The Sword of the Lady (70 page)

″Wait. Wait,″ Rudi said, even as another long guttural shout rang out, this time from the corsairs:

″Wait . . . not quite yet . . .″

The green flags waved and the rover crews ran forward towards the thump and clatter and screams of combat beyond the broken wall.

″God is Great,″
the priest murmured. ″So He is indeed. But men, alas . . . Father, forgive us for what we are about to do, and forgive us that we can see no better way. Lord who blessed the centurion, bless us also this day. But Thy will alone be done, for Thy judgments are just and righteous altogether.″

″Holy Mary, Lady pierced with sorrows, Queen of Heaven, intercede for us, now and at the hour of our deaths,″ Mathilda added soberly; she held up her sword for an instant by the blade, kissed the cross the hilt and guard made, then tossed it up and caught it ready. ″For us and for our foes.″

″Amen,″ the Christians said.

Tension grew, with a taste like hot copper and salt at the back of his throat. For a moment Rudi thought the wings beating above were in his mind. Then he realized they were two real ravens, launching themselves from a tall spruce. They soared upward, circling above the town. He felt a chill worse than the sweat congealing on his flanks under the armor and padding. Then a great calm, and under it a lifting current of hot anger.

″Yes,″ he said. ″It′s time, Victory-Father.″ Louder: ″For Montival! Follow me!″

″Artos and Montival!″
his companions called.

The wedge of them trotted out into the open ground, snow floating up around them like dust to the pounding of booted feet.

 

 

 

″No!″ Abdou al-Naari snarled, cuffing a man over the head with a gloved fist. ″I′ll castrate the first man who plunders before the battle ends!″

The crewman staggered, dropped the golden necklace he′d been pulling off a body and picked up his shield again. An arrow struck quivering in it a moment later with a hard dry
thunk
and the man′s eyes rolled in shock.

Abdou coughed; the whole town wasn′t burning, but there was enough smoke to lie thick. And it was a maze of lanes and log houses with steel shutters over their doors and lower windows; from the upper ones came arrows and spears, rocks and jars of burning lamp oil. Bodies of pagans and corsairs and their allies littered the trampled mud and dirty snow of the street, in a mess of blood and broken weapons and men who shrieked or whimpered or tried to crawl aside and bandage themselves.

Spears and axes waited behind a rough barricade of carts and furniture a little farther down; he could see the tiered roofs and gilt and painted dragonheads of the pagan temple beyond. If they took that, only the boat sheds and docks remained.

″Shields!″ he called.

The
Bou el-Mogdad
′s crew rallied, raising a wall of wood and leather ahead and overhead as well. Under that tent he looked around for his bosun, shouting the man′s name:

The man looked up, and Abdou pointed to a well-placed house larger than the others with his sword.

″That one. Clear it and get us some covering fire while we storm the barricade.″

The man nodded, grabbed a dozen hands who were all archers. They slung their bows, lifted a thick timber and began beating in a door; it gave off a thudding
bang
like a huge drum as they rammed their way through. Then it fell inward, and they drew their blades and charged in; screams came out then, but only a few clashes of steel on steel.

″The rest of you, with me.
God is great!
″

They charged the barricade with their tall shields locked together against missiles. Those rattled and thunked and banged off the protection until the moment they had to climb the obstacle; here and there a man fell, silent or screaming or cursing, but the others closed ranks and kept up the rush. Steel probed for his life as the wild corsair charge struck. He knocked the spearhead aside, slicing up it at the wielder′s fingers; a snarling face loomed out of the corner of his eye and a huge two-handed ax swung towards his head. Another man′s shield put itself in the way; Abdou could hear it crack beneath the force of the blow.

He slashed at the pagan′s face and he fell backward in a spray of blood as the ugly yielding feel of thin bones breaking flowed up wrist and arm. Grown men and boys and elders and even shrieking women were in the crowd facing the corsairs in a heaving, stabbing, shoving mass. Then they turned and pulled back as a shower of black cane arrows came slashing down from the house, driven by powerful whalebone-backed bows.

