He could not kill.
The Eika cast away ax and spear and leaped forward with its knife, a wicked obsidian blade. Alain tried to lift his short sword to parry, but he was paralyzed with that revelation.
He could not kill.
He was not worthy. He would never be a soldier. He had failed his father.
He was going to die.
The sun flashed fire in his eyes, blinding him. Or was it death that he did not yet feel, a knife buried in his eye or throat, that blinded him? He dropped his reins and instinctively held up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. A shadow swooped down over him. An iron-gray broadsword cut down across his sight. The Eika fell, cut down in midleap, and collapsed to the earth.
Alain gasped and groped for his reins before the horse could feel he had lost control; but this was a trained warhorse. It moved forward with the others. Who had come forward? Who had saved him? Who had witnessed his cowardice?
He turned. Her gaze was at once distant and utterly piercing. The rose burned at his chest like a hot coal pressed against his skin.
She spurred her horse forward, his horse responding not to his limp control but somehow to hers, though she did not touch it, though she did not hold its reins.
“Stay beside me,” she said, whether words spoken through her lips or ringing in his mind he could not tell. I am the Lady of Battles. She had a terrible beauty, seared by hardship and agony and the wild madness of battle. She drove her white horse, and with him beside her, surged forward through the Eika, striking to each side, so smooth in her movements that he knew she had ridden to war for so many years that she no longer had to think in order to kill.
Beyond her rode Lavastine, face grim and focused on his task. He took no pleasure in battle; this was duty. He parried a blow and cut in his turn, striking down a silver-scaled Eika; in that instant, as the Eika fell before him, Lavastine looked right past the woman and with that glance marked Alain and went back to the fight.
Now the cavalry drove the Eika back into the waiting line of infantry. Crushed between foe and foe, the Eika fought with hopeless fury or struggled to run free. But Alain, with the Lady of Battles at his side, remained untouched. She struck down any of the savages who lunged at him or hacked at him with ax or spear. He managed to stay seated on his horse. On her other side, Lavastine fought with the same steady imperturbable calm.
Alain jerked his horse left to avoid trampling an infantrymen. The two lines had met at last. Lavastine peeled aside and with a shouted command led Alain and a dozen others down toward the shore. Some Eika ran flat out for the ships; others fought as the horsemen came up behind them. But the savages were broken now. Each one fought only for its own life, or for death. Down at the beach one ship was halfway into the water; Eika jostled each other for a place in its belly, grappling for oars, shoving it out into the current. The other two ships burned with an oily smoke that stung Alain’s nostrils, bringing tears to his eyes and a cloudy haze over his vision.
“Rein in!” cried Lavastine.
Alain blinked back tears and passed a hand over his eyes.
“Well done,” said the count.
Alain wiped tears from his checks and looked at his father with surprise. Well done? To whom was he speaking?
Soldiers circled them, weapons held at the ready. They waited on that verge where sandy soil turns into grassy beach and watched a single ship as it hove to into the current, watched as oars beat the water and the ship was swept out to sea. A few arrows, shot harmlessly from the rocking belly of the boat, splashed in the shallows or skittered away into the reeds.
The Lady of Battles was gone. At his chest he felt only the cool, soft lump that was the little leather pouch.
The soldiers ranged ‘round as they shook themselves free of the last eddies of skirmishing. A few Eika had plunged into the river to swim after the receding ship. Most lay dying on the ground. A few men were wounded, one or two with mortal wounds, but Lavastine’s tactics had worked with that same blunt effectiveness with which Lavastine himself approached life.
“Well done, my son,” repeated Lavastine. He lifted his sword; a viscous fluid the greenish-blue color of corroded copper stained the blade. With it held high, he addressed his soldiers. “My trusted companions, now you have seen this boy prove himself in battle.”
One of the cavalrymen spoke. “I saw him strike down four with his own hand, my lord. He had the battle fury on him. He shone with it. I will follow Lord Alain gladly.” To Alain’s horror, he saw respect in the soldier’s eyes.
As soon as this was spoken, others began to talk. Others, too, had seen a kind of unearthly glow around the lad.