Meek

At the Cygnet mercenaries gathered, Eli felt the Reach calling to him. Tugging at him. He reflexively called upon the protection of the mountain, the vision of his core inside a deep cavern. Trying to keep the Reach from affecting the most central part of himself.

Then he exhaled slowly and released the vision.

If he wanted to use the Reach's power, he couldn't keep running from it. He couldn't keep fearing it. He needed to allow it, to welcome. And he tried, but he did fear it. It terrified him.

While he was struggling with that, Riadn appeared silently at his side.

She gazed past the children to the witch and her risen. She opened her mouth to speak, then didn't say anything.

"I saw you climb after we killed that bear," Eli told her. "The north wall won't be a problem for you."

"That's not what worries me."

He studied her face. "You don't like the plan?"

"No."

"Then why did you agree?"

"It's the best one we have." Riadn kept looking into the quarry. "Can you harness the Reach?"

"Huh?"

"I've spent my life hunting lost mages, Meek. You're not on one of the five Paths."

"I'm on a dryn Path. What're you, going to banish me?"

"Not in the next hour," she said, with a faint smile. "You decided to attack when you heard the lady talking about the Bloodwitch harnessing the Reach. You think you can do the same?"

Eli knew he should lie to her, but his plan involved her climbing alone into that pit and he just couldn't. "I'll blessdamn try."

"Mother Glade guide you," she said, and clasped his shoulder.

"Fair seas and favorable winds," he said, an old southern greeting.

Which, on second thought, he shouldn't have known.

But Riadn merely smiled again, then said, "If I fall, Payde will berserk."

"You want me to stop him?"

"No, I want you to get everyone out of his way."

In the chair, the mage Elsavet was trembling. Eyes still closed, posture still perfect. Sitting there primly, with her entire body trembling.

Eli crouched facing Lady Brazinka. She looked bad. Beads of sweat on her cheeks, her damp, mousy hair plastered to her face. Her breath was so faint and her skin was so pallid that for a moment he thought she'd died.

She'd been lying there for three days, feeding her power into the mage. With no hope of victory, refusing to retreat. Because she wouldn't abandon those kids, no matter the cost to herself--or to her people.

So yeah, 'stubborn' was right.

But also ... halo, talk about strength of will. Talk about determination.

Eli was a little awed. And, despite himself, impressed. He'd come here to make her pay for what she'd done to him, but clearly she'd paid enough.

She must've felt his proximity, because she opened one of her bloodshot eyes. Her chapped lips moved but didn't make a sound.

"You need to lend Payde a little magic," he said.

Her eye widened and she shook her head.

"If you don't, we're all dead. Those kids are dead."

Tears fell from both her eyes, open and closed, but she nodded minutely.

"Payde, get over here!" he called. "She'll do it."

When he stepped away, Lara called him a prick. At least she'd stopped saying 'prickle.'

"We needed it done," he told her.

"You enjoyed it. You're just ... vindictive."

"You've known that since the day we met."

She chewed on her lower lip. "I'm scared."

"Yeah, but you know what you're not?"

"What?"

"Useless."

She showed him a wavering smile. Her gray eyes were big, and caught glimmering of the torchlight burning in the quarry. He felt a sudden upwelling of fondness for her. She'd been though so much. As much as he had, in a way. A dryn among the grasslanders, a servant to Chivat Lo. A partner to ... to whatever he'd become.

Courage came easily when you were strong. When you fought like Riadn or cast shields like Payde or healed like him. But Lara's bravery came despite weakness, despite vulnerability. That was true courage.

He took her in his arms, and held her until it was time for her to leave.

During the first assault, half the Cygnet mercenaries had descended on ropes to the quarry floor. Most of the others had lowered themselves to the street level a few blocks to the south, in one of the few boulevards that still opened this close to the Reach, that still funneled into the quarry.

At that point, the Bloodwitch had been hanging back. The Cygnets had thought she was more like a normal mage: with terrible offensive powers, but no defense to speak of.

The first half of the mercs engaged the risen while the second group had circled around to attack the Bloodwitch herself. They'd been massacred.

But the few remaining mercs, the ones with Elsavet, had succeeded in freeing the kidnapped children from the pens. They'd led them halfway to safety before the Bloodwitch herself caught them at the edge of the quarry. Elsavet had raised a shield around the kids and maintained it while Swan dragged her up a rope to the top of the wall.

And that's how things still stood.

Eli crouched on the wall, just out of sight of the rear-most ranks of risen behind the Bloodwitch. Crouching beside him were Payde and Fishhook and Dorgo and a muscular woman named Twoeyes who, to Eli's bafflement, had two eyes. Apparently Fishhook was the best swordsman in the company, Dorgo the best spearman, and Twoeyes the best shieldwoman.

"And she reads a battlefield better'n anyone here," Fishhook told Payde.

"Including you?"

"Including me."

"Is that why you call her 'Twoeyes?'" Eli asked.

Fishhook looked at him funny. "No."

