Best Served Cold

And not ten strides from her, through the mass of writhing bodies, Faithful Carpi sat on his big warhorse, roaring like a madman. He hadn’t much changed-the same broad, honest, scarred face. The bald pate, the thick white moustache and the white stubble round it. He’d got himself a shiny breastplate and a long red cloak better suited to a duke than a mercenary. He had a flatbow bolt sticking from his shoulder, right arm hanging useless, the other raised to point a heavy sword towards the house.

The strange thing was that she felt a rush of warmth when she first laid eyes on him. That happy pang you get when you see a friend’s face in a crowd. Faithful Carpi, who’d led five charges for her. Who’d fought for her in all weathers and never let her down. Faithful Carpi, who she would’ve trusted with her life. Who she had trusted with her life, so he could sell it cheap for Cosca’s old chair. Sell her life, and sell her brother’s too.

The warmth didn’t last long. The dizziness faded with it, left her a dose of anger scalding her guts and a stinging pain down the side of her head where the coins held her skull together.

The mercenaries could be bitter fighters when they had no other choice, but they much preferred foraging to fighting and they’d been withered by that first volley, rattled by the shock of men where they hadn’t expected them. They had spears ahead, enemies in the buildings, archers at the windows and on the flat stable roof, shooting down at their leisure. A rider shrieked as he was dragged from his saddle, spear tumbling from his hand and clattering at Monza’s feet.

A couple of his comrades turned their horses to run. One made it back into the paddock. The other was poked wailing from his saddle with a sword, foot caught in one stirrup, dancing upside down while his horse thrashed about. Faithful Carpi was no coward, but you don’t last thirty years as a mercenary without knowing when to make a dash for it. He wheeled his horse around, chopping an Osprian soldier down and laying his skull wide open in the mud. Then he was gone round the side of the farmhouse.

Monza clawed up the fallen spear in her gloved hand, snatched hold of the bridle of the riderless horse with the other and dragged herself into the saddle, her sudden bitter need to kill Carpi putting some trace of the old spring back into her lead-filled legs. She pulled the horse around to face the farmyard wall, gave it her heels and jumped it, an Osprian soldier flinging his flatbow down and diving out of her way with a cry. She thumped down on the other side, jolting in the saddle and near stabbing herself in the face, crashed out into the wheat, stalks thrashing at the legs of her stolen horse as it struggled up the long slope. She fumbled the spear across into her left hand, took the reins in her right, crouched down and drummed up a jagged canter with her heels. She saw Carpi stop at the top of the rise, a black outline against the bright eastern sky, then turn his horse and tear away.

She burst out from the wheat and across a field spotted with thorny bushes, downhill now, clods of mud flying from the soft ground as she dug her mount to a full gallop. Not far ahead of her Carpi jumped a hedgerow, greenery thrashing at his horse’s hooves. He landed badly, flailing in the saddle to keep his balance. Monza picked her spot better, cleared the hedge easily, gaining on him all the time. She kept her eyes ahead, always ahead. Not thinking of the speed, or the danger, or the pain in her hand. All that was in her mind was Faithful Carpi, and his horse, and the overpowering need to stick her spear into one or the other.

They thundered across an unplanted field, hooves hammering at the thick mud, towards a crease in the ground that looked like a stream. A whitewashed building gleamed beside it in the brightening morning sun, a mill-house from what Monza could tell with the world shaking, wobbling, rushing around her. She strained forwards over her horse’s neck, gripping hard at the spear couched under her arm, wind rushing at her narrowed eyes. Willing herself closer to Faithful Carpi. Willing herself closer to vengeance. It looked as though his horse might have picked up a niggle when he spoiled that jump, she was making ground on him now, making ground fast.

There were just three lengths between them, then two, specks of mud from the hooves of Carpi’s warhorse flicking in her face. She drew herself up in the saddle, pulling back the spear, sun twinkling on the tip for a moment. She caught a glimpse of Faithful’s familiar face as he jerked his head round to look over his shoulder, one grey eyebrow thick with blood, streaks down his stubbly cheek from a cut on his forehead. She heard him growl, digging hard with his spurs, but his horse was a heavy beast, better suited to charging than fleeing. The bobbing head of her mount crept slowly closer and closer to the streaming tail of Carpi’s, the ground a brown blur rushing by between the two.