through everything that happened, and Tore and Sorcha were on his other side. He saw Ivor’s stocky figure just ahead, and in all that he did he fought to stay within reach of the Aven. Again, as in the fight by the banks of the Adein, he completely lost track of time. His was a narrowed maelstrom of a world: a universe of sweat and shattered bone, of lathered horses and slaug horns, and ground slippery with blood and with the trampled flesh of the dying and the dead. He fought with a silent savagery amid the screams of battle, and where his axe fell, where the hooves of his horse lashed out, they killed.
Time warped and twisted, spun away from him. He thrust the axe forward like a sword, smashing in the hairy face of the urgach in front of him. Almost in the same motion he drove the axehead down, to bite through the flesh of the slaug it rode. He rode on. Beside him, Levon’s blade was a whirling thing of ceaseless, glinting motion, a counterpoint of lethal grace to Dave’s own driven strength.
Time was gone from him, and the morning. He knew that they had been advancing for a time, and then later, now, with the sun somehow high in the sky, that they were no longer pressing forward, only holding their ground. Desperately, they strained to leave each other enough room to fight, yet not so much space that the quick svart alfar might slip between, to kill from below.
And gradually Dave began to acknowledge, however hard he tried to block the thought, something that a part of him had known the evening before, when first they’d topped the ridge and looked down. It was the numbers, the sheer brutal weight, that would beat them.
It isn’t even worth thinking about, he told himself, hammering the axe right through the blocking sword of an urgach on his right, watching Tore’s sword slash into the creature’s brain at the same moment. He and the dark Dalrei—his brother—looked at each other for one grim instant.
There was time for no more than that. Time and strength had rapidly become the most precious things in all the worlds and were becoming more rare with each passing moment. The white sun swung up the sky and paused overhead, balanced for an instant, as were all the worlds that day, and then began sliding down through a bloody afternoon.
Dave’s horse trampled a svart alfar, even as his axe severed the raking horn of a dark green slaug. He felt a pain in his thigh; ignored it; killed, with a mighty blow of his fist, the dagger-wielding svart that had slashed him. He heard Levon grunt with exertion, and he wheeled just in time to crash his mount into the side of the slaug menacing the Aven’s son. Levon dispatched the unbalanced urgach with a sweep of his blade.
There were two more behind it, and half a dozen of the svart alfar. Dave didn’t even have room to stay with Levon. In front of him three more of the slaug pressed forward, over the body of the one whose horn he’d smashed. Dave fell back a couple of paces, sick at heart. Beside him, Levon was doing the same.
Then, disbelieving, Dave heard the ceaseless shrieking of the svart alfar rise to a higher pitch. The largest of the urgach advancing on him roared a sudden desperate command, and a moment later, Dave saw a space suddenly materialize on his left, beyond Levon, as the enemy fell back.
And then, even as it appeared, the space was filled by Matt Sören, King of the Dwarves, fighting in grim, ferocious silence, his clothing shredded, saturated with blood, as he waded forward over the bodies of the dead to lead the Dwarves into the gap.
“Well met, King of Dwarves!” Ivor’s voice rose high over the tumult of battle. With a glad cry Dave thrust forward, Levon just ahead of him, and they merged with Matt’s forces and began to advance again.
Ra-Tenniel, dazzlingly swift on the raithen, was suddenly beside them as well. “How are they doing on the left?” he sang out.
“Aileron sent us this way. He says they will hold!” Matt shouted back. “I don’t know for how long, though. Galadan’s wolves are on that side. We have to break through together and then circle back west!”
“Come on, then!” Levon screamed, moving past them all, leading them northward as if he would storm the towers of