The angry elf looked at Storm, and Storm gave her a sunny smile in return.
About then the elf realized the two of them now stood alone, a good three or four paces ahead of all the other defenders. She grimaced, sighed, then turned and retreated with more haste than grace. Storm stood behind her, guarding her back all the way-as the mercenaries reached the end of where they’d dared to clear bodies aside, and broke into a stumbling charge across the heaped and slippery bodies, with ragged yells that mingled into a general rising roar.
And the din of battle broke out again, metal clanging on metal, laced with screams and grunts and yells. Storm’s tresses thrust forward like tentacles, wielding hand axes and daggers and at least one stolen mercenary spear, and the elves of Myth Drannor fought alongside her with a lithe agility that Arclath had already learned he had to keep from watching, lest he be fascinated for an instant too long and pay for his distraction with his life. The elves were skilled and fighting for their home-but they were also weary from days of fighting. No matter how many mercenaries they slew, the motley human hireswords just kept coming, in a great sea of helms and shields and breastplates, flooding through the trees in a flow beyond counting, a surge of bodies trampling their own fallen that forced the outnumbered defenders slowly back, and back again, and then into a hasty hacking scramble along the ridge to keep from being cut off and buried in thrusting enemy blades, and …
“Fall back!” Velathalar shouted, too beset by attackers to snatch at his horn. “Sound the retreat!”
High, fluting horns promptly did just that from behind the foremost elves, then larger and more distant horns took up the blaring call.
Storm’s hair curled around three throats from behind, and snatched that trio of Velathalar’s attackers off their feet; he used the respite to swiftly slash the other two and clamber up a heap of dying men he’d helped to build, to bellow, “Back, and rally!”
He shouted it twice, and by some magic of Storm’s, his second shout rolled through the trees like thunder. A glowing banner promptly unfurled atop a rise to the east, as a rallying point-but out of the trees beyond the mercenaries came a black, howling cone of biting jaws and raking claws, pouring through the air just above gleaming, bobbing mercenary helms to pounce on the banner.
The rise became briefly a dark cloud of swirling death and tatters of banner, but then the air turned bright, and the claws and jaws were beaten back, fading to nothingness.
Storm’s face, as she fought, turned grim.
The city wards should have stopped that Shadovar spell; it shouldn’t have taken a counterspell from an elf in the fray.
The inevitable end was coming much faster than she’d feared. Hereabouts, in this particular battle, perhaps in her next panting handful of breaths. Despite all the reinforcements Fflar had sent.
Elves who could not be spared, so if they fell here …
And in the end, she must do her utmost to preserve Amarune, and take her far from this, no matter what else happened or who fell.
She thought all of this without one moment of hesitation in her deadly dance of ducking, twisting, lunging, and leaping, sharp blades of steel thrusting and slashing at her constantly, many blows so heavy that sparks flew at every parry. She slew mercenaries with the same brutal ruthlessness they were trying to use on her, and they were falling in their dozens and scores, shoved onto the blades of those behind them, kicked to make them fall and trip their fellows, stunned from above by branches groaningly spell-bent for a moment, and beset by hails of fallen weapons flung in their faces by Storm’s tireless tresses. This was to the death, with no parleys nor ransoms, no chivalrous agreements for breathers or chances to retrieve the wounded or the dead.
Mercenaries were dying at a sickening rate-yet elves were falling fast too, and soon there’d be too few to hold any ground here at all, and the battle would be into the city streets and flying bridges, catwalks and room after splendid room of the homes and mansions that-
“Arclath!”
That anguished shriek nigh deafened Storm, and she whirled with her heart sinking, afraid that whatever had befallen Lord Delcastle, whom she had come to love and respect, would drive his beloved so mad with grief that she’d run right onto mercenary steel uncaring, or not seeing her peril at all.
And saw Arclath staggering back with a blade through his neck, the snarling mercenary who’d driven it there already dying, his fierce snarl sagging into bulging-eyed and agonized disbelief as a furious woman had leaped on him, her thighs now wrapped around his shoulders-and one of her daggers hilt deep in his nearest ear, her other dagger slashing at the man’s sword arm as if its blade could slice right through plate armor if it just struck often and hard enough.
Rune was going to overbalance, her weight dragging herself and the mercenary she was riding down, down atop the already dead and dying underfoot, and there were three mercenaries with well-used swords already lurching forward, ready to hack and stab …
Storm sprang to meet them, slashing viciously at faces and putting her shoulder into the chest of the first one, to topple him back into others and win space enough for Rune to come crashing down atop her mercenary without getting impaled on a reaching blade.
Storm sent her hair lashing out in all directions, to blind and to ensnare sword wrists and to tug at ankles and elbows, heedless of the pain as some of her hair was torn out by the roots.
Rune was down, crashing atop the mercenary she’d slain, his sword in Arclath and his dagger flying free into the air, and Storm sprang over her and landed on her toes right in front of the mercenaries she’d wounded and sent falling. She spent a precious spell to whirl up a dozen fallen weapons into a clanging, darting wall of slashing steel to keep back the mercenaries coming up behind those she’d felled, and spun around to try to get to Arclath.
Rune was there first, of course, sobbing and crying his name and trying to hold her man up-but stumbling helplessly to the ground with him. Or rather, thudding down onto the heaped bodies of the dead and dying. Storm shouldered her aside, to corral Arclath’s head in one hand, and kiss him long and hard on his blood-drooling mouth.
As she brutally tore the sword out of his neck.
“What’re you do-”
Rune stopped in midshriek as she saw silver fire leaking from around their joined lips.
Storm was holding Arclath up, kneeling over him, and in her strong but shaking arms Amarune saw her man writhe and stiffen. His eyes flared, momentarily becoming two silver flames.
Then he shuddered, arched-and fell back out of Storm’s embrace, shaking his head and moaning like a bewildered child in pain. His eyes were his own again, but trailing smoke as they wept blood, his face clenched in racking agony.
Yet there was no blood welling out of his mouth anymore, and the great wound in his neck was-gone.
And Storm was getting to her feet with her face drawn and old, swaying and staggering, and throwing up her hands in a desperate magic that flung scores of weapons up into the air from the dead all around and whirled them at the mercenaries surging forward.
Screams and wet gurglings rent the air as the front ranks of the besiegers collapsed into wild butchery, blood spraying in all directions, as Storm turned grimly to Arclath, who was once more in Rune’s fierce embrace, and said grimly, “It’s past time that the two of you went into hiding-and stayed there.”
“And leave you to die here? Leave Myth Drannor to fall?”
“Are we going to argue this?” Storm hissed fiercely, glaring at them both for just a moment before she found it prudent to whirl around and glare at the nearest mercenaries-those creeping around the edges of her spell to try to reach them.