A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [101]
"They'll learn," Hawkril grunted, shaking a gurgling, dying armsman off his sword. "Those few who live to heed the lesson, that is."
"You're going to leave some alive?" the procurer gasped, in mock horror, springing aside from an armaragor's snarling lunge.
"Some always flee," the tall, burly armaragor said regretfully, leaning over to chop the lunging knight's swordwrist into bloody ruin.
And then they were too busy to try to do anything but keep themselves alive.
The room was aswarm with enthusiastically hacking men, crowded together until their armored shoulders clashed, and still they poured in through the doors, in a flood of bright blued steel that swept past the tumbled stones and sprawled Melted and frightened men of the three barons, to thrust and hack and stab' at the small band of overdukes and their allies gathered by the throne.
Glarsimber and even Hawkril grunted and staggered back under the sheer force of that charge, jostling Raulin up against something soft that he realized with a shock was the Lady Embra's bosom. "Ss-sorry, Lady!" he shouted desperately, struggling for balance.
"For what? 'Tis a battle!" she shouted teasingly into his ear. "Now make up for it by slipping between Lady Talasorn and me, here, and holding this helm above your head. Straight up, but not so high we can't both touch it!"
Tshamarra was already weaving a swift spell of thornarrows, but she eyed the young bard with interest rather than hostility as he carefully ducked between them. The clanging and singing of steel was almost deafening as men hacked and hacked with frenzied fury, as if they could thresh their ways through armor to reach the blood and bone beneath.
Cringing as one long blade burst in over Craer's shoulder and almost touched his nose, Raulin feared that maybe, just maybe, the threshers might prevail.
"Hah!" Tshamarra cried then, in satisfaction, as her thorns sprayed into the faces of armsmen several ranks back-men who were busily shoving at their fellow warriors in their eagerness to get at the overdukes. Some of them screamed as they were blinded, some gurgled as they choked on their own blood and died-and more than a few just threw back their heads and perished in shuddering silence, to sag limply and bleed as they were held up in the press of bodies.
"Now, Lady Talasorn," Embra called, tiny white arcs of lightning coursing between her fingertips and the helmet as she raised her hand towards it. "Touch the helm!"
Two slender-fingered hands put fingers to the curving metal in unison, one from either side. Embra knew what to expect, and had braced herself, but the surge of magical power rushing down Tshamarra's arm almost made the last Talasorn sorceress reel and fall.
Raulin caught awkwardly at her hip to keep her upright-and then shouted in fear as the tingling he'd been feeling in his hand grasping the helm became a full-fledged hammering of power through him, leaping through crackling air to his fingers from Tshamarra's flank even as he snatched his hand away.
"Don't let go!" Embra shouted. "Stand, Raulin!"
Stand he did, teeth chattering in fear and from the sheer force of the mighty flow of magic racing through him, but Raulin Castlecloaks could not hold back a gasp of awe when bolts of lightning burst out of the helm, died in a spitting of sparks about an arm's length in front of him- and then burst forth again from the outstretched hands of the two sorceresses.
Armsmen and armaragors roared in pain and reeled, too tightly packed together in their armor to fall, even when the stink of their cooked flesh grew strong, and their armored heads lolled loosely in the shouting, convulsing press of bodies.
Again and again the women lashed out with those bolts of leaping death, slaying at will and reaping many lives, until it seemed like half the throne room was full of swaying, head-lolling dead men, but there seemed to be no end to Bloodblade's warriors-and the helm over