War Maid's choice

Chapter Thirty-Five

Leeana forced herself to sit calmly on the hunting lodge’s deep, roofed veranda.

What she really wanted to do was to stand up, pace vigorously, and spend several minutes screaming at Sir Frahdar Swordshank. She would, however, cheerfully have traded the screaming time for the opportunity to remove Lord Warden Golden Hill’s handsome, sleekly groomed head, instead.

Slowly, preferably. One inch at a time.

It seemed evident that whatever anyone else might think, King Markhos cherished no suspicions about her father’s fidelity. For that matter, she wasn’t at all certain Swordshank truly worried about Tellian’s loyalty. But it was Swordshank’s job to consider all possibilities, and the truth was that they knew far too little about what was happening. Given what they did know, the decision to stand fast or to seek a place of greater safety could have been argued either way, and the King wasn’t in the practice of capriciously overriding the skilled and experienced armsman he’d chosen to command his personal guard even before he’d attained his majority and assumed the Crown in his own right. The choice Swordshank had made might frustrate and worry her, and she might be convinced it was the wrong one, but she wasn’t angry at him for it. Not once she’d had a chance to think about it from his perspective and cool down a bit, at any rate.

But Golden Hill, now…him she could definitely be angry with. Even now, she knew, he was standing attentively with the knot of unarmored courtiers and servants surrounding the King in the lodge’s great room as the final line of defense. And while he was standing there, sword in hand and expression of noble purpose firmly fixed, he was undoubtedly continuing to drop the occasional, carefully honed, poisonous word to undermine her father. Nor was Baron Tellian in any position to parry his attacks at the moment.

Unlike any of the other courtiers, he and Hathan had brought their armor with them. Leeana knew that was solely because of his promise to her mother after the ambush had come so close to killing him last spring. Golden Hill (predictably) had commented on how “fortunate” it was that Tellian-and, of course, his closest and most trusted companion (it would never do to call him a “henchman”)-“happened” to be in full armor at a moment when the King might be exposed to the threat of assassination. Obviously he’d meant only that it was fortunate that the defenders should have been reinforced by two such formidable wind riders! He’d never meant to imply that it might keep the two of them safe in the sort of confused, desperate melee which might break out under such circumstances! Why, that might have suggested that they’d suspected their armor might actually be needed, and nothing could have been further from his intent!

At least a few of those barbed words had to be coming her way, as well. And, unfortunately, Golden Hill wasn’t the only one of the King’s courtiers who clearly wished that if someone was going to warn the King about a potential plot, the warning might at least have come from someone with a modicum of respectability.

All of that was quite enough to make anyone seethe with anger, yet she knew those reasons were almost superficial.

No, the true reason for the fury bubbling away just beneath her outward semblance of calm was the fact that, unlike her father, she didn’t have armor…and she remained far from anything someone might have called a trained wind rider. Which was why she was sitting on this veranda with a strung bow beside her, a quiver of arrows over her shoulder, and a war maid’s short swords at her side while her father, Hathan, their coursers, and Gayrfressa waited to take the battle to any attackers.

‹ I should be with you… and Father!› she raged silently to her hoofed sister.

‹ Not yet, Sister,› Gayrfressa replied far more gently, raising her head and looking back over her shoulder at Leeana from her own place in the hunting lodge’s central courtyard. ‹ Not until you’ve learned to fight from the saddle, not simply ride. I love you too much to risk you when you haven’t been trained to defend yourself properly from my back. And you don’t even have armor!›

Leeana felt her jaw tighten and forced herself to relax it, shocked by the spike of anger she felt at Gayrfressa, of all people!

‹ You’re not mad at me, › Gayrfressa told her with something almost like a tender laugh. ‹ Not really. You’re mad at hearing the voice of reason telling you what you don’t want to hear, and it happens to be mine. And the reason you’re angry is that you feel as if you’re somehow at fault for sitting there “safely” while your father, Hathan, Dathgar, and Gayrhalan are all out here with me. But you’re not really all that “safe” where you are, you know. You’re simply safer there than you would be out here until we get you properly trained. And while I admit you have a much better starting point than he did when Walsharno first took him in hand, that’s going to take a while.›

Leeana was forced to nod, and Gayrfressa shook her head in a mane-flipping gesture, then turned back to the closed gate, standing between the two stallions and their heavily armored riders. Neither her father nor Hathan had thought to bring lances with them, unfortunately. Instead, they had their horse bows strung, which would be more effective from a courser’s saddle than a sword-in the beginning, at least-unless their enemies were far better armored than anyone anticipated. Yet what gnawed at Leeana’s heart was the knowledge that Gayrfressa had no bow-armed rider, because Leeana hadn’t yet acquired that proficiency. And that meant that while the two armored wind riders might be able to stay out of weapons reach of an opponent, Gayrfressa would have no choice but to close so that she might use those weapons with which nature had endowed her.

