Godlike. That was the word—there were moments he felt almost godlike. The Fireflower was like molten silver in his veins, strengthening him, filling him with heat and weight. Even with all Shaso’s careful training, he would only have been a crippled boy of sixteen years who would never have survived this fight, but instead he had killed at least half a dozen men and wounded a dozen more, his blade finding its way through the Xixians’ defenses time after time, like a stroke of lightning.
As he hurried toward the nearest fighting, some of the Xixians turned and saw him. They shouted with dismay. Something hot and gleeful rose up in Barrick Eddon’s chest, like hands of fire cupping his heart.
They fear me!
As he reached the edge of the nearest skirmish, he finally saw Saqri and Hammerfoot and the others who had led the way. The queen and her friends were trapped in a swirling melee near the center of the Xixian camp. The moon had crept above the horizon, and its bony gleam was enough for him to see color, detail ... everything. He could even make out the terrified faces of the men Saqri was fighting—or destroying, rather, because if Barrick’s own blade had been like lightning, the queen’s spear was something even swifter and more deadly, perhaps the heavenly thunderbolts that had once flickered around the peak of Mount Xandos itself.
But the Xixians had so many more soldiers that they could bury Saqri and the Ettins in bodies. Cavalrymen from the farther reaches of the embattled camp were now galloping toward the Qar in great numbers, and these newest arrivals, unlike the earliest defenders, were fully armored. Battle standards waved from the backs of their saddles in the colors of half a dozen Xixian companies, horsetails flapping, leather straps jangling with coins.
As Barrick watched, three of the riders split off and headed toward him. Good sense should have made him drop back to the security of the rest of the Qar forces, but something in Barrick was afire and would not let him do the sensible thing.
I’ve been running for years. No more. My banner is my blood—if they want it, let them come take it!
“For Whitefire! For Kupilas!” he shouted, and leaped forward so that he would be better spaced between the approaching riders. Something black flew at him, and he let his momentum carry him onto his side in the dirt as the arrow hissed by. “For Crooked!” he shouted, climbing to his feet again.
Something boomed on the bay behind him, but Barrick had no time to look. The first of the riders was upon him, leaning half out of the saddle and swinging a long, metal-headed club. Barrick took the blow on his shield and managed a cut at the rider’s back, but his own blow only bounced harmlessly from the Xixian’s armor. As the rider wheeled past, Barrick confronted the other two horsemen, both carrying long, small-headed axes. Instead of retreating, he ran forward, forcing them to mistime their swings. He feinted toward one, then shoved his blade into the other Xixian’s chest just below his armpit. The Xixian clung to his saddle and did not fall, but he was shouting in pain and bleeding badly.
More thundering noises, and from the corner of his eye Barrick saw a huge burst of fire and smoke and flying dirt in the midst of the Qar, and bodies spinning through the air. The ships in the harbor! The autarch’s men were firing their deck guns, but in their eagerness to destroy the Qar, they were firing into the mass of their own men as well!
The horsemen who were after Barrick had turned and were coming at him again, slower this time, to take better advantage of having him outnumbered.
Surprise them, the voices urged. A thousand different invisible maps of things he could do came to him, as if he could read every page of a book at the same time. He took a few steps, then suddenly sprinted forward and rolled beneath the middle rider’s swinging mace. He grabbed at the man’s wrist as he passed, something he could never have done with his arm crippled as it had been, then held on, digging his heels into the earth so that the horse’s own force was enough to yank the man out of his saddle. The soldier fell only halfway and dangled with his foot caught in the stirrup, thrashing helplessly until Barrick caught up. He vaulted into the saddle, then turned and hacked away at the screaming man’s trapped ankle until it parted company with his foot and both parts of the Xixian soldier fell to the bloody sand.
As soon as Barrick had his own feet in the stirrups and the horse under his control, he made a point of riding after the wounded man he had already stabbed, not because the noises the man was making bothered him, but because a certain cold implacability was growing in him and he wanted to leave no loose ends, but before Barrick caught him the wounded horseman grabbed at his throat and fell from his horse, pierced by a Qar arrow. The last rider, now confronting a very different kind of fight, abruptly turned and spurred back toward the greater safety of the Xixian ranks at the edge of the camp.
Mounted now, the experience of a dozen kings helping him to calm the Xixian horse, he caught sight of the Tricksters fighting a group of southerners.
“Longscratch, Riddletongue, Blackspine—here!”
As he waited for them, Barrick could see a group of Xixians running away from the fight, but not with the desperate haste of men trying to flee the field of battle: they seemed to be under the control of an officer and were headed toward a large tent near the center of the camp, out between the edge of the city and the bay—the quarters of the autarch himself or some other high-ranking Xixian? Or perhaps something more directly of use in the battle, like one of their huge cannons? Or it might even hold important prisoners. “Hurry!” he shouted at the Qar. “Those Xixies are hiding something. We have to catch them!”
By the time the three Tricksters reached him, the fighting had surrounded him and Barrick was battling for his life again. As he and the Qar fought their way free, Barrick could see that something was happening on the hillside just outside the edge of the city and the camp. A great force of men was riding down out of the heights, singing and shouting. Were they enemies—or unexpected allies? Who could it be? They sounded like northerners! For a moment Barrick could almost believe the Fireflower was showing him some long-buried memory of Coldgray Moor, some vision of men and fairies at war, but it was no ancient Qar battle, it was here and now.
They fought their way out of the worst of the battle. Blackspine found a horse that had lost its rider and clambered into the saddle, soothing the frightened beast with a few whispered, hissing words, then extended a slender arm to help Riddletongue up behind him. Longscratch had found a mount of his own; the previous owner’s severed hand was still tangled in the reins, bouncing against the horse’s shoulder.
“They are hardy, these sunlanders,” said Longscratch with a nod toward the dangling hand, “but the fighting does not have much savor. I liked them better in the old days, when they fought one at a time like proper warriors.”
“And one had time to suck their marrow when they were dead,” added Blackspine wistfully.
Barrick pointed with his bloodied sword. “Look! Those southerners have fallen back to guard that tent. Let’s go have a look at what they don’t want us to see.” He spurred toward it, and the Tricksters followed, laughing and singing wordlessly.
Even as the Xixian horse hit full stride beneath him, its brute strength flowing as smoothly as oil from a flask, something darted past Barrick’s face, passing so close that he ducked down against his stolen mount’s neck. The men guarding the tent had seen them coming and were loosing arrows as fast as they could, but they did not flee. What was it they were willing to give their lives to guard? Barrick’s heart began to pump even faster. Could they truly be so lucky as to have caught the autarch himself on the field?