The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,410

blue glass streaked for her head. They shattered and sheared apart on Gill’s mirror shield, though she’d ducked, maybe even enough to evade them.

More missiles streaked in, and all life became dodging and deflecting and slicing with her own shield edge and, once, stabbing the shield far off to one side to catch a missile that Gill had turned his back to as he threw a wight to the ground for the kill.

The shock of the missile was greater than she’d expected, and she left her guard open for too long. A blue drafter appeared from nowhere with an ash lance, coming up for her guts.

His head flew half apart as Grinwoody’s blunderbuss discharged, but the dead man still completed his step blindly thrusting. But Grinwoody’s old training of never assuming a dead man knew he was dead had him already moving in toward the threat. He smashed the butt of the blunderbuss against the lance, sending it safely away, and the dead man took no second step.

There was no thanks. No time for it. Tamerah had been mortally wounded in the clash, blood shooting from her neck, then slowing, slowing, even as her breath did, and the nearest Blackguard took her in his arms, that her last sight would be of one who loved her.

They pressed on. A thousand paces left, and no chance to look to see how many wights and drafters were between them and that great tower.

In the next clash, she raked her scorpion across a blue drafter’s belly, opening it with all four claws. She dove under a musket blast.

The man who’d shot at her was dead before she regained her feet. Gill’s spinning spear flung blood in a wide circle.

Glancing back, she saw Grinwoody parry too slowly and take a blue spear in his guts—though a formidable warrior, the old man was no longer in his prime. But the luxin spear tip shattered on Grinwoody’s mirror armor and merely jabbed the old man with its wood shaft. It was still a blow that drove the wind from the old man’s lungs.

Karris lunged with her ataghan, but the wight attacking Grinwoody was a hair too far away. The point of her ataghan barely poked the back of its head, knocking it off-step, but not piercing its skull.

It was enough. Grinwoody stepped into its arms and drove a blade up under its ribs, wrenching the blade around before twisting it away.

Behind him, Rivvyn Shmuel dodged into the path of a monstrously huge blue wight and ran him through with a slender spear, but the wight threw great arms around him, and lifted, then threw layer upon layer of luxin around his waist and legs. Shmuel drew twin daggers and stabbed in a frenzy, over and over, trying to kill it before it could immobilize his arms. Then, as the huge wight fell to its knees, Shmuel calmed and buried one dagger in the base of its skull.

The dying wight went boneless, but Shmuel was bound to it with blue luxin and was dragged to the ground. He disappeared under a half-dozen wights.

Gill and Karris killed the wights atop the Blackguard as he fought them from beneath, but by the time they got them all, Shmuel’s throat had already been ripped open. With one hand, he was holding his life’s blood in while the other held a dagger drenched in his enemies’ blood. But now his grip relaxed, and blood poured out. His eyes dimmed.

Forward again—ever forward—though now with only five Blackguards.

Three hundred paces out now, not far! They sprinted up a rise, not daring to slow to reload muskets, and suddenly found themselves facing a double line of Blood Robe musketeers. More than twenty of them. The front row kneeling, the back row standing, all muskets leveled.

But their officer, facing the Chromeria, gave no order to fire. His eyes were on the tower.

An instant later, Karris and everyone else saw why.

With the speed and dazzling, eye-burning intensity of a falling star, something streaked in a fiery crimson-and-sapphire line from the top of the Prism’s Tower to the great blue tower at the center of the bane.

It lasted only one blinding moment, and seemed like it had been jerked away from its low, intended target up and to the side.

Karris found herself tackled, thrown to the side out of the way of the firing line, but the blue officer still gave no orders. The other Blackguards were cutting into the musketeers’ ranks with astonishing speed and efficiency.

Blues