The Bloodsworn (33 page)

“You address me,” Erik said, “and me alone.”

Sadik snorted softly. “Very well. What terms do you offer?”

“Get down from your horse and let us discuss it.” He met the Warlord's gaze unflinchingly, and though he looked small and vulnerable standing before the massive destrier, there was a dignity to his bearing that filled Alix with pride, as even as she felt her heart must burst with grief.

Sadik's mouth curled in amusement, but he complied, stepping down from his warhorse. Still he towered over Erik. “Is that better, Your Majesty? Now, what terms?”

“My head. It's yours if you want it.”

“Erik!”
Alix seized his elbow. “What are you doing?”

“Protecting the people I love.” Gently, he pried her fingers free. “Don't make me have you restrained, Captain.”

Sadik regarded the king with narrowed eyes. He was no beast, however beastly his actions; Alix saw a cold intelligence in his gaze that terrified her.

“You know as well as I do,” Erik said, “that you will need every man at your disposal to hold the territory you've gained. Accept my terms, and you need not spend even one more soldier today. The Kingswords will stand down. I will give you my life. You will have your total victory.”

“And in return?”

“My family goes free. My brother, my sister-in-law. Her brother, if he yet lives. There will be none of your royal purges. The banner lords retain their holdings, provided they swear fealty to you.”

“Your Majesty.” Sirin Grey appeared at his side. “The Greys will forsake their lands if needs be. The price is too high.”

“Far too high,” agreed Raibert Green. “We are together in this, if Alden has any meaning at all.”

Erik ignored them both, his gaze locked with Sadik's. “Do you accept?”

Alix took his arm again. Let him have her restrained if he dared. “Please, Erik, don't do this. Liam wouldn't want this. I don't want this.” Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she would die before she let them fall. She wouldn't give the Warlord the satisfaction.

Erik was breathing hard, but he didn't even glance at her. “Well?”

Sadik bowed his head as if in thought. Then, in a single smooth motion, he yanked a spear from a corpse at his feet and hurled it into the breast of the Kingsword flag-bearer. “There is my answer, Erik White,” he said as the young knight sank to his knees, grasping pitifully at the weapon in his chest.

“Make way!” cried a voice, and Vel jostled through the crowd.
Everyone's gathering round now
, Alix thought dully,
to witness the end
. The priestess's robe was spattered with blood, presumably from treating the wounded. She dropped to her knees beside the flag-bearer, but it was hopeless; even Alix could see that.

Erik's face flooded with rage. “This is a game to you, isn't it? You kill for sport!”

Sadik shrugged. “Your offer does not interest me. You are defeated, Your Majesty. It makes no difference to me if I lose a few more men convincing you of that fact. As for your head, it is not your skull that belongs on my mantelpiece.”

“No,” said a familiar voice, “it's mine.”

Rig shoved his way through the ring of soldiers. He looked like he'd been in a bare-knuckled brawl with a grizzly, scratched and bloodied from helm to boots, but he moved with the same powerful stride as always. Somehow, he'd survived the van.

“General Black,” Sadik said, and there was such a wistful tone in his voice that it made Alix shiver with dread. “I am pleased to see you whole. It vexed me to think you might have fallen to some anonymous spear.”

“I'm tough to kill,” Rig said. “Would you like to try your luck?”

Sadik laughed. “Are you challenging me to single combat?”

“Looks like it.”

Alix made a small, strangled sound. Everyone had heard the tales. The Warlord had earned his place by defeating his rivals in single combat.

“Now that
is
a tempting offer,” Sadik said. “It has been a very long time since anyone dared challenge me.”

“Afraid you're rusty?”

The Warlord's expression darkened. “Mind your tongue, or I'll cut it out.”

“You're welcome to try,” Rig said, unsheathing the greatsword strapped to his back.

Sadik's gauntlets twitched at his sides. His eyes bored into Rig hungrily.
He's going to do it
, Alix thought.
He's going to fight my brother.
The idea brought hope and grief in equal measure.

Then he snorted and said, “You think to goad me as if I were some brash young fool? I have nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

Rig's lip curled. “Coward.”

“What's it to be, then?” Erik demanded. “Do you truly wish to fight to the last man?”