And unlike the stallions, she was unbarded.

Stop that, she told herself firmly. You can’t change it by worrying about it, and Gayrfressa knows what you’re feeling even if you don’t actually say a thing to her. The last thing you need to be doing at this moment is to distract her!

A wordless ripple of love reached back to her, and she drew a deep breath as she reached back.

Guran Selmar came out of the undergrowth as silently as a puff of breeze, and Erkan Traram looked up from the mossy boulder upon which he sat.

“Lieutenant Larark’s in position, Sir,” the sergeant said, and Traram grimaced.

“Should I assume you took a close look at that lodge on your way back?” he asked the veteran noncom, and Selmar chuckled grimly.

“Aye, Sir. I did that.” He shrugged. “’Pears to be pretty much the way it was described, Captain. The wall’s nothing much-can’t be more than twelve, thirteen feet tall, and it looks like it’s only a couple of courses of brick.” He shrugged again. “Don’t see how it could have any kind of fighting step, and the ropes and grapnels should go over it clean and easy. The only thing that bothers me is the gate.”

“The gate?” Traram’s eyes narrowed. “What about it?”

“No tougher or heavier than any of the rest of that ‘wall’ of theirs, Sir. The thing is, though, it’s closed up tight. Seems to me the reasonable thing for them to do would be to leave it open.”

Traram’s face tightened.

“ I’d think so,” he acknowledged. “Our information didn’t suggest anything one way or the other about it, but still…”

He and Selmar looked at one another for several moments. Then the captain shrugged.

“Well, either way, they’ve only got forty or fifty men in there. But if that gate’s closed because they’ve figured out somehow that we’re coming, I think we should just leave it closed. Go tell Lieutenant Rasal-I want him and his men on the west wall with me rather than trying to rush the gate.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Selmar disappeared into the undergrowth once more, and Traram drew a deep breath. The closed gate might mean nothing at all, although that seemed unlikely. The next most likely possibility was that someone inside the lodge’s ornamental wall had caught sight of one or more of his men skulking about in the bushes getting into position. He wouldn’t have believed that could happen-his men were better than that-but anyone could make mistakes, however good they were, and sometimes the other side simply got lucky.

And then there was the least likely probability-that someone had betrayed their operation to the Sothoii. In that case, that gate might be closed to conceal the fact that King Markhos was somewhere else entirely…having left a hundred or so of his elite cavalry packed in the hunting lodge’s courtyard, waiting to come thundering out as soon as anyone was sufficiently injudicious as to disturb them.

You’re jumping at shadows, Erkan, he told himself. Jumping at shadows. If there’d been that much traffic in or out of that lodge, you’d have seen signs of it along the road, and you didn’t, did you? No, the only realistic worst-case is that someone did spot one of the boys.

That would be bad enough, yet it was a chance he was prepared to accept. Without the element of surprise, his casualties would climb sharply, but the defenders simply didn’t have enough manpower. The harsh truth was that he could afford far higher losses than the King’s bodyguards possibly could, and given how much they were being paid for this one The staccato cry of a southern bird who had no business on the Wind Plain sounded clearly through the cool, green woods, and Erkan Traram drew his sword and looked through the thin screen of branches at the top of that ornamental wall Selmar had described.

“ Now! ” he bellowed.

Leeana came to her feet with a dancer’s grace, and somehow the strung bow had appeared in her left hand. For just a moment, she wasn’t certain what had snatched her out of her chair. Then she realized- she hadn’t heard that single shouted word; Gayrfressa had.

