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Vog and his men took a step closer. “Stop!” Mod Feeney shouted. “This is hallowed ground, of temples old and proud. The gods weep.”
Rainfall drew his thin saber with one hand, detatched his cloak, and whipped it about his arm. “Vog! Remember yourself!”
“You’ve breathed your last insult, elf,” Vog said. “At him, now.”
In later years, Wistala only remembered Rainfall’s lower limbs. He fought as though performing one of the little jigs he did when happy, as on the morning his hair began to grow back in. The power of blocks and strikes came out of his legs and hips, not his arm, extended as stiffly as though it and the blade made one long weapon.
In a flash, Rainfall punched a hole through Vog’s ear. He sidestepped, knelt, and sent his next thrust into the kneecap of the man with the whirling chain. As the second man fell to the side of his injured limb, Rainfall got out of the way of the whirling balls, which wrapped around the man’s helm and went home all about the head and neck.
He fell and did not move again.
Rainfall threw his cloak-wrapped arm around the sword of the next man coming in—Wistala heard a krak! and as Rainfall stepped away, the sword fell and the man clutched his injured limb.
Rainfall rewrapped his cloak about his arm as he put his sword-point before the final pair.
The last two stood shoulder-to-shoulder as they advanced on Rainfall, swords held in both hands in front of them, each urging the other to close and occupy the blood-tipped point while the second finished the job.
Finally one worked up the nerve to raise the sword above his head. With a brave cry he came forward, struck a blow that cleaved the figure before him—
But the figure was Rainfall’s cloak, falling to the ground anyway. Rainfall’s sword penetrated the thick muscle at the attacker’s backside. The second man, seeing his lone ally hop about cursing, thought it best to drop his sword and run.
Vog rejoined the fight with a cry, the side of his head red with blood.
Rainfall parried, parried, ducked out of the way, parried again. Wistala heard the pants of both opponents, but Vog’s was the more labored.
Rainfall spoke next: “Blood has washed away whatever quarrels, old and new, we’ve had. Let us cry ‘settled’ and remember the example of those who built Hesstur’s walls and columns.”
Hooves sounded from the darkness, and two of Vog’s men trotted up, one with the bird-standard muddied. The thane looked around at his wounded, grunting men.
“I’ve been a fool,” Vog said. “I’ll beg your pardon and bury the sword-point.” He plunged his weapon into the dirt.
The riders relaxed atop their horses.
Rainfall nodded and turned. “Mod Feeney, let’s look to the injured.” He wiped his sword on his cloak and resheathed it.
Wistala didn’t like the look of the man Vog, the way he turned to his side and glanced around. So when he sprang forward, a dagger aimed at Rainfall’s back, she was already in motion.
Just before the blade went home, Rainfall twisted—too late. The dagger still plunged in.
Wistala’s dragon-dash had carried her only a third of the way—
Rainfall let out the softest of tired sighs like a man hanging up his hat at the end of a long day. He fell to the earth as Feeney screamed, perhaps at the infamy, or perhaps at the sight of a drakka shooting across the ruins like an arrow.
Vog twirled his dagger. “You forget, star-polisher, that victory’s all that matters in the end. And tonight the victory’s—”
As victory was so important to him, Wistala felt it only right that it should be the last intelligible word to pass his lips. Her spring cut off the rest.
Terror took the horses of the mounted men yet again.
She landed hard atop Vog’s back, sii and saa extended and digging. Vog squeaked, rabbitlike, as she opened him up under the rib cage. She took out a mouthful of neck to be sure of him.
She hurried to Rainfall’s side. “Oh, Fa—Rainfall. Speak!”
His eyes still lived, anyway. They fixed on her. “Dragon-daughter.”
Footsteps. Mod Feeny rushed forward, a pickax held high.
“I’m helping him, you fool,” Wistala said in her best Parl.
