The knights thundered straight through the ogres, who scattered like pins in every direction. The knights wheeled and galloped back again, this time shifting to the right to ride down the smaller group of ogres. As they stormed into the brutes, Onyx stood with a handful of dust, spit into it, and rolled her hands together to form a clay spike. She hurled the spike into the air above the knights. Pulling a startled Led along behind her, she darted out of range, behind the boulder on which they'd eaten lunch.
The sky seemed to split open. Enormous icicles, sharp and glistening in the sun, materialized in midair and rained down, slashing at knights and ogres alike. Most of the Solam shy;nics found shelter beneath their shields, but the ice pounded the horses mercilessly. Stunned and bleeding, the animals stumbled and finally fell. They lay on the ground, kicking feebly.
The ogres suffered as much as the horses, wailing and howling in panic. The ice storm sliced them into bloody rib shy;bons before they could crawl away.
Crouching beneath their battered, dented shields, the knights inched their way downhill. Once out of the mael shy;strom, the warriors scrambled back to their feet. They shook their heads to clear the awful ringing in their ears and cut the straps from their now useless shields.
But Led was not about to let them regroup. With the few remaining ogres at his back, he led the charge. Without their horses or shields, beaten and dazed by the hail, the knights fell before the assault. Led took great pride in slicing Stip-pling's pompous head from his shoulders.
When the fight was over, the smashed and broken bodies of the knights and their horses were mingled together on the narrow road with the hulking carcasses of slain ogres. An unfortunate survivor of the hailstorm whimpered pitifully
through its tusks, watching in horror as a tremendous pool of blood pumped unstoppably from its mutilated thigh. Led stepped up behind the doomed creature and cut its throat to end its suffering. The remaining ogres didn't object, merely clutched more tightly at their own bleeding sword cuts or licked their wounds like animals.
Watching from the fringe, Onyx caught a glimpse of move shy;ment out of the corner of her right eye. She swung her head about. A distance down the road, a knight was struggling to his knees. His armor was scorched black, helmet gone, hair singed nearly off. It was the young knight she'd set on fire. Assuming he would burn to death, she'd forgotten about him in the heat of battle. Blood ran freely down the dented plate mail at one shoulder. His awkwardly twisted leg also bore the signs of a clubbing. The young knight staggered with a clumsy gait down the hill, toward the thick woods on the east side of the pass.
"Hey!" she shouted. "One of them is getting away!" Onyx looked frantically back toward the scene of the fight. The ogres were stripping the corpses, dividing up the dead men's possessions. Led stared into the shattered wagon, shaking his head sadly. Onyx called again, but no one seemed to hear her.
Swearing under her breath, Onyx touched the knife in the top of her boot and set off at a dead run after the wounded knight. Rounding a boulder, she entered the forest and stalked through the brush, looking for signs of the man's passing. She stopped suddenly and held her breath, listen shy;ing. In the distance she heard the clanking of his heavy plate armor.
Onyx spied a bloody trail in the leaves and snow and fol shy;lowed it toward the sound of the jangling armor. She could hear the knighf s ragged, labored breathing as he struggled to run. Eyes ahead, she nearly tripped over the shield he had dumped along the way. At last she caught sight of him, half running, half crawling, dragging a leg.
He looked frantically over his shoulder, his brown eyes wide with alarm. Seeing how quickly the woman was closing
the gap, the knight pulled himself up to run faster. In his haste, he lost control of his wounded leg. The foot twisted to the side and caught on a sapling. He fell to his face on the ground. Cursing, the knight rolled over and tried to struggle to his feet again. Onyx launched herself in a flying leap and knocked him back to the cold ground.
Straddling his stomach, Onyx looked into his face. The knight's eyes were the deepest brown she'd ever seen. His soot-streaked cheeks were ruddy with burns. His Solamnic mustache had been singed to stubble above smooth lips. To her annoyance he showed no fear, and was, in fact, similarly evaluating her.
"How'd you put out the fire?"
"I dropped and rolled. You forgot about me."
Scowling, Onyx reached back, raised the knife from the cuff of her boot, and swung it down in an arc toward his face. The knight wrenched his head to the side and batted at her arm. The blade bounced off the young man's mailed sleeve and recoiled out of Onyx's hand. The knife landed in the underbrush several yards away.
"You're going to die, you know," she said coldly, reaching out to squeeze his throat with her bare hands.
"Eventually." He tossed her easily from his stomach and onto the ground. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg, the knight rolled onto his knees and pivoted to face her. His own knife was now in his palm. He waved it before him threateningly.
"Please run away," the knight invited in a patronizing tone. "I've no wish to compound my transgressions by killing a woman today."
"Transgressions?" she repeated, though she knew from the little Led had told her about the Solamnics that the knights valued honor above all else. "You mean bolting from a battle and leaving your dead friends to be mutilated by ogres?" she asked archly.
His eyes narrowed in anger. "My comrades were all good men and true, but my dying won't help them now."
"That doesn't sound very chivalrous," she said. "Won't you burn in the Abyss for your cowardice?"
The knight winced perceptibly at her choice of words. "I believe honor and chivalry must be tempered by wisdom and discretion. I'll be rewarded in the hereafter for the bal shy;ance of my good deeds." The young man shrugged and gave a rueful smile that made him tense in pain. "But who really knows how one will be judged when the time of reckoning comes? Today I chose to put that day off, so that I may live to avenge my friends."
"Oh, will you?" Onyx lashed out with her nails and raked his face, drawing three thin lines of bright red blood on his left cheek.
Scowling, the knight lunged toward Onyx with the knife. The cold blade bit into her shoulder, bringing an involuntary yelp of pain to her lips. She looked up at his young face in angry disbelief.
The knight shook his head almost sadly. "You can't act like a ruffian and expect to be treated like a lady. Stick to your spells, witch. You aren't very good at hand-to-hand fight shy;ing."
Humiliation made Onyx's blood boil like molten metal in her veins. Her fingers came upon a fist-sized stone. Scarcely moving a muscle, like a cat creeping up on a field mouse, she closed her hand around the cool rock. Onyx swallowed an evil smile, smelling revenge.
Suddenly, the young knight raised his forearm and his fist shot forward in a quick, effortless, bone-snapping punch to the bridge of Onyx's nose. The rock dropped from Onyx's fingers.
"Not much good at all," she heard the knight say distantly. As daylight spun into darkness, her last vision was of the young man's face. She would never forget, nor forgive, the pity in his brown eyes.
Chapter 9
The cold air brought Onyx back to consciousness. There was no sound around her but the wind whispering through trees. Her arm and face throbbed. Even her eyes ached. She lifted her cheek off the wet leaves and wrenched her swollen lids open. What was she doing in the woods? Where was every shy;one? And what was the matter with her face?