White Gold Wielder

Then the entrance loomed ahead. Now the air blew keenly into Covenant's face, tugging at his beard, drawing tears from his eyes. A dark pressure gathered in his veins. But he ducked his head and went on. With his companions, he strode through the opening onto the rocky ground at the foot of the escarpment.

The plain was sharp with sunlight. From a fathomless sky, the mid-afternoon sun burned across the white waste. The air felt strangely brittle, as if it were about to break under its own weight. Stiff snow crunched beneath Covenant's boots. For a moment, the cold seemed as bright as fire. He had to fight to keep wild magic from leaking past his restraint.

When his sight cleared, he saw that the whirling snow-devils which had marked and guarded the rhyshyshim were gone. The Waynhim had no more need of them.

Barking softly to each other, the creatures surged together into the compact and characteristic wedge which both they and the ur-viles used to concentrate and wield their combined force. Bamako stood at the apex of the formation. When it was complete and the invocations had been made, he would hold the lore and power of five rhysh in the blade of his scimitar. As long as they did not break ranks, the Waynhim along the sides of the wedge would be able to strike individual blows; but Bamako's might would be two hundred strong.

Every moment, the battle drew closer. Looking northward, Covenant found that he could barely see the region of monoliths beyond the massed advance of the arghuleh.

Ponderous and fatal, they came forward-a slow rush of white gleaming over the snow and ice. Already, their feral clatter was audible above the voices of the Waynhim. It echoed like shattering off the face of the escarpment. The horde did not appear to greatly outnumber the Waynhim; but the far larger bulk and savagery of the arghuleh made their force seem overwhelming.

The company still had time to flee. But no one suggested flight. The First stood, stem and ready, with one hand resting on the hilt of her longsword. Glints reflected out of Honninscrave's eyes as if he were eager to strike any blow which might make his grief useful. Pitchwife's expression was more wary and uncertain; he was no warrior. But Mistweave bore himself as though he saw his chance for restitution coming and had been commanded to ignore it. Only Cail watched the advancing horde with dispassion, unmoved alike by the valour of the Waynhim and the peril of the company. Perhaps he saw nothing especially courageous in what the rhysh were doing. Perhaps to his Haruchai mind such extravagant risk was simply reasonable.

Covenant struggled to speak. The cold seemed to freeze the words in his throat. “I want to help them. If they need it But I don't know how.” To the First, he said, “Don't go out there unless the wedge starts to break. I've seen this kind of fighting before.” He had seen ur-viles slash into the Celebration of Spring to devour the Wraiths of Andelain-and had been powerless against that black wedge. “As long as their formation holds, they aren't beaten.” Then he turned to Linden.

Her expression stopped him. Her face was fixed, pale with cold, toward the arghuleh, and her eyes looked as livid as, injuries. For one dire moment, he feared she had fallen again into her particular panic. But then her gaze snapped toward him. It was battered but not cowed. “I don't know,” she said tightly. “He's right. There's some force out there. Something that keeps them together. But I can't tell what it is.”

Covenant swallowed a knot of dread. “Keep trying,” he murmured. “I don't want these Waynhim to end up like the Unhomed.” Damned as well as doomed.

She did not reply; but her nod conveyed a fierce resolve as she turned back to the arghuleh.

They were dangerously close now. A score of them led the advance, and their mass was nearly that many deep. Though they were beasts of hate that preyed on everything, they had become as organized as a conscious army. Steadily, they gathered speed to hurl themselves upon the Waynhim.

In response, the Waynhim raised a chant into the chill. Together, they barked a raw, irrhythmic invocation which sprang back at them from the escarpment and resounded across the flat. And a moment later a black light shone from the apex of the wedge. Hamako flourished his scimitar. Its blade had become as ebon as Demondim vitriol. It emitted midnight as if it were ablaze with death.

At the same time, all the smaller blades of the Waynhim turned black and began to drip a hot fluid which steamed and sizzled in the snow.

Without knowing what he was doing Covenant retreated. The frigid air had become a thrumming shout of power, soundless in spite of the chant which summoned it; and that puissance called out to him. His yearning for fire battered at the walls he had built around it; the scars on his forearm burned poisonously. He took a few steps backward. But he could not put any distance between himself and his desire to strike. Instinctively, he fumbled his way to the only protection he could find: a jagged rock that stood half his height near the entrance to the rhyshyshim. Yet be did not crouch or cower there. His numb hands gripped the argute stone in the same way that his eyes clung to the Waynhim and the arghuleh; and within himself he pleaded. No. Not again.

He had not been required to watch the actual destruction of the Unhomed.

Then Hamako gave a shout like a huzzah; and the wedge started forward. Moving as one, the Waynhim went out to the foe they had chosen for their last service.

Hushed amid the vicious advance of the ice-beasts, the long hoarse chant of the Waynhim, the echoes breaking up and down the escarpment Covenant and his companions watched as the wedge drove in among the arghuleh.

For a moment, its thrust was so successful that the outcome appeared foregone. The rhysh poured their power into Hamako: he cut an irresistible swath for the wedge to follow. And as individuals the Waynhim slashed their ice-corroding fluid in all directions. Arghuleh snapped apart, fell back, blundered against each other.

Screaming from their many maws, they swarmed around the wedge, trying to engulf it, crush it among them. But that only brought the third side of the wedge into the fray. And Hamako's scimitar rang like a hammer on the ice, seat shards and limbs flying from side to side with every blow. He had aimed the wedge toward an especially large beast at the rear of the mass, an arghule that seemed to have been formed by one creature crouching atop another; and with each step he drew closer to that target.

The arghuleh were savage, impervious to fear. Webs and snares were flung across the wedge. Booming cracks riddled the snow-pack. But black liquid burned the nets to tatters. Falling chunks bruised the Waynhim, but did not weaken their formation. And the hard ground under the snow rendered the cracks ineffective.

Covenant leaned against his braced bands, half frozen there, hardly daring to credit what he saw. Low shouts of encouragement broke from the First; and her sword was in her hands. Avid with hope, Pitchwife peered into the fray as if he expected victory at any moment, expected the very winter to break and flee.

Then, without warning, everything changed.

The arghuleh were virtually mindless, but the force which ruled them was not. It was sentient and cunning. And it had learned a lesson from the way the Waynhim had rescued the company earlier.

Abruptly, the horde altered its tactics. In a sudden flurry like an explosion of white which almost obscured the battle, all the beasts raised their ice at once. But now that ice was not directed at the wedge. Instead, it covered every arghule that had been hurt, broken, or even killed by the Waynhim.

Ice slapped against every gout of vitriol, smothered the black fluid, effaced it, healed the wounds.

Ice bandaged every limb and body that Hamako had backed or shattered, restoring crippled creatures to wholeness with terrible celerity.

Ice gathered together the fragments of the slain, fused them anew, poured life back into them.

The Waynhim had not stopped fighting for an instant. But already half their work had been undone. The arghuleh revitalized each other faster than they were damaged.

More and more of them were freed to attack in other ways.

Unable to rend the wedge with their webs, they began to form a wall of ice around it as if they meant to encyst it until its power gave out through sheer weariness.

Covenant stared in horror. The Waynhim were clearly unprepared for this counterattack. Hamako whirled his blade, flaring desperation around him. Three times he pounded an arghule into pieces no larger than his fist; and each time a web snatched the pieces together, restored them, sent the beast at him again. Wildly he sprang forward to assail the web itself. But in so doing he broke contact with the wedge. Instantly, his