The Lords Of The Crimson River

Chapter 19

It was exciting to gallop down the hill, but Blade started to rein in his horse before he'd gone far. The slope was steep, the ground was rocky, and Duke Klaman's Lords were running about like cockroaches. Some of them were still full of fight as well. Blade saw one stand holding his lance out in front of him until a Nainan rider impaled his horse on it. The horse and both men went down and none of them got up again.

On the level ground riderless Faissan horses were added to the running men. Blade got his horse down from a canter to a trot. He guided it past the bodies of horses struck down by crossbow bolts and Helpers trampled by maddened horses. Flies were already gathering on some of the corpses, but the crossbowmen out on the river were still shooting furiously. Blade raised his pennant and waved it, but with the sun in their eyes no one out there saw it. The stream of bolts continued.

Blade's horse was a steady, intelligent beast. While its rider was trying to signal to his allies, it went on picking its way cautiously through the confusion. By the time Blade gave up trying to signal, he and his mount were both well south of the battlefield. For a minute or two he was embarrassingly alone, a possible victim for any Faissan Lords who noticed him. Then his men started to come up, and he no longer felt as if he were stark naked in Piccadilly Circus.

Blade found himself at the head of more than eighty men. Last among them was Lord Ebass, and Blade was glad to see him. He'd let Ebass take the rear guard because he was the best man for the job. He was also the man Blade would have hated most to lose. Ebass saluted, fell in beside him, and together they led their men off toward Castle Muras.

As they moved out, Blade noticed some of the Faissan Lords had caught their horses and were moving toward the river. It was time for Chenosh and Padro to stop shooting and fall back to the far side of the river or the even greater safety of Alsin's main body. They'd done everything necessary. Blade doubted that Klaman's Marshal would even be able to get his men to the narrows, let alone defeat Gennar before Alsin came up. Duke Klaman's field army would not see another sunset. The only question left was how long it would take to finish off the Duke entirely. The answer to that now lay mostly in the hands of Blade and his eighty riders.

Blade led his riders south until they rounded a bend in the Crimson River which hid them from the battlefield. On the way they saw several small bands of horsemen, who refused to come anywhere near them. They also saw a number of peasant farms lying abandoned. When Lords fought along the Crimson River, the only safety for other men lay in getting as far away as possible.

Once around the bend, Blade reined in and summoned his men to rally around him. «We're going south to Castle Muras,» he said. «We'll get between Klaman's Lords to the north and the castle, then keep them from getting home until Alsin comes and breaks them. If we all stay together, we'll be stronger than anyone we'll be meeting the rest of the day.»

«What if Klaman's Marshal does bring his people off the field before Alsin comes?» said one skeptic. «Or what if they send out the rest of the Lords in the castle?»

«If Klaman's Marshal retreats, so do we,» said Blade flatly.

«There's no honor-«began someone.

«There's no honor in getting killed fighting a useless battle against odds!» Blade snapped. «Better to wait a few hours and fight for victory beside Alsin. Or does anyone doubt he'll come?» He glowered at the Lords around him. None would meet his eye after that question. Thank goodness for Alsin's reputation!

«And they will not send out the Lords of the castle,» said Ebass. «They do not have enough. If they do, it will be a mistake. We will show them that.» This was the longest speech Blade had heard from Ebass since his face wound, and most of the words were badly distorted. Everyone seemed to understand him, though. Perhaps the berserk gleam in his eye helped.

«Are there any more doubters?» said Blade into the silence. The silence continued. «Let's be on our way, then.»

Blade's eighty moved south at a walk, to spare their horses. Even the most eager Lord understood the need for that. They might be thrusting themselves into the lion's jaws, and a man's chance of even dying with honor could depend on keeping a sound horse under him.

They rode so close to the river that Blade's mount sometimes splashed through shallow puddles. Out on the river small boats scurried frantically out of spear-throwing distance and fear-stricken men jumped overboard from rafts or logs. On land they passed more villages, bare of life except for an occasional stray dog or chicken.

A mile on they came to a family trying to drive its pigs onto an improvised raft. The pigs scattered with frantic squeals, and most of the family did the same. A small boy couldn't run fast enough to keep up, and after a look back, his mother turned to stay with him. She knelt with her son in her arms as Blade rode up, her eyes closed and her mouth twisted in prayers or perhaps curses. Blade fumbled in the purse on his belt and pulled out a handful of silver coins.

«Look, woman!» he said softly. «For your pigs.» He had to call three times, and when the woman did open her eyes and look up, he thought for a moment she was going to faint. Then she grabbed the coins as if her life depended on them. Blade rode on, the expression on his face discouraging questions. He hoped the coins would be enough for her pigs. The gift wasn't enough to silence the rage inside him, at the way things worked in this Dimension-or rather, didn't work for anyone except the Lords and their chosen friends. When he looked back a few minutes later, the woman was back on her knees, but this time she was counting the coins over and over again.

The eighty rode on, through a land so lifeless that the silence and stillness were eerie. Blade found himself looking back over his shoulder again. All he saw were his own riders on their sweating horses and the distant cloud of dust from the battle by the river. Then they came around another bend and were in sight of Castle Muras.

