Vellichor carved a swathe of waist-high, windblown grass as it rose to meet the druin’s singing sword, and the two blades met with a sound like glass breaking. Clay moved into the space behind Gabe, aware that several more blows were being exchanged just beyond his shoulder. When the charging minotaur was just strides away he stepped out to meet it, angling Blackheart so the beast bounced off and went careening toward Lastleaf.
The Heathen leapt out of its path, muttering a curse in druic as his sword quietly echoed at his side. The minotaur’s stumbling momentum took it right into the lava pit. It succeeded in getting an arm down before falling in, but bellowed in wordless agony as the limb turned to char and its mane caught fire.
Gabriel blinked, sparing a glance at Clay. “Thanks.”
Clay shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
“Did you know,” said Lastleaf, as casually as if the three of them were rocking in chairs on a sun-dappled porch, “my father told me once that to die by Vellichor’s blade is the only way our kind can return to our own realm.”
Clay recalled Shadow saying something to that effect back in the Heartwyld. It is a key, he’d told them, without realizing the only door it opened was death itself.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” said Gabriel.
The Heathen’s harsh laughter pealed into the air above the battlefield. “I think not,” he said liltingly.
Gabe feinted low, drawing Lastleaf’s blade humming toward his knees, but when Vellichor stabbed suddenly high the druin turned so the edge missed his face by inches. By then the Heathen’s own weapon was slicing toward Gabriel’s side. Clay managed to get Blackheart in its path, and gasped when Madrigal sheared a corner of his shield right off.
“Son of a bitch,” Clay swore, and then yelped as Gabriel shoved him hard.
The Heathen’s sword went shinging through what would have been Clay’s neck had Clay not been tumbling backward onto his ass.
A thought struck him suddenly, for no reason, and was of no use whatsoever except to explain why a piece of his most treasured possession was lying near his feet: The noise his sword makes … it’s cutting the air. His next thought was more of an observation, really: Gabe just saved your life.
Currently Gabriel was trying to save his own. With no one else to steal his focus, Lastleaf was pressing the attack, using the prescience to anticipate his rival’s every move. The Heathen’s sword was a howling blur, ringing in rapid succession against Vellichor as Gabe relied on instinct alone to defend himself.
From the ground it was hard to tell whether or not the battle was going in their favour. More than half of the matriarch’s brood were dead, but so was Aric Slake, whose head was admiring his body from several feet away. He saw May Drummond die (again) on the tip of a wyvern’s tail.
An unfortunate side effect of Moog’s Twining Staff was that once it was done clobbering one’s enemies it more often than not turned on whoever was holding it, at least until its enchantment wore off. The wizard was currently locked in mortal combat with his own weapon as each of them attempted to throttle the other into submission.
Matrick had somehow got himself onto the wyvern matriarch’s back. He was straddling one of Ashatan’s wings and attempting to push a dagger between her black iron scales. Ashatan herself was preoccupied by Larkspur, who scored a deep gash in the matriarch’s head before taking to the sky. The wyvern roared again and vaulted up after her, forcing Matrick to abandon his efforts to harm her and simply hold on for the ride.
Clay didn’t see Ganelon until Syrinx was cutting a seemingly inevitable path toward the Heathen’s midsection. Warned by the prescience, Lastleaf turned at the last second and brought his sword chopping down with enough strength to spin the axe sideways before it hit him.
It still hit him, though.
The blow drew a breathless grunt from the druin. He lost his grip on Madrigal and was thrown several yards through the air, yet somehow managed to land skidding on the soles of his feet. His helmet had been knocked askew, so Lastleaf tore it off and tossed it behind him.
Watching it bounce away, Clay was shocked to see the minotaur who’d charged him earlier climbing doggedly to its feet. Its mane was singed to stubble, and its left arm fizzled at the elbow in a cauterized stump, but it seemed hell-bent on getting back in the fight.
Clay was more immediately concerned by the fact that Lastleaf was pulling the straps of all three scabbards over his head. He let the two empty scabbards fall and curled his long fingers around the hilt of his third and final sword.
“The gorgon told me why you’ve come,” he said to Gabriel, who was using this brief respite to try to catch his breath. “If I kill you I will find her, this daughter of yours. I’ll make certain she suffers.”
It was Ganelon who answered, green eyes glaring over the edge of his axe. “If,” he said.
The Heathen’s sneer wavered, but so far as Clay could tell it had less to do with the warrior’s remark than with the prospect of unsheathing Tamarat. Lastleaf’s hands were trembling, his white-furred ears pressed flat. He seemed genuinely reluctant to draw it, and Clay wondered if he’d had cause to do so since the day he’d used it to defend himself from his even more monstrous father.
But then Ganelon took a step toward him and Lastleaf had no choice but to pull Tamarat out for all to see.
Except that Clay couldn’t see it—not really.
His mind told him the blade was black, a colourless void, as empty as a sky without stars. But when he looked into it there was simply … nothing there. Whereas Vellichor served as a window to a realm beyond this one, Tamarat was a fragment of utter oblivion.
Clay hoped to hell Ganelon could see it, because the Heathen took two running steps and leapt, snarling, at the warrior, his blade a black smear against the sky. Gabriel moved to Ganelon’s left side, leading with Vellichor’s bright edge and forcing Lastleaf to fight on two fronts.
Let’s make it three, thought Clay, surging to his feet, determined to help in whatever way he could. He hoisted his shield—
The minotaur hit him like a wagon full of rocks rolling downhill. Clay saw the battlefield blur, and the next moment he was slewing sideways on the ground. His ears were ringing, his jaw ached, and Clay wondered whether or not he’d hit his head—he couldn’t remember, so probably yes.
“You fucking—” he managed to say before his assailant fell on top him. The beast was surprisingly heavy for something half his height and missing most of an arm. Its bloody snout pressed wetly against his mouth, and Clay’s nostrils filled with the scent of burnt fur and overcooked cabbage.
Groaning with the effort, he used Blackheart to shove the minotaur aside, and then continued to hammer it with his shield until all but its twitching hooves had stopped moving.
He sat up, disoriented.
Saw Gabe and Ganelon trade strikes too fast to follow with the Autumn Son and his near-invisible sword. Saw Moog holding his staff by the tail as it walloped a flock of reanimated skeletons into ash. Saw Barret stomping on an orc’s head and Tiamax the arachnian cracking a wyvern’s jaws with the strength of six hands.
The stitches in Clay’s face had come open again, and his left cheek was scraped raw. He climbed groggily to his feet, trying to reconcile in his head how he’d spin this story to Tally if he lived to tell it.
What’s that, honey? What was I doing while Uncle Gabe was duelling a god with all of civilization at stake? Why, I was wrestling in the muck with an exceptionally tenacious cow.
He hefted his shield again and hobbled as fast as he could toward the only fight that mattered. He could hardly believe it was still going: Gabriel was among the fastest, most cunning fighters Clay had ever known, and Ganelon was the strongest, fiercest warrior … well, maybe ever.
But Lastleaf had been alive for more than a millennium, and had spent the majority of those years skulking in the Heartwyld, evading the pursuit of his father and imposing his will upon creatures that would give even the most stalwart hero a lifetime of sleepless nights. He wouldn’t go down easily.