Tyrant

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When Brennan first came to the Free, Lorin had told him that two things, above all else, marked them out from other warriors and decided whether or not a man would last in their ranks. A ferocity of will that could override fear and adversity. And an unswerving commitment to hard labour; a recognition that life and death were not always decided in the moment of blade to blade clash, but often in the months and years of hard, constant practice and training that had gone before.

Every man of the Free spent countless hours in the saddle. Rudran trained them all, not just his beloved lancers, in the mastery of horses. In the space of a year, all that labour had turned Brennan from a merely competent rider into an accomplished one. Not a natural, but a passable imitation of one.

Flying down the side of that hill tested him almost to his limit. It was not the kind of ground anyone in their right mind would fling a horse down. In almost anyone else, it would be rank recklessness. For the Free, it was the kind of thing that won them battles and turned their deeds into stories. Brennan tried to hold onto that thought. But it was snatched away by the chaotic, furious demands of keeping him and his horse alive.

The animal slipped and slid, almost stumbling more than once. Brennan wrestled the reins this way and that, back and forth, trying to give their wild descent some kind of rhythm. He didn’t succeed in that but at least no bones were broken, no skulls cracked.

He risked a glance up now and again, trying to judge what awaited them below. It did not look overly promising. He glimpsed Marweh-the first, perhaps, to hear their approach-stopping and looking up. Pausing for a moment in some kind of indecision and then running for the trees. He glimpsed armed men at the edge of those trees. Men with spears and swords in hand. Faintly, above the clatter of horses’ hoofs and tumbling pebbles, he could hear shouting.

On and on, down and down, into the waiting furnace. Men ran out from the shelter of the trees, making for Marweh. Thinking, no doubt, that they could reach her first and gather her up into their less than loving embrace. Three mounted madmen, as likely to break their necks as anything else, must not yet seem an overwhelming threat.

That changed as soon as Lorin’s mount got a shallower slope beneath its hoofs. The hill began to level out into the plain, and horse and rider alike drew new strength from the easing. Lorin charged, not for Marweh but for the slavers rushing towards her. He thundered past her, and she swerved to one side and stumbled and fell. Brennan’s own horse sprang over her and he had a momentary vision of her prone form there beneath him, passing behind him.

Lorin was not here to capture or rescue one wayward slave, Brennan understood. They were going to war now. All or nothing, to be won or lost by strength of will and strength of steel.

The slavers understood as well, but too late to do anything much about it. A couple ran back towards the trees. Another couple set their spears to greet Lorin. One more loosed an arrow which skimmed past Lorin’s shoulder and flew within a hand’s breadth of Brennan’s cheek behind him. Brennan would have liked to send an arrow of his own back along that track, but he had his sword in his hand and that must be his tool for this labour.

Lorin swung his horse around the waiting spearmen without breaking its stride or shedding any speed. It was a small movement, just enough to make a spearpoint slice across his calf rather than punch into the horse’s breast. Enough to give Lorin the space for a wide, leaning slash of his sword which snapped the spearman’s head back and sent his leather cap spinning away. Then Lorin was past them and pounding remorselessly on.

The second spearman rose and began to turn, unnerved by the fact that Lorin was behind him now, and Brennan killed him with a single blow to the back of his neck. The blade went deep and he could sense the flesh and bone separating beneath it, but it came free easily enough as his horse carried him onward.

The archer was running. Brennan charged him down. The man was knocked flat, his bow flying loose from his hand. Brennan hauled his horse around and stretched down to hack once, twice at the fallen man. That was enough.

Lorin, with Manadar close behind him, had plunged in among the trees. Brennan could see swords rising and falling, and hear cries of alarm and anger. He looked for Marweh. She was on her knees, watching everything unfolding before her with an expression that was impossible to read. She did not, at least, look likely to be going anywhere quickly. Brennan urged his horse on and made for the copse.

It was hard and bloody work in there. The trees stood well apart, and the soft ground was all but clear of undergrowth or tangles. Still, it was not ideal for mounted men. Brennan, by instinct more than considered choice, jumped down and left his horse behind him.

‘There’s only three of them,’ he heard someone shouting. ‘Call the tyrant!’

Only three, Brennan thought. Three of the Free’s enough, if we are indeed worthy of the name. He heard a horn, ragged and trembling. Nothing like the graceful note the Orphanidon had blown. Just as ill-omened though. That, he supposed, was what calling the tyrant meant.

He followed the sound, sprinting through light and shadows. The man with the horn was not far. He had his back to Brennan. The sound of footsteps made him begin to turn. The slaver spun and flung the horn at Brennan’s head. Brennan ducked it and cut at the man’s weight-bearing leg. The blade nicked his thigh but did not cut away his support as Brennan had intended.

If the man had the kind of training and experience Brennan had, he might have lived longer. As it was, his instincts were bad. His clarity of thought about what it took to live and kill in such a moment came up short. He was right-handed, and had used that hand for the horn. His short, slightly curved sword was in his left hand. The wrong hand. His mistake was to try to change that. He made to pass the sword from one hand to another.

Brennan understood what was happening in an instant. His body reacted to the opening without need of any prompting. A reverse sweep of his sword to knock the other man’s blade to the side as it was changing hands. A roll of his wrist and a fast cut back and up to the underside of the chin.

It was not a killing blow, but it staggered and dazed the slaver and had him reaching up to staunch the immediate rich flow of blood. Brennan rushed in and landed a hard two-handed slash on his ribcage. He heard the click of breaking ribs. That felled the slaver. Brennan killed him on the ground.

