Kagur spotted Eovath on the hillside. She aimed an arrow, and then a spiketail lumbered in front of the giant and blocked her view. Cursing, she shot an oncoming xulgath instead.
She dropped two more after that, then glimpsed or perhaps merely sensed motion overhead. She looked up and saw a gliding shadow, visible chiefly when it occluded one star and then another. It could only be a spearbeak.
“Watch the sky!” she shouted, pointing upward. She then realized that with so many folk yelling, xulgaths hissing, longstriders roaring, lightning bolts crackling, and log sections thumping and banging, it was likely no one had noticed. She loosed two shafts at the spearbeak, and it thudded to earth in front of one of the branch and briar barricades. Presumably, someone noticed that.
Kagur looked back down the hillside just in time to see xulgaths that had charged high enough to hurl javelins. She ducked, and two such missiles arced over her head. Off to her right, someone less fortunate cried out in pain.
The first wave of xulgaths raced onward. Kagur drew her sword.
As Holg had promised, the barrier in front of her hindered the foe. One xulgath tried to scramble over, its feet tangled in the mesh, and she slashed its throat as it floundered. A second darted for the gap between her barricade and the next one, but as it squeezed through, a tribesman smashed its skull with a club. A third had a spear long enough to reach across the top of the obstruction, and it thrust the point at Kagur’s torso. She sidestepped, grabbed the weapon, yanked the reptile forward, and hacked into its spine.
Then a redstripe sprang high enough to clear the barricade and rip her head off, too. She sidestepped, cut, and caught the beast in the leg. When it landed, the wounded limb made it stagger, and an orc speared it in the guts before it could catch its balance.
After that, the pressure on Kagur’s position let up, although she could see it would resume as soon as more xulgaths completed the scramble up the slope. She used the momentary respite to try to survey the battle as a whole.
But that was difficult. The flares of lightning reduced the lower reaches of the hillside to dazzling confusion. She could tell that a couple of the gigantic war beasts were down, but not what kind or how many were still on their feet. About all she was sure of was that, at the rate her allies were flinging the magic javelins, they were bound to run out soon.
Even closer to hand, it was difficult to decipher what was happening. Humans and orcs battled xulgaths across the barricades with dead and wounded comrades sprawled or crawling at their feet. But who was winning? It was all just howling, screaming chaos, and she wondered fleetingly if her father or even Lord Varnug, with all his experience leading the Blacklions’ following, would have understood it any better.
At least she could see that her shamans were still alive. Every tribe had contributed at least one, and they chanted and jabbed with the spears, clutched the carved fangs and claws, or brandished the quartz crystals that lent force to their prayers.
A young girl pointed, and blades of grass shot up tall, thick, and bristling with thorns to catch the xulgaths who were scrambling through them.
Ghethi filled the air with a piercing shriek that, audible even above the general din, knocked half a dozen reptilian warriors reeling backward.
Spiders the size of wolves, no doubt controlled by one of the enemy shamans, swarmed over a barricade, and Holg rattled off an incantation and lashed his staff at them. The scuttling creatures abruptly shrank until Kagur could no longer make them out and they were presumably too small to hurt anyone.
But a couple human shamans had already stopped fighting to drag wounded warriors back from the battle line and tend them. Kagur assumed they’d used up all their battle magic, and it wouldn’t be long before their fellow spellcasters did the same.
She hoped the xulgath shamans were running out of power, too. Then more reptilian warriors rushed at her spot on the battle line, and she no longer had thought to spare for anything but killing the next foe, and then the one after that.
Still, she noticed when the blasts of lightning came to an end, and constant dark engulfed the slope once more. Sometime after that, xulgaths stopped rushing up to try to slaughter her.
She looked around. No one else was fighting across the barricades, either, although two Dragonflies were dispatching a spearbeak that was thrashing around on the ground nearer the cave mouth. Mostly, warriors slumped weary and panting amid the mingled stinks of blood, sweat, charred flesh, and the thunderstorm smell of the lightning bolts responsible for the charring. The wounded moaned and whimpered, or, in the case of the maimed xulgaths littering the slope, croaked and hissed.
But what was going on farther away? Kagur didn’t think there were any longstriders still towering over all the other reptiles, but what about the other war beasts? Were any of them still alive? And were her allies still harassing the xulgaths’ flanks? She could hear cries and make out hints of movement that suggested they were, but it was impossible even to guess how they were faring.
