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There.
She loosed the arrow.
The point buried itself in flesh. The priest clapped both hands to his chest and tumbled backward as the wooden chest on his knees spun forward and cracked on the stone floor.
With a great, ear-shattering roar, Bloodheart lurched out of his throne, staggered, and stumbled to his knees. His bone flutes scattered around him. One splintered and broke.
“Priest! Traitor!” He roared again, a cry of pain and fury that echoed and hammered in the nave, resounding and rebounding off the vault. One window cracked and shattered, and shards of glass rained down from on high.
“Nestbrother!” he cried. A greenish fluid trickled from his mouth as he fell forward and crawled, trying to reach the wooden chest—or the old priest, both of which now lay within the limits of the prince’s chains. But Sanglant reached them first only to have the old priest stagger to his feet, snap off the haft of the arrow embedded in his chest, and scramble out of reach of prince and enchanter alike. Sanglant kicked the wooden chest out away from Bloodheart’s groping hands.
“Nestbrother!” The Eika chieftain’s voice was ragged now with a liquid lilt as though blood drowned him in his unmarked chest. Dogs bolted in to nip and bite at him, sensing his weakness, but he slapped them away and jerked up to his feet as bubbles of blood frothed on his chin. “By the bond between us I call on you to avenge me. Let your curse fall on the one—”
He clawed at his throat, staggered forward again while the old priest scuttled backward and made some kind of averting sign with his hand as he spoke words Liath couldn’t hear. Dust swirled on the choir floor, caught up in a sudden whirlwind, and a swarm of unseen creatures like stinging gnats spun around her, then sheared away as though wind had blown them off. Flailing blindly, Bloodheart made one last desperate lunge—
Only to drop, dead, at Sanglant’s feet.
And there on the westward flank of the hill, as the Eika horde took breath to make their final charge and annihilate the last of Lavastine’s infantry, the drums clapped once.
And not again.
XVI
THE UNSEEN CHAIN
1
“CAPTAIN Ulric, to the gate!” shouted Lavastine above the sudden outbreak of howling and keening that shattered the silence made by Bloodheart’s death. At once, the sound of fighting reverberated through the nave as Lavastine and his men bolted out of their hiding place.
She drew another arrow in time to see Lavastine himself cutting frantically, shield raised, as a trio of enraged Eika bore him backward. A soldier fell beside him, struck down. Lavastine was next, battered to his knees by their attack.
Sanglant lunged forward at the sight of the nobleman trapped and struggling. Liath winced, bracing herself for the jerk when he hit the limit of his chains, then gaped.
There were no chains. All but the iron collar rattled to the ground, lay crumbling there as if they were a hundred years old and turning to dust. Dust they became, sagging in heaps around Bloodheart’s corpse.
She nocked the arrow, but Sanglant and a half dozen Eika dogs hit the melee before she could get a shot off. He had nothing, only his hands, to fight with. Without thinking, she swung a leg over the railing, meaning to drop down, to save him—
His attack was as swift and as brutal as that of the Eika dogs. He had laid two Eika out flat and ripped one’s throat out with his own teeth while she gaped in horror. An Eika swung hard at him, but a dog leaped between them and took the cut meant for the prince while the rest of the pack swarmed the would-be killer, bearing him down to the flagstones. The other Eika retreated. The dogs gorged on the corpses—three Eika, one human. Lavastine jumped to his feet and he and Sanglant vanished from her line of sight as they ran toward the great doors. She swung her leg back and stood, panting, half in shock, trying to steady herself.
“Eagle!” Erkanwulf called to her from the door. “You must run! We’re sore outnumbered, and we’re to retreat through the tunnel!”
“Down!” she screamed as she drew—Erkanwulf dropped to his hands and knees—and shot the Eika who loomed behind the lad. The Eika fell with a surprised grunt and tumbled backward down the stairs. She ran, tugged Erkanwulf to his feet, and drew her sword, keeping Seeker of Hearts in her left hand.
“After me,” she said. They had to clamber over the dead Eika soldier to get down the curve of the stairs. She did not know what awaited them below, but as they came around the last curve before the door that let onto the nave her nose caught a whiff of it.
Just beyond the open door, Lavastine and his men had formed up. A line of Eika waited beyond among the litter that carpeted the vast nave, but no one moved. They made a broad curve to cut off access to the cathedral doors as well as leaving Lavastine and his men no room to maneuver out in the expanse of the nave itself.
Next to the door the creature that was Sanglant beat back five dogs, cuffing them until they lay down, whining, and bared their throats to him. Blood from their gorging dripped from their muzzles.
The prince stank. There was no kinder way to put it; the reek hit her like a tangible substance, something you could put your hands into. He started back at her appearance in the door. Blood rimed his lips. His clothes, or what remained of them, hung in tatters on him, cloth pressed into mail, stiff with grime; she had seen poor folk and beggars aplenty in her travels but never anyone as wretched as this. It was hard to believe he was a man, still, or to recall that he had ever been one. He was so foul that she had to look away, but even so she caught a glimpse of his expression. Whatever he was, now, he was ashamed of it.
“God have mercy,” whispered Erkanwulf, behind her. “What is it?”
“Hush.” She slipped out the door.
The dogs growled at her but kept their distance, nipping at Erkanwulf as he dodged past. Sanglant slapped them down but said nothing. Could he even speak?
“We retreat,” said Lavastine. “There are a hundred or more of them beyond the door. But Captain Ulric and his group got out ahead of me. We must hope they win through to the gates.”
