The Sterkarm Handshake (8 page)

“Why?” Per said.

Gobby gritted his teeth. “Let that be last time tha says ‘why?' to me. When I tell thee summat, do it!”

Sweet Milk had gone into the dark. Per followed his uncle back to the ride, jittery with anger. He should be with his own people, not trailing along behind Gobby, and he suspected that his uncle meant to order him to stay on the hillside, taking no part in the fight, like a boy making his first ride.

For a heart's beat the idea appealed. It would be no fault of his and, up on the height, no sword could slice off half his face or axe chop through his arm and break its bone. But that feeling passed with the heartbeat. If others fought, he had to fight. He wanted to get a swipe at the Grannams for the farm they'd burned. And the story taken back to the tower had to be that the May had fought, and fought well.

Gobby swung up onto his horse. Instead of going to Fowl, Per went to stand at his knee, looking up at him. “Father's-brother?”

Gobby looked down. “What now?”

“I'm sad for what I said, Father's-brother.” Even though he'd been right. But Gobby deserved an apology for having admitted that Per had been right.

“So tha shouldst be,” Gobby said. “Mount up.”

“Father's-brother?”

“What?”

“Will you be so kind, may I go with Sweet Milk?”

Gobby leaned down from his saddle, making the leather creak. “Nay. I'm no thy father. Tha don't get all thou asks from me. Now mount up!”

Per laid hold of his uncle's knee, looking up at him. “You'll let me fight! Be so kind!”

Gobby knocked his hand away. “Thine 'oss!” His exasperation betrayed that, much as he would like to thwart Per, he would not.

Per ran to Fowl and mounted, as scared of the coming fight as he was relieved that he was to be part of it. His lance was still in its sling, under his right thigh once he was seated, and he shifted it so its butt rested on the toe of his right boot. As he settled into the saddle, the horseman higher up the trail, dimly seen against the sky, lifted his lance and rode away. Gobby kicked his horse on, leading his band along the narrow sheep path and down into the valley.

The grass was short and slick under the horses' hooves, and the slope quickly became steeper. Per was among the first to sling his lance again and drop down from his horse's back. He clung to Fowl's neck and mane and let his feet slither as the horse picked the way down. Fowl brought them both safely to the valley floor.

Even down there, the ground was broken and rough. Gobby's men were assembling in the shelter of a hill spur. Per jumped up onto Fowl's back again and stroked and patted his neck, leaning forward to whisper reassurances and kiss the rough, dusty coat. He took long, deep breaths to steady the beating of his own heart. In the dark were the blurred masses of boulders fallen from the hillside. The valley floor was thick with them. Not a good place for a charge. The fighting was going to be close.

The constant braying of the reived sheep was louder as the first of them rounded the hill spur. Fowl stamped and shifted, lifting Per up and down like a boat on swelling water. Per, hauling at breath, wiped his left palm on the top of his leather boot. He drew his sword half from its scabbard, making sure it drew easily, before taking a fresh grip on his lance and tilting it into position.

Through the dark he glimpsed the bobbing shapes of the sheep and, behind them, the first dark mass of a horse and rider.

“
Sterk
arm!” The yell echoed from the hills. A horse in front of Per sprang forward, and Per felt Fowl's strength gather and rise under him as Fowl, without waiting for Per's order, followed. Per leaned forward and swung down his lance to the ready.

At the noise and onward rush of the Sterkarms, the sheep broke and bounded wildly every way, bleating ever more frantically. The Grannams yelled and swung their horses around, or swung their lances down. There was trampling and horses' squeals, cries of warning and surprise, smacks and crashes of blows.

Per, seeing a broad Grannam back turned to him, drove his lance head squarely at its center. The jar knocked him back in his saddle, knocked breath from him, and sent Fowl to his haunches. Per's feet were braced against the stirrups, the lance shaft and the iron plates of his jakke bruising his arm and side.

The lance head clanged against the metal plates in the Grannam's jakke, shoving him forward onto his horse's neck, but didn't unseat him. Reeling, he struggled to get upright in his saddle again, trying, at the same time, to turn his horse, to use his own lance against Per.

