The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,92

flame throwers?"

"Not unless we wish to risk cutting ourselves off from the lower Nests," the wizard whispered. In the fading glare, Rudy noted how pale he looked and how the sweat glittered on his face. "We have some three miles of tunnel to cover from here."

All about him, Rudy could hear the fearful murmuring of the Guards. Swords flashed in the graying light as the column moved into defense formation. He put out his strength into the light-spell but felt it sapped, drawn by what he knew to be magic, yet was incapable of comprehending enough to fight. As the light waned, he could see that some of the mosses were palely phosphorescent- more of Gil's nitrogen compounds , he thought-and moreover, there was a kind of a smell in the air, bitter and metallic, that he had never smelled before, overpowering in the enclosed spaces of the caves.

Eldor barked a hoarse command. The column moved on again, down a half mile or so of tunnel where the air seemed clearer, though the light continued to weaken. By the glow of Ingold's sword, the King's face looked harsh and terrible, a thin little smile playing about his lips.

He knows what's coming , Rudy thought, shivering with the effort of maintaining even a feeble glow. He knows ...

Then blackness slammed down over them all like the fall of night. Screaming burst along the tunnel, the echoes drumming into Rudy's ears. All his strength was put into the light, yet darkness covered him; he heard the sudden, roaring buzz that the Dark Ones made when they flew underground and he felt the hissing slash of a sword that just missed his ear. He flung himself against the rock wall, the acid in the moss stinging his bare hands, and spread a cloaking-spell over himself.

Winds howled by him; something hot and wet splattered his face. Then up ahead, white light burst into being again around Ingold and the Guards; the colors of tunic and mail, of human skin and stripped, bloody bones, were shocking in the refulgent glare. But he himself was still in darkness. Dimly, he could see struggling forms, swords, faces, and the sinewy, drifting glide of dark shapes. He tried to call light and found he hadn't the strength for both spells.

He bent and pulled the gory sword from the handbones of a corpse at his feet. Then, in a single instant of time, he slashed at the Dark One nearest him, dropped the cloaking-spell, and threw everything he had into a burst of searing, white light that exploded with radiance into the blackness.

All around him there was shrieking, buzzing, clawing wind. The light that encircled Rudy grew and flickered, the Dark Ones vanishing before it, leaving the tunnel a shambles of bodies and bones half-sunk in trampled, unspeakable filth. Then darkness surged down on them again, and he struck at the things that came for him in it, the thin, black slime from their slashed bodies splattering his hands. The effort of fighting the counterspells against the magelight exhausted him; it was all he could do to defend himself. If he had not had his back to the wall and been ringed by the Guards, he knew he could never have stood a chance.

Eldor's harsh voice cut the chaos of noise like acid; the column moved forward, struggling against that inky tide. From the darkness, a spined cable as big around as his wrist caught Rudy's sword arm and dragged him upward toward the darkness that hid the roof of the tunnel with a force that all but dislocated his arm. He felt his feet leave the floor and glimpsed a slobbering black maw in the midst of swirling illusion...

He must have screamed, for his throat hurt from it as the Icefalcon pulled him to his feet from the trampled muck of the tunnel floor where he'd fallen. The whiplike tail was already disintegrating away from his arm, its cut end still pulsing faintly where the Raider's sword had sheared it. He felt weak with shock, sickened at the hideous strength of the thing that had seized him.

The Icefalcon dragged him along with the moving column until he could find his feet. As the Raider let go, he said, "Don't let that happen again. You're the only light source this part of the column has."

Even as the Icefalcon spoke, Rudy could feel the counter-spells slacking and the light growing stronger. As the Dark swirled away in clouds of illusion,