Tungdil had no choice. He rolled out, hoping to throw himself under the nearest piece of debris, but the shadow mare was faster.
In a single powerful leap, it soared over the wreckage and landed beside him, its head shooting forward to seize Tungdil's right shoulder in its jaws. The dwarf's chain mail saved him from its sharp teeth, but the pressure was excruciating.
"Get your filthy teeth off me!" Tungdil's fighting spirit came to the fore, and he forgot his terror, swinging his ax at the steed.
But the shadow mare had no intention of relinquishing its quarry. Jerking its head, it shook Tungdil back and forth like a doll. Without warning, its jaws flew open and he sailed through the air, landing on the ashen grass with a thud. The shadow mare whinnied, carving deep furrows as it pawed the ground. Tungdil was still coming to his senses when it thundered toward him.
The twins sprang into action. As the mare drew level with them, they burst out of their hiding places on either side of its path.
"Here, horsey, horsey," shouted Boпndil, driving an ax with both hands into the steed's right knee. Boлndal's crow's beak carved into its left foreleg.
The black beast staggered and fell, tumbling along the ground in a pother of ash. In spite of its obvious agony, it tried to drag itself up again, but the dwarves rushed in.
"You're not a horse anymore, you're a pony," Boпndil yelled at it. "How do you fancy fighting eye to eye?" The shadow mare lunged at him and was rewarded with an ax blow to the jaw. "Try sinking your teeth into that!" The mare jerked away, thereby sealing its fate.
Boлndal embedded his beaked war hammer into its long bony nose and hauled the beast in. Not for nothing was Hookhand his second name. Triceps bulging and heels digging into the ground, he dragged the mare closer so that his brother could sink an ax into its neck.
"So you want to bite me, you worthless bunch of bones," cried Boпndil, hefting his ax to strike again. The blade severed the shadow mare's spinal cord and it slumped to the ground.
Boлndal put one foot on the steed's nose and levered the crow's beak out of the corpse.
His brother grinned at him. "Now for the pointy-eared rider!" He signaled to Tungdil to stay hidden. "Make yourself scarce, scholar, and watch how it's done!"
They crouched next to the mare's fallen body and waited. Tungdil started to tell them about his encounter with the revenant, but they waved him away. All that mattered for the moment was dispatching the дlf.
Before long an unnatural scream, more drawn out and high-pitched than the voice of any human female, rent the air.
Waggling his eyebrows in gleeful anticipation, Boпndil straightened his plait and steeled himself for combat. "Music to my ears."
Boлndal listened intently, then leaped to his feet. His brother followed.
I should be out there helping, not watching like a coward. Tungdil felt compelled to do something, even if only to act as a decoy. Sighing, he was about to emerge from his hiding place when two skeletal hands grabbed him from behind and thrust him to the ground.
"Who are you?" a musical voice demanded. Damp, foul-smelling bones fingered his face. "A small man or maybe a groundling…"
The dwarf was rolled onto his back and found himself looking into the tortured face of the once-beautiful elf. She too had become a revenant. Robbed of her eyes by the дlfar, she had torn herself from the trunk of the beech and was groping blindly through the ruins.
"Let go of me!" shrieked Tungdil, reaching for his ax. His arms were clamped so tightly that he went for his dagger instead. The blade clunked harmlessly against her rib cage.
"Who gave a dwarf permission to enter my glade?" she demanded imperiously. A bony hand tightened around his throat. "Are you in league with the дlfar? Do you hate us enough to ally yourselves with these monsters?"
Tungdil fought back his fear and realized that there was something different about her tone of voice. Unlike the wizard, she seemed to be in possession of her will. "Listen to me, my lady," he pleaded. "Lot-Ionan sent me here to return some items belonging to Gorйn."
She turned her fathomless gaze on him. "I'm changing," she whispered fearfully. "Something's happening to me. They killed me, but my soul… my soul…" She trailed off. "You say Lot-Ionan sent you? My beloved Gorйn thought highly of his magus." She released her murderous grip. "You'll find a book in the house; it's in the library. Gorйn was going to send it to your master, but then the дlfar attacked and-"
"I've got it already," he broke in excitedly.
"Don't let them have it!" she instructed. "Take it to Ionandar and give it to the magus; he'll know what to do as soon as he reads the letter." Her skeletal fingers clutched at him again. "Swear you'll do it!"
Tungdil stammered out a solemn oath, swearing first by Vraccas and then by the magus. The elf seemed satisfied and backed away.
"Now behead me," she said softly. "I can't allow the Perished Land to steal the little I have left." She stretched out her bony arms. "Do you see what they've done to me? Without your help, I'll be yoked to their evil forever, a blind servant of destruction."
There was something almost mesmerizing about the two dark pits in her face. Tungdil hesitated. "But I-"
"Everything I loved has been taken from me: Gorйn, my beauty, my home, my glade." She raised her left hand and poked a finger gingerly into her empty eye sockets. "Look, even tears are denied me. Have pity on me."
Her face and voice spoke so eloquently of her sorrow that Tungdil had no option but to comply. He rose to his feet, took a few shaky steps toward her, and swung his ax. As the elf's head rolled through the debris, her skeletal body slumped to the ground. The lady of the glade was dead.
The trees around them gave a piteous groan, the crackling and rustling mingling with the sounds of a raging battle. Tungdil remembered with a start that the twins were locked in combat with the дlf.
They still don't realize! he thought in alarm, quickly pulling himself together. If we don't decapitate the corpses, they'll rise up and attack us.
Meanwhile, Boлndal and Boпndil had discovered that their opponent had no intention of playing by their rules. The дlf was nimble as a cat, ducking, skipping, and leaping to evade their blows. But for all her agility she had yet to penetrate the dwarves' heavy mail.
"Over here!" Tungdil lunged forward and hurled his ax. The дlf spotted the missile just in time and stepped aside briskly.
Suddenly Gorйn loomed up behind her, swinging a plank. She heard the wood whistling toward her, but it was too late to move.
The plank connected with her back, catapulting her forward. With a cackle of frenzied laughter, Boпndil rushed up and took aim at her thinly armored thighs. "Fight on my level, no-eyes!"
The axes sliced deep into her flesh and the дlf shrieked in agony, only to be winded by Boлndal, who rammed the butt of his crow's beak into her belly. Before she could make another sound, Boпndil raised his blades and hewed her neck.
"What did you do that for?" he asked the wizard indignantly. "Couldn't you see we almost had her?" Puzzled, he stared as Gorйn staggered toward him. "Hang on, shouldn't he be dead?"
"He won't die unless you behead him!" Tungdil called out to him. "This is the Perished Land. You've got to chop his head off!"
"Well, if you insist…" Boпndil dodged the wizard's clumsy attempts to fell him and sliced off his head with a single strike of his ax. Gorйn was no more.
"Seeing as we're here, we should probably take care of the rest," said Boлndal, nodding in the direction of the ruins.
Brought back to life by the dark power, the charred corpses of the orcs and the elves were beginning to stir. The Perished Land made no distinction between its own soldiers and those who had died at their hands, so the twins were obliged to execute their task with utmost rigor, fighting and beheading every single revenant in order to deliver them from their fate. Tungdil chose to watch.
"They could have tried a bit harder," complained Boпndil when the gory business was over at last. "At least it's out of my system, though." Sure enough, the glint in his eyes was slowly fading. "Shall we go?"