Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [121]
Bird-headed, human-headed, clawed and pawed and handed, the screeching pack howled with terror and pain at every whack of his good steel sword. Although a few of the bolder ones darted his way, they fell back screeching the moment the blade touched them, even though it seemed to leave no wounds, merely passed right through their illusions of flesh. Slashing back and forth he drove them round the shelter. As they raced away from him, they began to disappear, a few at first, winking out like sparks flying up from a fire, then more and more, until all of a sudden he stood alone and panting for breath in the middle of the road. His red berserker rage lifted like fog, leaving him feeling more than a little foolish.
“Rhodry!” Garin was howling. “Get back here!”
Rhodry took two steps to follow the order and realized that he was no longer alone, that facing him in the roadway stood Alshandra. That night she appeared as the beautiful elven woman he’d met before, years past, standing almost as tall as he was, but slender, with honey-blond hair that cascaded round her shoulders and down to her waist. She held out delicate hands and smiled at him.
“Rhodry, Rhodry, come help me. I’m so alone now, and my poor daughter, I must save my daughter. Won’t you help me, Rhodry Maelwaedd?” All at once tears ran down her cheeks. “There’s naught I can do to save her, all alone as I am.”
Even as well as he knew her, her sobbing touched him, the silent way her shoulders trembled, the sincere pain in her golden eyes.
“Oh, Rhodry,” she whispered. “You’ll have a reward, the best I can offer. I could love a man like you, easily, easily. Come with me and let me love you forever. In my country you’ll never grow old, you know. Just put down that sword and come with me. I’ll give you a better sword, all made out of silver like the dagger you carry.”
All at once he found it hard to speak, to put rational thoughts together. When he glanced round he found that the road, the shelter, and the dwarves had disappeared into an opalescent mist.
“Take just one step forward, Rhodry,” she whispered. “Please, please, help me, and then we’ll be happy forever. Just drop that ugly sword and take but one step forward.”
With a wrench of will he swung the sword and held it straight up, a barrier between them. She shrieked and leapt back out of his reach, but though every muscle in his body ached to charge after for the kill, he made himself stand where he was, on his own side of the invisible border between their worlds. As she moved she changed, a huntress now, towering up huge, a gleaming bronze battle-ax clasped in her hands. She swung it up high, her face contorted in pure rage, as Rhodry tensed, half-crouched. Since attacking would take him forward, his one desperate chance lay in a dodge when that ax began to swing down. The mist dissolved; light gleamed all round them; a shout echoed.
Alshandra screamed and bent backward, the ax flying from her hands and dissolving in midair. Her entire body seemed to ripple and waver, her image flapping like a sheet of cloth in the wind. With her magic broken, Rhodry risked leaping forward, sweeping his steel blade through her. With a scream she disappeared.
He was standing back in the road, and round him towered the mountains he knew as part of his own world. In a gray dawn Garin stood facing him, holding a woodsman’s ax. The dwarf was grinning.
“From the look of things, those friends of yours couldn’t abide the touch of iron,” he said. “You hear of such, in the old lore. So once I could see her again, I just ran up and tried it out. Worked like a charm.” His smile disappeared. “Well, that’s an ill-omened way of speaking.”
Rhodry laughed, a bubbling howl of his berserker’s mirth that made Garin turn pale. He choked it off.
“My apologies and my thanks. The apology’s because I didn’t follow my own advice, and the thanks are for my life.”
“Think that ax would