Dragonheart (25 page)

“Scatter or die!” Einon shouted, and leapt his mount over the fire. Others followed his example. But even as his force split up, overwhelming numbers of rebels appeared to finish them off in hand-to-hand combat.

The peasant assault was swift and surprising and deadly. Bowen’s heart swelled with pride. Their courage had held.

Felton gripped his sword and slunk through commotion from tree to tree. He had lost his helmet and his horse and he was still not certain how he had gotten through the ring of flames and all those weapon-wielding madmen. He had already played dead three times to avoid fights and now desperately sought escape or at least a place to hide. After all, having only one hand put him at a terrible disadvantage; it was unfair of Einon to send a wounded man into battle. He had risked limb in the service of his king; he was not inclined to risk life with similar disastrous results.

He crept around the bole of a tree and nearly collided with a pitchfork that was suddenly thrust in his face. He jerked back, falling into a shrub, and the tines of the fork embedded themselves in the tree trunk.

“Have mercy! Have mercy!” Felton struggled out of the bush and fell to his knees before his adversary, holding up his stump. “Please, please! I’m a poor cripple forced to—
You!”

His conqueror was none other than his erstwhile minx! Felton forgot his embarrassment in a flash of stunned rage.

“You traitorous wench!” he screeched, clambering to his feet. “After all I’ve spent on—done for you!”

She sneered and tried to yank her pitchfork from the tree. But Felton snapped the shaft in two with his sword blade. The minx staggered back, holding the broken end.

Felton advanced on her. Bad enough she was a rebel, but she was also a badly dressed one. Her superb voluptuousness was hidden under the most unseemly bulk of men’s clothes. In fact, he realized with horror, they were
his
clothes! He recognized the brocaded trim . . . and his calfskin boots! Oh, did her betrayal know no depths?

The minx faced his naked blade with only her broken shaft. Felton hesitated in his thrust. She was a clever thing. It would be a pity to pierce her lush tanned flesh, to say nothing of his garments.

Nonetheless, his garments were pierced . . . but it was the very ones he was wearing. He heard the thunk and felt the pain in his backside almost simultaneously. Sharp, searing pain. He yelped and grabbed at the wound, feeling a feathered shaft protruding from his left buttock as he staggered back.

“Turn the other cheek, sinner!” The words came from a priest, who was sitting up a tree in an archer blind, crossing himself. Felton recognized him—that friar from his wheatfield. And next to him was that one-eyed brute that had dared to sever his hand.

“ ’Allelujah!” proclaimed a short rogue who sat on the other side of the priest and was also crossing himself. Even he looked familiar. But Felton couldn’t remember where he’d seen him. And at the moment he couldn’t really care. He felt the blood dribbling down the arrow shaft onto his fingers. God knows, it wasn’t as bad as his hand. Still and all . . . life and limb! Life and limb! Oh, the things he endured for his king.

At the maiming of his hand he had been in shock. He preferred that state to the taste of vomit that he now swallowed back down. He felt like he was going to swoon. The minx helped him on his way. She turned his other cheek by whacking him on the jaw with her broken pitchfork shaft. He crumpled to the ground, his back flopping against the tree. He heard the arrow crack underneath him and felt its point tear deeper into his flesh. Life and . . . the minx’s face became a hazy blob as she leaned into him. Everything started to jumble and go gray, then a jingling brought him back to consciousness just in time to see the minx filch his purse.

“Finally some money you can’t take back!” She rattled the purse in front of Felton’s blinking eyes. Actually, she looked quite fetching in his clothes, he decided. Or maybe it was just the hazy mist clouding his eyes. What had she said? Money. Mon . . . his money! Felton lifted his stump to protest. He felt the girl grab it and saw her lovely eyes grow wide as she inspected the jeweled cuff. Promptly she snatched it off his wrist. The mist grew heavier as her laughter grew fainter. He heard a groan. He thought it came from him. He wasn’t sure why he was groaning. The pain had stopped and everything was getting dizzy and dark . . . and peaceful.

Hewe sputtered in exasperation. Felton had been his target, but Gilbert struck before he could get off his shot. The noble had not even hit the ground when Gilbert had already notched another arrow and whirled to the other side of the tree they perched in. Hewe could not believe the speed with which the priest fired. Nor his unerring accuracy. But never with deadly accuracy; Gilbert shot only to incapacitate and to help out his fellow rebels. It seemed to Hewe a waste of arrows not to use them to maximum effect, especially when one’s eye was that good. And though Hewe hated to admit it, the priest’s eye was that good.