Sadik started to reply, but was cut off by a commotion behind him. His men were stirring, heads turning, and then a voice cried in Oridian, “We're under attack! They're coming at us from behind!”

Rig frowned. Alix and Erik exchanged a look. Neither Liam nor Rona could have outflanked the entire Oridian army.
Who . . . ?

Sadik paused for half a heartbeat. Then, without warning, he flicked a blade into his hand and lunged. Alix threw herself in front of Erik just in time to take the Warlord's dagger in her gut. It punched through her armour as though it weren't even there, a pain unlike anything she had ever known. The force of the blow doubled her over, sent her staggering back into Erik.

There was a moment of silence, a single heartbeat that sent a wash of dark blood over Alix's fingers. Then Rig threw himself at the Warlord with an inhuman roar; blades met in a brutal, ringing blow.

Alix's vision swam. She heard Erik's voice in her ear, and Vel's, and she thought she even saw Liam diving toward her, face twisted in anguish.

The battle flared to life. Bodies teemed in every direction. Someone had taken off her cuirass. Vel was leaning on her with both hands, bloodied to the elbows, shouting something Alix couldn't make out.

“Who?” Alix whispered.

“Stand back!” the priestess cried over her shoulder. “I need room!” Then, to Alix: “Hush. Don't try to talk.”

“The attack . . . who?” She had to know before she fell into darkness. She
had
to.

Then she heard a sound from her childhood, and she knew: a ram's horn just like the one she'd played with as a girl in Blackhold. Her father had claimed that warhorn in battle long ago, after a skirmish hard-fought against a formidable foe.

The mountain tribes.
The men who had captured Erik and Alix in the mountains, who'd brought the King of Alden before their council to plead for his life, and for his kingdom. The tribesmen had turned him away, his pleas falling on deaf ears—or so everyone had thought. But the horns told a different tale,
their thick, rasping notes heralding the arrival of an army that had not ridden as one in centuries.

“They came,” Alix murmured. “Erik, they came . . .” She clung to that thought as she tumbled down and down into blackness.

It was not over yet. The Harrami had come.

F
or a moment Erik stood frozen, a single thought circling his mind like a vulture, over and over:
I've killed her. I've killed her.

Then another voice spoke. Tom's voice.
Focus
, it said.
The battle is not over. You must focus.

Erik shook his head to clear it. He stood within a protective ring of his guardsmen, but it was steadily collapsing. All around him, battle raged, the brief lull already a distant memory. He concentrated on the nearest point of clarity in the chaos: Rig and the Warlord. The two of them circled each other like pit dogs, twisting and lunging, their bloodblades ringing off one another in reckless fury. The rest of the men gave them a wide berth. More than a few had stopped to watch, Oridian standing idle beside Kingsword to gawk at the spectacle. Even the priestess, occupied as she was tending to Alix, could not help glancing over every few moments.

Erik started toward the Warlord. He had no qualms about taking him in the back, not after what he had done. But then a familiar voice called his name, and he turned to find Liam fending off two attackers, trying to keep them away from Alix and the priestess. Erik dove in to help, driving one of them
back even as he pivoted to face a third. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Raibert Green and Sirin Grey fighting for their lives, surrounded by an ever-tightening ring of crimson. They would be no help. The royal guardsmen were all but spent, every Kingsword locked in combat. Slowly but surely, they were drowning in a sea of Oridians.

The Harrami tribesmen had come, but whatever brief jubilation Erik had felt was long gone. At this rate, he would be dead long before the battle was decided, and Alix and Liam with him.

But not yet.

He closed with his brother's flank. Together they would be a wall shielding Alix. And if they fell, at least they would fall together.

“I've stanched the bleeding,” the priestess called from behind them, “but I need to get her out of here or we'll lose her.”

She will be lost anyway
, Erik thought dully.
We are all lost.
He fought on, regardless.

The Oridian tide swelled. Rig and Sadik were the only faces Erik recognised now. Green had vanished, and Sirin too, swallowed in the melee. Everywhere he looked, all he saw was the enemy . . .

