The Druid Queen - Douglas Niles [112]
Brandon chopped hard into the forearm of a troll, sending the creature reeling backward, but another stepped in to take its place even as the wound began to mend. At the same time, a man beside the prince screamed as a pair of trolls ripped his torso in two.
Furiously the Prince of Gnarhelm slashed one troll in the side, but the creature whirled with deceptive speed, knocking Brandon flat onto his back. He lay immobilized, gasping for breath and trying unsuccessfully to move. The monster picked up a longsword, dropped by another slain northman, and thrust it down, straight toward the prince's unprotected chest.
A wiry body blocked out the sun, and Brandon blinked, knowing that he stared death in the face. The troll stabbed, and the muscular shape-a human shape-took the piercing blow intended for the Prince of Gnarhelm. Brandon's strength returned in a wave of energy, and he sprang upward, hacking the troll's chest open with his great axe. He chopped again and the monster fell.
Only then did Brandon turn to see the man who'd given his life for him. Knaff the Elder lay upon the ground, blood emerging like a fountain from the puncture wound in the chest.
"No!" gasped the prince, dropping to his knee beside his trusted helmsman and mentor. Desperately, fruitlessly, he tried to stem the flow of blood.
With gentle pressure, Knaff pulled his hand away. "Go and fight, my prince-for Gnarhelm and the Moonshaes!"
And as the warlike gleam in his eyes faded for the last time, Knaff's jaw remained set in a grimace of battle.
Shaking his head in a failed attempt to dispel his numbing grief, Brandon lurched to his feet and chopped savagely at a nearby troll. Sir Koll of Codscove fought nearby, but the prince saw with dismay that most of his loyal fighters had been driven from the field or slain. A sea of the enemy surged around him, and everywhere he saw the fallen bodies of his friends.
He heard a bullish battle cry and saw the armored figure of Koll, bashing several firbolgs back with his great sword. Brandon limped to the knight's side, driving back a troll that lunged at the Ffolkman's back.
Finally Koll and Brandon stood back to back in the center of the field, using sword and axe to hold a seething ring of trolls at bay. Bleeding from a dozen wounds, gasping and staggering from exhaustion, each gave every shred of his mind and muscle to the effort to prolong the fight for just a little longer.
For beyond this battle, both veteran warriors understood, there would be only the eternal peace of death.
* * * * *
The Moonwell looked much the same as Robyn remembered it, thought the last time she saw it seemed more than a lifetime ago. Cool white water glowed with health amid a setting of bright lily pads and brilliant, dew-glistened flowers. Nearby, through a gap in the trees, the crystalline waters of the Myrloch sparkled like diamonds in the sun.
Great, flat-topped arches of stone surrounded her, for this Moonwell had a special significance. Once, for a period of many centuries, it had been the well at the center of the Great Druid's grove. Then, during the Darkwalker War, this well had been corrupted. As the Darkwell, it gave birth to the Darkwalker itself, the young king's mightiest foe.
Now vines of ivy climbed those stone obelisks, some of which had toppled during the intervening years. The druid queen found a stone bench where she remembered it would be, though she had to clear it of fallen leaves before she could use it to rest.
When she had made herself comfortable, she sat there for a very long time. The sun slipped below the western horizon, and the stars broke into the sky. Then the full disc of the moon came into sight, rising into the night and spilling its creamy rays across the waters of the Moonwell.
For a time, Robyn's mind drifted across the people she loved, those who had given her joy