Vansen was wrong, was all Barrick had time to think, it is night already.
He turned to shout to the man on his other side, but as he looked for him something snapped past his face, so close he could feel it brush his nose. The pale man riding on his right had tipped his visor back, his black eyes were huge and had no whites. Even as Barrick stared, the man the creature whatever he was, nocked another arrow. Barrick knew he couldn’t outrun it or duck swiftly enough, so he yanked with his good hand on the reins and sent Kettle sideways into his attacker’s mount. There was a thump of contact as the bowstaff slapped against Barrick’s face. The arrow vanished harmlessly up into the air. Barrick still had not had a chance to draw his falchion, but he managed to pull Kettle away again just as his enemy lunged at him, leaving the manlike creature hanging, his hands wrapped around Barrick’s saddle strap, his feet still locked in his own stirrups as his horse galloped alongside Kettle. Despite the pulling and bumping of the horses, Barrick’s enemy was slapping at his leg for what looked like a knife sheathed there.
Shouting in disgust and fear, Barrick kicked at the unprotected face over and over. The helmet flew off, revealing streaming silvery hair. The creature, despite all this, continued to pull himself nearer until the two horses were only a yard apart. Barrick finally dragged his falchion out of its scabbard and shoved it artlessly at the man’s face, then hacked at the clawing white hands wrapped around his saddle strap until suddenly their grip dissolved in blood and the face with its staring black eyes fell away—a flash of his armor as he tumbled into the grass, then nothing. The riderless horse continued on for a few dozen paces, then turned and vanished through the fog.
Barrick reined up and sat for a long moment, gasping for breath, fearing that his jittering heart might crack like a newborn chick bursting its shell Men screeched hoarsely somewhere in the fog to his right, and though he was terrified, Barrick realized it was better to be moving than to sit waiting for something to come down on him out of the roil of mist.
They would have left me behind. I could have stayed behind.
He spurred toward the shouting.
Tyne of Blueshore and a dozen other knights and nobles had found each other, and Barrick had found them. The enemy was thick around them, but not endless. There were moments between one spate of fighting and the next, sometimes long enough for Barrick to catch his breath and even drink from his waterskin. He was holding his own despite being forced to fight with only one hand, and he found himself embarrassingly grateful for his old nemesis, Shaso, who had worked him so mercilessly all those years.
Once or twice the fog cleared so that he could see knots of combat all over the downs. Those instants when the mists rolled back and they could actually see something like a wholesome, natural twilight dragged a cheer from even the weariest of the fighters around Barrick, his own voice as loud as any. They had held their own against the first attack of the Twilight People. Barrick felt something almost like hope. If they could reach some of their fellows, they could begin to make an organized resistance, to make a real stand or, as Vansen had suggested—only hours ago, but it felt like years—then withdraw and try to lure the shadow folk after them.
The fairies didn’t seem to be as many as they had feared, but they were terrible foes. Their strangeness even more than their ferocity made them so. Most were man-sized and man-shaped, armored and carrying weapons of odd shapes and hues, but a few were twice the size of any mortal, massive things with patches of mangy fur and thick, sagging tortoise skin, powerful but slow. Barrick had already seen one of these monstrosities brought down by three mounted men with lances, and he had shouted with joy as the giant fell and lay shuddering in its own slow-oozing black blood. The fairy army contained swarms of small creatures with ruddy hair and faces almost as narrow as foxes’ muzzles, too, and others not much larger than apes who were covered all over with some dark, tangled fur so that they appeared faceless except for the staring gleam of their eyes Some of the enemies seemed to carry their own blankets of mist, so that even in the moments of clear light they were dim and hard to see as a reflection in a muddy pond, and the thrusts of lances and swords never quite seemed to strike them straight. Wolves accompanied them, too, silently swift and horrible in their intelligence. They had already pulled down several of the horses by tearing at legs and unprotected bellies until the beasts stumbled and fell.
“That way!” Tyne shouted.The war leader’s helmet was battered and his sword was bloodied and notched, but his voice was still strong Men moved to him without hesitation as he spurred his horse toward one of the clumps of fighting, a fog-shrouded mass of bodies and flashing metal—Mayne Calough and a company of Silverside nobles, perhaps three or four dozen mounted men all together, hard-pressed by at least that many foes. Tyne clearly planned to bring the two groups together with an eye toward mounting a coordinated defense, and Barrick was only too happy to follow. He had spent most of the last hour floating in a kind of singing silence, hearing but not recognizing the sounds of combat, terror, and pam all around him, lost in red-shot mists, but now the mists were beginning to clear—at least those in his head, even if the fogs that blew across the hillside showed no sign of doing the same.
As something like ordinary thought returned, he realized that he wanted only to get out of this ghastly murk any way he could. He didn’t want to kill anymore, not even monsters like these. He didn’t want to make anyone proud of him. He didn’t care what anyone thought.
War is a he. The disjointed words did not quite form in his head, but they were there all the same, like broken pieces of an object whose original shape could still be recognized. Because no one ever would. Terrible. If they knew, no one ever. Never.
Tyne was at the front of their small company, and reached the cluster of men on the hillside just in time to rein up in surprise as something huge burst through the rank of knights, flinging aside heavy, armored men and horses like a drunkard batting away a cloud of bees Tyne had only a moment to raise his sword in a gesture of helpless defiance before the leathery giant brought down its great cudgel of stone and wood on him with such force that Tyne’s horse was smashed to the ground with its back broken and its legs fractured and splayed Nothing was left of Tyne Aldritch, the Earl of Blueshore, but a headless jelly in a wreckage of crushed armor.
It was so sudden, so horrid, that Barrick could only gape as Kettle shied and stutter-stepped. The Silversiders scattered from the giant, mounted men running down those who had lost their horses, all of them leaping past the prince, a few shouting at him to turn, to ride for his life. The giant thing lumbered toward him, the massive club whistling back and forth as it came, dispatching those who couldn’t force their way past their fellows to escape, knocking them to pieces One of the fleeing knights lost control of his horse and the beast slammed into Kettle and forced Barrick’s mount sideways. This time Barrick did not catch its mane before he fell. The wet ground drove the breath out of him so powerfully that for a moment he thought it was the giant’s club that had struck him, but the fiery stab of pain in his arm told him otherwise he was still alive and there was worse to come. He rolled over and scrabbled along the ground to stay out of the way as his black horse tried to right itself, but it only bought him a moment.