The Raven Warrior by Alice Borchardt

Author:Alice Borchardt
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780345464330
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Black Leg treated the Huns as a wolf would. They analyze any sort of prey.

There were twelve of them, and in spite of the oldest, most seasoned warriors being Hun, the leader was a Pict. Since Kyra taught him the tribal Pict markings, Black Leg knew this one must be from near the Irish seacoast. The Huns had campaigned in the south of France, and this Pict had probably taken service with them.

Eight, by their weapons and armor, were Hun. Furred caps, oval shields, squat ponies, and a somewhat Eastern cast to their features. The Pict rode a tall horse, dark, as the Pict horses usually were. He remembered Kyra telling him that even the Romans had gone out of the way to try to capture horses from the Painted People. Being mounted on such a beast alone marked the Pict as a senior man and a dangerous killer.

The remaining three warriors were so scruffy that he could only make a general guess at their origins. He suspected they didn’t have an affiliation with any people—not in the sense the Huns or the Pict did. The Pict probably had a family and some children. He might share his wife with a couple of brothers. But they would honor him if he returned and mourn him if he didn’t. The Huns—he knew little of their social arrangements, but the red markings that blazed from their shields were similar and they very well might be related to the great Hun chief Attila himself. He knew barbarian chiefly families could stretch out to the twelfth or thirteenth degree and include hundreds of people. Even the slightest connection to a successful warlord was cherished, nurtured, and, often as not, lied about and exaggerated.

No, the remaining trio were the last and least, the wretched residue of Roman conquest, coloni, slaves, serfs, bound to the land, doomed to wear out their lives in silent, unrewarded labor. Opportunists and runaways.

One man is no man, he remembered Kyra saying. These were not men. They would die easily. The rest were the problem, and they would be a serious one, since they were escorting a wagonload of loot.

The contents of the wagon were tightly wrapped in oiled leather, but Black Leg could smell perfume, iron, gold, and silver. Yes, they have odors, especially when they rub against each other and small molecules are free to drift on the afternoon breeze. Silk, linen, and wool are rank to the wolf’s nose, and they formed part of the contents, too.

The party followed the bottom of the watercourse, down toward the lowlands. They would not be easy to take. By day as the ox-drawn wagon rolled along the stony, shallow riverbed, the Pict leader sent outriders to scout the path ahead and cover both sides of the riverbank to be sure no ambush was being prepared. He chose the spots where they camped well, the highest ground for miles. Or, failing an elevated position, he took a grotto or cave in the riverbank that could be fortified against attack.

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