Sasha (12 page)

Peg raced across the undulating final stretch, frothing and blowing hard, Sasha wriggling the fingers on her gloved right hand, as the index finger had gone suddenly numb. She hadn't performed that parry well at all. Kessligh was right, cavalry fighting was not ideal for a svaalverd fighter—balance in the saddle was not always simple, and fared far better with two hands than one. Deprived of her technique, the strength of Lenay fighting men became formidable. That last man had struck
hard.

Then Peg's hooves were pounding upon the packed earth road, ramshackle houses to either side, their doors smashed in. Further ahead, several dwellings were reduced to smouldering ashes. Beyond that, something large still burned. She raced by several bodies in the road, recently slashed and weapons at their side, blood pooling upon the dirt. Ahead, the road opened into what appeared to be a central village courtyard. Within, fighting raged, horses trampling in circles and swords clashing. There was no sign of villagers anywhere.

She burst into the courtyard and saw the main source of smoke—the roof of the broad, wooden training hall, which dominated the centre of the square, was on fire. Guardsmen seemed to have mostly won the fight against opposing cavalry as many Hadryn bodies lay sprawled about the square. Numerous guardsmen had dismounted to give chase into broken doorways, or across the debris of previously destroyed buildings. She noticed guardsmen clustered upon the front verandah of the training hall, hammering at the door with their sword hilts. One gave a harsh command to others, who went racing about to the building's other side, searching for entrances. From inside, she could hear the shrill cries of women.

Sasha spurred Peg forward while sheathing her sword. She leaped from the saddle, running across the stones and onto the verandah. “Someone give me a lift!” she yelled at the men hammering at the door, which appeared to be firmly locked. They spun…and to her surprise, the leader was Jaryd, his young face streaked with sweat beneath his helm. “Get me onto the roof! I can get in from there!”

“The damn roof's on fire, fool!” Jaryd yelled back as his men continued hammering.

“I know! I spend a lot more time in these buildings than you do, just trust me!”

Jaryd swore and ran to her side, hands clasped together for a cradle. Sasha stuck her foot in it, grasped the support pillar for balance and shoved upwards. Jaryd lifted at the same time, with a great heave, and she caught the verandah roof with both hands. She got an arm over, braced an elbow and scampered with both feet upon the pillar…it propelled her over the edge and onto the wooden shingles. She rolled upright, immediately feeling the heat of the flames that roared and surged upon the right side of the roof, threatening to cave it in.

Sasha ran up the increasing incline, aiming booted feet for the nails, knowing that a misstep could break straight through (she'd done it before, playing games on various roofs as a girl). She manoeuvred around the forward triangle panel and rolled onto the upper rooftop from there. Moved along a little way, then simply started kicking with a heel at a likely spot. A wooden shingle broke, and she kicked several more, clearing a space of exposed beams through which dark smoke poured out. One of the big Lenay soldiers might have struggled to fit through it, but Sasha quickly knelt, got both feet in, took her weight on her arms and lowered herself through with a hand-hold reversal, gasping a deep, final breath as she went.

Smoke within the enclosed ceiling space made breath and sight impossible. She screwed her eyes shut, held her breath, and felt about upon the straw ceiling matting for an edge. Pulled it up and threw it aside, drew her sword and plunged it point first through the light planks below. Stabbed repeatedly, then got her gloved hands into the broken gaps in the wood and pulled. They broke easily. Sasha threw them away, sheathed her sword as the lack of air began to burn at her lungs, stuck her head out of the gap below and saw the broad, open space of the training hall divided by multiple tachadar circles amidst numerous wooden ceiling supports. There were more horizontal beams below, and she grasped the edges of her hole, thrust her body out and half-somersaulted upon that grip, legs swinging and catching a beam. She grabbed onto it, swinging upside down by hands and knees, and overarmed to the ceiling pillar, sucking air thinly as the smoke clustered about the ceiling. She grabbed the pillar and slid down the smooth hewn sides to the ground, gasping a deep breath as the air cleared near the bottom.

A crowd of villagers were clustered at either end around the huge doors, which appeared to have been barred and padlocked. “Padlocked from the inside, but not the outside?” was her immediate thought. “How did the person with the key get out?” A crash from the middle of the hall interrupted that thought as ceiling beams collapsed in a clatter of flames, charcoal and sparks. The low ceiling of smoke was growing lower, the visibility already terrible, blocking light from the small windows high in the walls. A hammering sounded above the screams and crackling of the fire—someone trying to hack through a wall with axe or sword. Neither would work, these walls were vertyn hardwood, four times the weight of regular pine and just as many times the strength.

“Stand aside!” she yelled to the villagers. “Get aside, give some room!” They turned in astonishment and pulled others aside who had not heard, clothing held to their mouths, eyes wide with panic. Sasha redrew her sword and examined the padlock, a big, heavy, iron contraption, no doubt imported from the lowlands where such things were commonly engineered. She pointed to the nearest woman. “Hold this lock! Like this. Keep this side facing up! Don't worry, you'll keep your fingers!”

The woman grasped it in fear, held as instructed, and shut her eyes. About her, Sasha was aware, there were children crying. She took stance, trying to relax her shoulders…without a clean breath to take, it wasn't easy. But then, for her, swinging a sword was easier than breathing, and serrin steel was far tougher than iron. The lock broke with a ringing clash and Sasha tore the lock aside, villagers crowding to lift the heavy bar across the door and crash it to the ground. Pressure from inside and out sent it rolling aside and villagers poured out, clutching children and coughing for air.

Sasha remembered the group at the other end and turned back to stare desperately through the smoke…but already they were coming, skirting the flames.

“That's all of them?” Sasha yelled as they came. “No others?”

