The guerillas on foot had all thrown their pila. They weren’t experts, but the distance was ten feet and there were thirty of them with strong arms and they were full of desperate hate. Some of the big javelins missed and smashed into the glass window. Others thudded into shields as the Sixth Battalion guard detail reacted with trained speed. Many found flesh.

The survivors crowded back towards the tall worked-bronze doors of the shop; not running, but backing with their shields up and putting their bodies between the unknown enemy and their ruler’s kin, slightly crouched with their blades out ready for the stabbing stroke. Whistles trilled, calling the alarm.

More arrows punched into the heavy plywood and sheet metal, crack-crack-crack , and more men fell or dropped the shields as the points gouged through into arms. Soldiers were pushing out through the doors to join them, the other half of the guard detail, and the formation was shaken for a moment.

That instant’s gap was enough. A great high silvery shout: “Lacho calad! Drego morn!”

The Dúnedain war-shout, alive again in the Fifth Age: Flame light! Flee night!

And Astrid Loring-Larsson’s voice. She was moving, long sword and dagger in hand, like a human blade of black and silver, spired helm and elfboots, a soaring leap from the wagon to the trough and then another that sent her spinning in midair in a three-quarter tumble right over a man’s head and landing with the blades already moving.

In Dúnedain training a move like that was called a Jakie, for some reason, and they did a lot of them. Many involved running up trees and going across buildings and leaping from rock to rock through the hills. Eilir was half a pace behind; she hit the wall running and went straight up it and spunflipped and landed beside her anamchara.

Astrid killed the man over whose head she’d jumped before he could make himself believe what she’d done, a thrust to the back of the neck that flicked out and back like a frog’s tongue after a fly and he dropped as limp as a puppet with the strings cut, in a sprawling crash of armor.

“Lacho calad! Drego morn!” Ritva shrieked as she dropped her bow.