Tindror joined the hunt for clothes, panting hard and snarling, 'They must have emptied the Falconspires of lorn! There must be hundreds out there!'
'There'll be hundreds in here, once they hew through all the furniture,' Taeauna panted back at him. 'Sorry about your bed!'
The bearded baron shrugged. 'Just so long as we both live to see you help me warm the next one.' He found his belt and fumbled at the buckle, which started to glow, lifting the darkness they were all groping in to mere dimness. 'Can't find my damn boots in all this gloom! Why can't they attack after morning soup, like decent bandits?'
Rod stared at him.
''Twas a joke, silent man!' Tindror snarled, while hopping on one foot as he struggled, one-handed, to tug on what must be Galathan underwear. Then the baron saw that Rod's stare was fixed on his sword, which was dripping bright blue ichor. Tindror waved it. 'Hoy, silent man, haven't you ever seen lorn blood before?'
'N-no,' Rod admitted. 'We don't put it in
Baron Tindror blinked at his guest, and then roared with sudden laughter.
'Ho, but that's the spirit! That's the flaming backbone, by Galath!'
He whirled suddenly to wag a finger in the half-dressed wizard's face, and said, 'Don't let me catch you trying to hurl spells at our backsides, or use them to slink away, either! That motherless rump-licker Murlstag is out there with all his knights, nigh a score of Helms against every one of ours, ringing Wrathgard all around, and lorn by the score are roosting on all our roofs and turrets and battlements! You know as well as I do which Doom is behind this, and if you don't know by now what Dooms do to lesser wizards when they catch them, trust me thus far: you don't want to find out!'
The wizard whimpered, gabbling his words twice before he could say them clearly. 'Isn't this the safest place to stay, right here? With the long staircase Baron Murlstag's swords will have to fight their way up.'
'It would be,' Tindror snarled, 'if the lorn hadn't burst in on us up there! When my father's grandsire built Wrathgard, there were no lorn in Galath, none of us had ever seen such a beast. So my bedchamber has eight windows, each as tall as two men-or
He lowered his voice into a fierce muttering, and added, 'The only reason they're not down here clawing and biting at us right now is that Tay and I pulled my best suit of armor down into the top of the stair after us, and chanted nonsense over it; the lorn think it's enspelled and waiting to do them harm if they so much as touch it. No, we have to get down and go deep, to the cellars where our well is, and the granary and armory around it, where old spells are laced through the stones and no wizard of today, Doom or otherwise, can make those stones walk to thunder into battle against us, or melt to fall on our heads! Come, while we still can!'
By then, Tindror was speaking to three hastily dressed people. He and Taeauna traded looks, she lifted aside the bar across the door, Rod handed her the key to its lock, and they started down the steep, narrow staircase and into the growing din of battle.
Murlstag's men had won past the gates and were already inside the castle.
'Oh, shit,' Taeauna whispered, and turned to Rod. 'Lord, this is not the ending I hoped for. I am sorry.'
Tindror and the wizard both looked at Rod, startled at that 'lord.'
He kept his eyes on Taeauna, and told her fiercely, 'We're not dead yet. You… you have nothing to apologize to me for. I… I'm starting to like this. Even with all the blood and doom.'
Her sudden smile made her eyes flame. 'Oh, I can give you more of that.'
'I don't doubt it,' the wizard said suddenly from ahead of them, slowing as they reached the bottom of the staircase and the
'Stand aside,' Lord Tindror told him brusquely, 'and save your spells until I ask for their hurling. 'Tis time to fight! Good old butchery, carving up foes like carcasses for the kitchens!'
He thrust himself past the shuddering wizard and sprang down the last few steps, bellowing, 'For Wrathgard! For Tarmoral!'
The stair opened into blood-drenched tumult. Bodies lay sprawled in spreading pools of blood everywhere, and rats were boldly scurrying from one corpse to another, unheeded in the desperate fray. There was no sign of the baron's maids or any other women of the castle, except among the dead, and the few men of Tarmoral were busily swarming and hacking down two foes in full plate armor, holding their arms and feebly kicking legs as daggers worked at armor joints and snarling men wrestled against locked-down visors to open breach enough to slip a knife blade in.
The baron rushed over to the nearest enemy knight, dug his fingers under the edge of the man's helm, and tore at it, twisting viciously. The neck inside it cracked just before he got it far enough up that his men, stabbing past him, could bury half a dozen daggers into the exposed Murlan throat.
Blood fountained, and streamed down Lord Tindror as he turned and stalked over to the second Murlan knight, snapping, 'Belgard! Guard yon door! Gethkur, I want every stick of furniture you can swiftly lay hand to packed-and packed tight, in a real tangle-into the forehall, and its doors barred and braced, both ends!'
His men leaped to obey. Their fellows kept stabbing at the second knight who was dying by the time the baron reached him.
'The least of Murlstag's hounds,' Tindror said sourly, 'have better armor than any man of Tarmoral has ever owned. And for years the bulk of our crops have been demanded by the Throne of Galath, while all they ask of Morngard is a dozen new-forged swords and shields every harvest-tide. 'Twill be a pleasure swording warriors who invade us at the behest of the king.'
'I've been busy at that pleasure since before dawn,' a graybearded Tarmoran panted, rising from the task of tugging armor off a dead Murlan knight. 'Murlstag is out there; I saw him myself, sitting his saddle under his banner. No one else this side of a field hawk has those yellow eyes. We think he brought a few hundred more than a thousand with him, under arms; we've taken him down under the thousand, all right, but… then there're the lorn.'
Tindror nodded. 'There are,' he replied curtly. 'How much of Wrathgard do we still hold? Are all the lower floors-?'
'No. These and the rest up here came up a ladder to that big window in the Shields Hall; the lorn broke it and held the upper end of the ladder firm, against our shovings and hewings from within. They still have Shields Hall, but we've forced them back to its doors. Down below, the main doors are still shut against them for now, but a few of the Murlans who came up the ladder are skulking about, swording anyone they can reach. We're hunting them.'
'Well done, Lemral. The lorn: have any of them dared to enter Wrathgard?'
'Not that I know of, lord, though they could be swarming through the upper rooms of all six towers and I'd not know it. I have seen them out windows, just as I ran past; they're perched on our roofs and ramparts like trees in the forest!'
'The North Stairs?'
'Still ours. The Purple Stairs, too. We're going below, lord?'
Tindror nodded.
'Good. Tori and Baereth have been guarding the well since first warning was cried by the wall- watchers.'
The baron smiled. 'Good and better. Have-'
Faintly, from outside the walls, came a sudden swell of sound. Angry shouting, cries of alarm, a thundering of many hooves, and then a long, rolling succession of dull, meaty, heavy crashes, laced with the screams of horses and men.
Then a war-horn sang out, high and clear, in a distinctive three-note call. It was echoed by two more, and they were all answered by a rising din of shouts and steely clanging, the ringing of hundreds of swordblades striking each other.
'Deldragon?' Tindror snapped, wild hope in his face. He and Lemral sprinted off down a passage.
Taeauna followed every bit as quickly, taking firm hold of Rod's elbow as she passed, to tow him along, and snapping at the wizard, 'Come, wizard! Come, or I'll hunt you!'
