blocked him, but the force of the blow drove the Galt a half-step back.
Eustin chuckled. Now Sinja felt the pain in his leg. Late, but here now.
He put the sensation away and concentrated on Eustin's eyes.
He wondered how far I)anat had gone. If he was running back to the city
or forward to the tunnel. Or off into the snow that would be as likely
to kill him as the Galts. He wasn't buying the boy safety. Only a chance
at survival. That was as much as he had to offer.
He didn't see the swing until it was tinder way. Thinking too much, not
paying enough attention. He managed to turn it aside, but Eustin's blade
still raked his chest, scoring the leather of his vest and tearing off
one of the rings. Dustin's men called out again.
\\'hen it happened, Sinja thought it was a trick. The snow was fresh
enough to hold a boot if it hadn't been packed down, but they had ranged
over the same terrain. Some places would he slick by now; it was
plausible that Eustin might lose his footing, but the off-kilter lurch
that Eustin made didn't look right. Sinja held his guard, expecting a
furious attack that didn't cone. Eustin's face was a grimace of pain,
his eyes still fixed on Sinja. Eustin didn't raise his guard again, his
blade still held, but its point wavering and uncertain. Sinja made a
desperate thrust, and Eustin did try to block it, but his arm had gone
weak. Sinja stepped hack, gathered himself, and lunged.
Ills sword's tip was sharp, but broad. It had been made for swinging
from horseback, and so it didn't pierce Fustin's neck quite through.
When Sinja drew back, a fountain of red poured from the man's flesh,
soaking his tunic. "I'he steam from it rose amid falling snowflakes.
Sinja didn't feel a sense of victory so much as surprise. Ile hadn't
expected to win. And now he had, the arrows he'd assumed would be
feathering him were also strangely absent. He stood up, his breathing
heavy. I Ic noticed that his chest hurt badly, and that there was blood
on his robes. Eustin's last cut had gone deeper than he'd thought. But
he forgot it again when he saw the soldiers.
Eight men were kneeling or fallen in the snow, alive but moaning in what
seemed to be agony. Two were still in their saddles, but the bows and
quivers lay abandoned. It was a moment from a dream-strange and
unsettling and oddly beautiful. Sinja took a better grip on his blade
and started killing them before they could recover from whatever had
afflicted them. By the time he reached the fifth of the fallen men-the
first four already sent to confer with their god as to the indignity of
dying curled up like a weeping babe on the stone and snow of a foreign
land-the Galts had started to regain themselves. The fifth one took a
moment's work to kill. The sixth and seventh actually stood together,
hoping to hold Sinja at bay with the threat of the doubled swords
despite the difficulty they had in standing. Sinja danced hack, plucked
a throwing knife from the body of their fallen comrades, and
demonstrated the flaw in their theory.
The horse archers fled as Sinja finished the two remaining men. He
brushed the snow from a stone and sat, his breath ragged and hard,
pluming white. When he had his wind back, he laughed until he wept.
Nayiit, still lying by his cart, called out weakly. lie wasn't dead.