack set his jaw and waved his blade in a circle above his head. "To me!" he shouted, as loudly as he dared. "To me!"
If they blundered on like this, they'd reach the palace and take the arrows of its bowmen, if there were any, right down their throats. He had to rally his men-there! That little folly-tower!
"Whelm yonder!" he cried, pointing with his blade. "To me!"
The tower was no more than a three-sided room, open to the air on the side nearest the castle. Its other walls were all pierced with large, arched windows-bare, empty openings without shutters or draperies-and it narrowed swiftly to a shingled spire, perched on a little hillock amid floral beds like a castle turret set down on the ground by the grasping fingers of a passing giant. It wasn't quite a bowshot away from the palace walls, but it would have to do.
They hadn't much time. Those stone things might walk with comical grace and swing their swords as slowly-but they kept on striding, and he had no idea if they could be stopped or shattered or even fought. They couldn't fit into the palace, though, if it had doors of the usual size. A handy door was something they had to find in a hurry. Aye, this was turning into a nightmare of running and desperation and-
Abruptly a door opened in the palace wall, thrusting a bright, flickering ribbon of lamplight into the night with the flash of a drawn sword blade, and heads were peering out. Their shouts had been heard.
No orders were needed to make all of Dutchjack's warriors crouch to the ground and then keep still; they might have been so many dark rocks amid the night-gloom as three