pikes, metal starbursts, and clawed pincers. Mutter landed harder than his brother, striking the side of his head against a protruding iron bolt.
Gil rounded the base of the pillar but was so shocked by the sight of Alaric crawling through his own blood, that she released the arrow without allowing for D’Aeth’s reflexes. She saw the shaft streak past his head, killing nothing but a block of wood, and with a cry, she turned the bow in her hands, intending to use it like a club. Once again the chain lashed out and gleefully tore it out of her grasp, the force spinning her brutally into the wall.
Screaming, Alaric dove for his sword the same instant a small shrieking form came sailing down out of nowhere, arms and legs splayed wide to break his fall as he swiped across the path of the charging D’Aeth. Sparrow landed hard, plastered flat against the bulwark of chest muscles, knocking more air out of himself than out of D’Aeth, but before he was swatted aside like an annoying insect, he managed to plant his stingers—two glittering knives—one in each side of D’Aeth’s massive neck.
Alaric was on his feet, the sword gripped in both hands as D’Aeth lunged forward. The first cut barely creased the rock-hard mountain of flesh, the second carved a deep welt of gore from shoulder to ribs, and still he came on. Alaric backed up, hacking and slashing at the grinning monster. He was pressed into the corner, his sword red the full length, and D’Aeth was there in front of him, the chain raised in one hand, a leather-shanked battle-ax in the other. The first swipe of the axe broke Alaric’s sword in half, the second would have sheared his head from his shoulders if both the axe and arm were not halted midstroke by the arcing fury of a steel morning star. The rounded, spiked club tore a swath through flesh and muscle, bone and sinew, opening a raw gash from the top of D’Aeth’s skull to the base of his spine.
D’Aeth’s ugly face registered surprise, then shock, then an incredulous horror as his legs folded beneath him and he pitched forward like a felled tree. He was dead before he struck the ground, a torrent of blood gushing out of the hideous wound, some of it spattering a wall ten feet away.
The morning star was clotted with shreds of flesh and bone right up to the handgrip as Gil sank onto her knees beside Alaric. They were both winded and badly shaken, but there was no time to do more than exchange wry grimaces of pain to assure each other they were not mortally injured. After a moment, Alaric groped at the fallen behemoth’s waist for the ring of iron keys, while Gil went to extricate Sparrow from the tangle of hooks and barbs he had been flung into.
The right key was found and fitted into the padlocks at the Wolf’s wrists and ankles. The two men helped one another to their feet and took toll of the wreckage surrounding them.
De Chesnai was alive, but breathing with difficulty through a partially crushed windpipe. Sparrow was complaining—a good sign that the blood leaking from his arm was not critical. Mutter was dead, the spike still jutting from a small, bloodless hole in his temple. Gil was unharmed but for a few bad bruises and scrapes. Robert the Welshman, forgotten in the general melee, was the second unexpected casualty, a man whose courage and fighting strength they could ill afford to lose. He had been struck in the chest by one of the guards’ bolts, and while not quite dead of his wound, would most certainly be if he tried to move.
Together, Gil and Sparrow propped him more comfortably against the stone cistern, then turned to their leader for guidance.
“We are almost certain an alarm has been sounded,” Alaric advised. He hurriedly explained about the guard and the chain, and added unnecessarily, “Our men will put up a good fight and delay them as long as possible, but they are sure to break through.”
Lucien clenched his fists, still numb from having watched his friends fight and die for him. “The price of vengeance … was too steep this time, I fear.”
“Tell that to your son … and to the Lady Servanne, if and when we find her.”
The burning gray eyes moved slowly to Friar. “What did you say?”
“Lengthy explanations and formal introductions will have to wait for a more