Per drew back his lance and took aim, driving the point down at the man's hip, where the jakke ended, more with the intent of toppling him from his horse than injuring him. The lance head entered the man's thigh—Per knew it by the resistance and then the yielding of the flesh as the point entered, and by the wild yell torn from the man. Per kicked at Fowl: “On!” Arms waving, the Grannam fell from his saddle.

Per twisted his lance as the man's weight dragged it through his gloved hand, and it came free. His own hair moved under his helmet in fear of the unseen blow he felt coming at him from behind, but he reversed his lance and whacked the Grannam's horse on the rump with the butt end. The horse bounded away, the wounded Grannam yelling and dangling from the saddle.

Per wrenched Fowl around, pressing himself low against the horse's neck, but no one was threatening him. As he rose in the saddle again, he gasped for breath and sweat ran down his face from under his helmet. The darkness of the narrow valley was an uproar of bleating and shouting, a stink of sheep and blood, a thumping and panting, a din of iron, all echoing dismally between the hills.

The fight was already ending, the din dying away, the press of horses slackening. A brightening of the moon showed Grannams surrounded, threatened by lances. They were throwing down their weapons and calling out their ransom prices, hoping to save their lives. Per threw back his head and filled his lungs. He'd come through unscathed. A few bruises, nothing more.

Reining in Fowl, he rose in his stirrups, peering about for any of his own tower men. And then he thought of how the story would be told back at the tower and realized that he hadn't done enough. One man toppled from his saddle wasn't much to set against the burning farm—or the dressing-down Gobby had given him. Would Andrea be impressed with one man downed? Kicking Fowl, he guided him around the knot of horsemen and prisoners, hoping for some unfinished skirmish.

His eye was caught by movement farther down the valley. Horsemen, flitting through the shifting moonlight, going recklessly fast over the rough ground, two of them. Grannams for sure—escaping! He raised his bloody lance, yelled, “Sterkarm!” and kicked Fowl after them.

Most Sterkarms were busy with the prisoners. If they heard the call, they left it to others to answer. It was Sweet Milk, riding down from his end of the valley, where his share of the skirmish was finished, who saw the chase of riders. Rising in his stirrups, he recognized the pursuing rider by his movements, by the lance in his left hand.

Sweet Milk cursed, broke off, yelled, “Tower!” Looking around, and seeing few taking any interest, he changed the shout to “May!” A couple of horses were kicked toward him. He pointed down the valley with his lance, kicking on his horse. After him came Sim, Davy, Ecky and Hob.

As his body was jarred by the hard ride, Sweet Milk tried to watch the rough and rock-strewn ground ahead of his horse, and watch the chase too. Somewhere at the back of his mind was a grudge that he had to stir himself to this when he'd thought the worst of it was over.

The Grannams were still ahead, but Per was catching them. Both would turn on him. Sweet Milk felt a desperation, a sense of reaching to catch something he knew was going to fall through his fingers and smash. Filling his lungs, he yelled, “Per!” He wasn't heard.

The leading Grannam set his horse at the steep hillside; if there was a track there, Sweet Milk couldn't see it. The second tried to follow, but his horse balked, slipped back, fell and rolled.

Sweet Milk saw Per set Fowl at the slope, intent on chasing the escaping Grannam whose horse was, with difficulty, scrambling toward the hilltop. One Grannam wasn't worth the risk. Sweet Milk filled his lungs to call Per back again, but before he had the breath, he glimpsed a man on foot running nimbly up the slope toward Per: the Grannam from the fallen horse, unhurt but with sword upraised.

A horse passed Sweet Milk, racing. Ecky, with lance leveled. Sweet Milk yelled,
“Per!”

Per heard only the rattle of stones dislodged by the Grannam above him, saw only the frightened backward glances of the man, which urged him on. The unhorsed man he'd forgotten. He kicked Fowl again, who disliked being alone, without other familiar horses around him, and was unwilling to climb the difficult slope. He kept turning his head back to the valley floor, and Per pulled his head around, kicked him, urged him on, whacked his rump with the butt of his lance, set on taking his own prisoner, a man Gobby would have let escape.

He didn't hear Sweet Milk yelling, and only saw the swoop of the sword blow from the corner of his eye when it was too late to avoid it. Down the blade came, hard as a cudgel blow but with a cutting edge—and it felt like a cudgel blow, hot and bruising, when it hit his thigh above the top of his boot. He yelled out in sheer surprise, though a sharper cry was pulled from him when the sword blade was dragged free of his flesh.

