When they leapt from their beasts, it was almost as though they did so as one unit. The moon had its near bloat, and the darkness of the desert wasn't as full as the stars shivered out of their clouds and lent cool white light to the area. Enough that the sight of the immense women struck a sort of dread in Alaysha's chest. The rattling of their movement died and an undercurrent of subtle threat echoed in the air in its place. The largest woman, a redhead as strikingly beautiful as she looked dangerous, strode forward with all the confidence of a panther about to settle in for a languid meal she'd stashed in a tree.
Alaysha watched Gael's shoulders shift subtly, gathering energy from the coils of muscle deep into his spine. She expected an explosion of movement, a flurry of excitement from beside her as Edulph lost the rest of his mind to battle madness.
Neither man moved. Both trained, Alaysha thought. Both in their ways, to the warrior's way. Disciplined. Wait for the right time. Wait. Wait.
Alaysha wasn't sure exactly what to expect; she could hear her own breath, finding time with Gael's, with Edulph's finding balance with hers. Everything hummed around her. She felt her heart beat. Filled her legs with air, her fingertips with breath. She became one great lung waiting to exhale.
The leader shouted a word, startling Gael, Alaysha could see. He flinched, but he didn't move to strike, he was that disciplined. Alaysha wanted to steal a look at Edulph, to make sure he wasn't fool enough to engage before time.
The sound came again and Alaysha thought she understood the word. She waited, not sure if she should slip out of line or not. Then it came again.
“Woman.”
Gael didn't move so much as a lung to inhale. Edulph stood stock still. Alaysha shuffled, taking a step sideways and those mica colored eyes landed on her.
“Are these yours?” the woman demanded.
“Mine?”
The face hardened impatiently. “These.” The woman didn't even drop a look to Gael or Edulph; instead they stayed on Alaysha's face so steadily Alaysha believed they were deliberately ignoring the presence of the two men. That's when she realized they were.
“These are my friends,” she admitted. “We're traveling together. Yes.”
The woman's gaze narrowed. “Traveling? No one travels the burnt lands.” She sent a look to the women on either side of her, and two women stepped forward.
Alaysha only had time to think it was foolish for them to try to defend themselves against such calm command. And then she was sprung like a mechanism too long held taut.
She felt her arm lifting her sword, heard the clang of metal against metal. The jolt of meeting an unrelenting match leapt down her elbow and into some soft tissue beneath her ribcage. She meant to fight with all she had. She meant to meet each thrust with equal fervor, until she fell.
Only she didn't.
She couldn't.
The battle still raged, she could hear the metallic sounds, the grunts of effort. But she herself was impotent.
It took a few heartbeats to realize she was being held.
Two of the mountainous women towered behind her, holding her arms behind her back. One of them should have been enough to seize her, but Alaysha supposed the battle madness had given her enough juice to fight being pinned. And so two now held her tightly against one woman's body, with arms bent back from the shoulders, and her legs trapped between four legs. Alaysha could barely move enough to breathe.
Her shoulder burned deep in the tissues beneath the cuff as the women pulled her arms behind her and pinned them there. She could see Edulph being worn down, and she knew by the way he swung his sword a little too slowly, that he was finding it heavy. Still, the women circling him refused to engage him as anything but one-on-one when they could have made short work of him as a group.
The ground kicked up in plumes of dust that turned to grit sanding her eyes and coughing down into her lungs, making breathing difficult. How badly Edulph must be feeling she didn't want to guess, but he fought on anyway.
His opponent took her time, almost lazily playing with him as she blocked his every thrust, lifting her sword at the last moment, twisting it with barely any hip swing. Alaysha realized he was still too dehydrated to stand for long. She wondered why he didn't just give up. It was clear who the better fighter was. Still, Edulph gave it his all and only when it was painfully clear even to him that he would lose, did his opponent leap at him and send him hurtling backwards to the earth, her sword point at his throat. His chest heaved; hers barely moved. Edulph's hair plastered against his head, sweating. Only then, seeing how easily the woman could have taken Edulph did Alaysha breathe easily. The shame she felt at being so quickly dispatched melted away.
"She was playing with him," she heard herself say, and one of the women holding her made a sound of agreement.
