The Robber Knight's Love (The Robber Knight Saga #2)(121)

“Yes, of course. I…Reuben! Look out!”

Without turning to look, Reuben kicked backwards, caught the mercenary who had been about to jump over the wall in the chest, and catapulted him to his death. Then, gripping Burchard by the uninjured arm, he hauled the steward to his feet and more or less thrust him into Ayla's arms.

“Here! Catch!”

Ayla almost collapsed under the weight, but somehow she managed to steer the bleeding steward a few steps away. Then she half-fell, half-sank onto the walkway.

“Leave me,” Burchard grunted. “Go save yourself!”

“Shut that thing you hide under your mustache and lie still!” Ayla hissed at him. “I've got to get your bleeding stopped!”

Behind her, she heard Reuben shout at his enemies. All of those things were so infamous and sacrilegious they made her ears burn. Ordinarily, she would have tried to dunk his head in a bucket of water for uttering things like that in her presence. But, at the moment, she couldn't care less.

“Milady, I…”

“Be silent and hold still, I said!”

Pulling back her cloak, she ripped a piece of linen off the neckline of her dress and started winding it around Burchard's shoulder. Soon enough, it was soaked with blood, and she fumbled for her neckline again.

Despite the blood loss, Burchard still managed to make his ears turn red.

“Milady! If you must find bandages for me, couldn't you rip them off from somewhere else?”

“No!” Ayla snapped. “My hem and sleeves are soaked from the rain, and the bandages need to be dry!”

“But Milady, your…your…”

“Close your eyes if it makes you feel better!”

The steward promptly followed her suggestion.

“What's happening?” he asked after a few seconds.

“Would you like me to get your wound bandaged, or would you like battle commentary?”

“Both would be ideal.”

“Well, we're not dead yet!”

“Thank you, Milady.”

“You're welcome.”

Ayla wound the piece of linen around the steward's shoulder for a final time, tied a knot, and tugged.

“Ouch!”

“Don't be such a wimp.” Quickly, Ayla rose, and pointed her finger at the man on the floor imperiously, as you would at an old bulldog. “Stay!”

“I have no intention of going anywhere,” he growled.

“Good.”

Ayla sent a quick prayer to the heavens, and then turned towards the fight again. Her stomach plummeted.

Apparently, her prayer had not been heard. Enemy soldiers were crawling up the wall like ants up an anthill. They swung bloody blades of all forms and sizes, and from their throats rose terrible battlecries. Most of her archers had stopped shooting now; they had to defend themselves with their own axes, spears, and guisarmes. But they were only few, and the enemy were many. Three grappling hooks were firmly lodged between the crenels twenty yards down the wall, and it was all the defenders could do to hold the attacking army at bay. Get near enough to the ropes to cut them, or defeat their foe? Impossible!

Nearer to Ayla, however, where another two grappling hooks had sunk their teeth into the stonework, the situation looked quite different. Not that the enemy didn't have superiority in numbers there, too, no. In fact, there were about a dozen of them fighting against a single opponent. It just so happened that this opponent was wearing a red armor.

Reuben tore through his enemies like a rabid lion. A whirlwind of gore surrounded him, and men fell before him like so many leaves in an autumn storm. Very much so, in fact, for their color was that of late autumn leaves: a deep, dark crimson.

“Die! Die, you fawning, dread-bolted death-tokens! You puny, lily-livered wagtails!”

Nobody dared step in Reuben's path to strike a direct blow at him. And whenever one of his enemies did venture to strike at him from the side, he found the blow returned with double force. Reuben didn't seem to care whether he used his sword, his fists or his head to ram his opponents from the wall and into death and darkness. He wasn't just carrying a weapon, he was a weapon. A weapon that killed everything in sight.

“Die! Die, you horde of tottering, shard-borne hedgepigs! By Satan, you will die! By Belzebub, Astaroth, and Belphegor, die! Die, and may your souls die with you, and burn! Burn! Ha! ”

And his voice…if Ayla had thought before the soldiers had been yelling terrible battlecries, she thought again, now. Nothing came close to Reuben's bestial roar, his curses on the head of every demon and pagan idol under the sun, and most of all…

Most of all, his laughter.

It could hardly be thought possible, but his laughter seemed to frighten the enemy almost more than his blade did. He laughed as he cut them to pieces. He laughed as he threw them to their deaths. He laughed when he was hit by a blade and blood ran from his arm. The man who had dared to wound him did not live more than three seconds.

In front of her inner eye, Ayla saw once more a hand clutching the burning end of a torch, steadily, tightly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Apparently, several of the enemy soldiers were plagued by similar recollections. When they came over the wall and saw the piles of their dead comrades lying there and Reuben standing on top of them, laughing his head off with the mad joy of battle, they paled and balked. Some tried to flee down the rope again and were pierced by the arrows of Linhart's men, and some tried to veer off into the direction of the other Luntberg soldiers, to join what seemed to be a saner fight.