“Use me to cut it, all right?”
“It’s thicker than my arm!”
“Just do it!”
She stared at the knife in her hand, then quashed her doubt and began sawing at the wood while holding the pole above the cut.
Unbelievably, Breadlee’s keen edge slipped deeper into the wood with each stroke, until after only six, Fern used her weight to snap the top of the torch free in a shower of greasy sparks.
Turning back to the battle, she saw Astryx shoving one of the greenlings off Nigel’s blade with a savage kick of her booted foot. Her longsword made an inarticulate sound of triumph.
With a yowl, something plummeted from the roof to crash into a greenling topped with ram’s horns and burdock—
—Zyll, clawing furiously at the creature as she rode it to the ground, before springing away and disappearing into the shadows before it could retaliate.
“Lady!” cried Fern as she ran back with the shortened torch pole awkwardly pinned under one arm.
Astryx half turned, understanding already plain on her face as she stretched out her free hand.
“Sorry,” gasped Fern. Breadlee swore as she flung him to the dirt and used both paws to heave the torch in Astryx’s direction.
The elf snatched it from the air, spun, and planted its burning end into the chest of her nearest assailant.
Fern snatched Breadlee back up, but then could do little but watch in exhausted astonishment as the sweeping arcs of the torch sketched afterimages of fire into her vision. Astryx dismantled the remaining greenlings, laying waste with fire and Elder steel, until nothing remained but smoking wrecks of bone and stem.
In the stillness that followed, she stood heaving in long breaths, leaning on Nigel for support, bathed in sweat and soot in equal measure.
“Gods-damn,” breathed Breadlee. “We did it!”
Fern was about to suggest that Astryx was too tired to track down some more terrible creature deep in the woods when a haunting loon-call pierced the night, twisted at the last into a rotten, wet, chuckle.
Then the verdigaunt arrived.
Fern shivered with dreadful awe. The thing seemed to grow in stature as it emerged from the darkness with a thundering stride, rising above the smoldering remains of the greenlings like a lord of the Third Hell. It walked on two legs, and from its split hooves to the tips of its massive rack of antlers, it must have been thirty hands tall. Swollen eyes the glossy black of tar considered Astryx from the bearded, misshapen face of an elk, teeth bared in broken slabs within a lipless mouth. Its heavy shoulders dripped dead moss like banners of spiderweb as it moved. Three keratinous digits the width of shovels curled and uncurled at the ends of powerful arms as it regarded the Oathmaiden with the disdain of a vengeful god.
“Oh no,” breathed Fern, sagging.
“Guess she doesn’t have to find its tree after all,” added Breadlee, his voice grim.
There would be no reprieve, no moment to regroup.
The thing hunched to survey the wreckage of its minions in the road, then twisted its remarkably flexible neck to stare at Astryx.
Fern wondered in a distant way where Zyll was, and if the goblin had anything in her pockets they could use.
Through the glass of the upstairs windows, she could see the spectral impression of faces, watching with mouths agape.
Astryx caught Fern’s eyes even as she brought Nigel up before her, straight and still. “You can’t help here anymore, little squire. You have to run. Now.”
Something lost and tired in her voice bent a piece of Fern entirely out of true.
But she didn’t run. She couldn’t bring herself to abandon her friend.
Astryx snapped into motion, discarding the mantle of her fatigue. Nigel’s steel whipped in a flashing arc, and the verdigaunt howled as a line of black blood appeared along its thigh. The greenlings might not have been mortal, but this beast certainly was.
Mouth yawning and breath smoking, the antlered beast swiped at the elf with one arm, and she narrowly evaded by falling to a knee. Its bony fingertips dug a trench in the earth. The Oathmaiden caught the underside of its arm with a shallow slice as she rolled inside of its reach.
“What do we do?” said Fern, seized by a mad impulse to run toward the battle.