Sweet Milk heard the cries, saw the sword dragged back and raised for another blow. Then Ecky's lance skewered the Grannam low in the back, below his jakke's edge, and took him to the ground. Shouting approval, coming up hard and turning his horse aside from the slope only at the last moment, Sweet Milk drove his own lance home, the blow jarring through him.

The dizziness of fright and pain cleared from Per's head, and he realized that he was still alive and still in the saddle, and so couldn't be badly hurt, despite the blood. The slightest cuts bled most anyway. Looking up, he saw the Grannam above him, struggling on the slope. He could still be captured. Per's own heart was racing, pounding, urging him on. He whacked Fowl's rump and kicked him. The kick hurt his leg, but not much. “On!”

Sweet Milk left his lance in the Grannam and jumped from his horse to run up the slope toward Per, scrambling with his hands where it was steep. He knew from his own experience that deep wounds often felt like nothing more than a hard blow, especially if taken in hot blood. The lad might hardly know he'd been hurt yet. Reaching the narrow path where Fowl was shaking his head and refusing to move, Sweet Milk caught at the bridle.

Fowl had seen Sweet Milk coming, and smelled him, and knew him. Of the two, Per was the more startled by Sweet Milk's sudden springing up, and raised his lance.

“Sterkarm! Sweet Milk!”

The lance was lowered. “Out my way!” Per kicked Fowl again, ignoring the pain in his leg. Fowl jumped on the path, rattling his bit. Sweet Milk, buffeted by Fowl's head, staggered and almost fell down the slope. He clambered onto the path above the horse, shouting, “Thou'rt hurt!”

Per's own yells deafened him to Sweet Milk. He knew only that Sweet Milk was in his way. He swung his lance around and threatened Sweet Milk with the butt end.

From up the valley came an echoing shout of “Sterkarm!” as Gobby called them back. Hearing it, Per gave Fowl another kick. It was Ecky, scrambling up the slope, who got Per's attention by slapping at his wounded leg and then holding up his hand, black with blood. Per looked down and saw the leg of his breeches, wet and black, and the moonlight catching the lips of the wide wound. He looked up and saw the Grannam disappearing over the slope above, and tried yet again to urge Fowl on, but now he knew the pain in his leg was from something more than a slight cut. Sweet Milk grasped Fowl's bridle and firmly turned the horse off the path and down the slope. Fowl nimbly and gratefully found his own way down.

Per wiped tears from his eyes, pushing up his helmet and smearing blood across his face. The tears weren't of pain—he felt little—but of anger. He'd been bested, cut, and he'd lost his prisoner. Sweet Milk's fault! Sweet Milk and Ecky, getting in his way … He knew, though anger wouldn't yet allow him to admit it, that his own carelessness had been the fault. He'd assumed the unhorsed man was no further danger and hadn't been enough on guard. The other riders came circling closer and their anxious faces, peering at him, made him wish them all a hundred miles away and himself alone. But he was glad they were there.

Gobby yelled again. Sweet Milk, down at Fowl's side, said, “Shut tha gob, Gobby.”

Per surprised himself by laughing, and Sweet Milk looked up, grinning. “Let's look at this.” He shoved Fowl around until Per's wounded leg was in the best of the moonlight. Even so, it was hard to see—and Fowl kept turning his head, nudging at Per's foot and Sweet Milk's arms. Fowl knew something was wrong. Ecky came and held the horse's head, while Sim took Per's lance.

Sweet Milk squinted and felt around the wound, making Per gasp and shift in the saddle. “God's teeth! It no hurt until—”

“It'll hurt plenty,” Sweet Milk said. Even in the poor light he could tell it was the worst he'd feared when he'd seen the blow go home. Not a sidelong slash that would have lifted a flap of flesh, but a straight-on, downward cut that, like as not, had gone to the bone. “It be deep,” he said, while thinking: There'll be no stitching that. It'll fester. Jesus, it'll cripple him. The bleeding was slow—that was something to be thankful for. Black blood dripped to the ground and down Fowl's flank. Sweet Milk thought of all the miles they had to go before reaching home. The leg would be working all the way.

Sweet Milk unslung his bedroll from his back and crouched beside Fowl to open it. Inside he had some old rags, for bandages.