taught his worshipers the doctrine of the furious assault. Everything else was cowardice. Tactics were cowardice; bows were elven, coward s weapons. And so now the bulk of the orcs crashed down the slope into the dell, an undifferentiated mass. Lukas could see the genasi down below, his short sword in one hand, his scimitar burning with a watery, cold fire, lines of energy snaking in patterns down his back as he crept through the bushes; he shot his last three arrows almost without aiming, drew his sword, and ran down the hill to meet his friend.
It was only after he had disabled two of the enormous, enraged, brain-damaged creatures one with a cut across the hamstrings, one with a thrust into the belly that he realized how difficult their situation was. It had been hard to estimate the numbers. But now he could see that fourteen warriors at least were left, and despite their losses were pushing Lukas and Gaspar-shen steadily back, steadily uphill out of the bushes that were their only cover. Once in the open ground, it would be hard to guess how they d survive.
Lukas wondered as he hacked and parried, cut and thrust, whether it was normal for him to think so clearly and dispassionately in these moments of bitter combat. His body moved without thinking, and his thoughts, untethered, floated upward as if into the moonless sky. Looking down, he could see the land laid out around the fire on the ridge, beside which the orc leader, Gruumsh s eye, peered down into the dell, a hideous smile on his mutilated face. At the same time he was thinking of the catalogue of mistakes he had made, not just here, tonight, but in the recent past, ever since the first mistake of choosing to accept the commission, for no evident money, to accompany Lord Aldon Kendrick on his idiotic journey to Caer Corwell. And even in the not-so-recent past, when he had left Baldur s Gate where he had built the Sphinx, whose spars now, doubtless, littered the beach below Kork Head; he could see the wreck in his mind s eye as he continued his ascent, and the entire coast of Moray from the Orcskulls to Trollclaw, more than a hundred miles. He saw lightning storms in the mountains, and moving toward him. He imagined he was rising up and up, and he could see the coast of Gwynneth now and Alaron behind it. Only his body was struggling in the dirt down below, ducking under the massive blade, stumbling up and backward, always backward, with the genasi at his side. He was wounded. He could feel that, too, a heavy pain in his side.
Ware, said Gaspar-shen. And then they d run out of room, and so they staggered up through the last trees. The open knoll was above them. Lukas found himself looking up into an orc s murderous face. He really did have one eye. The left one had been cut away, and so Lukas stepped to the blind side and cut the brute across the neck; he didn t go down. Off balance, Lukas saw the axe start its descent, just before the fletching of an arrow sprouted in the orc s breast, and he fell backward down the slope.
Another archer was up there on the knoll, a good one. The wind had come up and the storm had risen. An explosion of lightning, and in the interval before the thunder crack the archer managed to bring down three orcs in succession while Lukas clambered toward her, holding his side and dragging Gaspar-shen, who had lost his sword. The genasi was wounded behind his ear, a deep cut that flowed with the shining green ichor that was his blood.
And the archer wasn t alone. Others were up there, pale figures in gray robes, who ran down softly through the throng of astonished orcs, armed with light weapons, knives and slings, pulling down their heavier prey and chasing them into the gorse.
Soon it was done. Bewildered, Lukas waited for the rain. He sat beside Gaspar-shen, watching the quick gray figures climb the ridge to the bonfire and the eye of Gruumsh and his captives. The archer squatted above Lukas, and with quick, impatient hands she examined his side under his shirt.
I ll live, he said in the Common tongue, accepting a bloody towel to press into the wound. Look to my friend.
But now he saw that someone had taken Gaspar-shen away. He felt lightheaded, weak from lost blood. He looked up at the archer, dressed in light leather armor and a leather cap, which she stripped off to reveal a coil of red hair.
Where is he? Lukas asked.
The archer shook her head. It s going to rain. Let us bring you to some shelter. I am
I know who you are, Lukas said.
Chapter Six — A Resurrection
Eighty miles away there was rain in the Orcskull Mountains and in the deserted city below Scourtop. There was even rain that trickled down through ancient ventilation shafts into the cavern at the mountain s root and seeped across the floor. It puddled in the slime below Malar s table where the lycanthropes had circled round, as if to protect their slumbering god from the onslaught of three warriors the Savage with his red sword, and the two druids, Einar and Eleuthra in their animal shapes.
Marikke hung suspended in a net of chains, her wrists chafed and bleeding. She lifted her head to watch the wolf and the leopard rip into the pack of beast-men, who at the first moment of the assault were almost human, vulnerable in their terror. But as they grasped the crushing superiority of their own numbers, their most bestial instincts returned to them. Marikke watched the leopard go down under a seething pile. On the other side of the tunnel s mouth, the wolf had been brought to bay by the albino pig-lord. The Savage, in the center of the floor, had opened the bellies of a pair of werewolves, and as Marikke watched he brought his sword down across the back of one of the great cats. Red lightning flickered from his blade, and the lycanthropes cringed away from him until Argon Bael climbed down from the table, his own sword glittering with light. Marikke saw him swell and grow, his face shining so bright he was hard to see. In a moment all the darkness and the shadows in the cavern were banished to its edges, while at the same time the angel s wings, visible for the first time, stirred the air and extinguished the torches, which were useless now in any case. The light streamed from the angel s head and hands, and the runes along the blade of his two-handed broadsword gleamed with holy power. The elf seemed diminished, frail by contrast, until with game courage he lifted up his blade, lifted his face also, and Marikke could see his eyes.
The light that flowed from the angel, transfiguring and pure, was now the greatest source of light in the noisome cavern. Whatever object it touched, it seemed to light it from within. The surface of the stone table glowed, and the sleeping bulk of the Beastlord also appeared to glow, each black hair alight. Kip had fallen to the side, and he seemed asleep, though with an egg of light inside his chest that illuminated the bands of his ribs. Argon Bael swung his sword, which seemed to cut away the lies from everyone it touched, leaving them defenseless. One of the druids was already dead, his naked body gnawed to the bone. The other cowered in a corner, a simple human woman wrapped in a wolf s skin.
The Savage stood over her, protecting her, his own sword branching with electric current a winged, batlike creature sprang at him, and he slashed it from the air. Marikke hung above him. The wolf-men had fled, leaving her alone. Now, undistracted by their malice, she could work on the manacles that held her, which had been made for someone with larger wrists. Her own were slippery with sweat. She was able to slip the heel of her left hand through the ring, little by little, while at the same time she watched the duel that moved below her, tentative at first, as the opponents took each other s measure. The angel s sword separated truth from darkness, and when the light of it cut across the Savage s face, Marikke gasped in astonishment as she worked her left hand free, for suddenly she understood why she had mistrusted him all this time. She had been right to hate him, wrong to feel guilty or unfair. What the golden elf did, whether he behaved nobly or honorably, manipulatively or arrogantly, all that was unimportant now that she saw him for what he was, revealed in the light of the angel s stroke, which cleaved the air. The Savage s beautiful features, his golden hair and green eyes, all that was a lie.
In her mind she prayed to Chauntea without ceasing, begging her to reduce the pain in her wrists and strip away the living tissue also, reduce her proud flesh. This was a piece of ritual abasement with a metaphorical meaning. Tonight, Marikke meant it in cold seriousness smaller, made little, she could slide herself free from the intolerable manacles, the intolerable pain in her shoulders as she swung and dangled back and forth. Free me from the bonds of care, she prayed, meaning the words literally for the first time in her life a tiny slip, her wrists greased with sweat.
Below her she could see the Savage s demonic form rise to the surface of his skin, as his eyes took on an unholy reddish flush, as his pupils narrowed into vertical slits.
Marikke prayed:
