Chapter 41
A beaked creature dropped to the dirt, still looking faintly surprised that Amris hadn’t paid any attention to its attempt to entrance him. The ranks of monsters parted for a few seconds, as happened in war, and Amris shook the ichor from his blade and glanced around.
The traps had done their work well, as had the siege before them. Thyran’s creatures now outnumbered Oakford’s soldiers only by two to one, and many of those remaining were scattered, fearing the fire that belonged, by association, to their patron’s deadliest foe. Any who came on them by accident, or was foolish in their purpose, would still meet a quick and messy end, but they had yet to mass and charge. In such disorganization, they were relatively easy prey for the three Sentinels who’d been in the town.
Emeth’s corona of flame and Katrine’s blue glow were hard to miss, but best of all was the sight of Darya atop a roof. Her clothing was in tatters, her armor singed, and her neat tail of braided hair was now short and uneven, blowing around her face in the wind from the fire. She was hurt, the spell revealed that much, but the Sentinels healed quickly.
From her perch, she smiled quickly at Amris, then looked past him to Hallis and waved her sword in a quick but emphatic gesture. The flash of green directed their attention beyond the immediate ranks of twistedmen, who were already moving to the side, and to the giant trundling toward them, its stink of corpses masked by the battlefield stench and the sharp lingering odor of the poison flames.
“Now!” Hallis shouted, and the soldiers scattered as well—but not blindly like the twistedmen before the flames. They broke into small groups, covering one another’s backs as they sped off, leading Thyran’s forces into terrain they knew to be treacherous. Hallis took charge of one group, Olvir and Branwyn each headed another, and Amris led a third.
His were the veterans, ten soldiers who’d been fighting on the border between Oakford and the twistedmen for years. Each had a sigil on their head, each a sword or ax in their hands. Following Amris’s lead, they held their position as the abattoir lumbered nearer, until Amris could no longer see Thyran’s face when he looked up, but only the clumps of bone and sinew forced together by Gizath’s fell power.
Then he and his troops ran to the side, pretending that their nerve had broken at the last. Thyran laughed loud enough to hear over the battle as they took cover behind one of the buildings. The twistedmen closed in on them; the men peeled off to fight them.
Amris put on an extra turn of speed, rounded the other corner of the building, and charged.
* * *
The time was now. Her heartbeat, loud in her ears, provided the rhythm. And gods knew she had her choice of partners.
When Amris charged, so did Darya—but in a different direction, screaming, into the crowd of twistedmen. A blast of cold came from her sword before it struck, stronger for Amris being near—much stronger, this time. Five of the monsters facing her simply burst, as the toad-thing had done back in the forest. Another few literally froze in their tracks, though the looks on what passed for their faces said they’d felt the touch of Gerant’s magic beforehand and hadn’t liked it at all.
The others, surprised and slow and scared, became so many targets in the field. If they stayed and fought, Darya cut them down, sensing dimly that their blood was splashing her face and their bones breaking on her sword’s edge. She let them run if they wanted to. That didn’t bother her.
She couldn’t spare a moment to search for Amris. Their bond told her he was alive and relatively well. That was all she knew, until she ran her sword through the chest of another twistedman and had a space to breathe, to wipe the blood away from her brow, to look toward the abattoir for the figure she knew would be there.
He was. For a man in armor, Amris was dodging well—slashing and pivoting, stabbing and running, using the abattoir’s size and slowness against it as well as Thyran’s rage. “No fire,” Darya panted. “Not yet.”
I think, said Gerant faintly, startling her with his presence,he must be using all his power to control that thing.
“That’s something,” said Darya.
Then she was fighting again, ducking under claws and whipping the arms they belonged to off at the shoulder, kicking backward as one of the twistedmen had a half-bright idea and using the force to cleave up through the rib cage of another. Pain raked down her back, there and then gone in the heat of battle. If she lived, she’d hurt later.
Thudon the ground not far in the distance as the abattoir’s fist struck. Darya ran one of the toad-things through, yanked her sword back, and spun to meet the next attack. Beyond the grisly shoulder of her foe, she spotted Amris, still alive and now moving in, as two figures rushed the abattoir from behind: Katrine and Olvir.
They struck first, each taking a leg at the knee, as far up as they could reach. Divine might backed both of their steel, and the construct felt it. The legs didn’t collapse, but they wavered, wobbled, and gave Amris the opening he needed.
Darya saw him take it before he leapt: knowledge of him and of war took the place of fortune-telling. It was their best chance, and he sank all his strength into it, rising off the ground farther than one mortal man in armor should have been able to do and driving his sword into the exact center of the abattoir.
* * *
In his landing, Amris felt more than one bone break: a rib, he thought from the immediate, intense pain, maybe more, and his sword arm between the elbow and the wrist. He’d left his sword itself in the abattoir, losing his grip on the hilt almost as soon as he’d sunk the blade full-length into the walking pile of corpses.
Through the eye-watering pain, he saw it frozen above him. It, Thyran, and the remaining faceless creatures seemed caught out of time again, and for a heartbeat that and the pain confused him. Had he truly awoken? Had he truly slept? Was Gerant still living, and the notion of a hundred years of stasis a fancy?
No—he felt Darya and Gerant present in the spell, and regretted that she must be sharing some echo of his pain. As Amris had the thought, the abattoir crumbled.
It was sudden and complete, and only the lack of force when the corpses fell apart made it a landslide rather than an explosion. The creature’s riders fell with it, and tumbled through the smoky air above Amris, the mages with their arms flung wide as though they could fly and Thyran still transfixed in disbelief. This was not how events were supposed to unfold.
Hands gripped Amris’s shoulders, and so great was the pain that he started to fight before he realized they were human, and that the face peering into his was Olvir’s. “Thank the gods, you’re alive,” he said. “Can you stand?”
“With help.”
Help he had in Olvir’s strong back and arms, and in Katrine’s tall armored figure standing between them and the twistedmen, who stared at the glowing woman and showed no inclination to approach. They learned, if slowly, and they’d learned fear of humans that day—particularly fear of Sentinels.
“We’d best get you to Dale,” said Olvir. “I don’t like the way you’re breathing.”
