(This follows Northward - Part 2)
Surprise widened the dark-circled eyes of the wild warrior. It was swiftly followed by a narrowing of those same features. Suspicion, to hear his native tongue fumbled from the lips of a foreigner.
“Are there more of you?” he growled, flicking his gaze sideways without turning his head.
Brynleigh hesitated only a fraction of a breath. “Yes,” she replied coolly.
Her answer prompted the Wildman to throw a proper glance over his shoulder, looking back into the shadowed hollow from which she had emerged. Seeing nothing of note, he turned to her with a glare. “There is no one there. I hear nothing.”
“They are coming just behind me,” she said. In her mind, her voice sounded fragmented, shaky, and fearful. She prayed that the sound issuing from her lips was steadier than she imagined. The tongue was not that of her homeland, after all. Perhaps he would reason that her stammering was nothing but unfamiliarity rather than the anxiety of deception.
Jack was restless beneath her, stomping at the soft earth, throwing up clods of soil that spattered behind them, beyond her field of vision.
The dark-faced man looked at the impressive stallion again, then pointed faintly with the tip of his spear. “Leave your horse and go on foot.”
A moment of shock delayed the woman’s response. “He would dash himself to death on these rocks before allowing you to touch him!” Her fingers tightened around her sword-hilt.
“He will be dead before nightfall and feeding our children’s bellies,” growled the man, adjusting the grip on the spear-shaft. “Or you go on foot and I will only sell him instead of carve him.”
“I want no quarrel with you,” she answered, and the fearful thrumming of her heart made her words breathy and faint. It was a weak sound, she knew. “Nor your people. I only seek to pass north unhindered.”
The Dunlending had stepped forward. The movement so slow that she hadn’t noticed it. His eyes were watchlights, stark and haunting. Her skin prickled with goosebumps. “You will not get half a league, forgoil,” he spat. “There are scouts up ahead, in the rocks and the trees. We make no sound. We blend into the earth. A spear will be through your heart before you feel a thing…”
The encroaching man had snuck too near. Jack burst out with a roar, and reared up, lashing out with his forehooves. Brynleigh felt a scream explode in her breast, but it never reached her lips. With her blade in her right hand, the fingers of her left could only cling to the reins while her weight slipped hazardously in the saddle. She bore down with her thighs and knees, willing herself to hold fast.
The horse’s weight came down with a thunderous sound, and he bellowed through his nostrils. Brynleigh looked up, frantically trying to regain her balance. Beyond the thrashing of Jack’s head and the wildly streaming mane, she saw the Wildman circling, his spear-head now pointed at them.
“Nay, Jack!” she cried, feeling his bulk turn beneath her to face the threat head-on. “We must flee!” Endless hours of practiced sword lessons, railing at straw-filled dummies, it all felt empty and useless behind the frenetic pounding of her heart and the crazed prancing of the horse. She had never trained to fight from horseback. There had never been a need, much less a master to teach her.
The Dunlending was dancing from one foot to the other, eyeing the beast before him, looking for an opening to strike.
A cold and terrible truth settled over Brynleigh, like a descending fog. Jack would face down any foe. He would never back down nor flee. His bearing had never been more proud, every muscle tensed and bulging. So long as his rider was upon his back, his spirit was that of his mearas forefathers. And he would give his life before letting her fall.
There was only one thing to do.
She jerked her feet free of the stirrups, braced her hands on his broad, floundering back, and flung herself to the ground. Jack reeled in confusion, whirling around her. Beyond the spray of soil and grass that had been churned into the air by his hooves, the Wildman stood with his feet planted, his shoulders curled.
“Jack, GO!” she hollered, without taking her eyes from their foe. She knew the horse would not obey, but inwardly implored that he might at least keep himself out of harm’s way.
Behind the man’s feral, black-smeared face, a cluster of sparrows burst from a thicket and fled from the frightening melee. Something pricked at Brynleigh’s heart, even as she readied her blade, hoisting it before herself. It was springtime. The air was scented with things green and growing. It was a time for life. For birth. For newness and hope.
Not bloodshed and death.
But Death cared nothing for seasons, nor hearts, nor the musings of Men. Death plucked its harvest at its own whimsy.
I do not wish to kill!
This thought was her last. The Dunlending warrior charged with a blood-curdling cry, and in her mind’s eye, a dozen faces flashed, one after the other, quicker than she could name them. There was a great roaring in her ears, she felt no air in her lungs nor the ground under her feet. Only the hot solidity of the sword in her grasp, cutting through the air.
And then nothingness.
