Tanis dropped into a fighting stance as the hobgoblin, dogged by its partner, raced across the clearing. The woman stormed a few paces behind.
"Turash koblani!" The hobgoblin raised a sword streaked with what Tanis guessed was blood—and probably human blood; a dark streak smeared one bare leg of the woman, who had leaped onto a stump with another cry. The movement brought her eye level with the monsters.
Tanis swung up his bow and swept an arrow from his quiver with the smooth motion that was second nature to Qualinesti elves.
The human raised her sword and aimed a deadly stroke at one hobgoblin. "Prepare to die, son of a gully dwarf!" she called mockingly, but the hobgoblins, who hated everything elven, remained focused on the half-elf. With their swords, the hobgoblins swatted halfheartedly at the woman. They moved to keep this annoying, deadly female human in their side vision while concentrating on the half-elf.
"Run, girl!" Tanis shouted. "Save yourself!"
She cast him a withering look, one dark brow cocked above a sardonic eye. Then she laughed and slashed the hamstrings of one hobgoblin as Tanis sent an arrow into the breast of the other. The two monsters fell bellowing, and Tanis dropped his bow and finished off the hamstrung hobgoblin with a thrust of his sword. Then he turned to the woman.
Tanis was prepared for any reaction but the one he got. The woman unleashed a string of epithets that would have shriveled the soul of a Caergoth dock-worker. Hatred blazed from her eyes. Tanis had never heard such invective—not, at least, from the mouth of a woman. He froze, hazel eyes wide, and she slammed him with the flat of her sword, sending him
tumbling to the damp earth. His longsword flew out of reach with the unexpectedness of her assault. The half-elf lay immobile atop his quiver, broken arrows strewn around him, as she stood straddling him, laying to the right and left with her sword, chopping plants and snapping sticks with angry motions. Of average height for a human woman, she looked seven feet tall from this angle. And as strong as a minotaur.
While he was but half elf, Tanis was still Qualinesti enough to avoid mortal combat with a woman—even one whose swordplay would put the average man to shame. Although the Qualinesti women were trained in the use of bow and sword, the practice was more ceremonial than practical, and no Qualinesti male really expected to cross weapons with a female of the race. Looking up at the battle-hardened body of his human tormentor, however, Tanis felt his palms grow slick with apprehension. A trickle of perspiration trailed back from his brow and dripped through his rust-red hair. The smell of rotting leaves was thick.
"Idiot! Interferer!" she fumed, decapitating a currant bush. Leaf fragments rained on Tanis. "I had the situation well under control, half-elf!"
"But . . ." Tanis's right hand cast through the slippery leaves and closed on an arrow; any weapon at all would help if this crazed woman lost her tenuous grip on her temper.
Her blade, dripping hobgoblin blood, swept to the right of Tanis's head and whacked off a trista blossom; the blade found its way unerringly to the bare inch of stem below the ground-hugging white blossom. Tanis marveled at her control.
"How dare you spoil my fun?" she spat out.
Tanis tried again. "Fun? It was six against . . ."
The sword blade halted above him, and the half-elf
had the notion that the woman was moments away from plunging the weapon into his ribs. He bit off his protest and tensed, ready to fling himself aside if an attack came.
Tanis probed the darkness for anything he could use to vanquish her. His elvensight, sensitive to heat released from objects, showed little but a half-dozen rapidly cooling hobgoblin corpses, two of which were only a few feet away.
"Eight," the woman corrected at last. "It was eight hobgoblins to one. Near-even odds for me. You missed the two by the river." She paused. "Although I'm sure you heard them." A crooked smile creased her face for the first time, and Tanis felt the deadly moment pass.
"Eight hobgoblins," he echoed, swallowing.
"I'm no amateur, half-elf. I've been a mercenary for over half a decade," she said.
How many enemies, Tanis wondered, had heard those silken tones as their life's blood drained away?
But the voice continued, warming again as to an old injury. "And when the day comes," she ranted, "that I can't trounce eight hobgoblins without help from a half-dressed half-man, half-elf, I'll gladly retire!"
She raised her sword in a mock salute to Tanis, wiped the bloody blade on a leg of his fringed breeches, then slid the weapon into a battle-scarred scabbard. Insolently she let her gaze flicker over the supine half-elf. His pointed ears, his most obvious elven heritage, showed through his shoulder-length hair. Her dark eyes also took in the broad shoulders and muscled chest that broadcast his human blood, and her smile grew wider. Tanis felt a flame ripple through him; then he shivered as the dampness of the ground permeated the back of his shirt.
Above him, the woman thrust out a hand. "Kitiara Uth Matar," she proclaimed. "Originally of Solace, most recently of wider horizons. Including the employ of numerous lords who are my business only." She raised a mocking eyebrow and stood back, arm stretched toward him. "Come on, half-elf. Get up!" She gestured impatiently. "Afraid of a woman?" Her smile curved lopsidedly again.
After some hesitation, Tanis met her handclasp, but she dipped forward at the last instant, clenching his forearm with a strong right hand. He, in turn, ended up grasping her arm at the elbow. Then the woman stepped back and began to haul upward, raising the half-elf despite his greater weight. "My name is Tanthalas," he said, letting himself be drawn to a half-seated position. "Also most recently of Solace."
"Tanthalas," she repeated. "A
