He was rewarded by seeing Thurauvyn Nathalanorn reel back, red flames like dragonfire momentarily licking up one undead arm, as the baelnorn’s barrier spell shattered like a great pane of glass, falling to crash silently to the floor in many thousand fading shards.
And then, as Helgore laughed in glee, the counterstrike came, and the world became an icy inferno of frigid needles piercing him in a score of places. Snatching Helgore’s breath away, and all movement, and for one agonizing and seemingly endless movement, the beat of his heart.
Slow agony spread through Helgore like some sort of blind, bumbling caterpillar, and then-his heart fell back to beating with a sullen thud, the world rushed back to him as a place of eerie shrieking-his own, he realized dazedly-and he was falling, fingers writhing spasmodically, tongue undulating out of the side of his mouth as if flutteringly eager to be elsewhere …
He landed on his back with a crash, and bounced, arching in helpless agony and kicking up at the sky uncontrollably. The aftershocks of both spells rolled away along the passage floor in a shared sigh of fading, racing radiances, and then … silence fell.
A stretching quiet that was broken by both Helgore and the baelnorn saying, in almost-perfect unison, “Is that the best you can do?”
A moment later, horribly, they both started to laugh at the same moment. Dry mirth from the baelnorn, and wild hysteria from the living man.
Helgore found unfunniness first.
The forest was acrawl with bands of mercenaries hastening into the fray or trudging back to their camps to rest, and it hadn’t taken Storm, Amarune, and Arclath long to trot straight into a collision with one.
In a trice, swords had been out among the trees, and Storm’s long silver hair whirling startled hireswords into brutal thudding collisions with various handy blueleaf and duskwood trunks.
And then it was steel against steel, blades clanging and shrieking with the fury of the hacking.
“You’re no elf!” the burly mercenary snarled into Arclath’s face as they strained for supremacy in a clinch of steel, blades locked together and noses not all that far apart. “What in the Nine blazing Hells are you doing here?”
“Defending Myth Drannor from the likes of you,” Lord Delcastle replied levelly, the veins standing out on his neck in his effort, as they shoved and set their teeth-and the arms of both men started to tremble.
“Oh, stop toying with your mercenaries, dear!” Rune muttered as she ducked past in the fray, hamstringing Arclath’s foe in an instant as she went.
The man lurched sideways with a shriek that ended abruptly as Arclath’s dagger flashed into his throat. As he collapsed like a load of dumped fish on the Suzailan docks, his slayer frowned at his lady’s slender back, now plunging into a knot of mercenaries battling a lone bladesinger. “Hoy, now, was that sporting? Honorable?”
“I’m not here for sport, Lord Delcastle,” she called back, driving the pommel of her dagger into the back of a mercenary helm so fiercely that it rang like a bell and spun half around on its wearer’s head, blinding him. “And I think we’ve long agreed that I lack honor. I’m here to win.”
“Hah!” a tusk-helmed mercenary jeered as he came crashing through the trees at the head of a fresh band of hireswords. “Then you’re fighting on the wrong side! You and all these long-ears are doomed!”
“Doomed! Doomed!” various hireswords chorused, sounding like so many lowing sheep.
“Do you mind?” Storm complained, flinging the body of her most recent assailant away and moving to intercept this new force. Alone. “ ‘Doom’ was my battle cry, I’ll have you know. A good seven centuries ago, I’ll grant, but still …”
“Pah! Seven years ago, mayhap!” the tusk-helmed warrior spat. “Seven centuries, my left haunch!”
“That can be arranged,” Storm told him sweetly, her tresses lashing out to hook around his elbows and ankles as their blades clashed, whisking him up and into the path of his charging fellows.
The tusk-helmed warrior’s startled shout became a raw roar of pain as the glaive of a hard-charging hiresword thrust into his behind and tore on through. The glaive wielder was coming too fast to halt his charge or sidestep, and slammed right into the wound he’d just created, blood spraying in all directions.
As the stricken tusk-helmed warrior shrieked, the glaive wielder slipped in gore, slid right under the man he’d just wounded-and straight into Storm.
Or rather, into where she’d been. She’d sprung into the air, to come down hard with both feet on the sliding man, crotch and throat. Pinned, he managed a high-pitched strangling gurgle and a beached-fishlike thrashing ere a running bladesinger disgustedly drove a sword point in under his jaw.
By then, the mercenary charge had become a wary, scattered advance, hampered by the trees and Storm’s fury. Myth Drannan bladesingers rushed to reinforce her, forming a formidable line that had more than one mercenary backing away.
When Amarune Whitewave arose from a tangle of three large and well-armored mercenaries, covered with blood but smiling, with her three foes lolling lifeless, and Arclath Delcastle came sprinting to her side with blood on his own sword and dagger, the mercenaries had tasted enough.
They broke and ran, leaving the human handful of Myth Drannan defenders unopposed. And trading weary smiles with the bladesingers who’d stood with them.
“A small victory,” one elf muttered, “but victory nonetheless.”
“Well said,” Storm agreed. “ ‘Savor victories whatever their size, and whenever they come-they are the little lights that brighten our days.’ ”
“Thaeruld Hraumendor,” Arclath said approvingly. “From his A Life Lived Adequately. One of the better philosophers in my father’s library. Very old book; I’m surprised you know it.”
Storm gave him a dangerous look. “I knew the man, Lord Delcastle. When he was younger than you are, to boot.”
“Ah,” Arclath said, wincing. “Pray accept my apologies-bad manners to openly remind a lady of her age, very bad. In my defense, let it be said that my slight was entirely unwitting and unintentional.”
Storm’s look turned sly. “ ‘Too many of our nobles, young and old, are headstrong self-centered louts, their every act unwitting of consquences, and uncaring of unintentional side effects.’ To quote Baerauble, writing back in the reign of Tharyann the Elder. And yes, Lord Delcastle, that was before my time.”
But Arclath was staring past her, through the trees, keeping his usual watch over the nearest mercenaries. And instead of replying to her sally, he frowned and scrambled a few steps sideways, over a softly rotten stump as large around as a good-sized oval dining table, to where he could see better.
“Well, Arclath,” Storm asked gently as Rune joined her man, and he gave her an almost absent-minded hug, “what’re the foe up to?”
“Much discussion,” he replied. “Some of them are waving torches. Unlit, but by the way they’re pointing them, I think they’re debating trying to start a large forest fire.”
“Much good may that do them. If there’s one thing even young elves can master, it’s firequench magic. Still, we should alert the best archers who can be spared from the lines. Fire setters have to tarry in one spot long enough to make superb targets-and if they try to use fire arrows, we can take down their archers. I-”
The faintest of rumbles arose, and the ground under their feet rocked. Out of a nearby hollow tree burst brief tongues of red flame, amid some ghostly shards of glowing light that faded to nothingness as they started to drift away into the air.
“What was that?” Arclath hissed. “Are the besiegers down below, blasting tunnels to get past our lines?”