Ardahl spun, his feet digging into the grass, his blade and every intention aimed for Dacha’s head. When his blade met flesh, sinew, and bone, it would end.
A chariot came crashing in upon them from his right. It rocked violently as the ponies dispersed Dacha’s defenders.
A man leaped down.
Amid Ardahl’s shock and the fighting rage, he recognized a fellow warrior—a man easy to know for his height and the color of his white-blond hair, now marked by blood.
Cathair.
Here.
Ardahl grunted and tried to bump him aside. Dacha and his defenders, still in a knot, recovered from the intrusion and regained their feet.
Ardahl needed room to fight.
But there was no room. The chariot, half tipped and with Cathair’s driver still aboard, had him trapped and curtailed his sword arm. A crush of men on his left and others—enemies—at his back.
Cathair leaped forward—a magnificent surge of power that took him directly at Dacha. Ardahl knew the truth then. Cathair wanted the glory of that kill, wanted the privilege of being the man to slay Dacha.
First among warriors.
Yet Dacha saw Cathair coming and raised his sword in time. The two blades met with a furious clang.
Ardahl, well occupied against Dacha’s men, had little time to spare for that battle.Let him have the glory so long as Dacha dies. So long as it ends.
He took down one of Dacha’s two remaining defenders. The man fell in a shower of blood and Ardahl had time to draw a breath. To turn his eyes on Cathair and Dacha.
Yet another man came at him from the right. Without conscious thought, Ardahl drove him down beneath the hooves of Cathair’s team, which stood nearly on top of them, trembling, and ran his sword through the man’s heart.
A mighty roar snared his attention. He spun in time to see Cathair, trapped between Dacha and the wheel of his own chariot, lose his footing in the slick grass and fall back.
Back, and back.
Ardahl saw it all in an instant. Dacha’s sword at the ready, drawn back for a blow that would take Cathair’s head. The shocked realization in Cathair’s eyes as he grasped that he would die. Die here on a day that barely yet reached for dawn.
Ardahl’s sword moved without his direction. A great, whirling sweep it made, cutting through the pale light of the morning. Ending in Dacha’s neck.
Dacha’s head flew, the intent to kill still in his eyes, and his sword fell from his suddenly flaccid hand before it could complete the blow it had begun, and end Cathair’s life.
Cathair fell hard down beside the wheel of his chariot. Dacha’s head rolled away with the force of Ardahl’s blow.
Ardahl and Cathair stared at one another for a moment suspended amid the screaming, the struggling, and the slaughter.
Cathair began to scrabble up. He still held his sword in one hand. Ardahl reached down swiftly and hauled him up by the other.
Cathair gawked at him, gazed clear into his eyes. “Ye saved my life.”
Ardahl had, if not consciously. It had been instinct. No time to worry over it now. Dacha’s remaining men, having witnessed the death of their chief, came on.
“Fight!” he bellowed at Cathair. And they did, standing shoulder to shoulder till they were joined by others of their men. Dornach, standing strong. And Fearghal, streaked with blood, moving up beside him.
The enemy fell back and back over the broken ground now lit to gray by the morning. Until, deprived of their chief, they broke and ran, and all that remained was the silent dead and a litter of broken chariots and abandoned weapons.
*
Following the battle,when the last of Dacha’s men had fled, pursued by whatever of Fearghal’s chariots remained, Fearghal and Brihan embraced one another. Even though Ardahl stoodnearby, he did not hear what was said. Words of gratitude, he supposed, and mayhap fealty.
Dacha’s men had recovered his body but not his head. That, Fearghal eventually picked up and used to decorate his chariot, the visage still fixed in the ugly grimace with which he’d faced Cathair.
