“What the hell is that?”
She would have stopped and turned for a look in the direction of the sound, many others did, but Rool started shrieking in her ear and she hardly slackened her pace.
“You remember Ganthem’s?” he told her.
“I’ll never forget,” was her reply.
“You aren’t the only one. The difference is, High Elves never forgive.”
The first horses of the Wild Hunt cleared the boundary wall of the estate as Elora and Ryn reached the steps of the veranda. She labeled them horses because that is what they most closely resembled, but these were no horses, any more than the riders could be mistaken for human. The animals gibbered with rage and hunger and she thought for an awful moment that she was being chased once more by Bavmorda’s Death Dogs. In that moment it was clear to her where the Demon Queen had acquired that damnable strain of hunting hound.
The horses struck the earth with hooves composed of three huge, hooked claws, each step gouging terrible wounds in the ground as a foretaste of what they would do to prey. Realizing their peril, far too late, those still on the lawn began to run.
None survived more than a couple of steps.
They fell beneath those awful hooves, or the fangs that filled these animals’ mouths instead of a ruminant’s flat teeth, or the gleaming crystal blades of the riders. There was blood as they fell and screams strangely after, as though the souls of the slain were being dragged to some hideous fate.
A sword was leveled in Elora’s direction and a squad wheeled with such precision, making a right-angle turn without losing a single step, they might have been mounted on turntables. Ryn took her in his arms, and before she could protest, much less struggle, he hurled her across the patio and through the nearest open doorway.
Then he turned to face the onrushing charge.
He thrust a bench into the path of one, hoping to trip the beast, but its unearthly agility allowed it to spring over with ease. He didn’t stop to think, events were happening so quickly, the battle erupting with such sudden and extreme ferocity, that by the time he’d done so he’d be dead. The Wyr ducked under a second beast and unhorsed its rider, whose neck made a satisfying and final krak when he landed.
Sadly, numbers and his own debilitated state worked against him. Even as Elora clambered to her feet inside, a horse delivered a fearsome body blow, ramming its chest into him. He went flying, another rider drawing blood with a sweeping slash of his blade, another mount finishing the job with a rake of its claws as Ryn crashed unmoving to the steps.
A whole host of voices screamed their protest at that sight. Elora’s was one, but her outcry was nothing compared with the one uttered by Anakerie as she charged down a flight of stairs.
“A sword,” she bellowed, as she would on any battlefield.
“The Danan,” one of the riders called out in a glorious tenor. “Where lies the Danan?”
Elora had already been seen. As she pitched herself clear of its path a horse burst through the glass doorway, filling the air with a shower of glittering and deadly shards. Neither horse nor rider appeared affected by the impact, and any hope Elora entertained that the animal might have a harder time on the polished floor were instantly dashed as its claws punched through the gleaming tile as if it were rice paper.
Duguay had brought her traveling pouches with the cloak and she’d automatically strapped them on. Now, scrambling to find footing of her own and keep track of the attackers, she thrust a hand inside, to come up with her long sword.
“Anakerie,” she called, in a fair approximation of the Warlord’s combat tones, and threw the weapon to her, while drawing its companion mid-length blade for herself.
With a wild grin and a war cry to match, Anakerie leaped into the air for the sword. She was spinning as she caught it, completing a full revolution by the time she touched down again, using the momentum of that movement and the speed she built up to add to the force of her first blow.
It took the nearest horse across the neck and without pause sliced deep into the rider as well. Shock made him jerk the reins, so that both he and his mount collapsed into a sideways crash that sent them skidding across the floor, the rushing torrents of their lives staining it scarlet behind them.
Elora stood staring, a little bit of shock, far more disbelief, at the sight. It wasn’t the brutality of the moment that startled her but the sheer beauty of the slain elf knight. As a race, they were at least a head taller than the tallest Daikini, attenuated creatures whose general resemblance to Daikini served to make them even more unreal to the eye. His armor was hide sandwiched between a lacquer laminate, the pieces fastened together by an intricate array of brocade ties. Somehow, though the armor was as hard to the touch as steel plate, it followed the specifics of the wearer’s form so that it appeared almost skin-snug. Underneath, for padding, was a quilted jacket, with baggy trousers to match. The fundamental elegance of the being itself was sustained through every aspect of its being, whether clothes or weapons. Form was wedded to function on every level, to create an appearance of consummate loveliness.
To look at these warriors, it was hard to see them as a threat. They were too beautiful.
For many, that was a fatal mistake.
Elora was still for all of a matter of seconds, and that was nearly her last mistake as well. A warrior aimed his sword at her back, the young woman sensing his presence a fraction too late, turning to face him too slowly to save herself.
Rool’s arrow struck at the elf knight from Elora’s shoulder, Franjean’s from the upstairs landing, striking him one after the other with all the fierce life energy the brownies could imbue them with, fueled by their rage at this attack and their even more desperate concern for Elora’s safety. The elf flew off his saddle as though he’d been lasso’d from behind, hammered backward onto the wall with such force that he cracked his armor if not his bones. He was hurt but far from finished, and struggled up from where he fell, his face twisting with rage and pain and exertion.
