Chapter Eleven
Druadaen’s best guess at the remaining distance back to the sod house was only six or seven miles. But it might as well have been a hundred. And for the hundredth time since the pekt had started hunting him, he repented the choice he’d made four days ago: I should never have gone to Garasan’s pyre on my own.
For the last two hours, the pekt horns had been silent, but that was not a good sign. The one reasonable explanation was that they had found his trail again and were now more concerned with giving away their own position than trying to summon the more far-flung chasers to join the end of the hunt.
Although they were too numerous to fight, he’d had to resist the temptation to turn and make a final stand. That impulse had grown as his pace slowed and his breath became more ragged. Take some with you before you are quaking too hard to have a still hand on your bow, he’d thought. Or wield a sword before you lose all the skill and speed you trained so hard to acquire.
But, for the first time in his life, Druadaen realized that giving in to that final resolve was, in some way, also surrendering his best hope of survival: to keep going, as fast and as far as he could. Only by buying every possible minute could he maximize the chance of being saved by the only force that could still change the outcome: luck. Maybe one or more of the bountiers was out upon the Graveyard, or maybe the pekt would be attacked by hungry wolves. He could elect to go out in a final flash of dubious glory, but what had Fronbec said? “Only a fool stands his ground against a flood that’s over his head.” Words to live by. Or today, maybe to die by.
Druadaen kept running.
* * *
The fourth time that Druadaen stumbled and fell, he was only twenty yards south of a rise that was actually higher than he was tall. He lurched to his feet, forced himself to start jogging up the slope.
A ringing rose deep inside his ears. The sky spun and suddenly blackened.
He woke up staring at the undersides of gray clouds: the Graveyard’s perpetual shroud. Each breath a sharp, wheezing struggle, he rolled to a shoulder, pushed upright, and finally heard what he’d been listening for: the cries of the pekt.
It took a moment for his eyes to focus, to make out the stooped, loping figures closing from the south. He rose shakily to one knee, put a hand to his sword’s hilt, drew it an inch so that the blade wouldn’t hitch on its way out of the scabbard.
He reached for his bow and, not for the first time, was glad for its compact design. Larger than a shortbow or typical horsebow, but smaller than a full composite bow, he could use it from a kneeling position. His heart was hammering hard enough without trying to stand, which would also have given any pek archers an easier target. And if he kept trying to outrun them, he’d be dead in a minute, maybe two. But with a bow, he might drive them to ground, force them to flank him, and so buy even more time.
He reached behind to the quiver, fingertips on the fletching of the first arrow, and felt it flop oddly against his back. He finished pulling it over his shoulder.
The shaft was half-snapped, just an inch forward of where the fletching began. Odd. Druadaen frowned, drew another.
And discovered himself holding another ruined arrow, broken at more or less the same place.
He unslung the quiver and saw the cause. When he’d blacked out, he’d fallen against a hard lump of prairie: probably a rock with a thin cover of soil and grass. The quiver had broken his impact, but at the expense of far too many arrows. Only six remained.
Well, Druadaen thought, I won’t be buying quite as much time with archery as I had hoped. He labored to pace his breathing, surveyed the oncoming pekt.
Three were much closer than the others: barely one hundred and fifty yards away. Probably the first ones to rediscover his trail, or sent ahead as harriers because they were faster. They were slender—well, skinny—for pekt and one had a horn around his neck. No sign of bows.
The next group—probably twice as large—was still almost five hundred yards off. Some in that group were larger, but they were charging to close the range. It was too far to be sure if any had bows, but several had two handed axes or polearms. On the rest, he spied the curve of shields carried on their backs. So, few archers, if any. Druadaen nocked his first shaft and strove to still the pounding in his temples. If he could bring down the first three, that might—might—cause the rest to approach more cautiously.
As the first group reached one hundred yards, they began a headlong charge; if they had any thought to make themselves difficult targets, they gave no sign of it. Druadaen drew to his ear, chose the horn-bearer in the middle, breathed deep, and was hardly aware of loosing the arrow.
Despite the flatter trajectory of the composite bow, he still overestimated the rate of drop; the shaft missed the top of the pek’s head by a hand’s width.
By that time, Druadaen had drawn the next arrow from over his shoulder and was sighting along it. As the targets grew in size, he felt the forces affecting the shot—their charge, the arrow’s trajectory, the breath of the wind—all align. As he relaxed his fingers to release the arrow, he realized that the throbbing in his temples was finally subsiding.
The arrow—a broad-headed hunting point—drove into the middle pek’s chest, just to the right of the sternum. He staggered, stumbled, fell.
Druadaen was barely aware of nocking the second arrow and loosing it in one fluid motion. And, as was often the case with the shots he thought about the least, it hummed to a quivering stop just below the base of another pek’s neck, driven into the collarbone.
But the third of the three—the smallest—was also the fastest. Druadaen had just enough time to pull another shaft over his shoulder and draw the bow before realizing that this pek had learned from the error of his fellows: he dodged as he came within twenty yards.
Druadaen checked his release, rode along with his target’s motion, knowing that the pek would have to break stride to resume his charge—
There! A final, feinted sideways step became a forward stride, and Druadaen loosed the arrow.
It hit, but not where he’d intended. The pek howled as it transfixed his left thigh, stumbled, righted himself, started limp-sprinting forward. In that moment, Druadaen drew another arrow and waited for when his enemy’s gait broke and slowed: the point where he had to drag his wounded leg forward.
Druadaen loosed his fifth arrow when the pek was only ten yards away. It hit and cut through the uncured chest armor with a sibilant sss-thk!
The pek fell forward. If it hadn’t already been dead, its forward fall finished the job, driving the arrow the rest of the way through its torso before it broke.
Druadaen drew his last arrow and surveyed the field. It was possible that some of the other arrows were salvageable, but it would take too long to cut free those that had hit. The one that had missed was over a hundred yards away: still too far, even though the half dozen pekt that had been racing toward him were now in a slow, crouching approach. As he watched, two of them angled off to either side: flankers.
So he’d bought himself some time, after all, but probably not more than a minute, maybe two. Before drawing his last arrow, he took the shield from his back and laid it where he could snatch it up quickly, then paused, considering the comparative merits of using his left hand to wield the shortsword, instead. Its quillons were fashioned to catch an attacker’s weapon and it preserved his agility.
But there were six pekt, and not only were most of them quite large but several were armed with two-handed weapons; the force of those blows was likely to be more than he could parry, let alone catch, with a shortsword. So he would rely upon the sword and shield, just like the Legions, and hope for the best.
However, that hope was becoming increasingly forlorn. The pekt had paused to sound their horns again, probably calling even more of their fellows to the final slaughter. But the second sonorous summons stopped abruptly. In the next instant, the pekt unaccountably begun to move away, breaking into a trot a moment later.
Druadaen stood wondering after them. Was it some kind of trick? Apparently not, because they had begun to run. Was it possible? Had his archery broken the nerve of six pekt warriors when he was down to his last arrow? Could he possibly be so lucky? Had he, in fact, prevailed?
Druadaen’s heart was thumping out such a wild tattoo of victory and relief that he almost missed the similar pounding that, like dull thunder struck from the loam of the plain, rose swiftly behind him.
He turned—and was almost killed where he stood. Horses—percherons in leather barding—came galloping over the rise, so close on either side that his hair was ruffled in the wake of their passing. The riders wore metal cuirasses and were otherwise cased in mail and streamed toward the routing pekt. Their narrow lances lowered, steel points winking faintly.
Druadaen laid aside his bow, drew his shortsword, then his longsword and, ignoring his shield, walked unsteadily forward to help his rescuers however he might.