She turned to her left, facing the direction from which the command-and it had to be a command-had come, and her right hand drew an arrow from her quiver. Somewhere deep under the surface of her thoughts, she recalled her first morning at Kalatha and her hopeless performance as an archer under Erlis and Ravlahn’s evaluating examination. She’d come a long way since that day, and despite the bigger muscles with which an unfair nature had gifted male arms, there weren’t a great many men who could have pulled the bow she’d mastered in the intervening years. She nocked the arrow, her brain ticking with the cool precision of a Dwarvenhame pocket watch, and felt the alert, tingling readiness purring through her nerves and sinews. Despite her years of hard, sometimes brutal training, she’d never faced an enemy when lives were in the balance, and she was vaguely astonished that what she felt most strongly at the moment was an overwhelming focus and purpose, not fear.

Well, a small inner voice told her almost whimsically, there’s always time for that.

Traram’s shout brought his entire company to its feet. Whistles shrilled and other voices shouted their own orders, galvanized by his command, and the attack rolled forward.

The approaches were most open on the western side of the lodge, which was why Traram himself commanded that prong of the assault. The dense greenery of the Forest of Chergor swept up to within little more than thirty or forty feet of the lodge’s other walls; here, on the west, the approach lay through the more open and orderly lines of an apple orchard. The apple trees’ leaves and ripening fruit provided a wind-tousled screen, concealing most of his men’s approach from any observer who might be perched awkwardly atop that purely decorative wall, but they were still far more exposed coming through the orchard. On the other hand, the orchard was much more open than the forest’s tangles, which allowed him not only to move more quickly, but also to maintain a tighter formation.

A bugle blared from somewhere inside the lodge before his men had moved ten yards, and he grimaced at the confirmation that the defenders had indeed had at least some inkling they were under threat. He’d never personally fought Sothoii before, but the deadly reputation of the Wind Plain’s horse archers told him the next few minutes were going to be ugly.

Still, he’d seen ugly before, and he’d taken the job.

The corner of Leeana’s eye noticed the three coursers turning away from the gate they’d been facing. They moved smoothly to the right, where the southernmost wall was screened from the main courtyard by the stables, taking up a position from which they could reach either the gate or the wall, as need required. Between the stables and the wall, there was-or had been-a small riding ring, but the white-painted fencing around it had been demolished to clear fighting room behind the stables, and she felt a flicker of Gayrfressa’s grim satisfaction as she trotted to one end of that open space between Dathgar and Gayrhalan.

It was a vague recognition, at the back of her mind, for her own eyes were fixed on the western wall as the first grappling hook soared up over the masonry. Iron teeth clattered, dug into the mortar between the bricks, and there were dozens of them.

She raised her bow, the watch ticking in her head a bit harder and faster, picturing the men who must even now be swarming up the knotted ropes attached to those grapnels. Men coming to kill her King.

Men coming for her to kill instead.

She drew and loosed with smooth, flashing speed, hands and muscles moving before she’d even realized what she’d seen. The range was less than fifty yards, and the man who’d drawn her attention had just transferred from the climbing rope. He flung his arms across the top of the wall to heave himself up and over…and disappeared without even a scream as her arrow tore through the base of his throat, just above the collarbone.

Something quivered deep inside her, like a momentary flash of nausea, as she realized she’d just killed another human being. It wasn’t like taking a hare or an antelope, yet there wasn’t the degree of shock she’d expected, either. Perhaps there simply wasn’t time to allow herself that distraction. Perhaps it would come back to haunt her later. But for now there was only that clear, clean focus, and she nocked another arrow even as a score of other heads topped the wall.

More bowstrings sang and snapped-dozens of them-along the northern, western, and eastern walls. There’d been no time to construct any sort of fighting step from which those archers might have engaged attackers short of the walls themselves, just as there was too little space for mounted troops to fight effectively within them. No Sothoii cavalryman was ever truly comfortable fighting on foot, but the Royal Guard was rather more flexible than most, and Swordshank had left his troopers’ mounts in the lodge’s capacious stables rather than pack its interior with a congested mass, unable to maneuver. Instead, he’d positioned his dismounted armsmen carefully around the main lodge, placed where they could simultaneously guard its entrances and cover the walls where the sightlines were clear enough for archery. But most of the southern wall, encumbered by the stables, was impossible to see-or sweep with arrowfire-from the central courtyard. That was why he’d demolished the riding ring…and the reason Tellian and Hathan had moved to cover that vulnerability the instant they were confident the attackers were coming over the walls rather than attempting to storm the gate.

Of course, the attack on the walls could always be a diversion to draw our attention away from the gate before they smash it open, that preposterously calm voice remarked inside Leeana Hanathafressa’s skull as she loosed a second arrow and another body collapsed.

