A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,151

leaned in his saddle, drew and loosed, putting an arrow into the Feral’s eye, little more than the fletching left visible. It spasmed in the air, a convulsion of limbs as it died, crashing to the ground and rolling in a heap.

Bleda galloped past it.

And then they were too close for arrows, Bleda’s bow slipping back into its case, his sword hissing from its scabbard, all those along his line doing the same. They crashed into the rear of the creatures, hooves and horseflesh pounding, trampling, mangling the first line of the musclebound beasts. Bleda and his guard lay about them either side with their swords, hacking and chopping, sending great bloody gouts trailing through the air. Then they were slowing, the press and heave of bodies crushed together halting their advance. Ferals twisted to face this new foe, tearing at Bleda and his warriors. Bleda dug his heels into his horse, hacked and stabbed, but still he could not break through to his mother’s warriors. He could see them, hear his mother’s voice as she bellowed at her enemy, but there were too many.

A Feral climbed up a dying horse and leaped at Bleda; in mid-leap Riv crashed into it, sending it hurtling back to the ground, a red wound in its chest. She swooped back up, hovering above them to loose more arrows into the Ferals.

We cannot break through to my mother. And there is another mass of Ferals beyond her.

Bleda felt his hope dying, vowed to sell his life as dearly as he could. Close by, he saw Ellac reel in his saddle, claws from a Feral opening up red wounds across his face.

And then horns were blaring, from within the trees to his left. Cheren horns.

Uldin.

He saw riders appear, bursting from the treeline: Cheren warriors with their bows in their fists, hundreds of them. Uldin rode at their head, and Jin at his side. They thundered across the open space between the forest and road, and hope flickered in Bleda’s heart.

We may yet break through, with the Cheren at our side.

Bleda’s eyes met Jin’s and she smiled at him, a cold, fierce thing.

And then the Cheren ploughed into the flank of Erdene’s warband and began cutting down Sirak warriors, screaming their battle-cries as they killed.

And his mother’s words returned to him, from that day on the weapons-field in Drassil. She had leaned close and whispered in his ear.

Never trust the Cheren.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

FRITHA

Fritha held her fist up and called a halt. Shouted commands behind her.

Arn rode to her side.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“This is the place,” Fritha said.

They were standing at the crest of a ridge, a long, gentle incline leading down to a crag-strewn plain. Red fern and yellow gorse dotted the landscape, dark scars marking ragged fissures and gullies that wound through the land like old, unhealed wounds. To the right a rocky precipice reared, scattered woodland before it.

“We will fight them here,” Fritha said.

“Here?” Arn said. He looked around. “It’s too open.” He had raised Fritha on the hit-and-run warfare of the outnumbered and out-skilled. It had done them well, seen their ranks grow and given them countless minor victories.

But this was the Order of the Bright Star they were about to fight. It would be one battle. One huge victory, or one crushing defeat.

They stand between me and my destiny, to destroy the Ben-Elim and their pathetic sycophants, the White-Wings.

The Order of the Bright Star will not keep me from that, no matter what its reputation is.

Besides them Elise rippled on her coils. Wherever Fritha went, Elise was close by. She looked at Arn, her father, with the hint of a scowl and gave a disapproving rattle of her long, sinuous tail.

That is an interesting development.

“If Fritha saysss we fight here, then thisss is where we fight,” Elise said. Her voice had changed, too, the edge of a reptilian hiss to it.

Fritha liked these changes. And she liked Elise’s loyalty, more apparent than before.

Arn frowned at his daughter but said nothing.

Fritha surveyed the land again.

“Here.” She nodded and looked back over her shoulder.

In the distance pinpricks of fire bloomed, scores of them scattered across the landscape, and behind them dark stains of scorched, blackened earth. Holds and hamlets that Fritha had fired on her march south.

“Draw the Order out,” Gulla had said, so Fritha had given their crows and scouts something to see, a warband slaughtering its way south, destroying all before it as it travelled.

That should stir the Order’s sanctimonious heart, Fritha thought.