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Followed by the red-haired priest shouting, "I can't hold it!" from the front.
Other voices shouted out "Hamanu!" but there wasn't time or space to evoke the mighty sorcerer-king's aid.
Templars at the rear of the column surged forward, desperate to avoid one certain death, unmindful of the danger that lay ahead. Mahtra pushed Ruari, who pushed Pavek, who pushed the priest toward the dust-streaked light. Ruari stumbled against something that was not stone. His mind said the sergeant's body, and his feet refused to take the next necessary step. He lurched forward and would have gone down if Pavek hadn't yanked his arm hard enough to make the sinew snap. His foot came down where it had to, on something soft and silent. The next body was easier, the next easier still, and then
he could see light streaming in from above.
Whatever Mahtra had done—Ruari assumed that she and her "protection" were responsible for the cave-in—it had destroyed the little building in the middle of the abattoir floor and any blue-green warding along with it. With Pavek leading, they emerged into a devastated area of the killing ground where stone, bone, and flesh had been reduced to fist-sized lumps. Smoke from the fires and dust from the cave-in made it difficult to see more than an arm's length, but they weren't alone, and they weren't among friends.
Ruari made certain Mahtra and Zvain were behind him, then unslung his staff as Codesh brawlers came out of the haze, poleaxes raised and swinging. He had no trouble blocking the blows—he was fast, and the wood of his new staff was stronger than any other wood he could name—but his body had to absorb the force of the heavy poleaxes. The force shocked his wrists, his elbows, his shoulders, and then his back, bone by bone, through his legs and into his feet before it dissipated in the ground. With each blocked blow, Ruari felt himself shrink, felt his own strength depleted.
There was no hope of landing a blow, not at that moment. He and the templars were surrounded. Those who were fighting could only defend—and pray that those who were evoking the Lion-King succeeded.
Desperate prayers seemed answered when two huge and slanting yellow eyes manifested in the haze. To a man, the Codeshites fell back, and the templars raised a chorus of requests for flaming swords, lightning bolts, enchantments, charms, and blessings. Ruari had all he'd ever want from the Lion of Urik already in his hands. He took advantage of the lull, striding forward to deliver a succession of quick thrusts and knocks with his staff's bronze finial. Three brawlers went down with bleeding heads before Ruari retreated to his original position; the last place he wanted to be was among the Codeshites when Lord Hamanu began granting spells.
The sulphur eyes narrowed to burning slits, focused on one man: Pavek, whose sword was already bloody and whose off-weapon hand held a plain, ceramic medallion.
A single, serpentine thread of radiant gold spun down from the Lion-King's eyes. It struck Pavek's hand with blinding light. When Ruari could see again, the hovering eyes were gone and Pavek was on his knees, doubled over, his sword discarded, clutching his off-weapon hand against his gut. The templars were horrified. They knew their master had abandoned them, though the Codeshites hadn't yet realized this and were still keeping their distance. That changed in a matter of heartbeats. The brawlers surged. Mahtra raced to Pavek's side; the burnished skin on her face and shoulders glowed as brightly as the Lion-King's eyes.
Her protection, Ruari thought. The force that had knocked him down in this same spot yesterday and collapsed the cavern passage behind them moments ago. At least I won't feel the axe that kills me.
But there was something else loose on the killing ground. Everyone felt it, Codeshites and templars alike. Everyone looked up in awe and fear, expecting the sorcerer-king to reappear. Everyone except Ruari, who knew what was happening, Pavek, who was making it happen, and Mahtra, whose eyes were glazed milky white, and whose peculiar magic would be their doom if he, Ruari, couldn't stop it.
He'd touched Mahtra once before when her skin was glowing; it had been the most unpleasant sensation of his life. But Pavek said she'd stopped herself because she felt him, Ruari, beside her.
If he could make her feel that again—?
It was all the hope Ruari had, and there was no time to think of anything better. He was beside her in one long-legged stride, had his arms around her and his lips close to her ear. The heat around her was excruciating. The charring flesh he smelled was undoubtedly his own.
