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Ekkehard lifted his chin, very much like the boy who has at last defeated his powerful rival. “You can’t answer me!” he crowed.
“Sanglant!” Her voice cut through everything else.
He turned in the saddle to see Liath pressing her mount forward, to see her speaking as she rode in a manner that caught Hathui and Fulk’s attention. His guardsmen scattered like chaff before wind.
“What?” he began.
Too late, he recognized the threat.
“Behind me!” she shouted, riding toward him. “I still have my bow and a dozen griffin feathers. Best if Ekkehard’s men spread out. They must not clump together.”
This he had seen for himself that awful night on the foothills of the Alfar Mountains.
“How many?” she asked. “I can’t see them.”
Galla.
He smelled them now. He heard their bell-like voices tolling, two of them, four of them, whispering his name and Liath’s name: Sanglant. Liathano. But he could not see them through the trees.
“Four, I think.”
“Who are they after?”
“Only you and me.”
“Ai, God.” She was furious, scared, and determined. “Who has sent them?”
“There!”
Branches swayed and snapped. Where their track led across the underbrush it left a barren trail in its wake.
“I see only three.” Her bow was already strung. She drew an iron feather out of her quiver and set it to the string, heedless of the trickle of blood on her skin.
The galla approached from the south, two of them moving one behind the next and one about thirty paces off to one side. He hissed, then shut his eyes, seeking, listening, smelling, letting the touch of the wind on his cheek speak to him. He heard a fainter set of bells, but the ringing of the other three drowned it and he could not mark its direction.
Horses screamed. Men shouted, trying to control them. He heard a man fall, the thump of his impact on the ground, a shattered bone, a weeping curse at the injury.
“Fulk!” Sanglant shouted, not looking to see where Fulk was. He dared not look away from the advancing galla. “Scatter the men and keep them away from me and Liath! Do as I say!”
“Ride quickly!” said Ekkehard, behind them. “We’ll get away.”
Sanglant drew his sword, because he could not stand his ground without his sword in his hand, even knowing the sword was useless.
“Back up,” said Liath to him. “I need a clear shot.”
She drew but held it, lips parted, gaze drawn as tight as the bowstring. Her braid hung down her back. Her chin was lifted and her shoulders in perfect alignment. The mellow light gave her skin a rich gleam. Her eyes flared with blue. She was as beautiful as any creature he had ever seen, bright, poised, and deadly. No wonder he loved her so much.
The galla shuddered as they came out from under the trees, as if the pale light of this cloudy day hurt their essence. Light hurt them, because they were creatures formed out of shards of darkness. They were pillars of black smoke, roiling, faceless but not voiceless. He heard them speak.
“Sanglant. Liathano. Liathano.” And, more faintly, “Liathano.” One for him, but three for her. Why not twenty? Why not a hundred? He was sweating; he was cold.
They glided forward over the ground.
“Nay!” shouted Fulk. “Stay back! Stay back!” He sounded likely to weep, but he had seen galla before. No human weapon could defeat them.
Liath loosed her first arrow.
The leading galla vanished with a ringing wail, and a sizzle, and a snap. The smoky pillar simply flicked out of existence. He no longer heard his own name, only hers.
