Halthak was helping to lift Grelthus to his feet when he saw Amric fall beneath the corrupted Wyrgens on the stairs. He froze in horror, his breath caught in his throat. Bellimar released Grelthus’s other arm and took a rapid step toward the stairway.
With an incoherent cry, Valkarr leapt to his fallen friend’s defense. Heedless of his own safety, he burst among them like a demon, cleaving through the creatures with a berserk ferocity. A snarling, grizzled head tumbled down the stairs, freed of its body. Another hulking form staggered and fell back, cloven nearly in twain. Syth joined him an instant later in a blast of biting wind, hammering powerful blows into spine and skull until the beasts over Amric retreated or were still. Shoulder to shoulder they fought, driving back the Wyrgens for precious seconds.
“Healer!” Valkarr bellowed. “Pull him free!”
Halthak turned to Grelthus, who was now recuperated enough to stand. “Be ready with that wall!” he ordered as he shoved the Wyrgen toward the panel nestled on the side wall of stone.
Darting out of the chamber and onto the broad stairway, he knelt by Amric. The warrior was unconscious and bleeding from countless minor wounds, but was still breathing. He slid his hands under Amric’s arms and heaved, dragging him from beneath the panting combatants. Wicked talons reached for him from amid the press, and Halthak flinched away without relinquishing his grip. They never landed, however, and when the healer looked again the severed arm was rolling on the flagstones nearby, still twitching. With a surge of effort, the Half-Ork pulled the man free and started up the stairs.
Behind him, the vibrating rumble of ponderous machinery began, and the enormous glass wall began its slow descent.
Too early, Halthak thought as panic rose like ice in his chest. After all it had taken to revive the stricken Wyrgen, he had now triggered the wall at the worst possible time. He threw a glance over his shoulder to see Grelthus leaning against the side wall, watching the battle on the stairs with an unreadable expression. Bellimar was behind the lowering portal, standing poised and rigid like he meant to throw himself into the fray. The Half-Ork looked up to the clear sheet of diamond-hard material, several feet thick, rumbling its way downward to the floor. His gut twisted as he realized he was not going to make it. The wall would come down before he could reach the safety of the chamber, burdened as he was, and it would either seal them without or crush them under its weight.
“Hold the wall!” he cried.
Grelthus tore his eyes from the battle to meet the healer’s gaze.
A slow, malevolent smile spread across the savage countenance, and the wall continued to descend.
Halthak shouted a warning to Syth and Valkarr, but the warriors were locked in battle and could not turn away to help or even to escape themselves. He gritted his teeth and heaved with all his might, dragging the limp form of the swordsman up the steps. Certain death awaited them out here. He had no choice but to beat the descending wall. He resolved not to look back again, but instead to pull for all he was worth, and he and Amric would either live or die together. He reached the top of the stairs and lunged backward, grunting with the effort. His head struck the edge of the glass wall. He ducked under it and tightened his fists in Amric’s chain shirt, sinking his claws into the link to retain his grip. He wrenched back, pulling desperately at the warrior, sick with the knowledge that he had not been fast enough, but unwilling to abandon their only chance.
With a squealing groan of protest, the wall’s descent came to a sudden stop.
Halthak’s mouth fell open in disbelief, and he turned wide eyes upward. Bellimar stood above him, eyes glowing red like searing pinpoints of flame, pale hands straining under the edge of the wall. The old man’s back was bowed and his frame shook with the effort, but somehow, impossibly, he was holding up the titanic weight of the wall.
“This may look easy, healer,” Bellimar gasped through clenched teeth. “But I pray you will hurry, nonetheless.”
Halthak scrambled into the chamber, dragging his charge behind him. Amric groaned and began to stir. The Half-Ork looked under the wall to where Valkarr and Syth were still locked in combat with the Wyrgens, and he shouted to them, beckoning them on with repeated, frantic gestures.
He saw Valkarr risk a look back and then shout to Syth, “I will turn them back one last time while you run for the wall!”
“I’ll not leave you to die in my stead,” Syth snarled back, his gauntleted fist smashing out with a cracking report to cave in a grizzled skull.
“There is no time to debate it!” the Sil’ath returned. “Go now, and I will be on your heels.”
The warriors locked gazes for a split second, and Halthak witnessed some grim understanding pass between them. Then Valkarr plunged forward in a blinding whirlwind of steel, uttering a battle roar. The horde swayed back from the savagery of his assault.
Syth lashed out to send another Wyrgen reeling, and then hesitated as he watched the swarm close around the frenzied Sil’ath. Then he wheeled and bolted up the stairs. He dove under the massive wall in a rush of air, rolling smoothly to his feet inside the chamber.
The glass wall made a dull grinding sound and dropped another half a foot before Bellimar caught it with a grunt. A violent trembling rocked his slender frame, but the wall hung suspended once more. Syth and Halthak turned their anxious stares to the fight raging below on the stairs.
Valkarr cut his way free in a bloody swath, and for a fleeting instant, he was clear. He leapt up the stairs, grim resolve written in every hard line of his face. A claw raked at his leg, leaving the flesh ragged and blackened in its wake, and he swept away the offending appendage with a terse stroke. A brutish Wyrgen bounded through the air to crash into his back, and he twisted, spinning into a sweeping cut that laid the creature open even as it was thrown from him. Talons caught at his leather baldric, slinging him to the side, and he crossed his arms to thrust behind him, impaling his assailant with both blades.
Halthak’s mouth fell open, his breath caught in his throat. The effort was incredible, stunning in its display of swordsmanship and determination, but the speed and power and endless numbers of the corrupted Wyrgens made the conclusion inevitable. More and more claws snaked through to catch at the fleeing Sil’ath, slowing him, staggering him, tearing into his scaly flesh. He went to one knee, still hammering lethal blows all about him, and finally pitched forward beneath the weight as the swarm enveloped him.
Within the chamber, Halthak watched aghast as Valkarr disappeared from sight beneath a surging mass of rending claws and fangs. Bellimar sagged forward, groaning in agony as his grip failed at last.
The massive wall slammed to the ground with a shuddering boom of thunder.
Amric blinked, trying to clear the haze from his vision. Everything swam before his eyes, blurred and washed out, as if he viewed the world through a swirling white mist. Several figures stood above him, their outlines muddled and indistinct, but he could see they were all facing away from him.
He clenched his teeth in pain. His insides burned as if afire, and some dim part of him wondered if the Fount had corrupted him at last. Or perhaps the vicious Wyrgens had torn into him, and he was simply too obstinate to die.
His hands remembered sword hilts, and he groped for them, but his fingers met only cold stone. Something unfamiliar clawed at his clouded awareness; he felt a rush of alien sensations thrust upon him, as if the conflicting emotions of some other being were somehow bursting inside him. It was mercurial, seeming at once insistent, fearful, eager, ashamed and restrained. It raged with fury and clamored for his attention, and then shrank from his scrutiny as he tried to focus upon it.