Breathing hard now, he turned about to take the measure of his surroundings. He could see Manadar plunging back and forth among the trees, whooping with furious excitement as he cut and hacked at scattering slavers. Closer, he saw a huddle of men and women and children. They sat on the ground, arms around one another. Their clothes were ragged and filthy. Some were ripped, revealing the fresh welts left by whips. Their faces were drawn and grimed. Villagers. Slaves.

Brennan hesitated. There was still fighting to be done but these people were his purpose here, in the end.

‘Get up-’ he began to shout.

Then something hit him, hard. He went down, the air rushing out of his chest. Someone was on top of him. He knew he was injured. It was not so much pain as a point of pressure, an awareness of a presence in his body that did not belong. A knife, he thought surprisingly calmly, in my flank. No time to worry about that.

He twisted with all his strength and smashed the pommel of his sword against his attacker’s head. They rolled, the two of them. And of the two, it was Brennan whose furious refusal to die was the stronger. He pounded again and again, beating at the same point in the man’s head. No skill, no artifice, just anger and violence. The slaver slumped aside. Not dead, but quivering, his eyelids fluttering and his lips trembling.

Brennan got stiffly to his feet, clamping a hand over the wound in his side. It was not serious. It did hurt though, now that he could allow himself to feel the pain.

‘Get up,’ he repeated to the villagers, leaning on his sword.

They did, one by one. Some looked hesitant and fearful. Others less so. A couple of the men and one of the women rushed to the slaver and began kicking and beating him. The woman grabbed up a fallen branch and belaboured him with it. The man made no response to these assaults. He had already lost his grip on life, Brennan suspected.

‘Leave him,’ he snapped.

Somewhat to his surprise, they did.

‘That way,’ he told them, gesturing with his sword back towards where he could see his own horse, patiently waiting at the edge of the trees.

The first few paces he took were difficult. He limped a little. It was tightening up where the knife had gone in. He forced himself to straighten, walking tall and even.

Lorin appeared before him. His horse reared and snorted. There were more slaves-former slaves, now-appearing from among the trees.

‘Have we done it?’ Brennan asked, not quite ready to believe it.

‘No,’ Lorin said emphatically. ‘We’ve got a few folks set free for now, but now might be a short, short time.’

He nodded past Brennan’s shoulder. Brennan looked back, out beyond the limits of the thicket. A knot of horses and men was coming around the haunch of the hill, from the hidden far side. A lot of them. Called by the horn, Brennan assumed. A handful of slavers had escaped the struggle among the trees unhurt and were sprinting across the open ground towards those newcomers. They would tell them they only faced three men, should they wish to reclaim their precious captives.

‘We need to get back on high ground,’ Lorin said.

His voice sounded slightly strained. There was a lot of blood over his boot, flowing from the wound where the spear had cut him. There looked to be some in his scalp too. Another blow collected along the way.

It was Lorin who asked ‘You hurt?’ though.

Brennan shrugged. He glanced at his left hand, still pressed hard against his side.

‘Not bad enough to slow me down.’

‘Good.’

Lorin swung his horse away and moved off.

‘Manadar!’ he shouted. ‘Manadar! Get back up the hill, you lazy whelp.’

‘Up the hill,’ Brennan shouted at the villagers around him.

He ran-hobbled, really-for his horse. Before he reached it, he found Marweh. She was sitting on the ground, cradling a man’s head in her lap. A boy stood at her shoulder. He looked to be about six, just as she had said.

‘This is them?’ Brennan asked, standing over her.

‘Yes,’ she said without looking up. She had eyes only for her husband’s pale face.

He did look sick. Fevered. And there were ugly marks where the tips of the thorns he had been whipped with had curled around the side of his neck and face. His eyes were closed.

‘Can he walk?’ Brennan asked.

Marweh’s husband opened his eyes.

‘I can walk,’ he said.

And they did walk. All the two dozen or so people Brennan and the others had freed found the strength-despite all they had already suffered-to stagger their way up the hillside. A few had picked up spears whose owners were slain or fled. They leaned on them like walking staffs. The sun was starting to get low in the sky now, and it threw their long, lean shadows across the rocks. Like weights, dragging them back.

Lorin and Brennan and Manadar rode at the rear. Their horses were running short on strength, struggling almost as much as the villagers to make the climb. Brennan could feel his own vigour flagging now that the urgency of combat had retreated, like a wave pulling back from a beach. Taking some of the beach with it.

Only Manadar of the three of them had come through the skirmish unscathed. He still had the fire of battle burning in him.

‘They’re goats, these slave-takers,’ he crowed. ‘Running around, bleating. They’re no test.’

‘Glad you think so,’ Lorin said. ‘You get up ahead, make sure none of your goats’ve topped the hill before us.’

They watched him labour to overtake the little crowd of villagers. Brennan saw some of those men and women looking up at Manadar as he passed them. Some of the children too. What did they see? he wondered. The figure out of legend that he and his friend had imagined when they talked of the Free years ago? Manadar did not look much like a legend. Nor did Brennan feel like one. Not any more, if he ever had.

‘Up! Up!’ Lorin shouted.

Almost like a shepherd trying to hurry along a recalcitrant flock.

Brennan was close beside him and heard the dull thud before Lorin reacted. That reaction, when it came, was little more than a sharp breath and a momentary lurch in the saddle.

‘They’ve got someone down there who knows how to use a bow after all,’ Lorin grunted.

The arrow had hit him in the back of his upper arm. The muscle was transfixed. Brennan reached across to steady Lorin in his saddle, but the older man shook his head.

‘It’s nothing.’

Another arrow rattled off the hard ground behind them.

‘Be good if it didn’t happen again though,’ Lorin muttered. ‘I’m running out of fresh bits of my body for them to bloody. Let’s get out of sight or out of range. One or the other.’