R. Salvatore - The Education of Brother Thaddius and other tales of DemonWars

Still, the small woman did not turn, but continued forward and drove the newcomer aside before it could get to Thaddius.

Victoria intercepted the knife-wielder so he couldn’t do more harm. Diamanda closed tight to her, both moving with Victoria to reform the defensive line.

By all rights, they were winning the fight. They had hit their enemies many times harder than they had been hit.

And yet, they were losing. They all knew it. The powries, stuck with arrows, faces clawed, throats jabbed, hair burned, seemed hardly hurt!

“Victoria, flee and tell St.-Mere-Abelle of our fate,” Diamanda said, and she slugged a dwarf hard across the face.

But it laughed and swatted at her with its spiked club — which Elysant blocked with her staff.

The cunning bloody cap rolled the club over that block, though, and clipped Elysant across the arm, tearing the sleeve from her white robe and gashing her, shoulder-to-elbow.

The tough Disciple of St. Belfour just growled through it, though, and spun her club like a spear and jabbed out, once, twice, thrice, into the dwarf’s face and throat.

Pain burned in Elysant. Blood ran down the back of her leg and from her arm liberally, but she growled through it and worked furiously to keep the ferocious dwarfs from her beloved sisters.

But they were overmatched and outnumbered, and for all of the beauty in movement and precise strikes, the dwarves would not fall down.

“Go, Victoria, the Church must know,” Diamanda cried, and the end was garbled as she took a glancing, but painful, blow from that many-headed weapon. She barely managed to straighten and fallback as the axe of another swept in at her, and still would have been hit had not Elysant’s quarterstaff flashed across yet again.

“No,” Victoria cried.

“The Church is greater than any of us! Go!” Elysant yelled at her.

A dwarf leaped up high, descending upon Elysant, but Victoria sprang between them, her sword longer than the dwarf’s knife, the blade catching the descending powrie just under the ribs, and driving up as its weight carried it down, down.

Blood erupted from the wound and the dwarf tried to scream, but all that came form was a showed of red mist and spurting liquid.

Victoria couldn’t possibly disengage in time to bring her sword into a defensive posture, so she simply let the blade fall with the powrie — their first kill, and one, at least, would not be dipping its beret in the spilled blood of the sisters!

Up and around came Victoria, seemingly unarmed, and that prove an advantage, as the powrie she had been facing thought her an easy kill and came in with abandon.

She slugged it square in the face, sending it staggering backwards, and how she wanted to leap upon it and choke the life from it!

But she could not, and she followed her training and fell back in line beside Elysant.

“Go,” Elysant pleaded with her et again, and she meant it, for while one dwarf was down, the others pressed them hard from every angle. They couldn’t hold on against the fierce bloody caps — Elysant’s left leg was going numb and the fingers on her left hand tingled so that she could hardly hold her quarterstaff.

A powrie blade flashed out at Diamanda to Elysant’s right. She sent the staff out to block.

But too late, and Diamanda staggered, her belly stabbed.

“Tell them sister,” Elysant pleaded with Victoria. “Tell them we fought well.”

And Victoria almost fled, and intended to, but a hand fell upon her shoulder, and before she could react, a blue-white glow encompassed her.

“Sister!” she cried to Elysant, and she moved a step closer and grabbed Elysant’s wounded upper arm.

How Elysant howled, and started to pull away.

But she too saw the blue-white ghostly glow flowing over her form, and instead she reached her staff out toward Diamanda, calling to her to grab it.

And as the woman did, inviting the glow to encapsulate her as well, Elysant managed to glance back at Brother Thddius.

He too was glowing, for he had initiated the enchantment, after all, from the serpentine he held in his upraised palm, its texture blurred by the blue-white shield.

The other gem he held, though, the mighty ruby, was not so dulled, for it was outside the shield.

It glowed fiercely — Father Abbot Braumin had promised Thaddius that this stone would hold all that he could put into it and more.

And so it had.

And so Brother Thaddius lived up to his reputation with the Ring Stones, for from that ruby came a tremendous burst of fire, a blast that roll about the four monks and the five powries, that rushed out to the trees and into the boughs, and despite the dreary rain and sleet, set them ablaze.

And set the powries ablaze!

But not the sisters and Thaddius, no, for the serpentine shield held strong.

Elysant felt the warmth in her face, but the biting fires could not get through the shield and could not curl her skin.

The fireball lasted only an instant, and when the immediate flames rolled to nothingness, the three sisters went at the dwarves with fury, for the stubborn beasts had not fallen.

But the fight had turned, and the dwarves, wounded, horribly burned and dazed, could not get their bearings, could not mount any defense against the staff of Elysant, the pounding fists of Victoria, and the deadly tiger’s paw of Diamanda.

One of the dwarves did get out of the immediate area, fleeing through the trees.

“Sister, your bow!” Elysant cried to Victoria.

They both realized that wouldn’t work when they glanced at the bow on the ground behind them, its string melted by the fireball, its wood smoking.

“Catch him!” Diamanda cried.

“Hold!” said Thaddius, stepping toward Victoria with an outstretched hand.

All three women looked at him curiously for a moment, but then Victoria grinned and brought forth a gemstone, pressing it in Thaddius’s palm. He took it and clenched his fist up before his eyes, sending his power into the gem.

Clever Diamanda removed her cat’s eye circlet and placed it over Thaddius’s head, and his vision shifted with the magic, turning night into day, showing him the fleeing powrie clearly.

He didn’t even need to see the dwarf, though, for he could feel it. He could feel the metal rivets in its leather armor, and could feel keenly the long metal knife it held tight against its chest.

Ah, that knife!

Brother Thaddius thrust his hand forward and opened his fingers and the lodestone shot forth, speeding until it clanged against that blade.

Of course, to reach the blade, it had to first drive right through the dwarf.

The powrie fell to its knees, then toppled to its face.

The arguments raged day and night, one issue after another.

“The Church has been through terrible times, Father Abbot,” Haney kept reminding Braumin Herde.

Braumin nodded each time, and tried to offer a smile, truly appreciating Abbot Haney’s attempts to keep perspective on this trying College of Abbots.

This late afternoon, the argument centered on the southern city of Entel, the only city in Honce-the-Bear serving as home to two separate abbeys. With Dusibol ascending to the rank of Abbot of St. Bondabruce and St. Rontlemore in chaos, the idea had been floated to give the man the lead of both abbeys until the situation could be better sorted.

Of the seven major abbeys of Honce-the-Bear, St.-Mere-Abelle, St. Gwendolyn-by-the-Sea, St. Honce, St. Belfour, St. Precious, and the pair in Entel, no two were more ferocious rivals than Bondabruce and Rontlemore! St. Bondabruce was the larger, and had prospered greatly because of the Duke of Entel’s affinity toward the southern Kingdom of Behren. Many of Bondabruce’s monks claimed Behrenese heritage — Blessed St. Bruce himself was dark skinned, and claimed ancestry in the fierce Chezhou-Lei warrior class of the Behrenese city of Jacintha.