The Burning Stone
Page 342

They kept moving and as they came around the narrow end of the hill they saw a large force of Quman moving round just inside the river’s bend. About fifty heavy horse riding under Princess Sapientia’s banner moved south to meet them. The weight of her lead riders simply pressed the Quman toward the river as though they were herding cattle, and yet every one of those lightly armored Quman riders chose to face sword and shield rather than try to swim to safety.
The weight of the melee was all to Sapientia’s advantage. Killing as they went, the heavy cavalry drove the Quman back along the river’s bank until the metal-winged warrior appeared again, rallying his troops into a counter charge. The two massed lines of horse clashed on the narrow strip of flood plain, but already twilight dimmed the scene as sword and armor and shield clanged like the echo of some great smithy. A horn call rang, one short, one long. Then it repeated.
“That’s the call to retreat!” cried Baldwin. “Ai, God! We’re going to be abandoned here! The Quman will walk up this hill tonight and cut us down one by one!”
Ermanrich tugged him on, and they ran from rampart to rampart, those strange curling earthworks that wrapped the slope more like decoration than fortification. As dusk lowered, Ivar saw Sapientia escorted from the field by her husband as fully half her company fought on, screening her retreat.
“Young lords, give me a hand, I pray you.” The voice was low, almost lost under the din of battle and the growing peals of thunder. In the shadow of an earthen mound, the Lion who had shielded their first retreat lay with blood running from a dozen shallow wounds. He had a hand closed over the boiled-leather jacket of his comrade and was trying to tug him down from the exposed rim of the earthen dike—he and his comrade had evidently retreated by another route, only to intersect them here. A misting rain began to fall.
“We can’t wait!” whispered Baldwin, but Ermanrich had already surveyed the situation.
“Nay,” he said. “The princess’ forces have drawn off those who were climbing the fort before. They won’t pursue us right now.”
Baldwin was shaking. “But they might be swarming up the other side of the hill. They’ll drop down on us from above.”
“Then we’ll be dead,” said Ivar. “I thought you said you’d rather be dead than go to Margrave Judith’s bed again. You might just get your wish!”
“But I don’t want to die!” wailed Baldwin. Ermanrich slapped him, and he sniffled, wiping his nose, and then, as if nothing had happened, he jumped forward, grabbed the silent Lion’s leg, and helped tug him down from the rampart.
They moved on around the hill, sliding in wet ground until their knees and hands dropped mud. The mist turned to drizzle and steadied into rain as they by turns tugged and pushed the unconscious Lion through the moss and the mud while his wounded fellow staggered behind. As they rounded the southwestern turn of the hill fort, they saw the ford lying dim below them in the ragged glow of a full moon now and then veiled by cloud. Somehow, although it still rained where they crouched, the ford lay full in the moonlight, and Ivar could see that the front of rain quite simply ceased about twenty paces in front of a semicircle of Lions whose locked shields made a barrier behind which horsemen and infantry forded the river to the safety of the north shore. As though they were the gates of a refuge, the shields opened to admit stragglers who came pelting in alone or in small, beleaguered groups, and then closed again to meet the erratic charges of the furious Quman, who could not break the strong shield wall. Across the river, the army wound away into the woodland in remarkably good formation. The baggage train was long gone, but a single small wagon more like a little house on wheels sat beside the shore, and for an instant Ivar thought he saw its beaded window shiver and sway as someone pressed aside the hanging to look out.
At a stone’s toss from the wagon, he saw a pale-haired figure in an Eagle’s cloak standing beside her horse. Hanna was safe across the river.
Off to the east, thunder still rolled, distant now, as if the storm had passed them by. Below, they could see the Quman pressing Sapientia’s troops backward toward the ford.
“We’ll never make it,” said Ermanrich. “We’re cut off.”
“Nay, lads” said the old Lion. “Don’t wait for us. If you run for it—”
“Can’t run—” gasped Baldwin.
“Are you hurt?” demanded Ivar.
“No. Just—can’t run anymore.”
“Look there,” said Ermanrich. “There’s a bit of a fosse up ahead. We’ll hide there and then make a run for the ford in the middle of the night.”