Gilbert drew a bead on a grinning knight who swept in on a horse, shouting with savage glee as he swiped at a peasant armed with only a club. The priest’s arrow neatly sliced the stirrup strap and the knight jerked from the saddle and tumbled to the ground with a crunch. The peasant rushed in with his club and there ensued a few more crunches.

“Pride goeth before a fall, brother.” Gilbert crossed himself and sadly shook his head.

“Amen!” shouted Trev, also making the sign of the cross. Hewe frowned and rolled his one good eye. The little git thought the priest walked on water and had all but become his apostle. Next he’d be passing the plate around after every shot.

Piqued, Hewe turned and found a new target—Brok—who came crashing through a phalanx of peasants, scattering them with a mace and chain. Hewe aimed and drew his bowstring back and . . . another arrow struck the mace and tore it from Brok’s hand. It was Gilbert’s arrow.

“The meek shall inherit the earth!” Gilbert exclaimed, as the peasants rushed Brok.

“ ’Osanna in the ’ighest!” echoed his disciple, Trev.

Brok wheeled his horse out of the onslaught. Gilbert was already aiming another arrow at the fleeing knight, but Hewe shoved his bow aside to take a shot and snarl a biblical quote of his own. “Vengeance is mine . . .” Hewe released his arrow, but it went wide, and Brok disappeared into the woods.

“. . . saith the Lord . . .” Gilbert finished the quote for the mortified archer, and wearily shook his head.

“And it’s a sorry sight in the ’ands of an incompetent,” added Trev, who also shook his head.

Hewe said nothing . . . limiting himself to breaking his bow over his knee and flinging his quiver at Gilbert. Drawing his sword, he uttered a bloodthirsty yell, leapt from the tree, and stalked off to pursue prey in less competitive circumstances.

A whoosh of wind rippled past Draco’s outspread wings as he felt the tug on his leg and was jerked downward. A dozen men on the battlements slowly reeled in the chain snared about his foot and anchored securely on the tower ledge. He spewed a bolt of flame at them, but one of the dragonslayers deflected it off his shield. He was yanked another foot closer to the two brawny louts who cast spears at him. He spun and dived, easily dodging them, and he wondered why.

Wasn’t it time?

The blaze of Bowen’s trench fire could be seen through the treetops. He had heard the screams and shouts. The rebel strategy had been successful. Isolated patches of the king’s force already staggered from the forest, wounded and weaponless. Somewhere in the melee below rode Einon, his violent presence the only obstacle to the utter rout of his army. An obstacle that Draco could crush with one decisive blow.

Draco resisted the pull of the chain. Victory was just a short distance away. Just a spear cast. Another few heaves of the chain. So close. But he would never see the triumph on Bowen and Kara’s faces; he would not share their joy, hear the jubilation of their rebel band. Would they remember him? Would they know that for him there was no victory? Only a dark windless void where sensation ceased and the stars never shone.

Draco strained against the chain, lurching upward, out of range of the dragonslayers’ spears. The soldiers were dragged or thrown from the chain as it pulled taut and tore loose from the ledge, taking a section of tower with it. The battlements were sprayed with tumbling stone and fire from Draco as he broke free and soared into the glare of the sun.

Just a little longer, a little longer. Just some scrap of victory before the end. Let it be the climax, not the end. Let it be the reward, not merely the anticipation of reward. And let it come in a blaze of glory; his way, his choosing, not at the sordid hands of these murderers. He would not fail them. Bowen or Kara or his rebels. He would not fail. He would do what must be done. But now he needed wind and light and speed and the warm sun caressing his body. He spiraled up into its glow, blinded by the golden dazzle, and wished he could fly into its fire and feed its light forever.

Thirty-Two

GILBERT HITS HIS MARK

“Devil’s work.”

Smoke and confusion. And noise. Violent noise. Horses screaming. Men screaming. The screams of metal against metal and the high piercing screams of arrows. The cries of the living indistinguishable from those of the dying. A chaotic crush of weapons and bodies and blood.