This time the corpse sprawled across the top of the wall until the next man up the rope shoved it out of his way. There were screams now, she noticed, nocking yet another arrow, yet the attack never faltered. Whatever else these men might be, they weren’t cowards, and their experience showed in the speed and ferocity of their assault. Clearly they recognized their numerical advantage…and that their best hope of success and survival lay in swamping the defense. There could be only so many bows inside the lodge, and the arithmetic was coldly pragmatic. Spread the defenders as thinly as possible by attacking from all points of the compass simultaneously, then throw the greatest possible number of bodies over each wall as rapidly as possible. King Markhos’ armsmen might wound or kill many of them; the trick was to get the survivors across more quickly than they could be killed. Every one of them who got a sword close enough to threaten one of Swordshank’s armsmen would take that armsman’s bow out of play…and make it easier still for the men behind them to get over the walls, in turn.

The man who’d swarmed up behind Leeana’s second victim seemed to embrace his predecessor’s body. For an instant, she thought she’d only wounded her second target; then she realized the newcomer was using his companion’s corpse as a shield, putting it between him and the incoming arrows while he rolled across the wall and let himself drop. An arrow plunged into the shielding body. Then another. Someone else’s arrow slashed past him, shattering against the wall’s inner brickwork, as he pushed the dead man clear and plummeted, and Leeana dropped her own point of aim. He landed in a controlled tumble, coming back to his feet quickly, and she loosed.

The attackers were more heavily armored than most Sothoii. They wore chain or scale armor, rather than light cavalry’s leather armor, and at least some of them had cuirasses, as well. Someone’s arrow hit a steel breastplate and skipped off harmlessly, but the man springing back upright in front of Leeana Hanathafressa’s pitiless green eyes didn’t have one, and the needle-sharp tip of her arrow’s awl-like pile head drove between the links of his mail. The armor might slow it, might rob it of much of its power, but it couldn’t stop it at that short range, and he cried out, clutching at the shaft quivering in his chest before he crashed back to earth. He lay twisting and jerking in agony, and Leeana swung away from him, seeking another target.

There were more than enough of them, for there were more grappling hooks than there were royal armsmen, and more and more of the attackers made it across the walls while the defenders were occupied picking off their companions. And just as the attackers had planned, every man who made it to the ground inside instantly became a greater threat than those still swarming up the ropes. He had to be dealt with, and that diverted the defenders’ fire from the walls themselves. Leeana loosed again, and then again, killing one target and watching her arrow glance off the other’s steel plate. She had no time for a follow-up shot against that assassin; he was coming straight at her, and she dropped her bow, shed her protective finger tab, and swept out both of her short swords.

The man wore an open-faced helmet, and he was close enough now for her to see his eyes, see his sudden savage smile, as he realized the single defender dancing towards the head of the veranda’s steps was unarmored. His sword was much heavier-and at least a foot longer than hers-as well, and she had no shield. He bounded forward, three or four others following at his heels, and Leeana sensed his eagerness to cut her down and be on about the mission which had brought him here. His own armor and helmet gave him an enormous edge, and he drove straight up the steps towards her with a veteran’s ruthless determination to capitalize on that advantage.

It was a mistake.

Leeana was taller than most men-over half a foot taller than him-with more than enough reach to offset the greater length of his sword, and war maid training was actually harder, harsher, and more demanding than that of most professional armsmen. It had to be, for they needed that razor edge of lethality, because unlike Leeana, the majority of war maids were smaller than the men they were likely to confront in combat. Leeana wasn’t, but she’d trained to the same hard, unforgiving standard as her smaller sisters, and her own sword technique had been adopted directly from Dame Kaeritha Seldansdaughter. She hadn’t trained in it for as many years as Kaeritha, but very few swordsmen-and even fewer swords women — had been mentored by a champion of Tomanak and then polished under the unrelenting eye of Erlis Rahnafressa and Ravlahn Thregafressa since she was fourteen years old.

The assassin’s eyes widened in astonishment as Leeana’s left hand blade engaged his longer sword, twisting elegantly about it, binding it and carrying it out and to the side. It was a very brief astonishment, however-his eyes hadn’t finished widening before the razor-edged steel in her right hand licked out through the opening she’d created, precise as a surgeon’s scalpel, and sliced effortlessly through his throat.

