with each step, and a chorus of challenges, catcalls, and foul oaths rose up from those sellswords who were inclined to shout or snarl defiance at the archers waiting for them.
'Fire!' Earek shouted.
The bows of the Dalesfolk thrummed, and arrows streaked out from the thicket, buzzing like angry wasps. Many glanced from shields or breastplates, but the Dales-folk had waited for such a short range that their powerful bows were perfectly capable of driving a yard-long shaft through armor, given a clean hit. For their part, the elf archers did not try to power their missiles through a foe's armor. Instead, elven arrows found throats, eyes, or underarms, places where a swordsman's cuirass did not guard him. Mercenaries shrieked, swore, or stumbled to the ground, wounded or dying. With each man that fell, gaps appeared in the shield wall, and more arrows sleeted into the mass of soldiers.
The Chondathans let out a roar of rage and surged forward, charging to bring the archers to sword's reach. Despite the weight of their steel, they covered the last few yards of the open field faster than Daried could have imagined. Men dropped and died with every step, but still they came on-and now Daried saw their plan. Across the field, the waiting horsemen spurred their mounts forward, charging in the wake of the armored footsoldiers. With the Dalesfolk and elves occupied in shooting the men right in front of them, the riders covered the open space unmolested.
'Teriandyln! Stop the cavalry!' Daried cried.
The wizard barked out the words of a spell, and hurled a scathing blast of fire at the oncoming riders. A tremendous detonation left a dozen men and horses dead in the field, and a black pall of smoke rose over the field. At once Teriandyln turned and threw another spell at a different group of riders. 'There are too many!' he shouted back at Daried.
While the wizard wove his deadly spells and arrows continued to scythe through the Chondathan ranks, Daried drew a slender wand from his belt and turned his attention to the line of swordsmen swarming into the trees. The wand was Teriandyln's, but Daried could use it well enough. He leveled it at the first group of Chondathans and snapped out its activating word. A brilliant blue stroke of lightning blasted five men from their feet. Recklessly Daried triggered the wand again and again, trying to stop the attack in its tracks.
For a moment, he thought they might succeed. Scoured by arrows and lightning, the footsoldiers faltered at the very edge of the woods, and the wheeling bands of horsemen beyond shied away from Teriandyln's fiery blasts. But then a wave of dull thuds or booms like distant thunder rippled through the woods behind Daried and his warriors, filling the shadows beneath the trees with a sulfurlike stench.
'Devils! Devils!' came the cry.
Daried wheeled in sudden horror, and found a gang of hamatulas-barbed devils-materializing in the middle of the defender's ranks. Eyes aglow with emerald hate, the fearsome creatures immediately tore into any villager or elf hapless enough to be within talon's reach. Blasts of hellfire blackened the trees and seared flesh.
Without a moment's thought, Daried slid easily into the bladesinger's trance and glided forward to meet the hell-born fiends. The furious battle around him faded into a strange, dull silence. Distantly he noted the skirmish of Chondathan swordsmen and Dalesfolk archers around him, the desperate cut and parry of men and women fighting for their lives, but he simply avoided the fray and moved to the first of the monsters.
The creature grinned maliciously and hurled a great orb of green fire at Daried, but the bladesinger whispered the word of a spell and caught the whirling ball of flame on his swordpoint. He flicked it over his shoulder at a Chondathan swordsman behind him, immolating the man with the devil's fire. Then there was a sudden clash of talons and barbs against elven steel, and the creature recoiled, bleeding from several deep cuts. Daried spun from a high guard to a low crouch, and used the lightning wand in his left hand to strike down another three swordsmen before returning to his duel against the hamatula.
'Now you die, elf!' the hamatula hissed.
It sprang at him, arms spread wide, seeking to impale the bladesinger on the forest of spikes covering its body. Daried folded to the ground and ran it through the belly, rolling under its feet as it crashed to the ground behind him. Jagged spines caught him at the shoulder and the top of his back, but he simply set the pain aside and rolled up onto his feet, continuing his blade-dance.
