A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [94]
Where Sarasper was fighting, the rushing ranks of Bloodblade's armaragors looked more like a battlefield of the fallen-yet still the warriors flooded in through the throne chamber doors, more and more of them, bright-armored and eager.
"Bloodblade! Bloodblade! Victory!" the shouts rang out. Hawkril's warsword flashed as he drew it and shot glances in all directions, deciding whom to charge at first. His mouth tightened as he saw figures in splendid, fluted armor stumbling along in the midst of ragged rings of baronial warriors. The three barons themselves were here-no doubt strolling hence on an idle day, to see if perchance any fallen crown might be lying around for them to pluck up.
Well, there were worse ways to enliven a dull afternoon… but most of them involved floods, forest fires, earthquakes, mountains erupting in fires from below, or several reckless archwizards hungry for battle.
Sarasper growled and sprang away from a forest of reaching blades to the wall once more, out of reach-for just an instant. His blood-slick legs could not hold, he slipped, and a roar of hope arose in the warriors below him.
A roar that lasted until the wolf-spider kicked out against that wall as he slid, to twist in the air and pounce, slamming two tall armaragors broken to the marble beneath with screams and a horrible bouncing splintering of shattered bones. Sarasper came up biting and tearing, slashing faces and throats with his teeth and slapping out with his legs with such swift savagery that men were thrown into their fellows, falling outward from the raging wolf-spider by the dozens.
Still Bloodblade's warriors came swarming into the room, slaying men of the three barons with eager, vigorous speed, and Craer had to scramble to avoid being cornered and hewn down. "They're coming up every passage, converging on us," he puffed, coming to a halt beside Embra. "This bids fair to be entertaining."
"As the gravediggers say," Glarsimber agreed in a dry voice, as he and Hawk joined them.
Then swords were ringing all around them as Bloodblade's foremost knights came seeking the blood of overdukes, and there was no time for converse in the brief, frantic skirling of steel.
Sarasper sprang up to the wall again as warriors with spears came striding over the dead, to slay this deadly longfangs-and his limbs caught and clung this time.
There he hung, just out of reach of their seeking pole steel, with two legs raised to bat aside any hurled spears, and panted visibly. Longfangs or not, Sarasper Codelmer was old-and, as the bards said solemnly, growing older by the day.
The last man of Bloodblade gurgled to the floor, and the Baron Brightpennant tugged back his bloody blade, peered at the longfangs clinging to the wall above the door, and asked, "That is Sarasper, isn't it?" Upon Craer's nod, he added, "What's he doing there, just hanging from the wall and watching?"
"Oh," Craer replied airily, "it's his way. Healers like to watch damage done, you know; the thought of all that business to come excites them."
Embra sighed and shook her head. "Craer," she murmured, "don't ever change. I'd miss all the inane comments."
Whatever biting riposte the procurer might have intended was lost in the sudden crash of Quelver's door, as it was flung open to boom against the wall and rebound, shuddering. The screaming figure racing through it was safely past it by then, and well across the throne chamber towards them, as Craer raised an approving eyebrow at her speed.
Tshamarra Talasorn was sprinting in wild-eyed terror, sobbing between shrieks as she slapped busily at things that kept