magic was astounding. Magae flanked Vi and they faced a dozen Vürdmeisters with vir clawing through every inch of exposed skin. On a white charger in white enameled armor, Logan and a score of his bodyguards faced dozens of monsters. A great sword-tooth cat leapt for the king. Logan slashed his sword into the top of its head. Its claws scored his horse’s armor as it fell dead.
A wash of fire spurted from a Vürdmeister toward the king and lapped against a shimmering shield one of the magae had put around him. A squat red krul, a head shorter than most of its kin but three times as wide, with skin that looked like it was entirely made of bone, grabbed a horse’s leg. The horse whinnied as its leg cracked. It fell, spilling one of Logan’s bodyguards to the ground. He jumped up and slashed at the creature, but his thin blade rang off its skin. He stabbed it; his blade bowed but then pierced the creature’s skin. It ignored it and grabbed his arm, then his face. Gnasher grabbed the man’s other arm and tried to pull him up onto his horse. His scream was muffled against the krul’s palm until it crushed helmet and head together. Gnasher kept pulling, not understanding the guard was already dead.
Greenish krul with splayed legs like frogs leapt at Logan, trying to knock him from his saddle. Vi blasted them aside with Talent and bodyguards opened their throats.
As Logan’s knot of warriors ground slowly toward the Dead Demesne, a Vürdmeister beyond the fighting chanted calmly. Kylar saw the sword-tooth cat’s split head mend, and moments later it stood. Everywhere, the scene was repeated. The Vürdmeisters were instantly replacing the most powerful krul they lost.
Kylar unlimbered Curoch and decapitated that Vürdmeister, and then another before it could raise the red-skinned ogre, and cut a third in half. Through the press of bodies, he saw Vi. A krul claw slapped into her arm, but bounced off as her blood-red dress hardened like armor. She sliced off the krul’s arm and met Kylar’s eyes. She pointed behind him.
It was the Titan, looming huge. It had cracked open Black Barrow and now it was coming to war. The sheer size of it was hard to believe. It was shaped almost like a man, its skin a coolly luminous blue under scale armor, its hair gold and short and spiky like an unruly boy’s, its eyes black with silver vertical irises like a cat’s, its muscles smooth and beautiful. But if it was a god from the front, it was a demon from behind. Huge spikes extended from its spine, reptilian wings draped from its shoulders, and a rat-like hairy tail dragged behind it. It wielded a spiked pole as a cudgel.
“Kylar!” Vi shouted. “Kill it!”
He could feel her intimately enough to know she hadn’t meant to invoke the bond, but she’d done it anyway. Like he’d been lashed with a cat o’nine tails, his attention focused instantly, irrevocably on the Titan. He had no choice.
92
Kaldrosa Wyn was lying in the shadow of a huge krul corpse. This one was shaped like a bear with scabby pale skin devoid of fur. She was near the crest of a hill in the Dead Demesne, north of Black Barrow—or north of where Black Barrow had been. The dome had come down minutes earlier, scaring the hell out of her. From her position, she could see several hundred of the other soldiers. Most of them were sa’ceurai, the rest were Agon’s Dogs. She’d come because her husband Tomman had, and if he was going to take a mission this dangerous, she was going with him.
A low whistle trilled in the distance, and seconds later, was repeated by someone closer. It was time. Kaldrosa pulled the muddy bag at her feet up and opened it. She dressed slowly, carefully, trying to work blood into her stiff arms and legs. They’d been crawling and lying in muck for two days, and it was a wonder she could move at all. They’d blackened their armor and weapons so they wouldn’t reflect sunlight, but she was still as quiet as possible. They didn’t want to spoil their gambit this close to its fruition.
The Ymmuri bows were the biggest problem. To string them, the Ymmuri warmed them by a fire for at least half an hour. That wasn’t an option. Someone had foreseen it, though, and the archers gathered around an odd, kohled Modaini magus