“DIRTMEN!” He shouted derisively at the band of ruffians. “Rapists of ewes and she-goats! Your fellow bastards here are lonely. Are you going to come join them, or are you going home to bugger your own infant sons? That’s an old Ehleen custom, isn’t it? Along with eating dung?”
He carried on in the same vein, each succeeding insult more repugnant and offensive than its predecessor. Their leader wisely held his tongue, hoping that Bill’s sneering contumely would arouse an aggressive spark in his bat-tered band where his own oration had failed.
At length, one of the tatterdemalions was stung to the quick. Shouting maniacally, waving his aged saber, he spurred his horse at the lone figure on the bridge. Bili stood his ground; to the watching men it appeared that he was certain to be ridden down. But Bili had positioned himself cunningly, and he judged the oncoming rider to be something less than an accomplished horseman.
The horse had to jump in order to clear the two dead horses blocking the direct route to the axeman. Before the rider could recover enough of his balance to use his sword, Bili had let his axe go to swing by its wrist thong, grabbed a sandaled foot and a thick, hairy leg, and heaved him over the other side of his mount!
Dropping his sword and squalling in terror, the Ehleen clawed frantically for a grip on the bridgerail. He missed and commenced a despairing howl which was abruptly terminated when his hurtling body struck the swiftflowing water. He had been one of the “lucky ones,” arrayed in an almost complete set of threequarter plate. Since he could not swim anyway, he sank like a stone.
But Bili had not watched. No sooner was the man out of the saddle, than he who had unseated him was in it, trying to turn the unsettled and unfamiliar annual in tune to meet the fresh attackers he could hear pounding up. Hear . . . but not see, for once more the sick, tight diz-ziness was attempting to claim his senses. When at last he got the skittish horse facing the forest, it was to dimly perceive the backs of the motley pack of skulkers pound-ing toward the forest, a small shower of arrows falling amongst them, the shafts glinting as they crossed a va-grant beam of moonlight.
Bili’s brain told his arm to lift the axe, his legs to urge the new horse on in pursuit of the fleeing ruffians . . . vainly. His legs might have ceased to exist, while his axe now seemed to weigh tons. The weight was just too much and he let it go, then pitched out of the lowcut saddle to land on the narrow railing above the deep, icy water.
Hari and Drehkos caught the senseless body just in time to prevent Bili from joining his latest victim on the bed of the stream. While Komees Djeen led his men on the trail of the fleeing force, the brothers bore the ThoheeK’s son to where Vaskos and his orderly, Frahnkos, were tending Ahndee. When Bili’s battered helmet was removed, it was found to be filled with both old and fresh blood from a nasty scalp wound. Nor was that the extent of his hurts. Once his body lay prone, a stream of blood crept from the top of his left boot, and exam-ination revealed a deep stab in the side of the calf. Also, as was usual for a man who had fought for any length of time in plate, the skin surfaces of his muscular body from shoulders to knees were one vast bruise, while his clothing dripped of sweat.
Vaskos’s gentle probing had early established that Ahndee’s left radius was broken. It was a clean break, however, and had been more or less immobilized by the tight-fitting armguard which had encased it. The broken arm did not disturb the Keeleeohstos and his orderly. What did was not visible until more armor was stripped off. Both the left elbow and shoulder had been sprung from their sockets! So employing rough-and-ready battle-field expedients between them, the officer and the soldier snapped the two joints back into place, then set and splintered the forearm.