He went down with a bubbling scream, the sudden geyser of his life’s blood splashing Leeana’s arm, and his tumbling body tripped the man behind him. The second assassin managed not to fall, but he was off center, fighting for balance, as Leeana lunged and recovered in a single, supple flash that left another slashed throat spouting blood in its wake.

It had taken perhaps three heartbeats, and the men following on her victims’ heels paused in what might have been consternation. The two bodies before Leeana encumbered the steps up to the high veranda. There might be space enough for two of them to come up them simultaneously, but they were far more likely to get in one another’s way or stumble over their unfortunate companions, and no one was inclined to share their fate.

Yet neither were they inclined to abandon the effort, and more and more of the King’s armsmen had been forced to abandon their bows as the tide of attackers swept over the walls. The courtyard was carpeted with bodies-there had to be at least thirty or forty of them-and the gods only knew how many more had fallen backward off the wall, but at least that number had made it into sword range of the archers. They’d charged straight towards the central lodge, forcing the guardsmen to intercept them and stop picking off their fellows as they swarmed across the wall.

Now half a dozen of them flowed across the body-strewn ground to join the men glaring up at Leeana, and her heart sank as they began to spread. There was only the single set of steps, and the veranda was high enough to be an awkward, climbing scramble from any other approach. The wooden railing along its edge was open, without any sort of upright pickets to bar anyone willing to make the climb, however, and she could be in only one spot at a time.

She drew a deep breath, forcing herself to focus on only the next few moments, and stepped back slightly from the head of the steps.

Tellian of Balthar dropped his bow.

He and Hathan had dropped at least a dozen attackers as they scaled the wall, yet there’d never been any hope of actually holding it with only two bows, for the attackers had redoubled their efforts when they realized there were only two archers on the southern side of the lodge’s perimeter. They’d swarmed up the ropes, vaulted across the top of the wall, and dropped exultantly to the ground at its foot, with only a tithe of the casualties their companions had suffered elsewhere.

Exultation became something else as they found themselves face-to-face with two wind riders and a one-eared chestnut mare with an eye of unnatural blue flame.

Dathgar, Gayrhalan, and Gayrfressa had swept from east to west along the southern wall while Tellian and Hathan drove arrows into the attackers’ faces. Now they wheeled, facing back to the east, and the space between the the solid block of stables and the lodge’s outer wall was no more than seventy feet across. With the riding ring’s demolition, it was also smooth and obstruction free, like a corridor between two sheer walls.

With three coursers at one end of it.

The men coming over that wall could not have been more badly positioned to receive a cavalry charge. They were in no particular formation, without the tight frontage and pikes or halberds which might have fended off even regular cavalry, far less coursers, and the space in which they were trapped was just long enough for those coursers to spring off their hocks and accelerate towards them with preposterous speed.

As Leeana had already realized, whatever else Erkan Traram’s men might be, there were precious few cowards among them. Most of the men who’d already made it to the ground drew their swords. Some flung themselves forward, trying desperately to somehow get under the coursers to gut or hamstring them. Others pressed as close to the outer wall as they could, trying to stay out of the coursers’ path and come at them from behind once they’d passed. A handful sprang towards the back of the stables, prying frantically at closed and barred doors, and another handful, closest to the eastern end of the confined space, boiled around that edge of the stables, funneling past it to join their fellows in the main courtyard. And then “ Balthar! ” Tellian bellowed, leaning low from his saddle, and red spray flew as his saber removed an assassin’s right hand.

The man’s sword spun away, still clenched in his severed hand, and Dathgar trumpeted a high, piercing echo of his rider’s warcry. Another assassin screamed as steel shod hooves bigger than his own head crushed the life from him, and the baron swept along the inner face of the wall, while Hathan and Gayrhalan took the back side of the stables. The other wind rider always took Tellian’s left flank in battle, for he was left-handed, and his own saber flashed crimson as his courser thundered forward.

Gayrhalan’s herd stallion had known what he he was about when he christened the iron gray “Storm Souled.” He’d never been noted for the gentleness of his temper, but unlike Dathgar, he sounded no trumpet call of defiance; he was too busy crushing a shrieking mercenary’s shoulder into ruin between battleaxe jaws. His victim squealed desperately as the courser jerked him off his feet, snapping him in midair like a greyhound with a rabbit, without even breaking stride. Then the body was tossed aside, to bounce brokenly off the stable wall, even as Gayrhalan put his barded shoulder into a fresh victim, knocking him off his feet to sprawl directly in front of Gayrfressa.

