“Finally,” breathed the orc, widening her stance.
Quillin seized Fern’s arm and yanked. She stumbled as he pulled her after him, darting behind Kell, who noticed and began to turn. Tullah registered none of it, focused fully on the approaching goblin, her teeth bared and her axe waiting.
Then everything happened very fast.
Zyll growled in her throat, still barreling toward Tullah.
Quillin drove his shoulder into Kell’s left calf, then bit savagely into the back of his knee. Kell shouted, and Fern sprang aside before he could crush her with his fall. She tripped and landed on her ass, scrabbling through the grass as the man hit the ground, hard.
With a triumphant grin, Tullah sliced her axe down and across in a savage cut to meet the place where Zyll would be—
—and howled in fury as Nigel’s steel met the axeblade and drove it sidelong. She found herself face-to-face with Astryx, whose ghostlight eyes blazed into her own.
Zyll made a sharp left and skittered away from Tullah’s thwarted attack. As she did, the clasp of Fern’s red cloak came undone, and the red fabric billowed up and away from her, snagging on Astryx’s hip and threatening to foul her step.
“Eventually,” growled Tullah, turning her attention fully to the Oathmaiden, “. . .everylegend has to end.”
Kell moaned in the grass, one hand clapped to his wounded knee as he tried to rise, flailing with his mace at Quillin, who kicked at his exposed face with every opportunity.
Tullah hacked at Astryx in a frenzied explosion of motion. The elf backed away, wielding Nigel left-handed and barely turning aside the hail of blows.
Then Tullah let her axehead drop and punched Astryx directly in her wounded shoulder with a lightning-fast left cross.
The elf screamed and fell back, staggering unsteadily, tangled in Fern’s cloak.
“I thought so,” muttered the orc.
Astryx grunted with pain as she yanked the cloak from around her leg. She twirled it over her right arm and fist, eyes watering.
“Not much of a shield,” observed Tullah, advancing relentlessly. “Let’s get this over with.”
She raised her axe and brought it down hard, not bothering to look for an opening. Every bone-jarring chop hammered Nigel’s steel lower. Astryx’s left arm quivered. With so much damage accumulated from recent battles, she couldn’t muster the strength or vigor for a counterattack.
The Oathmaiden’s eyes glimmered with the possibility of her own death as her defense was whittled away with each merciless stroke.
Nigel moaned something inarticulate, crying out at every impact.
Then Fern stared at the cloak on Astryx’s arm, and something slotted into place in her mind.
“Astryx!” she cried. “The pocket!”
The Oathmaiden’s face clouded for a moment before her eyes widened in sudden understanding.
Tullah’s next stroke knocked Nigel from the elf’s grasp and skinned along the outside of her upper arm, spitting blood across the dead grass.
Astryx let the impact spin her, bringing her right arm around and driving her cloak-wrapped fist against Tullah’s belly with a meaty slap.
The orc grunted, eyes flying wide.
“Whu—” she choked through a mouthful of blood that stippled Astryx’s face. Her brow creased in slow confusion.
Astryx raised her other hand and placed it open-palmed against the orc’s chest. She pressed gently.
Tullah lurched backward, revealing Breadlee’s bloody Elder steel where it had punctured fabric, armor, and flesh, and driven deep into the orc’s gut.
Sagging to her knees, Tullah let her axe tumble from a nerveless grip and brought the hand dreamily to her belly, then up in front of her face. She marveled at the sticky crimson on her fingers.
Her eyelids flickered as she gazed past her trembling hand and Astryx, who was down on her knees and barely supporting herself with one arm. Zyll stood in the grass beyond, staring back solemnly.