Duke Klaman's seat was the strongest fortress in the Crimson River lands. It stood on level ground, close to the river which filled its moat and let the Duke bring in supplies by boat. Other than the moat it relied entirely on its massive walls for protection. Some years ago, Duke Klaman's father tore down part of his keep, used the loose stones to strengthen the walls, and turned what was left into a pleasure palace.

From those walls and the palace roof floated a number of brightly colored banners. From a mile away, Blade couldn't tell if one was Duke Klaman's. He could definitely make out something much more important.

The drawbridge was down.

In fact, not only was it down but the gate was open. As Blade watched, he saw three ox-carts rumble out of the shadowed gateway, across the bridge, and onto the road along the moat. It looked like «business as usual» at Castle Muras, with no one suspecting what was going on barely five miles away.

The last stronghold of Duke Cyron's enemies lay open to Blade and his eighty mounted Lords.

He quickly gathered his men around him. Speaking softly, fighting the absurd notion that the enemy might overhear him from the distant walls, he gave new orders. They would form two lines, then advance at a steady trot, as if they were Duke Klaman's men with every right to be riding up to his castle. They would hold back to a trot until they were challenged, then take the drawbridge at a gallop. Once inside they would start by setting fire to everything which would burn. That should destroy the supplies and make it impossible for the castle to stand a long siege. After that, it would be a simple matter of «kill or be killed.»

«I will praise every brave deed I see,» Blade concluded. «But I am going to be busy enough myself. So do not worry about whether I see you. Only remember that you will be able to tell your grandchildren that you were with Lord Blade and Lord Ebass, the day they took Castle Muras!»

He'd struck the right note, so much so that he had to stop the men from cheering him. Then they formed the two lines and were off again. Blade found himself thinking more kindly of the Lords of the Crimson River. For all their faults, they would follow a leader they trusted into hell and out the other side. Right now that particular virtue outweighed a lot of their faults!

Three-quarters of a mile. Half a mile. A quarter of a mile. Blade began to measure the distance to the castle gate in yards. Three hundred yards, two hundred-if there was much archery in these lands, they would now have been within bowshot. For once the laws against using archery against Lords would work in Blade's favor. The men on the walls wouldn't dare shoot at riders who were certainly Lords, whatever else they might be.

A hundred and fifty yards, and a trumpet call came from the wall. Blade's trumpeter replied. The riders closed another fifty yards in silence. Then a human voice took over.

«Who goes there?»

«Lord (mumble) of (mumble),» replied Blade. «Bringing a hundred men to Duke Klaman's service for the war against Nainan.» Those words took him across another ten yards.

«Who?»

Blade repeated the garbled identification, and added, «Has Duke Klaman marched yet?» That was good for fifteen yards.

«Yes,» the man on the wall shouted. «They rode north this morning, to catch Nainan's men coming through the narrows….» The voice trailed off into silence. Blade took a deep breath and grinned at Ebass. Ebass returned the grin as well as his scars would let him. Then…

«Nainans!» screamed the man on the wall. «To arms, to arms, to guard!»

The scream was as good as a trumpet call for Blade's men. Some of them were off the mark so fast they'd got ahead of their leader before he could even dig in his own spurs. Then his trumpeter sounded and the whole band plunged forward toward the castle gate.

Blade and Ebass wanted to be the first riders in through the gate. It was not only their duty as the leaders; it would also give them more control over the battle inside the castle. But it was a vain hope. Everyone was racing toward the drawbridge as if his fortune depended on being the first inside. Blade stopped trying to take the lead and started trying to keep the frenzied riders from crashing into each other. Then he had to stop that, too, and concentrate on keeping his own legs from being smashed by other horses cannoning into his.

The drawbridge was starting to rise as the first riders charged onto it. Under their weight it slammed back down, chains, snapping and lashing about like giant whips. Someone inside the castle tried to lower the portcullis, the iron grille just inside the great iron-bound wooden gates. It came down halfway, then impaled a Nainan rider and his horse and stuck. The opening was too low to let a mounted man pass through, but more than a dozen riders already passed beyond it.

Blade reined in desperately, trying to avoid smashing into the portcullis at a gallop. He had almost succeeded when his horse lost its footing on the dung-slick stones of the gateway. The animal crashed down and Blade fell clear, feeling as if all his bones had been jarred loose. He couldn't get up in time to save his horse from a castle defender who ran forward and crushed its skull with an ax, but when at last he did get up, he drew his sword and beheaded the man before he could escape. Then he threw his shield in front of him and joined the men who'd made it through the portcullis. The defenders couldn't have dropped and died much faster if they'd been machine-gunned.

There was a battle fury in Blade and all his Lords, and this was not the day for ordinary men to stand against them and hope to live.

When the fight around the portcullis was over, Blade was able to look back toward the drawbridge and the open ground beyond it. Most of the riders were luckier than he'd been. They'd not only reined in but kept their seats. Now they were leaping to the ground, drawing their weapons, and hurrying forward to join their leader. Horses were wandering free, and a few were swimming in the moat, but all the men were coming on, fit and ready.

