Strategy? ‘Get ready,’ I told them.
‘How do you know this?’ Honey challenged me.
‘Let’s run!’ suggested Piper. She didn’t care how I knew. The wideness of her eyes told me how much she had feared this.
‘No. They’ll overtake us, and we’ll be winded when they do. And even if we did outrun them, we’d still have to get past them tomorrow.’ I dropped my bundle to the road, kicked it clear of me. Nothing in it was worth my life. If we won, I’d be able to pick it up again. If we didn’t, I wouldn’t care. But Honey and Piper and Josh were musicians. Their instruments were in their bundles. None of them moved to free themselves from their burdens. I didn’t waste my breath suggesting they do so. Almost instinctively, Piper and Honey moved to flank the old man. They gripped their walking sticks too tightly. Mine settled in my hands and I held it balanced and at the ready, waiting. For an instant I stopped thinking entirely. My hands seemed to know what to do of their own accord.
‘Cob, take care of Honey and Piper. Don’t worry about me, just don’t let them get hurt,’ Josh ordered me tersely.
His words broke through to me, and suddenly terror flooded me. My body lost its easy ready stance, and all I could think of was the pain defeat would bring me. I felt sick and shaky and wanted more than anything to simply turn and run, with no thought for the minstrels. Wait, wait, I wanted to cry to the day. I am not ready for this, I do not know if I will fight or run or simply faint where I stand. But time knows no mercy. They come through the brush, Nighteyes told me. Two come swiftly and one lags behind. I think he shall be mine.
Be careful, I warned him. I heard them crackling through the brush and scented the foulness of them. A moment later, Piper cried out as she spotted them, and then they rushed out of the trees at us. If my strategy was stand and fight, theirs was simply run up and attack. They were both larger than I was, and seemed to have no doubts at all. Their clothing was filthy but mostly intact. I did not think they had been Forged long. Both carried clubs. I had little time to comprehend more than that.
Forging did not make folk stupid, nor slow. They could no longer sense or feel emotions from others, nor, it seemed, recall what those emotions might make an enemy do. That often made their actions almost incomprehensible. It did not make them any less intelligent than they had been when whole, or any less skilled with their weapons. They did, however, act with an immediacy in satisfying their wants that was wholly animal. The horse they stole one day they might eat the next, simply because hunger was a more immediate want than the convenience of riding. Nor did they co-operate in a battle. Within their own groups, there was no loyalty. They were as likely to turn on one another to gain plunder as to attack a common enemy. They would travel together, and attack together, but not as a concerted effort. Yet they remained brutally cunning, remorselessly clever in their efforts to get what they desired.
I knew all this. So I was not surprised when both of them tried to get past me to attack the smaller folk first. What surprised me was the cowardly relief I felt. It paralysed me like one of my dreams, and I let them rush past me.
Honey and Piper fought like angry and frightened minstrels with sticks. There was no skill, no training there, not even the experience to fight as a team and thus avoid clubbing each other or Josh in the process. They had been schooled to music, not battle. Josh was paralysed in the middle, gripping his staff, but unable to strike out without risking injury to Honey or Piper. Rage contorted his face.
I could have run then. I could have snatched up my bundle and fled down the road and never looked back. The Forged ones would not have chased me; they were content with whatever prey was easiest. But I did not. Some tatter of courage or pride survived in me still. I attacked the smaller of the two men, even though he seemed more skilled with his cudgel. I left Honey and Piper to whack away at the larger man, and forced the other to engage with me. My first blow caught him low on the legs. I sought to cripple him, or at least knock him down. He did roar out with pain as he turned to attack me, but seemed to move no slower for it.
It was another thing I had noticed about Forged ones: pain seemed to affect them less. I knew that when I had been so badly beaten, a great part of what unmanned me was distress at the destruction of my body. It was odd to realize I had an emotional attachment to my own flesh. My deep desire to keep it functioning well surpassed simple avoidance of pain. A man takes pride in his body. When it is damaged, it is more than a physical thing. Regal had known that. He had known that every blow his guardsmen dealt me inflicted a fear with its bruise. Would he send me back to what I had been, a sickly creature who trembled after exertion, and feared the seizures that stole both body and mind from him? That fear had crippled me as much as their blows. Forged ones seemed not to have that fear; perhaps when they lost their attachment to everything else, they lost all affection for their own bodies.
My opponent spun about and dealt me a blow with his cudgel that sent a shock up to my shoulders as I caught it on my staff. Small pain, my body whispered to me of the jolt, and listened for more. He struck at me again, and again I caught it. Once I had engaged him, there was no safe way to turn and flee. He used his cudgel well: probably a warrior once, and one trained with an axe. I recognized the moves and blocked, or caught, or deflected each one. I feared him too much to attack him, feared the surprise blow that might streak past my staff if I did not constantly guard myself. I gave ground so readily that he glanced back over his shoulder, perhaps thinking he could just turn away from me and go after the women. I managed a timid reply to one of his blows; he barely flinched. He did not weary, nor did he give me space to take advantage of my longer weapon. Unlike me, he was not distracted by the shouts of the minstrels as they strove to defend themselves. Back up in the trees, I could hear muffled curses and faint growls. Nighteyes had stalked the third man, and had rushed in to attempt to hamstring him. He had failed, but now he circled him, keeping well out of range of the sword he carried.
I do not know that I can get past his blade, brother. But I think I can delay him here. He dares not turn his back on me to come down and attack you.
Be careful! It was all I had time to say to him, for the man with the club demanded every bit of my attention. Blow after blow he rained on me, and I soon realized he had stepped up his efforts, putting more force into his blows. He no longer felt he had to guard against a possible attack from me; he put all his strength into battering down my defence. Every jolt I caught squarely with my staff sent an echoing shock up to my shoulders. The impacts awakened old pains, jouncing healed injuries I had almost forgotten. My endurance as a fighter was not what it had been. Hunting and walking did not toughen a body and build muscle the way pulling an oar all day had. A flood of doubt undercut my concentration. I suspected I was overmatched, and so feared the pain to come that I could not plot how to avoid it. Desperation to avoid injury is not the same as determination to win. I kept trying to work away from him, to gain space for my staff, but he pressed me relentlessly.
I caught a glimpse of the minstrels. Josh stood squarely in the middle of the road, staff ready, but the battle had moved away from him. Honey was limping backwards as the man pursued her. She was trying to ward off blows from the man’s club while Piper followed, ineffectually thwacking him across the shoulders with her slender staff. He simply hunched to her blows and remained intent on the injured Honey. It woke something in me. ‘Piper, take his legs out!’ I yelled to her, and then put my attention to my own problems as a cudgel grazed my shoulder. I dealt back a couple of quick blows that lacked force and leaped away from him.
A sword sliced my shoulder and skimmed along my rib-cage.
I cried out in astonishment and nearly dropped my staff before I realized the injury wasn’t mine. I felt as much as heard Nighteyes’ surprised yelp of pain. And then the impact of a boot to my head.
Dazed, cornered. Help me!
There were