Rool nocked another shaft and let fly, but he’d used too much of his life force in that first reflexive response. The arrow he fired had hardly more energy than an ordinary flight, and even though the parry was ugly, the elf was able to bat it aside with his sword. He swung for Elora and just as she had done in her training duels with Khory, her own curved blade rose to check him. He was faster than any Daikini, even bashed and battered as he was, but Elora had honed her skills against the demon child, whose speed was beyond belief. There were none of the harsh sounds of contact between steel blades, this engagement like the others raging throughout the room and yard beyond was marked by a succession of sweet chimes as metal struck crystal.
Before this exchange was done, Elora knew she had him.
“Yield,” she called to him. “Lay down your weapon.”
He nodded shallowly, curtly, let his sword fall. Elora didn’t want to take her eyes off him or lower her guard, so she called on Rool to tell her what was happening behind her back.
That was what the elf was waiting for. He had no respect for Elora’s abilities, even though they were proving better than his own, it was the brownie he regarded as the only legitimate threat. As soon as Rool looked away, knives appeared in both his hands as if by magic, though in fact they’d come from spring-loaded sheathes strapped against his forearms. With a sideward sweep of the leg, he struck at Elora’s wrist to slap her sword aside. That done, he meant to bury both his daggers in her unprotected back.
Except that she was turning even as he was, reacting only the barest instant behind him. A kick intended to break bones and possibly disarm her made only the most marginal contact as she folded at the knees, dropping at the same time into a crouch.
Here, the elf’s height worked against him. He couldn’t bend quite as fast and his own momentum made it that much harder to reverse direction. Suddenly he was the one who was vul
nerable, Elora spinning through a single revolution like a top.
There was no time. For hesitation, for second thoughts, for anything. Both combatants were committed to a course of action that could not be recalled.
The elf began to mouth a curse, but in Sandeni they were little more than words. The last thing he saw was Elora’s face. There was no rage in her, only a great sorrow.
Her aim was as true as Anakerie’s as she stabbed upward through the side seam of his breastplates, beneath his ribs, into his heart.
There was no time to react to his death, a sweep of her gaze across the room conveyed the whole of the situation.
Anakerie stood alone on the veranda, straddling Ryn’s body, her gown ruined by dark stains on the glorious blue fabric, the sword Elora gave her whipping through the air faster than any eye could follow, her body moving only slightly slower as she stood her ground against every warrior that came against her.
Within the ballroom was an ever-more-chaotic melee, a mad mix of struggling bodies, shouts and screams, the clash of blades and fists.
“Where’s Franjean,” she demanded of Rool, “where’s Thorn?”
She didn’t dare use her InSight to find them, she needed all her wits to stay alive.
“Maizan!” she heard, and saw Anakerie’s escort, armed and armored, charging on foot into the room like a cresting wave, shoulder to shoulder. They had no shields, but they wore steel head to toe and accepted no foe from either side of the Veil as their equal.
Warriors came together with an audible crash and the form of battle dissolved instantly into a myriad of individual combats. The Daikini would seem to have the key advantage, since the very substance of their weapons was anathema to their opponents and in this crowded and relatively confined space the elves would not be able to utilize their extraordinary speed. The Maizan assumed as well that the elven armor would be no defense against their scimitars.
To their surprise, and very quickly their horror, that proved not to be the case. Faery armor could be broken, but only with a tremendous effort, and while that blow might prove successful, it left the warrior who delivered it exposed to other attacks. The enemy in front was not the paramount threat, but the two who struck from either side.
The opposing forces could not be more different, in appearance and in style. With the entrance of the Maizan, the Daikini appeared as dark, brutish shapes, workmanlike and graceless, stamped from a single mold. By contrast, though the elves fought in concert they never lost their individuality, or the phenomenal grace that made this appear more like a performance than a pitched and bloody battle. No striking cobra could hope to match their speed, and their strength beggared description. Blows from the Maizan that would have slain any other foe too often spent themselves on empty air. Before that luckless warrior could recover himself his life was done. Or a pair of hands would close on some poor man’s head, with long, elegant fingers you’d think would have trouble cracking an eggshell. There would be a moment of dread realization, when the Daikini so caught might mistakenly believe he’d just been clamped between the jaws of some vise, and then a twist of those delicate wrists would break his neck.
The Maizan were valiant, they were skilled, they were doomed.
Khory Bannefin saved them.
She wore no armor, save a shirt of fine mail beneath her leather tunic. She faced the elves with a sword in either hand and a look of wild joy on her face. Fast as the elven warriors were, she proved faster, her thrusts and parries an ongoing masterpiece of precision. Not a move was wasted, nor an opportunity missed. She killed for herself, she drove her foes onto the swords of others, she took so great a toll in so short a time that the elves had to fall back a few steps to try to regroup.
She gave them no chance, but lunged forward to bury the point of one blade in a naked throat, pivoting sideways to stroke her edge across another’s shoulder to nearly sever his arm, backhanding her second blade to parry an attack, following through and completing her turn with the first blade to open her foe across the hips. The elf dropped, yowling in agony, ravaged as much by the touch of her steel as the actual damage she’d inflicted with that dreadful wound until a following Maizani finished him. By then, Khory had moved ahead, to another duel, another victory.
