Without their shields to protect them, the humans suffered the full force of the crescent blades. Auum threw two, both of them finding their targets. He heard the mourning sound of more jaqrui and saw one slice the top from an enemy’s skull, another chop away a mage’s dagger hand.
Auum drew his twin blades and sprinted in at an angle calculated to take him towards Pelyn. The enemy readied but he had no time for them. Two paces in front of their line he jumped, turned a roll in the air and came down behind them in the midst of mages and bowmen.
A mage in front of him screamed; Auum slashed him through the shoulder and barged him aside. A bowman turned and shot; Auum saw the flight of the arrow and swayed his body to the right then lashed out his blade and split the bowman’s skull. Auum thrust left and caught a mage’s dagger. He turned his wrist, drove the weapon down and jabbed his blade into the man’s face. Auum moved his right blade out, slicing deep into the side of another. He jumped above a clumsy hack. His feet licked out one after the other, smashing the soldier’s nose and breaking his jaw.
Auum moved on, hearing his Tais driving into the fragile enemy flank. He glanced behind him, seeing the ClawBound beginning to fall back, their panthers tiring. They had done enough. Ahead, the humans had begun to make ground. Auum signalled archers on the wrecked courthouse to concentrate their fire on the enemy front line.
Three men ran at him, seeing him alone and thinking him vulnerable. Auum watched them come and saw the intent in each of them. They would reach him simultaneously but it would do them no good.
The first jumped in the air to hack his blade down two-handed. Auum simply stepped aside and reversed a sword into the man’s back, skewering vital organs. The second had gone low, but Auum was already jumping above his swipe. He landed while the man was off balance and kicked his standing leg from under him. Auum thrust his right fist into the mouth of the third before he could deliver his intended strike. He finished the second off, stamping hard on the back of his neck and feeling it crack beneath his foot.
Auum paused. More came at him. Bowmen were also targeting him, but in the chaos he could crouch and run beneath their arcs of vision. With his own poison archers doing terrible damage to their ranks, he battered into the rear of the human lines, Ulysan once again at his shoulder.
Pelyn sensed the shift in the army behind the front lines and knew the TaiGethen had joined the attack. She was blowing hard and her blade speed had dropped. Most of the Al-Arynaar about her were dead, and the Katurans were beginning to waver before the humans’ skilled blades.
‘One more time!’ she called, fending away a cut to her head and lashing a blow to a human’s gut. ‘We can break them.’
To her left, a Beethan iad screamed. Her meat cleaver went spinning from her hand, which had been partly severed by a savage blow. The soldier drew back his blade to finish the job but the iad leapt on him, her other hand ripping at his eyes and her teeth clamped on his lower jaw.
‘That’s it!’ cried Pelyn. ‘Hit them with everything you have. For Katura!’
Her words were taken up along the Katuran lines and they flew in once more. The enemy fell back a pace, regrouped and formed again, blades working hard, doing dreadful damage to the poorly trained city folk. The Katurans would not hold for long. Pelyn drew another shuddering breath and pushed forward.
She faced a man with the mark of command on him. Pelyn dodged back, avoiding his thrust to her stomach by a whisker. She bounced forward, aiming a cut at his head which he blocked hard, sending a painful vibration through her arm.
Katuran militia next to her lost their lives, their inadequate weapons breaking in the face of keen steel. One lost her intestines to a deep cut. Another’s heart was pierced by a blow which sliced straight through his unskilled defence. More took their places. Hope remained, but Pelyn could feel it it faltering.
Pelyn’s opponent advanced. He feinted right and struck left. She deflected the blade but its edge sliced into her side. Pelyn gasped at the sudden pain. She moved her blade left to right in riposte and the man leapt back. Her sword point cut into the leather at his neck.
Pelyn heard shouts from behind and felt the Katurans press in around her, their sudden move forcing the enemy back again. Her enemy weaved his sword in front of her. As she tried to follow the blade, nausea gripped her. She felt weak and her mouth was dry. Pelyn took half a pace back and waved her blade in front of her chest, trying to give herself a moment.
The enemy moved in. He butted her, his forehead smashing into her nose before she could lift her blade. Pelyn staggered back, dazed. Other humans moved to either side, driving her flanking militia back. The man stepped in again and Pelyn struck out. Her thrust was blocked and the next instant she felt a terrible cold pain in her chest.
The soldier put his hand out and pushed her away. His blade came clear, its edges dragging against her ribs. Her mouth filled with blood. Pelyn dropped her blade and fell, the pain gone to be replaced by a roaring in her ears that grew and grew with each slow heartbeat. She looked around and saw nothing but the gaping mouths and wide eyes of dead Katurans.
Her head fell back against the ground. There were shapes in the air, tumbling and rolling. Someone called her name but she didn’t have the strength to reply.
‘Pelyn!’ Auum landed astride her body, Ulysan a couple of paces to his right. ‘Fight! Fight for Pelyn! Fight for your lives!’
The Katurans had paused and some had lost their lives as a result. Auum’s arrival energised them once more, lent confidence to flagging spirits and turned them on their human foe one last time.
Ulysan led the charge, driving a wedge into the enemy lines that the Katurans filled. Jeral stood in front of Auum, his blade dripping with Pelyn’s blood. He pointed at Auum.
‘Kill him,’ he said.
Four rushed in. Auum held one sword across his forehead and the other with its tip touching the ground. His body was forward and his legs straddled the breathing but dying Pelyn. He didn’t wait for them to strike. Auum lashed his high blade across the face of the leftmost, his low blade up through the thigh of the rightmost. He balanced himself instantly, jumped straight up and kicked both feet into the chest of the third soldier. Auum landed on the unfortunate’s chest and brought his blades across his body, batting aside the blade of the last with one and opening up his stomach with the other.
Auum walked over the soldier on which he stood, crushing his throat on his way to Jeral. The human commander stood alone. The human line wavered behind him, its flanks weak and its centre fatally pierced by Ulysan.
Jeral swept his sword left to right. Auum ducked under it and with his left blade blocked it down and aside. He took a pace forward and drove his right blade into Jeral’s chest. The two locked eyes momentarily before Jeral’s gaze began to fade. Auum dragged the blade clear with his next motion and cut as hard as he ever had across Jeral’s exposed neck with his left.
Jeral’s body teetered for a moment then crumpled sideways, his head rolling off his neck to fetch up at Auum’s feet. The elf stared into the eyes of the men behind Jeral and fought for the word he needed in the clumsy human tongue.
‘Flee,’ he said.
They fled. Auum took Jeral’s head by the hair and held it high.
‘Their commander is dead!’ he roared. ‘Their magic is gone and their beast has no head. Fight, Katura! Break them.’
Katurans hanging back behind Auum roared their support and rushed past him. Auum watched them go. He flung the head towards the wavering enemy.
‘Here, have him. I have no use for him.’
He saw the head bounce once in the mud and roll a couple of times before stopping, the eyes staring up and the mouth hanging open. Auum turned to Pelyn and dropped to his knees by her side. She was almost gone but still she managed a faint smile when she saw him.
‘You did it,’ said Auum. ‘You showed your true self. Shorth will welcome you and the ancients will honour your arrival among them.’
Pelyn tried to speak but her mouth was clogged with blood.
‘Shhh,’ said Auum. ‘All is forgiven, Pelyn. They are broken. We have won. You have saved Katura and the elves.’
