War Maid's Choice-ARC (79 page)

Stoneblade’s eyes were narrow, and he looked at Horsemaster.

The junior captain had been staring at Cassan. Now he looked at his fellow armsman, his brain racing. Silence hovered for a moment, and then Horsemaster drew a deep breath.

“I saw Hathan reach for his sword,” he said softly.

Cassan’s expression never altered, but triumph flooded through him. He hadn’t dared hope Horsemaster would commit himself, and he wondered how much of it was an armsman’s loyalty and how much was cold calculation. Horsemaster must realize that by the simple fact of being here, suspicion must attach to him and Stoneblade if their liege was proven a traitor. Loyalty to his baron would be a thin defense against the charge of regicide, even among the Sothōii, but if Cassan was in a position to control the story emerging from this day’s work...

Stoneblade’s expression was still shaken, but his eyes hardened and he looked back at Cassan.

“Your orders, Milord?” he asked crisply.

* * *

Leeana’s hands were rock steady as she nocked an arrow to her string once more, but tears trickled down her cheeks. Hathan had been a part of her life since she’d learned to walk—her father’s closest friend, her personal armsman’s cousin, her own adoptive uncle. A man of unyielding honor, the very shieldarm he’d been named. A man Cassan of Frahmahn could never have defeated in battle...murdered by a coward and traitor, and his wind brother with him.

She felt Gayrfressa’s rage and grief melding with her own, but the mare wasn’t with her. She and Dathgar—and Tellian—had circled around behind the still blazing main lodge despite the smoke and the heat. It was bad enough for the humans; it was far worse for someone with a courser’s senses, and Gayrfressa lacked the barding which had protected Dathgar from flying cinders. Now the coursers waited, shrouded in blinding, choking smoke and surrounded by roaring flame. Any normal horse would have been overcome by the smoke, even assuming it hadn’t been driven mad with panic, but Dathgar and Gayrfressa weren’t horses. They closed their eyes, enduring, drawing on their link to the energy which sustained the entire world, and somehow they bore it.

Leeana didn’t know how. Even with her link to Gayrfressa, she couldn’t understand how the coursers could do it, but they did, and she blinked her own eyes furiously clear of tears as bugles sounded outside the lodge once more.

* * *

The warhorses were skittish.

No, Cassan thought, they were far worse than that—they were half-panicked, and he knew Stoneblade had been right. It would have been far better to dismount his armsmen and take them in on foot. However little they might care for the prospect of fighting on their own feet, his men would have found it enormously easier than trying to control warhorses who were terrified by the smell of smoke and the roar of flames. And it would have been far easier to control them, as well.

Which was why Cassan had insisted on a mounted charge. He wanted—
needed
—as much confusion as he could possibly get. All of the King’s guards had to die in the melee, and the chaos would cover Dirkson and his squad as they made sure Markhos himself was dead.

He could hardly explain all of that to Stoneblade, of course. Instead, he’d pointed out that they didn’t know for
certain
the King was dead. He
might
simply be a prisoner...so far, at least. And if that was the case, they had to break in and settle this as quickly as humanly possible, before a desperate Tellian did kill his captive.

It was a risky argument, in some ways, but it was a pretext with which Stoneblade was unable to quibble. The armsman remained manifestly unhappy about his baron’s choice of tactics, but he could scarcely argue with Cassan’s motives. Nor could he dispute Cassan’s insistence that even if they were to lose half their men, it would be a bargain price if they got King Markhos back alive.

And if there are any inconvenient little problems, I’m sure I can count on Tarmahk to see to it that Stoneblade isn’t around to become one of them
, the baron thought grimly. That, too, would be a bargain price if it came to it.

Even with Stoneblade’s acquiescence, it had taken longer than he liked. Not that it had actually taken as long as it had seemed to, he told himself, and—

The bugles sounded.

“
For the King!
”

* * *

“Here it comes!” Swordshank shouted. “Ready lads!”

Leeana recognized the bugle call, and she shook her head. Much as she respected her father, she’d questioned his sanity when he predicted Cassan would attack mounted. How could any Sothōii be stupid enough to drive horses into something like
this?!

But they were doing it, and her jaw tightened as she raised her bow. It was going to be ugly.

