War Maid's choice

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Hathan!”

The agonized cry burst from Tellian Bowmaster as Dathgar and Gayrfressa felt Gayrhalan’s death. The coursers echoed the helpless protest, screaming their rage, and Leeana tasted blood as her teeth sank into her lip.

She and her father stared at one another, each feeling the other’s pain. It was all they could do for what seemed like an eternity, but then Tellian gave himself a savage shake and turned to the King.

“Hathan is dead,” he said in a voice of hammered iron. “So is Gayrhalan. Cassan murdered them both.”

Markhos’ face turned to stone.

“How?” he demanded.

“ Cassan,” Tellian spat. “Cassan spun a tale about Yeraghor being behind all this-spun it well enough even I might have believed there was some truth in it. He offered to show Hathan ‘proof’…and then put a dagger through his eye. He’s mine, Markhos- mine! This time I’ll have his blood!”

“This time you’ll have his blood, Milord,” Markhos promised. King and baron gazed into one another’s eyes for a long, icy moment, and then Markhos smiled humorlessly. “Of course, first we both have to live long enough for you to collect it.”

Cassan thundered back to Stoneblade and Horsemaster, then drew rein so hard his horse half-crouched, skidding on its rear hooves. Both captains stared at him, eyes stunned, and he pointed back at the fallen courser and wind rider.

“The bastards have killed the King!” he snarled.

“Are you sure of that, Milord?” Stoneblade demanded, his expression shocked.

“ Sure of it?!” Cassan looked at him incredulously. “The son of a whore admitted it to me!”

“He admitted it?”

Cassan gripped his reins fiercely, battling his own impatience. But he had to handle this carefully. He had to carry Stoneblade-and all of his armsmen-with him if he meant to succeed.

“Not at first,” he said harshly. “At first, he insisted the King was well. You saw us talking! He said the King was suspicious of our ‘timely’ arrival-that was why he’d been sent out to find out who we were, why we were here. He wasn’t happy to see me, I assure you! But he pretended he was…at least until I suggested the King would be safer out here. That was when he told me he’d been instructed by the King to invite me into the lodge to ‘confer’ with him and Tellian. Look at that smoke, those fires! D’you really think the King would invite me into the middle of all that instead of getting out of it himself as quickly as possible?! Besides, he insisted the King had invited me by name…after admitting he’d been sent to find out who we were! It was ridiculous!”

He spat on the ground.

“I told him that with the hunting lodge burning down around the King’s ears, it would be far better to get him safely out of it, and that’s when he started getting evasive. He came up with one excuse after another, every one of them thinner than the one before. So I told him I needed some assurance-some proof-the King was still well and in control of his own fate. That’s when he cursed me and reached for his sword. It was only the gods’ own grace I’d been suspicious enough to see it coming! I couldn’t reach my saber in time, but I got my dagger into his helmet before he could clear the scabbard. And somehow Tarmahk managed to drop the courser before he could take my arm off with his jaws.”

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 Sothoii, 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 wantedneeded — 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 Sothoii 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.

“We won’t be that lucky a second time,” he told Tellian flatly, and the baron was forced to nod.

“Probably not, Your Majesty. Even Cassan’s going to be bright enough not to pack cavalry like that again. They’ll either push an infantry column through the gate or come at us over the wall, the way that first lot did.”

“Why in Phrobus’ name didn’t they do that the first time?” someone demanded, and Tellian shrugged.

“Because he thought his way would work,” he said. “And because all this smoke”-he gestured at the thick columns rising from the fires-“is going to attract someone’s attention. And when it does, the people who see it are going to remember the King’s visiting here. He needs to finish this before any unfortunate witnesses happen along.”

“I think there may be another reason, Milord,” Leeana said, carefully not calling him father. He looked at her, and she grimaced. “The confusion,” she said.

“To create an opportunity for Golden Hill, you mean?” Macebearer said, glaring at the elegantly dressed corpse one of Swordshank’s armsmen had dragged away and heaved onto the pile of bodies heaped into a grisly breastwork for their position.