She turned to Holg and felt a shock of dismay. As far as she could tell, no enemy had wounded him. But he was wheezing, hanging his head, and leaning on his staff like he’d fall over without it.
But she knew the old man wouldn’t want her to remark on his exhaustion or hold back from seeking his help. “What do you see,” she asked him, “and what do you think it means?”
“We held them and hurt them,” Holg answered, “but they hurt us, too.”
“Did we hurt them enough to make them run away?”
The shaman shook his head. “I doubt it. Not while the giant with the shining axe is still alive to lead them.”
“Good.” Win or lose, live or die, it was time to dance the final measures of the dance.
Down below, the xulgaths in the center of the hillside, the ones not busy fighting on the flanks, raised a hissing, screeching clamor. Then they cleared a path. Tower shield on his left arm and greataxe in his right hand, Eovath rode out of the darkness.
Mounted just behind the bony ruff, which further shielded the lower portion of his body, the frost giant rode the hugest threehorn Kagur had yet seen. As far as she could tell, the steed didn’t have any lightning burns or other wounds on its hide. Maybe Eovath had kept it well back, holding it in reserve, or perhaps he’d just now summoned it out of the forest.
For all its bulk and thick legs and the steepness of the slope, the threehorn accelerated until it was lumbering fast as a man could run. Xulgaths screamed and charged alongside it.
Kagur aimed at a beady eye and let an arrow fly. But the beast’s head bobbed up and down as it ran, and her first effort struck the bony beak, pricking the creature but nothing more.
At first, no lightning bolts leaped at the threehorn, and she assumed her comrades had expended them all. Then Rho scrambled up to the barricades and cast the one he’d evidently held in reserve.
As the weapon dissolved into a streak of burning light, Eovath shifted the tower shield to the side to uncover the black breastplate beneath. The lightning disappeared into it as the earlier magical fire had, without seeming to do the wearer the slightest harm.
Rho should have thrown at the threehorn, Kagur thought. But she understood how the creature moved now, its rhythm. She could accomplish what the youth hadn’t. She nocked one of her last remaining arrows and drew it back to her ear.
The longbow writhed in her grip, twisting and locking into a contorted shape incapable of propelling a shaft. A xulgath shaman had evidently cast a spell on it.
Kagur pivoted back toward Holg. He shook his head to indicate that he couldn’t restore the weapon to usefulness. With a curse, she dropped it and her quiver as well.
Meanwhile, Eovath, his mount, and the allies charging with them pounded into javelin range. Men and orcs threw relentlessly, exhausting the last of the missiles. Xulgaths dropped, but the shield protected the giant, and the threehorn only suffered scratches.
Vom bellowed commands, and warriors massed and extended spears over the section of barricade Eovath was charging. The threat didn’t deter him or the war beast, either. They kept coming, and when they smashed into the spear points, the weapons gouged the reptile’s visage but then snapped or glanced away.
An instant later, the threehorn rammed through the barrier and trampled the center of it flat. Humans and orcs scattered, but some weren’t quick enough. Swinging its head back and forth, the beast battered warriors with the sides of its two longer horns, flinging them about. It tossed its head and ripped an orc open from crotch to throat with the curved horn on its beak.
Xulgaths poured through the breach the threehorn had opened. Howling tribesfolk rushed to meet the threat, and where they only fought enemy warriors, they held their own. But when the war beast turned its horns in their direction, they had to scurry out of the way or die.
Kagur circled. The threehorn was all but invulnerable from the front but might prove less so if she attacked its flank.
A xulgath screeched and lunged at her with outstretched claws. She sidestepped, cut at its spine as it blundered past, and it dropped.
Two more reptiles spread out to flank her. She shifted her front foot to make it look like she was retreating, then rushed them. Surprised, they faltered. She slashed left, then right, and they too fell.
She stepped over bodies as she maneuvered, and one of them fumbled at her leg. She sprang beyond its reach without looking to see if it was an injured xulgath trying to hinder her or a wounded ally seeking help. She had no time for either.
Finally, the surging back and forth of frenzied combatants opened a path to the war beast. And Eovath was busy swinging his axe one-handed at targets on the right side of the threehorn while Kagur was approaching on the left. Perfect.
