The Garden of Stones - By Mark T. Barnes Page 0,145
comrade, balanced precariously on an outcropping of stone. Her hands moved rhythmically, the blue-tinted blades seeming to appear wherever her hands were at the time. At one point it seemed as if there were knives tumbling in the air about her. She would snatch one and hurl it with deadly accuracy. An elderly man in tasseled deerskins knelt at her side, his storm-rifle peppering the Anlūki with bolts.
Other Anlūki tried to interfere, without success. Indris moved between them so they could not strike at him without possibly harming their own. Brede had no such consideration. If an Anlūki got in her way, she cut the warrior down.
Wolfram steadied himself. Carnelian light spun like a tiny star in the cage of his fingers. The witch hurled it forward. Indris caught the ball of flame with his weapon, which pealed in protest. Sweat beaded the scholar’s brow as he flung the fireball into the prow of the ship, where it exploded, igniting the wood in a gush of red flame and black smoke. Soldiers scrambled from the blaze, clothes smoldering.
Teeth bared in a snarl, Wolfram leaped forward. Corajidin was surprised to see the old witch so quick in his calipers. He twirled his staff about him as expertly as any warrior Corajidin had ever seen. Brede joined the attack on Indris, her own blade a blur humming through the air. Nacreous light flickered from all three weapons as they struck and parried. Indris danced back and forth, used both haft and blade to keep his assailants at bay. Despite his skill, Indris was driven, step by step, toward the burning prow.
Indris spun, kicked Wolfram hard in the face. The witch teetered, then fell into the incendiary ruin of the prow, shrieking in pain. Brede snarled. Her blade cascaded with arcs of black lighting, which she flung at Indris with a flick of her wrists. The lightning enveloped Indris. Lifted him from the deck and hurled him overboard amid spiraled pillars of smoke from below. Brede went to the rail.
Corajidin yelled with joy. He dashed forward to relieve Brede of the Spirit Casque. There was nothing more he wanted than to hold it in his arms. He reached out to Brede, who turned to face him.
He felt the warm, wet spray and spatter across his face. A salty tang on his tongue. Brede’s expression went blank. A red hole marred her forehead.
She pitched overboard, the Spirit Casque still strapped to her back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Blow, wind, if it please you. Autumn is upon me, the tall flowers are gone, and I wait for winter.”—from The Long Walk of the Spirit’s Path, by Näsarat fa Amonindris, 492nd Year of the Shrīanese Federation
Day 325 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
Indris watched the wind-skiff careen away. Smoke trailed from its burning hull, though he had little doubt those on board would manage to douse the flames. Changeling murmured faint deprecations in his hand, frustrations and opinions more impressions than words.
“Sorry I couldn’t shoot Brede earlier. I didn’t want to hit you, and you was moving a mite quick over there,” Hayden murmured sadly. The old drover had scrambled down from his vantage point, storm-rifle clutched in bloodied hands. Shar joined them. A squad of Tau-se gathered, their weapons notched. Blood was spattered across their armor, clotted in their manes. “That was quite a fall you took.”
Indris looked down at the scorch marks on his skin, courtesy of Brede’s formulae. It was not something the Sēq taught. His muscles still twitched, though the burns and abrasions of his most recent encounter had already started to vanish. He whispered to Changeling. She twisted in his hand as she shortened her shape back to a long-hilted sword. He was thankful to the blade for the trickle of disentropy she fed him, which offset the worst of the mindstorm and entropic fever he knew would otherwise have come from his heavy use of the ahmsah.
“Let’s find the others.” Indris rested his hand on the rifleman’s shoulder.
Around them the battle dwindled. With their finely tuned senses, it had not taken the Tau-se long to locate the Fenling nests where they wound, labyrinthine and fetid, beneath the Time Master ruins. The Tau-se had gone still when they had seen Fenlings wearing armor scavenged from Lion Guard bodies. Some of the rat-folk had worn Tau-see manes as headdresses or necklaces of fangs and claws. Lion-man skins had been strung on frames as a hunter would tan hides.