Read Online The Golden Sword by Janet Morris - Free Book Online Page B

upon the threx in the confusion of battle. The helsar was in Quiris’ pack. But I knew, somehow, that I would not.
    Silent were the jiasks as single file they made their way over the rise and down the slope, together waiting in the dark pool of shadows at its base. Soundless, recurved swords of stra and steel were drawn and held low, that the glint of them might not warn our approaching victims. And still the dust cloud enlarged and the greening moved higher and higher in the sky, until the dust had dark shapes within it, and those shapes resolved themselves into mounted threx, a dozen or more.
    And whispered orders formed the five pairs of jiasks into a spear point, with the cahndor and dharener at its tip. So close they were that I could see they carried neither spear nor shield, and still the cahndor did not stir his waiting men, though his arm was raised pointing to the sky. As I raised my eyes to his hand, that I might see the signal given, another thing, and strange, did I see. A M’ksakkan egg-shape glowed silent, like some speeding creamy comet across the sky: a Liaison’s ship surely, for no other may fly the gravitic-drive that hovers through the skies of Silistra. And yet there was no port in the Parset Lands for such a craft, and none due north, from whence it came. It danced for a moment motionless over the plain, then veered northeast and was gone. Chayin’s hand came down. As one, the jiasks of the Nemarsi swept down upon their prey.
    Barely had I time to steady my seat after, Quiris’ first leap and ready the gol-knife in my hand, before we were’among them. Crouched low on Quiris’ neck, that I not impede the dharener’s longer blade, I found my knife of use first upon the gaping mouth of a threx who sought to clamp his jaws around my arm. Its pupils glowed gold and huge in white-walled eyes rolling in that deathly head. I split its nostrils, and it reared away in agony, giving the cahndor clear strike at his opponent’s armorless chest, which he made with the ease of a man slicing cheese. The first rays of the sun color-glowed the plain and fired the sparking swords, and the whole world was blood-soaked. I saw for a moment the fallen jiask before I followed him, tumbling upon the corpse as Hael’s mount kicked out with both hind feet at a new tormentor and whirled to meet an attacker coming up from behind. I disengaged from the corpse, up and running, lest I be trampled by the beasts as they tried to savage one another. I saw a riderless threx, unable to escape, so close-quartered was the fighting. His lifeless rider was wedged, head dangling down, between two live combatants’ threx. He had no top to his skull, and the gray pulp dripped upon the feet of the fighting men. Somehow I made my way to its far side, and, unthinking, squeezed behind Saer’s rear. I had just grabbed the mounting strap when I heard a great singing above my head. Chayin’s sword snicked the head from a man whose own blade was in mid-strike at my back. I dodged the free-falling weapon and caught it in my right hand by the blade near the hilt. I looked up and grasped Chayin’s arm as it was extended, to me, and he all but threw me upon the riderless threx’s back. Our eyes met for a moment. He laughed his joy and turned away, still smiling, to seek a new foe. I grasped the threx’s back with but the strength of my knees and thighs, the stirrups being so far too long I could not even use the strap loops. I grabbed the reins caught around the saddle grip just as the great dun beast reared and brought his steel-shod hooves down upon the neck of another threx, who thought to get him by the throat. And I saw Hael, badly pressed by two foes, Quiris bleeding. I slammed the flat of the short sword against the threx’s rear, and he fairly jumped upon the back of the nearest attacker’s threx. The man’s head turned, and I saw his startled expression as I plunged the gol-knife in my left hand into his throat, while his sword arm