Then she was out into the passage, sliding the panel almost closed behind her, and gone, darting to the left. Rod stepped forward to stand right where she'd been, nose near the narrow gap so he could look out. Taeauna was down at the corner the Dark Helms had been rounding, presumably on their way up from deeper levels of the cellars. Her shoulder was to the wall, she was crouching, and her sword was out and ready.
More Dark Helms burst around the corner; Taeauna gutted the last one with a perfect thrust through the side-seam of his armor plate, where a row of descending buckles under his arm attached the back to the front.
The other Dark Helms whirled in surprise, stumbling over their own haste. Taeauna slashed open the throat of the nearest one while he was still turning; he fell into the one beside him, slamming the man helplessly into the wall. Taeauna carved a new smile across his eyes before he could move, took out his throat on her return slash, and whirled back to face the corner, just in time to meet the next trio of racing Dark Helms.
They saw the sprawled bodies, and stumbled and swayed trying not to trip over them; Taeauna's blade was in the neck of the nearest one before he even saw her. The other two hacked at her, off-balance and wading in ankle-deep dead warriors, and she managed to batter one's blade aside and bury her sword in his face because his visor was still half-up.
The other one sprang over bodies to reach the wall right beside Taeauna, and swung his sword viciously.
She thrust herself against him like a lover, belly to belly, to get inside the reach of his sword, hooking her leg behind his. When he tried to pull back so as to sword her properly, he crashed over backwards and she pounced, stabbing ruthlessly.
Which meant she was down on hands and knees, with her back to the next Dark Helms, as they came rushing around the corner and started falling over bodies and cursing and reeling aside.
Taeauna was turning, but there were four swords reaching for her this time, too many for her to ever hope to turn aside. No! Rod Everlar thrust the panel open and burst out into the passage, the heavy laedlen dragging him wildly off-balance at his first step into a helpless sideways stagger that ended in him tripping on a downed Dark Helm and toppling onto that body, hard and ingloriously.
Yet Dark Helms had turned at his arrival, blades swinging around to him, and that had given the Aumrarr all the chance she needed. Black blades were already clattering to the floor as Taeauna darted here and there like some sort of Olympic fencer trying to out-dance an acrobat, and by the time Rod had heaved himself upright again, two throat-slit Dark Helms were falling dead at his feet.
His stomach heaved, and he promptly emptied it, all over them.
Taeauna reached out a long arm as the last Dark Helm she'd been fighting fell over backwards, throat fountaining, and dragged Rod over now-heaped bodies to stand with her against the wall.
She gave him a disgusted look, wrinkling her nose at the smell of his sickness. "The hidden passage where I told you to stay," she said pointedly, gesturing with a sword dark and dripping with fresh blood, "would have been safer. And less upsetting."
"And if something happened to you?" Rod panted, as the Deldragon battle far down the hall rose to fresh heights of frantic hacking and screaming. "I'd be alone, and doomed, and utterly lost. 'Welcome to Falconfar,' indeed."
Taeauna shrugged. "Yes, lord; welcome to Falconfar. Just the way you wrote about it."
"It is not! I never wrote about Dark Helms! They're Holdoncorp's invention!"
"Well,
un
invent them, lord. Write with power!"
Rod flung up his hands in helpless exasperation. Unexpectedly, the Aumrarr gave him a wry smile, grabbed one of those waving hands, and used it to tow him around the corner. "Come. We must find that well."
Before he could reply she suddenly staggered, the air around her glowed and sang, and a metal gauntlet appeared, silently and out of nowhere, on her sword hand. Its appearance gently thrust her bloody blade out of her fingers, to clatter to the stone floor.
Taeauna stared at the massive, gleaming war-gauntlet with just as much gaping astonishment as Rod was. Then she let go of him to use her free hand to try to snatch the heavy thing off without success, despite a few moments of hard-panting struggling. The gauntlet just wouldn't budge.
Rod watched all the color drain out of her face. "Where did it come from?" he couldn't help but ask. "Does it feel magical? What's it for?"
