his throat, still wrestling with other Dark Helms, and from across the room, more Dark Helms were rushing to the wizard's aid.
The Rosera woman screamed a curse of her own as she was forced to turn and deal with them, the wizard whirled triumphantly away from her to slice her cord away from his wrist, the fat man bellowed in triumph as another pair of Dark Helms went down before him, and…
Rod was suddenly falling, his boots slipping helplessly in something wet and sticky. Much nearer Helms were looming up over him, swords reaching down-
And Taeauna crashed into those warriors from one side, hurling herself against them to make them lurch and jostle, their swords waving everywhere except at Rod.
Deldragon fired his sword again, sending fire howling just over Taeauna's wingless back. Rod saw the stump of one of her severed wings blacken and start to sizzle, as the sword-fire streamed around it, and the wizard screamed as that fire found his newly freed hand and blasted it, fingers smashed limp and blackened.
Then the Dark Helms closed in over Rod again, and were toppling over on him with wet sobs, Taeauna's blade darting back out of their throats dark and wet and glistening, blood spraying all over Rod as they came down, huge and dark and-
Rod groaned and twisted as the armored hulks slammed into him and bounced him hard up off the stone floor and down again. All his wind had been driven out of him, he couldn't-
Couldn't-
Something boomed, the floor shuddered under Rod, and he was bouncing again, wincing and gasping for breath enough to moan, fighting to…
The dead men atop him were suddenly gone, plucked and torn away. All over the room Rod could hear a strange thudding: body after body being driven against stone, or against other bodies already against that stone…
Panting, shoulders settling against the trembling, calming floor, he could see the room around him again now.
The golden-haired wizard stood alone, staring down at his mangled hand. There was no one left around him at all except the ragged flesh-and-bones thing hanging from the gate. He must have managed some magic that hurled people away from him, probably to keep the big man or the Rosera woman from knifing him.
Behind him, the gate was noticeably darker, the hum of its flames lower and quieter. As Rod stared at it, it flickered.
That momentary darkening seemed to enrage the wizard. 'Warriors of Arlaghaun, obey me!' he bellowed. 'Seize him, and him, and
His pointing hand had indicated the fat man, the velduke, Taeauna, and Rod. Great.
So, was this Arlaghaun? One of the Dooms? He looked rather young to have terrorized Falconfar, but then, if something Rod wrote could change everything, overnight…
But wait. How could this wizard be so powerful in Falconfar, yet a complete stranger? He'd glanced at all the Holdoncorp stuff, he was sure he had. Oh. Right. He wasn't the only Shaper, and perhaps their designers changed Falconfar whenever they typed stuff into their computers, not just when it got published.
And perhaps they weren't the only other Shapers. Shit.
'Wound them not!' the wizard called.
Right. Thanks for the reminder. He had no time just now for thinking about how things worked in Falconfar; he had to worry about staying alive. Again.
Rod had his breath back now. The floor cold and hard under him, he turned his head to look the other way, away from the humming purple fire of the gate.
Dark Helms were coming for him, of course, trotting across the room from where the wizard's spell had driven them. Swords sheathed, but hands outstretched to grab.
As Rod watched, one of them stiffened, staggered, and then fell. Taeauna was trotting behind him, bloody blade in hand, with her own hulking escort of dark-armored warriors closing in behind her. Which meant that the other flurry of Dark Helms, yonder, must be centered around the velduke.
'I threw a party,' he murmured, rolling over to get up and run, 'and men with swords came.'
There were sudden grunts and sounds of struggling from the direction of the wizard; Rod looked that way as he gained his feet again, and saw the big man, bloody dagger in hand, straining in the grip of more than a dozen Dark Helms, fighting to stay where he was as they tugged and shoved, trying to drag him closer to the gate.
Fourteen-no, sixteen-to one…
The big man might be a mountain to each of them, but together they were hauling him inexorably toward the gate.
Rod ran for the darkness, away from the gate but also away from the Dark Helms, as they started running, too. Taeauna was surrounded by a swarm of them, now, just like Deldragon and the fat man. The Rosera woman, where was she?
Dark Helms were coming at him from this direction too, now; with every stride he was running to meet them. Rod breathed a bitter curse and turned in the only direction that wasn't full of Dark Helms.
Toward the gate. They were herding him; they're herding us all.
'Bastards,' he hissed aloud. 'Goddamned bloody bastards.'
He saw the Rosera woman leaping out of the darkness again, racing past the wizard to pounce from behind on the Dark Helms struggling with the fat man. The wizard staggered hastily back with a shout: she'd thrown something, probably a small knife, into the mage's face on her way past.
Well, why shouldn't he throw something at the wizard, too?
Because I have nothing to throw, and I'm afraid of what he'll do to me, after…
The Rosera woman had a dagger in her hand, and was plunging it up under helm after helm from behind, darting and racing along the line of struggling warriors, letting them sag and fall in her wake. The fat man was still roaring and grunting in their midst, shouting something that sounded like, 'Isk! Keep back! Back, hraul you!'
More Dark Helms were rushing at the fat man, now, slamming into the knot already around him and driving it a few staggering steps closer to the gate. Others rushed around it, trying to get at the woman who half-climbed a Dark Helm from behind to lean desperately in and get a hand on the fat man or something he was wearing.
What looked like a grotesquely long pink tongue-the tongue of a giant, as wide as the woman's head-shot out from where her reaching hand was, over her shoulder, stretching like bubble gum Rod had once seen a kid pull and snap, thinner and longer and thinner and longer…
The golden-haired wizard ducked aside, batting at it with his mangled hand, but it swooped around him in the air, and slapped across his face like a wet pink mask. And tightened, and pulled.
The wizard came staggering blindly toward the battling fat man and his Dark Helms.
'Smother him,' Rod distinctly heard the Rosera woman gasp, before Dark Helms grabbed her and dragged her down. He saw daggers reach up for the long pink tongue, to slash and pierce.
And the pink tongue came away from the fat man with a wet, sticky sucking sound and snapped through the air to join itself, whipping around the wizard's head with a loud crack that might have been the man's neck breaking, so suddenly did he spin around and fall limply to the floor-right in the mouth of the gate.
Which flickered again.
And again, darker this time.
It was answered with a bright flash, a line of flame racing through the air from behind Rod to claw at the knot of Dark Helms. Some of them turned, breaking free, to see where this sudden torment was coming from.
The velduke was using his sword-fire again.
Well, why not? Save it for when, exactly? Death could come right now, and-
More Dark Helms turned, and Rod caught a glimpse of the fat man again, still struggling against dozens of gripping hands.
It seemed Deldragon had seen the man, too. The next bolt of flame was lower, racing at warriors' ankles.