Einon sliced his way through a mob of rebels and freed himself from the press of their sweating bodies. He reined his horse and wiped the sweat from his eyes. His army was in tatters. Outnumbered. Outmatched. Outthought. Twice he had seen Bowen, but each time he had been unable to penetrate the whirlwind of slaughter to challenge him. And so he ended up challenging no one. His entire fight had been defensive. Not once had he been in control. The field and the day belonged to Bowen.

The axes sparked and locked at the hafts. Kara saw the two soldiers rushing up to aid her foe. She wrenched loose and whirled, striking away the blade of one of the approaching swordsmen and ducking the ax wielded by her adversary. The blade skimmed her flowing hair as she tumbled backward on the ground. But as the two swordsmen dived in for the kill, a rider galloped his horse between them and, extending his legs, kicked both of them into the dirt as he rode by. It was Bowen!

But Kara had no time to rejoice—the ax man was hacking down at her where she lay. She rolled and sprang to her feet, and before her foe could spin to meet her, her own ax swiftly rose and fell. The soldier fell too, Kara plucking the ax from his limp grip as he careened past her to the ground. She smiled at Bowen as he leapt off his charging horse and ran to her.

“Like a pudding!” Kara whirled both axes with proud skill.

“More pudding behind you!” Bowen jabbed his sword under her arm and stabbed one of the swordsmen who had regained his feet and was lunging behind her. He fell with a groan. “Only expose your back to a corpse!” Bowen admonished her as the other swordsman was joined by four of his fellows emerging from the forest. As the five circled the pair Kara clenched her axes and, out of the corner of her eye, caught a glimpse of Bowen at her shoulder. He was grimly grinning as the five men charged.

Three went for Bowen, who quickly made it two with one swipe of his blade. The other two came at her, one snarling, “Is your blood the color of your hair, wench?”

“Yours is!” Kara’s ax sliced a red ribbon across his neck that soon turned to a gush of blood. The man staggered back and crumpled in the grass next to Bowen’s victim.

“That evens the odds,” Bowen shouted to Kara, admiring her handiwork as he drove his adversaries back.

“Hardly!” Kara laughed, tossing her red hair. “They were always in our favor.” The last of her attackers gave ground before her flashing axe blade.

Suddenly a rider burst from the forest and, galloping between Kara and Bowen, whipped his horse up the hill heading for the castle road. Kara gasped as she recognized the rider, and nearly was decapitated in the moment.

“Einon!” she cried, and dodged the blade, her ax cutting into her foe’s shoulder as she knocked him aside and ran after the horse. She flung one of her axes at the fleeing rider. But it went far wide.

A savage war cry turned Kara around and she saw Bowen execute a dazzling maneuver that took both his men out with one stroke of the blade. Then another blade flashed before her eyes. Her wounded opponent was upon her again. She jerked back and caught the sword inches from her face. But even cut, the man was strong, and he trapped her ax with his blade as he drew a knife with his other hand. It flashed up . . . and dropped from his fingers as they convulsively jerked open. His eyes rolled up and his body went limp. Bowen stood behind him, glaring fury. But not at her. He looked beyond her, at Einon, as he galloped off to his castle.

“Gilbert!”

The priest emerged from the forest, routing several of Einon’s men on the road home with well-placed arrows. He’d been having a good day. He turned at the sound of his name and saw Bowen and Kara down the hill amidst a pile of bodies. They apparently had been having a good day too. The two were running toward him, waving frantically. He waved cheerily back.

“Einon! Einon!” Bowen screamed, and pointed. A rider almost parallel to Gilbert was dashing up the road to the castle. The priest recognized the king. The arrow was out of his quiver and notched instantly. Einon turned about to cover the retreat of his men and, in so doing, gave the priest a clear target of his breast. Gilbert hesitated, grimly aware for the first time of the full power of his remarkable talent.

“Shoot! Shoot!” Bowen and Kara were almost upon him. Gilbert noticed how white his fingers were as they tautly. tensely, pulled back the bowstring.

“Thou . . . shalt . . . not . . . kill . . .” Gilbert spoke the thought of his wavering conscience. But his bow arm did not waver.

The arrow sped straight and true, Einon jerked in the saddle as it pierced his mail and embedded itself deep in his heart.

But the howling screech of agony was not Einon’s.

It was Draco’s!