The Horse Lord (16 page)

Two warriors pounced before the big Andarran courser had got into his stride, and Aldric reacted instinctively as he had been taught to do—charging the nearer man, sidestepping Lyard at the last minute with tug of rein and touch of knee, then lunging past the displaced shield with his spear. The second warrior, sword-armed, was “dead” before he closed enough to be dangerous.

Children’s game or not, Aldric found his heart was pounding with the excitement of something that was far more real than anything done in Dunrath’s exercise yard so long ago. A target reared up and he lowered spear-point, struck squarely home—and felt his spear disintegrate as some small unseen flaw gave way under the impact.

Cursing under his breath, he threw down the pieces and swept his longbow from its case, drawing an arrow from the ornate fan of shafts quivered at his back. He preferred the handier shortbow to this seven-foot asymmetrical archaism, finding it clumsy by comparison. Like its modern counterpart the Great-bow of old Alba was thumb-drawn—but to well behind the archer’s ear—and its arrows were correspondingly long, heavy and destructive. Aldric loosed one at close range and even over the noise of galloping in full battle armour heard the wooden target split from top to bottom…

Another target appeared, this time craftily set on his right. The
eijo
bared his teeth in a hard, appreciative grin; whoever had built the course knew that no horse-archer could shoot to his nearside. Heeling Lyard briefly away to the left, he launched a shaft backwards over the animal’s rump—almost missing altogether in his haste— and then turned back towards the judge’s island.

The three remaining
kailinin
were waiting for him at the bridge. Lyard reared as Aldric reined back, eyeing the other riders apprehensively. Without a spear, attacking all three would be a risky undertaking, yet he did not want to waste time swimming his horse across the moat. Deciding at last that boldness would be best, he pulled the peak of his helmet down a little, settled more firmly in the saddle and touched heels to his stallion’s flanks, aware that the judge had risen from his canopied seat to get a better view.

But the official was not watching him. Aldric’s head jerked round, all plans and strategies forgotten as something surfaced in the moat with a hiss of displaced water.

As an armoured horseman surged towards him through the shallows, he thought for just one instant that it was all part of some trick staged by the Prefect. Then weeds fell from the rider’s spearhead to reveal not a dye-pad but a long, sharp blade. This trick, if trick it was, had no part in
yril’t’sathorn
...

There was time enough for his stomach to turn right over as the lance slashed towards his head, then reflex took over and his shield came up. The impact punched it back against him, rocked him in the saddle—and chilled him with the knowledge that such a blow striking home would drive clear through him, armour or no armour. Throwing aside his useless wooden weapons, Aldric rode with desperate haste towards the judge’s escort, the only men in range who wore real swords.

The soldiers broke and scattered as he approached, terrified not of the
eijo
but of that which followed him. Aldric snarled and rode one of them down; before Lyard had skidded to a halt he was on the ground and wrenching the dazed man’s broadsword from its scabbard. The weapon was no
taiken
—but it was steel, and that was enough.

Before he could regain his saddle the bronze rider was upon him. Aldric twisted away from the jabbing spear and hacked at its shaft, but almost dropped his sword from stinging fingers as it bounced off solid metal. With obvious intent the
katafrakt
continued his charge at Lyard and Aldric screamed a warning. The battle-trained Andarran knew well enough what was meant by that and galloped out of reach.

In the deathly stillness which had fallen over the crowd, Kyrin’s whistle rang out clearly. The black stallion hesitated, ears pricked, recognising the signal but knowing that his master had not given it. Kyrin had to repeat the summons twice before she was obeyed.

Rather than press home his advantage, the scaled horseman descended with a harsh metallic slither from his own steed. The sound had an eerie echo, almost a hollowness, as if there was emptiness within both the reptilian armour and the horse’s hide. Aldric swallowed sourness and tried not to think what that might imply.

“I am Esel, o enemy of my master,” pronounced the
katafrakt
, his voice so deep that Aldric felt it vibrating in the marrow of his bones. That, too, had an ominous metallic quality which confirmed the Alban’s fears. His enemy, no matter what he looked like, was not a man. “Return to me the thing ye stole aforetime, ere I take it from thee.” Esel paused, the empty glare of his war mask not wavering from Aldric’s face. “Speak thy choice.”