“No, Milord.” Leeana shook her head. “Or not primarily for him, at least. I’m not at all sure he was part of the plan from the beginning. I think he simply realized his patrons’ position is hopeless if His Majesty survives. He thought he saw an opportunity to make sure you didn’t, Your Majesty, but I doubt Cassan even realized he was here. And even if Golden Hill was part of the plot from the beginning, how could Cassan have been confident he was still alive?”

“Then why create confusion?” the Prime Councilor asked.

“Not for Golden Hill,” Tellian said slowly, his eyes on his daughter’s face. “For his own people.”

“That’s what I think,” Leeana agreed. She looked back and forth between Markhos and Macebearer. “We know the lies he spun for Hathan and Gayrhalan before he killed them, but we don’t know what he told his own armsmen after he murdered them. And when they charged, Your Majesty, they were shouting ‘For the King.’ I think he told his armsmen that we’ve either killed you or taken you prisoner. Most of those men think they’re trying to rescue or avenge you…and he wanted enough confusion for someone he trusts to get close enough to kill you before the others realized you weren’t already dead.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Macebearer nodded slowly and looked at Tellian.

“A remarkable daughter you’ve raised here, Milord,” he said.

“I’ve always thought so,” Tellian acknowledged with a faint smile.

“But if she’s right-and I think you are, Milady,” Markhos said, “-then the way to beat him is simple enough. All I have to do is show myself to his men and call on them to lay down their weapons.”

“No,” Tellian said immediately. The King looked at him, eyebrows raised, and the baron shook his head. “At least some of those men out there do know why they’re here, Your Majesty, and every one of those armsmen has a bow.”

“They wouldn’t dare-not in front of so many witnesses who aren’t part of any plot against me,” Markhos shot back.

“Your Majesty, they don’t have anything to lose,” Macebearer pointed out. “Any of them who were part of this from the beginning know your magi will get to the bottom of it in the end…if you live to order the investigation. And they know the penalty for treason. Any of them with a bit of backbone-or enough desperation-is going to figure he has a better chance of surviving if he engineers an ‘accident’ for you, no matter how suspicious the accident in question might appear.”

“That’s as may be,” Markhos said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that losses or no losses, he’s still got two or three hundred armsmen out there and we have less than thirty in here, even counting those of us who don’t have armor.” He swept one hand in a circular motion, indicating the surviving grim faced, scorched and bedraggled men standing around him with bows and swords in hand. “Eventually, they’re going to simply overwhelm all of you, and when that happens I think it’s unlikely I’ll get out of this alive any more than the rest of you.” He smiled crookedly. “I don’t doubt all of you are prepared to die defending me, but I’d really prefer you don’t. Especially not if I’m not going to survive anyway.”

“Your Majesty, you’re the King.” Tellian’s voice was flat. “You don’t have the right to risk your life the way other men do-not when the stability of the entire Kingdom depends upon you.”

“I have a son, I have a brother, and I have two daughters,” Markhos replied in an equally flat tone. “I am the King, Milord Baron, but there are others to bear the Crown, should I fall.”

“Your Majesty, we can’t-”

“Baron Tellian, we can.”

Blue eyes locked with gray, and tension crackled between them.

Cassan exhaled in noisy relief mingled with anger.

Stoneblade had moved with maddening deliberation as he organized the fresh attack. He’d used a dagger to scrape a diagram of the hunting lodge’s layout onto a cleared patch of ground, and he’d methodically questioned the survivors of the first attack to fill in the details. Then he’d assigned objectives to each troop of dismounted armsmen and made sure their troop commanders understood what they were to do.

Cassan was confident Dirkson and his squad had already known what they were to do, but Stoneblade’s careful organization was going to make their task more difficult. That was bad enough, but the baron suspected his captain was deliberately delaying the assault. Something about Stoneblade’s eyes, the set of his shoulders, shouted a warning to Cassan’s instincts.

He wanted to snap out the attack order, override Stoneblade’s dragged out preparations, but he dared not. If the captain truly did suspect the truth, a premptory order might be enough to turn reluctance into open resistance, despite his personal oath to Cassan. No. Better to wait. If Stoneblade refused to order the charge, that would be time enough to take drastic action. Once the captain did order the attack, he’d be just as committed as Cassan-or just as guilty of treason, at any rate-and a man like Stoneblade didn’t do things by halves. Besides A bugle blared suddenly out of the forest behind him, and Cassan wheeled his horse in shock as a long line of cavalry walked slowly out of the shadows towards him with lances ready.

