The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [99]
An armored hand took her by the throat, then, and tightened.
"I think it's been some time," Baron Blackgult remarked cheerfully, "since you've been a true servant of the Huntress." His fingers closed, the priestess sobbed forth blood and fell on her face on the trampled ground, and the mists and sparks melted away together.
The dying priestess thrashed briefly and lay still. Hawkril snatched up her blade to defend his baron-and then they stood together in silence, Blackgult and Anharu, and looked across a field of butchery. There was no one left to fight.
Here and there men of Blackgult raised bloody swords in salute. The hollow was awash in the blood of Sharaden worshipers.
The Golden Griffon put his arm around the shoulders of his armaragor-he had to reach up to do it-and said thickly, "Most loyal Anharu, I live because of you. If ever you stand in similar need, I'll return the favor, or submit myself willingly to the damnation of the Lady these unholy ones were so swift to invoke. I bind myself in this!"
His voice dropped, he gasped for air, and he added, "And now, Hawkril, let's find something copious to drink!"
"Lord," Hawkril murmured, as they staggered across the fallen together, feeling the smart of their wounds in earnest now, "you always boldly snatch at wisdom. Behold your latest great idea."
On a battlefield bereft of priestesses but holding no less blood and desperation, Craer leaped high into the air to kick an enemy face, and then shoved the staggering man back into the reach of Sarasper's whirling spell-blades. He saw two foresters desperately parrying the darting swords-but the man he'd introduced to them had no blade up and ready to fend off steel. A leaping spellblade made short and bloody work of the man's face; as he gurgled and fell, the conjured sword that had slain him started to fade away.
By then, the procurer had grown tired of trading slashing parries with a false forester who was taller, stronger-and angrier. The man seemed to like launching huge backhand slashes, so Craer lured the man into one with a feigned stagger that became a somersault forward under the forester's sweeping blade.
He landed hip to hip with the man, but another foe-the man Hawkril had hurled aside-was temptingly close, staggering and facing away from Craer. The procurer leaped, thrust his dagger into the man's throat, and dragged it back and to the right, tearing open the man's neck and turning him into the path of the man who liked to slash so enthusiastically. Halting or turning aside slashes, it was immediately and bloodily apparent, was something the tall false forester needed rather more practice at.
Craer was already spinning away, his dagger trailing a bright arc of blood, to confront two more foes-a pair of foresters who were advancing on him in careful, menacing unison.
Somewhere to his right, Hawkril had trotted carefully around the dancing spellblades to reach the two foresters struggling against the flying fangs, and was now slashing enthusiastically at their faces, seeking to distract them from their parries. One of them was a little too slow in frantically batting away one of the swooping swords-and the armaragor's blade slid into his throat.
He choked, gagged, and spewed forth a rush of blood, and was still staggering vainly toward Hawkril, eyes darkening, when his brother forester moaned in fear and fled… straight at Craer.
Hawkril cried a warning, and the procurer obligingly faded out of the way, allowing the terrified man to blunder right into the heart of the careful attack being launched by his two fellows.
The spellblades raced after the man as Sarasper rose to his feet, letting Embra sag against his shins, to direct his spell at the last few foresters.
Hawkril felled the dying forester with a backhand slash as he broke into a lumbering run after the spellblades. The other foresters were backing away in the face of this magical menace, and Hawkril had little stomach for long, gasping chases through the trees-into who-but-the-Three knew what ambushes or