“The passage is narrow,” Cazio said. “We’ll take turns. I’m first; work out the rest of the order among you.”
“I pledged an oath to Sir Leafton that I would face her foes first,” Ansgar replied. “I hope you will allow me to honor that oath.”
Cazio started to object, but Ansgar, after all, was wearing armor. He was probably more suited, so to speak, to the situation.
“I yield the priority,” he said. “But please do not kill them all. Leave some for me.”
The man nodded, and Cazio stepped back, hoping his head would clear a bit more. At least their foe hadn’t made it through a few moments earlier, when they were all still weak. Maybe Robert’s men had been affected, as well.
He’d have to ask Anne exactly what had happened once this was over.
“Maybe they won’t make it through—” Austra began, but suddenly a wand of flickering light appeared in the stone, carving through it. An instant later, not only was the hidden doorway gone, so was a large lump of the passage.
“Saints,” Anne breathed. “He’s got a feysword.”
And indeed, Robert Dare stepped through the gap. Sir Ansgar started forward but paused when the usurper held up his hand.
“Wait a moment,” he said.
“Majesty?” Ansgar asked, glancing at Anne.
“Do as he says,” Anne said. “What do you want, Robert?”
Robert was shaking his head.
“Amazing. He’s gone, isn’t he? You let him go.”
“I did.”
“Why? What could he possibly have promised you? Rut I can guess, can’t I? He told you he would help you defeat me. And yet here I stand, unvanquished.”
“We haven’t begun fighting yet,” Cazio said.
“Did someone ask you to speak?” Robert snapped. “I’ve no idea who you are, but I’m certain neither Her Majesty nor I gave you leave to speak. Stab me if you wish, but please don’t sully my language with that ridiculous accent.”
“Cazio has my leave to speak,” Anne snapped, “and you do not, unless it is to beg forgiveness for your treachery.”
“My treachery? Dear Anne, you’ve just loosed the last Skasloi upon the world. Do you know how long he’s been planning this? He was the one who taught your mother to curse me, who made me what I have become and broke the law of death. You have fallen into his design and betrayed our entire race. Your treachery outshines mine as the sun does, ah, some small star.”
“You left me no choice,” Anne replied.
“Oh, well, if that’s the caseNo, wait, you had at least two other choices. You might have told him no and surrendered to me. Or you might have fought me and died.”
“Or we could fight you and live,” Cazio said.
“You are becoming annoying,” Robert said, poking the shining blade toward him. “Surrender, Anne, and all of you will live, I promise you.”
Cazio would never know what Anne might have said to that, because Cheiso suddenly rushed forward, howling in anguish, and launched himself at Robert.
The usurper raised his eldritch weapon, but not quickly enough. Cheiso plunged his borrowed dagger into the prince’s chest. Robert promptly thumped him on the head with the hilt of his weapon, but the momentary truce had ended, and the flood had come.
Roberts men surged into the chamber. Cazio leapt toward the prince, but Ansgar was already there, swinging a blow that might have decapitated Robert had he not ducked it, then thrust his feysword into Ansgar’s belly. The weapon went through him as if he were butter, and Robert carved up and out his shoulder, splitting the knight’s upper body into two pieces.
“Now you,” Robert said, turning toward Cazio.
Rut it wasn’t the first time Cazio had faced a man who couldn’t die or, for that matter, a sword he couldn’t parry. As Robert cocked for the cut, he lunged long and stop-hit the prince in the wrist. Robert snarled and slashed at Acredo’s blade, but Cazio disengaged and stabbed him in the wrist a second time. Then, avoiding the next, even wilder blow, Cazio made a draw-cut to the top of Robert’s hand.
“Not much of a swordsman, are you?” he said, grinning, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Even with a sword like that.”
Robert rushed him then, but again Cazio avoided the beat at his blade and sidestepped the charge as one might a bull, leaving his blade in a high line for Robert to run into. The usurper did, the blade taking him in the forehead so that his skull stopped and his feet went flying out from under him. Cazio had the great pleasure of seeing the bastard land flat on his back.
“Zo dessrator, nip zo chiado,” he pointed out.
He had to say it quickly, however, for Robert’s men—and womenwere swarming all around. He placed himself as best he could in front of Anne, engaging two, then three, and finally and impossibly four. He saw Preston and Cuelm fall, and then it was just he, standing between the three woman and the mob.
Worse, he saw Robert in the background, dabbing a cloth at his pierced head.
“Kill them all,” he heard Robert shout. “I’ve lost all patience with this business.”
Aspar threw his arms around the trunk of the fir and gritted his teeth as his body stripped the topmost branches. The scent of resin exploded in his nostrils as the treetop bent earthward under his weight, and for a moment he felt like the jungen who once had ridden saplings to the ground for fun.
This one wasn’t going all the way to the ground, though, so he let go before it could snap him back up. That left him falling another five kingsyards into shallow water that was still draining off from the woorm’s eruption.
He was lucky. The water didn’t hide a boulder or a stump, but it still felt as if a palm the size of a boy had slapped him with all its might.
The pain galvanized him rather than slowing him down, and he managed to slosh to his feet and take stock of the situation.
Aspar couldn’t see the woorm just now, but he could hear it crashing through the forest. He spun and ran toward the base of the cliff, hoping against hope that he would find his bow and the precious arrow. But though the water was receding, it left in its wake ajumbled mess of sticks, leaves, and needles. It could take him a bell—or ten—to find his gear.
He still didn’t see the woorm, but he drew his dirk and, reaching for his ax, encountered the horn where he’d tucked it in his belt. He plucked it out, staring at it for a moment.
Why not? He didn’t have much to lose at this point.
He raised the horn to his lips, took the deepest breath he could manage, and blew a shrill high note that he remembered very well from a day not long gone. Even after he ran out of breath, the peal hung in the air, reluctant to fade.
But fade it did, and the woorm was still coming.
He’d reached the cliff now, and fortune favored him a bit; his bow-stave was caught in the lowest branches of an everic. But he didn’t see the arrow anyplace, and the woorm—
—was suddenly turning away from him, moving out of the canyon.
But something was still coming, something man-sized and moving far too quickly for a man.
“Sceat,” he groaned. “Not a another one of these bloody—”
But the» the monk was on him, his sword a barely visible gleam in the dusk.
Stephen stiffened as the high clear note of a horn sounded in the evening air.
Zemlé noticed. “What is it?”
“I recognize that horn,” he said. “That’s the Briar King’s horn. The one I blew, the one that summoned him.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” Stephen replied absently.
Below, the khriim had been doing unusual things. Instead of moving straight toward the praifec and his men, it had gone off through the trees, in the direction of the cliffside. Just after the horn blew, however, it resumed its course, moving toward the approaching war band.
Stephen felt a tingle as a line of eight horsemen formed and charged the creature. He wondered if they stood a chance. A knight, a horse, armor, and barding at a dead gallop all concentrated on the steel tip of a lance was a formidable force.