Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

Someone, she thought it was Lavim, bellowed a warning to duck and she did, only realizing as she dropped to the blood-slick floor that the warning had not been meant for her. A length from her and to her left, a Theiwar, bolt cocked and ready in his crossbow, dropped to one knee and took aim. His target was Hornfel.

“No!” she cried as she launched herself at the dwarf’s back, dagger high. She plunged the blade between the bowman’s shoulders, and she knew she’d killed him when his scream vibrated in the dagger’s steel.

Before Kelida had time to react, Lavim roared warning again. A dagger flew over her head, missing by scant inches. Kelida heard a horrible, bubbling moan and turned.

She knew at once that turning had been a mistake. A heavy weight toppled her from behind. Hands pinned her arms to her side, a knee driven hard into the small of her back sent a sharp pain lancing through her. Nausea churned in her stomach, her vision grayed.

Panicked and weak, Kelida heard someone scream her name.

There was nothing she could do to free herself, no breath to take to even answer. She heard the rough grating of a steel blade scraping on bone.

Had she been struck?

She didn’t know. There was no pain … until the blade was withdrawn. She knew then that she had been stabbed, and knew it only a moment before she knew nothing at all.

The screams filling the gatehouse echoed the screams tearing through Hauk’s soul. Like a starving raptor, he fell upon the Theiwar as though they were nothing more than prey. He killed silently, a voiceless creature seeking death and hoping those deaths would amount to vengeance and that vengeance could amount to cleansing. Those who died on his sword and were luckless enough to look into his eyes as they did, carried an image of fire and ice with them through eternity.

“Kelida!” someone screamed.

Hauk yanked his sword from the belly of a Theiwar.

Kelida!

She was down, lying in a spreading pool of blood, her left arm outflung, her hand reaching wide as though for help or pity. She didn’t move. A Theiwar lay half across her back, staring up at the dark vault of the ceiling with sightless eyes. His body bristled with arrows, and protruding from his neck was a crossbow bolt.

But there was no getting to her. Realgar’s guards swarmed through the gatehouse, and the waves of battle carried Hauk far from the blood-stained floor where Kelida lay, still and silent as the dead.

“Kelida!” Tyorl howled warning, but too late. Too late!

The bolt he loosed flew true, taking the Theiwar guard in the throat. But too late! He looked wildly about the gatehouse, searching for someone who was in the clear and close to her. Lavim was, but only for the second it took Tyorl to draw a breath to call to him. One of Realgar’s dwarves jumped him from behind, dragging the old kender down in a tangle of arms and legs.

His mind worked on two levels now: the level of searching for someone to help Kelida, and the level of attack and defense. Tyorl sent a steel-tipped bolt through the heart of the dwarf who rose up to plunge a dagger into Lavim’s back and shouted for Stanach, who was just dragging his sword from the gut of another.

The wailing of the dying, the screams of the attackers and defenders both dinned in his ears. Tyorl couldn’t be sure that Stanach had heard him, but he no longer had the attention to spare. Four Theiwar, their cold black eyes gleaming with a wild blood lust, rushed him.

Too close to his attackers now to make any use of the crossbow, Tyorl abandoned the weapon for his dagger and sword. Steel in each hand, roaring Kelida’s name as though it were a war cry and a talisman both, he leaped among the dwarves.

Stanach kept his back so close to Hornfel’s that a sword’s blade could not have passed between them. The thane fought with deadly skill and a cold fury, and no Theiwar would take him from behind while Stanach still lived.

As short as that span may be, Stanach thought grimly.

Realgar had called up fifty warriors. The enemy outnumbered them by odds Stanach didn’t care to reckon. Still, the entrance to the gatehouse was narrow, and the three archers within exacted a deadly toll. Stanach thought they could hold the gatehouse for a time, if all of his seven could fight with any skill. But one was an untutored girl, one an old kender, and the three rangers were exhausted before they’d ever picked up their weapons. And I am one-handed and failing fast …

Stanach staggered as Hornfel, hard pressed by two opponents, fell back against htm.

“Break,” Hornfel panted, “break the form, Stanach! I can watch my back. You’re needed in the gatehouse!”

“I’m needed here,” Stanach growled.

He sliced the arm from his opponent. Bone glared white and obscenely naked. No sound came from the Theiwar but a thin, gasping with no voice behind it.

Stanach read the scream in his eyes.

Blood sprayed high, steaming in the cold air. Stanach ducked to avoid the blood and kept a firm control over a rising urge to vomit. When Stanach recovered his stance it was to face yet another opponent. Realgar!

Sapphired Stormblade raised for a killing blow, Realgar’s eyes shone with a hatred like the heart of a raging fire. Stanach saw his death in those eyes and in the red-shot gleaming silver of Stormblade’s steel. He swung his own sword up to counter and didn’t know the defense had gone well until he heard the ring of steel on steel and felt the numbing vibration of Stormblade’s strike against his sword. Stanach threw his whole weight behind his blade, pushing with all the strength he had left. His strength was not sufficient. As inevitably as the moons rode the sky eastward, so did Stormblade push closer and closer.

Stanach smelled the rusty stench of blood and saw that blood, thick gouts of someone else’s life moving in slow sliding trails down Stormblade’s smooth steel.

In some far place in his mind, Stanach thought that a pattern was coming right, a circle closing. He would die on the blade of the sword for which he had risked his life and the lives of those who had become his friends.

Realgar hissed, and Stanach, feeling the first tremors in the muscles of his sword arm, knew the hiss for laughter.

Someone bellowed wildly and tackled him low around the knees. Stormblade’s steel cut the air where Stanach’s neck had been. He crashed to the broken tiles and slid with the force of the tackle on the blood-slicked floor. Gasping for breath that would not come, Stanach groped blindly for his sword.

“Up!” Lavim yelled, “Up, young Stanach! C’mon! Get up! There’s more of ’em! Look!”

Stanach lurched to his feet, still gasping. He looked wildly around. More, aye! He laughed aloud. The most of the dwarves he saw wore Daewar scarlet and silver!

“Friends, Lavim! Those are Gneiss’s warriors!”

Stanach sucked in a long breath and realized then that the deep song of bow strings and flown arrows was stilled. The clash of steel on steel rang now only in the great hall. The gatehouse behind him was silent. He stared numbly at the old kender who had once again saved his life. “Where’s—where’s the thane?”

Blood crimsoned the kender’s hands nearly to the elbows and his old black coat was slashed. A bruise purpled his wrinkled cheek and the mark of a dagger scored his forehead. But he was still on his legs, his green eyes gleaming.

“I’m not sure,” Lavim said. “He might be in the gatehouse. He ran back toward Tyorl. Stanach, that crazy-eyed dwarf who was going to slice off your head followed him! Piper says he’s the one who wants to kill Hornfel.”

“Piper says—” Stanach shook his head. Piper says … But there was no time to think about dead mages. He had to find Hornfel.