Chapter 28 | Part 2 | The Line

The first arrow hit Xandor before the old druid finished raising his staff.

The arrow struck the fleshy part of his left shoulder. Xandor’s arm dropped.

He drove his staff into the ground with his right hand. Roots broke through the frozen soil beneath two attackers. Xandor sagged against the staff, gasping, while the men struggled for their footing.

Then the line collapsed.

Not theirs. The attackers’. They came in from three sides at once, disciplined pairs breaking into a coordinated rush, and Aldric stopped thinking and started counting. Distance. Angle. Speed. The tallest one first. Sword, right-handed, shield on the left, closing from the northeast with a stride that covered ground efficiently. Military training.

Probably frontier, judging by the economy of motion.

Aldric met him at seven paces from Dulint.

The tall man struck fast. Aldric parried three blows and gave ground on the fourth. On the fifth, the man overreached and left his ribs exposed.

Aldric’s blade caught the edge of the grey cloak and bit into the leather beneath. Not deep. The man jumped back, surprised, and Aldric used the gap to scan the field.

“Leave him!” Aldric shouted, because Balin was already moving.

The young dwarf was running toward Xandor, who was on one knee now, the arrow in his shoulder making his left arm useless, his right hand still gripping the staff as roots churned the ground around him. Two grey cloaks were closing on the druid, and Balin was sprinting directly toward them with the graceless determination of someone who had made a decision and burned every alternative behind it.

Dulint watched his nephew run. His hand gripped the axe. He didn’t draw it.

Balin reached Xandor. His sword caught the first grey cloak’s blade inches from the druid’s neck, a block that shouldn’t have worked at his height and didn’t entirely, the impact jarring through his arms and driving him to one knee in the snow. But it was enough. The strike deflected wide. Xandor used the opening to drag himself backward, his staff scraping a line in the snow that the roots followed.

The second grey cloak swung low. Balin couldn’t block it. He twisted, took the flat of the blade against his thigh instead of the edge across his calf, and the impact spun him sideways into Xandor.

Maris braced against a pine at the rear. She stared past the fighters toward the south ridge. Blood started from her nose.

“Two more coming from the south ridge,” she said. Her voice was clinical, stripped of everything except the fact itself. “Thirty seconds.”

Aldric drove his pommel into his opponent’s wrist guard. The man’s grip loosened. Aldric shouldered past him toward the center.

The grey cloaks kept replacing one another. When Aldric turned to meet a blade, another man came at his flank. They were driving him away from Dulint.

A blade cut through his bracer and opened his forearm. He changed his grip and kept fighting.

He couldn’t let them reach the pack.

Blood seeped through Balin’s left trouser leg where the blow had split the skin. He fought from one knee beside Xandor. Each block came later than the last.

“Back,” Aldric commanded. “Everyone back. West. Through the trees. Now.”

Dulint moved first. Axe in one hand, the other gripping Balin’s collar, hauling his nephew upright with a strength that age should have taken from him but rage had returned.

Balin snarled at the contact but his legs took his weight and he stumbled west, bleeding into the snow.

Xandor held the roots until the others reached the trees. When he let go, his staff slipped from his hand. Balin caught him, and Aldric covered their retreat.

Then they were in the trees. Running. Not fast, because Xandor was bleeding and Balin was limping and Aldric’s right arm was going numb below the cut, but moving, west, away from the trail and the trap and the people who wanted what they carried.

Behind them, the horn sounded again. Once. Patient.

No one answered it.

End of Chapter 28.2 —> 28.3: The Second Blood: The Weight