“That's all!” answered an elderly, coughing man. “They locked us in here, threatened to kill a child on the outside if we did not throw the key out…we…we didn't know the roof was afire until…”

“Tell me later!” She ushered him out, onto the verandah, to find that most of the others had already been escorted across the square to the neighbouring inn. She moved down the stairs and across the square at the old man's side, several women hastening to help.

Halfway across, and a thunder of hooves and motion took her attention left…a horseman came to a skittering pause, several men on foot behind, weapons in hand and assuredly Hadryn from their dark grey cloaks. Their heads were bare, hair closely cropped in the Verenthane way, nearly bare at the back and sides in the northern style. Gleaming star symbols hung prominently about their necks.

“It
is
the Cronenverdt bitch!” yelled the horseman to the others, their eyes wild with the fury of recent combat, sweaty, dirt-stained and, in several cases, bloody. “We may have lost Perys, but this trophy shall be ours!”

“Run!” Sasha yelled at the straggling villagers, who ran for the inn. The horseman spurred his mount, pounding straight for her. Sasha switched her sword to her left hand, and waited. For a charging warhorse, it seemed to be approaching very slowly. Everything did. The Hadryn's face was contorted with rage and the lust of revenge. And Sasha felt a wave of hatred, calm and smooth, like fire in her veins.

She rolled aside at the last moment, the rider's sword flashing empty air, performed a simple roll to one knee, a hand to the knife at her belt, and threw. The knife struck the passing rider in the side and he clutched at it with a cry.

The first of the foot soldiers reached her at full pelt and unloaded with a huge swing fit to cleave her in two…Sasha sidestepped with a neatly angled, swinging deflection, and slashed him open from behind as he skidded by. The second swung high, low and sideways, Sasha fading smoothly before each, feet and hands shifting in unison. A third came at her flank with a ready blow, and Sasha reversed the parry into a swivelling footing-change that took half a length from the new attacker before he realised he was in range. Her swing cleft head from shoulders, before reversing in turn to slash at her original opponent, low backhand to high overhead…his footing entangled as his defence struggled to make that difficult transition, his guard faltering, and Sasha split him across the middle with a vicious cut. A fourth charged with a roar, a huge man with bare biceps rippling beneath his sleeveless tunic…Sasha saw the basic pattern of his attack before perhaps even he did, and simply invited the right-quarter cross that she knew would follow the halfstep fake and thrust. Deflected it straight past its target as he overbalanced, her blade circling in that singular, foot-sliding movement to remove arm and head in quick, precise succession.

Silence, then. She stood amidst the gruesome, human carnage she had wrought, and looked about. She felt amazingly calm. Sound seemed to come at her as though from underwater. Colours appeared strange, almost tactile. The black smoke roiling above seemed impossibly black, and ominous. The blood that spurted and flooded about her boots was the deepest, reddest of reds she'd ever seen. She swung slowly in her stance, a sliding pivot in the centre of the dirt courtyard between neighbouring buildings and the burning hall. Behind, guardsmen were staring at her. Blades limp at their sides, paused as if halted in mid-rush, having come to her aid but finding themselves far too late for assistance.

Jaryd Nyvar was at their head, staring as if he'd seen a ghost. Sasha took a long, slow breath and stepped carefully past the ruined corpses, her boots already splattered red with blood. Jaryd made the Verenthane holy sign repeatedly. A Verenthane guardsman did likewise. Another made the spirit sign, then another. Further along, a guardsman had removed the rider she had knifed from his mount. He sat upon the dirt now, clutching the knife wound in his side, guarded at blade point. The wound, she noted coldly, appeared several finger-breadths away from his heart. More throwing practice was in order, it seemed.

“Your Highness…” Jaryd said hoarsely as she passed, eyes filled with utter disbelief. “I…please, Your Highness…”

From the verandah of the inn, a crowd of villagers stared and gasped amongst themselves.

“Synnich-ahn,” she heard the reverent, frightened murmur. “Synnich-ahn.” With wonder.

She paused before the fallen rider. He stared up at her from within a grimacing, battle-stained face. Hatred and fear battled for supremacy in his eyes. Sasha met his gaze directly with a stare of utter contempt.

“Where are your gods now?” she said.

T
HE COLUMN RODE FROM
P
ERYS
in the early afternoon, short five of their number. Two were dead, and another three bore wounds too severe for them to continue. All remained in Perys, confident of the goodwill and care of their hosts. Thirty-one to three. It was, Sasha reflected, an abject lesson in the importance of basic tactics.

She was almost surprised at herself for finding the time to think on such things through the turmoil and heartbreak of the scene at Perys. But above the suffering, and any simple human compassion, there was strategy. Such was the lesson that Kessligh had driven into her—that the lives of soldiers, and indeed the lives of an entire people, would in times of war become dependent upon something so simple as a commander's decisions and deployments. If Kessligh and Captain Tyrun had not been so competent many more families of Tyree would have been mourning the loss of a son, brother or father at Perys.

They left their Hadryn prisoners within the care of a Verenthane monastery along the valley from Perys. Leaving them in Perys, to the tender mercies of the townsfolk whose families they had slaughtered, was out of the question.

Sasha gazed along the old monastery walls as she rode beside them, turning back in her saddle to contemplate the single spire that thrust skyward above a magnificent sprawl of Lenay hillside. With its small, arched windows placed high in the walls, the monastery seemed as much to shun its beautiful surroundings as to revel in them. The Goeren-yai in her soul rebelled at the feel of it—dark, worn stone, unsmiling and welcomeless.

“How long has it been here, do you think?” she asked Kessligh, as they rode two abreast behind Damon and Captain Tyrun, the forward guard in full armour and banners ahead of them. Not that the banners could be seen for any distance through the thick pine forest…but then, there was always the prospect of ambush from Taneryns thinking them a Hadryn column, or vice-versa.