Sig ploughed on, knowing to slow down against numbers like this was to die. She slammed into more acolytes, a concussive impact that sent bodies spinning through the air. She stumbled but kept her feet, continued her relentless assault of stabbing and hacking and lunging, her arms drenched with their blood, and her enemies died about her, falling away screaming or silent, bloody and broken. But more kept coming. Blows rained down upon her, chainmail shirt turning some, a stutter of discordant thuds across her shield, red-fire cuts opening up on arms and legs, a dull thump on her shoulder, something more serious on her hip, a flash of pain and then tingling numbness.

No time for pain. No time for dying. Where’s Gulla?

It was a maelstrom of blood and chaos, and she was the centre of that storm, carving limbs from bodies, trailing scarlet arcs of blood, leaving the dead in her wake. But there were just too many of them. She tried to keep moving, to be the storm personified, but bodies heaped around her, tripping, snaring, hands grabbing, clutching at her, blades stabbing, and slowly she felt her strength leaking from her along with her blood.

A blow across the back of her leg sent her stumbling to one knee, faces lunging at her and she smashed a fist into one, sent the acolyte crashing to the ground with a pulped nose and fewer teeth than he’d had a few heartbeats ago. A sharp pain in her back, someone trying to stab her, though it felt like her shirt of mail held. She blocked a sword-swing with her blade, rolled her wrists and slashed its tip across a throat, the acolyte, a woman this time, stumbling away gurgling, dropping to her knees as she tried in vain to stem the blood pumping through her fingers.

A crunch to her head, white lights exploding before her eyes, and she fell forwards into the snow-slush, churned with blood and mud, lost a grip of her sword. She lifted her head, blood sluicing into one eye, hand reaching blindly for her sword hilt.

A calm came upon her then, legs all around her, figures seeming to slow in their rush to kill her, as if they were wading through water.

This is my end, she thought, knowing the numbers were too great, even for her and her crew, and she’d given her orders to Cullen and Keld to remain separate, to get Drem out and back to Dun Seren, unless she gave the order, the signal for them to fight. And she hadn’t. The numbers were too great alone, without feral man-beasts and whatever in the Otherworld it was that Gulla had become, and was infecting others with.

I hope they got Drem out, she thought as she tried to push herself back to her knees.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: RIV

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

RIV