L. Modesitt - Fall of Angels

Nylan barely managed to get the blade up to deflect the smashing blow, and his entire arm ached. He urged the mare sideways, raising his own weapon again, and hacking the bearded man, who caught Nylan’s blade with the big crowbar. Again, Nylan’s arm shivered, but he actually gouged a chunk of iron from the huge sword.

He wished he had had the time to try his shield idea, but the armsman brought the huge blade around in a sweeping,screaming arc, and the engineer was forced back in the saddle. He could no longer see what else was happening, though he could feel the lines of white-red force flying toward and around Ryba.

Almost automatically, as the attacking armsman overbalanced, Nylan felt the moves that Saryn and Ryba had drilled into him taking over, and his blade flashed-once … twice.

The bearded man’s surprised look stayed on his dead face, even as the white shock of his death shivered through Nylan.

“Move, ser! Move!”

At the sound of Huldran’s voice, Nylan forced his eyes back open, despite the needles of pain that shivered through them, and weakly lifted his blade. Three guards had swept in before him and seemed to hold back twice their number.

His guts churned, and his eyes burned. His arm just hurt.

Another armsman rode up, circling toward Huldran’s blind side, and Nylan, again mostly reacting, threw the heavy balanced blade, and immediately grabbed for his second blade.

As the thrown blade sliced through the armsman’s chest, Nylan’s fingers groped for, and almost lost, his other blade. For a moment he sat on the mare, paralyzed, knives of liquid lightning stabbing through his eyes, and lines of ionized fire streaming down his arms.

He forced his blade up, but, for the moment, it wasn’t needed. The last armsman attacking Cessya wheeled his mount, turned, and started to flee. Cessya threw one of her blades through his back, then rode after the trotting mount to reclaim it.

HHHssttt!

Nylan’s stomach churned as the ashes that had been Cessya flared into the morning air, but he forced himself to turn the mare toward the white-clad figure and raised his remaining blade. “Let’s go.”

Extending his perceptions again, ignoring the fire that ran through his body, he let the mare trot forward, afraid a run would jolt him right out of the saddle.

Huldran rode on his right, Weindre on his left, and twoothers he didn’t look back to identify slightly behind.

Another firebolt flared, but Nylan raised his blade, using his senses somehow to deflect it.

A third firebolt slammed at Nylan, cascading around his blade, and almost singeing his hair.

The engineer felt as though he were riding in slow motion, but he kept moving, holding the blade like a talisman, ignoring the soreness in his muscles as he and the guards narrowed the distance between them and the wizard.

Two firebolts, in quick succession, flashed toward them, but Nylan, with his senses, eased them aside.

As the white wizard saw the guards beating their way through the armsmen, he glanced left, then right, and squinted.

Nylan could feel the sense of distortion, the wrenching feeling twisting at his sight, and he fought it, muttering under his breath, “I will. I will see what is. I will … will …”

His head seemed to split as unseen lines of fire stretched from the wizard to him, but he held firm, his eyes blurring, only knowing that the wizard’s defenders were melting under the flashing, often crudely hacking, blades of the Westwind guards.

Suddenly, the wizard turned his mount and started to gallop away. Two blades flashed through the air. One struck, almost a glancing blow, Nylan thought, but the wizard almost seemed to disintegrate.

“Get those blades!” ordered Huldran.

Nylan, ignoring the blinding knives that accompanied each glance at the bodies strewn across the area around the fields, and the gash in his arm that he had not even noticed before, urged the mare toward the knot of armsmen besieging Ryba and the guards around her.

As the two guards reclaimed their blades, Huldran, Weindre, and Nylan rode over the corner of the bean field toward the dust-shrouded figures struggling in the mid-morning light.

Gerlich loomed over the group, and his blade cleared a guard from her mount, almost bisecting her.

Nylan winced at the additional pain of more death, but leaned forward in the saddle, still gripping his blade.

“Now, we’ll see, Angel and Marshal!” yelled Gerlich, spurring his mount toward Ryba, pushing aside one of his own armsmen as he came up on her left side, the huge blade spinning like night toward the marshal, even as she turned.

The dark-haired leader dived sideways as the blade clove through the neck of the roan. The big red horse crumbled, but Ryba tucked and rolled out, staggering erect into a space in the midst of the dust and horses.

One of Ryba’s arms hung loosely as Gerlich wheeled his mount toward her.

Her shoulders slumped, and Nylan watched helplessly. Gerlich’s blade rose again.

At the last moment, the forgotten slug-thrower came up … and four even shots stitched four welts of red across Gerlich’s chest. The big blade slipped from his fingers as his mouth dropped open.

As the ten or so armsmen turned, as if to attack the dismounted marshal, Saryn lifted both her blades. Each glittered like black fire in the midday sun, each impossibly reflecting the sun. Saryn and the half-dozen guards beside her charged the remaining armsmen, splitting off half the group and backing them away from Ryba. The guards’ black blades glittered in the late morning light, glimmered like black fire.

A second group of five guards, led by Fierral, formed a tight circle around Ryba against nearly twice their number.

Nylan turned toward Ryba’s attackers, and the mare pulled up short, almost slamming into an armsman’s mount from behind. As the man turned, seemingly in slow motion, Nylan’s iron blade slashed.

With the cold white of another death, Nylan shuddered, and his senses screamed.

No matter how hard he tried to hold on, the engineercould feel himself slumping in the saddle, almost in slow motion, as the power of that exploding whiteness slammed into him, and his fingers grasped at the mare’s mane, trying to hold on. Trying …

ZELDYAN SITS NEARLY upright in the rocking chair, Nesslek on her shoulder, patting him as he cries. “Now … now …” She nods to Sillek. “What did Terek tell you? You went running out of here like the Westhorns had burst into flame.”

Sillek looks down at the uneaten remnants of his midday meal. “I’m worried.”

“That is obvious.” She continues to pat Nesslek.

Her son arches his back slightly and gives an uccurpppp.

“There … does little Nesslek’s tummy feel better? There …” Zeldyan raises an eyebrow. “Does this have to do with your adventuresome wizard’s exploits?”

“He’s dead. Somehow they turned his wizardry back on him and cut him down with cold iron.” Sillek stands and walks to the window, his eyes looking toward the fields filled with grain turning gold, a gold he does not see though his eyes rest upon the fields. “They have demon blades-or angel blades-or something. Hissl threw his fire at the head angel, and she turned it with her blade. I didn’t see it in the glass, but Terek swears it happened.”

“Do you believe him?”

Nesslek whimpers again, and Zeldyan brings him up to her shoulder, patting him once more.

“I’ve never seen him look that shaken.”

“How many of Hissl’s armsmen survived?”

“A handful, if that. They were led by a big man who was one of the best I’ve seen. He had a big blade, as big as my father’s, and he used it like a toothpick. It wasn’t enough.”