...The blood of the Phyros made great knights immortal, but it also drove them mad. Countless are the tales of those who woke from black rages to find the blood of loved ones on their hands. Yet few could bear abstinence, and only one succeeded long.
- From Lore of Ancient Arkendia, by Sir Benfist of Sudlin
Chapter Two
Sir Willard woke from an unintended sleep in the saddle. The sound of Molly’s snort had wakened him — a snort of warning, of enemies nearby — and not the first alarm she’d raised, he realized, only the first to wake him.
He cursed and peered about through the slots of his helm. At a glance he saw they were still on the road to Gallows Ferry. The two mortal ponies still plodded before them. To his relief, the ambassador remained fastened to the saddle of the smaller pony, his blanket still cloaking him, hiding his inhuman shape.
Nothing amiss there.
But it was past dawn, and their cover of fog had disintegrated in a brisk north wind, exposing their position to their pursuers. Worse, their road no longer crept along the bottom of a scabland canyon; it had climbed onto an open ridge above the river to his right, and a dry gulch on the left, where they stood skylined against the glowing mist. The river rushed below, wide and swift and cold. On its far bank, the cliffs of the Godswall erupted from the waters and soared into frosted pinnacles in blue sky.
“Something is wrong ahead?” Ambassador Brolli stirred, his weirdly fingered foot poking briefly from under the blanket.
Willard grunted, finally awakening fully to the backward cant of Molly’s ears and glances. “Something behind us.”
“Perhaps our pursuers did not give up as we thought.”
Willard turned around in time to see the first crossbowman loose his bolt from two hundred paces on the opposite side of the dry gulch. The bolt whipped past Molly’s nose and over the ambassador’s head to crack against a stone.
“Willard — ?”
“Keep your head down!”
Willard spurred Molly hard into Brolli'’s pony, herding it toward the cover of a massive boulder and shielding the ambassador with Molly’s bulk and his own armored back. A bolt stuck deep in Molly's neck, below her ear. She tossed her head in rage, and Willard tore the shaft away, painting the stones with immortal violet blood. Another bolt snapped upon the boulder as the ambassador reached safety, followed by a wet thack! and a flash of pain in Willard’s thigh. A glance down confirmed a feathered bolt jutting behind the steel of the cuisse.
He cursed, and freed the shaft with an unconscious yank. White-hot pain lanced up and down his leg, and he nearly fainted. Perhaps he did faint, for he’d apparently dropped the bolt, and now he couldn’t see it among the stones. Long ago he’d forgotten the crippling pain a mortal feels. How it ruled him now! Bile welled in his throat. His vision spun.
The ambassador threw off the blanket and looked about, gold owlish eyes full of fear.
In that moment, the absurdity of their predicament flashed before Willard in dismaying clarity: with a single bolt through the ambassador’s heart, their enemies would turn Brolli’s people from a needed ally in her war against the Old Ones, into a vengeful enemy. Brolli’s people would attack, and when the Old Ones saw her armies stretched and weakened, they’d seize the throne and return the kingdom to the tyranny of the Old Ways. One well-placed bolt, and the Queen and everything Willard worked ten lifetimes to achieve would be lost.
“Stay in the saddle, ambassador!” he shouted. He wheeled Molly to face their attackers
“You are injured!” The ambassador’s long fingers flew to unfasten the straps that kept his ill-fitting body in the saddle.
“I said stay on your horse!” Willard drove Molly against Brolli’s pony again, startling both pony and ambassador. “You cannot help me! Keep your head down until I return.”
“You are bleed! Look!” Brolli’s accent thickened in agitation. “You falling before you reach them!”
As if in confirmation, a line of blood began to tickle his ankle as it streamed into the dust. A qualm of nausea swept him. His bowels grew watery.
“Sir Willard, you must drink Molly's healing blood.”
“I cannot! My oath to Lady Anna—”
“A foolish oath! What of oath to your Queen? What of me?”
Willard’s head swam. He turned his eyes to the wound, and jammed a fistful of his cloak behind the cuisse so the plate would hold the wool tight against the wound and staunch the flow. With each fold of cloak he jammed in, the dripping slowed, but hot wires of pain shot up his legs. “You don’t understand,” he panted. “The madness, Brolli. The addiction. The Blood offers no simple healing, Brolli. It changes everything. Forever. You don't know what I suffered to be rid of it.”
“You wish to be rid of life, too?” The ambassador’s flat face scowled, huge gold eyes burning scorn into Willard’s. “You free of being Queen’s Champion? You wish be free of worry her safety so long, all lost in the end? Here is the madness, if you not drink the Blood!”
Willard clenched his teeth against the pain. “I’ll put the suggestion of cowardice down to a mistake of language, Ambassador,” he growled. “But only once.”
Brolli held his gaze unflinching.
Willard sighed. “We don’t have time for this, Brolli.” From the height of Molly’s back, he reached down and laid a reassuring hand on Brolli’s shoulder. “You can trust me in this. This is my land. My people. I know how to fight them. And you must stay in that saddle, or we will not make Gallows Ferry before our enemies.”
Brolli gave a curt nod of agreement, just as a bolt whizzed past his ear. He flinched and ducked as another hissed through the air where his head had been, and a third skipped off the sheltering boulder.
“Keep that head down!” Willard bellowed. Whirling, Molly launched back down the road.
The crossbowmen had made no attempt to hide themselves. Four men, four horses. They had drawn up on the opposite side of the treacherous-looking ravine around which Molly had taken him when the road bent around the head of the ravine in the shape of an elongated “U.” The bowmen worked the cranks of their crossbows to load another volley, watching Willard intently as he halted Molly at the edge of the ravine and assessed their position. The shortest way to the bowmen would be straight across the gulley, but once Molly plunged in, the way might prove uncrossable, wasting precious time and allowing more shots at Brolli. The surest way would be the long way around the head of the ravine, on the road.
Shifting his weight, he turned Molly, and she exploded into the road-devouring gallop only possible for a Phyros.
As the bowmen cranked furiously at their crossbows, their horses shifted uneasily beside them, eyes on Molly. Hot-blooded stallions, Willard noted, unburdened with gear or armor. The four were scouts, sent from the main body of knights who pursued him, expressly to take pot-shots at the ambassador if they could catch Willard unaware.
Or sleeping. Willard ground his teeth. Sleeping! When immortal, he’d gone days without sleep — weeks at a time during the campaigns of the Cleansing. Now he couldn’t stay awake an hour without nodding off when his mortal carcass took the notion. It made no difference that the fate of the kingdom rested upon this mad quest for the Queen or that a single bolt to the ambassador could start a war that would end it.
He roared a string of curses that left his great-helm ringing. Let them think that was his battle cry and not an anthem of frustration.
“Lady Anna, your paramour is not adapting well to mortality,” he muttered to his absent love. “But I shall stay true to my oath. I will not take the Blood.”
As Molly reached the head of the ravine, she cornered and accelerated, hoof beats shattering the morning stillness. The bowmen abandoned their bow-cranks and scrambled for their horses.
"That's right, boys," he muttered, "it's about to get ugly."
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