David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

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"Cashel?" Sharina said. Master Ortron had lashed the men of his phalanx into motion with a tongue rough as chipped lava, and the regular infantrymen were moving also out of embarrassment to lag behind troops they felt were their social inferiors. "Can you walk?"

"I can run," growled Cashel. He started forward, holding his quarterstaff up at a slant before him.

"Let us by!" Sharina cried, because she wasn't sure whether Cashel was aware of anything beyond the fact that hewas going through, whoever or whatever happened to be in the way. Maybe he wasn't ready to face the dangers on the other side of the opening, but Sharina didn't want to leave him behind. Even without Beard's prodding she wouldn't have stayed back herself.

Besides, she'd never seen a time that Cashelwasn't ready to face what was before him.

The soldiers made way. As Sharina danced through the opening, moving like a breeze beside Cashel's avalanche, she heard Master Ortron snarl, "There, you pansies! Will you let a wisp of a girl go where you're afraid to?"

"Wisp of a girl!" Beard chortled. "Mymistress, a wisp of a girl?"

The hall within seemed empty at first glance only because it was huge beyond the standards of enclosed space. The entire royal palace in Valles, scores of separate buildings spreading across many acres, would've been lost beneath the huge dome. Here as elsewhere in these caverns the ice shone with a core of wizardlight, but the ceiling and walls were so distant that the figures within were dim shadows.

The floor was clear as diamond. Plankton in the water beneath shone faintly red or blue instead of the yellow-green of the sea off Barca's Hamlet in springtime. Through the glowing water swam monsters that were large even by the standards of this place. Their teeth gleamed as their platter-sized eyes stared longingly at the creatures above them.

Garric, Attaper and the two soldiers with them were in a tight circle surrounded by a pack of Hunters like the ones Sharina had killed when she'd been sucked into this world. There must've been seven of the gangling giants to begin with, but one was down with a javelin sticking up from an eyesocket and another staggered in tight circles trying to pull out the similar missile imbedded to the wood in her breastbone. It was amazing that she was still alive since the iron must be through her heart, but she was no longer a danger to the men.

The remaining five were. One raised a club made from a whale's shoulderblade to swing at Garric. Cashel stepped close with quick right and left blows from his quarterstaff. The Hunter gave a guttural cry and toppled backward, his knee joints smashed.

"Blood!" shrilled Beard as Sharina rushed the Hunter whose great iron sword threatened the soldier to Garric's right. "Blood! Blood! Blo-"

Sharina swung, cutting the Hunter's left hamstring. The creature fell, twisting toward the injury.

The soldier lunged forward, thrusting into the Hunter's thigh as Sharina ducked under the falling body to reach the next enemy. When he withdrew his short blade, a column of blood spouted high from the wound: he'd sliced the Hunter's femoral artery. From the way the soldier moved, that stroke had been no more of an accident than the way he'd thrown his javelin through a previous Hunter's eye.

A Hunter crashed his club, a section of tree trunk, down at Lord Attaper. The Blood Eagle didn't carry a shield. His long sword slashed, not in a vain attempt to block the stroke but trying rather to skew it to the side enough to miss.

He was almost succesful, but the wood brushing his left shoulder flung him sprawling; the thigh-thick club splintered without marking the ice. A fish scraped teeth the length of a man across the bottom of the crystalline barrier, trying to get at either combatant.

Sharina leaped over Attaper and swung high, shearing the throat of the stooping Hunter. Its blood sprayed in a steaming torrent over the ice.

"Blood and brains!" said the axe.

The other soldier of Garric's entourage jabbed the edge of his shield into a Hunter's groin, doubling his opponent up, while the point of its great spear skidded on the ice where the soldier had been a moment before. That put the creature's skull within Sharina's reach. She buried Beard's edge in the Hunter's temple, then twisted it free. Her victim bounded away like a headless chicken.

The remaining Hunter was staggering backwards, making wordless cries and waving its arms above its head like a pair of bloody fountains. Garric crouched, gasping as he used a swatch of his tunic to wipe the blade which had just lopped off the creature's hands.

Additional monsters lumbered toward them, Hunters and things still more terrible. Sharina saw a pair of beetles with iridescent wing cases; they picked their way across the ice on legs the size of trees. But more troops were pouring through the opening as well, their weapons and armor catching highlights from the cold purple glow.

Garric straightened, throwing down the rag. He looked back at the soldiers entering the hall, then slanted his sword forward.

"Follow me!" he called. He jogged toward the center of a room so large that his shout didn't echo.

The difference between what Garric was doing and the nobleman's identical order to charge the Elemental was that this was the right time for it. A headlong assault might not succeed, but no other means could possibly succeed.

Garric was measuring his stride, leading his troops but not running away from them. Cashel followed, though for him it was probably his best speed. Sharina paused instead of going off with them immediately; she sucked in deep breaths and took a good look at the situation.

"Nothing lefthere to kill," Beard fumed, but he knew as well as she did that she could catch up with the others before there was more fighting. And there certainly would be more fighting.

Skeins of crimson and azure wizardlight wove upward from the middle of the hall. Their patterns were as breathtakingly complex as the iridescence of a soap bubble. The tapestry of light had the searing perfection of the surface of the sun.

"Much blood!" the axe said. "Much more blood though not Her blood, not even with this fine mistress… but oh! if wecould drink Her blood…"

The lines and ribbons and cables of light spread from a nub raised from the floor. Just a bump of ice, Sharina thought, denying what her eyes suggested.

"You know better!" Beard cackled. "You know it's a throne, mistress; and you know who sits on the throne!"

Itwas a throne, of ice so clear that only surface reflections limned its form. On it a great white blob quivered in concert with the pulsing wizardlight.

"To drink Her blood!" said the axe. "Oh, if only Beard could drink Her blood!"

Lord Attaper had gotten to his feet, but when he took a step his face went white and he stumbled. Despite the pain, a broken collarbone if not worse, he continued to shuffle forward.

One of the common soldiers who'd accompanied Garric set his right heel on the head of the javelin he'd pulled from the Hunter's eye and lifted the shaft judiciously to straighten the iron. The head back of the point wasn't hardened, so it would bend in an enemy's shield and prevent him from pulling it out to throw back. This veteran obviously had experience with field expedients.

The chest-speared Hunter had finally collapsed face upward. The other soldier was trying to free his javelin from the corpse. The missile had penetrated so deeply that the point was probably in the creature's spine.

"Leave it, Pont!" the first soldier cried. "Time's a-wasting!"

The pair broke into a lumbering jog. "That's all right for you to say, Prester," Pont muttered, "but I notice that you waited till you had yours loose!"

Sharina loped along with them. A segmented worm that looked like a glacier squirmed toward the invaders, but despite its size at least the leading company of soldiers would be past before it could block the route to the throne. No point in fighting needlessly; there'd be more than enough that couldn't be avoided.

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