Combat rang like temple bells, yet Adira heard none of it. Scuttling on hands and knees, she dragged Simone to her bosom, soaking herself in blood. Even clamping both hands front and back couldn't stanch the grievous wound.
"Simone! Simone! Please, don't go! Not you! I couldn't bear it!"
Simone's face waxed gray. Her black curls hung limp as petals on a dying flower. Blood trickled from her mouth. Weakly she tried to focus.
"Di-ra? I can't-Scarzam's Dragon, it hurts."
"Potion!" Magfire scrambled over rocks to reach Adira. Dropping her bloody war club, she yanked at the wooden stopper sealed with beeswax in a stoneware crock. "Alabaster potion'll save anyone! Pour it down her-"
"Magfire!" Kyenou, the scout in deer hide and ermine tails, snagged her leader's arm. "Taurion's neck is split open!"
"Brother!" Cramped amid rocks and corpses, Magfire crabbed back around. Everyone shouted, calling, scrabbling, moving. She called to Kyenou, "Wind of the West, help us! Is he alive?"
"He's dying!" The cool-headed Kyenou was crying.
"Give it here!" Adira slapped at Magfire's sleeve, bloodying her silver fox mantle, groping down her arm in the dim light to grab the crock without spilling its precious contents. "Give me some potion! Simone dies too! Then you can dose Taurton."
"No!" Magfire hugged the potion to her chest. "It's only potent in one dose! It can't be shared!"
"Give it to me!" Still with Simone's head cradled in her lap, Adira Strongheart grabbed the war chief by the mantle, flipped her bodily over her dying comrade, and slammed a fist into her jaw twice.
Iron-handed from a lifetime of warfare, Magfire refused to surrender the bottle. Spittle made bloody froth on her battered lips, and fire blazed in her eyes. Her free hand shot at Adira's face, four fingers spread, and would have blinded the pirate queen if she hadn't ducked. Snagging Adira's chestnut locks, Magfire twisted and almost popped her foe's neck.
The forester hissed, "One of mine or one of yours is no choice, outlander!"
"By the Sea-King's Crook!" Grabbing Magfire's wrist to stall the wrenching of her hair, Adira groped wildly for her black sword. "I'll gut you and every one of your benighted woods rats."
"No!"
Adira jumped as a cold hand clutched hers. Simone dragged down her friend's fingers as if disciplining a child. Her beautiful dulcet voice, that once had caroled from the crow's nest and carried miles across the sea, was faint as a whisper through a winter cave.
"I'm too far gone… Tom up… Give it away. Oh, kiss me, Adira… It's dark."
"Simone! Oh, Simone!" Shaking off Magfire's slackening grip, Adira held her friend's dark head and sobbed and sobbed as killing raged around her.
Confusion reigned as Magfire jumped over living and dead to reach her fallen brother. Tilting back his lolling head, she poured the alabaster potion between her fingers into his mouth. So potent was the mana-charged fluid that a pale white glow washed over Taurion's skin. The gaping wound at his neck sealed from both ends as if pinched by invisible hands. Flesh knit into a nasty white scar wide as a finger. Within a minute the near-dead man flushed pink and healthy.
Opening his eyes, he gasped, "Why aren't I dead?"
"Because a strong heart breeds strong friends." Magfire couldn't explain to her confused sibling, for she broke down crying.
"Listen!" called Heath.
Orders barked in a foreign tongue. The nearest legionnaires dropped back in the haze.
New to combat, Jasmine croaked, "Did we win?"
"Reinforcements must've arrived," explained Murdoch. "They'll switch and come at us again with fresh troops."
In the odd lull, pirates and foresters saw only glimpses of the enemy through the pall of smoke and dust. Veterans checked their blades, straightened tackle, sipped water, awaited orders, and talked of small things to banish fear. For soon they would die.
Murdoch bobbed his looted black sword in the air. "I wish I had my shield. That's how we trained in Yerkoy's Royal Army, sword and shield together, attack and defend. This one-handed steel-slinging is for high-faluting mercenaries or fog-headed fools."
"You're a mercenary yourself," said Sister Wilemina. Even with one arm in a sling, she checked her bowstring for frays. "Thanks to me. I recommended Adira adopt you back in Palmyra. I wish I were there now."
"I wish I had my own arrows. Pheasant feathers don't compare to good goose quills." Heath bound up his bleeding knee, his bow and quiver near at hand. "I can sink a shaft in a crow's eye at a mile with my own handwork. These arrows are sticks glued with eiderdown. Still, it was kind of Magfire's people to give us them. I wish I'd thanked them all properly."
"I wish I knew a spell so frightening it would scare even me." Jasmine Boreal fidgeted with her antique bronze knife. "But without my oddments this far underground, who knows what works? May the Virgin, Mother, and Crone pity me. I wish I'd paid them more fealty."
"Wishes are regrets glimpsed in yesterday's mirror," quoted Heath obscurely. "One of you women rouse Adira, will you? Time speeds."
Whistledove Kithkin was as tall standing as was Adira kneeling over her dead lieutenant. The brownie touched her chief's shoulder gently.
"Adira? We're sorry about Simone, but we need you. The legionnaires regroup. We've got to gird and break through their line, or we'll never leave this cavern alive."
"Aye, aye." Hovering over dead Simone, Adira tried to think of a benediction, but failed. As leader, she could only succor the living. Planting a final kiss on Simone's cold brow, Adira swabbed blood off her black blade with her sash.
Ducking low among boulders, treading yellow-clad corpses strewn mostly by Jedit, Adira positioned her mercenaries and Magfire's foresters, then summoned Jedit. Measuring the odds and comparing her resources, Adira fell into old patterns as if Simone had never existed.
In less than a minute Adira formed a loose phalanx with right- and left-handed swordbearers spaced apart and spear- wielders ranged behind. It gave her a bitter satisfaction that this two-tier rank had been used by Johan to raid Bryce and Palmyra. Such a formation just might break through the legionnaires' line and escape into the tunnels. Once in the twisting corridors, they could run hell-for-leather while guarding their rear. They didn't have to destroy the legionnaires, after all, only outrun them.
She finished, "Jedit, you take point."
"Yes, captain." The tiger looked a nightmare. Blood and dust matted his fur in clumps. His broad breast was more red than white. One ear was slit, his whiskers were splintered, gore dripped from lacerations on his long arms, and he listed to port from a ferocious leg wound hastily bound with rags. Yet, Adira noted, when she needed unquestioning loyalty, he gave it. Much like Simone.
For a second Adira felt her throat seize up, then nodded. "When you're ready, go."
Without a word Jedit Ojanen spun in place, tail flying like a bullwhip, and bounded over a boulder toward the still-forming enemy. Pirates and pine warriors ran just to keep up.
Ahead through haze and dust waited a long yellow-black line of Akron Legionnaires, as if Jedit charged a hornet's nest. This suicidal charge into slaughter would make a fine heroic saga, thought the cat warrior. Hoxv sad no tigers would ever sing it. Briefly, in the never-ending seconds hanging before combat, Jedit thought of his homeland Efrava, of his mother Musata, of Hestia and her affectionate teasing, of his doughty opponent Ruko, of all the tigers he'd abandoned for a life of adventure and a desire to follow in his father's footsteps. And of his father, Jaeger, who'd pursued Johan and never been seen again. Despite his predicament, the battle-mad brute grinned so fangs winked below his striped muzzle.