The Lioness

—hard upon the skull of a young elf leaping between the Lioness and Dark Knight. She saw the boy’s face—Ander! Blood spurted, white shards of skull tumbling through the air, and in the ruin of his face Kerian she saw the terrible surprise in his eyes as he fell. On the face of the Skull Knight there was fury as he lunged again. Kerian dropped back, hoping his thrust would overbalance him. It did not, and she moved swiftly, brought up her own blade, met his and held. Thagol, the heavier, pressed. Kerian, the lighter, let him. He thrust again, she moved as though to counter, then ducked hard aside. He lost his footing on the blood-slick earth. In the instant that bought her, she turned and screamed, Retreat! Retreat! With all the air in her lungs, every second the boy’s life bought her, she shouted her warriors off the field.

They did not hear her, they did not have to. The farmers and townsmen, never trained to fight, were the first to die. The outlaws, her good warriors, knew a losing fight when they saw one. They ran, leaping over the corpses of foes and friends alike, into the forest, deep into the woods and high up the granite slopes where, maybe, horses would find it hard to follow.

Kerian ran after, cursing, and hearing Lord Thagol’s laughter ringing not in her ears but bellowing through her mind.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Kerian counted her dead. She counted them by reckoning those who did not make it out, who fell in the forest to Knights, to the trampling hoofs of war horses, to swords, to maces, to Thagol’s evil. She counted them in tears and wasn’t ashamed of that. She wept, Jeratt did, and Feather’s Flight did not, for she was among the dead. She lay among the farmers, the villagers, beside Ander the miller’s son who had refused to hand her over to Thagol’s Knights. He’d been in love with her, so said Jeratt.

“When I close my eyes, I see it on him still, Jeratt. The look on him, dying for me.” The flash of madness, of glory as he flung himself between her and the killing steel.

They sat on a high, boulder-topped hill of the kind she first saw an age ago, in another autumn, as she climbed endlessly behind Stanach to avoid Knights on the road to the Hare and Hound. Stubborn, that day she’d climbed in ill-chosen boots until her feet bled. She thought, now, that her heart bled. When she looked down the hill, Kerian saw the dwarf coming up. He’d fought well—for a one-handed man, Jeratt had said.

“What are you going to do about the dwarf, Kerian?”

Kerian shrugged. “What’s to do? He’s here, and I can’t get him safely to Qualinost. He should have stayed hehind. Damn, maybe he should have stayed in Thorbardin.”

Kerian watched Stanach labor up the hill, weary as she, sweat running on him, a filthy bandage wrapped around his head.

“Are you all right?” she asked when he came close.

He looked up at her in moonlight, his eyes fierce as a blade’s edge. He said, “No, I’m Weeding. I’m hungry. I am in this gods damned forest, Mistress Lioness. I am not all right.” He looked around, behind, to the sides. “I don’t think any of us are.”

She frowned. Jeratt lifted his head.

“There’s something in the forest,” the dwarf said.

Jeratt rose, his hand on his sword.

“No.” Stanach dropped to a seat beside Kerian, his breathing a weary groaning. Kerian touched his shoulder lightly. He shook his head. “I’m all right. By Reorx’s beard, though, I am tired.

“In the forest,” he said, returning to what he’d started to say. “Not Knights. Not the rest of our folk straggling back or away. Something else. Something sly and quiet.”

Kerian nodded to Jeratt, who went off down the hill to gather a few of those still standing. They went out into the forest, cat-footed. A young woman ran up the hill—where did she get the strength?—to whisper in Kerian’s ear.

“Yes, and quickly. Keep an eye out for friends.”

Down she went, bounding, and in moments, one by one, guards took stands around the hill, setting a perimeter. Stanach put his arms on his drawn-up knees, his head on his forearms. He did not take four breaths before Kerian heard him gently snoring. She sat alone beside the sleeping emissary from Thorbardin, a dwarf far from home. When he wavered, she helped him lie down. He hardly woke, never missed a breath. Neither did he stir when Jeratt came back to say he’d found nothing and no one in the forest.

“I don’t know what the dwarf heard, but we didn’t see sign of anything. Just his imagination?”

Kerian glanced at Stanach, sleeping, then back. “Doesn’t usually have a very active imagination, does he?”

Jeratt agreed that he didn’t “What dwarf does? There’s nothing there, Kerian. Just the night, the forest and our doom, eh?”

Just those things. Jeratt sat down. He’d found a good stream and offered her his leather water bottle, fat and dripping. “That’s supper, I’m afraid, and I’m thinking breakfast won’t be much better.”