“I didn’t bring them,” Corylus snapped, drawing his sword. He no longer cared if he frightened this maddening sprite. “How many Ethiopes are there?”
The dryad spread her fingers and looked at them, pursing her lips. She shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Many. Many many.”
Nerthus knew what that meant, but it probably meant too many. Corylus would have chanced his luck with three and possibly with four of the horse-headed monsters, but more than ten—probably—would be suicide.
“Which direction are they coming from?” he said. “
Quickly,
now.”
“You don’t have to shout,” said the dryad. “I don’t think I like you very much.”
Then, either because of a dryad’s usual kindliness or because she correctly read his mood as approaching violence, she added, “From that way, I guess.”
She pointed to brushes whose limbs rose nearly straight up. Their leaves were almond shaped and so bright a yellow that they stood out from the shadows even now at dusk.
“They’re smashing everything, even when it’s not in the way.”
Corylus took the leaf away from the Princess with his left hand. “Mistress, Ethiopes are coming,” he said, wondering if there was comprehension in her slit-pupiled eyes. “There’re too many for me to fight, so we’ve got to run if we can.”
“Yes, I can run,” the Princess said. “For a time.”
“Go ahead that way,” Corylus said, gesturing in what he thought was the direction opposite to where the Ethiopes were coming from. “Unless you know a way out?”
The Princess set off at a lope around the trunk of a fallen tree that was being consumed by mushrooms the size of purple helmets. Corylus had sent her ahead to put himself between her and the danger, but she obviously had better night vision than he did.
“There is no way out from the inside,” she said. Her steady pace didn’t affect her speech, as it would have that of most human beings. “It is a trap like the one which held Melino until I freed him. We will be released from outside, or we will die here.”
Or we’ll be killed,
Corylus added silently, but he supposed being killed was a special case within the general category “Dying.” He thought of classes with Master Pandareus, and thought of the recent past, when his concern had been to decide with which legion to seek an appointment as tribune, the first step on his career.
They reached a creek. It was only about twenty feet wide and sluggish; motionless lilies floated on it, their flowers closed at nightfall. It couldn’t be too deep or the plants wouldn’t have been able to root in the bottom, but the Princess followed its bank in a gentle slant to the left.
Corylus didn’t object. She seemed to know what she was doing, and he had no reason to believe that crossing the stream would bring any real advantage.
A pair of naiads watched from behind a lily pad, ready to hide if threatened. Corylus thought of calling to them, but he didn’t have anything to say.
The Princess didn’t seem winded and he was keeping up thus far without showing the strain, but they couldn’t run forever. He couldn’t at least. His sword dipped and bobbed, its long blade a lever that increased the effort of holding it across his chest. He would have liked to take the tip in his left hand, but he was afraid that as tired as he was, he’d manage to cut off his fingers on the naked edge if he tripped.
From the left a pair of horse-headed silhouettes stepped out from behind a tall shrub whose bi-colored leaves pointed stiffly upward. The Princess shied to the right with a hiss of surprise. Corylus thrust the leading Ethiope through the solar plexus, his blade horizontal. Momentum carried him around, slicing almost completely through his victim’s torso.
The Ethiope’s arms flailed sideways, one hand knocking his companion’s spear aside and the other flinging his own stone-headed axe into the undergrowth. His mouth opened to a spray of blood. He couldn’t shout because the stroke had severed his diaphragm.
As his sword came free on the other side of the falling body, Corylus raised the point as much as he could as he struck. The second Ethiope got his right arm in the way of the stroke, but the edge cut through one bone of his forearm and so deeply into the other that it cracked when Corylus levered his blade free.
The Ethiope bellowed and stabbed, but the weight of his own right arm weighed the spear down and the point slipped past Corylus’ knee. Corylus lunged as though he were trying to tackle his opponent, but his point was forward. It split the Ethiope’s breastbone.
Corylus straightened; he wobbled, then clapped his hand against a scale-barked tree with fronds like a palm dangling from branches. Except for the interruption he might have been able to continue running for another five minutes or so, but now he was finished until he got time to recruit.
