I cheered loudly, pumping my right arm skyward in a salute to that charge and leaning just slightly to my left. And heard, and felt, something zing past me between arm and head.
I whirled, crouching, hand on my dagger hilt, wondering what missile had so narrowly missed me.
Iswy was already launching himself at me, face contorted, dagger raised. He didn’t even see Borvo and Maros instantly coming to my defense.
“No, he’s mine!” I shouted at them, and ducked away from my assailant. “He slaughtered my pony!”
I didn’t think of Yayin’s lessons in dagger fighting: I thought only of avenging Spadix. That lent me a cunning I didn’t know I possessed. I noticed that I had the reach of Iswy, for I had grown in arm as well as leg, and the years at the anvil had matured the spindly cabin boy Iswy had once mocked.
He came at me again and I caught his dagger hand, forcing it back, hoping to break it; but somehow he squirmed free and sliced at my belly.
The leather apron I had put on that morning deflected his blade. He cursed wildly.
“I’m not the easy mark I used to be, Iswy.” It was my turn to taunt him as we crouched, facing one another and circling, each trying to discover an opening.
Like a snake, he twisted and made to stab at Ravus where the gray was tied to a bush. But Ravus reared, breaking the restraint and trying to run. Maros, for all his bulk, was fast on his feet and caught the trailing reins.
“Horse killer!” I cried. “That takes such a brave man, doesn’t it, Iswy? To kill an animal that looks to be protected by you!”
I changed my dagger from hand to hand, making him watch the transfer: a trick Yayin had drilled me in. Then I attacked, just as I had switched the blade once more to the left. Iswy didn’t expect that and didn’t know which way to lunge. I sliced at his right leg, catching him above the knee with a deep gash.
He staggered back, totally surprised by my strategy. I switched the blade again even as I closed with him, my left hand gripping his right wrist and arm. I struck downward, through his leather jerkin, and into his chest.
“You’ve-killed-me,” he gasped out, sinking to the ground, dead before his body stretched out.
I looked down at him and did not close his sightless eyes. Spadix’s death was now avenged. Still gasping from my exertions, I turned away, back to the battle raging on the slope below.
The Companions on the great black horses wielded their swords tirelessly and brought down every Saxon enemy they passed on their way to the Glein. The river was turning red in the sun, with the blood of the wounded and dying.
And then our reinforcements-the troops of half-breed Libyans-charged out of the woods from the left of the river. It was a total rout of Aelle’s arrogant horde.
“That were well done, Master Galwyn,” said Borvo at my side.
“That were some fight,” Maros added.
They were looking at the carnage below, but it wasn’t that battle they meant.
“There,” I said, pointing to a loose horse, limping badly and dazed as it wandered back up the hill. “We must be about our duties.”
We left Iswy’s body where it had fallen, where the ravens would find it.
THAT WAS THE FIRST Battle of the Glein, and the only one I fought in. As Master Glebus had said, I had a skill that was of far more service to Lord Artos than that of another swordsman’s.
There were twelve great battles in all, the final one at Mount Badon. But though I lifted neither dagger nor sword in any other, I played my part, watching every one of them, and keeping well shod the great black horses of Artos, the Comes Brttannorum.