The Steel Remains

The armored form stopped. The featureless helmet lifted. Perhaps it expected sorcery; Elith was unarmed, but her hair was a wild, tangled halo of gray that seemed to catch the fading blue flickers from the dwenda, her face was a worn mask of age and suffering, and her arms were held up and out in mute echo of the glirsht markers. There was no fear on her face, her whole body denied the very concept that she could be afraid, and she moved forward as if she could not be harmed.

It was as good an impression of a witch as Archeth had ever seen.

“You come too late, dwenda,” she declaimed. “They are all gone, the land is stolen, the sentinels thrown down, the memory faded. I am the last.”

The dwenda shifted, made a decision any warrior could have read in its stance. Archeth opened her mouth to scream. Elith came on, arms outstretched. Smiling, it seemed.

“Take me ho—”

The dwenda chopped out. The sword sliced into Elith’s unprotected side, cut deep into her midriff and pulled clear again. Archeth thought she heard a contemptuous grunt from within the smooth helmet, or maybe it was just relief. Blood drenched the nightgown. Elith made a noise that seemed more gusty joy than pain, and would not fall down. Archeth felt tears sting in her eyes. The dwenda moved in, chopping again, impatiently. The chair back Archeth had fetched up against blocked clear vision of what happened next, but Elith hit the ground three feet away, eyes staring at nothing.

The dwenda turned about and found Archeth on her feet, eight inches away, face bloodied and contorted into a snarl.

She shrilled and stabbed, both knives at once, Bandgleam in under the helmet lip, Falling Angel into the belly. She twisted the blades with every ounce of krin-fed rage she could summon. The dwenda screamed back at her, tried to batter her with the guard and pommel of the long-sword, but she was in far too close for it to be effective. She rode the blows and backed her opponent up on the knives, jerking upward, twisting savagely. The dwenda shrieked again, dropped its sword, and shoved her bodily away with both hands. She grunted, held on to the knives this time. She shook her head and grinned. The blades stayed where they were, the dwenda would have had to levitate eight inches off the floor to get unhooked. She knew it was insane, that the other two Aldrain would be finishing off the Throne Eternal soldier and turning to take her, but she could not let go.

“Indamaninarmal!” she snarled through gritted teeth. “My father’s house! Indamaninarmal!”

It seemed to unlock something inside her. She put her shoulder into the dwenda’s chest, shoved him away, and tugged the knives free. Came about to see the Throne Eternal down on the floor in the puddling crimson of his own blood, gasping and dying, ax fallen from his nerveless fingers, and the two remaining dwenda coming at her, kicking the tumbled furniture aside as they advanced, splattered with human blood but neither of them harmed as far as she could see.

She mustered a deep breath, squared herself, and lifted the knives.

“All right then,” she said.

RINGIL RAN UP THE DARKENED, SCREAMING STREET.

He passed bodies here and there, villagers and Throne Eternal both. Doors in some of the houses were thrown open, and he saw a woman’s corpse sprawled over the threshold of one. The dwenda had come, it seemed, into the homes and open spaces of Ibiksinri with random disregard, and were killing whatever they ran into. As he watched, another front door burst open and a young boy of about eight fled screaming toward him. Behind, in the interior gloom, he saw the blue flicker under the lintel and then the old familiar form, ducking to step through and out. The boy cannoned into him at hip height and he put out a hand, almost absently, to steady him.

“They, my mother, it—” the boy gabbled through streaming tears.

The dwenda came out into the street. It had a peculiar-looking ax in one hand and a short-sword in the other. Ringil tilted his head a little, heard his neck click.

“You’d better stand behind me,” he said, and pushed the boy gently around his hip and backward. “There’s no point in running from these things.”

He let the dwenda come to him. He lifted one hand and pointed to his own face. He’d dipped fingers into the blood of the last dwenda he’d killed and liberally daubed his features until the bittersweet reek of the stuff was thick in his nostrils and throat. He didn’t know if the dwenda had much of a sense of smell, especially from inside their smooth, blank helmets, but it was worth a try.

“See that?” he called out in slow, drawling Naomic. “That’s from one of your friends. But it’s drying up, I need fresh. C’mere, you fuck.”