"Tarram! Tarram!" Tantaerra shrieked, struggling through sleek rushing bodies to try to reach where he'd gone down, picturing hundreds of fanged jaws biting and sharp claws raking-
Her partner staggered up into view again, red-faced and breathless.
"They're swarming me," he panted, "or rather-" He tugged, fighting to lift one arm by pulling on it with the other. "-they're swarming the gauntlet!"
Dweomercats had fallen from his elbows, and were now leaping like trained beasts to try to bite the Fearsome Gauntlet, their jaws snapping in midair.
"Swarming?" Tantaerra asked, eyeing it.
"Clutching at it, trying to rub up against it." He waded a step farther and almost fell as he trod on unseen wriggling dweomercats. Others rose in a leaping, snapping wave right in front of him. "Using magic on them just brings them to you faster! The gods know how we're going to get anywhere, with all of these …"
He staggered, almost fell, then lurched into a turn that brought him around to face Tantaerra directly.
"Get over there," he shouted, "to that plinth or block or whatever it is, and get up on it."
She started toward it, through streams of rushing dweomercats who ignored her completely in their haste to get to The Masked.
"Why?" she flung back over her shoulder, when she was halfway there.
"I'm going to throw the gauntlet to you. Don't drop it."
"So I can get smothered in dweomercats?"
"Just long enough for me to get to that ruined wall, yonder. You throw it back to me, and take yourself up that street to where that tree is-the one with the low bough, there? I'll throw it back to you, and move on and shout at you to throw it back. And so on."
"Sometimes," she called, clambering up onto the plinth, "I wonder why I hired you, I really do!"
"Sometimes," he called back, "I wonder why I let myself be hired. Catch!"
Tantaerra spat out a rude word, watched the glowing gage come hurtling at her, and concentrated on making the catch. If she dropped it, with all of these dweomercats raging around her …
She didn't.
The next few moments were a whirlwind of leaping furry bodies, opened jaws coming at her, reaching paws…she slid the Fearsome Gauntlet on and hugged it to her, and the world promptly darkened and swam into muted, muffled excitement, as she felt the magic of the glove surging through her, spreading out its glories like an unfolding array of shining stars …it could do this, and this, and that, and-
"Tantaerra!" The Masked shouted, from atop a ruined wall that he was sharing with a dozen-some dweomercats, all trying to rub up against his front, for some rea-oh, yes. She saw a faint glimmer of blue light through the leaping furry bodies. He had the mask tucked down his front.
"Yes?" she called back.
"The gauntlet!" he bellowed. "Remember?"
She didn't want to yield it up. This was wonderful, more power than she'd ever felt before. Stars before her, stars at her command, stars in the-
A bolder dweomercat than the rest slammed into her face and drove her staggering back against rough stone, that broken end of wall behind the plinth that she hadn't liked the look of at her first glimpse of it. It was every bit as sharp and hard as she'd thought it would be, and the dweomercats were thudding against her now in a ceaseless flood that threatened to crush her or drive her down and bury her, the strong reek of their musk tickling in her nose and throat, their eager fury a frightening-
Tantaerra spat out the rudest words she knew as she struggled to stand, struggled to climb the wall. She slipped twice, dweomercats climbing up her back and arms and dragging her down.
The Masked was watching her anxiously. She drew off the gauntlet and held it carefully in both hands, swung underarm once or twice to gain momentum, and threw.
End over end the glowing gage flashed, over the heads of countless dweomercats-and fell short.
The Masked sprang down off his wall, snatched it from under the very paws of jostling and yowling dweomercats, then turned and fought his way through a sudden surge of them, up the rising street.
"Run!" he yelled. "Head back the way we came!" He pointed ahead up the street, in the direction of the distant border with Molthune.
Tantaerra jumped down off the plinth and ran, utterly ignored by every dweomercat around her.
She made it into thick trees, where almost all traces of Hurlandrun were buried in forest, before she heard him shout again.
When she turned, he was hidden under a surging mound of dweomercats-and the Fearsome Gauntlet was hurtling toward her, end over end in the air.
It was a bad throw, and she had to sprint back toward the ruins to field it, dweomercats racing eagerly to beat her, but field it she did. She slid it on and ran, hugging it to her breast and just trying to get up into the trees again before the weight of rushing, leaping cats bore her to the ground.
There was a gully of sorts to her left, and she headed for it, to try to keep a throwing area relatively free of trees, so her return throw might have some small chance of reaching her partner. Provided he was smart enough to head up the other side of the little gulley. He-
The freedom to ponder things was snatched away from her in a leaping wall of musky, mewling bodies that slammed her to the ground, rolled her over, and almost dragged the gauntlet off her arm.
Spitting out curses she couldn't even hear through the squalling din, Tantaerra fought her way around a tree, dashed dweomercats away from her face and front for an instant with a vicious swipe of her arm, and shouted, "Tarram! Tarram!"
Then she spun around and slammed herself against the tree trunk, pinning several squirming dweomercats against it and scraping more off her as she slid along it, leaning into it hard.
There he was. She drew back the gauntlet, holding it firmly with her free hand, kicked out viciously to dislodge any cat trying to leap aboard it, and hurled it.
High and not far. Her turn for a lousy throw.
He sprang across the gully to meet it, punched the air with such deft aim that the great warglove hurtled right onto his hand. He landed hard, pivoted, and was gone up the gulley like a storm wind.
He made such headway that the suddenly abandoned Tantaerra held her tongue about what she'd just seen, back down behind them in the ruins of Hurlandrun. She wanted him to get a good long way up into the forest before saying anything that might slow him.
The slithering tentacled thing Voyvik had become was following them, gliding along the street. It was passing the plinth where she'd caught the gauntlet, and rising up to watch them, waving the Whispering Blade in one tentacle like some flamboyant duelist.
"Dung," she whispered. Then she turned and ran.
She reached the first wooded ridge before she was out of breath. Off to her left, amid trees too thick for any thrown gauntlet to travel far, The Masked was trudging along amid a carpet of dweomercats-well, more like a long bridal gown, with a dragging train of swarming cats that extended far back behind him. But he was still on his feet, still forging ahead. Slowly.
"Tarram!" she called. "Look back!"
For a moment she thought he hadn't heard her, but then she saw he was making for a many-limbed, half-fallen old tree that he could clamber up onto, and have some hope of not being buried alive in cats.
He made it, turned doggedly amid a battering hail of leaping cats, saw Voyvik-and blasted the tentacled monster with the gauntlet.
The magic surrounded it with a nimbus of flickering radiance. Amid that aura, the scaled, slithering thing grew visibly larger, the sword it held became louder in its whisperings-and every dweomercat in sight quivered, turns to regard the tentacled thing …and then rushed toward it, yowling and screaming.