There.
A single Kingsword cavalryman, hacking away from atop his destrier. But no, there was another, and another . . . As Erik watched, they seemed to multiply before his eyes, fresh as the dawn, mowing down the enemy foot soldiers with sword and mace and heavy-shod hooves. A moment more of confusion, and then Erik understood: Rona Brown crashed across his view, sword swinging in a bloodstained arc. The reserves had arrived.

Choose your moment well
, Erik had told her. And so she had, waiting until every lance and spear was spent before driving her cavalry straight at the enemy's heart. The infantry were weak as lambs, and Rona had brought the slaughter to them.

Strength flooded anew to Erik's limbs. An Oridian rushed at him, half fleeing, half attacking. Planting his feet, Erik braced for his enemy.

*   *   *

Rig fought in a blind fury. He knew nothing else. Fear, pain, the bitter sense of failure—all of it evaporated in the inferno
of his rage. Nothing but grief could withstand it, and that grief was a great gaping maw at the core of his being. He filled it with still more rage, until it felt as if his very bone marrow were molten steel.

Sadik met his blows with skill and strength, but Rig was undaunted. Every grunt from his enemy, every inch of ground conceded was a tiny victory, a wisp of oxygen drawn into the furnace of Rig's wrath. He swung again and again, aiming for neck, knees, ribs, his bloodblade seeming weightless as the enchantment bound weapon to man. He kept light on his feet, forcing his enemy to pivot like a bull keeping a wolf at bay with its horns. The Warlord was bigger than he, and older, and his vainglorious plate armour was much heavier. Rig processed all of this as he did the clamour around him, the smell of blood and sweat: He absorbed it without thinking. None of it cluttered his focus, his unwavering concentration on the bloodred demon in his sights.

Sadik's blade cleaved the air, seeking to cave in the side of Rig's skull. Rig ducked under the blow and lashed out with an elbow, taking the Warlord in the chin, but the man didn't even stagger; he hooked Rig with his own elbow and threw him to the ground. Whirling, Sadik took his blade half-hand and drove it like a spear at Rig's breast. It bit deep into the dirt as Rig twitched aside, his boot lashing out at the Warlord's knee to send him stumbling. Rig rolled to his feet and cocked his sword, point levelled at Sadik's throat.

Again he dove in, and again Sadik parried. Over and over, long past the point where Rig should have been too tired to lift his blade. Vaguely, as from a great distance, he could sense things changing around him; a breath of hope stirring, like the gentle ruffling of wind in limp sails. He drew it in, fed it to the furnace. He brought a concussive blow down against Sadik's blade, forcing the Warlord to spin out of the way. Rig had just enough human thought left to recognise the grim set of the other man's jaw. The smug look was gone. Rig had beaten it off his face. He fed that to the furnace too.

Gradually, he became aware that the noise around him was growing. Something had happened. Rig registered it, fought through it. Pivoting, he came at Sadik again. The Warlord shuffled back, sending onlookers scattering. All but one. A familiar
figure strode up behind him, raised his sword, and plunged it at the Warlord's shoulder blades. Sadik's armour turned the blow aside, but he twisted instinctively to face the threat, and that was his undoing. Rig rammed the point of his greatsword at the joint between faulds and cuirass, burying it to the hilt.

Sadik pitched to his knees with a howl of rage and pain. Raising his head, he looked up at the man who had tried to stab him. Erik gazed back at him with the impassive expression of one who has had his insides scraped out. Rig knew that face. He wore it now.

“You would sneak up on me like a thief, Erik White?” Sadik roared. “Have you no honour?”

“Not for you,” Erik said, and Rig swept the Warlord's head from his shoulders.

*   *   *

Liam knew that if he stopped fighting for even a moment, he would come undone. He watched Erik walk away from him to stab the Warlord in the back. He saw Rig take the monster's head. But Liam didn't pause, seeking out the next foe and the next, killing anything in crimson. The reserves had punched a gaping hole through the enemy's side, relieving the pressure, but the battle was far from over. Liam ducked under the blow of one enemy to come up under another, ramming his sword into the man's chest in a quick in-and-out, whirling in the same motion to drive the pommel of his sword into the face of the man who'd taken a swing at him. He brought his knee up into his enemy's gut, doubling him over and exposing his neck. Liam sliced him open and moved on. Seeing him come for them, a pair of Oridians rushed him together; Liam drew his dagger with his off hand and jammed it under the jaw of one while he turned aside the lunge of another. He was bleeding, he wasn't sure from where, but he didn't care. He finished off his foe and scanned the field for another. He may as well have been a thrall for all the thought he gave to it, too numb even to be appalled by the efficiency of his killing.

