Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

though, were catching up knives and swords and spears, surrounding Jehan, striking, lashing out. One leaped upon his back as another laid open his side. Lacerated a hundred times, bleeding and concussed, Jehan fell quickly, and the servants rushed to carry Berard to his couch. Someone was calling for water, someone else ran off screaming for a physician; but dizziness and darkness were growing on Berard, and from short, flickering glimpses of the faces of his servants—all he could see now—he judged that he was beyond the help of any leechcraft.

The rank, metallic taste of regurgitated blood was welling up in his throat along with his breakfast bread and wine as Berard flailed out with his good hand, batted the servants away, staggered to his feet. The flat carpet bucked and fought his feet treacherously, but he lurched to the tent flap and pushed outside. Close by, he knew, were the men, assembled and ready for the assault.

He was almost blind now, and he did not know whether his blood-filled throat would be able to shout, but he sucked air into his lungs and forced it out again:

“Fire the mines! Full assault! Straight up the middle!”

The ground tipped, and his useless arm flapped like the piece of dead meat that it was, He fought to stay on his feet, but his legs rebelled against him, and he spun in little circles like a crippled dog. He could hear shouts, cries of confusion. Were they giving up?

He tried to shout, to curse, to repeat his orders, but his words, drowned in his own blood, burbled and wheezed out in a crimson froth.

There was a roaring, then: a sudden blare of horns and hoofbeats and challenges. Berard managed to focus on a black banner streaming in the east wind. It was approaching him quickly, like the urgent herald of a King coming into his Kingdom, and though he could not see who bore it, his failing sight gave him a last, fading glimpse of what was on it: the figure of a standing knight lifting a sword against an attacking lion.

Aurverelle.

He stared, but the blood loss overwhelmed him then and left him in a sightless world. He felt the ground come up to meet him like a fist, felt his breath flutter to a stop, felt the fires of his wounds go cold. And all that penetrated the husk that he was, all that stirred it into a momentary recognition and remembrance of life and living before it slid into finality was the sound of a battle cry that rose from many throats as from one:

“Elthia!”

Chapter Thirty-two

Unfurling banners and pennants and shouting out their challenge, the forces commanded by Christopher and Paul swept down from the east and north, charging out of morning mist thick with the smoke of the forest fire, driving straight into the startled ranks of the free companies.

Spears hit their mark, striking deadly and centered upon steel carapaces. Horses reared, lashing out with their hooves, pummeling and battering the archers before they had a chance to nock an arrow. Axes and maces and swords lifted and fell . . . and Berard's men fell beneath them.

But even in the midst of the initial charge, Christopher had realized that there was a strange sense of indecision and hesitancy about Berard's men. Some had been arguing, shouting, gesticulating animatedly. Servants had been running in and out of Berard's tent. A few groups of soldiers had appeared to be actually walking away.

It was too good to be true, and to Christopher's utter surprise and shock, it remained too good to be true. The forces of the Aurverelle alliance met with startled faces, a complete lack of morale . . . and little else. They plowed and furrowed the human field with which they were presented and left behind a scattered mass of panic.

Dismounted for the assault, hemmed in by the village and the forest, Berard's men had no chance whatsoever to fight before they were ridden down, hacked, spitted, and crushed. Christopher, resplendent in the golden armor he had taken from the Shrinerock armory, found himself surrounded by men who were not so much running or fighting as floundering like so many stranded fish. The outcome of a battle, it was said, could be determined by the loosing of the sixth arrow, but here there were no arrows—the archers had been among the first to go down—and the outcome, it seemed, had been determined even before the charge.

No quarter had been asked, and none would have been given in any case, for Christopher had pronounced sentence upon the free companies nearly two weeks ago. The business of killing, therefore, turned into hot, revolting work; and since his spear had broken after his third charge, Christopher now used the plain, unadorned sword that had replaced the relic-laden wonder he had lost, along with his illusions, at Nicopolis.

He still had no illusions. The French, he knew, would have issued a challenge and waited politely while the free companies formed up—or perhaps negotiated. Not so Christopher. Surprise, like thrown apples or breaking into noblemen's bedrooms, was unchivalrous, but effective. Still, though, what he was seeing as he stood up in his stirrups and smashed his weapon down on the steel helmets and visors of men who wept and cried out and struggled ineffectively was much more than surprise alone could account for. Something else had happened.

Across the field he saw Martin and Paul delMari, both clad in Aurverelle armor, fighting side by side through the shuddering mass of milling, frightened man-flesh. Martin was young, strong, and, yes, by the Lady, he could indeed fight. There was no mincing nervousness or sense of craven apology here, just strong shoulders, an obviously cool head, and regardless of his choice of bedmates, a lusty, male swagger.

The three met in the middle of death. As his horse pranced spiritedly among the armor-clad bodies lying thick on the ground, Paul raised his visor, lifted his sword in salute.