He’d never met the burly, fair-haired man riding beside the gray and white banner, but he recognized the arms of the Pickaxes of Lorham. The full-moon banner of the Quaysar temple streamed on the breeze beside it, and the woman riding beneath that banner wore the surcoat of an Arm of Lillinara.

His heart sank, but he faced the newcomers with the courage of a man who had nothing left to lose.

“Stand where you are!” he snapped.

The oncoming banners halted a hundred yards away and he heard his own armsmen climbing quickly back into their own saddles behind him, yet that upright thicket of lances never wavered.

“What’s your business here?” Cassan shouted across the distance.

“A question I might fairly ask you, Milord Baron,” the man who must be Trisu of Lorham replied coldly. “This is the West Riding, not the South.”

“I know perfectly well where we are. And I ask you again- what brings you here? ”

“A threat to the Kingdom,” Trisu said flatly. “One I believe I’m beginning to fully understand.”

“A threat to the Kingdom, is it?” Cassan shot back and barked a contemptuous laugh. “The only threat to the Kingdom I see here is you, Milord! You and that traitorous bastard you serve!”

“Have a care, Milord! Baron or no, any man who names me traitor will answer with his life!”

Cassan sneered as he realized how badly outnumbered Trisu actually was. Even supported by the Quaysar Guard-and how dangerous could armsmen who took orders from women truly be? — he had less than half the men Cassan still retained.

“I’ll call you whatever I choose,” he said harshly. “Your baron’s already murdered the King! No doubt you were part of the same plot. I order you in the name of the Crown to lay down your weapons and surrender now or pay the penalty for your crimes!”

“If you think you can take our arms, come and try,” Trisu’s voice was a glacier grinding mountains into rubble, and the upright lances shivered and came down all along the front of his line.

“Very well-on your own head be it!” Cassan drew his saber and looked over his shoulder at his armsmen. “Take them! For the King!”

“ For the King! ” his men thundered, and they charged.

A baron had no business in the front line of a cavalry melee, and Cassan let his armsmen charge past him. Trisu’s men and the Quaysar guards spurred to meet them, and Cassan smiled thinly as the two forces slammed into one another and he realized the newcomers were even more badly outnumbered than he’d realized. He actually owed that idiot Trisu a vote of thanks! Stoneblade would be committed now, whatever else happened, and it wasn’t as if “ Kalatha! Kalatha! Kalatha for the King! ”

Cassan twitched and twisted in the saddle as the forest stretching along his right flank came to sudden life. The fresh voices shouting that warcry were higher and lighter but no less savage, and he stared in disbelief as the war maids of Kalatha swarmed out of the trees. They were on foot, not mounted, and a Sothoii’s instinctive contempt for infantry-especially unarmored infantry women — welled up within him as he realized who and what they were. But only for an instant, for these women were past mistresses of the art of light infantry tactics and concealment. They’d filtered soundlessly forward in the shadows of the trees while Trisu occupied his attention, putting themselves in a perfect position to hit his own men from behind, and he hadn’t seen a thing. Not a thing! How in Fiendark’s name had they managed to get this close without his even seeing them?!

And then they were upon his armsmen, and they didn’t seem to care that they were on foot.

Warhorses screamed afresh as the war maids piled into the fray, short swords and daggers flashing ruthlessly, hamstringing the horses of men who were already locked in combat with Trisu’s mounted troops and helpless to defend themselves against an attack from the rear. The shrieking horses went down, spilling their riders, and the war maids were waiting when those armsmen fell. They swarmed over them before they could even start to rise, and if those armsmen were armored, that did them little good when they were taken two or three to one. War maids fell, as well, but they flooded through the ranks of Cassan’s men like the sea, and the surprise was devastating.

He gawked in disbelief as his entire right flank crumpled in chaos and confusion, and even as he watched, Trisu’s left pivoted, swinging in on the rubble of his own right, charging past their war maid allies to slam into the back of his left wing.

