Chap had to duck, and Én’nish rolled away to her feet and ran off. He lunged after her but faltered as the open deck filled his view.
Dänvârfij kicked a crewman, who staggered off to her right and nearly fell. The man then stiffened, arching, and toppled forward with an arrow through the back of his neck. Chap could not tell from where that arrow had come, and Dänvârfij bolted straight at Magiere.
“Do not fire at the quarry!” she shouted out in Elvish.
Before Chap could blink, Dänvârfij and Magiere went at each other ... and Én’nish closed on Leesil in a maddened rush.
Where was Brot’an? This was all his fault. If they survived this, Chap would make certain Brot’an never had such a chance again.
As if summoned, the old assassin appeared to leap from the uncovered hatch. Three crewmen came running out of the aftcastle’s far door, though they faltered at what they saw. They would have no idea who was with whom or that more than one faction had boarded their vessel.
“We’re under attack!” one of them shouted.
They would simply kill anyone viewed as an intruder.
Én’nish and Leesil slammed together, falling to the deck in a flurry of blades.
If either Magiere or Leesil was taken, one hostage was all these anmaglâhk would need to control the other.
Chap stalled too long in choosing either Magiere or Leesil to aid first. Heavy footfalls came at him from behind. He lunged aside, and the head of an iron mace cracked the deck boards.
Én’nish saw no one but Léshil ... the one who had killed her beloved, Grôyt’ashia.
She barely heard the guttural shrieks of rage from Léshil’s monster of a mate, or the click and screech of Dänvârfij’s blades off the heavy falchion. She had barely heard Dänvârfij call to Rhysís not to fire.
Én’nish’s orders were to take Léshil alive. Once, the thought of his being tortured had held her to obedience. The hope of him watching his mate die would have even been enough.
She rushed at him and drove a stiletto straight for his throat.
Léshil twisted as her blade point nearly touched his flesh. The stiletto’s tip caught and tore a hunk from his tunic’s collar, and suddenly he was gone.
Én’nish leaped, tucking her legs up in midair.
Léshil attempted to lash his leg across her shins, but his foot passed below her raised ones. Then he was up again, spinning away across the deck and pulling one of his winged blades as her feet touched down.
Magiere tried to hold on to reason as she fended off a double slash of white stilettos with her falchion’s tilted blade. She couldn’t let the hunger overwhelm her; she had to stay sane. None of them could falter here and now if any of them were to escape alive. And it wasn’t her own life that she feared for.
She could kill this woman, this anmaglâhk, but if she lost all awareness of Leesil, or Chap, or what she had to do to back them up, someone might die.
As the woman’s double slash passed off her sword, Magiere dropped to one knee and swung with her white metal dagger.
The hair-thin black line down the blade’s spine lit up with orange-red heat. Humid air sizzled in its passing. The blade missed her opponent’s right thigh ... and grazed the left.
Forest gray wool split, smoke rose from the gap, and Magiere heard a sharp suck of breath. She quickly pulled the falchion’s blade up and across. Two more screeches rose on the steel under the flash of white stiletto blades.
Magiere slashed again with the dagger. Her opponent twisted out of the way this time, and she straightened up, looking into the woman’s amber eyes. They were somehow familiar, though she couldn’t place them above the wrap across the woman’s face.
A trace of smoke from the woman’s wound blew away in the breeze, and her eyes betrayed no pain. She came again so fast that Magiere barely blocked.
Fear, not anger, let hunger begin to escape.
Magiere’s jaws ached under the change in her teeth. Everything in the world but her own body suddenly slowed. She dodged and chopped down with the falchion at the anmaglâhk’s shoulder.
The woman leaned under the sword’s path and pulled her left wrist out of the way last.
A glint of white passed before Magiere’s face.
She barely saw her opponent’s right hand finish its swing as a burning sting rose along a line from her left temple to the center of her forehead.
Blood ran down into Magiere’s left eye and half blinded her.
Leesil knew exactly whom he fought. Above the wrap that hid the rest of her face, her slanted eyes were sick with fury. He knew the depth of her pained hatred for him and knew the reason for it, but he felt no pity for her anymore.
Én’nish and her kind had come at him and Magiere too many times. It would end right here.
He held on to control and grew coldly calm, as in his youth. He could taste those nights that had haunted him for so many years after. Carrying a thin blade between his teeth or a garrote wire coiled between his gloved fingers, he would crouch in the dark or scale a wall to slip into a bedchamber.
Én’nish tried to get inside his guard, to strike for his throat, his heart, his abdomen, and finally the inside of his thigh to pierce an artery. He kept her going with feints of his own but had no chance to pull his second blade.
When her speed waned, when the fury used her up ... he feinted straight at her this time, as if to aim a kick and expose his left side.
She took the bait and lunged.
Leesil spun in his false kick and turned his back to her. The winged blade he held in his right hand swept around, and he heard his blade clink against one of her stilettos.
She had tried for his heart again, as he knew she would: it was the only kill point of which she could be certain in a fast attack from behind.
He dropped to one knee as he came around with Én’nish’s blade still grating on his own, and he punched his free hand under as he swept her blade upward on his. His fist cracked against her small knee, and she began to buckle as he slashed down.
The point of his winged blade tore open her tunic, down her abdomen, and off her right hip.
She staggered back. Shock rather than pain washed the malice from her eyes.
Leesil felt nothing as he pushed off, rising to finish her.
An arrow hit the deck right in front of his foot, and he jumped back, looking up.
Never looking at the man, Brot’ân’duivé rammed two straightened fingers into the right eye of a crewman. As his target fell, dropping both cudgel and sword amid a scream, he unfocused his sight and took in the whole deck at once.
He had expected Dänvârfij to send two, perhaps three, to take either Léshil or Magiere. Only one need be seized to subdue the other. He had taken out one anmaglâhk, but two were left: Dänvârfij was obviously one and Én’nish the other.
Brot’ân’duivé had planned to take those two and then kill the others one by one when they came to investigate. Now the crew had been alerted, and two more men rushed out of one aftcastle door.
He saw Dänvârfij’s blade slash Magiere’s forehead.
Léshil split the front of Én’nish’s tunic and stepped after her as she retreated ... and an arrow sprouted from the deck at his feet.
Brot’ân’duivé ducked under one crewman’s cutlass as he kicked out the knee of another. He rammed an elbow into the back of the first one’s neck and peered upward into the rigging.
Four, not three, anmaglâhk had boarded this ship. There was an archer above.