take refuge inside if it turned out to be necessary.
Sadly, it was necessary. Their enemies were closing in, and they were too spent to run much farther. The fortress was a better redoubt than she could have expected to find, even though its crumbling sandstone ramparts could do no more than delay the defenders' inevitable annihilation, and that only if the fugitives could reach the interior alive.
Thamalon led her toward a gate in the castle's north wall. Crossbows clacked. The quarrels thrummed through the dark but missed their marks.
Suddenly a pair of lizard men seemed to pounce from nowhere; exhausted as she was, dashing at breakneck speed, Shamur hadn't noticed their approach. The one that attacked her bore no weapons, but it raked at her chest with claws sharp as any dagger. She recoiled, and the creature's talons merely shredded her gown and tore away the silver and sapphire brooch Tamlin had given her on her birthday.
The lizard man lunged at her again, clawed hands raised, fanged jaws gaping, but not before she came on guard. Exploiting the superior reach the broadsword afforded her, she thrust at the reptile's throat, then instantly stepped back and prepared to parry, perceiving even as she did so that she wouldn't actually need to defend. Blood spurted from the lizard man's throat. It clutched at the wound, then sprawled at her feet.
She pivoted and saw that Thamalon had just dispatched the other lizard man. His foe had carried a battle-axe and a sturdy, leather-covered target, and the nobleman hesitated over the shield as if wondering whether he could afford the time to pull it from the creature's arm and take it for himself. Then two rogues emerged from the trees, and Thamalon cursed, whirled, and ran up the motte on which the ruin sat. Shamur followed.
The fortress gate had once been comprised of two leaves. The one on the left had fallen from its hinges, and the nobles had to run over it to get inside. Their footsteps boomed on the planks.
Shamur and Thamalon flung themselves behind the leaf that was still standing, shielded at last, if only for the moment, from flying quarrels. Panting, soaked in perspiration despite the chill night air, leaning heavily on the gate, the blonde woman peered about the snowy courtyard.
As she'd already inferred from viewing its exterior, the fortress had no donjon. Instead, rows of humbler structures, several with collapsed roofs, stood along the walls, where they'd no doubt served as a barracks, kitchen, dining hall, stable, storerooms, smithy, shrine, and every other facility such an outpost required. A wagon with the front wheels missing sat up on a trestle in the far corner of the yard.
There seemed to be no superior defensive position farther inside. They might as well fight here, at the gate. At least that way, she wouldn't have to stagger any farther.
Thamalon peered out at the clearing. 'They're coming,' he wheezed, 'and I need you to hold them.' He turned and trotted away.
'What are you doing?' she demanded. 'There's nowhere better to go, and I need you here!'
If he heard, he evidently grudged the time to reply, for he just kept going, and then she heard footsteps crunching in the snow beyond the entrance. She peeked around the gate.
She didn't see as many foes as she'd expected. Perhaps some of the bravos and conjured creatures were still making their way through the woods. Moreover, the bullies were hanging back at the verge of the clearing, seemingly happy to let the wizard's inhuman minions risk their lives to take the common quarry.
Still, a sufficiency of the conjured servitors were hurrying across the snow to do precisely that. A couple had already reached the base of the mound.
Shamur's throat was parched. Wishing for a drink of water, some scrap of relief to ease her plight if only for an instant, she forced herself to stand without support and lifted her broadsword from where it trailed on the ground. The notched, wet blade was heavy in her hand.
An osquip swarmed through the gate, and she killed it. In the moment it took to free the broadsword from the carcass, a lizard man leaped through the opening. She parried the first thrust of its spear, and had her riposte deflected in its turn. Shifting back and forth, they traded attacks until she finally dispatched it with a cut to the head.
As it fell, she realized she was now standing unshielded in the castle entrance. She dodged to the side, and a pair of crossbow bolts whizzed through the space where she'd just been standing.
'Thamalon!' she croaked. No one answered.
Then she smelled an acrid odor, and an instant later, a dark horror scuttled through the gate. Its shape superficially resembled that of a centaur, with a human's head, arms, and torso set atop a hard-shelled, eight- legged body. A segmented tail, ten feet long and culminating in a curved stinger, lashed about behind it.
Shamur cut at the spot where a human would have a navel, just above the point where skin gave way to chitin. Its blank yellow eyes flaring, the manscorpion lashed a clawed hand down to block the blow, sacrificing one of its three fingers to stop what would otherwise have been a mortal stroke.
The creature hissed and threatened her with its unmanned hand. It was attempting to distract her, she suspected, from the true attack, and sure enough, an instant later, its tail whipped up over its body, lashing its stinger down at her head.
She scrambled backward, and the stinger scored the earth. The manscorpion scuttled forward, taking some of the ground she'd given up and clearing the narrow entrance for a second such creature to hurry through.
Shamur felt a surge of despair. Exhausted as she was, how could she fight both of them by herself? Where was Thamalon? Then one manscorpion scuttled right, the other to the left, maneuvering to catch their quarry between them, and she had no more time for doubt or questions.
She darted to the left, outflanking the wounded tlincalli, as she recalled the name, and putting it between herself and its companion. Bellowing, she charged, and the manscorpion's sting whipped at her in a horizontal arc. Without breaking stride, she blocked the attack with her broadsword, vaulted onto the creature's back, then leaped at the second abomination.
Still circling to engage its prey, the unwounded tlincalli had doubtless assumed it could not be attacked until it completed the maneuver. Now, suddenly, death was flying at it through the air. Crying out in alarm, it raised its hands to fend Shamur off, but it was an instant too slow. Knowing that no fighter can use his strength to best effect when his feet aren't planted, she hacked with all her might. Her broadsword bit deep into the tlincalli's hairless brow.
The manscorpion fell and so did she, slamming down on her side. As she struggled to yank her sword free, the remaining tlincalli's tail hurtled down at her. She wrenched herself to the side, and the curved stinger smashed into the earth and splashed her with drops of venom. She grabbed the tail just beneath the deadly hook to keep it from striking at her a second time, whereupon the manscorpion whipped the member back, dragging her bumping across the snowy ground toward its ready claws. It was this pulling, rather than her own all-but-depleted strength, that actually drew her blade from the dead tlincalli's skull.
Bending at the waist, its four front legs bowing, the manscorpion stooped to rake her with its unwounded hand. Grunting, she evaded the attack, gashing the creature's forearm in the process, then drove her point up at its belly.
Her aim was too low, hitting chitin instead of skin, but the broadsword crunched through its armor. The manscorpion convulsed and toppled, and she had to scramble backward to keep it from smashing down on top of her.
Rising, she studied the writhing tlincalli, making sure it truly was incapacitated, and then, gasping, staggered toward the gate. She had to resume her station there before the rest of her enemies swarmed through the gap. If several of them attacked her at once, they'd surely drag her down.
She almost didn't make it in time, for just as she reached the entrance, a pair of lizard men skulked through. She charged and somehow managed to slay them both before they turned their chert-tipped spears in her direction.
After that, she had nothing to do but gasp for breath and wait for the next onslaught, which, she suspected, was likely to finish her. She simply had nothing left.
At least she'd perish with a sword in her hand. Better that, she'd often thought, than dying withered, decrepit, and sick, like poor old Lindrian. There was still no sign of Thamalon, and she supposed that, his courage failing, he'd hidden himself in one of the derelict buildings in the pathetic hope that his enemies wouldn't be able to find him. It gave her a bitter satisfaction to think that, even if he wasn't a murderer, her repugnance for him was justified after all.
Standing at the foot of the motte, Marance, who had enhanced his night vision with an enchantment,
