Morning's Journey (56 page)

What if…what if they were too late?

Gawain spat out the fear on a rising tide of bile and continued stumping through the endless night.

BEFORE ÆLFERD could press his advantage, javelin-casting horsemen came screaming down from the pine-shrouded ridge crest, followed by waves of foot soldiers.

He had no time to wonder how the Brædeas had been alerted. Shouting over the tumult, he commanded his men to fall back onto the valley floor, where the improved footing allowed the enemy horsemen to be more easily cut down. About the archers he could nothing except hope they ran out of arrows before he ran out of men.

He eyed a warrior astride a white stallion, the leader of the charge and his only chance to salvage success from this disaster. He readied his seax for the killing blow.

Chapter 28

S
TONN’S MOMENTUM CARRIED Angusel deep into enemy ranks. The cavalry had been ordered to break off and circle to the Shasunaich left flank upon reaching the valley, to let the foot troops engage the front ranks. Angusel was in danger of being overwhelmed.

If the Sasunaich didn’t kill him for failing to follow orders, Gyan would.

He wheeled Stonn around to fight his way out. Men rushed at him, screaming obscenities and brandishing war-knives, swords, spears, and torches. He cared naught. His sword reaped a bloody harvest, fires marking his trail as dropped torches ignited leaves and clothing. Sasunaich ran from him, and he quested for other targets. To his battle-frenzied delight, he discovered a plentiful supply.

During a lull, he searched for Gyan and the rest of the cavalry. Several dozen paces away, she bestrode Macmuir, towering over the writhing Sasunach sea, felling a foe with each stroke. Angusel’s gut clenched. The charge had carried her too far too!

Heedless of how she might react, he urged Stonn toward her.

JUST WHEN Gawain thought the anticipation would drive him mad, a dull ringing arose, faint but clear. His body reflexively obeyed the command to double the pace, and the noise intensified into a din of heroic proportions.

He labored with the rest of his rank to the top of the ridge and its unobstructed view. His stomach lurched.

Scores of bodies littered the ground. Yet the enemy kept pressing forward, trampling the fallen to batter the Brytoni line, which was buckling in too many places. He spotted Gyan near the center of the conflict. Bitter dismay threatened to choke him as he watched Saxons close in. Orders be damned, he had to reach her side!

Logic ceased as he rushed into the fray.

AS THE Brædan leader plunged toward Ælferd, he realized he faced a woman screeching some weird battle cry as she hacked down Saxon after Saxon. Camilla’s face flashed to mind, but he pushed the beloved vision aside. The woman bearing down upon him, face contorted with fury, bore no resemblance to the princess. And this warrior had already killed or maimed a score of his men.

Ælferd dodged from her path and leaped to thrust behind her shield as she flashed by. With a dull clank, his seax deflected off a wide metal belt, but the blow’s force knocked her from the saddle. Her stallion bolted. Swinging his seax in a deadly arc as she tried to roll to her feet, Ælferd closed in for the kill.

ANGUSEL SAW Gyan disappear into a knot of Sasunaich and spurred his stallion with redoubled urgency. She could rebuke his disobedience later, and he’d gladly bear any punishment, if she survived.

If.
The word powered his sword arm with fatal precision, fatigue and pain imprisoned in a remote corner of his mind.

Crossing the distance seemed to take a gods-cursed eternity.

He found her grappling with a richly armored Sasun, who had her pinned. Her helmet was gone. Gritting her teeth, she struggled to hold her attacker’s war-knife from her throat. Her neck oozed blood where the Sasun had grazed it.

Angusel shed his shock and fear, kicked Stonn closer, scrambled to a crouch in the saddle, and jumped.

GAWAIN LOST his spear in the charge, buried in a Saxon belly. His enemy, shrieking, gripped the shaft, and it snapped when Gawain tried to yank it free. Another Saxon lost an eye to the broken spear’s iron-capped butt. Gawain flung the shaft aside and drew his sword. Catching the torchlight, the blade seemed to writhe with an inner fire. For an instant, he stared agape at its uncanny beauty.

The blond onslaught began anew. Three screaming Saxons tried to overwhelm him by a concerted attack.

He hewed through them in time to see a Dhoo-Glass horseman leap from his mount to knock a Saxon off a companion.

Gyan! And that ill-begotten Angusel, both just moments from slaughter.

Not if he, Gawain map Loth, had any say!

The former heir of Clan Lothian called members of his unit to his side and grimly applied himself to his work.

ANGUSEL HIT the Sasun with bone-rattling force, and they rolled away from Gyan. Before the stunned warrior could recover, he tore off the man’s helmet, grabbed two fistfuls of flaxen hair, and slammed his head repeatedly into the ground. The Sasun went limp.

As he reached for his sword, fingers dug into his shoulder and dragged him back. Angrily, he whipped his head around to find emerald eyes that blazed like a monster from his worst Otherworldly nightmares. Sweat cut through the blood and grime on her fury-contorted face. Her blood-streaked sword was leveled at Angusel.

Choking back despair, he deferred, head bowed, to the Hag of Death incarnate.

AS TIME seemed to freeze, Gyan glared at Angusel. Rather, at the scar on his neck she couldn’t see but knew all too well, the scar that signified his defunct Oath of Fealty. The scar that mocked her, reminding her of the son she never would see again because of the ineptitude of the scar’s bearer. The scar she ached to obliterate.

Love or hatred: choose.

At her feet, the Sasunach commander moaned. Angusel stood beside him, bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, chest heaving, sword lowered, head bowed. The battle eddied around them as a knot of Manx Cohort warriors prevented Sasunaich from rescuing their fallen leader. Gawain led them, she realized dimly, which meant that Per’s troops had arrived, freeing her to concentrate on her immediate threat.

She gazed at Angusel’s scar.

Me or the Adversary. Choose.

Her neck burned as if branded with a fealty-mark. She removed her glove to touch the spot, not surprised to find it hot and sticky. A hair’s breadth deeper and the wound might have been her last. Should have been her last! Rage welled at the thought that Angusel had thwarted her escape into eternity.