She charged, longsword extended for a thrust that momentum ought to drive deep into the war beast’s body. Xulgaths pivoted to chop and stab at her as she passed, but the quickest of them was still a shade too slow.
Eovath, however, was not. Just as the blade was about to reach its target, he somehow sensed the threat. He turned, leaned down, and blocked the attack with his shield. Kagur lurched to a halt just shy of slamming into the barrier herself.
The axe spun at her head, and she stepped back from the blow. Eovath, she thought, was using a weapon intended for two hands with only one. He was also striking across his body, and that was always awkward for a mounted warrior. Maybe she could kill the threehorn even with him fighting to protect it, or better yet, kill him!
She advanced, inviting an axe chop, then swayed back far enough to let it whiz by. She slashed at his hand, just missed, then cut at the threehorn. Jorn Blacklion’s sword gashed scaly hide and the flesh beneath. But a rib blocked it from slicing as deep as she’d hoped.
Then the threehorn wheeled toward her, and its bulk was like a shifting mountain, impossible to resist. She scrambled to keep it from knocking her off her feet.
The frantic evasion landed her in the midst of a clash between two orcs and three xulgaths. She parried a spear thrust, cut her assailant’s belly open, pivoted, and slashed a second reptile’s throat. One orc seized and immobilized the remaining xulgath’s knife hand while his comrade bashed its skull in.
All together, it only took a moment. But when Kagur whirled back around, she was right in front of the threehorn’s bloody spikes and glaring eyes.
She and the orcs scattered. As she expected, the beast ignored her fellow warriors and stamped after her.
It advanced with a measured tread that allowed it to compensate when she dodged. Under other circumstances, she could still have outmaneuvered it as she had the spiketail her first night in Orv. But the rest of the battle hemmed her in, whereas the giant reptile could simply wade through anyone who failed to get out of the way without even slowing down.
The creature stepped and thrust its horns at her. She lunged between them and slashed it across a nostril. Maybe that part was tender, and the pain would balk it.
No. It flipped its head, and she leaped back to keep the beak horn from goring her. Eovath grinned down like they were playing a game together.
“Coward!” she shouted. “Come down on the ground and fight fair!”
He laughed. The war beast lumbered forward, and she retreated.
But she couldn’t just back away forever. Soon she was bound to fetch up against a tree or some other obstacle. Or xulgaths would take her down from behind while she was focused on the threat in front of her.
She charged. A horn shifted to catch her, and she dodged past it.
The giant reptile lowered its head to rip with the curved horn. But before it even finished the preliminary motion, she leaped on top of the beak and scrambled onward toward the bony ruff and the rider behind it. At last, wide-eyed surprise wiped the smirk from Eovath’s square blue face.
Kagur raised her sword to cut and reached for the base of one of the long horns to anchor herself. But then, even though she was no longer in front of it, Eovath’s mount, completing the action it had begun, tossed its head and flung her into the air.
She slammed down on her back, and her head banged into a stone or something equally hard. Suddenly, everything seemed hazy and far away.
The threehorn lumbered around to face her. A part of her screamed that she had to get away from it, but when she tried to jump up, her limbs were numb and sluggish.
Chanting, eyes closed, Holg stepped between the threehorn and her. The swirling lines on his staff glowed, and as he swung it over his head, the end burst into crimson flame.
Seemingly startled, the threehorn hesitated. Then Eovath snarled a sibilant command and it started onward, evidently to spear Kagur and trample the old man at the same time.
But its foot was just leaving the ground when Holg shouted the final word of his prayer and brought the fiery rod down across its beak. The staff snapped into three pieces. The threehorn froze. Then it shuddered, groaned, and fell over sideways with an earthshaking thud.
Swaying, Holg regarded the huge, now motionless body for an instant. Then he too toppled.
His collapse jolted the fumbling slowness out of Kagur’s limbs. She scrambled to the old man and asked, “Are you all right?”
Judging from the way he was shuddering and the blood pouring from his nose, he wasn’t. But he gasped, “Fine! Get Eovath! You’re the only one who can finish this!”
As she dashed around the threehorn’s mound of a carcass, she thought Holg might be mistaken. Even a frost giant could be crushed or pinned if astride such a colossal mount when it fell.
