Maybe Losalis recognized the trap for what it was, or perhaps he simply knew that his saber couldn't penetrate his foe's armor. Rather than delivering another bruising blow to Jassion's ribs, as the baron had hoped, the mercenary swung at his legs.
Desperate, Jassion dropped to his knees lest he find himself crippled. The blade indeed rang against chain and Jassion brought his right elbow down, briefly pinning the saber to his side. That was as he planned; being on his knees rather than his feet, as Losalis raised the shield overhead once more, was not.
Swiftly as he could given the awkward posture, Jassion swung the Kholben Shiar upward even as Losalis brought his brutal shield down. And indeed, Talon's infernal magics made all the difference. With the hideous squeal of rending metal, the shield-and a small portion of the flesh to which it was strapped-pinwheeled away to land in the dust.
Losalis screamed in agony. Jassion fell sideways and rolled across the earth, taking the mercenary's saber with him. He kicked at the ground, spinning on his back, whipping Talon around him.
Leather, flesh, and bone parted before the Kholben Shiar and Losalis, now silent as his body convulsed in shock, tumbled to his back, both feet severed at the ankles.
The baron staggered up once more, ignoring the pounding agony in his chest, raised Talon one last time-and Losalis, former lieutenant of the Terror of the East, suffered no more. "KALEB!" MELLORIN SHRIEKED, SPRINGING toward him even as she recognized that she couldn't possibly reach him in time.
The sorcerer was fast, spinning to meet the man who had burst through his faltering flame. He almost dodged, so that what would have been a murderous thrust through his chest instead sliced along one arm, spraying drops of blood to boil away in the roaring fire. Again he shifted the angle of his magics, and the warrior who'd dared attack him fell to earth in a burning heap of human wreckage.
But that distraction allowed Ulfgai to close. He'd crept around the edges of the battle, drawing ever nearer the man who was holding their reinforcements at bay. Tears clouded the vicious barbarian's eyes as Losalis fell, and his entire body twitched in apparent desire to hurl himself at Jassion, but no. Clearly he knew that, with the sorcerer down, he and his men could overwhelm the enemy, and then he would have his vengeance.
The southerner raised a wedge-shaped axe, prepared to dash Kaleb's brains across the earth…
And shuddered with the impact of Mellorin's falchion. Fur-lined leathers absorbed most of the blow, and Ulfgai was already turning to swat aside this nuisance when she drove the point of her dagger into his gut.
Ulfgai coughed, staining his beard with blood, and Mellorin forced herself to twist the knife in the wound. The fingers clasping that axe trembled but did not drop the weapon.
Whether he would have had the strength left to kill her, Mellorin never knew. Kaleb appeared behind the mercenary, and his hands were now empty of fire. They closed, instead, upon Ulfgai's shoulder, and shoved the weakened southerner back into the flames.
"I can open us a path," he said tiredly to his companions. "And with the grasses burning, it should be a few moments before the rest of them realize that they're just facing normal flames, now, not magic. We'd best be gone by then."
Mellorin helped her uncle, who couldn't seem to stand upright, to mount his horse, and then the wounded sorcerer to do the same. She wondered, briefly, why the beasts hadn't panicked, whether this was more of Kaleb's magic or simply that the ring of fire permitted them nowhere to run.
Kaleb unleashed one last burst of flame through the grassfire, hoping to scatter-if not to slay-any mercenaries on the other side. Then, suppressing the flame as easily as he'd summoned it, he carved them a path to freedom. The pounding of hooves was lost in the roar of the fire, and the frustrated screams of the warriors beyond. THEY MADE A COLD CAMP, far from the roadside. Hours of hard and painful riding had probably averted pursuit, but they weren't about to take that for granted.
Jassion, his ribs wrapped tight, muttered and grumbled as he struggled to find a position in which he might sleep. Kaleb, arm neatly bandaged, crossed the camp to kneel before the young woman, who was sitting on a stump and gazing off into the distance.
"Mellorin?" he asked gently.
"I didn't… Kaleb, I've never…"
Carefully-giving her every opportunity to pull away, to ask him to stop-the sorcerer took her hand. "I know," he told her. "You know what else you did?"
She stared blankly.
"You saved my life." He turned her hand over, brushed a light kiss across her knuckles. "Thank you, Mellorin." Then, hesitantly, he leaned in and placed another soft kiss on her cheek. He smiled at her as he rose, pretending not to notice the sudden flutter of her pulse in her neck, and returned to his own blankets.
Yes, he decided with a grin that absolutely did not mean what Mellorin doubtless thought it did. That worked out just fine.
Chapter Twelve
THE CORRIDORS OF THE HALL of Meeting felt a lot more claustrophobic than they had mere minutes prior. Irrial could have sworn the walls were actually closing in, the doors transforming into prison bars. Not even the carpet muffled the tread of the soldiers who pressed in from all sides, reverberating in unison, the inexorable march of time itself.
She knew the plan-such as it was-for they'd both acknowledged the possibility of capture, but damn it all, if Corvis didn't act soon, she wasn't going to wait for him!
Two guards strode before her, broad shoulders and hauberks blocking her view of the hallway, while the other four marched behind. Irrial didn't need to look, for she could feel their looming presence, and the skin between her shoulder blades twinged nervously at the thought of those brutal crossbows.
Corvis walked beside her in a peculiar slouch, shoulders slumped and head hanging. He lurked at the corners of her vision, where detail blurred like moist watercolor, and she thought she saw his lips moving.
Almost time, then.
Her hand grew clammy, her breathing tight. "When it starts," he'd told her, "all I need is for you to keep them off me." A simple enough proposition, in theory. But what if-?
Corvis waited until they drew even with a branching passageway, the intersection providing a bit more room to maneuver than the narrow halls, and then he collapsed. With a pained, sepulchral groan, he struck the floor, limp as a boned trout. He landed facing away from Irrial and guards alike, and the noblewoman could only trust that he was maintaining his near-silent concentration.
Not being utter imbeciles, the soldiers reacted swiftly, calmly. The two in front knelt beside the fallen prisoner, one checking for pulse or fever, the other keeping tight grip on the hilt of his sword in case this should prove some feeble ruse. The remaining four clustered around Irrial, blocking any possible escape with their bodies while keeping their arbalests trained on Corvis.
The thought that the freckle-faced baroness might prove the greater threat had clearly never crossed their minds.
Irrial took her cane in both hands and yanked. For an instant, the walking stick seemed to come smoothly apart, before the illusion that Corvis had wrapped around it-subtle, static, far harder to detect than that which cloaked his own features-unraveled. In her left hand, Irrial clutched two thin strips of wood, wrapped in a leather thong to form a makeshift scabbard; in her right, a narrow, long-bladed sword, the weapon of a duelist rather than a soldier.
A sword whose blade was etched from tip to hilt with spidery runes and wavering figures. Even surrounded by enemies on all sides, it was all she could do to keep her focus off the whispers and urges that crawled through her mind, weevils hatched from the demonic spirit of the thing in her hand.