“I know.”
“Rah-ya! Wistala, what passes?” Rainfall called from the tree-flanked balcony above the door. Now the hooves could be heard even when the wind blew.
“Lock the doors and shutters!” Dsossa called as she raced across the lawn toward the stable, the ends of her housecoat flapping.
“Forstrel, the doors! The windows!” Rainfall shouted as he turned his seat on the balcony. He spun around again, completing the circle.
“Wistala, get in here!”
“But the main door—”
“Climb up here. The front gallery is wide enough, and I don’t care if the paintwork and floors get scale-chipped. Hurry!”
She could see lights in the tree line to the east, along the little path Jessup had driven the wagon the day they buried Avalanche. “Name of Masmodon!” Rainfall said, his arms falling limp. “What’s this?”
“Invasion,” Wistala said.
Wistala heard alarmed cries from within the house, both male and female, and Forstrel’s echoed voice bellowing orders: “Drop that, girl, and get all the shutters on the top floor. Latch and bolt! Hurry!”
Wistala climbed the tree trunk nearest her easily enough, despite the light-headedness she felt at the thought of a battle, and as she put sii on the balcony rail, the hoofbeats grew thunderous with alarming suddenness.
A clump of torch-bearing horsemen with no more formation than a broken egg emerged from the wood path. They spread as they came, one part riding for the garden, the other for the front turnaround.
“Inside, Wistala,” Rainfall said, his voice so deep and hard for a moment, she thought she heard Ragwrist beside.
Her shoulders and hips made it through the double doors. It occurred to her that she’d fit on the grand staircase down, but she might not make the tight squeeze to the third floor, should it become necessary.
Wistala turned—with some difficulty, and stuck her head out of the gallery door next to Rainfall.
Forstrel came down the hall, squeezing past Wistala. “I’ve seen to the lower level myself, Master,” Forstrel said.
“Douse the lights—let’s not give archers a mark,” Rainfall said. Then he whispered to Forstrel.
Wailing battle horns sounded from the riders, now individually distinguishable. Most were hairy and bearded; they rode blanket-back on shaggy mounts, handles of weapons sticking up from their back and belts like quills on a porcupine. But at the center of the group riding hard for Mossbell’s door was a better arrayed company. Wistala marked a man in dark plate with a white sash about him atop a black-armored horse, followed closely behind by a boy-man in black leather with a red sash draped across his shoulder.
Behind that pair rode another score of warriors, and more men at the back with packhorses and strings of those sharp-faced dogs with the twin lightning bolt runes emblazoned on their side.
Wistala remembered the dogs as being bigger and fiercer looking. Now they just appeared to be like any other pack of tongue-lolling hunting hounds, albeit matching in size and color and odd marking.
“How can this be? The thane rides at their head,” Rainfall said.
Wistala looked out. Near the man in the black armor rode Thane Hammar, clad in chain armor and blue-and-yellow cloaks and sub-cloaks trailing down across the horse’s back to its hocks.
“Mark! What does she do?” Rainfall said.
Dsossa exploded out of the barn in a knot of horseflesh, her bare toes clutching at the saddle stirrups and fingers holding both reins and mane of her mottle-gray horse. Backside raised and head close beside the neck of her horse, she galloped across the lawn toward the road wall, similar horses flanking and behind her, running for no other reason than that the lead had taken flight. At the rear was Stog, gray all around the nose, eyes, and hooves, who gave up the chase at the fountain and turned to watch the intruders with interest.
The black-leather-clad youth, fair hair showing under his cap, said a word to the men behind him. A group of six rode to the other side of the turnaround, taking great recurved bows off their backs and arrows from saddle quivers.
Thane Hammar pointed and cried out, and three of his saddled retinue charged after Dsossa.
“Let the archers bring her down,” the armored rider said, pointing with a long crossbarred spear. Wistala’s heart went cold; she knew that armor and spear of old.
The archers nocked their arrows and edged their horses so they could fire clean.
“Stog,” Wistala shouted in the beast tongue, and the giant black helm on the armored rider turned toward the balcony. “Cry out, as you did that night on the road!”
