“I’m no lady! But if you’d repay me, tell me—what should we do? I have six children up here and they want to know what all the noise is.”
Croy looked back toward the eastern gate, where he knew the fighting would be hot and desperate. For the moment at least his view was blocked by the intervening houses, but any minute now the berserkers would come flooding through this street, destroying everything in their path, murdering every man, woman and child they met. He looked up again at the woman in the window and thought of what advice he could possibly give her.
“Please, sir knight. For my children’s sake?”
He closed his eyes and looked down. “Get to the keep, if you can. Stick as close to the western wall as possible—if you see anyone bloodied or screaming, run away. I’ll pray for you, goodwife.”
She slammed the shutters of the window closed without another word.
Croy and Orne hurried down the lane she’d indicated and saw a serjeant with an arrow sticking out of his back. He was breathing heavily and looked as pale as a sheet, but he waved them over when he saw them.
The serjeant led them down into a root cellar, where the king lay on a bed of sack cloth. His eyes were closed and there was a bad bruise on his left temple. “Hasn’t … woken since I … brought him here,” the serjeant gasped.
Sir Orne grabbed the arrow in the man’s back and twisted it free, then shoved a piece of cloth into the wound. The serjeant winced until tears came from his eyes, but he would not cry out.
“You’re a good man,” Croy said, and put a hand on the serjeant’s shoulder.
“Get him … to Sir Hew … he’ll …” The serjeant said no more. He sat down on the close-packed earth of the floor and just stared at the ceiling.
Croy ran back up to the street and sought about until he found what he wanted—a pair of bill hooks with long enough hafts. With these and a bed sheet from an abandoned house, he made a litter that he and Orne could carry between them. They put the king on it and started to carry him up the stairs. “Come with us,” Croy said to the wounded serjeant.
But the man was dead, his eyes rolled back up into their sockets. Croy closed his eyelids, then went back to his burden.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Where do we take him?” Orne asked, when they were back in the street. “The keep? Or the western gate?”
Croy tried to think. He must keep the king alive, at any cost—that was Hew’s order. But where did safety lie? It was impossible to say without better information.
Lady, he prayed silently, give me a sign.
He got it—though he would gladly have taken her silence instead.
A berserker came howling down the street toward him. The man was naked and covered in wounds—shallow cuts across his face and chest, deep gashes in his legs. He held an axe in either hand.
Perhaps the berserker hadn’t even seen them in his fury—he didn’t turn to engage them, instead looking as if he would run right past the two knights in his fury. Croy whipped Ghostcutter from its sheath and cut the barbarian’s throat without resistance. The berserker fell, but behind him, perhaps only a street away, Croy could hear more of them whooping and laughing for the joy of battle.
The choice was made for them. There was no way they could reach the keep, not if they had to hack their way through Mörg’s entire army to get there. Instead they must make for the gate and leave Helstrow behind. Croy and Orne picked up the litter and hurried as fast as they could for the western gate. It wasn’t far, only a dozen streets or so, but in full armor and carrying the king they made slow going of it.
Before they’d covered half the distance, the barbarians had spotted them. A great howl went up and the knights had to duck down a side passage or be overrun.
Taking a winding route, trying to stay ahead of their pursuers, they covered the distance somehow. Croy was past rational thought at that point—he was only aware of his feet, and of the sounds of murder and butchery all around him. He had to do everything in his power to save the king. That was his duty. If he was cut down before he reached the gate, the Lady could ask no more of him. But he would not stop. He would not consider the possibility of hiding or of not taking another step.
When the gate appeared before him, he realized he had a new problem. It was sealed. As it had been for ten days.
“Put him down over there,” Croy said, and when it was done he went to the massive bar that held the iron gates closed. There was no portcullis on this side, but the wooden doors closing the gate were made of massive planks of age-hardened wood reinforced with thick metal fittings. The bar of the gate was a rod of iron thicker than his wrist. “Help me,” he said.
“No,” Orne told Croy. “You have to get it open yourself.”
Croy turned around in a rage, but then he saw Bloodquaffer in Orne’s hand—and a crowd of barbarians in the street behind him. Orne ran to meet the invaders, his Ancient Blade whistling as it swooped around and around in the air.
This was it, then. This was the foretold moment—the moment Orne was to die.
Croy decided he would make that death mean something, at any cost. Struggling with the iron bar, he put all his muscles into moving it until he felt something tear in his back. The bar came loose from its brackets and crashed to the ground with a noise so loud it jarred Croy’s bones. He pushed hard on the gate until it started to swing open.
Only then did he look back.
Orne was lost in the melee, but he could see Bloodquaffer rise and fall and slash and spin. Never had Croy seen a man fight so desperately, never had he watched a sword move so fast. Heads, arms, fingers bounced and spun in the air as Bloodquaffer took its due. But with every barbarian that the sword cut down, a dozen axe blows came at Orne, while spears jabbed at him through every opening and arrows seemed to float on air above him. The barbarians didn’t seem to care if they struck or killed their own numbers in the confusion, only that they took down the doomed knight. Blood pooled between the cobblestones and ran in the gutters, but they fought on.
Croy longed to go and help his friend—but he dared not. He bent to pick up the king and throw his sleeping form over one shoulder.
It was then he heard a booming, horrible laugh that he knew all too well. Striding through the crowd of barbarians, Mörget came to challenge Orne.
“No,” Croy said, staggering under the weight of the king.
No, it could not be. Mörget could not still be alive. He’d been under Cloudblade when it fell. It had been Mörget’s own hand that set off the explosion which leveled the mountain. Not even Mörget could have survived that.
Yet here he was.
Mörget—the biggest man Croy had ever seen. The fiercest warrior he’d ever known. The son of Mörg, and himself a chieftain of many barbarian clans. Mörget’s face was painted half red like those of the berserkers, but he was more dangerous than any of those insensate warriors.
Croy had called Mörget brother, once. They had fought together against a demon, and Croy had marveled at the strength in Mörget’s massive arms and the sheer delight Mörget took in hacking and slashing and killing. Mörget had terrified Croy even when they’d been on the same side.
But Mörget had betrayed Croy—he had betrayed everyone who went into the mountain with him. Even before the barbarians declared war on Skrae, Croy and Mörget had become sworn enemies. If he’d thought Mörget still lived, Croy would have been honor bound to do nothing until he had tracked down Mörget and slain him in single combat. Slain him and taken from his treacherous hands the sword called Dawnbringer.
Mörget waded into the fight, an axe in one hand, the self-same Ancient Blade in the other. The throng of barbarians drew back and Croy saw Orne in the sudden clearing. The knight had lost half the armor from his left arm and his helm had been torn from his head. His face was perfectly calm and resigned to his fate.
He brought Bloodquaffer up, ready to parry Mörget’s axe stroke.
Mörget was as big as a horse and his arm was like a tree trunk. The axe came round in an unstoppable arc, a blow as fast and inescapable as an avalanche.
Orne took the perfect stance and gripped Bloodquaffer’s hilt in both hands. He braced himself in perfect form. How many times had he stood like that, ready to take a blow that could have killed a normal man? Orne was a knight and an Ancient Blade. A warrior of incomparable skill.
He could no more have stopped the axe blow than he could have held back the ocean at high tide. The axe would have cut him in half if that had been Mörget’s intention. Instead, it cut right through Bloodquaffer’s blade.
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