Swordshank had put his surviving armsmen to work even before Hathan rode out to his death. They’d dragged every obstacle they could find in the smothering smoke out into the courtyard, littering the area in front of them with blocks of stone levered loose from the veranda’s steps, wheelbarrows from the groundskeeper’s storage shed, picks and shovels, firewood, even blazing roof beams dragged out of the inferno. Leeana’s hair was even more badly singed and scorched from helping them, but Swordshank had harshly ordered her away when they started moving the burning timbers. Unlike the armsmen’s armored gauntlets, she had only riding gloves, and she’d burned her left hand badly before Swordshank realized what she was doing. Fortunately, it was the
back
of it she’d damaged. Using it hurt, but she could still grip, and she settled herself firmly as the oncoming hooves thundered through the wide-open gate.

The smoke was thinner than it had been, and she and the defenders had the advantage of familiarity with the lodge’s ruins. They didn’t have to look for their enemies—they knew where they had to be, and the first volley of arrows was fired almost before they saw their targets.

* * *

Horses screamed as the arrows drove into them.

However wide the gate in that wall might be, putting a cavalry charge through it was like trying to thread a needle with an anchor hawser. The galloping column of horses, all of them already half maddened by the smell of smoke, was squeezed together. Over a score of warhorses peeled away from the column, completely refusing to pass through that narrow opening. Half a dozen more ran into the gate posts, or were crowded into them by their fellows and reeled aside with broken legs...or necks. But others got through, bursting into the courtyard, spreading out again, wheeling as their riders sought their enemies.

And as they wheeled, the arrows found them.

Cassan’s armsmen were armored; their horses were not, and Swordshank’s orders had been cold and brutally pragmatic. His armsmen wasted no arrows on targets protected by breastplates and boiled leather.

They shot at the horses.

Leeana tried to close her ears to the tortured screams of horses riven and torn by arrowfire. They couldn’t understand what was happening, and she wished she couldn’t, either. Wished those screams wouldn’t come back to her in nightmares. Wished she hadn’t been forced to murder innocents rather than the traitors on those horses’ backs.

Yet even through her tears, she picked her targets unflinchingly, and the entire front rank of Baron Cassan’s armsmen crashed down in ruin.

* * *

The weight of fire astonished Cassan.

He’d been positive Markhos’ armsmen had to have taken heavy casualties against the mercenaries, and he’d known they no longer had any buildings to use for cover. What kind of lunatics would stand in the open and try to use
bow
fire to break a cavalry charge?!

Yet that was precisely what they’d done...and it worked.

Less than half the horses who went down were actually hit by arrows. The others crashed into their dead or wounded fellows, falling, spilling their riders, in all too many cases rolling over those riders and crushing them in their own collapse. Here and there, a handful made it through without being hit or falling over another horse—only to encounter the obstacles strewn in their path. Some of them reared, throwing their riders, squealing in panic as they found flames directly in their path. Others broke legs on wheelbarrows or heaps of firewood, invisible to them in the smoke until far too late.

Cassan swore viciously, watching as the attack slithered to a halt. It stalled in a drift of dead or screaming horses, and the column behind them packed itself solid, unable to advance, losing its momentum and wavering in confusion.

* * *

“
Your Majesty!
”

Leeana spun as Sir Jerhas Macebearer shouted. The Prime Councilor had claimed a fallen armsman’s bow to thicken the defensive fire, as had most of the surviving courtiers and servants, and positioned himself on one flank of their perilously short line. He stood to Leeana’s left and rear...in the last line before the King.

And too far away to intervene when Sir Benshair Broadaxe, Lord Warden of Golden Hill, dropped his own bow, drew his dagger, and turned on the King.

Macebearer’s shout warned Markhos, but Golden Hill was already inside the reach of the King’s saber. Markhos dropped the sword, reaching for the dagger, then gasped as Golden Hill got past his grappling hand. It wasn’t a clean strike—the King had managed to partially block it, divert it so that it drove into the meaty part of his shoulder instead of his heart—but Golden Hill recovered the blade with a snarl, and no one else could reach him in time. He bored in again, desperate to finish the King and make his escape in the confusion of combat, and—

A short sword drove into his spine. He twisted, mouth open in a silent scream, dropping the dagger, and Leeana Hanathafressa kicked his body off her blade and turned to face Cassan’s armsmen.