But Stog was already running, tail up. “Better!” the old mule cried, and threw himself at the heads of the line of horses. As Stog tore through, kicking at the bigger horses left and right, the archers lifted their bows. One arrow shot almost straight up into the sky. Stog plowed into the horse bearing the young man in black leather, knocked it and the rider over, and jumped clear.
“Kill that beast!” the bright-haired youth called.
Stog wheeled and ran so that he’d be a crossing target. The archers fired, and as the arrows hit, Wistala felt their impact in her heart. She no longer feared a fight, but longed to plunge into the array in the courtyard, to rend and tear with claw-tips wet and hot—Rainfall took a breath.
Stog collapsed, falling forward. Wistala lunged, but Rainfall grabbed her by the rattling griff.
“No, Wistala. They want that. There’s the Dragonblade out there, with his spear!”
The archers put new arrows in their strings and turned toward the receding figure of Dsossa, heading for the road wall rather than the gate. The Dragonblade passed his spear point across a torch carried by one of his men, and it sparked and sputtered as though it were a firework.
Stog moved and rolled, snapping arrow shafts, then rose, blood running from the piercings. The young man, dusting disgustedly at the dirt on his leather suit, gaped.
Froth dripped from his mouth, Stog stared fixedly at the archers, now drawing against Dsossa. He began to stagger toward them, braying:
While a horse will carry any fool—
“Shoot that wretched animal!” the youth said. The archers turned.
“Eliam! She’s getting away,” Thane Hammar shouted. He turned his head to the man heating the spear. “Drakossozh, your son’s a fool.”
The arrows flew again, striking Stog all about the shoulder point, neck, and withers. Stog stumbled but did not fall. Wistala saw his ribs against his skin as he took a deep gasping breath.
“If the going’s hard, you’ll want a mule . . . ,” Stog brayed, oblivious of the arrows. He staggered forward toward the archers.
“Again!” the man-boy shrieked, his voice breaking. “Will no one find that horse’s heart?”
Stog, still lumbering forward, may have understood the words, or at least that he’d been called a horse, for he turned toward the voice, eyes white and staring. The arrows cut air again and struck with wet smacks, and this time Stog’s front legs collapsed. The back pair pushed the body forward another nose-length or two, then sagged.
But Dsossa was at the wall, gathered self and horse, and went over a slight sag in its length in a flash of gray white. Wistala heard hooves pounding up the road toward Quarryness.
The three riders after her aimed for the spot, as well, but the first horse balked. It tried to turn, sliding on its hooves, and went over sideways, back crashing into the wall with rider pinned between. The second horse half-sat down as it skidded forward, and the rider, carried by momentum, slid forward up its neck and hit the wall at the knees. He spun feet-up as he went over. The third managed to turn his horse to run along the wall but got tangled in the legs of the mount who’d gone back-first into the bricks, and horse and rider tumbled.
“Get back, Wistala,” Rainfall said. “I have to delay them so Dsossa has time.”
To do what? Wistala wondered, staring wretchedly at Stog’s body, trying to will the old mule back to life. Warn the Inn—no, she’d turned north. Get to the circus? She shifted backwards into the hall.
Wistala counted heads. There were over a hundred riders to the front of the house, and she could hear others in back, probably a like number, though there were still no sounds of destruction to the house. What could anything but an army—?
“Who do I have the dubious pleasure of addressing?” Rainfall shouted from his balcony.
“Into the old wood dry-room behind the chimney,” she heard Forstrel saying as light feet ran down the stairs. “Then down. Quickly now.” Forstrel approached, the azure blue battle sash of Rainfall’s grandfather held as carefully as though it were woven from a morning mist.
The barbarians, who’d been poking around at the stable door and looking into rain barrels, moved to look at the tree-flanked balcony. Thane Hammar turned his horse, but kept to the other side of the fountain, perhaps fearing arrows. “Your Lord Hammar is paying a final call on Mossbell!” he shouted.
Wistala, her fire bladder pulsing, noted that he hadn’t had success with his beard, which was still thin and scraggly, for all he tried to shape it into a point below his chin. “It’s time for us to finally settle accounts, in a single night-of-blades.”
