Book 2 - October's Baby by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

ground. There were more attackers than defenders, and those professionals by their look. He couldn't see Elana. Fear snapped at his heart like the sudden bite of a bear trap.
    He was not afraid of the fighting—much; a truly fearless man was a fool and certain to die young—but of losing Elana. They had an odd, open marriage. Outsiders sometimes thought there was no love between them, but their interdependence went beyond love. Without one another, neither would have been a complete person.
    He slowed the pace briefly, signaled his lancers into line abreast. Those who couldn't handle a lance stayed back with their bows.
    Some cavalry charge, Ragnarson thought. Six lances. In Libiannin Greyfells had commanded fourteen thousand horses and ten thousand bows, plus spearmen and mercenaries.
    But every battle was the big one to the men involved. Scope and scale had no meaning when your life was on the line. It came down to you and the man you had to kill before he could kill you.
    The foreigners weren't expecting more company. Indeed, a freehold this size should have had fewer men about, but Ragnarson's land wasn't a freehold (in the sense that he had been enfiefed and owed the Crown a military obligation), and many of his hangers-on weren't married.
    The attackers noticed his approach only after he was less than a quarter-mile distant. They had hardly begun to sort themselves out when he struck.
    Ragnarson presented his lance, swung his shield across his body, gripped his reins in his lance hand. His shield was a round one, in the Trolledyngjan style, and not fit for a horseman. He paid the price almost immediately.
    As his lancehead entered the breast of his first opponent, a glancing saber stroke slashed his unshielded left thigh. The sudden pain distracted him. He lost his .lance as the man he had slain went over his horse's tail.
    Then his mount smashed into two others, momentarily trapping him. He couldn't drag out his sword. He clawed at the Trolledyngjan ax slung across his back while
     warding off swordstrokes with his shield, began chopping kindling from the nearest unfamiliar target.
    A progression of dark faces appeared before him, men his own age with deep-set, dark eyes and heavy aquiline noses, like a parade of bin Yousif s. Desert men. But not Haroun's Royalists. What were they doing this far from Hammad al Nakir?
    Three opponents he demolished with his berserk, overpowering attack, then, with a sinking in his stomach, felt his mount going down. Someone had slashed her hamstrings. He had to hurl ax and shield away as he leapt to avoid being pinned beneath. The jump threw him face-first into someone's boot and stirrup. A swordstroke proved the small battle-worth of his fancy helmet. A wing came off. A dent so deep that the metal bruised his scalp left him half-unconscious. On hands and knees, with hooves stamping all around, he lifted his visor to heave the milk he had drunk.
    With bile in his mouth, thinking the pukes and a dented helmet were cheaper than a shaved ear, he rose in the melee like a bear beset by hounds, sprang barehanded at the nearest enemy not looking his way. With his forearm across the man's throat, using him as a shield, he struggled out of the thickest press.
    While strangling his victim, he looked around. The remaining horsemen were drifting toward the forest. Only a handful from either side were still in their saddles. His own people, on the ground, were having the best of a more numerous foe. They were in their element, being infantrymen by trade. Here and there they were linking up in twos and threes. In a bit they would have a shield wall.
    Things weren't going that well atop the mound. He saw Elana now. She, Uthe Haas, and another man were trying to hold off three times their number and managing well enough that their attackers had not noticed their comrades withdrawing.
    There was no one to send to the mound. Except himself. And he would be no use charging into that mess. Just fodder for