Time that he wasn’t going to get. Only those two Ethiopes had managed to flank them, probably cutting the chord of their swing to the left, but he could hear the rest of their enemies crashing through the woods nearby.
“Princess, keep running,” Corylus said, breathing through his open mouth. “I’ll hold them here.”
The Ethiopes wore leather harnesses rather than proper garments. Corylus knelt and wiped his sword on the thigh of the one he had cut nearly in half, leaving parallel lines of blood on the mottled hide. He straightened.
“We will both wait here,” the Princess said. She tugged the spear from the hand of the dead Ethiope. The shaft was heavy and had a noticeable kink, but it was better than nothing.
Corylus had reacted without thinking when the Ethiopes appeared, doing what training had conditioned him to do. He started laughing, despite the situation or maybe because of it.
“I knew I might die in the forest,” he said without looking away from the approaching pursuit. “I just thought it would be somewhere in Germany.”
Behind them was a screen of saplings whose branches curved toward the ground in showers of feathery foliage. Half a dozen Ethiopes burst through them.
Corylus didn’t trust his legs for a rush, so he stepped back to the tree that had sheltered the initial ambushers. He felt the sprite stir in the darkness, a sturdy woman with almond eyes who was shivering at the violence.
Four Ethiopes charged the instant they saw him, calling in musical voices. They sounded more like huge birds than the horses their heads resembled. Each was at least seven feet tall, and one was nearly eight.
Corylus waited. It was like fighting Germans—but the Ethiopes were even bigger, even clumsier, and even stronger than Germans.
As he expected, the two in the middle collided because their fellows were crowding inward to get to their victim first. When the middle pair tumbled, they tripped the Ethiope on their right also.
The remaining attacker was raising his axe for a blow that would have split its victim to the crotch if it had landed. Corylus stepped forward and stabbed the Ethiope through the top of the thigh, severing the artery and bringing him down twisting onto the pile of his fellows. Corylus flicked the sword tip twice, breaking an Ethiope’s spine and opening the neck veins of the fellow with whom he was tangled.
Corylus couldn’t finish the last of the four because the pair who had hesitated were now galloping toward him. One leaped the pile of thrashing bodies, holding his spear like a vaulting pole. He had feet like a camel’s, not horse hooves.
The Princess threw her spear, catching the Ethiope in the belly. The flaked point poked out from the Ethiope’s back as he doubled up. Corylus didn’t think he could have done better himself with so awkward a missile.
The other Ethiope came around to the left of the pile of his fellows. Corylus hoped he would collide with the survivor who had risen to all fours, but the attacker avoided that mistake.
My luck’s been too good already.…
The Ethiope had a long cudgel studded with chips of flint. He swung it horizontally, four feet up from the ground. Corylus ducked under the blow without thinking—there was no time to think, time only to observe and react—and thrust through the Ethiope’s leading wrist.
The cudgel hit the tree trunk with a crash like nearby lightning. It bounced out of the Ethiope’s remaining hand. He trumpeted in surprise at the blood spurting from his right wrist. Corylus thrust again, this time into the rib cage with the flat of the blade held parallel to the ground so that the steel wouldn’t grate through bone and maybe catch when he tried to withdraw it.
The point slid in and slid out with no more trouble than stabbing a wineskin. Bright blood from the lungs gushed out instead of wine.
Which left the last of the original four—
The Princess swung an axe sideways, driving the edge into the Ethiope’s temple with a hollow
thunk.
She stepped back as the Ethiope thrashed. The blunt stone blade remained buried in his skull.
“We’ve—,” Corylus said/gasped.
More Ethiopes—a dozen or so; Corylus didn’t have leisure for a proper count—crashed through the undergrowth hooting.
The dryad said many.…
Too many.
Corylus was trying to breathe and praying not to fall over. His muscles burned, his lungs burned, and everything he saw was blurred and tinged with red.
The tone of the Ethiopes’ cries changed. They were leaping, toppling as though a squadron of archers were shooting into them. Horse-headed hunters flopped to the ground in bloody confusion.
