absence, gave a muffled cry as dark limbs wrapped about his head and shoulders. His neck broke with a sharp crack as he was jerked from his feet, and his struggling form sagged in their grasp. A pair of creatures pulled him several more feet before slowing, evidently noticing his condition. They released their hold, and he slid to the ground in a limp pile. They stepped upon him as they returned to the fray, taking no more notice of his discarded corpse than they would a loose stone in the roadway.
These blasted things want to take us alive, Borric thought. He shouted orders, and two more guards closed the gap immediately with blades flashing, but their protective ring was thinning by the moment.
Borric shot a glance inward at the huddled citizens. It was mostly children now. The able-bodied men and women had already taken up the weapons of the fallen and thrown themselves into aiding the defense. They were not soldiers, however, and had been even quicker to fall before their tireless foes than the members of the city guard. To Borric’s blurred vision, the children were one big indistinct mass of shape and color, clinging tightly together. He felt a traitorous flash of gratitude that he could no longer see their frightened expressions.
He had a sudden irrational thought for his own son, the boy he had not seen in the years since Borric had taken this job, the boy who would be a tall young man by now. He remembered wiping away the boy’s tears at his departure, his assurances that it would not be as long as it seemed. He remembered his confident promises that he would return one day, laden with his earnings. He had only to accept this important position in a remote outpost for a few years, where the pay was many times what he could earn at home, in a land of untold riches beyond the frayed edges of known civilization…
Someone was shouting at him. Borric blinked, breaking from his reverie and straining to hear the words over the persistent ringing in his ears. He looked around. The ring of guards had thinned to the point of breaking.
“Tighten the ring!” he shouted. “Fall back three steps and tighten the ring!”
The men were quick to obey, their boots stomping and scraping as they backed into a tighter defensive circle. If the ring shrinks much further, Borric thought with a rueful grimace, the men will be tripping over that cluster of children.
A hole opened in the ranks before him as several of the fiends tried to force their way through in a wedge. Dead eyes stared at him above soundless, gaping mouths, and his men struggled to hold them back. With a roar of defiance, the captain of the guard raised his sword and plunged back into the fray.
Someone was shouting at him. A strident voice, somehow both distant and yet uncomfortably near, was gibbering at him to wake up, to fight back and, in a seeming contradiction, to give in and let go. Release me, the voice urged. Join me, so that we may fight together as we were meant to!
Amric’s eyes flared open, and he realized with a chill that he had lost consciousness for a fleeting instant.
The huge visage of the Nar’ath queen loomed before him, and the stench of putrefaction washed over him with her hot breath. Her outer jaws were flared wide, reaching toward him with the hooked prongs that would keep his head frozen in place for the killing kiss. Her ruby lips peeled back to reveal row upon row of tiny glistening fangs that were eager to receive him.
Something slammed into the queen from the side, eliciting a shriek of pain from the monster. Amric gasped as the claws encircling his torso convulsed from the blow and nearly crushed him. She whirled in the direction from which the attack had come, but all Amric could see were the swirling sands obscuring all. Seconds later came another blow from the other side, and she shuddered, spinning in that direction and sweeping her claws in a blind, furious arc.
A phantom laughed echoed back to them, seeming to come from all directions at once. It was a rich, smooth voice, mocking as it slid through the murk and circled them.
Bellimar! Amric realized. The vampire was taking a direct hand in affairs once more, as he had in Stronghold.
A third blow shook the Nar’ath queen with a sound like muted thunder. She