Rayla didn’t answer, but indicated the mountain pass with a glance and a wave of her head, then the road and the rearmost ranks of the long column of refugees trudging towards the border. Villis understood. He cursed bitterly, leapt from his saddle, staggered and leaned on his sword.
‘Dismount!’ he yelled to the soldiers hoarsely. ‘Block the road with anything you can! What are you staring at? Your mother bore you once and you only die once! We’re the army! We’re the rearguard! We have to hold back our pursuers, delay them . . .’
He fell silent.
‘Should we delay the pursuers, the people will manage to cross into Temeria, to cross the mountains,’ ended Rayla, also dismounting. ‘There are women and children among them. What are you gawping at? It’s our trade. This is what we’re paid for, remember?’
The soldiers looked at one another. For a moment Rayla thought they would actually run away, that they would rouse their wet and exhausted horses for a last, desperate effort, that they would race past the column of fugitives, towards the pass – and safety. She was wrong. She had misjudged them.
They upset a cart on the road. They quickly built a barricade. A makeshift barricade. Not very high. And absolutely ineffectual.
They didn’t have to wait long. Two horses, snorting and stumbling, lurched into the ravine, strewing flecks of froth around. Only one of them bore a rider.
‘Blaise!’
‘Ready yourselves . . .’ The mercenary slid from the saddle into a soldier’s arms. ‘Ready yourselves, dammit . . . They’re right behind me . . .’
The horse snorted, skittered a few paces sideways, fell back on its haunches, collapsed heavily on its side, kicked, stretched its neck out, and uttered a long neigh.
‘Rayla . . .’ wheezed Blaise, looking away. ‘Give me . . . Give me something. I’ve lost my sword . . .’
Rayla, looking at the smoke from fires rising into the sky, gestured with her head to an axe leaning against the overturned cart. Blaise seized the weapon and staggered. The left leg of his trousers was soaked in blood.
‘What about the others, Blaise?’
‘They were slaughtered,’ the mercenary groaned. ‘Every last man. The entire troop . . . Rayla, it’s not Nilfgaard . . . It’s the Squirrels . . . It was the elves who overhauled us. The Scoia’tael are in front, ahead of the Nilfgaardians.’
One of the soldiers wailed piercingly, and another sat down heavily on the ground, burying his face in his hands. Villis cursed, tightening the strap of his cuirass.
‘To your positions!’ yelled Rayla. ‘Behind the barricade! They won’t take us alive! I swear to you!’
Villis spat, then tore the three-coloured, black, gold and red rosette of King Demavend’s special forces from his spaulder, throwing it into the bushes. Rayla, cleaning and polishing her own badge, smiled wryly.
‘I don’t know if that’ll help, Villis. I don’t know.’
‘You promised, Rayla.’
‘I did. And I’ll keep my promise. To your positions, boys! Grab your crossbows and longbows!’
They didn’t have to wait long.
After they had repelled the first wave, there were only six of them left alive. The battle was short but fierce. The soldiers mobilised from Vengerberg fought like devils and were every bit as savage as the mercenaries. Not one of them fell into the hands of the Scoia’tael alive. They chose to die fighting. And they died shot through by arrows; died from the blows of lance and sword. Blaise died lying down, stabbed by the daggers of two elves who pounced on him, dragging him from the barricade. Neither of the elves got up again. Blaise had a dagger too.
The Scoia’tael gave them no respite. A second group charged. Villis, stabbed with a lance for the third time, fell to the ground.
‘Rayla!’ he screamed indistinctly. ‘You promised!’
The mercenary, dispatching another elf, swung around.
‘Farewell, Villis,’ she said, placing the point of her sword beneath his sternum and pushing hard. ‘See you in hell!’
A moment later, she stood alone. The Scoia’tael encircled her from all sides. The soldier, smeared with blood from head to foot, raised her sword, whirled around and shook her black plait. She stood among the elves, terrible and hunched like a demon. The elves retreated.
‘Come on!’ she screamed savagely. ‘What are you waiting for? You will not take me alive! I am Black Rayla!’
‘Glaeddyv vort, beanna,’ responded a beautiful, fair-haired elf in a calm voice. He had the face of a cherub and the large, cornflower-blue eyes of a child. He had emerged from the surrounding group of Scoia’tael, who were still hanging back hesitantly. His snow-white horse snorted, tossed its head powerfully up and down and energetically pawed at the bloodstained sand of the road.