Two rushed Corylus. They were trying to escape rather than attacking, though it would amount to the same thing. He chopped to deflect the spear aimed at his torso. His sword bit deep into the spear shaft, but the Ethiope’s point scraped his ribs as it passed under his raised sword arm.
Mithras, but these bastards are strong!
The Princess threw an axe at the other Ethiope. It was good for line, but it struck handle first, staggering him without serious injury.
Corylus grappled with his own opponent. The Ethiope swung him aside, clearing the sword from the spear shaft. Corylus cut downward into the Ethiope’s left ankle. It was a poor blow, but good enough to chip bone and cause the victim to bleat.
Instead of falling, the Ethiope shook Corylus off his right arm and raised the spear to stab him like a carp in a tank. Corylus tried to twist away. His right arm was numb and he couldn’t raise the sword into even a pretense of defense.
The Princess was trying to tug free another spear, but the weight of bodies held it firm. The Ethiope whom she’d hit with the axe pitched forward, causing her to jump back. The back of his neck gouted blood.
The Ethiope preparing to kill Corylus fell like a windblown pine. Corylus managed to curl his legs so that the massive body didn’t land on him.
Behind where the Ethiopes had stood was a pair of Singiri with short, serviceable swords of the sort that a beasthunter like Veturius kept in the arms locker of his compound. The weapons dripped with blood, as did the warriors holding them.
Corylus tried to stand. He got to his knees, but he couldn’t rise from that posture. He let go of his sword hilt and gasped air on all fours, hoping to quench the fire in his lungs.
Two more Singiri appeared. One held a boar spear, while the other was the elder whom the Princess had called Tassk. These were Veturius’ four lizard-monkeys.
Tassk didn’t have a human weapon, but his fingers wore the clawed rings that had masqueraded as a necklace in the cage. He still had the loop of heavier chain around his waist.
“I hope your warrior doesn’t mind us getting involved in a fight he seems to have had under control, Princess,” Tassk said in Latin as well modulated as the Princess’ own. His arms were red to the elbows, as though he’d been reaching into the chests of Ethiopes. That probably hadn’t been necessary.
Corylus managed a smile. “The only thing I had under control,” he croaked, “was the grass I was lying on. And that’s pretty sparse.”
He glanced at the ground, then lurched to his feet. A Singiri warrior stepped close but didn’t offer help unless it were needed, which it wasn’t, quite.
“We took the Ethiopes from behind,” Tassk said. “Which was easy, because they were wholly focused on the warrior who had killed so many of them already. Perhaps another time we will all stand together.”
The younger male Singiri faced outward around their leaders and the human, just in case there were other enemies, Ethiopes or otherwise. Corylus had seen too many ambushes to imagine that what these warriors had done was easy, though complete surprise had made it possible.
“Can you get us out of here, sir?” Corylus said. “You’re a magician?”
Tassk’s expression was probably a grin. “Not like my princess,” he said, “but I can dissolve the maze which held you now that it’s been breached from the outside.”
“Corylus?” the Princess said, speaking for the first time since Tassk and his warriors had rescued them. “We will go back to our own world, which this no longer is. You are welcome to come with us, but I believe you have duties of your own.”
“Right,” said Corylus. He was starting to feel human again. He wasn’t ready for another fight, but he’d be able to make a showing if one was forced on him. “If you need help, I think I can arrange a ship back to Africa.”
He picked up his sword and wiped it on another corpse. The edges would take careful sharpening, and there was a chip out near the tip where he must have struck one of the stone weapons … or possibly a tooth.
“That will not be necessary,” Tassk said, undoing the chain around his waist. “The other end of this is connected to the temple from which we came to recover our princess.”
Corylus frowned, trying to make sense of the words. The chain wasn’t connected to anything. Though … the end that had dangled loose when Tassk wore it was fuzzy, somehow, out of focus.
“Good Fortune to you, Corylus,” Tassk said. “Perhaps another time.”
The three Singiri warriors each gripped the chain with one hand. They watched Tassk silently.
The Princess took the last link of the chain in her hand. She smiled at Corylus and said, “I will not forget that you helped me, warrior, at my time of greatest need. There will be a time when your need is great also, and I will remember.”