The Charnel Prince Read Free

your deer-horn cap, you’re too clever for that. Instead, you shake snakes at me. Very cunning, I must say. A most excellent reply. I await your next witticism with utmost eagerness.”
    The antlered man merely blinked, as if Sir Oneu’s words were so many raindrops.
    “You’re quite senseless, aren’t you?” Sir Oneu asked. This time the horned man crooked his head back, so his mouth opened to the sky, and he howled.
    Three bows hummed together. Ehawk jerked around at the sound and saw that three of the monks were firing into the forest. The naked and half-naked figures that had been drifting through the trees were suddenly charging. Ehawk watched as one of them fell, an arrow in her neck. She was pretty, or had been. Now she spasmed on the ground like a wounded deer.
    “Flank me, Brother Gavrel,” Sir Oneu said. He dropped his lance level to the party on the trail. Like their brethren in the woods, they were unarmed, and the sight of a fully armored knight ought to have shaken them, but instead, one of the women sprang forward and ran upon the spear. It hit her with such force that the spearhead broke through her back, but she clawed at the shaft as if she might drag herself up its length to the knight who had killed her.
    Sir Oneu cursed and drew his broadsword. He hacked down the first man leaping for him, and the next, but more and more of the madmen came pouring from the woods. The three monks kept firing at a rate Ehawk deemed impossible, yet already most of their shafts were hitting almost point-blank, and the sides of the trail were quickly heaped with dead.
    Martyn, Gavrel, and Sir Oneu drew swords, now trading places with the archers, forming a circle around them to give them space to fire. Ehawk was crowded into the center of the ring. Belatedly, he took out his own bow and put an arrow to it, but with all the jostling chaos, it was hard to find a shot.
    They had more attackers than Ehawk could count, but those were all unarmed.
    Then that changed, suddenly, as someone seemed to remember how to throw a stone. The first rock belled from Sir Oneu’s helm and did no damage, but soon there came a hail of them. Meanwhile, the enemy had begun a kind of wordless chant or keening. It rose and fell like the call of the whippoorwill.
    Brother Alvaer staggered as a stone struck his forehead and blood sprayed from the cut. He raised a hand to wipe his eyes, and in that brief pause, a giant of a man yanked at his arm, pulling him into the sea of rabid faces.
    Ehawk had never seen the sea, of course, but he could imagine it from Sir Oneu’s vivid descriptions—like a lake that rose and fell. Alvaer was like a man drowning in such water. He fought his way above the waves and was pulled down again. He reappeared once more, farther away and very bloody. Ehawk thought the monk was missing an eye.
    Alvaer struggled back up a final time—and then was gone.
    Meanwhile, the other monks and Sir Oneu continued the slaughter, but bodies were piling too thick for the horses to move. Gavrel was next to die, pulled into the throng and torn limb from limb.
    “They will overwhelm us!” Sir Oneu shouted. “We must break free.” He urged Airece forward, his sword arm rising and falling, hewing limbs that grappled at him and his mount. Ehawk’s pony screamed and pranced, and suddenly a man was there, tearing at Ehawk’s leg with filthy, ragged nails. He shouted, dropped his bow, and yanked out his dirk. He stabbed and felt rather than saw the blade cut. The man ignored him and leapt up, caught Ehawk by the arm, and began to pull with hideous strength.
    Then suddenly Martyn was beside him, and the attacker’s head bouncing on the ground. Ehawk watched with detached fascination.
    He looked back up in time to see Sir Oneu go down, three men attached to his sword arm and two more tugging at him. He shouted in anguish as they pulled him from his horse. The monks fought forward, moving with absurd speed, striking, it seemed, in all