Страница 18 из 47
The map showed the toll fort as lying off to the right of the breakwater, up a short path and through a grove of tall trees. He led his men up the path at a trot without incident, but as they reached the trees crossbows suddenly began to twang from inside the grove. Blade saw two of the men behind him topple to the path and lie there writhing. But the whole force of fifty odd pirates were moving so fast that they were closed with their opponents before another volley hurtled from the slow-firing crossbows. Screams, oaths, the clang of swords on swords and the chunk of swords carving human flesh rose into the night.
Blade found himself confronted by a grotesquely short man with a plate cuirass, wielding a sword taller than himself with both fury and skill. He steadily gave way before the flailing dwarf, waited until the man was forced by the trees to shorten his stroke, then lunged past his guard into his face. Leaping over the body, Blade reformed his men with bellowed oaths and brandishings of his sword and led them quickly up to the fortress wall.
As a «fort» the toll establishment would never have stood against a major force equipped with even a few siege engines. But Blade's force was one of pirates equipped with nothing but their personal weapons. They would have been baffled utterly by the fort's ditch and single eight-foot wall if Blade had not noticed that several large trees had been allowed to grow within their own height of the wall.
He gave his orders quickly. Archers climbed some of the trees to pick off anyone on top of the wall. Axe men attacked four of the trees nearest to the wall. The remaining pirates drew back under cover. Bows began to twang and axes to flash and hack. «Make those chips fly!» called Blade. «We haven't got all night!»
He had barely finished speaking when with a crackle of splitting wood and breaking branches one of the trees tipped drunkenly, seemed to hang against the sky for a moment, then toppled over with a crash. It slammed straight down onto the wall, making a bridge over both ditch and wall. Blade ran monkeylike up the fallen trunk before it had stopped rocking, sword out and yelling to his men to follow.
Two of the men atop the wall had been crushed into red pulp by the falling tree, but some of their fellows were still alive and fighting. Two of them came at Blade with pikes leveled. He twisted, parried one pike thrust with his sword, grabbed the man by the collar, and slung him bodily off the wall into the ditch. The other drew back, but not fast enough, as Blade's sword whistled down and slashed through the pike shaft and one of the arms holding it. Then others of Witch's crew were coming up behind Blade to help clear the wall, and he was able to seize a branch and swing himself down to ground level inside the fort.
Another tree came crashing down and more broken branches and stones pattered down about Blade. He looked around him. Inside the wall was a small flagstoned courtyard, with three buildings set in a rough triangle in the middle of it. As he ran toward the first one, four more soldiers ran out of it. Blade stepped back before their rush, noting almost with detachment their shoddy swordsmanship. This was a sleepy and over-confident garrison. In a moment half a dozen of his own men again caught up with him, and the four soldiers died where they stood.
That was very much the story of the whole battle for the fort. Little knots of resistance popped up unexpectedly and chaotically and died minutes later. Perhaps the pirates were clumsy on land, but they were also numerous this night. Not that the pirates escaped unscathed. Six of them were lying dead or dying by the end of the fighting, and more were wounded. But even the dying raised a cheer when Blade, using the keys snatched from the body of the fort's commander, opened the huge iron-shod doors of the vault. Soon they saw their fellows bringing out chest after chest of gold and silver pieces, jewels, fine silks, painted vases, ornamented weapons-everything the Counts of Tram had taken as tolls from passing ships during the months gone past.
It took nearly half Blade's force to simply carry the chests, so he was just as glad there was only one prisoner to guard. The fort commander's daughter was a girl of nineteen, small, blonde, vaguely pretty. She must have been shy and nervous at the best of times and was now fortunately scared almost senseless and certainly far beyond making any attempt to escape. Blade had her hands tied behind her back and one of the pirates led her with a rope around her neck.
The fort's buildings were stone, but everything inside them was blazing as merrily as possible when Blade led his richly encumbered raiders back toward the waiting ships. In the confusion of his own battle, he had almost forgotten about the other two parties. But now as he looked up at the sky, he saw it flaring red and orange over both the town and the harbor. Then as he led his men out of the grove and down the path toward the water, he stopped abruptly.
A solid mass of helmeted and armored men, the heads of their pikes and halberds gleaming in the firelight, had blocked off the end of the breakwater. Blade saw swords and cutlasses flashing just in front of the soldiers, as the pirates tried to break up that solid front, but the wall of points and blades was too strong. Somebody had called out the regular infantry. From what Blade remembered of the Swiss pikemen whom these men resembled, if they once got a good start down that breakwater, they would sweep the pirates aside as inexorably as an advancing tidal wave and then turn to the ships.
Blade was not going to let the pirates become involved in a general disaster like that, regardless of what he might think of them in general, and particularly when Brora-and yes, Tuabir-would be involved in it as well as himself. He quickly gave his orders. Eight of the able-bodied men would stay behind and guard the chests and wounded. The rest-again he waved his sword, this time towards the rear of the infantry formation, and ran down the slope.
As he ran, he noticed a small figure slipping into the water and a bright blonde head swimming up the breakwater until it was just behind the front rank of the infantry. Cayla! Before Blade could wonder what she was doing, he saw her reach up and jerk one infantryman by the ankle. He went over with a yell and a splash. Before the weight of his armor could take him down, she thrust her sword up into the groin of a second man. As he screamed and crumpled, she leaped like a salmon out of the water into the midst of the close-packed soldiers. A moment later, the same mass of soldiers cut off his view of her, and he had too many other things to think about.
Blade's forty men were outnumbered at least five to one by the soldiers, but the soldiers were packed close together and concentrating completely on the enemy to their front. The pirates bit them from behind, by surprise, and at a dead run, yelling like a horde of fiends and laying about them like madmen. Some of the soldiers tried to turn and bring their pikes and halberds to bear. The pirates spitted most of these before they could strike a blow. Some dropped their pole weapons and drew short swords. These lasted a little longer. Some simply dropped everything including helms and armor and ran for it or leaped into the water and swam for it. These mostly got away, because Blade and his men were too busy with the ones who stayed to fight.
Blade was keyed up to the highest pitch, and he was a terrifying sight as he lunged and slashed and hacked and yelled. Run his dagger through the hand of a man trying to bring a halberd down on him, then take the man's head off with a backswing. A swordsman coming at you? Kick him in the knee and then stab him in the neck as he goes over. Blade's sword stuck in the wood of a halberd shaft and was wrenched out of his hands. He let it go, grappled with the halberdier and snapped his neck like a carrot, then darted under a sword thrust and butted the swordsman in the belly so hard that he crashed backward against two of his fellows and all three of them went over the edge of the breakwater to be carried under by the weight of their armor.