The
eijo
cleared his throat, trying to still the tremor lurking there. Gripping his broadsword and settling his shield, he smiled a mirthless smile that did little to conceal his fright. “1 r-really think—” he tried again: “I really think you have to take it.” His voice sounded insignificant.

“As ye will.” The monstrous figure turned towards his horse, standing immobile like something cast from metal, and when he swung back there was a sheathed sword in his hand. “My master desires that ye be brought before him, that he may visit condign punishment upon thee at his pleasure. This shall be. It is my master’s bidding.”

Kyrin shouldered her way furiously through an audience who stood as if spellbound, trying to reach the spot where Lyard waited patiently. She approached the stallion as warily as her need for haste allowed, knowing how dangerous a war-schooled horse could be. When she vaulted into the charger’s saddle Lyard reared, pawing the air and shrilling his anger and excitement; but he did nothing worse, knowing the woman on his back as a companion of his master, as someone who had treated him kindly, and was at least familiar with the strangeness which had frightened him. Kyrin sighed with relief, then dug in her heels and rode full-tilt for Aldric’s tent and Widowmaker.

Backing away from Esel’s stealthy advance, the
eijo
glanced around. Nobody moved, whether through fear or horror… or some more sinister reason. Then the bronze
katafrakt
shook the scabbard from his sword, flicking it at Aldric’s head. The Alban almost forgot to duck, such was his shock at seeing what Esel cradled easily in one scaly fist.

It was not steel, nor even bronze, but a shimmering translucent stuff like glass which drew the eyes and held them. Aldric gulped as bile rose in his throat and wrenched his gaze away with an effort, feeling sweat begin to film his skin. For perhaps a second the world had tried to slither out of focus, and he knew another second would have left him helpless. It was more rage and fear than courage which sent a whirring cut at Esel’s helm, and it was more luck than judgement that permitted it to strike.

With a snap one of the bronze goat-horns spun away, but Esel ignored what should have stunned him and kept on advancing. He had not parried, nor even tried to, and his shield sat uselessly on his arm as he gripped his great sword like a blacksmith’s hammer. Or a bronze-founder’s maul.

Then heavy feet approached from Aldric’s left as one of his erstwhile opponents came charging in with an axe raised in both hands. Why this man had moved when no one else did, the
eijo
did not know. Not that it was of use. The bronze warrior blocked clumsily, his blade emitting a piercingly-sweet chiming note, and Aldric saw the nacreous shimmer drain from the weapon to leave it clear as ice, almost invisible in the sunlight.

Then it chopped home.

The stricken
kailin
dropped his axe and tottered back a pace. There was no wound, no blood on the white robe covering his
tsalaer
—but those robes had gone strangely rigid and crackled at each sluggish movement. It was a sound Aldric had heard before. As the warrior fell over stiffly, his face frozen into a pallid mask of shock, Aldric knew what Esel’s sword had done even before the wave of icy air billowed over him. The man was frozen in very truth, his body, clothing, armour all frosted over—within half a heartbeat on a hot spring day.

Another great sweep of the sword left a trail of chilly white vapour hanging in the air as Aldric ducked, then straightened and smashed his iron-bound shield rim into the bridge of Esel’s nose. It should have blinded the bigger man with pain; but the only blindness was that of a war-mask buckled beyond recovery. Esel made a grinding, impatient noise and tore the mask aside to reveal his non-face.

In the next exchange Aldric lost his sword. Not through clumsiness but because, made brittle by appalling cold, its blade abruptly flew into a score of tinkling shards. With blood streaming down his face from where a splinter had ripped skin, Aldric flung the useless hilt—a hilt which frozen perspiration had almost stuck to his hand— at his enemy before backing out of reach. Esel followed, making no attempt to lengthen his stride. He came on with the calm assurance of an executioner.

Aldric knew now that he could not outlast Duergar’s sending, because though he was sodden with sweat, exhausted by the dragging weight of
an-moyya-tsalaer
and growing rapidly unsteady on his feet, Esel’s movements were still the same: no slower, no faster, patient and inevitable. Resignation joined fatigue in Aldric’s brain, combining into the despair of vast weariness so that he almost knelt and waited for the inevitable. Almost… but not quite. He was Alban,
kailin-eir
Talvalin. If this thing was to finish it would be on his own terms. Aldric’s hand began to close around his
tsepan’s
hilt.

