'We're better fighters than the Galathans,' Lhauntur said dryly. 'We enslaved
Taeauna strode right up to the Dark Helm at the doorway. When his sword came up, she backhanded it aside and thrust her own blade unceremoniously into his throat.
He sagged to the floor, spewing blood, and she stepped inside the room with Rod on her heels.
'The well,' she said with some satisfaction, indicating a circle of stone blocks overhung by a stout timber frame sporting two cranks and sets of descending ropes. Six Dark Helms looked up from what looked like a game of dice, rose hastily, drew their swords, and came over to her.
Taeauna stepped around the first one, touched the blade the second one was raising uncertainly to menace her, spun swiftly to slap aside the first warrior's sword that was on its way to plunge into her back, and then fed that warrior her own sword, right through his throat.
She ran around him in a swift circle as she did so, swinging his choking, staggering body between herself and the rest of the Dark Helms. Their charge parted to come around the flailing man and at her from both sides. Taeauna calmly tripped one warrior as she shouted, 'Lord!' and then lunged in the other direction, parrying a blade and then melting it to nothingness with a slap of the gauntlet.
Rod swallowed as he ran forward. He was supposed to slit the sprawling warrior's throat, he knew, but winced at the very thought. The Dark Helm still had hold of his sword, and swung it viciously at Rod's ankles, so he hopped over it and brought the laedlen together down on the man's head, hard.
The man shuddered and fell still. By then Taeauna had slain two more, the. one she'd disarmed was sprinting around them all in a wide half-circle, seeking to escape the room, and the last Dark Helm was shouting in fear as Taeauna advanced on him. 'Lord!' she called. 'Don't let that one get away!'
Rod obediently trotted over to where he'd be in the running warrior's way; the Dark Helm greeted him with a sneer and a wild roundhouse slash that would have severed Rod's head from his body if it had connected. Rod ducked, stumbled, let go of the sacks right against the running man's ankles, and tried to step aside to ready his own sword.
The Dark Helm tripped over the sacks, staggered, and ran into the wall. Bouncing off it, he reeled right into Rod's desperate, teeth-clenched slash that sliced deeply into his neck and left him wobbling unsteadily to the floor, groaning.
Rod tried to be sick again, but there was nothing left in his stomach. He was still heaving when Taeauna strode past to slit the throats of the Dark Helms Rod had fought, giving him a disgusted look as she did so.
'You're going to have to learn to kill without becoming ill,' she told him. 'Now help me drag this dead meat over to the door. We'll heap them up there to win us time to be ready for the next Dark Helms to show up, and believe me, there will be more.'
Rod believed her, even before sudden sounds nigh the doors heralded the arrival of forty-no, something nearer sixty Dark Helms that were crowding into the room before he and Taeauna could shift a single body.
'Get around behind the well,' Taeauna ordered, shifting her sword to her free hand so she could flex the fingers of the gauntlet.
'We're going to die here, aren't we?' Rod asked, as he hastened to obey.
''Tis quite likely,' the Aumrarr replied. 'Unless you can picture your bedchamber again, very vividly.'
'I…' Rod couldn't see anything but the cruel grins of Dark Helms who were moving into the room, walking slowly and carefully, forming a wide arc of armored men as they drew their swords and lowered their visors. So this was it. He was going to die in Falconfar.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I will try to use the gauntlet,' Taeauna murmured, 'and shield you. But you must have the will to use your dagger on your own hand- deeply, slicing the palm, not your fingers-and thrust it around to my mouth, so I can drink lots of your blood. If I am sore-wounded, and collapse, hold tightly to me and try to vividly remember your bedroom.'
Rod shook his head. 'We're going to die here,' he muttered, watching more than seventy Dark Helms closing in. The menacing black-armored warriors were crowded together, filling that entire end of the well- chamber. Step by careful step, they were moving forward, forming a curving wall like giant living pincers closing in around the Aumrarr and her mysterious companion.
Taeauna looked straight into Rod's eyes and said softly, 'Very likely, lord. Know that it has been an honor.'
She stepped forward and tenderly, then passionately kissed him, her tongue darting in to thrillingly caress his.
Sudden passion flared in Rod, a tingling excitement he hadn't felt since his first kiss. Taeauna's mouth was sweet, and hot, and
She pulled back just enough to whisper, 'Your feelings are strong enough, I think, that if you could think of your bedroom, hold its image in your mind, and wound me without letting that image waver…'
Then the air tingled, suddenly as cold as ice. Taeauna stiffened and Rod winced, feeling a searing chill despite her body standing as a shield to his; what must
They staggered apart as Taeauna whirled to see the cause of the cold and stiffened again.
A short, slender, darkly handsome young man in flowing robes was standing not an arm's length away. He was facing away from them, aiming a wand at the Dark Helms who were suddenly sprinting forward, swords raised and faces tight with fear, starting to shout.
The wizard snapped a word that struck all ears like a blow, and echoed weirdly around the room, and from the wand erupted a wide fan of racing flames.
Dark Helms screamed, writhed, and died, flames blazing briefly and hungrily along their limbs as the wizard calmly turned to make sure he fried all of them. Leather under-armor blazed up as the metal armor atop it twisted, buckled, and melted, the men beneath both shrieking and sizzling loudly as they died. A horrific stink of burnt leather and cooked men-akin to roast boar, but rank with sweat and urine-arose before all the Dark Helms, their reaching swords falling just short of their slayer, were slumped dead on the floor.
The man in robes turned to Taeauna and Rod as smoothly as a tavern dancer, smiled a coldly commanding smile, and said, 'I am Malraun, and with my wizardry, we can-'
That was as far as he got before the gauntlet on Taeauna's sword hand came alive, rising and reaching out, and dragging her unwilling arm with it, as she trembled in a vain struggle against it.
As its metal fingers spread, an unseen force snatched the wand from Malraun's hand and plucked it whirling through the air into the grasp of the gauntlet, which closed around it.
Fighting to wrench her hand free of the gage or maintain some control over her fingers, Taeauna sobbed aloud in her exertions, arching her back and heavily muscled shoulders to twist and pull.
The wand blossomed into a flaring glow, and from that glow streaked a bright and sudden bolt of racing flame, no longer a wide cone now, but a lance aimed to pierce Malraun the Matchless.
The flames flashed, struck, and were gone, leaving Malraun wet with sweat and staggering in their wake, smokes swirling from him in a dozen places and his hair an ashen ruin. He gasped for air through a slack mouth, bent over in pain… and then was gone, in an eye-blink, as if he'd never been there at all.
'Teleported,' Rod said tersely in the instant before the gauntlet turned, still towing the unwilling Taeauna, and touched him with the end of the wand.
Rod set his teeth against pain that didn't come, wincing away from… no attack at all. No flames, nothing.
Nothing but a strong and vivid image flooding into his mind, as bright and detailed as his clearest memories.
Yet he knew it was a place he'd never seen before.
A castle that looked old and sinister, a tall black needle soaring up into a milky, cloud-filled sky in front of hundreds of trees. It was a castle of unique and striking appearance; a slender, soaring hall of obsidian hue that sprouted a spire offset to one corner.
