The stag-man charged.
Slate dived out of the way again, and the stag discovered too late that she had been standing directly in front of the shaman. He tried to change direction to avoid trampling the old doe, and ran directly into Caliban instead.
Ooof…
The stag-man went down in a welter of flailing limbs. The knight felt hooves drum against his ribs.
She did that deliberately. I wonder if she’s hoping we’ll kill each other.
The stag tried to rise. A hoof scraped down Caliban’s back, leaving a welt.
I’ve got to keep him down. I’ve got to help.He tried to roll on top of one of the stag’s legs.
It scolded like a jay, an incongruous sound, and struck out with the knife. A hot line went across his thigh. Caliban hissed.
Slate stepped in, her face as cool and detached as a woman doing long division. She caught the stag’s antlers in one hand, hauled its head back, and jammed Brenner’s knife into its throat, up to the hilt.
Blood fountained out. Caliban’s armor was awash in it. If they lived through this, his chainmail would take hours to clean.
The creature thrashed atop him and died.
Slate stepped back, nodded, and cracked her knuckles.
It occurred to Caliban that he had been nattering about his oath to protect the weak to a woman who had apparently just tracked them through the woods, found their weapons, climbed up the outside of the hut carrying said weapons, dropped fifteen feet through a hole in the ceiling onto a shaman, saving his life and possibly his soul in the process, and then proceeded to fight and dispatch a stag-man twice her size.
My god. Iaman arrogant jackass.
Slate rolled the rune sideways off him, pulled the knife free, and sawed through his ropes. By the time he managed to sit up and get the blood back into his hands, she’d also freed Brenner.
“And now—” Slate said, turning, and then, “God’s balls!”
All around the perimeter of the room, the rune were rising to their feet.
“I didn’t see allthemfrom up there,” said Slate, turning in a slow circle. Then she sneezed.
Caliban got to his feet, feeling his wrists and ankles screaming. His feet were coming back to life and felt like they were on fire. He looked around, found his sword and picked it up.
Slate sneezed again and wiped at her nose, never taking her eyes off the circle of rune. Caliban limped to her side, and looked up at the deer-people in despair.
There had to be two dozen of them. Even if his legs weren’t about to buckle, even if his throat didn’t feel as if it were full of shards of glass, even if Slate weren’t bleeding and if half of the rune were too groggy to fight, there was just no way.
The deer were advancing toward the pit.
“It was a good rescue,” he rasped, lifting his sword.
“Pity it didn’t work,” she muttered, and sneezed again.
The rune were moving slowly. He groped in a pocket and found a handkerchief. Slate took it with a choking laugh.
Ranks of green bodies circled the pit. The sounds that they made were high-pitched and dangerous, like the screams of hunting hawks.
“I’m sorry I said you were weak.”
“You damn wellbetterbe.”
She shoved the handkerchief into a pocket. There were bloody fingerprints across it.
“Everybody back off,” said Brenner behind them, in a voice so cold and brittle that it sounded as if it might shatter, “and I mean it.”