"Yes, it feels magical!" the Aumrarr told him, eyes large and dark in a snow-white face. "As for your other questions: I don't know! I don't know!"
Then boots were pounding toward them, out of the darkness of the far end of the passage.
Rod set down the sacks and drew his sword; Taeauna had just enough time to scoop up her blade before five Dark Helms burst into view, and they were fighting for their lives.
Rod flinched back as a sword struck his own blade so hard that his hand went numb. The Dark Helm pressing him stumbled on the edge of one laedre, and Rod hacked desperately at his head, clumsily and sideways, catching the man's helm and wrenching it around.
The warrior screamed through the metal as his ears and nose were torn, and then a second Dark Helm lunged at Rod over the shoulder of the first one. Rod backed away so swiftly he almost fell, and the second Dark Helm fell over the first as the blinded first warrior blundered sideways into his charge.
Rod sworded the backs of both of their necks as hard as he could, feeling his sword bite in. It came back red and dripping, and his stomach lurched again.
He threw up right in the visor-covered face of another Dark Helm, who staggered back in disgust. Taeauna used the space that gave her to dance away from the wall where she'd been frantically parrying three shoulder-jostling foes, and tossed her sword to her free hand to stab around behind a sword-arm, into its leather-covered armpit. Even as that foe sobbed and dropped his sword, another Dark Helm's blade was darting at her. She slapped it aside with the gauntlet, and at the touch of her gage, the metal of that blade melted away into curling smoke.
The Dark Helm stared at the stub of his weapon in astonishment, but Taeauna never slowed; she drove her gauntleted fist in the other direction, into the ribs of the man she'd just wounded.
His breastplate was suddenly gone—just
gone—
and Taeauna whistled in amazement and slapped the man across his visored face.
An instant later, he was staring at her in pain and fear, bare-headed. She broke his jaw and struck him senseless with her next blow, and then turned back to the warrior whose blade she'd first melted away. The third of the Dark Helms she'd been fighting had already fled back down the passage.
The swordless Dark Helm was backing away, hauling out his dagger. Taeauna glared at him, but took the time to gingerly put her blade back into her gauntleted hand.
It did not melt away; she sighed in relief and headed after the Dark Helm, who kept on backing away, waving his dagger warningly.
Taeauna broke into a sudden run, to catch her foe, and Rod hastily scooped up the laedren and ran after her.
When she caught the man, it was his turn to desperately parry, the dagger bending under the force of her cut. Rod skidded to a stop beside them and used the momentum of his run to bring the laedren looping around like a huge sap, crashing into the Dark Helm's arm and shoulder and sending him staggering. Taeauna sprang at him, clutching, and his greaves, breastplate, and gorget all melted away before he got his dagger up into her face where her waiting gauntlet caught it. The man's moan of fear ended abruptly when Taeauna's punch crushed his throat and bounced his head off the stone floor with brutal force.
"Come on," she gasped at Rod, "or we'll be standing right here all day and night while they come at us. We've got to get to that well!"
"Do you know where it is?" he asked, as they started running again.
"Certainly," Taeauna replied, and pointed at the floor. "That way."
"Thanks!" he responded sarcastically, as they trotted down the passage into steadily deeper gloom, and found the first descending stone staircase. The first flight was bare and empty, but as they turned at the landing, about a dozen Dark Helms came trotting up the steps toward them.
"Don't let any of them get around behind me," Taeauna panted. "Just swing those laedlen!"
So Rod did, timing his first buffeting blow to catch a lunge headed for the Aumrarr. The warrior was strong; Rod's attack just moved his arm and blade aside a foot or so, but it was enough. Taeauna's sword was like a flickering flame among the black blades, and Dark Helms were reeling, clutching at slit throats, and tumbling back down the stairs, driving down the warriors behind them into a stumbling, fighting-for-balance chaos. Rod waded into that with his swinging sacks, making sure off-balance men fell back onto those below. The Aumrarr punched aside swords, destroying them halfway down to the hilts at a touch.
