Shrike shook the weapon at him. “Take it,” he said, more firmly.
Anborn declined again. “I cannot bear it tonight, Shrike.”
“If you are going to be lost to melancholy thoughts, at least go into that heavyheartedness with having experienced the sight, not just the memory.”
Finally the general turned and looked at his man-at-arms, who, as always, stood just behind him, at his back. He sighed and took the cutlass, holding it up to the firelight so that it reflected in the blade.
Shrike stood very still, watching Anborn as he sat, lost in memory, reliving a moment in time gone forever, a sight that Shrike, alone in the wide world, by virtue of a Namer’s word bestowed on him long ago, had the power to allow him to see again.
When the image faded, he returned the cutlass to the man-at-arms and took hold of his useless legs, stretching them.
“I suppose I should thank you,” he said distantly.
“No need. You never do.”
“For good reason,” the General said as he settled down to sleep. “There are some things a man should abstain from allowing himself to see, no matter how desperately he wants to. Now summon the guards back and let them rest.” In the morning, the journey to the dragon’s lair resumed, through fair weather, three warm days and three cool nights, uneventful and easy. Until the first bolt struck.
27
Early morning on the fourth day, they were half a day’s journey from the narrowest crossing of the Tara’fel river when Shrike lurched forward in his saddle.
Shrike always rode rear guard, directly behind Anborn, covering the General’s back literally as he had for centuries figuratively. So when the first bolt was released at the beginning of the ambush, it was aimed at Shrike, riding at the end of the guardian circle behind the carriage in which Rhapsody slept.
Despite his years, Shrike was blessed with uncommon speed, and so had time to catch a fleeting glance of the double volley of bolts that severed the spinal columns of the soldiers riding before and to the sides of him as the men reeled forward simultaneously, their legs suddenly as useless as Anborn’s.
The bolt aimed at him had caught the high-backed saddle, shocking him with its impact, but giving him the opportunity to wheel in his seat and fire his crossbows into the eyes of two of the men who had appeared from the trees behind him. He noted the rustling of the branches, the rise of dirt and dead leaves into the air as they fell back, but did not hear them hit the ground.
Time slowed maddeningly; he could hear the pounding of his heart, the scream of the horse as it reared, the crashing of the forest branches all around them. In that one last, instantaneous moment of sight, before the second bolt struck him, before the blood welled into his throat, Shrike heard his own voice, from which he was quite dissociated, loose in a shout of alarm.
“We’re under attack! Drive on! Drive on!”
The third bolt split his breastbone, ripping his breath away. Shrike fought the darkness dropping in from the corners of his eyes as the crossbow fell from his left hand, the bolt gouging the horse as it skittered down its side, and put all of his concentration, all of the torn spiderwebs of his conscious focus, into one last shot.
He fired again.
The bolt went wide, or so it seemed, and yet it appeared to him, in the haze that had settled now in his eyes and mind, that another body fell from the trees.
He noted an impressive absence of pain as he rolled off the twisting horse’s flank, heard nothing now but the pounding in his ears, the emptying of his heart as the blood gushed out of his chest, pooling onto the forest floor beneath his face.
He heard Anborn shouting his name, the sound growing dimmer until in reverberated into nothingness.
Ride! Surround the carriage!” the General thundered, reining his horse back as Shrike fell to the forest floor, his life spilling out into the loam. He slapped the horse, using the hand signal it knew, directing it across the road, bisecting the pathway, and, stonebow in one arm, he drew his bastard sword with the other, murder in his eyes.
Rider and animal halted; then galloped forth at an inverse angle again, dodging another hailstorm of bolts. Anborn leaned forward over the neck of the horse, hearing the sickening tattoo of the careening carriage wheels as the drivers beat their team, the guardian soldiers thundering along beside it, then charged forward into the woods from whence the crossbow fire had come, slashing with fury unleashed.
The crunching of bone, the spewing of blood, of leather, of brain, the true, solid reflections of the accuracy in which his marks were met, did nothing to quell the fury that had boiled over, and was now scorching all in his path. Gone was the detached pragmatism with which the Lord Marshal had conducted himself through some of the bloodiest campaigns in the history of the continent. He could not contain the anger, laying on a slack-faced crossbow-man so viciously that after six rapid blows the corpse was unrecognizable.
He heard in the distance the sound of hammers firing and stopped, reining the stallion in place, then turning in horror.
Ahead of the carriage the crossbows fired again. One of the drivers, shot through the forehead, fell heavily to the ground, taking the reins with him as he slipped under the wheels.
The coach wobbled crazily, tilting off its wheels, as the royal guards struggled to keep up with it, firing at any movement they saw in the woods at the edge of the roadway.
From either side of the carriage, two of Rhapsody’s guards attempted to leap from their horses to gain control of the coach and drive it to escape. One succeeded, the other making a grab for the running board, only to be shot as well.
“Fly!” Anborn roared to the riders and the coachman, but they were out of range of his voice.
He sheared the reins and swept around, driving his mount back through the forest edge, bearing down on two men on foot who had turned and were fleeing toward the forest road. Man and animal, in single-minded concentration, rode the first one down; Anborn waited until he felt the horse’s hooves crush the first man’s head like a melon before firing into the back of the neck of the second, sweeping him out of the way with the bastard sword as he spun and fell.
Ahead in the tree line he could see shapes moving, a score or more, and knew that it was only the rear flank of the force that had laid the ambush. His gorge rose as he leaned close to the neck of the stallion in pursuit, knowing the carriage was probably surrounded by now, the guards outnumbered or dead.
He did not think about Shrike.
Rhapsody woke as she was flung across the carriage.
In the haze that had settled into her mind since conceiving the child, she struggled to come to consciousness, her perspective thrown off kilter both by the wildly tilting carriage and her own internal lack of balance. At first she couldn’t even remember where she was, fraught in the clutches of the strange and exaggerated dreams that had been plaguing her.
She heard voices outside the carriage window, the shouts of her own troops, and, more distantly, muffled calls in a language she didn’t understand.
Shakily she felt for her sword.
This can’t be happening, she thought, trying to clear her head and at the same time hold on to her stomach as the carriage swerved again, slamming her to the floor.
As her ear banged against the planks of the jolting carriage floor, she could hear a whooping cry go up, and her blood ran cold.
It was a call of impending victory.
The seneschal was waiting half a league up the road.
He could hear the sound of the carriage approaching on the breeze, followed by the keening cry. He looked over his shoulder and called to Fergus, at the head of the remaining troop mounted atop the horses they had acquired in the last week.
“There’s the signal. She’s coming. Take her off the road.”
Fergus gave a quick nodded and gestured to the troops, then kicked his horse forward into a rolling canter.