As Ebass joined Blade inside the gateway, war cries echoed around the courtyard. Then a mass of men appeared, armed but mostly unarmored, launching a hastily improvised counterattack in the hope of staving off disaster. Blade and Ebass joined six Nainans backed against the portcullis and got ready to hold on to the death when suddenly, screams and the clash of steel-sounded from directly overhead. A moment later three bodies came hurtling down, castle defenders with their throats cut. The portcullis itself let out a terrible squeal and groan, then began to rise.

«We've got the gateway,» roared Blade, so loudly that men standing next to him flinched. «Come on, and we'll have the castle!» He whirled his sword around his head in a gesture of pure bravado, then charged forward into the ranks of the enemy.

Blade wasn't sure if he gave any orders after he came to sword strokes with the castle's defenders. Certainly his men did everything he would have ordered them to do, whether or not he ever said a word. So he was free to hack his way through steel and flesh, until the cover was stripped from his shield, the edge was gone from his sword, and he was red from head to foot with other men's blood.

Ebass fought beside him most of the way, his twisted mouth open to let out the sort of battle cries heard in nightmares. Ebass seemed determined to kill ten of Duke Klaman's men for every tooth he'd lost in his battle with the Faissan Lord. If he didn't succeed, it was only because after a while none of the castle's defenders would stand against him.

From the gateway Blade and Ebass fought their way to the door of the palace, while the men behind them scattered in all directions to kill and burn. By the time the two warriors were fighting five Lords at the palace door, smoke was pouring out of the kitchen hut, the stables, and one of the storehouses.

Normally, five men should have been able to hold a flight of stairs against two, but this wasn't a normal fight. Blade and Ebass killed three opponents in as many minutes and drove a fourth over the side of the stairs. He broke a leg in the fall and was stabbed where he lay. Then the men inside the hall opened the door to let in the last defender. Ebass threw a spear, catching the man in the throat. He fell, blocking the closing of the door. Blade dashed forward, picked up the fallen man's ax, and used it to kill two men trying to drag the body clear. Three more ax blows on the door and it was sagging on its hinges. It would stand against dogs and thieves, but not against fully armed Lords with the strength of madmen.

Blade and Ebass charged through the door, running so fast that one defender died simply by falling down and being trampled underfoot. Then they had a clear view to the end of the hall. A lean, gray-haired man in silvered armor was sitting on a chair of carved stone with polished brass fittings.

«Duke Klaman,» said Ebass, and got ready to charge. Blade held him back with his shield, raised the ax, and started swinging it around his head. As Duke Klaman started to rise, Blade threw the ax. It flew the fifty feet separating the two men, struck the Duke in the chest, and tore through his mail as if it were cardboard. He dropped back into his chair of state and died sitting there, blood forming on his lips.

«They will call you Duke-Slayer,» said Ebass, looking from the man to his victim.

Blade shrugged. The battle rage was beginning to pass off. He was aware of new bruises and freshly pulled muscles, the smell of blood and smoke, and all the things which still had to be done to consummate the victory. His men were inside a castle still held by three or four times their number. Blade pulled his ax free of Duke Klaman's chest, dropped a scrap of cloth over the dead face, and led Ebass out of the hall to rejoin the battle.

There wasn't much battle left to rejoin. The hurricane-swift eruption of Blade's men into the castle inaugurated the collapse of the defender's morale, the defeat of the counterattack continued it, and the word of Duke Klaman's death finished the work.

So the castle was well in hand, and all the defenders safely locked away, even before the first reinforcements rode up just before sunset. Fifty mounted Lords, in battered armor and on lathered horses, brought word that nearly all of Duke Klaman's field army was either dead, captured, or fleeing for their lives. Blade sent a man on a fresh horse from the castle's stables back to Alsin to take word of the Duke's death. Then he put the new arrivals on guard duty, so that his own riders could finally get off their feet and put down their weapons. Few of them were unwounded, and none of them had the strength left to raise a soup spoon, let alone a sword or mace.

Shortly after dark new reinforcements arrived-Duke Padro and Chenosh, with the men who had stood with them in the river and an assortment of companions from Skandra and Lords from both Gualdar and Nainan. Padro put himself and his party under Blade's command, giving him more than two hundred men to hold Castle Muras through the night. Blade would have been content, except for the news Chenosh brought. «King Fedron of the East Kingdom intends to march on the lands of the Crimson River,» he said. «The word came just as we were rounding up the last of Klaman's men.»

Clearly King Fedron realized that if ever there was a time to attack, that time was now. Even though Cyron of Nainan had won victories over all the hostile Dukes, the lands of the Crimson River were in great disarray, and its Lords could be overwhelmed by the Eastern Kingdom's superior forces.

That was an unpleasant but undeniable possibility. Blade looked around at the sprawled bodies and charred ruins, and listened to the wailing of women and the screams of the wounded. The fall of Castle Muras wasn't going to end the fighting along the Crimson River after all. There were other and probably bloodier battles to come.