Octobers Baby by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

no time for ale or beer. Beer made him sweat, especially across his brow, and he needed no perspiration in his eyes during a fight.
    “Lock up after us,” he told Gerda as he swung into the saddle and accepted shield, ax, and lance from another of the women. “Helmet? Where’s my damned helmet?” He had left it with the foundered horse. “Somebody find me a helmet.” To Gerda again, “If we’re not back, don’t give up. Mocker’s on his way.”
    The girl who had brought him the milk returned with a helmet. Ragnarson groaned. It was gold-and silver-chased with high, spread silver wings at the sides, a noble’s dress helmet that he had plundered years ago. But she was right. It was the only thing around that would fit his head. If he weren’t so cheap, he’d have a spare. He disappeared into the thing, glared around, daring someone to laugh.
    No one did. The situation was too grim.
    “Dahl, what’s happening?”
    “Same as before.”
    Everyone was mounted, armed, ready. “Let’s go.”
    He wasted no time. He rode straight for the barrow, over sprouting wheat.
     
    V) Sometimes you bite the bear, and sometimes the bear bites you
    Even while still a long way away, Ragnarson saw that the situation was grim. There were four or five men on the barrow, afoot, surrounded. As many more were below, on horseback, hard-pressed. Men from both sides, unhorsed, were fighting on the 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 thou-sand 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 whilewarding 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