Alaysha slumped in their hold. Fighting had been a futile endeavour, obviously allowed by these women only as a means to demonstrate their strength and superiority. She tried to twist in their grasp, to see if Gael realized it too. To tell him to give it up, not to waste his strength fighting for a life that they obviously didn't plan to take.
Her holders didn't seem to want to allow it at first, but when the sounds of battle didn't stop, even when Edulph was being forced to his knees and his hands bound behind him, Alaysha grew belligerent.
"Pull them off," she growled, thinking it was smarter for Gael to conserve his strength, that to continue to oppose the warriors might well mean his unintentional death—he was a stubborn one, that man.
At first, she felt the women slacken their hold, and then she heard a cry of anguish from beside her. She felt her arm being let go and she spun so she could see around before the other could capture it and pull it taut against its mate again.
Yet the clang of metal continued. Gael, Alaysha thought. He must still be fighting. She needed to twist to see him, but she couldn't. She couldn't move enough, and she prayed she'd not hear the silence descend. That one would fight to the death, she knew.
The moments were few but could have been seasons as Alaysha waited. The sounds of exertion grew more laboured, the sounds of scuffle meant a barrage of warriors rather than two. Alaysha counted quietly; two for Edulph, two for her. That meant at least eight against Gael.
She tried to struggle and heard a harsh command in her ear.
“Be still.”
Alaysha tried to catch Edulph's eye as he was forced to his knees. His face was bloody, his cheeks swollen. His beard was cut neatly into two swaths by a long slash. He'd fought with all he had, she thought and sighed heavily. If it weren't for Gael, and for the uncertainty of how far the others had managed to flee, Alaysha would bleed these women of their fluid and be done with it.
The hold on her arms began to twist, and she realized she too was forced to her knees. She swore to herself if Gael was harmed, she would bleed these women. She would, and pray Aedus had gotten far enough away to use the rain that would come after.
As her knees struck the earth, she felt the hold on her lessen, and then she was thrust onto her side, her shoulder ramming the unyielding clay painfully. The point of a sword—her own—was pressed behind her ear as she was left to see the carnage.
Dear deities, there were bodies and body parts everywhere. The ground was soaked with blood.
There, in the midst of three standing, fully engaged women fought Gael. She'd seen him in battle before, and it could be described as beautiful, the way he moved, the way he struck out with such economy of motion it was obvious he treated it with the sense of art he thought it. He fought so now, stepping lightly, face down, arms moving—one with blade, one with sword. Strikingly only when necessary, waiting with the patience of a cobra for the right moment, except now, his combat was not a thing of beauty.
He was bloodied. Hair clotted with red, arms slashed and bleeding. When he spun to meet the blade of an Enyalian who got too close, Alaysha could see his eyes were swollen nearly shut—he'd been struck by a fist or a sword hilt or elbow.
Someone had got close enough to do him harm.
Alaysha could tell the women had realized one was not enough to take this warrior down. Several women lay bleeding and sprawled on the ground around him. It was to one of these fallen that one of Alaysha's captors ran, stumbling in a way that told Alaysha the woman was dead, and none of these Enyalia—least of all that weeping and furious woman touching an unmoving face—would let him live for such folly.
Gael was fighting for his life and he knew it. To call to him would be foolish. They were too large, too strong, too disciplined.
Alaysha couldn't feel her lungs expand. She fought to inhale, to feel her heart pump. Once, as he spun and swung, his metal biting into the blade of another, she thought she caught his eye, and she knew what he'd see if indeed he could see at all: her fear. Fear in her face, her posture. Fear in the way she felt her face contorting in an effort to hold back the stinging in her eyes, to sop up the tears that pooled beneath her nose and leaked into her mouth.
And fear of the knowledge that the power was coming despite her best attempt to wait until he was indeed dead and gone, because if he lived through the battle, then she’d drain him as surely as she drained the rest, and she’d never survive the guilt of it.
And then he dropped his blade, let his arms fall to his sides as he halted, facing her, keeping her gaze with his own purpled and bloody one. He surrendered for her, she knew that. He would've died fighting but for the guilt she'd have to live with if he didn't. He chose instead the blades of his opponents as his death, all three of them darting for him at the same moment he gave in.
Alaysha braced herself for the strike, telling herself she would unleash the coiled power the moment the blades went in. She did her best to hold it back, knowing that if she let go too late, it would be she who took Gael's life.
But it was too late.
The power was unready unfurling.