The mare had neither rider nor barding, but she was actually larger than either of the stallions, and mere men in armor held no terror for someone who’d trampled demons in defense of her herd when she was only a filly. More than that, coursers weren’t horses. Even the most superbly trained warhorse was far less lethal than a creature half again as large, as intelligent as any of the Races of Man, and as thoroughly trained as any mishuk in a combat technique the coursers had spent a millennium perfecting.

Her left forehoof-shod in steel and broader than a dinner plate-came down on the assassin Gayrhalan had toppled with the brutal efficiency of a water-driven Dwarvenhame drop hammer. Her target didn’t even scream, and even as he died, she was thundering forward with the stallions, taking her next victim. She trampled him underfoot, jaws reaching past him, closing on a fourth enemy, and not in Gayrhalan’s shoulder-crushing grip. No-her incisors closed on the mercenary’s head, and when she tossed her head, his went flying like a child’s ball.

In a bare handful of seconds, the two humans and three coursers turned the space between the stables and the wall into an abattoir where nothing lived. And then the blood-splashed coursers swept around the stables’ eastern edge after the fleet footed enemies who’d escaped their wrath.

At least ten men came scrambling towards the veranda.

No one would have accused them of being in any sort of formation-not surprisingly, given the chaos behind them and the knots of royal guardsmen and assassins coalescing in furious swirls of combat around the main lodge. But no one could have accused them of hesitation, either, and if their coordination wasn’t perfect, it was good enough to overwhelm Leeana.

The first mercenary beat all of his fellows up and over the edge of the veranda, and Leeana’s left-hand sword flashed in a crimson-streaming arc as she gave him the victor’s prize. Then she whirled in the same flowing motion to face a man coming at her from the right. She engaged his sword with her right-hand blade, parrying it high barely in time, crashing into him chest-to-chest, and her left hand came up. She switched her primary attack from right to left, as instantly as Dame Kaeritha herself might have, and the man who’d just tried to kill her collapsed as she thrust up under their locked blades and drove the sword in that hand home in his armpit.

He slithered off her steel, and she turned, swaying aside purely by trained instinct, as another sword whistled through the space her head had occupied an instant before. She backpedaled, knowing she had to give ground while she regained her balance, yet painfully aware of the wall behind her. She couldn’t back far, and so she set herself, taking a chance, bulling in on her new opponent before she was fully centered herself. A blade scored her ribs as she twisted her torso aside, and then he, too, went down, clutching at his face and screaming as her right-hand sword drove into his open-faced helmet. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but blood fountained between his fingers as he clutched at his butchered eyes, and she kicked him aside as three more mercenaries came at her.

Her finely focused, steely purpose never faltered, but despair welled up behind it. All three of them were armored, whereas she could already feel the blood flowing down her left side in proof that she was completely un armored, and they advanced on her with coordinated menace.

She backed slowly, unable now to pay attention to the larger fight, watching them, poised to take any opening, however tiny, however fleeting. But they gave her no opening, and she felt the edge of the veranda looming up behind her. She drew a deep breath, and then The mercenary at the left end of the short, advancing line, screamed. He rose on his toes, then stumbled forward, going to his knees, and Sir Jerhas Macebearer’s riding boot slammed between his shoulder blades, kicking him out of the way. The white-haired Prime Councilor slid through the gap he’d created, his back protected by the lodge’s front wall, slotting in at Leeana’s left, and she noticed that he’d left his cane behind.

Despite his age, he was past the mercenaries, covering her left side, before they even realized he was there, and the worn, wetly gleaming saber in his right hand was rocksteady.

Leeana noted all of that from the corner of her left eye, her attention locked on the men in front of her. They hesitated-only for an instant, barely noticeable to any observer-as their brains adjusted to the old warrior’s unexpected appearance, and in that instant, she attacked. She uncoiled in a full-extension lunge that drove her right-hand sword through the closer mercenary’s mouth and into his brain, and he dropped like a string-cut puppet. But her sword stuck briefly in the wound. It pulled her arm down, dragged her off balance, opened her to his remaining companion’s attack, and it was his turn to lunge forward.

