There was so little space to fight in, here at the top of the slope. They had discussed this chance. Che would be trying to get her mind into Tisamon, to prise him apart and disperse him, creation of magic that he was, but Seda would be opposing her, move for move. They were locked together, each the other’s equal in strength and skill, but while they struggled silently, magic to magic, their Weaponsmasters fought the real duel.
Tynisa lunged in, angling her blade to take Tisamon under the arm, then circling the point over his arm as he brought it up to parry her, pushing next for his throat. He swayed back, just enough to be out of her reach, inviting her to overextend.
She took a pace back, saw him follow her up, darting inside her reach and going for her throat, always his favourite strike, but a poor choice against a skilled opponent. She passed back and to her right, feinting at his eyes, at the cold, pale face within his helm. He was dead, long dead, but there was magic in her arm and in her sword. A killing blow from her might not destroy him, but it would be enough to bring him down. After that she needed only a moment to bring an end to Seda, and that would free her father forever.
Abruptly he blurred into motion, striking high towards her head, then stepping around her parry, steel claw darting for her shoulder, her side, her injured hip. She felt no pain from her old wounds, the sword sustaining her as it leapt almost joyously to her defence, matching move to move and always the point directed to him, so that each parry was nothing more than the most economical shifting of her hand, only the angle changing, never the intent.
She struck against his shoulder, then his side, scraping mail both times, and never opening herself up. She was inside his shorter reach most of the time, but her own blade was constantly holding the centre line, standing in the way of his strikes. He was relentless in attack, near perfect in defence but, try as he might, he could not hook his claw around her guard to get to her.
She knew him. He was her father and she had fought him so many times, for practice and for blood. When they had first met they had nearly killed one another. They had crossed blades in the sewers beneath Myna, in the Prowess Forum of Collegium, in the darkness of Argastos’s domain in the Netheryon. She retained that connection with him, that understanding of his style and his limits. Dead, now, he had lost his feel for her, locked inside his armour and cut off from the man he had been.
He lunged for her hip again, trying to exploit an injury that did not slow her, and she twisted aside deftly, caught his blade when it flicked up for her face and bound it back behind her, punching him across the jaw with the edged knuckle-guard of her sword. She contacted only metal, but he staggered with the blow, and a moment later she had stepped around him, leaving her sword behind to catch his following strike, and Seda was before her, backing up frantically.
Then a blazing white agony struck through Tynisa, surging out from her hip, and she fell to one knee with a screech of pain, sword dropping from her hand with the utter, unexpected shock. Tisamon would not hesitate, she knew. His blade would be descending even now. She tried to fling up a hand to ward off the blow, in a hopeless, futile gesture.
It never came. She looked back wildly, trying to find him. He was gone. The deadening influence of the Worm had rolled over them, a momentary gain in ground by the attackers, and Tynisa’s magic had been snuffed out. As had Seda’s. As had Tisamon.
Tynisa gave out a rasping cry and reclaimed her sword – no Weaponsmaster’s call to have it instantly to hand, but just fumbling it from the floor with shaking hands. Seda’s face was stricken – how long had she been relying on her magic, and now it was gone, as though she had never been special at all.
Tynisa limped forwards, teeth gritted, willing herself to finish this.
A moment later and the pain was gone, her sword flooding its strength back into her. And she turned instinctively, bringing her hilt up so that the diagonal of her blade intersected Tisamon’s darting strike. The revenant was back.
The slaves were fighting harder than they had a right to, was Thalric’s assessment. Even with all their dependants at their back, and nowhere else to go in the world, he would have thought they should have crumbled by now. Instead, the Worm had rushed them again and again, and the volleys of slingshot had beaten into this attacking force, slowing them, tripping them over their own dead, so that when they reached the first line of slave-held swords the speed of their charge had been checked. There were mounds of the dead, now – dead from both sides – whole charnel barricades for the Worm to clamber over. It was all mounting up, impeding the enemy, making them slow down and wasting their numbers.
Of course, it’s still a hopeless fight, Thalric acknowledged. I’m not exactly going to get a chance to go around and tell everyone ‘Well done,’ am I?
He had been leaning heavily on his Art: aloft much of the time and battering down on the Worm with his sting – each shot just a tiny effort, but he was feeling the drag of it now. There were just too many of the enemy, and they didn’t care if they died. Or perhaps the problem was that there was only one of the enemy, and they could kill these husks forever and still not win the war.
The Mole Crickets were proving surprisingly effective, too, he considered. Of course he knew them back from his Empire days – big, slow, dull brutes, fit for mining and with a surprising turn for artifice, but seldom much use as warriors. Then, again, they were scarce in the world above, but here he had them in the hundreds, a hulking second line armed with clubs and hammers and the great reach of their long arms. The swordsmen in the front row were just concentrating on staying alive and fending the Worm off, whilst the big Moles reached forwards between them and hammered and crushed and slapped.
But we’ll run out of sling stones soon, I suppose,Thalric reflected. How ridiculous, to be trapped in this hole in the ground, and yet meet your end because there aren’t enough stones in the world.
He let himself drop down again, trying to conserve his strength. Below, down the slope, the lines shifted and wavered, and still the wretched slaves somehow held – the slingers thinning out the Worm even as they came so that what reached the defending lines was just manageable. There was a simple mathematics, though, of attrition and exhaustion, neither of which appeared to be problems the enemy suffered from.
It’s been an education, Thalric admitted. But they’re still slaves all the same, and when that line breaks there’ll be no recovering from it.
With that in mind, he began working his way back, keeping an eye on the ebb and flow of the fight. It was not from some desperate need to preserve his own skin, but he wanted to be closer to Che. When the inevitable worst happened, and these doomed defenders were overwhelmed, he wanted to get her out somehow. They would trust to their wings and risk the White Death and the carnivorous stars, and they would find some way out of this place, just the two of them.
He looked back up the slope, and saw fighting there too. For a moment, by the light of their single fire up there, he could not see who was crossing blades with whom, and he let his wings lift him up and carry him over, utterly bewildered. Then he saw them: who else could it be, really? After all, the world had ceased working to comprehensible rules some time ago, so why not these players acting out this scene one last time?