Abdou braced the point of his scimitar on a broken cart and his weight on the pommel for a moment to sob for breath, waving his free hand to Falilu, who grinned from the second-story window before he loosed another shaft.

Then a choked-off cry of pain drew his notice. Ahmed was crumpled at his feet, trying to get the broken shield off his arm. Abdou helped his son, and though the youngster was silent his teeth brought blood from his own lips.

″Not broken, dislocated,″ the father said. Then, in a sharp bark:
″What′s that?″

The boy′s head jerked aside to see what had brought the cry of alarm. In the same instant his father grabbed the arm, pulled and twisted. The joint went back into its socket with a
click
audible as much by feel as through the noise of combat. Ahmed made a stifled sound, but the rough treatment was over before he could shift his attention back to it.

″And you saved my life.″ Abdou grinned into the pain-sweating face. After a moment the younger man grinned back. ″Now stay close. That arm will be too sore to hold a shield for days.″

They pushed on over the ruins of the barricade, and the houses drew back on either side. The triangular open space before the silver-worked and gilded doors of the idolater′s temple—even then a brief
what a place to sack!
went through his mind—was crowded, but the fight was shaking itself out into lines after the chaotic scramble through the streets. His crew linked up with that of the
Shark
, and Jawara was there, grinning like the predator itself.

″We have them, I think,″ he yelled.

Abdou nodded and let the battle surge past him; his head went back and forth. The pagans were still fighting, but they were outnumbered now . . . and most of the casualties on his side had been the weird allies the Marabout had found, not his own folk. Which was
just
as he′d planned.

A cry came from behind him; in Wolof, and not just the sort of screaming—usually for their mothers—that men in unendurable pain made. He turned, and his eyes went wide in alarm. It was one of the men held left as a rearguard at the broken wall. Two gray-fletched arrows stood in the back of his steel-strapped cuirass of doubled hippo hide, and his left forearm and hand were a dripping mass of ruin through which bone showed pink-white. His right held the broken stub of a sword.

The man fell forward into Abdou′s arms, and the captain turned and laid him down gently on his side. Blood bubbled out across his broad dark face, and his eyes were blind as they hunted about. It was a younger cousin of his, not much older than Ahmed.

″What is it, Dia?″ he asked.

″Too many,″ the man mumbled. ″Couldn′t stop them. They come. Warn the skipper!
Hurts!
″

″You have warned me,″ Abdou said.

He spoke loudly, to cut through the haze of agony and fear. The other did hear, and understand for an instant.

″You die with honor. Go with God, ghazi of the Faith. The gates of Paradise open for you.″

The man forced a smile, shuddered, jerked, died. Abdou rose and met Jawara′s eyes.

″We′re fucked,″ the other man said. ″So much for our allies′
sentries
who were
experienced woodsmen
.″

″They met someone more experienced,″ Abdou said. ″We couldn′t divide our forces and we didn′t know the country. Probably some force from inland.″

Which was any corsair′s nightmare on a longshore raid; you had to strike swiftly and then
go
. He drew a deep breath. A rover captain had to be able to think quickly in an emergency—even a disaster, as this had suddenly become. He went on urgently:

″Your men are closer to that southern gate and it′s probably not held anymore. Chances are any of the pagans there hurried back into the street fighting when we came over the wall. Get going. Cut your way through anything you meet and stop for nothing. It can′t be helped.
Inshallah
, we can break contact and follow you.″

Jawara started to protest, and Abdou grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him backward hard.

″Go! Now! We′ll hold them as long as we can and then retreat. You can cover us from the water with your ship′s catapults.
Go!
″

 

 

 

″Volley! Forward six paces. Volley! Forward six paces! Volley! Forward six paces—
pick your man
. Volley! Volley! Wholly together!
Volley!
Forward six paces!″

Edain had the bowmen well under control. Two dozen longbows bent and spat at the sparse line of corsairs opposing them in the gap of the shattered wall. A third of them fell, and the rest wavered as the heavy-armed band around Rudi came up behind the thin line of archers. He knocked down his visor with a hard
snick-clack
!