"There are only two!" someone snarled from several steps down. "Stand and fight! Just charge, and hurl them back, and swarm them! Come on!"
Taeauna waded down the steps in the direction of that voice, punching and slapping, then driving her blade home wherever armor vanished. A voice cursed aloud as its owner turned and fled back down the stairs.
That started a rout; suddenly everyone was running, leaving only the wounded and dying behind on the steps. Ruthlessly Taeauna descended from body to body, turning the former into the latter.
Rod did not want to see that bloody work too closely. He hung back, settling the laedlen properly over his shoulder and gingerly wiping the blade of his sword clean on a body clad in leathers that had been under now-vanished armor, that thankfully had its head turned away.
"Come!" Taeauna called at last. "The well, remember?"
Rod sighed and hastened down the steps to join her, carefully skirting the slumped bodies.
The Aumrarr stared up at him consideringly. "You're fine in a fray, but hate the blood the moment you've time to think about it, don't you?"
Rod nodded. "I'm a writer, not
a—"
A Dark Helm came running up the stairs, and Taeauna coolly turned, parried the man's blade with her gauntlet, and drove her sword under the edge of his visor and into his throat.
"And I'm an Aumrarr," she said a little sadly. "Perhaps the last one. Killing Dark Helms is what I do, now." Then she shrugged, and added, "Well, 'tis more purpose than some folk have in their lives. Let's find that well."
"And fill it up with blood," Rod murmured to himself. He took care to speak so quietly that she couldn't possibly hear him.
Warsword Lhauntur looked
up at the fat trader's cheerful hail. He recognized the man: Reskrul, who came over the mountains from Scarlorn once a year, his mules heavy-laden with tools and buttons and fastenings that the folk of Hollowtree bought eagerly.
"Be welcome in Hollowtree," he said cheerfully, "and have a tankard. We're just about to ride out on the night patrols. What news?"
"Hah! Big news. Recall a wingless Aumrarr who came through here some days back?"
"I do, indeed."
"Well, seems she laid waste to Arbridge, and went on down into Galath swording barons and besieging castles right and left."
Lhauntur raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "All by herself? That'd be a feat worthy of a god."
"Ah, but she wasn't alone. There's a man traveling with her."
That brought forth snorts of amusement around the warriors' table, and one jesting comment. "He's deadly with a pitchfork, that one!"
"Oh?" Reskrul said happily, pulling himself a tankard. "Well, the traders I met outside Arvale said she slaughtered hundreds forcing her way into Wrathgard, and enslaved poor Tindror!"
He peered around. "Looks like she didn't do all that much damage here."
"We're better fighters than the Galathans," Lhauntur said dryly. "We enslaved
her."
Taeauna strode right
up to the Dark Helm at the doorway. When his sword came up, she backhanded it aside and thrust her own blade unceremoniously into his throat.
He sagged to the floor, spewing blood, and she stepped inside the room with Rod on her heels.
"The well," she said with some satisfaction, indicating a circle of stone blocks overhung by a stout timber frame sporting two cranks and sets of descending ropes. Six Dark Helms looked up from what looked like a game of dice, rose hastily, drew their swords, and came over to her.
Taeauna stepped around the first one, touched the blade the second one was raising uncertainly to menace her, spun swiftly to slap aside the first warrior's sword that was on its way to plunge into her back, and then fed that warrior her own sword, right through his throat.
She ran around him in a swift circle as she did so, swinging his choking, staggering body between herself and the rest of the Dark Helms. Their charge parted to come around the flailing man and at her from both sides. Taeauna calmly tripped one warrior as she shouted, "Lord!" and then lunged in the other direction, parrying a blade and then melting it to nothingness with a slap of the gauntlet.
Rod swallowed as he ran forward. He was supposed to slit the sprawling warrior's throat, he knew, but winced at the very thought. The Dark Helm still had hold of his sword, and swung it viciously at Rod's ankles, so he hopped over it and brought the laedlen together down on the man's head, hard.