* * *

“
Now!
”

Not even choking smoke and crackling flame could overwhelm instincts trained on half a hundred battlefields. Tellian Bowmaster and Dathgar could read the tempo of a battle the way a bard read an epic poem. Neither of them could have explained how, but they knew the exact instant when Cassan’s charge spent itself. When it recoiled, its strength compressing upon itself like a bow stave bent to the very edge of breaking.

And in that moment,
they
charged.

It was ludicrous, of course. There were only two coursers and a single wind rider, and there were almost a hundred mounted armsmen packed into that courtyard. Huge coursers might be, and powerful, but not even they could face those odds. It was obvious.

But no one had told
them
that, and even if someone had, they wouldn’t have cared. Not with the deaths of two brothers burning in their hearts and souls. Not with their daughter and wind sister fighting for her own life. Not with their King’s life hanging in the balance.

They slammed into the stalled warhorses like thunderbolts. Tellian’s saber stayed sheathed. Instead, he’d chosen a battle ax, standing in his stirrups, swinging with both hands and all the power of his back and shoulders, trusting his armor to turn any blows someone landed in return while he cropped heads and hands and arms. Blood sprayed as he sheared through flesh and bone, and Dathgar was a battering ram. He ripped into the warhorses with a high, whistling scream of rage, like a dray horse running over children’s ponies.

“
Markhos!
Markhos!
For the King!
”

The horses squealed, trying frantically to get out of Dathgar’s way, but there was no room to dodge, and Tellian bellowed his warcry as he and his courser literally rode down Cassan’s mounted armsmen. They clove a chasm of crushed and broken bodies—horses and men alike—through the heart of their enemies’ charge, and Gayrfressa charged beside them. Bigger and stronger even than Dathgar, the blue star of her missing eye glaring with blinding fury, hooves like hammers, jaws like axes, and filled with a rage that was terrifying to behold. She rampaged across the courtyard like a chestnut hurricane, and then she and Dathgar burst through the far side of the column, turned hard to their left, and braked to a halt on one flank of that short line of armsmen.

It was too much.

Cassan’s
armsmen
might have been willing to continue that charge, to continue to attack, but their horses were not. They recoiled, turned and fought their way back out of the hunting lodge’s confining walls and the smoke and the fire and the blood which had consumed so many of their fellows, and they took Cassan and his armsmen with them.

* * *

Cassan wrestled his stampeding mount to a halt.

The warhorse trembled under him, snorting, shaking its head, still fighting the bit, but the baron dragged it under control with an iron hand. He turned it, forcing it back, and saw Stoneblade pulling his own mount to a stop beside the lead troop of the company he’d held in reserve. The captain’s breastplate was splashed with blood—someone else’s, obviously—and Cassan’s jaw tightened as he drew rein beside the armsman and saw Stoneblade’s expression...and no sign of Horsemaster.

“You were right,” he said quickly, before Stoneblade could speak. “We should have gone in on foot.”

The admission seemed to defuse at least some of the captain’s anger and Stoneblade drew a deep breath.

“Done is done, Milord.” His grim voice was harsh. “But I think we’d best organize a bit better for the next attack.”

“Agreed,” Cassan said curtly.

The captain seemed to hover on the brink of saying something more, and tension crackled between them for a moment. Then that moment passed and Stoneblade looked away.

“I’ll see to it, then.”

He gave his baron a brusque nod and began barking orders, and Cassan watched him. Then he glanced at Tarmahk Dirkson, and his personal armsman looked back...and nodded slowly.

* * *

“Oh, stop fussing, Jerhas!” King Markhos said testily.

“But, Your Majesty—”

“Stop fussing, I said.” The King shook his head. “It hurts, all right? I admit it. But I’m not exactly in danger of bleeding to death, and we have other things to worry about.”

The Prime Councilor looked as if he wanted to argue, but he clamped his jaw, and Markhos grunted in satisfaction. The bandage over the deep wound in his shoulder made an ungainly lump under his bloodstained tunic and he looked just a little pale, but his blue eyes were clear and snapping with anger.