And that would be all right. Ever since the night of his betrayal, she’d craved the most complete and personal vengeance she could take, meeting Eovath blade to blade in the fullness of his might and pride and outfighting him, humbling him, slashing his blue flesh over and over till she ended with his heart’s blood staining their father’s sword. But now, with her allies’ lives in jeopardy, she simply wanted him dead, no matter how.
Unfortunately, when she rounded the threehorn’s body, Eovath was on his feet and to all appearances unharmed. He grinned and called, “I’m impressed. Who was that old man?”
She advanced. He tossed away the tower shield, gripped his greataxe with both hands, and came to meet her. Perhaps sensing something of destiny or expressive of the will of spirits, gods, and demons in the moment, neither humans, orcs, nor even xulgaths moved to intervene.
Eovath feinted high and swung low, the true attack a stroke meant to reap the legs out from under Kagur. She retreated and slashed his forearm as the greataxe whizzed past, then, before he could ready it for a second blow, lunged to slash at his knee.
But he too defended by retreating. His long legs made it easy, and now the axe came hurtling down at her head. She wrenched herself out of the way and flicked her blade at the giant’s wrist. The axe snapped sideways to parry, and steel clanged on steel. The jolt stung her fingers.
Eovath followed up with a chop at her face. She sprang back out of range, and he pursued, whirling the axe at her torso. She dropped under the blow, then exploded forward with her sword extended for another try at slicing his knee.
He pivoted out of the way, and from the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a flicker that told her the greataxe was in motion. She dodged, spun, and cut to the ribs. Her sword rang harmlessly against the black cuirass.
Eovath cut, and she pulled her sword arm back to keep him from lopping it off. They stepped back from one another and started to circle.
She initiated the next three exchanges, and he, the four after that, neither scoring. But by the end of the last one, Kagur was panting. Sweat stung her eyes, her pulse pounded in her neck, and her actions were a hair less precise than before. Meanwhile, except for the superficial cut on his arm, Eovath seemed as fresh as ever.
She supposed it only made sense that he was wearing her down. She was human and had been fighting since the initial skirmish below the village. He had a giant’s might and endurance and had saved them for this duel.
But she had to find a way to win! She knew his style and his favorite tricks. That ought to mean she could make him react as she wanted him to.
She shifted in and slashed upward at his fingers. He spun the greataxe in a way that both evaded her attack and caught her blade where the head of his weapon met the shaft. Without pausing, the axe began a second rotation intended to twist the sword hilt out of her grasp.
She cried out, grabbed her weapon with her off hand, and strained against the pressure. Such resistance could only delay the inevitable, and that not for long. Whether she used one arm or two, her strength was no match for his, and, knowing that, he grinned.
The greataxe tore the sword from her fingers. No doubt rejoicing, xulgaths hissed and screeched, while humans and orcs cried out in dismay.
Either way, the responses were premature. After a moment of pushing back, she’d intentionally loosened her grip, and the sudden lack of opposition tipped Eovath off balance. She sprang in close, pulled his knife from her belt, and drove it into his groin, where the black cuirass didn’t cover.
Blood spurted, painting her arm to the shoulder. The watchers roared. She stepped out of the way as Eovath tottered forward and fell to his knees.
He turned his head. He was still smiling, but a different smile, with something dazed and incredulous in it. “My own trick,” he croaked.
Give or take, she thought. Keeping her eyes on him, she maneuvered to pick up her sword.
“It’s still not enough,” her brother said. “The xulgaths will heal me. Or Rovagug will.”
No, she thought, he won’t. And then she charged.
To her surprise, Eovath’s shaking hands managed to raise the axe and interpose its curved edge between them. She twisted past it and cut at his neck.
More blood sprayed, and the giant fell forward onto his face. She stood over him and kept hacking.
When the head came off, she lifted it by its yellow hair and pivoted to show it to those nearby. Then she looked for a higher spot from which to display it to everyone.
The body of the threehorn would do. She scrambled up its tail onto its ribs and brandished both the severed head and her father’s sword in the air. “Blacklion!” she roared, with all the breath she had left. “Blacklion! Blacklion! Blacklion!”
Xulgaths gaped up at her. Then they fled—first one, two, or three at a time, then the entire horde running back down the hillside.