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simple: spears, slings, and swords.
Iron, rammed through me. But those blades were not flamelike, nor even as
bright as bronze. They were dark, almost brown. Nor did they have the
laurel-leaf curves of ours; they were long and straight, barely tapered at the
ends.
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My hand dropped to the hilt of my own. Several among the crews yelled. Paddles
rattled to the bottom of the boat. Those who had not been paddling snatched
for weapons and shields. Standing beside me, Herut caught hold of my shoulder.
"They don't know whether we're friendly," he said fast.
His strength flowed into me. "Easy!" I shouted, loud enough to be heard in
both boats. "Keep station!
Gairwarth, tell them we're peaceful!"
The Boian leader shouted, flung his spear at us, and drew sword even as he
sprang from the car. His followers howled and dashed forward. A slingstone
whizzed by my ear. I saw a man in the hull crumple, skull smashed asunder,
brains spilling out on a tide of blood.
For a trice, I think, each one of us stood unmoving, stunned. The
Celts splashed into the shallows. It comes back to me how the water
swirled and glittered around their calves, knees, thighs. "Get away!"
I
cried. I felt us scrape bottom. The current had borne us inward and we sat
fast. The foe were hip-deep when they reached us. Their blows and thrusts
crossed our low freeboards.
I remember the battle as a wild red rainstorm, formless save when a lightning
flash brings a sight forth searingly bright. I had learned the use of arms,
as every high-born youth should, but never before had I
wielded them in anger. Since then too often, when stark need in the worst of
these worsening years has raised packs of cattle raiders, and lately we
must beat off an assault greater and fiercer than that
Harking back, I can piece together the jagged tales I heard after this affray,
and see the shape of it.
At the time, all that I knew to begin with was a face glaring at me, a
mustache like tusks over bared teeth and red stubble, a blade lifted
slantwise, and the fleeting thought that that blade seemed endlessly
long. Blindly, I stabbed my own at the throat beneath. It missed
when he shifted deftly aside, and I
stumbled, half falling against the strake. My clumsiness saved me; for he
swung. Not thrust, swung. The whetted iron flew inches past my shoulder and
bit deeply into the wood how very deeply!
Herut edged close. His point reached. I saw it go in one cheek and out the
other. Ferret-swift though he was, I saw how the Boian pulled his
sword free before himself. That movement took him past our
upward-curving prow. I know not what became of him. Belike he returned to the
combat, wound and all.
Maybe he lived, maybe he died.
What I remember next is another of them there, and that his hair was black and
his nose crooked. He must have appeared quickly after the first, but by now
everything was one uproar. His sword whirred past
Herut's and cut into the neck. It nearly took the head off. Blood spurted
and gushed, weirdly brilliant. It spattered over me. Herut sagged down,
jerked, and lay still, sprawled at my feet. I felt nothing, just then. It was
as if I stood aside and watched another man tread on the body, forward, to
thrust into the Boian before he could recover. I watched the bronze enter
beneath the chin. More blood spouted. He toppled out of sight.
No, wait, I did feel Herut's ribs crack beneath my weight and the . . . the
heaviness of metal piercing flesh.
Next I remember standing on the sheer horn, clutching its end, so I could
look the length of the boat.
Struggle seethed, not only alongside. Boii who found or made a clear space
were hauling themselves up. A
pull, a squirm, a leap, and a man stood in the hull. Once there, he hewed
about him with the iron blade that was deadly from hilt to point. We
outnumbered them, but their weapons made each of them worth two of us.
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The dead and the wailing, groaning wounded thickly cluttered the bilge.
My soul still icily clear, I saw what might save us, filled my lungs, and
bawled the command through the racket, over and over. Gair-warth, amidships,
was fighting skillfully. It was not his first time. He used a spear
to fend off blows, yielding enough that the sword did not cut the shaft in
two, then jabbing in before the foeman was again on guard. That checked the
onslaught, at least. He heard me and understood. He passed the order on
to those near him. They obeyed, bit by bit and blunderingly, but doing it.
When men are desperate, their single great wish is for a commander.
Take paddles. Push us off this sandbank. Or else stand by and protect.
Next in my memory, I was fighting my way aft. That seemed to be the only duty
left me. But I did not really fight much. I pushed against the crowd
packed into the narrow room, forcing myself among crewmen. Once, I
think, a foe came before me, and I stabbed and may have hit, but
others, Skernings, roiled between us, and he was gone. Afterward I saw that
it would have been better for me to keep my place forward and help repel
boarders. What happened is unclear to me. Mainly I remember the
sharp stench. When a man is killed he fouls himself.
And then we were free, drifting north on the river. We had not been hard
aground. I hope it was I who called for paddlers to get us out beyond the
enemy's depth. Maybe it was Gairwarth, maybe both of us. At first just a few
were able to man the sweeps, but that served.
In truth as I, astonished, saw after a while by the sun the battle had
been short. No more than a handful of Boii had scrambled aboard. They had
reaped gruesomely, but now several slashed a path to the side and sprang back
over.
I learned that later. Suddenly one broke out of the press that hindered him
and charged forward. His cry ululated, not a wolf-howl but a strange song.
Drops of blood flew fire-hot from his lifted sword. Somehow I
had been forced clear of the struggle and stood again in the bows, shakily,
alone. I knew it was my death coming for me and raised a blade too short and
soft to stop it.
Behind him, Ernu surged from the crowd. He had dropped his axe; a red gash
gaped on the right forearm.
But he threw that arm around the Boian's throat and clamped tight. They [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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