The Lioness

Jeratt whistled. Every head turned, faces lifted. He gestured, and Kerian counted them, coming. There weren’t more than a hundred of them, with weakened weapons. Some had stolen swords, lifted from corpses. Out in the forest, there had to be half as many draconians and twice as many Knights. She gathered her warriors around her.

“Find cover wherever you can, make them find you. We don’t rush; we don’t attack. We hold this hill until we’ve killed all we can.”

Until they have killed us.

Beside her, Stanach made his axe sing to a whetstone. Little sparks flew up from the blade. It amazed her he still had it. The weapon was made to fly, to kill at a distance. It was easily the first weapon lost in any battle.

“Are you fond of it?” she asked, her eyes on the forest, watching for her foe.

“The axe. Pretty much. I made it.”

She turned, surprised. “You?”

From lowering brows, he looked at her. He held up his hand, the one with the broken fingers. He turned the hand over, as though to study it. “Surprising, isn’t it? Fight pretty good for a one-handed man. Imagine what I could do with two.”

The color mounted to her cheeks as she watched him study his hand. He didn’t move those fingers, he couldn’t, but sight of them reminded her of the sign above his tavern door, a broken hammer on an anvil’s breast Stanach’s Curse.

“Look,” said the dwarf, with his axe pointing down to the forest. “Time has come, Mistress Lioness.”

Time had come. The Knights came through the forest on foot, their steeds abandoned. They did not come clanking in armor. They came lightly, in mail and some wearing breastplates. They came behind a vanguard of draconians, the lizard-men their shield and decisive weapon all at once. The wind came from behind, carrying the reptile stench of them, the reek of their foul breath.

“Archers,” Kerian said, surprised by the coolness of her voice. “Draconians first. Go after them the way they used to go after dragons in the days before dragonlances—aim for the eyes, send your shaft right through to their tiny brains and drop them where they stand. Let the Knights wade through the poison.”

Jeratt laughed, liking the picture of that.

“We never leave this hill,” Kerian said. “We make them come up.”

Closer, the draconians slashed through the underbrush, and now Kerian heard their voices, growling curses in a language whose every word seemed like a curse. She put a hand on Jeratt’s arm. She knew this was the moment to steady him or he’d leap too soon.

“Easy,” she said. “Let them see us. Let them come to us.”

He quivered under her hand, but he held. Because he did, the rest did. Arrows whispered from quivers. By the handful each archer took them, one to nock to the bowstring, four to hold between clenched teeth.

“Not till you see the first of them among the ashes of our fires,” Kerian warned.

Below the crest, on either side, men and women with swords and war-axes stood ready to fall upon whatever enemy made it up the hill.

“Soft,” Kerian said, “now patient, patient.”

The first draconian stepped into the empty campsite, stopped and looked around. His fellows came after, and they slowed, then stopped, looking around for prey.

Stanach stood and tucked his whetstone into the little pouch at his belt. Jeratt took a careful breath around the shafts of his arrows. He lifted his bow. Every archer had an eye on Kerian, and every one of them saw her lift her hand, drew breath as she did, and let fly when she dropped her fist.

The arrow-storm whistled down the hill, shrieking in the morning silence. One draconian fell, and another. A third, and one after that. Four in the first volley! It was not enough. Came the second volley, and two more fell. One stumbled into the decomposing corpse of his fellow and died screaming. Three fell wounded, and it needed another volley to kill those.

Kerian shouted, “Archers!” and the fourth volley flew.

Beyond the hissing, reeking corpses of draconians, the Knights stopped. Some stumbled into the acid, others pulled away in time, and those saw their prey atop the hill.

“Go!” shouted Thagol, pointing. “Charge them!”

The Skull Knight drove them hard, howled at them, cursed them, and sent them around the deadly draconian corpses. They split and regrouped to come up the hill from the sides.

Heart hammering, her sword in her right hand, the dwarf-made knife in her left, Kerian looked at Jeratt, looked at Stanach.

“Now,” she said, as the first of Thagol’s men came up the hill. “For the song!”

For the song, she cried, and even as she did, her battle cry changed to a baffled shout as the line of Knights wavered at the sides and in the rear. From the crest, she saw them falter and fall out, one after another staggering from the line. Some cried out, others fell in silence, as death came suddenly.

“Look!” Jeratt shouted. “What is that?”

He pointed. Something moved like a shadow behind the Knights, dark and swift and silent.

“By the gods,” Jeratt whispered. “It’s him.”