The sun was higher now. From where Kim stood she could see the seething army of the Dark carpeting the whole of the plain below. To the left, Aileron raised his sword, and on the other side the Aven did the same, and Ra-Tenniel. She saw Matt turn to Faebur and speak to him.
Then she heard the ringing note of the horn that Faebur sounded, and there was war.
Cechtar was the first man Dave saw die. The big Dalrei thundered, screaming at the top of his voice, toward the nearest of the urgach as the armies met with a crash that shook the earth. Cechtar’s momentum and his whistling sword blow knocked the urgach sprawling sideways in his saddle. But before the Dalrei could follow up, his mount was viciously speared by the horn of the slaug the urgach rode, and as the grey horse stumbled, dying, Cechtar’s side was exposed and a svart alfar leaped up, a long thin knife in its hand, and plunged it into his heart.
Dave didn’t even have time to cry out, or grieve, or even think about it. There was death all around him, bloody and blurred. There were svart alfar shrieking amid the screams of dying men. A svart leaped for his horse. Dave dragged a foot free of his stirrups, kicked at it viciously, and felt the ugly creature’s skull crack under the impact.
Fighting for room to swing his axe, he urged his horse forward. He went for the nearest urgach then, and every time thereafter, with a hatred and a bitterness (cold, though, icily, calculating cold) that drove him on and on, the head of his axe soon red and wet with blood, as it rose and fell, and rose and fell again.
He had no idea what was happening even twenty feet away. The lios alfar were somewhere to the right. He knew that Levon was beside him, always, through everything that happened, and Tore and Sorcha were on his other side. He saw Ivor’s stocky figure just ahead, and in all that he did he fought to stay within reach of the Aven. Again, as in the fight by the banks of the Adein, he completely lost track of time. His was a narrowed maelstrom of a world: a universe of sweat and shattered bone, of lathered horses and slaug horns, and ground slippery with blood and with the trampled flesh of the dying and the dead. He fought with a silent savagery amid the screams of battle, and where his axe fell, where the hooves of his horse lashed out, they killed.
Time warped and twisted, spun away from him. He thrust the axe forward like a sword, smashing in the hairy face of the urgach in front of him. Almost in the same motion he drove the axehead down, to bite through the flesh of the slaug it rode. He rode on. Beside him, Levon’s blade was a whirling thing of ceaseless, glinting motion, a counterpoint of lethal grace to Dave’s own driven strength.
Time was gone from him, and the morning. He knew that they had been advancing for a time, and then later, now, with the sun somehow high in the sky, that they were no longer pressing forward, only holding their ground. Desperately, they strained to leave each other enough room to fight, yet not so much space that the quick svart alfar might slip between, to kill from below.
And gradually Dave began to acknowledge, however hard he tried to block the thought, something that a part of him had known the evening before, when first they’d topped the ridge and looked down. It was the numbers, the sheer brutal weight, that would beat them.
It isn’t even worth thinking about, he told himself, hammering the axe right through the blocking sword of an urgach on his right, watching Tore’s sword slash into the creature’s brain at the same moment. He and the dark Dalrei—his brother—looked at each other for one grim instant.
There was time for no more than that. Time and strength had rapidly become the most precious things in all the worlds and were becoming more rare with each passing moment. The white sun swung up the sky and paused overhead, balanced for an instant, as were all the worlds that day, and then began sliding down through a bloody afternoon.
Dave’s horse trampled a svart alfar, even as his axe severed the raking horn of a dark green slaug. He felt a pain in his thigh; ignored it; killed, with a mighty blow of his fist, the dagger-wielding svart that had slashed him. He heard Levon grunt with exertion, and he wheeled just in time to crash his mount into the side of the slaug menacing the Aven’s son. Levon dispatched the unbalanced urgach with a sweep of his blade.
There were two more behind it, and half a dozen of the svart alfar. Dave didn’t even have room to stay with Levon. In front of him three more of the slaug pressed forward, over the body of the one whose horn he’d smashed. Dave fell back a couple of paces, sick at heart. Beside him, Levon was doing the same.
Then, disbelieving, Dave heard the ceaseless shrieking of the svart alfar rise to a higher pitch. The largest of the urgach advancing on him roared a sudden desperate command, and a moment later, Dave saw a space suddenly materialize on his left, beyond Levon, as the enemy fell back.
And then, even as it appeared, the space was filled by Matt Sören, King of the Dwarves, fighting in grim, ferocious silence, his clothing shredded, saturated with blood, as he waded forward over the bodies of the dead to lead the Dwarves into the gap.
“Well met, King of Dwarves!” Ivor’s voice rose high over the tumult of battle. With a glad cry Dave thrust forward, Levon just ahead of him, and they merged with Matt’s forces and began to advance again.
Ra-Tenniel, dazzlingly swift on the raithen, was suddenly beside them as well. “How are they doing on the left?” he sang out.
“Aileron sent us this way. He says they will hold!” Matt shouted back. “I don’t know for how long, though. Galadan’s wolves are on that side. We have to break through together and then circle back west!”
“Come on, then!” Levon screamed, moving past them all, leading them northward as if he would storm the towers of Starkadh itself. Ivor was right beside his son.
Dave kicked his own mount ahead, hastening to follow. He had to stay close: to guard them if he could, to share in whatever happened to them.
He felt a wind suddenly. Saw a vast, onrushing shadow sweeping across Andarien.
“Dear gods!” Sorcha cried, by Dave’s right hand. There came a tremendous roaring sound.
Dave looked up.
At dawn Leila woke. She felt feverish and afraid after a terrible, restless night. When Shiel came to get her, she told the other priestess to lead the morning chants in her stead. Shiel took one look at Leila and went away without a word.
Pacing the narrow confines of her room, Leila struggled to hold the images that were flashing into her mind. They were too quick, though, too violently chaotic. She didn’t know where they were coming from, how she was receiving them. She didn’t know! She didn’t want them! Her hands were damp and she felt perspiration on her face, though the underground rooms were as cool as they always were.
The chanting ended under the dome. In the sudden silence she became conscious of her own footsteps, the rapid beating of her heart, the pulsing in her mind—all seemed louder, more insistent. She was afraid now, more so than she had ever been.
There was a tapping at her door.
“Yes!” she snapped. She hadn’t meant to say it that way.
Timorously, Shiel opened the door and peeped in. She did not enter the room. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of Leila’s face.
“What is it?” Leila said, fighting to control her voice.
“There are men here, Priestess. Waiting by the entranceway. Will you see them?”
It was a thing to do, an action to take. She brushed past Shiel, walking swiftly down the curving corridors toward the entrance to the Temple. There were three priestesses and a dun-robed acolyte waiting there. The doors were open, but the men waited patiently outside.