Hoofbeats and shouting cut through his daze and his unfocused eyes finally settled on the blonde figure riding swiftly closer on a black horse. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps there is another way. He forced himself into a shaky run.

Kyrin slid Isileth Widowmaker from her lacquered scabbard and breathed a soft apology to the
taiken
, then flung it as hard and straight as she was able. The weapon came cartwheeling down and quivered in the turf for barely a second before Aldric’s fingers closed around its hilt and he turned to face his tormentor.

He turned almost into a cut across the eyes and though he jerked his head a handsbreadth back, the frigid wind which whipped into his war-mask’s trefoil opening left frost rimed thickly on eyebrows and lashes. He had no illusions about crossing swords, even with Widowmaker, and made no attempt to press home an attack. Instead he concentrated on the opening that he wanted… needed… had to have sooner or later.

Bronze was brittle. That helmet-horn had not been cut but broken off like a dry stick. Given the chance— Aldric threw his shield invitingly away—he would test his theory on the bronze man’s armour.

Or his arm. Esel’s blow was huge but clumsy and Aldric evaded it with ease even in his weakened state. There was nothing weak about the double-handed cut which came down on Esel’s sword-arm. The limb shattered halfway to the elbow.

With a shrill noise barely recognisable as a scream, Esel clutched his stump with the remaining hand. There was no blood and instead of flesh an oily pulp bulged from the ruptured metal. It dripped clear ooze that had a sharply chemical stench, and it pulsed with a slow rhythm which in the severed portion fluttered briefly and then stopped.

Aldric fought the churning in his stomach as he lifted the amputated half-arm and twisted the sword-hilt from its slack grip. He moved forward, stiff-legged both with anger and exhaustion.

“Esel…” There was no longer any quaver in his voice, only hatred fired and tempered by the memory of how this—this
thing
had frightened him. “If you ever truly lived, you are truly dead now.” Aldric poised the huge sword momentarily, then stabbed it home. The iceblade slid into the bronze
katafrak’s
chest as easily as into a scabbard and there stuck fast. A convulsion wrenched the hilt from Aldric’s grip—not that he was reluctant to let # go—and Esel staggered drunkenly towards his horse.

Somehow the bronze warrior crawled into his saddle and sat there, plucking feebly at the sword protruding from a torso already thickly caked with ice. Then his horse jerkily raised one foreleg and stopped in that position. Esel leaned back, stump raised as if to hold his missing war-mask in a hand no longer there, and gazed fixedly into the distance.

Both man and mount slowly overbalanced and fell with a vast splash into the moat. As the mass of metal rolled over and sank, the sword reared into view—and in that instant the whole surface of the moat froze over. Then the hilt slid out of sight, dragged through the crust by the weight of the metal in which it was embedded.

Aldric watched it vanish. There was a full minute of shocked silence before the cheers began, and he turned a face curdled with disgust to watch how armed and armoured men came running up. Now that it was safe! The
eijo’s
stomach heaved and tearing off his helmet he started to vomit.

Kyrin bent over him and gently, with a kerchief wetted through a crack in the ice, she began to clean the flaking blood-streaks from his hair and chalk-white face. Reaction struck and, making a tiny whimpering noise, Aldric wrapped his steel-sheathed arms around her waist and clung on tight. Even through the armour she could feel the waves of shudders racking his body. The girl knelt and cradled his head, murmuring soft comforting sounds until the shaking died away.

She glared as soldiers came clattering towards him— then blinked in shock as they levelled curving halberd blades. Their officer, a slight man whose face was sallow inside his rank-flashed helmet, surveyed her with a cold eye, then studied Aldric’s face. The
eijo
licked dry lips and whatever flicker of expression crossed his face made the officer take a long step backwards. “Somebody get his sword,” the soldier snapped, angry at being startled by a frightened boy in armour. But the fright had almost gone by now and Aldric was not so immature as he appeared. There was a glitter in his grey-green eyes suggesting that after a sorcery-created monstrosity like Esel, a mere officer of guards would give him little trouble.