Free The Selkie’s Daughter by Deborah MacGillivray

 
    Rhys de Valyer felt the arrow slam into his shoulder.  His stunned warrior’s mind corrected: a bolt not an arrow.  The unseen attackers were using crossbows.  White-hot, blinding pain exploded within him and clawed its way through his muscles, his blood boiling until he nearly lost consciousness.  He reeled in the tall war saddle, desperate to stay upright.  A second wave of pain followed on the heels of the first impact, an agony so intense he lost power to grip the reins of his destrier.  No longer able to hold the leads on the bridle, the leather straps flapped loosely about the animal’s neck.  He flexed that hand, fighting against losing all feeling in the left arm.  There was no time to judge how badly he was wounded.  Life now hung in the balance.  A single thought drove him onward: to reach cover and try to stay alive.
    On journeys he usually rode a sure-gaited palfrey, and allowed his squires to lead his powerful warhorses.  Expensive animals, one did not foolishly grind them down by using them for traveling.  Unsure why––some odd presentiment had brushed against the back of his mind this morn, sending a chill over his flesh.  People oft spoke of that sensation as someone walking over their grave .  He had wanted to laugh at the bit of fae nonsense.  Instead, he obeyed the impulse and ordered Justin to saddle Spirit for this leg of the passage.  That change might now afford him a fighting chance. 
    Trained to fight in battle, his destrier was controlled by only Rhys’s knees and heels giving him commands.  The powerful animal pranced on his hooves, as chaos rained down on them in the blinding snowstorm.  Fortunately, the horse’s pale dapple grey hide blended with the blizzard.  He failed to present an easy target as the riders mounted upon the blacks or browns.
    Three squires on his right went down, one after the other––young Jarvis took an arrow in the neck and toppled from his palfrey.  Rhys just barely guided his mount away from trampling the poor lad.  The fate of his other men he could not discern.  A rain of bolts screamed through the air from all directions.  Rhys heard the hard thuds when they hit muscle and bone.  Heard his soldiers scream.  The driving snow made it impossible to see anything, friend or foe.  Far off to his right came shouts, “To Valyer!”   By that point, everything was so confused in the blowing snowstorm that Rhys had no idea who was left standing, or to where they were rallying.
    Another quarrel sliced straight into his hip, through the slit in his mail, not too deep for it hit bone.  Instinct pressed him to pull the arrows out, but he knew in a bizarre way the arrowhead actually plugged the flow of blood.  Extract them and he would likely bleed to death before he could deal with the wounds.  Pain built upon pain, until he could no longer stay in the saddle.  The world spun.  He was aware of falling and then slamming into the ground.  The suffering exploding within him somehow felt distant.  Barely conscious, he lay there in the snow, feeling the wet, heavy flakes hitting his face. 
    Unable to close his eyes and will the nightmare away …
    Rhys sensed movement off to his left: dark shadows advancing swiftly through the white storm.  Then, there were shrieks of his men being slaughtered.  The attackers were making certain they quit the field with everyone dead.  Since he had just ridden ahead to scout a suitable shelter for the night when the attack came, he was farther away from the main body of his party.  Even so, it would only be a matter of time before the enemies came to put a sword to him.  There was naught he could do to defend himself.  He could not even blink.  Still, he struggled to move his right hand, trying to reach the dirk in a sheath at his belt.
    His middle three fingers flexed.  By working them, he was able to keep focused to where he finally lifted his lower arm.  Raising it, his trembling fingers tried