Now the geisbar was between the wizard and one of its targets, though. The Twisted must have worked that out or be running short of power, because the gray fire stopped.
That was when Olvir spun around to face the lumbering undead. He charged, sword flashing in the sunlight and battle cry on his lips: “Tinival and Justice!”
The undead geisbar would have no notion what he was saying, the wizard wouldn’t care, and there were no others to inspire. None of that mattered. The cry drove Olvir’s feet forward, then, as he came to the geisbar’s hind leg, lent power to his arms, his hips, and his blade. He swung hard at a spot he’d noticed from a distance, where the flesh had fallen off and exposed the bone behind its knee completely.
Bone that had been lying in the wilderness for a few days, even geisbar bone, quickly gave way under two hundred pounds, the force of an all-out charge, and keen-edged steel. The leg cracked in two. The geisbar rocked, suddenly off-balance.
Olvir let himself keep going past the creature. The wizard was on the move now and not at all indecisive any longer. A last-second leap sideways brought Olvir barely out of the way of another strike. The light writhed a few inches from the side of his neck, cold and slimy even when it didn’t touch him.
The Twisted had adjusted to them running away. It was a good moment to catch it off guard again—and to see if its shield still held. Olvir spun in a tight half circle and rushed it, head down, pushing himself to go faster when he glimpsed Vivian dodging a swipe of the geisbar’s claws.
It almost worked. The wizard stumbled backward, not nearly fast enough. Olvir started to sweep his sword down from his shoulder, a blow that had left plenty of Twisted with cleft skulls in the past. He braced himself for the backlash if the shield held.
No force struck him. He felt the air beneath his blade resist, then start to give way. His stroke would be slower for it, but Olvir was a large man and a determined one. He thought the blow would do the job.
The wizard clenched one fist. Deep within the horror’s sunken sockets, patterns squirmed across dull gray eyes.
Olvir’s armor clamped down on every side of his chest, then wrenched. Metal links cut through his shirt and bit deep into the skin beneath it, but that sharp pain was the least of his problems. His sword fell as his arm went limp and bloodless. The pressure on his ribs equaled his weight or more. He fell, wheezing, to his knees.
The wizard was too smart to gloat. Its maw wouldn’t smile anyhow. Olvir had no notion what it was thinking. He didn’t know, either, what the oncoming blow would do to him—whether it would be death or unconsciousness so that he could be given to Thyran for a leisurely dismantling.
He knew only that he could do nothing to prevent his fate, whatever it was.
* * *
Hand-length teeth snapped together on the back of Vivian’s doublet. She lunged, then finally shot forward as the leather parted, leaving half her armor in the geisbar’s jaws.
She whipped around as soon as she’d gotten a little distance. The geisbar turned clumsily at best, especially missing a leg, and undead senses were sluggish. While it was trying to work out the change, Vivian dashed back the way she’d come, passing within a few inches of the geisbar’s side.
The thing reeked. She’d smelled decay before, from open graves to untended battlefields, but the geisbar was different. Behind the natural rot lurked a scent like burning hair. Vivian wished she could hold her breath. She needed all the air she could get, though, stinking or not; her lungs were already faintly aching.
She shot past the monster’s dirt-covered flank, caught sight of Olvir and the wizard, and almost did stop breathing.
Training took over and kept her moving even as she saw Olvir’s sword fall to the ground and shrieked internal protest.
She didn’t have time to draw her bow and nock an arrow. The wizard was out of knife’s range. Still running, Vivian recognized futility, thought of the lone move that could have any effect, and started to gasp out the command. “Lethal—”
Lend me your voice first,said Ulamir, urgent.Will you?
Vivian didn’t know what he meant, but they’d been partners for decades. He had a plan. “Yes,” she replied at once.
The geisbar thudded across the ground behind her. Olvir fell to his knees. The wizard stepped forward and placed both its palms on Olvir’s forehead.
Olvir slumped over, then toppled to one side. He went silently, with a strange dignity even when clearly unconscious. Vivian opened her mouth to scream.
The series of sounds that came forth was so deep that they almost burst her throat. Her body shook with the force of them. They moved her jaw at angles that Vivian would never have been able to consciously manage, agonizing contortions that she welcomed.
The sounds sank into the earth, and the earth answered.
Rocks burst up through the ground near the wizard. Most were the size of Vivian’s fist or larger, and the force of their ascent sent up explosions of dirt—dirt now absent from the ground beneath the Twisted’s feet.
Caught by surprise, the mage stumbled back. One of the stones slammed into what passed for its ankle. It fell, clutching at the earth with its distorted hands.
Vivian could almost have felt sorry for the thing. Except, looking at Olvir, she couldn’t.
“Good,” she rasped to Ulamir when she could talk. She hadn’t stopped running while the rocks erupted, and her legs no longer felt like they belonged to her, but that was fine. “Now.”
Now, he agreed, and the lethal blessing surged through them both.