He never completed that lunge. In the instant that he launched it, Macebearer’s bloody saber flicked into his helmet opening. There was no nasal, and the saber chopped through the bridge of the mercenary’s nose. It struck his forehead with stunning force, not quite cleanly enough to cut through the bone, and the would-be assassin went down on one knee. He retained his sword, but his left hand clutched at his mangled face. Leeana couldn’t tell if it was a simple reaction to the pain or if he was trying to clear his eyes of the sudden flow of blood, and it didn’t matter. In the instant he was blind, the Prime Councilor’s wrist turned, and the blade the mercenary never even saw drove through his unguarded throat from the side.

Tellian and Dathgar rounded the corner of the stable block first.

The courtyard was a chaos of bodies and blood. There were no more mercenaries coming over the wall, but at least sixty of them were already inside it, driving in on the main lodge…and the King. More than a dozen of Swordshank’s armsmen were down, lying amid the bodies of their enemies, and the survivors had been pushed back against the lodge, fighting furiously to hold the doors. At least two of the unarmored courtiers of the King’s party lay with those still, twisted armsmen, and others fought to hold the building’s windows.

And on the veranda, fighting before the front door itself, was his daughter, the left side of her white shirt soaked in blood, with the Kingdom’s white-haired Prime Councilor at her side.

Bodies sprawled in front of them, but even as he caught sight of them, another clutch of mercenaries separated itself from the confusion and charged towards them, seeking to rush the door.

Something screamed beside him like a wounded direcat, and then Gayrfressa went bounding forward like a chestnut demon.

There was no time to discuss it with Dathgar…nor was there any need. They were one, and as the mare charged, they thundered out into the courtyard behind her with Hathan and Gayrhalan at their side.

Leeana felt Gayrfressa coming, but she dared not look away from the fresh attackers swarming across the veranda towards her and Sir Jerhas.

“Take it to them, Milady!” a sharp, clear voice said from beside her. “I’ve got your back!”

She didn’t waste time nodding. She simply went to meet her foes, and Sir Jerhas Macebearer came behind her.

Their sudden advance took the mercenaries by surprise, and Leeana pressed that fleeting advantage ruthlessly. She feinted to her left, then drove forward with her right, and another assassin collapsed as she thrust eight inches of steel into his thigh and his leg folded beneath him. Her booted heel came down on his sword wrist with bone-shattering force as he hit the veranda’s bloodsoaked planks, and she pivoted left, taking the man she’d first feinted towards from his suddenly unprotected flank. He gave ground, interposing his own sword frantically, but her left foot came up. The toe of her boot slammed up between his legs, and he cried out, staggering in sudden anguish. She tore through his wavering guard, ripping out his throat with both blades at once, and he sprawled across the man she’d crippled.

She recovered with desperate speed, aware of yet another opponent coming at her from the right, but Sir Jerhas was there. His saber engaged the mercenary’s heavier longsword in a flurry of steel that would have done credit to a man half his age, turning the other’s attack. Steel belled on steel in a lightning exchange of cuts and parries, but the younger, stronger mercenary pushed the older man back.

Not quickly enough. Leeana Hanathafressa was a war maid, and just as ruthlessly pragmatic as her husband. Honor was undoubtedly all very well, but she saw no reason to let the unarmored Prime Councilor fight it out with a man half his age and armored to boot. As Sir Jerhas gave ground, backing past her, she swiveled and struck with a viper’s speed, driving a short sword home just below the mercenary’s ear.

Gayrfressa was crimson to the knees, and more blood streaked her throat and blew in a scarlet froth from her nostrils, as she took the mercenaries in the courtyard from the rear. Two tons of chestnut fury rolled over them like a boulder, pounding them into the dirt, crushing anyone who stood between her and her chosen sister, and Dathgar and Gayrhalan fanned out behind her.

One moment, the attackers had known they hovered on the brink of success, despite far heavier losses than they’d ever anticipated. At least half the King’s armsmen were down and they were driving remorselessly forward, fighting in the very doorway of the lodge with the defenders melting like snow before them. And then, with no warning, three bloodsoaked juggernauts slammed into them.

The coursers rampaged through them, killing as they came, and the mercenaries in that courtyard were in no better state to meet them than the ones they’d trapped between the stables and the outer wall. The only difference was that these mercenaries had room to run, and they did. The shock of that sudden, unexpected attack broke them, and the survivors fled madly towards the gate, flinging up the bar, spilling through it with Dathgar and Gayrhalan thundering in pursuit.

Less than thirty of them made it.