spraying drops of blood to boil away in the roaring fire. Again he shifted the angle of his magics, and the warrior who'd dared attack him fell to earth in a burning heap of human wreckage.
But that distraction allowed Ulfgai to close. He'd crept around the edges of the battle, drawing ever nearer the man who was holding their reinforcements at bay. Tears clouded the vicious barbarian's eyes as Losalis fell, and his entire body twitched in apparent desire to hurl himself at Jassion, but no. Clearly he knew that, with the sorcerer down, he and his men could overwhelm the enemy, and then he would have his vengeance.
The southerner raised a wedge-shaped axe, prepared to dash Kaleb's brains across the earth…
And shuddered with the impact of Mellorin's falchion. Fur-lined leathers absorbed most of the blow, and Ulfgai was already turning to swat aside this nuisance when she drove the point of her dagger into his gut.
Ulfgai coughed, staining his beard with blood, and Mellorin forced herself to twist the knife in the wound. The fingers clasping that axe trembled but did not drop the weapon.
Whether he would have had the strength left to kill her, Mellorin never knew. Kaleb appeared behind the mercenary, and his hands were now empty of fire. They closed, instead, upon Ulfgai's shoulder, and shoved the weakened southerner back into the flames.
'I can open us a path,' he said tiredly to his companions. 'And with the grasses burning, it should be a few moments before the rest of them realize that they're just facing normal flames, now, not magic. We'd best be gone by then.'
Mellorin helped her uncle, who couldn't seem to stand upright, to mount his horse, and then the wounded sorcerer to do the same. She wondered, briefly, why the beasts hadn't panicked, whether this was more of Kaleb's magic or simply that the ring of fire permitted them nowhere to run.
Kaleb unleashed one last burst of flame through the grassfire, hoping to scatter-if not to slay-any mercenaries on the other side. Then, suppressing the flame as easily as he'd summoned it, he carved them a path to freedom. The pounding of hooves was lost in the roar of the fire, and the frustrated screams of the warriors beyond. THEY MADE A COLD CAMP, far from the roadside. Hours of hard and painful riding had probably averted pursuit, but they weren't about to take that for granted.
Jassion, his ribs wrapped tight, muttered and grumbled as he struggled to find a position in which he might sleep. Kaleb, arm neatly bandaged, crossed the camp to kneel before the young woman, who was sitting on a stump and gazing off into the distance.
'Mellorin?' he asked gently.
'I didn't… Kaleb, I've never…'
Carefully-giving her every opportunity to pull away, to ask him to stop-the sorcerer took her hand. 'I know,' he told her. 'You know what else you did?'
She stared blankly.
'You saved my life.' He turned her hand over, brushed a light kiss across her knuckles. 'Thank you, Mellorin.' Then, hesitantly, he leaned in and placed another soft kiss on her cheek. He smiled at her as he rose, pretending not to notice the sudden flutter of her pulse in her neck, and returned to his own blankets.
Yes, he decided with a grin that absolutely did not mean what Mellorin doubtless thought it did. That worked out just fine.
Chapter Twelve
THE CORRIDORS OF THE HALL of Meeting felt a lot more claustrophobic than they had mere minutes prior. Irrial could have sworn the walls were actually closing in, the doors transforming into prison bars. Not even the carpet muffled the tread of the soldiers who pressed in from all sides, reverberating in unison, the inexorable march of time itself.
She knew the plan-such as it was-for they'd both acknowledged the possibility of capture, but damn it all, if Corvis didn't act soon, she wasn't going to wait for him!
Two guards strode before her, broad shoulders and hauberks blocking her view of the hallway, while the other four marched behind. Irrial didn't need to look, for she could feel their looming presence, and the skin between her shoulder blades twinged nervously at the thought of those brutal crossbows.
Corvis walked beside her in a peculiar slouch, shoulders slumped and head hanging. He lurked at the corners of her vision, where detail blurred like moist watercolor, and she thought she saw his lips moving.
Almost time, then.
Her hand grew clammy, her breathing tight. 'When it starts,' he'd told her, 'all I need is for you to keep them off me.' A simple enough proposition, in theory. But what if-?
Corvis waited until they drew even with a branching passageway, the intersection providing a bit more room to maneuver than the narrow halls, and then he collapsed. With a pained, sepulchral groan, he struck the floor, limp as a boned trout. He landed facing away from Irrial and guards alike, and the noblewoman could only trust that he was maintaining his near-silent concentration.
Not being utter imbeciles, the soldiers reacted swiftly, calmly. The two in front knelt beside the fallen prisoner, one checking for pulse or fever, the other keeping tight grip on the hilt of his sword in case this should prove some feeble ruse. The remaining four clustered around Irrial, blocking any possible escape with their bodies while keeping their arbalests trained on Corvis.
The thought that the freckle-faced baroness might prove the greater threat had clearly never crossed their minds.
Irrial took her cane in both hands and yanked. For an instant, the walking stick seemed to come smoothly apart, before the illusion that Corvis had wrapped around it-subtle, static, far harder to detect than that which cloaked his own features-unraveled. In her left hand, Irrial clutched two thin strips of wood, wrapped in a leather thong to form a makeshift scabbard; in her right, a narrow, long-bladed sword, the weapon of a duelist rather than a soldier.
A sword whose blade was etched from tip to hilt with spidery runes and wavering figures. Even surrounded by enemies on all sides, it was all she could do to keep her focus off the whispers and urges that crawled through her mind, weevils hatched from the demonic spirit of the thing in her hand.
The baroness struck in both directions at once. The crude scabbard slammed one guard across the bridge of his nose, cracking wood and cartilage alike, while Sunder cleaved through a second mercenary's crossbow, rendering it so much junk. Dropping the shattered wood, she drove her knee into the groin of the man whose weapon she'd just obliterated. He doubled over in an awkward bow and Irrial thrust Sunder over his head, stabbing into the shoulder of yet a third guard. She prayed it would be enough to keep him out of the fight…
The last of the four drew his own blade and thrust brutally at her chest. Irrial leapt aside, sweeping Sunder in a desperate parry, awkward but impossibly swift. She heard the creak of leather and mail as the pair behind her rose from Corvis's side, but could not spare a moment to glance their way. She could only keep moving and hope that they'd recognize the distinct possibility of skewering their fellow guards before pulling the triggers on those crossbows.
Apparently they did, for no bolts flew. Instead she sensed a presence looming behind, twisted, then stabbed Sunder down into the thigh of the approaching man. He screamed, clutching at the gaping wound.
But the second soldier hurled himself bodily at Irrial's legs, knocking them out from under her. She fell hard, and only the thick carpeting saved her from a cracked skull. A broad-shouldered man, nose battered and bleeding, knelt painfully on Irrial's left arm, while the fellow she'd kneed stomped brutally on her other wrist. Despite herself she cried out, and felt Sunder slide from her spasming fingers.
'Cerris!' she cried out, trying desperately to peer past the shapes gathered around and atop her. No help there, she noted gravely; he lay on the carpet where he'd fallen. The guard who'd nearly gutted her now stood over him, sword held to his throat. Footsteps sounded in the hall, and another dozen guards appeared from around the corners and through various doors, drawn by the commotion.
Well, Irrial thought bitterly, that could have gone better. They were in worse trouble now than they'd been, without the slightest indication that Corvis's plan had even-
More footsteps, again from both sides. Guards and prisoners alike strained their necks first this way then that, desperate to see.
