As if in a nightmare where time slowed to a crawl, yet nothing could be done to stop what was happening, Alberich saw a hundred fighters moving at the same time. Saw the mob close in, like a pack of rabid dogs, shoving Crathach into Sendar’s side, hemming in the horse and Companion so that neither could move.

Watched as too many weapons to count pierced first Sendar’s Companion, then Sendar.

Flicker of blue—and a wave of sickening horror smashed him back into his body. But he knew what he had seen was real.

Sendar, the King of Valdemar—

—was dead.

That was when a shriek of berserk rage tore the throat of every man and woman in the army, and sent them against their foes in a killing frenzy such as no Valdemaran had experienced in three centuries or more. He and Kantor rode that wave of bitter, mindless hatred, rode it and used it and let it use them, until it ran out—

—and the foes ran out—

—and left them, like every other surviving fighter on the Valdemar side, exhausted and sickened; blinking at the carnage around them, peering at death through eyes that streamed with agonized tears, in grief and mourning that would never entirely be healed.

17

17

The taste of blood was in his mouth; the sweet-sickly stench of it in his throat. His nostrils felt choked with it.

He thought, vaguely, that he should be on his knees, throwing up what little there was in his stomach. But instead, all he could feel was grief and numbness.

:Selenay—: prompted Kantor, with unutterable weariness, turning his head in the direction of the Heir.

No, not the Heir, he reminded himself, with a stabbing sensation in his heart. The Queen.

He wiped blood and sweat away from his eyes, and peered through a haze of exhaustion toward her circle of protection. He hadn’t prevented all of the Tedrels from getting to her and her guardians, after all—just a great many of them. Another clot of bodies marked where the Royal Guardsmen and her bodyguards had taken care of the ones that had gotten by him. Four of the Royal Guardsmen were dead, the rest wounded, two of the four mounted bodyguards were down.

Kantor stumbled to them; he half fell out of the saddle. His leg slash and half a dozen other wounds burned with a fire of their own, but he knew from the way they felt that though they hurt like demons were poking him, they were relatively minor. He wasn’t going to bleed to death any time soon, and his injuries weren’t going to incapacitate him. Therefore, as he had countless times when he was injured, he would carry on, if need be, until he dropped.