Honor among thieves

Chapter Sixty-Three

Spittle flecked their red-painted lips. They came running with blood in their eyes, flourishing axes high over their heads and biting their shields. Croy had seen them before, at the gate of Helstrow, but then he’d had a wall at his back and a gate to retreat behind. Now they surrounded him on all sides.

The few of Morgain’s barbarians left on the road broke off from the combat and moved out of the road, making room for their reinforcements. The men of Skrae, perhaps heartened by their near victory, fell back into ragged formations, making tight squares bristling with pikestaffs. Not even a cavalry charge could break a properly formed pike square.

The berserkers were beyond awareness of the danger. They threw themselves on the points of the pikes, impaling themselves even as they slashed at the long hafts with their axes. Pikes exploded in bursts of splinters and the squares began to fall apart. The berserkers, jabbed in a dozen places, their wounds running bright red, did not even slow down. When a pike square broke, the berserkers leapt into the gap, hewing left and right with no concern for their own safety.

“Break and run!” Croy shouted. There was no cowardice in fleeing this madness. “Serjeants, disperse your men!”

It made no difference. Croy’s men could not hear him over the roaring of the berserkers.

He turned to see Morgain leaping onto the back of her horse.

“They’ll slaughter friend and foe alike. Their fury can’t be quenched but by blood,” Morgain told him. “If you’re wise, you’ll do as I do.”

Croy frowned at her. “You expect me to leave my men here to die?”

“I hope you will,” she told him. A strange wistful look came into her eyes. “I’d like to see you again. At the point of my sword or-otherwise.” Then she laughed and kicked her horse into a gallop. In a moment she was gone around a bend of the road.

Croy cursed in frustration and ran toward the fray. Ghostcutter tore through the spine of the first berserker he found, cutting the man’s back to ribbons. The berserker fell but his legs kept kicking at the dust as he tried to get up.

Another man with a red-painted face howled at Croy and swung at him with his axe. The blow could have chopped down a tree, but it was ill-timed. Croy ducked underneath it and ran the easterner through the heart.

The berserkers died like anyone else. They just took longer to realize what had happened. Croy laid low two more before he’d reached the first pike square. “You, men, get out of here,” he screamed at his own soldiers. “You only have one chance!”

As the serjeant smote and bellowed at his men to obey their orders, one by one the men of Skrae broke for the trees. Many of them were caught by berserkers but a few escaped. Unfortunately that left Croy alone with a pair of berserkers who had no other target for their wrath.

They moved fast, though not nearly with the speed of Morgain. Croy turned their headlong recklessness against them, tripping one as he stepped inside the reach of another. Ghostcutter rose and fell as he slew them. They made no attempt to parry. Croy paused only a moment to make sure they were dead and would not come biting at his ankles.

Suddenly another berserker was right next to him. A wicked axe blade came down on the side of Croy’s helmet. It bounced off but it left his head ringing, and his helmet slid to the side so he could no longer see out of the eyeslits. Blind and deaf, Croy jabbed straight out with Ghostcutter and tore the helmet off with his free hand.

Two more berserkers faced him. They were still ten yards away. More than enough time to think of how to dispatch them. Or just enough time to try to break up another doomed pike square. Croy sought the nearest group of his own soldiers — and found none.

Maybe they’d been smart enough to break and run without waiting for his command. He saw mounds of bodies, though, and this time he recognized most of the dead faces. Nowhere on the road could he see men of Skrae still standing. What he did see was red-painted faces and rolling, bloodshot eyes.

He was alone, with at least thirty berserkers.

Croy no longer had a duty to dispatch. Without men, he had no orders to carry out. He raced for his horse as fast as his legs could carry him. Jumping up onto its back, he gave it a sharp jab with his spurs and grabbed up the reins as he tried desperately not to fall off.

As fast as his horse could run, though, the berserkers gave chase. They ran after him, whooping and brandishing their weapons, covered in blood. Croy felt like he was in some terrible dream where no matter how fast he rode he would never get away.

Little by little, though, he gained ground. His horse panted for breath as its hooves flashed on the dusty road. He leaned forward into the charge, to avoid the naked tree branches that flashed by overhead. He was going to make it. He was A berserker leapt from the side of the road and grabbed onto his saddle. The man’s legs dragged behind him on the ground but his hands clutched with white knuckles at Croy’s tack.

Croy stared down into eyes gone wholly to madness. He saw anger there, only anger-anger at the world, at the gods, at anything that could bleed. The berserker grabbed at the reins with his teeth and started chewing through them.

Croy didn’t have time to cry out in surprise. He lifted Ghostcutter high and brought its pommel down hard enough to smash in the berserker’s skull. The madman’s hands finally released the saddle, and the body fell away.

Easthull, Croy thought. He must go at once to the manor. The Baron, the king, the princess were there. He needed to move them somewhere else, perhaps far to the west. Perhaps as far as Ness.

There was no time to waste.