Preparing to hack his way into half a dozen foes, Mattick found them all writhing helplessly at his feet, so it was ease itself to ruthlessly stab through the backs of their necks, one by one.
Only one determined elf reached him upright, and that was after four elf corpses had slammed into that elf from behind. Off-balance and winded, the elf could only parry desperately as Mattick slashed at his face. Which left him vulnerable to the prince’s hearty crotch kick.
As the elf was propelled into the air, mewing in shocked pain, Mattick moved to where he could hack the falling body viciously-and did so. The elf’s neck broke at his second blow, and its owner slammed heavily into the ground, loose limbed and dead or dying.
Mattick regarded his work with some satisfaction, but Vattick slapped his arm on the way past and hissed, “Come on. There’ll be plenty more showing up if we tarry!”
Mattick sighed, nodded, and followed his brother over a heavily wooded ridge, and down into a little dell ringed by the smooth-curved walls of elf buildings that looked more like gigantic garden plantings than dwellings. Fearful-faced elf children and wrinkled elders emerged from the arched doorways of some of the buildings, all heading off to the princes’ left.
A lot of children, but only a few withered elders-and no other sort of elves at all.
The two princes looked at each other, then nodded in unison, hefted their swords, and started forward.
“It’s always a good day to butcher elves,” Vattick hissed, as they began their charge.
Storm was fighting hard in the teeth of the fray.
She was drenched with blood not her own, and despite subsuming the spark of silver fire she’d swallowed in her kitchen-the spark that had once belonged to her fallen sister Syluné-she was more than tired. She kept her matted silver tresses plucking up fallen daggers whenever she saw them and hurling them at the hireswords she couldn’t reach, the ones crowding to get at her from behind the men she was busy killing at the moment.
And those men seemed endless. The Myth Drannor still in elf hands was down to just a few buildings, the battered and weary defenders dwindling to mere hand counts-and still the Shadovar hirelings came pouring out of the trees, a forest of moving helmed heads that outnumbered the trees within sight.
There could be only one end to this, and it might well come very soon.
Slashing open a warrior’s throat and kicking his body down off the high stump he’d joined her atop won her a few moments to draw breath and twirl for a proper scan all around.
That whirlwind of dying mercenaries was Fflar and three or four elf knights fighting with him, and-
There. That was the coronal. Fighting hard, too, with none too many knights and not a single high mage left to stand with her in battle.
“Sorry, saers-must run!” Storm called merrily to the besiegers warily approaching her stump, and she sprang down to hit the ground sprinting. She might as well get as close to the coronal as she could before she had to stop and hack and hew the rest of the way.
Storm could still run like the wind when she had to, and got surprisingly far, but her reward for that was to have a score of silver-plate-armored armsmen converge on her. Obviously all stalwarts hailing from the same elite mercenary company.
All that gleaming armor gave her an idea, but she would have to time things just right. When the foremost trio of the shiny helms reached her, Storm backed away hastily, looking scared.
And as she’d hoped, one of them fell for her ruse, sneering at her and swaggering forward, drawing back a great war axe for a cleaving blow.
Storm sprang at him like a panther, reversing her sword and dagger so two hard pommels slammed into the axeman’s nearest elbow, driving his swing farther back than he’d intended. He overbalanced with a profanely startled yell-and crashed back into the knees of his fellow full-plate mercenaries, driving them back in turn. One crashed back into the hurrying man behind him, and the other fell unopposed to the ground but bounced and flailed, tripping another mercenary who was at a full run, charging to get at Storm.
Which meant all these stalwarts were in clanging contact, so it was time.
Storm spent a tiny spurt of silver fire-as chain lightning.
And saw it leap and crack from man to man, back along the colliding stream of them.
Grunts became screams, but she hadn’t time to watch the fun; she needed all the time their disablement and brief careers as spasming, helplessly convulsing armored barriers would buy her to get to the coronal.
As it happened, Ilsevele Miritar was no fool in battle, and between foes, she constantly snatched moments to glance around her. So she saw Storm while the blood-drenched Chosen was still far off, but sprinting her way, and turned to slash her own route to meet Storm.
She hewed her way through five besiegers-then six-the last one a tall hulk of a man in bright armor that didn’t fit him, sobbing his way down into death. Falling to reveal another dying, sagging mercenary beyond him, dying in the arms of … Storm Silverhand.
“Well met!” Ilsevele greeted her, and they traded wry smiles. Both knew things were far from well for the defenders, and would rapidly get very worse.
“You must get all the Tel’Quess out you can, now!” Storm panted. “The city is lost!”
“I know,” the coronal agreed grimly. “We’re doing that already. The youngest ones first, with the weakest of our elders-to guide and teach them, should the rest of us fall. You know Iymurr’s Gate?”
Storm nodded.
“Find the door in its tallest tower adorned with a diagonal line of four star gems. Pluck them out, reverse each one and put it back in, and a portal will form, right there-if the mythal is too weak to prevent it.” And with a sigh, the coronal added, “And I’ve been feeling the mythal weakening more and more, as the day draws on.”
Storm nodded again, but said not a word. This must be heartbreaking for Ilsevele; she wasn’t going to say anything to make it worse.
“That way leads to Semberholme,” the coronal went on. “But if the portal won’t open, then any who gather to take it will be trapped there and doomed if these Shadovar-serving slaycoins take that end of the city. There’ll be no other way out.”
Storm shrugged and hefted her sword. “With this I’ll make one, if I have to. May we all live to see another dawn.”
They embraced, kissed, then whirled and rushed their separate ways, back into the hard-fought slaughter.
Some of the arcanists were reluctant to leave their towers. Thultanthar was now close enough to Myth Drannor that nine or more rising pillars of smoke, where some of the mercenaries had set fires, could clearly be seen from high windows and balconies of their city-and they wanted to miss nothing.
“Accursed spectators,” Gwelt muttered darkly. “They’d sit and watch the world get devoured, and never lift a hand to defend it, for fear of spoiling the spectacle.”
Aglarel gave Gwelt a grim half smile as he nodded, but he said not a word. His attention was on the arcanists hastening to obey the summons of the Most High and assemble in the great courtyard below. There would be few better moments for treachery than this one, with the High Prince of Thultanthar walking among most of the city’s arcanists, arranging them to stand in the best places for the spell-linkage.
So the great mythal-draining magic could begin.
It would take the services of most of the arcanists of the city, and they were streaming into the courtyard, converging on the Most High. Telamont was warded and mantled, of course, but such defenses do little against a spellcaster standing so close as to be within all wards and mantles. Wherefore Prince Aglarel was worried and intent on seeing every person, at every last moment.