So intent was he on bloodshed that it took him a moment to realise someone was calling his name. Rona Brown's horse danced in front of him, blocking his path. “The Harrami have scattered the rearguard! The enemy is vulnerable!”

The words skipped over his consciousness like a smooth stone across water, making only the briefest of ripples. “I have to stay with Allie,” he said, turning away.

His gaze fell on Erik. Surrounded by a ring of knights once more, the king was pointing, giving orders Liam couldn't hear. Erik strode purposefully over to Raibert Green, passing Alix as he did so, only a fleeting glance at her prone form betraying his thoughts. A fleeting glance, but packed with so much emotion that it struck Liam like a blow across the face, snapping him out of the red haze.
He feels this as much as you do. But he can't afford to come apart, because he's king.

He's king, and you're the prince. So get a sodding grip and do your job.

Turning back to Rona, he said, “I need a horse.”

Ide had the Pack skirmishing along the edges of the enemy centre, but the moment she spotted Liam riding toward her, she rounded them up and fell in behind him. Rona was right, Liam saw as they veered out wide of the lines—the Oridian rearguard was a mess. The Harrami had them pinned in on three sides, peppering them with arrows in a display of horsemanship like none Liam had ever seen. Their thick, shaggy horses wheeled as if of their own accord, guided by the merest pressure of the riders' knees, leaving the tribesmen to fire their weapons over and over at short range. They were dropping enemy soldiers, but mostly they were causing panic. The Oridians swarmed about like ants. Liam didn't blame them—the Harrami were bloody
terrifying
. Wild and foreign, relentless, dive-bombing over and over like birds of prey. And they were untouchable; the few Oridians foolish enough to get close ended up with a curved blade across their throats as reward.

The Oridian rearguard was breaking apart, many in full flight. They were useless. The van had largely been spent devouring the Kingswords. But the enemy centre was still a threat. Only the first half or so had engaged; the rest remained in reserve, seemingly torn between attacking the Kingsword centre or turning back in relief of the rear. Liam made the choice for them, bringing the Pack in a thundering charge to cut through the centre ranks, splitting them in two. He sent one battle pushing east, the other west, deepening the wedge between the two halves of the enemy. The Harrami read the
manoeuvre almost immediately, swooping in behind the Pack and herding the stray lines into the rearguard before closing in around them. Surrounded, the swollen Oridian rearguard had two choices: surrender or die.

That left half the centre and what remained of the shattered van to face the entire Kingsword army, and they would have to do it without the Warlord. Bereft of their commander, they did the only sensible thing: They fled.

“You did it!” Ide cried, drawing up alongside Liam. “It's done! By the gods, it's done!”

It was true, Liam saw. The rearguard had surrendered to the Harrami. Only a few pockets of fighting remained, concentrated at the Kingsword centre. They wouldn't last long, not with Rona commanding a full battalion of fresh cavalry.

A current of joy arced through Liam, brief as lightning. It left behind the sulphurous taste of despair. The battle might be won, but his wife still lay dying in a blood-soaked field.

He looked over at Ide, and she read it in his face. “Alix . . . she all right?”

“No,” Liam tried to say, but the word didn't really come out.

“Is she—”

He gave a short shake of his head. “But it's bad.”

“She's strong. Come on, you'll see.” Without waiting for a reply, Ide kicked her horse.

Strong
, Liam told himself as he followed Ide back to the place where Allie lay.
Strongest woman I've ever known.
Stronger than he was, that was certain. But being strong was no bulwark against death. Nor could it protect you from grief. Liam could feel it dragging him down with cold claws, whispering in his ear with a poison tongue.

A cool wind raced up from the south, buffeting him as he rode. Bowing his head against it, Liam prayed.