More battle magic crashed and thundered in the thicket, blasts of fire and stabbing forks of lightning. He glimpsed Nilsa, moving gracefully among the trees as she drew and shot, taking a man with every arrow. Then he spotted another barbed devil, crouching over the torn body of Feldyrr, a moon elf. The monster leered at the dying elf as it clenched its talons in his chest.
Daried knocked the devil away from his warrior with darting daggers of magic. The devil staggered to its feet with a hiss of rage. It hurled its fearsome will against the bladesinger, trying to paralyze him with its terrible magic, but in his trance Daried was hardly conscious of such things. While the devil glared at him, he spun close and sliced its throat open with a long draw cut, leaving it to crumple to the ground beside Feldyrr's body.
He danced through a knot of mercenary swordsmen next, leaving one man blinded with his magic and another dying from a thrust through the belly. But then he was driven out of his trance by the staggering impact of a barbed devil hurling itself into his back like a battering ram of red-hot steel. Agonizing hooks and spikes pierced Daried's flesh in a dozen places, but his golden mail held just enough to keep him from being killed at once.
The devil on his back hissed and spat fire, burning Daried as it tried to clamp its foul black fangs in the back of the bladesinger's neck. He struggled in the dirt and underbrush to get his feet under him or get an arm free so that he could get away, but the devil's strength was terrible. It tore a bloody gobbet of flesh from his shoulder, and despite himself Daried screamed.
'Get off me!' he snarled.
'You did not like that?' the creature hissed in his ear. 'Ah, how you will sing before I am through with you, delicious elfling!'
Daried reversed his grip on his thinblade and tried to stab at the monster, but the devil swatted the blade out of his hand. Desperately Daried rolled back in the other direction, and found the lightning wand with his groping fingers. Quick as a cat he jammed the end of the wand over his shoulder into the devil's face, and blew its head apart with a stroke of lightning that picked him up and flung him down a dozen feet away.
His mail charred and smoking, Daried climbed unsteadily to his feet. The arming-coat under his mail was sopping wet with his own blood. Ignoring the clamor of battle all around, he staggered over to the devil's twitching corpse and retrieved his thinblade. Then he straightened up as much as he could, and tried to make sense of what was going on around him. It seemed that the battle still continued, though scores of dead or dying humans-and some elves, too-littered the ground.
'Aillesil Seldarie,' he breathed.
The Dalesfolk hadn't been overcome yet, but it didn't seem possible that they could keep fighting against such odds. At least no more barbed devils remained in the fight.
'I had a feeling we would meet again, elf.' Daried wheeled and found himself facing the wizard Sarthos. The Chondathan lord wore a breastplate worked in the image of a snarling dragon, and wore an ornate helm over his stubbled scalp. The human smiled cruelly.
'A shame you are wounded already,' he said. 'I hoped to try you at your best. That would have been a contest to remember.'
He carried the Morvaeril moonblade bared in his hand.
'You should take care with your wishes, Chondathan,' the bladesinger rasped. 'You might get exactly what you want.'
Ignoring the hollow unsteadiness of his legs and the stabbing aches that crisscrossed his back, he raised his thinblade in challenge. Slowly he circled Sarthos, taking the measure of his opponent while the battle raged all around them.
The mercenary struck first. Snarling the words of a sinister spell, he threw out his arm and launched a black bolt of crackling power at the bladesinger. But Daried was still warded by the parrying spell he'd used to deflect the fireball the first barbed devil had thrown at him. He managed to interpose his thinblade and bat the ebon ray back at Sarthos. The ray caught the mercenary wizard on his side and spun him half around, its frigid darkness draining away strength and vitality.
Sarthos struggled to fight off the effects of his own spell, and Daried saw his chance. He stumbled in close to the Chondathan and managed to cut the man badly across the arm and face before Sarthos reeled away, blood streaming from his wounds. The bladesinger pressed his attack, stretching for his last reserves of strength as his
