«Who?»

Blade repeated the garbled identification, and added, «Has Duke Klaman marched yet?» That was good for fifteen yards.

«Yes,» the man on the wall shouted. «They rode north this morning, to catch Nainan's men coming through the narrows….» The voice trailed off into silence. Blade took a deep breath and grinned at Ebass. Ebass returned the grin as well as his scars would let him. Then…

«Nainans!» screamed the man on the wall. «To arms, to arms, to guard!»

The scream was as good as a trumpet call for Blade's men. Some of them were off the mark so fast they'd got ahead of their leader before he could even dig in his own spurs. Then his trumpeter sounded and the whole band plunged forward toward the castle gate.

Blade and Ebass wanted to be the first riders in through the gate. It was not only their duty as the leaders; it would also give them more control over the battle inside the castle. But it was a vain hope. Everyone was racing toward the drawbridge as if his fortune depended on being the first inside. Blade stopped trying to take the lead and started trying to keep the frenzied riders from crashing into each other. Then he had to stop that, too, and concentrate on keeping his own legs from being smashed by other horses cannoning into his.

The drawbridge was starting to rise as the first riders charged onto it. Under their weight it slammed back down, chains, snapping and lashing about like giant whips. Someone inside the castle tried to lower the portcullis, the iron grille just inside the great iron-bound wooden gates. It came down halfway, then impaled a Nainan rider and his horse and stuck. The opening was too low to let a mounted man pass through, but more than a dozen riders already passed beyond it.

Blade reined in desperately, trying to avoid smashing into the portcullis at a gallop. He had almost succeeded when his horse lost its footing on the dung-slick stones of the gateway. The animal crashed down and Blade fell clear, feeling as if all his bones had been jarred loose. He couldn't get up in time to save his horse from a castle defender who ran forward and crushed its skull with an ax, but when at last he did get up, he drew his sword and beheaded the man before he could escape. Then he threw his shield in front of him and joined the men who'd made it through the portcullis. The defenders couldn't have dropped and died much faster if they'd been machine-gunned.

There was a battle fury in Blade and all his Lords, and this was not the day for ordinary men to stand against them and hope to live.

When the fight around the portcullis was over, Blade was able to look back toward the drawbridge and the open ground beyond it. Most of the riders were luckier than he'd been. They'd not only reined in but kept their seats. Now they were leaping to the ground, drawing their weapons, and hurrying forward to join their leader. Horses were wandering free, and a few were swimming in the moat, but all the men were coming on, fit and ready.

As Ebass joined Blade inside the gateway, war cries echoed around the courtyard. Then a mass of men appeared, armed but mostly unarmored, launching a hastily improvised counterattack in the hope of staving off disaster. Blade and Ebass joined six Nainans backed against the portcullis and got ready to hold on to the death when suddenly, screams and the clash of steel-sounded from directly overhead. A moment later three bodies came hurtling down, castle defenders with their throats cut. The portcullis itself let out a terrible squeal and groan, then began to rise.

«We've got the gateway,» roared Blade, so loudly that men standing next to him flinched. «Come on, and we'll have the castle!» He whirled his sword around his head in a gesture of pure bravado, then charged forward into the ranks of the enemy.

Blade wasn't sure if he gave any orders after he came to sword strokes with the castle's defenders. Certainly his men did everything he would have ordered them to do, whether or not he ever said a word. So he was free to hack his way through steel and flesh, until the cover was stripped from his shield, the edge was gone from his sword, and he was red from head to foot with other men's blood.

Ebass fought beside him most of the way, his twisted mouth open to let out the sort of battle cries heard in nightmares. Ebass seemed determined to kill ten of Duke Klaman's men for every tooth he'd lost in his battle with the Faissan Lord. If he didn't succeed, it was only because after a while none of the castle's defenders would stand against him.

From the gateway Blade and Ebass fought their way to the door of the palace, while the men behind them scattered in all directions to kill and burn. By the time the two warriors were fighting five Lords at the palace door, smoke was pouring out of the kitchen hut, the stables, and one of the storehouses.

Normally, five men should have been able to hold a flight of stairs against two, but this wasn't a normal fight. Blade and Ebass killed three opponents in as many minutes and drove a fourth over the side of the stairs. He broke a leg in the fall and was stabbed where he lay. Then the men inside the hall opened the door to let in the last defender. Ebass threw a spear, catching the man in the throat. He fell, blocking the closing of the door. Blade dashed forward, picked up the fallen man's ax, and used it to kill two men trying to drag the body clear. Three more ax blows on the door and it was sagging on its hinges. It would stand against dogs and thieves, but not against fully armed Lords with the strength of madmen.

Blade and Ebass charged through the door, running so fast that one defender died simply by falling down and being trampled underfoot. Then they had a clear view to the end of the hall. A lean, gray-haired man in silvered armor was sitting on a chair of carved stone with polished brass fittings.

«Duke Klaman,» said Ebass, and got ready to charge. Blade held him back with his shield, raised the ax, and started swinging it around his head. As Duke Klaman started to rise, Blade threw the ax. It flew the fifty feet separating the two men, struck the Duke in the chest, and tore through his mail as if it were cardboard. He dropped back into his chair of state and died sitting there, blood forming on his lips.

«They will call you Duke-Slayer,» said Ebass, looking from the man to his victim.

Blade shrugged. The battle rage was beginning to pass off. He was aware of new bruises and freshly pulled muscles, the smell of blood and smoke, and all the things which still had to be done to consummate the victory. His men were inside a castle still held by three or four times their number. Blade pulled his ax free of Duke Klaman's chest, dropped a scrap of cloth over the dead face, and led Ebass out of the hall to rejoin the battle.

There wasn't much battle left to rejoin. The hurricane-swift eruption of Blade's men into the castle inaugurated the collapse of the defender's morale, the defeat of the counterattack continued it, and the word of Duke Klaman's death finished the work.

So the castle was well in hand, and all the defenders safely locked away, even before the first reinforcements rode up just before sunset. Fifty mounted Lords, in battered armor and on lathered horses, brought word that nearly all of Duke Klaman's field army was either dead, captured, or fleeing for their lives. Blade sent a man on a fresh horse from the castle's stables back to Alsin to take word of the Duke's death. Then he put the new arrivals on guard duty, so that his own riders could finally get off their feet and put down their weapons. Few of them were unwounded, and none of them had the strength left to raise a soup spoon, let alone a sword or mace.

Shortly after dark new reinforcements arrived-Duke Padro and Chenosh, with the men who had stood with them in the river and an assortment of companions from Skandra and Lords from both Gualdar and Nainan. Padro put himself and his party under Blade's command, giving him more than two hundred men to hold Castle Muras through the night. Blade would have been content, except for the news Chenosh brought. «King Fedron of the East Kingdom intends to march on the lands of the Crimson River,» he said. «The word came just as we were rounding up the last of Klaman's men.»