“Over here!” Alec called over to the others as he took aim at the Retha’noi.
“How many?” asked Micum.
“Two score or more, but that’s what I see.”
There were short arrows scattered everywhere, and the cart looked like a tailor’s pin pillow, but the archers had stopped. They were probably among those coming down after them.
Then the remaining witches began to play again and Sebrahn answered them with a new, even more earsplitting note.
Alec staggered toward him, then fell to his knees as the combined sound of Sebrahn and the horns threatened to overwhelm his senses.
They are going to kill us all, thought Alec. His head felt like it was going to explode and his vision went red. The mingled sounds of the oo’lus and Sebrahn’s song were unbearable, and a sudden wind knocked him flat on his back, making it impossible to get to Sebrahn, who was exposed now, standing beside the cart, pale hair whipping wildly around his head.
Just when he thought he would die or go mad, the air was suddenly filled with the sound of wings. Looking up, he saw owls—hundreds of them—some swirling overhead while others dove toward the Retha’noi.
Sebrahn is calling them! His “owl dragons.” Illior’s sign. If only there were real dragons in this part of the world!
But the huge flock descending on the men on the heights might equal a dragon; the oo’lu song faltered and stopped and there were cries of pain and dismay from the forest to their left, some dangerously close.
Sebrahn stopped singing and fell to his hands and knees, his hair dull now, and dragging in the dirt. Alec crawled the short distance to him, aware that Seregil was shouting for him to get to cover. He grabbed up the rhekaro and staggered behind the cart with the others.
Sebrahn clung to Alec, croaking his name. Here in the shadow of the cart, Alec couldn’t see Sebrahn well enough to be sure of any injuries, but he could feel how depleted that little body was. Cutting his finger on the edge of his sword, he fed him and was relieved when Sebrahn sucked eagerly.
The owls were still diving and clawing at the Retha’noi, looking like avenging demons in the glare of the spreading forest fire. But that didn’t stop more armed men from bursting from the trees and falling on Seregil and the others. Entrusting Sebrahn to Hâzadriën, Alec waded into the fight.
The Retha’noi outnumbered them, but certainly couldn’t outfight them. They were all small like Turmay, and were armed with nothing but knives or short spears. Alec cut down four of them, and then lost count. It was horrible, like fighting children, and all the while the owls swooped and tore at their scalps and faces. He could see Seregil and Micum a few yards away, and they both wore similar expressions of dismay.
But the Retha’noi kept coming.
The sound of oo’lus behind him startled Alec. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw Turmay there, with Naba, and another witch he didn’t know. They were all looking at him as they played.
An icy hand gripped Alec’s heart and froze the blood in his veins. The sword fell from his numb hand and he staggered, vision going dim as Sebrahn began a song that Alec had heard only once before.
Seregil saw Alec crumpled on the ground and Micum kneeling beside him, pressing a hand to Alec’s chest. Stanching a wound or feeling for a heartbeat? Just beyond, Turmay and Naba stood with another witch, but Sebrahn was there in front of them, singing.
Dropping his bloody sword, Seregil ran to them and fell to his knees beside Alec, hardly noticing when both songs ceased. He took Alec’s face between his hands and felt blood seeping from the younger man’s ears. More ran like tears from beneath Alec’s closed eyelids.
“Alec! Alec, open your eyes, talí!”
After a long terrible moment, Alec’s eyelids fluttered.
“Alec, can you hear me? Say something!” Seregil pleaded.
“Stop—yelling—at me,” he mumbled.
Micum laughed in relief, and so did Seregil, but there were tears on his cheeks.
Alec reached up and brushed them away with one grimy, bloody thumb. “I’m all right.”
“I told you no more dying, damn it!”
“I didn’t, this time,” Alec gasped, then pushed himself up on one arm. “Sebrahn—Where’s Sebrahn?”
Retha’noi and some of the Ebrados lay scattered like forgotten rag dolls all over the clearing and at the edge of the forest. Hâzadriën knelt in the midst of them, tending Morai. There were bodies floating in the pool below the waterfall and—
And Sebrahn lay in a heap near the bodies of Turmay and Naba and some other witch Seregil hadn’t seen.
Struggling to his feet, Alec staggered over to the rhekaro.
The luster was gone from Sebrahn’s pale hair, and when Alec turned him over and gathered him in his arms, Seregil saw that the color of those open, unseeing eyes was as dull as old lead.
Seregil drew his poniard and held it out. Alec drove the tip of his forefinger against the point, piercing it nearly to the bone, then put it between Sebrahn’s slack lips. The rhekaro’s whole small body was withered like a pumpkin vine after a frost.
“Drink, Sebrahn,” Alec urged, squeezing droplets onto Sebrahn’s tongue. “Please drink.”
“Can’t Hâzadriën do something, Rieser?” asked Seregil.
Rieser shook his head sadly. “Tayan’gils can’t heal themselves or each other. Only—”
“Hâzadriëlfaie blood,” Alec finished for him, pressing his thumb against his forefinger to make the blood come faster.
Seregil put an arm around him, saying nothing.
“Please don’t die, Sebrahn.”
Seregil was about to pull him away when Sebrahn’s lips twitched around Alec’s finger and his dull eyes slowly closed. Alec stabbed his left forefinger and squeezed out fresh blood for him. Sebrahn was sucking weakly now; blood ran in a thin trickle from the corner of his mouth.
Rieser knelt down beside him. “Thank Aura. I didn’t think it was possible.”
“Maybe you should feed him, too,” said Alec. “Your blood is pure.”
Rieser nodded and cut his finger, then fed Sebrahn as Alec held him.
Alec leaned against Seregil, not taking his eyes from Rieser and Sebrahn. “He saved us all.”
“Not all,” said Nowen, limping over to them, her sword arm bloody to the elbow.
“How many of us are left?” asked Rieser.
“Rane survived whatever those witches did with their cursed horns, but he’s weak. Taegil has an arrow through his thigh. Relian is weak but alive, thanks to Sebrahn, though he can’t talk. Allia and Morai are dead and Kalien is still missing.”
“So many!” Rieser murmured grimly.
“Sebrahn’s not strong enough to bring them back,” said Alec.
“That’s just as well,” said Rieser. “It might be a temptation if he were.”
Rhal came to join them, covered in blood and pressing a hand to a gash on his forearm.
“How many men did you lose?” asked Seregil.
“Not a man. There are some wounds, but nothing we need the rhekaro for. But we’d better get out of these woods. The fire’s spreading.”
The entire clearing was bathed in the shifting red light now, and smoke was drifting over them in a grey pall. The surface of the pool below the waterfall reflected the color of blood; Seregil suspected that it wasn’t just a trick of the light. The wind was to the west, blowing away from the trail, but that could change in an instant.
“Nowen, get the dead tied on their horses,” Rieser ordered.
“Is there time for that?” asked Rhal, and got a cold look from the Ebrados captain.
“Then my men will help,” Rhal told him.
Rieser looked surprised, but nodded.
Hâzadriën tended the wounded while the others dealt with the dead. Rieser saw to it that some of the bodies were doubled on one horse so that Alec could ride out with Sebrahn. Rane, Sorengil, and Taegil slumped in the saddle and had to be tied on, but Nowen and Rieser made a quick job of it.