"Oh," he said.

Behind them, the mage Elsavet gasped, "We are. Out. Of time."

"Twenty seconds," Fishhook told her.

Yet it was only five seconds before a few dozen risen swiveled toward the south. The witch must've placed lookouts in the southern boulevard and spotted the mercs advancing from that direction.

As one, the risen rushed across the quarry floor: loping, running, limping. The two blood-deer galloped in front of the pack and vanished from Eli's sight. A moment later, he heard the crash of combat. Which he knew must've been the deer slamming into the mercenary shield wall in the narrow, defensible confines of the boulevard.

"Here goes," Eli said, and wrapped his wrist around the rope secured behind him.

"For the throne," Payde said.

"That's fine with me," Eli told him. "As long as you go first."

Payde shot him a grin. He raised his axe, signalling the mercs behind him, then leaped over the edge of the wall, his own rope slithering after him.

Eli followed immediately, afraid to give himself a chance to hesitate. He jumped off the wall.

The mercs tasked with protecting the mage and the lady unspooled the ropes as he fell. The stench of risen filled his nostrils. His sparks pushed against the stone wall blurring behind him, then braced against the floor to soften his landing slightly.

Still he almost slipped on the steep slope. He took two steps to steady himself, while Payde raised his own shield to protect the children a moment before Elsavet's failed.

His was smaller than hers, but the risen weren't focusing on the children. They were focusing on the new threat.

As they pushed forward, Fishhook and Dorgo took position to either side of the mage-shield, and started driving them down the slope.

Eli didn't join him. In a wide, low niche scooped from the side of the wall behind him, a half-dozen bandits roused from yawning idleness with cries of alarm. Three of them loosed arrows; they'd been positioned there to kill the hostages if the mercs lowered the shield and attempted a rescue.

Except Swan and Fishhook had known they were there. And they'd been there for three days, intermittently resupplied by risen who were ostensibly wandering at random. Exhausted and uncomfortable and half-asleep.

Still one of them fired an arrow that might've struck the kids or Payde if Eli hadn't taken it in his shoulder instead. Eli darted forward, already swinging his falcona. He killed two of the bandits before a third slashed him in the back with a greatsword, despite it being far too long to use in such cramped quarters.

The brigand's greatsword clanked against the wall and Eli killed that one and his spark showed him a blur of rage and fur barreling toward him while Payde and Fishhook and Dorgo stood against the risen and Twoeyes yelled orders at the children from behind her shield.

The blood-boar hit Eli in the leg and rocketed past, not quite breaking his knee as the fourth bandit put an arrow in Eli's throat.

His world turned red with fear and he jerked at the shaft. The arrowhead came free with a splurt of gristle and blood and when he screamed he made a gurgling noise but he barely even felt the pain.

The boar hit the back wall of the stone niche then wheeled at him. A spark showed Eli everything around himself. The two remaining bandits, the boar's twisted head and broken tusks. Lumps shifted under this one's skin, and that part of Eli's mind that seemed to always observe him at a distance didn't know why there hadn't been lumps on the cub or the deer.

A more useful part of his mind fed him sensations of his surroundings: the boar charging, the greatsword on the ground at his feet, the latrine stink in the corner, the clinks of tiles hitting the ground from an overturned game board. His sparks showed him the risen mercenaries advancing toward Payde and Fishhook while the Bloodwitch stood on her throne, making some sort of speech. Dorgo protected Twoeyes as she herded the children toward Eli, toward the relative safety of the cave even though he hadn't secured it yet ...

Eli stomped on the grip of the fallen greatsword.

The point rose and the boar impaled its belly on the blade and Eli swiveled in position to behead it, but before he swung, it collapsed into a heap of rotting meat. He must've nicked the blood blister.

"I got lucky for once," he told the surviving bandits.

"Godsdamn," one of them said. "We surrender."

"Drop your swords," Eli told them.

When Twoeyes ushered the children into the niche five seconds later, Eli was the only one alive. They'd been willing to massacre kids with arrows. Let them surrender to the Angel when they met Her on the other side.

"Get out there," Twoeyes snapped at him, crouching at the mouth of the niche facing the fight.

"Yesmir," Eli said.

The children cried out in fear when he approached, then shied away. He pushed past them and Dorgo, moving fast because a spark had already showed him what to expect: Payde and Fishhook on the slope, using the upper ground to battle the tide of rising pushing against them.

"Shield me a ramp in front of you!" Eli yelled, and ran forward.

He wasn't sure if Payde had heard--or wanted to waste a shield--but a moment later the risen slashing at him with powerful, clumsy strokes stumbled aside. Struck by a shield forming. The air shimmered and Payde and Fishhook took advantage of the sudden barrier, of the risens' sudden stumbles. Each of them beheaded another risen.

"Three for me!" Payde bellowed. "Three for you!"

Eli ran between the two men. He sprinted up the glimmering shield ramp, pushed with his sparks, and leaped toward the Bloodwitch.