Bloodforged by Nathan Long Page B

she could ride in with them. She smiled to herself. Now she was thinking like a Lahmian.
    She wiped the blood from her mouth and chin, then struggled under the marauder as if she were fighting him. The patrol was almost upon her.
    ‘Help, brothers!’ she called. ‘Help me!’
    The Gryphons turned, but as they started for her, Ulrika grunted in dismay, realising she had made a mistake. The marauder’s neck was a torn ruin. They would see it! Where was her dagger? There! She clawed for it.
    One of the Gryphons, a dashing young Gospodar with a proud nose and magnificent moustaches, slid from his saddle and stabbed the marauder in the back with his sabre, then pulled him off. Ulrika snatched up the dagger at last, then rolled with the corpse and straddled it, stabbing wildly at the bite wound in its neck, as if mad with rage and fear.
    ‘Filthy savage!’ she cried. ‘Monster!’
    ‘Easy, fellow – er, madam,’ said the Gryphon, catching her arm. ‘He’s dead now.’
    Ulrika reeled back and let herself slump against him. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘There were too many.’
    The Gryphon helped her to her feet, giving her an appreciative once over, then waved his fellows away. They turned their horses, smirking, and galloped back into the melee, which still raged around the surrounded caravan.
    ‘There now,’ said the Gryphon, picking up her rapier and returning it to her. ‘Are you hurt?’
    She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It… it all happened so fast.’
    ‘Let me have a look at you.’ He held her at arm’s length and gave her another longish head-to-toe, then returned to business and squinted at the gash over her eye, tsking softly. ‘Well, it’s bloody, but not very deep. Listen, I must get back, can you make it on your own to our field surgeon? He’ll be setting up just there on the hill. I’ll come check on you after.’
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘I believe I can, and I am most obliged to you.’
    He looked back at the corpses of the marauders as he mounted his horse. ‘You gave better than you got, that’s certain,’ he said approvingly, then dug his spurs in and galloped after his comrades. ‘See you soon!’ he called over his shoulder.
    Ulrika waved after him, then turned and made her way around the edges of melee towards a little pony cart that had drawn up on the low hill. She watched enviously as the Gryphons wheeled and charged in formation, trampling the disorganised marauders like so much wheat. Her blood rage was still upon her, and she wanted more than anything to join in the slaughter, but she didn’t dare. In the frenzy of battle she might forget herself and reveal her unnatural strength, or let out her fangs and claws. Besides, she had written herself a part as a nobly wounded maiden, who needed the care and attention of a brave man, and it wouldn’t do to let her ‘saviour’ see her back in the fray, fighting like a whirlwind.
    In less than a quarter of an hour it was finished, and the Gryphons were victorious. As the rescued caravanners crept out from behind their circled wagons to thank the white-bearded Gryphon captain, and a few selected squads chased down the last of the fleeing marauders, the rest began the dirty work of collecting the corpses of their fallen comrades and heaping the bodies of the Norsemen onto piles for burning.
    Ulrika watched it all from the Gryphons’ field hospital, where the surgeon and his assistants bandaged and stitched up lancer and caravaner alike, and the screams of the wounded almost drowned out the hiss of hot pitch being applied to the stumps of amputated limbs. She sat as far away from the surgery as she could, for the swallow of tainted blood she’d had from the marauder had not sated her hunger in the least, and the scent of honest human blood was making her head swim.
    A while later, as the wounded and the dead were being loaded onto any wagon that had room, and the lancers and caravanners were sorting out their order