Lorlarra, flying in Dauntra's wake in a welter of disintegrating dark armor, blew him a kiss. That raised a ragged shout of laughter from the men on the battlements.
One of them called, 'Looking for someone handsome?' He struck a pose.
It wasn't hard to tell that the four Aumrarr were peering at every face as they glided along above the walls. Soon fierce and scarred Juskra made a sudden, wordless sound and pointed, and the four winged women converged.
'Friggin' Falcon!' Garfist swore, as dark wings loomed. He grabbed a sword from the man beside him as he turned to Iskarra. 'They're coming for us!'
'Of course they are,' she said bitterly. 'Who else would they be after, in all besieged Bowrock? I know not what we did to anger the Falcon, but I wish most fervently that…'
The man whose blade Garfist had borrowed tried to snatch it back. Garfist hung on to it, offering the man a hard elbow and a harder knee instead. They struggled together as Dauntra and Juskra sped past, plucked up Iskarra by clamping firm hands around each of her bony wrists, her drawn daggers waving vainly, and flapped up into the morning sky.
Lorlarra and Ambrelle slammed right into Garfist, knocking him free of the other warrior and the other warrior's blade, and caught him by the ankles as he rolled helplessly, the men of Bowrock scattering.
A moment later, Garfist was hanging head downward in the air, high over the heart of Bowrock, with two pairs of wings beating hard above him, their owners puffing and panting, and straps and dangling plates of dark armor flailing him across the face. He roared in anger and tried to squirm free, snaring the nearest armor-strap in one hairy fist and tugging, hard.
A wing slammed into the side of his head as his captors lurched, dipping alarmingly.
'Stop fighting us! You'll die if you fall!' Lorlarra gasped, from the other end of that strap.
'Yes!' Ambrelle added severely, through her own tangle of purple-black hair. 'Stop struggling; we're rescuing you from all this!'
Garfist let go of the strap, and twisted his neck around until he could glare up at her. 'Why?'
'We need hands that can act where we dare not go.'
'Go to do what?' Iskarra called, as her pair of Aumrarr brought her near.
'Slay Dooms, rescue Falconfar… that sort of thing.'
'I see,' Iskarra said weakly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Put them on.
The voice in his head was strong and firm, now;
whispering and suggesting no longer.
Rod drew on the gauntlets, halting in alarm for a moment as sudden lightning arced between them, crackling and spitting.
Rod hurried out of the chill, earthy darkness, out into a vivid purple glow that was already disgorging black- armored warriors. They trotted toward him, raising shields and hefting swords.
Rod pointed his fingers and blasted, hastily moving from one warrior to another. The gauntlets seemed able to spit one pencil-thin crimson beam per finger, if he concentrated on maintaining all the beams he willed into existence, but those beams shot out arrow-straight from his fingertips, and had to be aimed precisely. They melted through armor and flesh alike without pause, slaying almost as fast as he could aim them.
But the Dark Helms were fast, too. They came rushing at him in such desperate haste that Rod was almost forced back into the tomb, and they died so swiftly that they fell in heaps, forming a wall. He hurried along the slope, trying to keep from being literally buried in foes, foes who had plenty of swords and daggers to stab with.
The finger-beams soon started to fade, reaching shorter and shorter distances, until there came a time when one of them sputtered and failed completely. The face of the foremost onrushing Dark Helm changed from terror to triumph.
Rod hesitated for an instant, and felt sickening surges in his arms and legs, forcing him to shake the gauntlets off-sickening because they were being done to him. He was as much a slave as any shackled, flogged unfortunate, but his master was sitting in his head!
The horn-headed scepter proved to unleash cones of ravening fire that could reduce several armored warriors to blackened, tumbling bones in the space of a deeply drawn breath. It was just a little slower at slaying than the gauntlets had been, which would have doomed him if there'd been many Dark Helms left.
However, only a few came trotting through the glowing purple arch now, sporadically, and perhaps twenty were left on the hill, skulking behind the bodies of their dead fellows, trying to get close enough to Rod to rush and hack at him before he could burn them down.
Rod felt sick. The stink of cooked Dark Helms was like burned roadkill, a reek so strong that it was almost choking. Part of him wanted to burn down every last Dark Helm, in Taeauna's name, and part of him was screaming that he was a writer, not any sort of fighter, and certainly not any sort of killer.
Yet here he was, dodging and ducking among the heaped dead, peering at wherever he thought a warrior or two was hiding.
Rod spun around, scepter spewing flame even before he got properly turned. That was what saved him; the ribs beneath the arm that was swinging a sword at his head were boiling away before the blade could get to him, robbing its swing of strength and height so that it was falling free by the time it bounced off his shoulder and tumbled past. Rod crisped that warrior and the three right behind him in frenzied haste, as their sprint carried their collapsing bones almost into him.
And then there were no more Dark Helms, and the gate was pulsing bright purple, flickering and dancing.
Rod stumbled over bones and corpses, wondering how it was that flies discovered the dead so quickly, and where they all came from. He looked this way and that, but…
Someone was standing atop the tomb-hill, where there had been no one a moment earlier. Someone with burning brown eyes.
Arlaghaun.
That was all Rod had time to see before a spell burst in the air all around him, washing over him and setting the trampled grass aflame.
He felt heat on his face, heat that should have blistered and then blinded him, that should have scorched his hair off, consumed his flesh, and sent his ashen bones tumbling, but instead washed over him and was gone, leaving him tingling in three places along his belts, where enchanted items had suddenly faded away.
Sacrificed to save him, Rod thought blearily, as the mind-voice shouted at him,
He obeyed, but Arlaghaun was suddenly-not there. The hilltop was empty again.
