He didn’t look convinced, but there wasn’t much he could do. He was drained and they were not, and his element was far below us now. Plus, he couldn’t do anything without dropping Pritkin, which was exactly what they wanted. I knew that because two of the others had just landed on the tattered ladder and were closing in on Arsen and his passenger.

Oh, no, you don’t, I thought, and slammed my elbow back into my captor’s face.

I guessed nobody had told him that he’d grabbed a wildcat, but that was what I felt like because I didn’t have time for anything more refined. A twist in mid-air, a knee to his groin—and this one wasn’t covered in chain mail. Then an uppercut to the chin, knocking his head back, followed by a savage blow to the chest—

And it was over. He fell into darkness, unconscious or worse, and I swung back, striking one of the two fey currently on the path with outstretched legs. I knocked him off, taking his place on the sagging old trail, although he grabbed a nearby vine, saving himself from a hell of a fall. But the other fey had seen me and had started kicking me in the head with a hard soled boot.

The Lord of the Rings lied to me, I thought, as the very un-Elven footwear smashed me in the face, over and over. Until I grabbed the offending foot and jerked, using every ounce of Mircea’s strength. And saw the bastard go flying.

But now the one who’d caught the vine was back, swinging onto the path just below me, and the fourth fey finally made a move, landing up ahead and scurrying after Arsen while the rest of us fought it out. Damn it! There was only one way to fix this in time, but nobody was going to like it.

“Arsen!” I yelled. “Hold on!”

I didn’t know whether he heard me or not, but there was no time to yell again. There was no time for anything except grabbing the fabric of the path and shaking it, although that term is far too soft for what I was doing. I was shaking it, clinging to my vine while what looked like tsunami quality waves formed in the ‘cloth’ and rippled upward.

They caught the fey, right before he reached his target, causing him to slip. Not off the path—I’m not that lucky—but he grabbed a handhold of the material as his body slung outward, and I guessed that was too much for the crappy stuff. Because it tore, causing him to rip a huge piece out of the middle as he fell downward—straight into me.