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"Da name's Drat. I'd remember it when da Maker asks youse who sent ya."
The guards moved out from behind Snit, slowly jockeying for position.
"Get Alex to safety," I whispered to Josh. "There's a bridge off the balcony that leads over to the next
tower."
The shapeshifter hesitated, torn between his desire to stay and fight, and the need to get his daughter
out of harm's way. It must have felt to him as though he was abandoning his friends, but in the end Alex's
safety won out.
Drat rushed the mage as Snit held his staff out to the side and mumbled words of incantation. The
energies in the crystal globe swirled chaotically as the light in the room dimmed. A guard rushed Drat, trying
to intercept the War Chief before he could cut down the mage. The flat of Drat's axe head caught the guard
just under the chin. Teeth shattered as the troll was thrown back into his comrades.
I sidestepped a spear thrust at me, ducked under it as it swung at my head, and kicked the troll holding
it hard in the family jewels. I'm not really sure if trolls have family jewels, but if they did this troll would have
to have his reappraised. After what I did to them, I'm certain they dropped considerably in value.
I could see Josh and Alex out on the bridge between the towers now. They seemed to be making good
their escape. I was confident we could take out these trolls in short order. The only thing that had held us back
the last time was our concern for Alex's safety.
Leanne held a troll aloft by the throat with one hand, while two more circled her. She threw her
struggling captive into his companions, then picked up the oak coffee table and slammed it down hard over
their heads as they struggled to their feet. The table splintered into fragments, and the trolls ceased struggling.
Drat swung the battle-axe, slashing sideways at Snit in an effort to hack the mage in half. Snit waved a
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hand before him at the last moment--obviously a magical gesture--as Drat's axe bounced harmlessly off of a
shimmering, blue transparent force-shield. The impact of axe against shield jarred Drat to the shoulders, and
the troll cursed as his fingers went numb.
Have you ever wondered why in the movies the bad guys always seem to attack the good guys one at a
time, giving them time to dispatch each villain in turn? Apparently the troll guards wondered the same thing.
Five of them decided to rush me at once. Fortunately for me they were really slow, or rather I'm really fast.
Two of them collided with one another as I simply ceased to be where I was only a moment before.
One I actually tripped, lunging to the right and extending my left leg so that he stumbled over it and into his
buddies. I straightened up, did a one-eighty (that's man-speak for pirouette) and shoved the fourth troll into the
other three. Lastly, I grabbed the fifth troll by his weapons belt and tossed him into the fray. To an outside
observer, it must have looked like I simply disappeared, and the five trolls had rushed into each other and
knocked themselves out. Being an Eternal allowed me to take the art of fighting to a whole new level. Kind of
like "The Three Stooges" meets The Matrix.
Leanne had taken out another couple of trolls. Her vampire reflexes made her almost as fast as I was. I
noted that she hadn't drunk from any of her victims this time. She told me later that troll blood tastes like
ground chalk and iodine. I took her word for it, never having tasted troll blood--or ground chalk and iodine
either, for that matter.
Snit's eyes sparked with electricity. A bolt of crackling energy leapt from the crystal and struck Drat in
the chest, throwing the War Chief sprawling to the floor some ten feet away. Faint traces of electrical current
flickered along Drat's breastplate.
The troll climbed slowly to his feet and shook his head roughly from side to side to clear it. "Try dat
again. I dares ya," he said once his vision focused again.
"With pleasure," Snit replied. Another lightning bolt streaked toward Drat, who suddenly deflected the
energy back at the mage with the head of his battle-axe. The wooden haft of the axe acted as an insulator,
protecting the troll this time.
The bolt struck Snit's shield and splashed harmlessly off of it. Well, harmlessly as far as Snit was
concerned. The residual energy fragmented and struck two more of his guards. The several remaining guards
circled us warily now. There is one thing to be said for attacking one at a time: at least you don't get in one
another's way.
I turned just in time to see a troll about to hit Leanne from behind. Either she wasn't paying attention,
or she'd become overconfident. He'd picked up one of the splintered table legs from the ruined coffee table
and was about to plunge it into her back.
I panicked, realizing the table leg was made of wood and could actually kill her. Suddenly I was
standing between her and her attacker. It wasn't like before, either. I had no memory of crossing the space
between where I had been and where I now stood. The suddenness of it stunned me for a moment, and I stood
there stupidly as the troll drove the wooden stake into my chest.
As startled as I was, the troll was even more shocked. One moment he was about to drive a stake into a
vampire's back, and the next he's nose to nose with a pissed-off Eternal. I looked down at the two feet of
lumber sticking out of my chest, then slowly up at the troll. His eyes widened and he turned ashen-gray, which
is pretty pale for a troll. I reached across with my right hand and slowly pulled the stake from my chest. It
resisted for a moment, then finally let go with a nauseating, sucking sound. The troll turned and ran, but not
out of fear--well okay, maybe a little out of fear. I heard him retching over the balcony, which I'm sure came
as a pleasant surprise to anyone walking on the grounds below.
The shirt Goibnu had made for me held up under the assault. The stake hadn't penetrated it; merely
driven the fabric into the chest wound. I pulled at the material until I had cleared the hole. Other than the
small circular bloodstain there was no way to know that I'd been impaled. Unless of course I took my shirt off;
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the huge gaping hole would be a dead giveaway. I wondered how long it would take that to heal.
I ducked as Leanne spun about, sensing someone behind her and not realizing it was me. I caught her
fist just inches from my face, gave her a quick kiss on the lips, then spun her about just in time for her to drive
her palm into some troll's nose. We turned just as another group of guards rushed through the doors.
"Time to beat a hasty retreat," I called out.
"Huh?" Drat grunted.
"Run away!" I hollered, and headed for the balcony. The guards scrambled after us, with Snit sedately
bringing up the rear, as we made for the balcony, then the bridge.
The bridge was wide enough for maybe three or four trolls to walk abreast, and paved with well-worn
cobblestone. I looked over the edge to the ground several hundred feet below. A knee-high, cut marble rail,
maybe two feet high, was the only thing to keep someone from accidentally going over the side. Of course, if
you're a four-foot troll then I suppose it was more than adequate. For Leanne and me it was just the perfect
height to be shoved over. With luck we might land on one of the bridges that spanned the distance below us,
only a measly hundred feet or so.
The guards began to crowd onto the bridge now, and I saw Snit ordering some of them back. If he was
smart--which unfortunately seemed to be the case--he would send men down through the tower and up
through the next one to cut off our escape route. Sure enough, I saw ten or twenty trolls cutting across the
garden below us, heading for the next building. I could only hope that Josh and Alex had made good their [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]