The old woman was sitting behind them, crosslegged beneath one of the trees, frowning into the dead fire as though the solution to their troubles might be hidden among the embers. “No!” she snapped over her shoulder.
“Arrows!” someone screeched and Brand saw them, black splinters sailing high, drifting with the wind. One flickered down near him, the feathered flights twitching. What change in the breeze might have wafted that little thing of wood and metal through his chest, and he’d have died out here under a bloody sky and never seen his sister again, or the docks, or the middens of Thorlby. Even things you always hated seem wonderful when you look back on them from a place like this.
“Get a wall together you lazy dogs!” Rulf roared, and Brand scrambled between Odda and Fror, wood and metal grating as they locked their shields together, rim behind the one on the left and in front of the one on the right. A thousand times he’d done it in the training square, arms and legs moving by themselves. Just as well, since his head felt full of mud. Men with spears and bows crowded behind them, thumping the front rank on their backs and snarling encouragements, those without shields waiting to kill anyone who broke through, to plug the gaps when men fell. When men died. Because men would die here, today, and soon.
“Before breakfast too, the bastards!” snapped Odda.
“If I had it in mind to kill a man I’d want him hungry,” grunted Fror.
Brand’s heart was beating as if it would burst his chest, his knees shaking with the need to run, jaw clenched tight with the need to stand. To stand with his crew, his brothers, his family. He wriggled his shoulders to feel them pressed tight against him. Gods, he needed to piss.
“How did you get the scar?” he hissed.
“Now?” growled Fror.
“I’d like to die knowing something about my shoulder-man.”
“Very well.” The Vansterman flashed a mad grin, good eye white in the midst of that blue handprint. “When you die, I’ll tell you.”
Father Yarvi squatted in the shadow of the shield wall, yelling words in the Horse People’s tongue, giving Father Peace his chance, but no answer came but arrows, clicking on wood, flickering overhead. Someone cried out as a shaft found his leg.
“Mother War rules today,” muttered Yarvi, hefting his curved sword. “Teach them some archery, Rulf.”
“Arrows!” shouted the helmsman and Brand stepped back, angling his shield to make a slot to shoot through, Rulf stepping up beside him with his black bow full-drawn, string whining in fury. Brand felt the wind of the flying shaft on his cheek as he stepped back and locked his rim with Fror’s again.
A shrill howl echoed out as the arrow found its mark and the crew laughed and jeered, stuck out their tongues and showed their brave faces, beast faces, battle faces. Brand didn’t feel much like laughing. He felt like pissing.
The Horse People were known for darting in and out, tricking their enemies and wearing them down with their bows. A well-built shield wall is hard to pierce with arrows alone, though, and that horn bow of Rulf’s was even more fearsome than it looked. With the height of their little hill he had the longer reach and, in spite of the years washed by him, his aim was deadly. One by one he sent arrows whistling down the grassy slope, calm as still water, patient as stone. Twice more the crew cheered as he brought down a horse then knocked a rider from his saddle to tumble through the grass. The others fell back out of his bow’s reach and began to gather.
“They can’t get around us because of the river.” Father Yarvi pressed between them to glance over Odda’s shield. “Or make use of their horses among the boulders, and we have the high ground. My left hand picked a good spot.”
“It’s not my first dance,” said Rulf, sliding out another arrow. “They’ll come on foot, and they’ll break on our wall like Mother Sea on the rocks.”
Rocks feel no pain. Rocks shed no blood. Rocks do not die. Brand went up on his toes to peer over the wall, saw the Uzhaks sliding from their saddles, readying for a charge. So many of them. The South Wind’s crew was outnumbered two to one by his reckoning. Maybe more.
“What do they want?” whispered Brand, scared by the fear in his own voice.
“There is a time for wondering what a man wants,” said Fror, no fear at all in his. “And there is a time for splitting his head. This is that second time.”
“We hold ’em here!” roared Rulf, “and when I cry ‘heave’ we drive these bastards down the slope. Drive ’em, and cut ’em down, and trample ’em, and keep mercy for another day, you hear? Arrow.”
The shields swung apart and Brand caught a glimpse of men running. Rulf sent his shaft flitting down the hill into the nearest one’s ribs, left him crawling, wailing, pleading to his friends as they charged on past.
“Hold now, boys!” called Rulf, tossing aside his bow and lifting a spear. “Hold!”