He killed the dwenda.
It came from nowhere, it was like a gift of dark powers. The black-clad form went almost back to the boards of the boathouse wall, then abruptly leapt out at him. Off the ground, not quite the floating grace Seethlaw had used to take him down in Terip Hale’s cellar, not quite as high or as fast, or maybe it was just the krin again that made it easier to beat. Ringil flinched aside, hewed in with the Ravensfriend, and the dwenda gave up a muffled scream inside the helmet. The blade had sliced deep into a thigh, right through the black skinmail-looking garb. He felt it hit the bone and twisted instinctively, pulled back to free it. The dwenda fell out of the air and hit the ground hard, tried to stand on its damaged leg and fell again. Ringil stalked in and hacked down, into the right shoulder. Another muffled shriek, the Kiriath blade had gone deep again. The dwenda floundered, thrashed about, long-sword dropped somewhere. Ringil kicked it flat, stood on its chest, and stabbed the Ravensfriend through his opponent’s throat. The dwenda shuddered like a pinned insect and made desperate choking sounds. Ringil kept his boot where it was, worked his blade back and forth to make sure, then yanked it back out. Blood spurted from under the lip of the strange smooth helmet and the dwenda shuddered once more and stopped moving.
Ringil threw back his head and howled.
Faintly, down at the other end of the street, he heard it answered, he did not know by whom or what.
EGAR MET HIS FIRST ATTACKER IN TORCHLIGHT ON THE STEPS OF THE blockhouse. The blue fire threw him for a pair of seconds, but he’d listened to Ringil’s lecture just like everybody else. He stood firm, looked for the form at the center of the storm, and whipped the staff lance in at knee height. He hit something, but not with the solid chunking impact he was used to. It was more like swirling the lance through deep water. The dwenda moved at the heart of its radiance and seemed to chuckle.
A long, slim blade came leaping.
He blocked it, swung on the move, and shoved back hard with the lance. The dwenda retreated, seemed to wait for something.
Only the blue light from above warned him.
He caught it reflected in a puddle made in the angle of an unevenly laid flagstone at his feet, glimmering cold and separate from the glow of the blockhouse wall torches. He understood at some instantaneous, visceral level, and was swinging about as the second dwenda leapt from the roof of the blockhouse at him. He got the lance shaft up at chest height just in time, caught his attacker on it, and shunted him sideways onto the ground. The impact shocked him back a couple of steps, but he stayed on his feet, just. He saw the way the dwenda recovered, rolled upright again still indistinct in the blue glow of the storm, knew the other one was about to rush him from the left. Saw it happen out of the corner of his eye. No time for conscious thought—reflexively, he dropped his stance and slashed the lance back up to a braced horizontal.
The right-hand end sent the second dwenda stumbling, maybe wounded, maybe not; the left was a brutal skewer pointed back past Egar’s shoulder.
The first dwenda ran right onto it.
He felt the impact and knew without looking back. He grunted and twisted the shaft of the lance—the dwenda shrieked. Now he looked, saw the damage, grinned and jerked the lance blade free. The injured dwenda sagged backward, sword gone to the floor, both hands clutched over the wound the lance had made. Egar vented a berserker howl and swung back to where the second dwenda was squaring up to him with its sword in both hands. The last traces of the blue storm flickered around its limbs, inking out.
“Now you,” Egar said grimly, and hurled himself forward.
Inside the blockhouse, screams.
ARCHETH FOUGHT IN A BLUR OF KNIFE BLADES AND KRIN.
Wraithslayer was gone from her hand, buried up to the hilt in a dwenda’s back, and no time to withdraw it before she must move, dance on and duck and swing back in. Laughing Girl lay gleaming dully in a corner, thrown in error, wasted. She wielded Bandgleam and Falling Angel, right hand and left, and she still had Quarterless in the sheath at her back. There was blood on her face from a long-sword slash, a shrill Kiriath battle shriek in her throat, and bodies all around.
“Indamaninarmal!” The High Kir syllables poured from her mouth in venomous rolling torrent. “My father’s house! Indamaninarmal!”
The dwenda had welled up inside the blockhouse like burning blue ghosts, exactly the way Ringil had warned they might. She was in the tower room when it happened, heard panicked yelling downstairs and went down the steps at a run. On the first turn, she met a dwenda coming up, all blue fire and vague, darker motion at the core. She cannoned into the thing, passed through it, distinctly felt the tugging it made, but came out the other side unharmed. No time, no fucking time. She tumbled down the remaining stairs barely on her feet and erupted into the main room of the blockhouse. Chaos flapped across her vision; two of the Throne Eternal already down, dead or dying on the flagstones, a third with his back to the wall, defending himself just barely with a long-hafted ax. No helmet, he must have taken it off earlier in the night—his face was bloodied and grim with knowledge of his chances. There were three dwenda in the room, driving him along the wall, spreading to bracket him. In another second, the angle would be too wide and he’d be dead. Archeth yelled and sprang. Two of the figures whipped around to face the new sound, black-garbed bodies and blank oval heads swathed in flickering blue light, long-swords raised toward her as if in admonishment. But she thought—yeah, that’s right, the Black Folk are here after all, motherfuckers—they were taken aback.
She had Laughing Girl in her right hand.
She loosed the knife at the closest of the figures well ahead of conscious decision. The dwenda ducked and the knife spun off the gleaming curve of the helmet. She cursed, drew Wraithslayer on her way across the room, matched it with Falling Angel. A long-sword licked out, she was no longer there. Almost no longer there—she felt the heated wire of the stroke paint a line over one temple as she ducked. She let the shock drive her, whipped about behind the dwenda and drove Wraithslayer in hard at kidney height. The Kiriath steel went through whatever the dwenda was wearing; the creature shrilled and bucked, staggered away from her. She had to let go of the knife, leave it where it was. She filled her hand with Bandgleam.
The second dwenda rushed her, swinging his sword. She flinched aside, caught the weapon at its tip with Falling Angel’s blade, and looped it away from her. Bandgleam flashed and probed, but the dwenda was quicker and swayed back out of the way. In the corner, the last remaining Throne Eternal was nearly done, wounded in one leg and fighting to stay on his feet. Blood poured down his thigh from the join in his armor. His attacker pressed in, gave him no space or respite. She dare not risk another throw; it wasn’t clear the Kiriath blades would penetrate the dwenda’s garb without a hand on the hilt to drive them in.
“Hold on,” she screamed, and leapt back just in time to avoid another long-sword thrust from her opponent.
The move took her toward the door to the tower, and she knew it was an error as soon as she jumped. She knew—the krinzanz knew—the dwenda she’d met on the stairs was there, back down having found no one to slaughter up there, blade drawn and—
She dropped to the floor, heard the sword hiss past where she’d been, rolled desperately to get some space. A fallen chair blocked her, the dwenda from the tower came after her. Blank, smooth helmet inclined, long-sword held two-handed before him, poised and looking for the moment. It was like being stalked by something mechanical, as if there was nothing under the helm but air and a raw spirit of malice.