Garec suddenly realised what he’d heard, just an instant later, but it was already too late. Before he could cry out, a group of Malakasian soldiers attacked from the underbrush, coming all at once in a howling blur from all sides. They were taken entirely by surprise.
Strangely, the attackers did not strike at them with weapons; instead, they pulled the riders from their mounts and grappled furiously with them on the ground.
Having a heartbeat’s warning gave Garec time enough to draw and fire at point-blank range into a charging soldier’s chest. The man had no shield and Garec’s arrow killed him almost instantly. Not slowing for a moment, the bowman nocked another shaft and felled a second warrior who had Mika pinned beneath his horse. He was beating Mika’s face with his fists, and the arrow took him in the neck, showering the youngest partisan in blood.
These were not normal soldiers; there was something different about them, something dark, almost apelike. Garec wished in vain for more light as he released a third shaft into the ribs of yet another of the curious assailants; in spite of the rapidly increasing gloom of twilight, the arrow found its mark. The Ronan bowman was reaching into his quiver again when strong leathery hands finally pulled him to the ground.
As the attack started, Steven watched dumbstruck as Garec felled several enemy soldiers with lightning-fast bow-fire. A moment later, two of the warriors burst from the underbrush and wrestled the Ronan from his horse. Garec blindly fought to ward them off as they clawed at his face. In the distance Mark struggled to pull one of the attackers away from Brynne as Versen and Sallax hacked at their assailants with battle-axes. Mika lay still beneath his horse. The scene was surreal.
Through his fear, Steven felt time begin to slow. He and Gilmour were the only members of their party not yet fighting; it looked to him as if they had been spared, maybe because they had been riding at the end of the line. He remembered the feel of cool water cascading across the back of his neck and his own words, repeated over and over: ‘We might not make it.’
In slow motion he dismounted, stooped for a moment to pick up a length of hickory from beside the trail. We might not make it. A Malakasian soldier emerged from a thicket to his right and with effortless grace, Steven turned, bringing the staff around violently in a deadly arc that crushed the unsuspecting soldier’s skull. The man’s face was animal-like; he had a wild look, almost brutal.
Steven paid him no more heed and moved instead to where Garec lay, still fighting to free himself from the two soldiers ripping at his flesh with clawed fingers. We might not make it. Steven released his anger in a crushing blow that took one soldier under the chin and broke his neck cleanly. Thrown backwards into the brush along the trail, the Malakasian’s body continued to twitch reflexively as Garec’s second attacker turned his attention to Steven. Seeing the now-bloody hickory shaft, he tried to tear it from Steven’s hands.
‘We might not make it,’ Steven heard himself cry, and then laughed inanely as he punched the Malakasian hard across the face. The soldier lost his footing and Steven brought the wooden staff down across the outside of his knee, shattering it beneath him. The warrior screamed, it sounded like an ancient, primaeval curse, and flailed wildly as he fell to the ground.
Steven ignored him and moved to help Mark and Brynne. Mark was fighting to escape from the iron grip of a brutal soldier pounding away at him with sledge-like fists and granite elbows. Moving with mercurial quickness, Brynne ducked and closed in on the enemy soldier. Her short blade in one hand, she spun, took a glancing blow on the side of her face and rammed her knife to the hilt in the big soldier’s chest. She gave a guttural shout of satisfaction when the blade broke through the sinewy muscles above the Malakasian’s breastbone.
Steven made his way around the injured soldier and took aim. Swinging like a lumberjack felling an ancient redwood, he splintered the hickory staff against the small of the enemy’s back, breaking his spine. The man collapsed like a pricked balloon.
Brynne helped Mark to his feet and the couple scurried away from the now disabled but still vicious Malakasian. ‘Steven, get back!’ Mark shouted when he saw his roommate standing over their fallen attacker.
‘We might not make it,’ Steven cried in a voice that sent chills along Mark’s spine. And he watched in terror as his best friend raised a short, jagged piece of hickory and drove it deep into the soldier’s neck, killing him.
Steven, sprayed with the explosion of blood from the soldier’s carotid artery, fell to his knees and began to sob. The world caught up with him: now time moved at breakneck speed. He felt alone, terrified, and certain he would die in this strange land.
Mark wrapped an arm around his friend’s shoulder and led him away from the bloody aftermath of the fight.
‘We might not make it,’ Steven cried against Mark’s chest.
Versen and Sallax had dispatched their assailants in a flurry of deadly axe blows; now they moved towards Gilmour, who was sitting in the mud beneath Mika’s horse, cradling the young man’s head in his lap. Mika was dead. His head had struck a rock when the Malakasian wrenched him from the saddle. He died as the soldier battered his already fractured skull. Over the din of Steven’s sobs, and the raging screams of the injured soldier dragging his ruined knee through the forest underbrush, Sallax heard Gilmour say quietly, ‘He was just a boy.’
When she saw Mika’s broken form lying still in Gilmour’s lap, Brynne began to cry. Versen, white, brushed a hand over his eyes, trying not to give way to emotion, and Garec too fought back tears as he held a patch of cloth against a large gash across his forehead.
Then Gilmour’s face changed. Shock and sadness were wiped clean, to be replaced with cold, calculating rage. Gently he rested Mika’s head on the ground, where it lolled awkwardly to one side. He rose to face the last surviving soldier, still doggedly dragging himself to freedom despite his shattered knee. The Malakasian grunted malevolently and spat at Gilmour as the Larion Senator glared back at him.
‘Our time draws near, Nerak,’ he said almost to himself as he raised one hand above his head. ‘I am coming.’
With inhuman speed, Gilmour brought his arm forward in a crooked, throwing motion, releasing the full force of his anger in a focused magical stroke. As he did so, the Malakasian was lifted from the ground and thrown several paces back into the underbrush. It looked as if he had been hit in the chest with an invisible boulder, a shattering blow that audibly broke bones and punctured organs. There was no need for anyone to confirm that the last of the attack party was dead.
Without speaking, Gilmour moved to the soldier Steven had killed with the broken branch and withdrew the short length of splintered hickory from the dead man’s neck. More blood ran from the wound; Mark wondered briefly how that could be possible since the man’s heart had stopped beating. He was distracted by Gilmour stepping over the body to retrieve the shattered pieces of the rough staff Steven had used to fight off the Malakasians. Turning to face the forest, the old man fit the shaft together piece by piece until each section was back in its original place. His hands glowed a warm red in the dim light of early evening as he ran them along the length of wood, magically reshaping the hickory staff.
When he had finished, the Larion sorcerer recited a barely audible spell. The glow from his palms grew bright for an instant, then faded to match the surrounding darkness.
Steven had calmed down somewhat; like the others, he was watching the old man with great curiosity. Gilmour handed the remade hickory bough to him and said, ‘Take this. You wield it well.’
Steven felt his breath catch in his throat. ‘I killed people today. I don’t know if I can-’