“We’re almost to the palace,” she warned Leonidas.
The young horse-man nodded once. He pulled his short hunting bow off his shoulder, strung it, and settled the quiver of arrows at his side where he could easily reach it. The other centaurs followed suit.
They reached the high, wide passages that crisscrossed beneath the grounds of the old elven palace, and to their relief, found them empty. The treasure-hunting mercenaries seemed to be busy elsewhere. Hurrying faster, they passed the arched entrances to the tunnels and the vast stairs leading to the palace and took the corridor that sloped up to the surface. At the foot of another flight of stairs, Leonidas and Tanefer stopped the others. They gathered close, grim and silent, their weapons ready.
“The entrance is up those stairs and through a short hall,” Linsha told them. “The last time I saw it, the doorway was hidden behind vines and overgrown bushes, but it was open and wide enough for us to pass through one at a time.”
The centaurs and the Legionnaires did not look happy at that news. A small doorway made it too easy for an enemy to pick off departing opponents one by one. Warily they walked up the steps. At the end of the hall they saw a glimmer of daylight and realized night had passed and the sun was beginning to rise. So much for the cover of darkness.
Tanefer set three centaurs and their riders to watch the top of the stairs, then he and Leonidas led the rest down the hallway toward the light. A clatter and a loud outcry from outside suddenly broke the quiet of the dawn. A horn’s blast echoed into the corridor. The centaurs and the humans looked one another in alarm.
They recognized those sounds all too well. It was the noise of armed conflict.
“Oh, gods, now what?” Tanefer growled, voicing the frustration of all. Their group wasn’t outside yet. Who would the mercenaries be fighting?
Linsha slid off Leonidas’s back and hurried to the entrance. The door was smaller than the arches and corridors below and opened into a spacious courtyard that was part of the large, overgrown gardens connected to the palace where Iyesta had once made her lair. The doorway was as she remembered, its wooden door long rotted away, its opening cloaked in vines and disguised by the roots and branches of shrubs and young trees. Keeping to the shadows, she pushed aside some vines and peered carefully out, squinting in the early morning light.
The signal horn sounded again, loud and fierce, and this time it was accompanied by shouts and screams from several directions. Weapons clashed somewhere out of sight.
There was nothing Linsha could see in her immediate vicinity, so she held out her arm for the owl and waited as Varia stepped to her wrist and launched herself out into the rising morning wind.
Lanther crowded in beside her and together they watched the owl wing silently into a copse of nearby trees. “Where are they?” he muttered in Linsha’s ear. “Do you see anything?”
She stared into the trees and gave her head a brief shake. “No. But judging by the horns, the mercenaries are under attack. Did Falaius have something planned I didn’t know about?”
“Not that he told me. Maybe this was meant to be a distraction?”
Any thought of that abruptly ended when a dozen or so mercenaries burst through the grove of trees where Varia hid. They ran as if all the denizens of the Abyss were after them. The mercenaries scrambled over a collapsed wall and ran through the overgrowth toward the distant palace. A flight of arrows ripped through leaves behind them and fell in their midst. Several men fell and lay still. Another fell screaming but fought his way to his feet and staggered after his companions, none of whom stopped to help him.
More figures, their bare skin stained blue, crashed through the undergrowth into the courtyard and loped after the mercenaries. They caught up with the wounded man, slit his throat, and moved on without a pause. They disappeared into the trees and brush just behind the fleeing mercenaries.
Linsha stood transfixed.
Lanther’s eyes smoldered with anger while he watched; the scar on his face burned a dull red against his weathered skin. “The Tarmaks are finally moving,” he said as if pronouncing a doom.
Linsha knew he was. She had suspected for some time that the Tarmaks were biding their time, allowing Thunder’s hired mercenaries to grow lazy and complacent in the dragon’s lair before they disposed of them. Today of all days they had launched a surprise attack against the soldiers, and Linsha and her militia had rushed into the thick of it.
“We can’t go out there,” she said. “We’ll be caught in the middle.”
Shouts suddenly rang through the passageway behind them. Hoofbeats pounded on stone.
“We already are,” Lanther said as the centaurs crowded into the hall.
“What are you waiting for?” Tanefer bellowed from the back. “The Tarmaks are coming up the stairs. Two of ours have already fallen.”
“The Tarmaks are in front of us, too!” Linsha replied. She glanced back at the centaurs and Legionnaires crowded into the dimly lit corridor. She saw concern and some anxiety on their faces, but there was determination as well. They had fought together for so long, they had no need to question one another or seek advice. They knew what needed to be done.
Linsha hauled aside a clump of vines to clear the door. “Go!” she snapped.
The first centaur sprang out, his rider ducking low and hanging on with all his strength. They did not run though. Both man and centaur drew their bows and took a position to the right of the door to cover the courtyard. The second centaur drew up beside them, then a third.
Four centaurs waited outside the entrance when an owl’s cry shattered the air. Ten more Tarmaks erupted from the dense stand of trees and raced over the ruined wall. Both foes saw one another and released their arrows at the same time. A howl rose from the Brute warriors, and without waiting to see how their arrows fell, they plunged in with swords and battle-axes. Two Legionnaires and a centaur fell, mortally wounded. Two more centaurs charged out the doorway.
Linsha had no time left to watch. Leonidas came up beside her, hauled her onto his back, and barged out of the door before she could see if Tanefer and Lanther were behind her.
War cries rang out in the passage, and a bevy of crossbow bolts whirred out behind her. She felt a stinging blow to the back of her left arm, and when she reached around, she felt a bolt protruding from the fleshy part of her upper arm. It was only a flesh wound, but it hurt like fury down to her fingers, and she had no time to work the bolt loose. Warm blood stained her sleeve and seeped down her skin.
Meanwhile the Tarmaks had pressed their attack with a cold ferocity, in spite of the fact that they were attacking a superior force of men and centaurs. Their swords brought down two more centaurs and badly wounded a Legionnaire before Leonidas reached the fray.
The young stallion fired his crossbow pointblank into the neck of the Brute attacking the wounded Legionnaire. Blood spattered over his chest and Linsha’s legs. Linsha tried to help the wounded man onto Leonidas’s back, but another Brute whirled and threw a small axe into the man’s back, severing his spinal cord. The Legionnaire, a man Linsha respected and knew well, gave a grunt of pain and shock and sagged out of her arms. His face went slack as his body struck the ground. Leonidas sidestepped away from the body and drew his sword.
“Linsha, we’ve got to get out of this!” he yelled. He blocked a blow from another warrior and kicked a hind hoof into the knee of a third. Linsha forced herself to hold on. Her head felt heavy and dizzy from the loss of blood.
“Where are Tanefer and Lanther?” she cried. She looked around wildly and saw nothing of the man or the black stallion. Forms moved in the doorway, but when she looked that way she saw only Tarmaks hacking aside the vines and pouring out of the dark exit. Her heart sank.
“Go! Go! Go!” she shouted.
There was nothing else to do. If Tanefer and Lanther had not left the passageway by now, they had probably given their lives holding the door against the enemy.
The centaurs still standing upright heard her call and obeyed. Including Leonidas, there were only four centaurs, three Legionnaires, and Linsha able to flee. They took what wounded they could and broke away from the Tarmaks. The footing was treacherous for horse hooves among the tumbled stones, fallen trees, and tangled roots of the ancient ruin, but they tried to increase their speed away from the bows and throwing axes of the enemy.
The Tarmaks jeered loudly and moved to follow at a determined pace. One pulled out a small horn and
