Leesil kicked out at the anmaglâhk still trying to regain his feet at the shack’s corner. That one ducked and somehow spun into the cutway’s mouth, rising with a blade in each hand. Én’nish had to be closing by now, and Leesil had lost track of the fourth elf, but he couldn’t look back. He had to keep the one in front of him from turning around and going after Magiere.
Something thin and silvery flashed downward before Leesil’s face.
He had barely an instant to thrust upward with his right winged blade. A garrote caught on the tip of his blade. Then a knee rammed into his back as the wire’s wielder pulled it tight. His blade jerked in against his chest, its tip and the wire cinched against his throat.
“Yield, or she dies ... you all die!” Én’nish hissed behind him.
Her accent was thick but the words were perfect Belaskian, Leesil’s native tongue, and the words stuck in his head.
Yield, or she dies ...
They were trying to take Magiere alive.
Magiere stumbled along the shack’s wall in the cutway’s darkness where Leesil had shoved her, and she then crumpled. Even with piercing pain in her thigh, she struggled to gain her feet. At the sounds of clashing weapons and Chap’s snarls out in the street, she clawed up the wall and looked back.
In the cutway’s mouth stood the black silhouette of an anmaglâhk, and beyond him ...
Leesil stood a few paces from the cutway’s mouth with the point of one of his own winged blades at his throat. For an instant, Magiere didn’t understand, and then she spotted the forest gray, cowled head over Leesil’s left shoulder.
A silver-white garrote was pulled tight around his neck. Only his blade’s tip kept the wire from cutting into his throat.
At that sight, fear flooded through Magiere, and hunger rose to eat her pain. She felt her eyeteeth elongate as reason died under fury, and she tried to shout at the one holding Leesil. All that came from her throat was a harsh, high-pitched screech that filled the night air.
The anmaglâhk in the cutway’s mouth stiffened and backed up a half step.
Magiere shrieked as she charged.
Leesil’s mouth opened, perhaps shouting to her, but she didn’t hear him. She gripped the falchion’s hilt with both hands. Nothing mattered but killing anyone that touched him—anything that even got near him. She didn’t get far.
Magiere lurched to a halt, arching backward, as something pulled her cloak taut from behind. She tried to slash back with her falchion one-handed, but the long, heavy blade rammed against the narrow cutway’s wall. She struggled to turn and grab hold of her cloak.
A sharp strike landed on Magiere’s shoulder at the base of her neck. The night’s brightness dimmed as everything spun in her sight. She lost her grip on the falchion as she was wrenched back down the cutway.
“Magiere!”
Leesil couldn’t help crying out when she suddenly lurched backward into the cutway’s deeper darkness. She vanished from his sight. In only a breath, he heard the clatter of heavy steel, as if her sword had dropped. Fear turned him cold.
How could so many anmaglâhk be coming at them from so many directions? He had just shoved Magiere into the hands of another waiting there in the dark cutway. But the one between him and the opening froze and didn’t follow her. That one didn’t even turn around as he whispered something sharp in Elvish.
Leesil couldn’t follow the words, but he felt Én’nish fidget behind him. She barked an answer, and the only part he recognized and understood was “bârtva’na”—no, do nothing. Then he was jerked back as Én’nish shouted up the street.
“Vorthash majay-hì—äm-an!”
Leesil spotted Chap still ranging there. The one anmaglâhk that the dog kept at bay glanced toward Én’nish and then back down at Chap. That one raised his blades to poised positions, and then he hesitated.
Én’nish shouted again in greater anger, and Leesil took his chance. He slammed his free arm back, driving his elbow and a blade’s long wing tip at Én’nish’s abdomen.
It struck nothing.
The wire cinched tighter around Leesil’s neck, and his pinned blade tip bit into his skin.
All that Chap had been able to do was hold one anmaglâhk at bay. He could outrun and cut off any one of them, but he could not fully outmaneuver his adversary. In his effort, he had backed farther and farther toward Leesil and Magiere. Even in his rushes at his opponent, he had not laid tooth or claw into the man. Yet his adversary still appeared unwilling to strike him. And somewhere above was an archer.
Magiere had been hit, and Chap had not even been able to turn to see what had happened to her.
“Vorthash majay-hì— äm-an !”
Chap understood the shout: Kill the majay-hì—now!
The anmaglâhk’s eyes flickered above the forest gray wrap across his lower face. He raised his weapons but still did not attack. When the shout from the female came again, his eyes rose, glancing down the street.
Chap took two lunging steps and leaped.
Both of his forepaws struck the man’s chest. As his weight followed, the elf began to topple. Chap struck with his rear paws, tearing at the man’s thighs, snapping his teeth at the man’s face. The elf jerked his head away, and his skull struck the cobble first under Chap’s bulk.
Chap spun off, charging down the street, but his breath caught. The smaller anmaglâhk had a garrote around Leesil’s throat, and Magiere was nowhere to be seen. Panic quickened Chap’s heartbeat more than his efforts. As he was about to throw himself at Leesil’s captor, he heard a breathy hiss in the night air and twisted aside.
An arrow tip struck the cobble a stride to his right.
Chap glanced up as he raced on, and he tried to gauge from where the arrow had come. He caught the soft puff of a bowstring’s release, and he quickly swerved again.
No arrow struck the street. The sound of the bowstring had not come from along the first arrow’s path, but a barking Elvish curse followed from that direction.
Chap had no notion what was happening up on the rooftops. There were at least two archers above, though the second had not fired at him. Two unseen archers could prove devastating with Magiere already wounded. He howled, trying to draw attention, as he closed on Leesil.
Leesil heard Chap coming, but he still couldn’t spot Magiere, and the anmaglâhk in the cutway’s mouth spun around. All Leesil could hope to do was scatter everyone’s attention until Chap reached him. He thrust one foot back between Én’nish’s legs.
He planted it hard, prepared to lurch back into her and twist, and ...
A tall form appeared too suddenly, too silently from the cutway’s darkness.
It was as if the figure had been there in the dark all along and simply materialized in the passage’s opening. The one anmaglâhk standing before the cutway and now facing Leesil didn’t seem to hear it. Leesil’s senses sharpened as his mind took in the newcomer.
He was taller than any elf in sight and broader of shoulder. Instead of forest gray, he wore a dusky wool cloak with a full hood. His face was lost in the hood’s shadows, though his jaw and mouth appeared to be covered with a black scarf or wrap. But even if he wasn’t dressed like the Anmaglâhk, in his gloved hands were long, silver-white stilettos.
Leesil couldn’t believe how many elves from the eastern continent had been sent so far from home to come after them—after Magiere.
It had been more than two years since they had secured the first orb and fled with it, only to have a pair of anmaglâhk come for them, demanding Magiere release what she had into their hands. The confrontation had ended in bloodshed and death on both sides.