“Hei! Hei!” she called in a husky voice. “Make way!”
They left Breschius behind.
Rosvita yelped in fear as the wagon hit the incline. The weight of the wagon pressed it forward into the hindquarters of the beasts. The horses opened into a panicked gallop. A few people stood at the side of the ramp, heads slewing sideways as they stared upward in horror at the wagon careening down. Farther below, horsemen blocked the road, but they reined aside to get out of the way. There was one person in the middle of the road, staggering as though drunk.
The foreigner struggled with the reins, desperately trying to turn them aside from the man fixed in their path, but the horses had opened into a wild gallop and did not—could not—respond.
Rosvita shut her eyes. She whispered a prayer, asking forgiveness for her cowardice, and pitched herself off the side.
When she hit, her breath was knocked out of her as shoulder and hip took the impact. Pain stabbed. She rolled, hit the rim, and tumbled over the verge, coming to rest in a knob of grass grown in among the rocky in-fill.
Ai, God, she hurt as she crawled up the side and lay gasping. Breschius appeared on the ramp far above, calling after them. One moment she saw his familiar face, a good man who had served God faithfully and with joy his whole life long; the blackness devoured him as the galla glided through the space his body inhabited.
She shouted his name, too late, and because she was a coward, she scuttled back from the road as a dozen or more galla flowed down the slope, all fixed on one object.
Below, men scattered. All men but one.
When the wagon out of control and the horses in a blind panic hit the plane where the incline leveled out, the wagon bounced. An axle shattered. A wheel came loose.
The entire assemblage slammed right into the man wearing the dragon helm who stood in the center of the road. His body crumpled beneath hooves. The wagon lurched over him, then overturned and skidded with a grinding roar to one side as the horses screamed and, tangled in their harness, were jerked after it. The driver was thrown free and hit hard, lying still. One horse struggled to rise but fell back on a broken leg. The other did not move at all.
The man’s body lay on its back on the ground, helm torn free, black hair fallen over the dark face. There is something about a body that is dead that tells the eye even at a distance. Once the soul is fled, the flesh is nothing but meat.
Never had any held breath lasted as long. It seemed to Rosvita that she had gone utterly deaf, or that all the noises of the world had been smothered.