It was too much for men who were already confused, who knew they were far from home…who’d had one surprise too many. Sabers began to go up, raised hilt-first in token of surrender, and once it began, it spread like wildfire. Perhaps a third of his armsmen refused to yield, grimly determined to take as many of their enemies with them as possible, but there could be only one possible outcome.

For one endless moment, Cassan of the South Riding stared at the disastrous collapse of all his plans. Then he wrenched his horse’s head around and drove in his spurs.

“ Stand where you are! ” Baron Tellian bellowed as Swordshank’s armsmen started to race towards the gate and the bedlam of combat. They halted, staring over their shoulders at him, and he glared at them. “Get back into your positions! If those are friends of ours out there and they win, well and good! But that’s their job; your job is to protect the King!”

The armsmen stared at him for another handful of seconds, and then they slunk meekly back into their original lines. Yet even as they did, a chestnut courser with an eye of blue flame went bounding past them and out the gate with a redhaired wind rider in its saddle.

“ Leeana! ” Tellian shouted, but Gayrfressa was already through the gate in a rolling thunder of hooves.

Cassan turned his head, peering over his shoulder once more. There was no sign of pursuit yet, but it would be coming all too soon. He needed enough of a head start for his tracks to be lost in those of all the other fugitives who would shortly be fleeing the scene of his debacle. Where he’d go, what he’d do, in the wake of such utter disaster was more than he could begin to calculate at the moment, yet the first order of business was clear enough: to escape. To A huge chestnut mare burst through a screen of trees behind him, and he swallowed a strangled curse. His warhorse was already at full stretch, galloping all out despite the dangerous terrain, but the courser closed quickly, eating up the distance between them effortlessly, and blue fire glittered from its right eye socket. He didn’t know what that fire was, but somehow he knew he couldn’t escape it-that glittering flame would find him wherever he went, wherever he hid.

Despair flooded through him, and with it came a towering rage. It was over. Tellian had won. Everything Cassan had fought for throughout his entire life was gone, snatched away by the man he hated most in all the world. And on that courser, charging after him, was Tellian’s hradani-loving whore of a daughter-a woman who’d never trained to fight on horseback and who wasn’t even armored.

He bared his teeth, turning, bringing his horse back around and drawing his saber once more. Perhaps he’d lost, but he could take this one last exquisite vengeance. He could lay Tellian’s daughter dead on the ground and turn his triumph to dust and ashes in his mouth!

“Come to me, bitch!” he screamed, and charged to meet her.

They flashed towards one another, and he snarled triumphantly as he realized she didn’t even have a sword in her hands! He’d have to be careful of the courser, but he didn’t really care whether he lived or died now-not any longer. All that mattered was that he kill her before he died, and the fool was making it easy!

He rode right at her, saber extended in a long, straight lunge, anticipating the shock in his wrist as the steel drove into her and She wasn’t there.

Cassan’s eyes started to widen in astonishment as Gayrfressa broke to her right, impossibly quick for something so huge, and Leeana twisted sinuously in the saddle. His saber drove past her harmlessly, and he was still turning his head, trying to understand what had happened, when Gayrfressa thundered past him in the opposite direction and Leanna’s left foot came up under his left foot and heaved with savage power. The sudden pressure unbalanced him, and his saber flew from his grip as he clutched desperately after the pommel of his saddle.

It was too late. Surprised, already off-center from the lunge which had missed its target, Leeana’s lifting foot unbalanced him completely. He hit the ground with bone-crushing force, crying out as something shattered in his right shoulder. Slivers of anguish rocketed through him, and he shook his head groggily, dragging himself up as high as his knees. He had to get back on his feet, he had to Something flashed over his head. A kneecap rammed into his shoulder blades like a maul, and his left hand clawed uselessly at his suddenly blood-slick throat as the war maid garrotte bit deep. He gurgled, twisting frantically, and Leeana Hanathafressa crossed her wrists behind his head, set her shoulders, and twisted with all her strength.

The last sound Cassan Axehammer ever heard was the crunching snap of his own neck.