″Morrigú!″
he shrieked, as the world shrank to a slit.
″Charge!″

They ran forward in a wedge with him at the point; the archers slung their bows, drew blades or axes or mallets, and followed. A curved sword swung at his head as he leapt up the body-littered slope of the broken wall, agile as a great steel-skinned cat, screaming like a panther in battle heat. He ducked beneath the stroke and stabbed up at the man above him. The point of the western longsword went in behind the chin and punched through the thin bone that shielded the brainpan. Rudi wrenched it free; Matti′s shield knocked aside a spearpoint probing for his face, unseen until the last instant. His own shield blocked a slash and he cut the man′s legs out from under him with a chop that severed a thighbone.

Cries rang out, battle slogans where they weren′t just raw shrieks of rage or of pain:

″Morrigú!
Morrigú!
″

″Jesu-Maria!″

″
Haro
, Portland! Holy Mary for Portland!″

″Face Gervais, face death!″

There was a long moment of slipping, scrambling fighting on the uncertain footing of the broken wall. Rudi felt an arrow hammer into his knight-style shield; six inches of it showed through the inner felt lining just beside his forearm until he broke it off with the hilt of his sword. The Moors′ bows hit hard. The man was behind a balk of timber, fumbling another shaft onto the string when Rudi′s lunge punched the point of the longsword into his throat.

It didn′t sink deeply—the lunge had also slammed Rudi′s shield and chest against the pinewood—but it was enough to send him back, both hands scrabbling at the wound. Rudi vaulted over into the place he′d occupied, landing with a grunt under the weight of his armor and dodging a stroke from a curved slashing sword in the same instant. A big Bjorning named Hrolf followed Rudi, roaring, one of their newcomers from Eriksgarth. His blow met and snapped the sword in a shower of sparks, then crushed the Moor′s shield hand right through the thick leather with a swing of the hammer side of his ax.

″Edain.
That one!
″

Rudi pointed with his sword as the wounded man dodged beneath a return stroke that would have taken his head off, turned and sprinted into the town; you could tell when a man was running
to
something, as opposed to just
away
.

The younger clansman sprang up on the balk of timber behind him. The pirate staggered as two shafts thudded into his leather armor, then ran on and vanished behind the corner of a building. His comrades ducked and backed, wavering on the edge of panic as Rudi stood ready with dripping sword and shield up under his visor′s beak. Arrows showered down on them as more and more of the attackers came over the ridge and put their bows to work. Garbh paced the rubble at Edain′s feet and barred blood-dripping red teeth.

″There they go!″ Mathilda said breathlessly, as she scrabbled over to join him.

The last few pirates broke and ran, down into the smoke-fogged streets. Rudi looked over the town, recalled what the descriptions and maps had said, made a quick decision.

We need to put a lid on the kettle,
he thought.
Otherwise they′ll squeeze out, if they′ve their wits about them. But I wish I had more men to spare.

″Odard!″ he called.

The Portlander noble looked at him, mouth a grim line beneath his visor and sword dripping crimson-dark.

″Take six men and block that road there, the one to the south gate. Hold if anyone comes at you, push on to the square in front of the temple if nobody does.″

″Your Majesty!″

That′s actually starting to sound more natural, and less like a joke
, some corner of Rudi′s brain noted.

Odard dashed off. Rudi led the rest down the ruined wall and into the town—there was a clear strip inside the defenses, and then houses.

″Come out!″ he shouted. ″Kalksthorpe folk, come out and fight!″

There were probably a lot of dwellers still inside, waiting to sell their lives hard when their doors were beaten in. He filled his lungs and shouted again, a great bass sound like a trumpet in the fouled street, overriding the sound of boots and the growing clamor of combat.

The folk of Kalksthorpe came out of their homes to join them as they loped down the street, with sword or ax, spear or smith′s hammer in their hands.