Thorn used no blade, but fought with a quarterstaff twice his height that reminded Elora of the rod the Lord Regent of Lower Faery had carried on Tyrrel’s Tor. He was hard to reach with swords, though short enough to be stomped on, but he never let his adversaries come close enough to try. With a fair speed of his own, and an uncanny accuracy, he stabbed out with the point of his staff as though it was a lance, at ankles and knees and groin, blows meant to harry and possibly cripple, and if his attacks doubled that unlucky warrior over so that his head came in range, Thorn would shift his grip on the polished ironwood and slap the elf down with a sharp clout to jaw or skull. At the same time Franjean kept up a harassing fire of his own, conserving his energies after that initial burst to save Elora, intent not so much on inflicting mortal harm as on distracting as many of the elves as possible so that other hands might finish the job.
One set of those hands belonged to Renny Garedo, and Elora saw at once that he was being especially hard-pressed amidst a pile of still forms who were more Daikini in Sandeni and Cascani livery than they were warriors of Greater Faery. He’d led his men as well as they had fought, which was with all the courage any leader could hope for, but his very presence seemed to inspire the elves to a manic ferocity, as though his existence was an insult that couldn’t be borne.
Renny made no attempt to escape, or join forces with other defenders. Quite the opposite. He used the elves’ focus on him to draw them away from more valuable targets, making plain that he considered his life fair exchange for those of Thorn and Elora.
Elora thought differently.
There were only a few Maizan left, but they were advancing steadily on to the veranda. The flow of battle had swirled Khory to the side, placing her closer to Thorn and Renny.
She didn’t attempt to use her speaking voice. After her performance, there was precious little of it left. Even in top-notch condition, she wasn’t sure she could make herself heard over this din. She didn’t like using mindspeech with Khory. Each contact brought with it a reminder that the human structure of her thoughts was only a surface construct. Beneath it, like an ocean beneath an ice field, was something deep and dark and wholly unfathomable, whose essence was the deadliest entity known to the Twelve Realms. That was why, in this battle, Khory proved as much a lightning rod as Renny. The elves sensed the dual nature of the demon child and saw this as an opportunity to revenge themselves on a race they hated almost as much as they hated the Daikini.
There was no time for doubts, or hesitation. Thoughts had to give birth instantly to action or they were of no use.
“Khory,” Elora called in mindspeech. “Bring Renny to Thorn, stay with them both.”
There was no entreaty to what she said. As before with Rool, these were royal commands, and meant to be obeyed.
She heard no acknowledgment from Khory, expected none. Trusting the warrior woman to do what was right, Elora turned her attention the other way.
Rool had heard her instructions. He had his own thoughts about them.
“Best you join ’em, Elora, safety in those swords.”
She kept her silence and let her body answer for her. She’d taken hardly a step before Rool realized her intent and hullabaloo’d a protest.
“Are you demented, girl? Stop this foolishness, this instant, before we’re both of us for the high jump!”
“I won’t let you die today, Rool.”
“What about you?”
“Anakerie’s fighting on her own! I can’t leave her!”
“She’s a trained professional, you silly nit, this is what she was born to do!” In his agitation, the brownie cast aside all sense of
propriety and tact, saying whatever came to mind and contemplating worse in a vain attempt to deflect Elora from her headstrong course.
Franjean heard the outcry. In this close a proximity, what one of them saw the other instantly knew, and he wasted no time in telling Thorn. They all recognized the danger but there was nothing to be done about it. The press of bodies arrayed against them was too great, they had to secure their own position first.
Elora sent a chair skidding across the veranda, catching one elven warrior in time to turn a fatal stab into a nasty slash that glanced messily off the bones of Anakerie’s back. As though the move had been intended all along, she reversed her grip on her sword and stroked its tip across the elf’s throat. Blood fountained, life fled, and she brought the curved blade around and up to parry the thrust of another foe. Their weapons crossed only twice more before Elora was on him from the side in a tackle that pitched him into a tangle of bushes. Again without missing a beat, Anakerie scooped up one of the elven knives and hurled it at him with a sideways flick of the wrist.
“What are you doing here?” she snarled at the younger woman as they stood shoulder to shoulder over Ryn’s still form, their blades weaving a daunting, deadly pattern before them while Rool did what he could from his perch atop Elora’s shoulder.
“I thought you needed help.”
“Your help, singer? That’ll be the day.”
“We stay long enough, Highness, that day may yet dawn.”
How long they fought, neither could tell. A clock might tell them minutes and they would say it lied, because to them it seemed like hours passing. They were hard-pressed from every side, even after they were joined by the two or three Maizan to fight their way to the veranda. The sights and sounds and smells, every physical sensation, blurred and distorted in Elora’s perceptions into a ravening pandemonium that stripped the moments of their consequence. She lost all sense of herself as a being, and worse, of those she fought as well. They became objects, as did she, and the fact that flesh opened when she cut it and blood spilled and eyes turned glassy lost its meaning. She fought as fiercely as she was able because her life was at stake, and that of friends and comrades, but that was a truth her body knew far better than her mind.
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