darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,64

trail, snapping my arms wide in a scissoring cut with both swords that beheaded the monster. It felt like chopping through an inch-thick wooden staff, and the impact shocked through me, driving me down and back into the stone.

My footing held. Both then, and again when momentum carried the now headless and inanimate corpse forward to slam into my chest in a gruesome parody of a tackle. The bones of its neck scraped unpleasantly across my ribs, as it slid aside and fell into the void. I barely noticed, as I was already facing the next of its fellows. This one I skewered through the eyes and under the breast bone, twisting sideways to lever it off the cliff.

Again, I was driven back on my heels. Again, I held my ground. The third went over without any help from me, as the pressure from behind squeezed him up against the back of the second so that he was dragged along when that one fell.

If they had simply kept piling into me and each other at a full run, they might have carried me over the side at the cost of a dozen or fewer of their number. But they were either too dumb to realize that, or they cared more for their survival than my death.

Whatever the reason, by the time I faced the fourth, the front of the line had slowed down and forced those behind to do the same. In the brief moment of respite between three and four I heard a sort of gnawing crackle from somewhere far above, like a squirrel with stone teeth chewing away at a marble walnut.

This one swung at me with finger bones sharpened into claws where they punched through the rotting flesh of its hands. I took my first step back then, as I needed to give up some ground before the avalanche came. I parried at the same time, neatly cutting away its right hand. Before it could take another swing, I bent my knees and hacked sharply at its left ankle. Bone splintered. Support faltered. Another risen fell into the abyss.

I backed up again, taking a moment to look both above and below my next opponent. Just as I had expected, the risen that couldn’t come at me directly had begun to climb—some up, some down. The stone walls were steep and sheer, but the creatures were finding grips enough to begin their advance around the bottleneck I had created. Far above, the gnawing away of stone grew louder, punctuated now by occasional sharp cracks and pops.

I levered another of the risen off the path, and tried to back up faster as I realized the first major flaw in my plan. I had seriously underestimated the speed with which the risen could climb along the rock face. They were faster there than I could have imagined. A dead hand snatching at my ankle emphasized that point, and I had to take a reckless leap backward to get clear—hoping madly as I did so that I hadn’t misjudged where the path behind me lay.

The next risen on the trail lunged forward into the gap my move created, clawing viciously at my face and chest. I felt my shirt tear as I backpedaled, and then my heel came down on air and I almost went over the edge. I probably would have, too, had not the one that leaped in then gotten a grip on my left wrist and yanked me forward, opening its rotted jaws wide to take a bite out of my face.

He’d have had me then, if not for Triss, who formed himself into a wire-like loop of darkness that neatly nipped off the hand that had hold of me. I staggered and flung my arms wide as I tried to recover my balance. Fortunately for my survival, the risen’s situation was even worse. It suddenly found itself pulling at nothing, stumbled, put a foot down on nothing at all, and started to fall. As it went over, it made a desperate grab for the edge with its remaining hand, but caught the shoulder of the foremost of the climbers instead. They fell away together to bounce and shatter on the rocks far below.

That gave me a tiny instant of room to think and to act. I used it to turn and bolt down the trail. I hated having to turn my back on the dead, but it was that or be swarmed under. I knew I couldn’t