Silver Shadows - Elaine Cunningham [148]
Instant death, or eternal servitude.
Arilyn stooped and seized the blade.
Twenty-three
A flash of vivid azure magic burst from the moonblade, enveloping Arilyn in a flair of arcane energy. And then it was gone, as quickly as it had come.
The moonblade had reclaimed her. Without pause for reflection or regret, the half-elf flung herself toward the nearest battle. A dozen or so mercenaries had surrounded a pair of elven females, who stood back to back and held off the taunting blades of the humans as best they could. The humans were toying with their captives. The females' clothing hung about them in ribbons, and their coppery skin was marked by many shallow cuts. More painful to the proud elves than these wounds was the indignity of their situation. Arilyn saw this in her elf-sisters' eyes, and she burned with wrath at the lewd, taunting comments that the captive elves, mercifully, could not fully understand.
Arilyn stalked in, her moonblade held high over her right shoulder. Without breaking step, she slashed into the neck of the man to her left, cutting him nearly to the bone. She pivoted with the backswing and knocked the sword from the hand of the man on her right-hand side, then ran him through before the surprise of the attack could wipe the lascivious sneer from his bearded face. She heaved him off her blade and into the reflexive grasp of the man behind him-a short, slight youth who staggered under the weight of his dying comrade.
For a moment the young mercenary could not use his sword. One of the elf women seized the opportunity. She darted forward and drew her bone dagger across his windpipe.
•Down!" Arilyn shouted in Elvish as she slashed forward. The elf woman dropped and rolled as the magic blade whistled in over the young man's head-and cut a deep and bloody path through the eyes of the mercenary who approached from behind.
Eight men still stood, eight against three elven females. No longer were the mercenaries quite so cocky. There was an element of vindictive fury to their fighting that brought to mind wicked children, outraged when the puppies they tormented nipped at their fingers.
Arilyn winced as one of the elf women was disarmed, almost literally, by the brutal stoke of a broadsword wielded by a man nearly thrice her weight. Two of the men leaped at the wounded female and wrestled her down. One of them pinned her arms, and the other opened her belly. Grinning fiendishly, they left her there to die slowly.
Arilyn's first thought was to end the elf woman's agony as quickly as possible. Yet she could not. Pressed as she was by the remaining swordsmen, she could not get through with the merciful gift of death. And the elf woman who still fought at Arilyn's side was not much better off than her kin. She bled freely from many wounds, and her face was nearly gray under its coppery tints. Arilyn noted with sudden sharp horror the softly rounded swell of the elf's belly. The female carried her unborn child into battle; there were two more lives soon to be lost.
The half-elf nudged the swaying female sharply. "To the trees, while you still can!"
"I will not leave you alone," the elf insisted.
Arilyn hesitated for only a moment. The warning that Danilo's shadow-double had sent her rang loudly in her mind: she could not call forth the elfshadows again without grave danger to herself. Yet in truth, what risk was this, to one whose life was already forfeit to the service of the moonblade?
"Come forth, all of you!" Arilyn shouted.
She parried an attack even as the mists that presaged the elfshadow entities poured from the sword. Then the startled humans fell back as they regarded the eerie manifestation taking shape before them.
Eight elfshadow warriors, apparently as solid as life and armed with elven blades, stalked toward the dumbfounded humans. One of them, a tiny, blue-haired female, slipped an arm around the pregnant elf and helped her toward the safety of the trees. Arilyn saw this and took comfort in the knowledge that Zoastria