The light infantryman in front of the Prince, seeing Tomaz, seemed to forget that he had a sword of his own; he turned and ran, but the Prince caught him and cut him down. That life was added to the Prince’s, and he quickly forced the memories to the back of his mind, using the strength and speed to dodge another sword thrust at him from his left.
Time seemed to blur together as the world became a simple fight to stay alive. The Prince was able to avoid killing any more men, the general panic of the Imperials keeping most of them from being too much of a threat. His valerium sword cut indiscriminately through armor and flesh, and it was an easy thing for the Prince to use his training to locate tendons and muscles that, once severed, left the soldiers incapacitated. At one point the Imperials seemed to rally, but then arrows flashed out of the night again and cut down the men holding the torches, plunging the world into darkness and the Imperials back into a blind panic.
Leah was fighting next to him, and even in the midst of the bloodshed she was breathtaking. The Prince had known she was good, and if he hadn’t, then their sparring match in Vale had proved it, but this was different. She had a deadly, graceful beauty to her that was chilling to watch. The sparse torchlight seemed to gather in her green eyes, and her body flowed from one move to the next so seamlessly that she seemed to be dancing. Her lithe body twisted and turned with a dexterity and finesse that made even the most skilled swordsman look like a hapless lumberjack.
Tomaz fought next to her, and if Leah was the embodiment of grace and finesse, he was power and brute force. There was not a single man who could stand in front of Tomaz and not quake at the sight—arrows could not pierce his heavy armor, swords were swept aside like tree branches by his gauntletedfists, and men fell beneath the enormous sword Malachi as if they were nothing more than stalks of wheat at harvest. At one point, caught up in the fight as he was, the giant threw back his head and bellowed out a wordless challenge to all who could hear him. It gave the Kindred heart, and their blows rained down on an Imperial army absolutely terrified out of their minds.
“Fall back!” cried the voice of Captain Autmaran, “fall back!”
The cry was taken up and horns sounded. The Exiled Kindred began to disengage and retreat, leaving hundreds of the enemy dead behind littering the ground and hundreds more fleeing back up the ravine. In the confusion, the Prince was jostled around and forced to kill two more or else be killed himself. His body, weary and exhausted, was suddenly strong once more, allowing him to race ahead of the soldiers and catch up with Leah and Tomaz. A cry came from the Imperial force as the men realized what was happening and regained enough presence of mind to give chase, but arrows from the waiting Kindred Scouts stationed high up on the mountain walls brought them down in droves with terrible accuracy.
“Let’s go!” roared Tomaz ahead of the Prince, Imperial arrows and broken blades sticking out from his armor in so many places that he looked like a monstrous porcupine. Leah almost shot past him as well, but the Prince reached out and grabbed the Exile girl’s arm. The other Rogues and Rangers continued on without a backward glance, covered by volley after volley of deadly rain from Captain Autmaran’s Scouts.
“The tracking spell is still in place!” the Prince roared in her ear. He saw her eyes light up with understanding: if they retreated now, they’d be followed straight to the Stand.
“How do you break the spell?” she asked.
“Normally,” the Prince began, “you’d need to use a –”
She drew her daggers.
“We canmake that work!” he said.
They turned and ran back down the hill, the Prince unsheathing the valerium sword once more, the strength of the three soldiers making it light enough even for his exhausted limbs to wield with dexterity. They passed fleeing Kindred soldiers, who all looked at them as if they were insane, but they didn’t notice; they were searching with all of their might for the blood drop insignia of the Bloodmages.
“There!” the Prince said, pointing off to their right. It was a single banner, not very large, but located on the fringe of one of the groups still in disarray. They doubled their speed, dodging through a thickening crowd of soldiers, mostly Kindred fighting to extricate themselves from the fray and retreat to the escape passes in the heights of the mountains.
Leah and the Prince were the only ones runningtowardthe enemy troops.
“We’re going to die!” the Prince said.
“No we aren’t!” Leah shouted back.
Three men seemed to spring up from the ground directly in front of them. Before Leah and the Prince could even react, arrows flashed out of the mountains, and all three crumpled in heaps—leaving the path to the Bloodmages completely open.
They crossed the final twenty feet, and were suddenly in the midst of three men in hooded black robes, all of who were completely surprised to see two Exiles running at them, weapons drawn. One of them wore a Soul Catcher that was shining with a bright, gold-and-blue light, very different from the usual blood-red.
The essence of lightning! He was in control of the Daemon!
“That one!” the Prince shouted, pointing.
They both shot toward the Bloodmage in the center, but the hooded men had recovered quickly, and they all drew long, straight daggers, tips blackened with poison, chanting words under their breath that cracked and hissed.
The Prince was confronted on the left, but his enhanced strength and the valerium sword made quick work of the dagger, and the hand holding it as well. With a cry of pain, the man fell to his knees, blood blossoming on his robes. The Prince turned to the Bloodmage with the blue Soul Catcher. Leah had been engaged off to the right by the third Bloodmage and two other Imperial soldiers who had come to his aid. The Prince saw her throw one of her daggers; it impaled itself in the first soldier, flew back into her hand—and then the Prince lost sight of her as he engaged the lead Bloodmage.
The hooded man attacked, feinting to the left and then stabbing at the Prince’s right. It was child’s play: the Prince, with the speed of three men, dodged the blow, wrapped an arm around the man’s elbows, and broke them with a sharp snap.
There was a wordless shriek of pain from within the hood, and the Prince knew that the Bloodmage’s mouth was pulled back in a snarling rictus of agony. The valerium sword flashed up and slashed the Soul Catcher cleanly in two, breaking the spell, and destroying the force that bound the mage to life.
The air around them seemed to compress, and then it exploded outward with the sound of thunder. Lightning shot up into the sky, throwing the Prince backwards into a tree, forcing the breath out of his lungs. The Bloodmage let out a shriek of disbelief and despair, and then fell to the ground, dead.
A shape shot past the Prince’s blurred vision, pulling him along with it as it hurled up the mountain as fast as it could.
“Time to go, time to go, time to go!”
Breath still not flowing into his lungs quite properly, the Prince just managed to keep up with the girl as he shot a glance over his shoulder. What he saw made him lose any last hint of inhibition and run like a madman.
The second rank of the army had rounded the corner of the ravine and had been altered to the presence of the Prince and Leah by the destruction of the Bloodmage’s medallion. It consisted of five columns of archers, and whatlooked like nearly a thousand bows were trained on the Prince and Leah as they ran up the mountainside.