"Mahtra! It's Ruari—don't do this! We're saved. I swear to you—Pavek's saved us." Dust and grit swirled around them. The ground shuddered, but not because of Mahtra. Wrapped tight around Ruari's shoulders and waist, her magic was fading, her arms were cooling with every throb of her pulse. He could feel her breath through the mask, two gentle gusts against his neck. Two gusts. In the midst of chaos, Ruari wondered what the mask concealed, but the thought, for the instant that it lasted, was curiosity, not disgust. Then his attention was drawn into the swirling dust.
And the guardian Pavek had raised through the packed dirt of the Codesh killing ground was an aspect like nothing Ruari had ever imagined.
It cleared the air inside the abattoir, sucking all the dust, the debris, the smoke, and even the flames into a semblance no taller than an elf, no burlier than a dwarf. But the ground shuddered when it took a ponderous step, and the air whistled when it slowly swung its arm. A Codesh brawler caught the force of its fist and flew in a great arc that ended on the other side of the wall, leaving her poleaxe behind. The semblance—it was not a guardian: guardians were real, but they had no substance; that was another axiom of druidry—armed itself with the axe and with its second swing took the heads of two more.
That sobered the Codeshite brawlers. The boldest among them attacked the semblance Pavek had summoned. They died for their bravery. The brightest surged toward Pavek, who had not risen from the ground. Ruari dived for his staff and regained his feet, ready to defend Pavek's life. The fighting was thrust and block, sweep and block, rhythm and reaction, as it had been before, with no time for thought until they'd beaten back the first Codeshite surge. Then there was time to breathe, time to notice who was standing and who had fallen.
Time to notice, through the now-clear air, the solid line of yellow-robed corpses hanged from the railing of their watchtower.
Until he had met Pavek, and for considerable time thereafter, Ruari would have cheered the hanging sight. He'd been conceived when his templar father had raped his elven mother, and he'd grown up believing the only good templar was a dead one. Even now he wouldn't want any of the men and women fighting beside him as friends, but he'd learned to see them as individuals within their yellow robes and understood their gasps and curses. He wasn't surprised when the war bureau survivors around raised their voices in an eerie, wailing war-cry, or that they pursued the Codeshites, who broke ranks and ran for the gate. What did surprise Ruari, though, was the four yellow-robed templars who stayed behind with him in a ring around Pavek, the red-haired priest, Mahtra, and Zvain.
The. guardian semblance Pavek had raised was slow but relentless. Nothing the Codeshite brawlers did wounded it or sapped its strength. The best they could do against it was defend, as Ruari defended with his staff against their poleaxes—and with the same effect. Though formed from insubstantial dust and debris, the semblance put the strength of the land in each of its blows. Mortal sinews couldn't withstand such force for long. The brawlers went down, one by one, until the critical moment came when those who were left comprehended that they wouldn't win, couldn't win, and stopped trying. They broke ranks and fled toward the gate—which was apparently the only way off the killing ground and which was where the fighting between Codeshites and templars remained thick.
Ruari took two strides in pursuit, then stopped when the semblance collapsed into a dusty rubbish heap. Two of his four templar allies kept going, but two stayed behind, panting hard, but aware that they were in danger as long as they were in Codesh, as long as Pavek remained senseless and slumped in the dirt.
Pavek's eyes were open when Ruari crouched beside him, and he groaned when, with Mahtra's help, Ruari eased him onto his side. Blood soaked the front of the fine, linen clothes the Lion-King had given him. Blood was on his arms and on his hands. Ruari feared the worst.
The priest knelt and took Pavek's left hand gently between his own. "It's his hand," the priest said, turning Pavek's hand to show Ruari what had happened when the medallion burst apart. "He'll lose it, but he'll live, if I can stop the bleeding."
Looking down at bone, sinew, and tattered flesh, Ruari's fear became cold nausea. He knelt beside the priest as much from weakness as from the desire to help.
"There's power here—"
"The power he himself raised?" The priest refused Ruari's offer with a shake of his he
ad. "It's too riled, too angry. I wouldn't try—if I were you."
The priest was right. Ruari had no affinity for Pavek's guardian. This was Urik, in all its aspects: Pavek's roots, not his. But the red-haired priest was no healer. The only help he could offer was taking the remains of the leather thong that had held Pavek's medallion around his neck and tying it tight around Pavek's wrist instead.
