POV: Seraphina
Seraphina was sitting up when the flap opened. The sky beyond it was the wrong color. Past Suri on the cot, she could see men running. The screaming started.
She got off the cot. The fire-scars at her wrists were still warm from the day's heal. The staff was propped against the stool Thalion had used. The sword was beside it. The blade came free in her hand. She set the flat of her palm to the steel. Fire came up under her hand and ran down the blade. The heat held.
Suri stayed on the cot. His ears tracked the opening.
She stepped outside.
The camp was already in pieces. The picket line had broken at three points she could see. The eastern gap was the worst. Demons were coming through it faster than the line could close behind them. The closest demon was past the line, moving for Corwin's table. She stepped between it and Corwin.
The first cut she made took the arm at the shoulder. The fire on her blade ate through the demon flesh where steel would have caught. The arm came away and the demon dropped what was left of it and came for her face. She put the blade through its mouth.
Another came at her from her right. She turned and put fire across its chest before it reached her. It dropped and she stepped over it. A third came from the line behind it. She put the blade through its throat. The fire on her steel did not falter.
To her right, a corporal of the paladin contingent stood between her and the next two. The face of his shield was lit from a source that was not torchlight, pale and even, and the edge of his blade had the same pale glow. A demon came at the seam between his shield and the next man and went back without hitting him. He held the next one off the same way, the pale glow stopping it short. His eyes stayed on the line.
She kept her eyes on the demon at her left. Another one was closing. It came in low and a claw caught her along the forearm before she put fire through its throat. The cut opened her sleeve. Under the cloth, gold ran along the scar lines and closed the wound without her looking down. A sharp sting under her sleeve. Only her own body felt it. She wiped the blood on her hip and kept moving.
Thalion was two paces ahead of her. He had moved through the flap before she had. His sword was already out and already cutting. The demon under his blade went down. He moved into the path of the next one.
Seraphina moved up against his back without thinking about it. They held the square of ground in front of the tent flap. He took the demon on her left without turning his head. Her blade caught the one on his right. He shifted his stance a hand's width to the right and she shifted with him. A demon came at the seam where their backs met. He took it through the chest without letting her side go open. Three passes. Four. The square stayed clear.
Then he moved forward. Away from her, out into the camp, where the line had broken hardest.
She moved the other way. The camp could not hold if they both stayed at the flap.
She fought across to the eastern line. Thalion worked his way to the western side. The hum stayed between them, dimmer for the distance. It held the way it had when she lay on the cot and he had stood by the bonfire.
Two demons came through the eastern gap at a run, out of sword reach. She raised her free hand and sent fire through the first at twenty paces. The second kept coming. Another burst of fire dropped it at ten paces. A third reached the line. She met it with the sword.
The line in front of her was three paladins deep, two of them new under Gavrel. They held what they had been given. A demon broke between the second and the third. She put fire across the seam and forced it back. The demon dropped to a paladin's blade.
To her left, Brennan stepped up to fill a gap where one of Gavrel's new men had gone down. He took a claw across his upper arm and the sleeve went through. He did not go down. He kept his blade up and stepped into the line. She saw him hold his position through the next two demons before he traded out. The man who had stumbled was on his feet again behind the line.
A demon broke through the line on her left and came at her unguarded side. Through her boots, the ground shifted. Lower than a footfall.
Thalion was warning her. She pivoted into the angle before her eyes caught the demon. The blade went through its chest and out, and the demon was on the ground.
Across the camp, the hum spiked. He was fighting harder now. She raised her free hand and let the fire run from her palm into a thin sheet of heat in the air. Two seconds of it, along the path his sword was cutting. Then it was gone. She let the fire fall. The hum settled.
His voice came across the camp before she saw the work. The earth shifted again at the western edge. Stone spikes came up where a gap had been. Two demons that had moved at speed went into them and stayed. The third tried to go around and the ground dropped out from under it. She did not see it come back up.
He shaped the ground the way she shaped fire. He worked quickly and did not look down.
Her fingers cramped on the hilt. She tightened her grip and kept the blade up. The scars along her forearms ran hot.
To her other side, an unfamiliar paladin wore dark armor that broke the moonlight into pieces instead of catching it. His breastplate was dark stone with light running through it. A demon's claw came at his throat and broke against the face of his armor. The demon dropped. The paladin moved on.
A shout went up behind her, a warning.
She did not turn. If she turned, the line in front of her broke.
The shout cut off mid-word.
She cut through the demon in front of her and turned then. In her peripheral, through the trampled grass, a demon was crouched over a shape on the ground.
Her free hand came up to burn it.
Before she could release the fire, earth rose between her and them. A wall of soil and stone cut across her path.
Thalion had raised it to keep her side of the line whole.
She went around it.
The ground buckled, his stone tearing up the earth beneath her boots. A lost half-step. Then another. It was a shield she had not asked for. It made her too slow.
By the time she cleared his barricade, the Imperial soldier was already face down. The demon was past him, moving back toward the breach. She put her blade through the demon's back. The body did not move.
Behind her, the wall was still standing where Thalion had raised it for her. The man had been outside its reach.
The first rush thinned. Bodies outnumbered the demons still standing.
Then more came through the same three breaches.
The picket line held them at the breaches this time. Thalion shut a gap on the western edge with stone where his men had stepped back for a breath. A demon that had come through the gap died on the spikes that came up under it.
She fought the second rush with what she had left. She put the blade through demon after demon and kept her line.
At last, the second rush thinned. The screaming behind her became sparse, then stopped.
Seraphina did not stop.
The screaming was gone.
She noticed it after she cut down the last demon within reach. Her blade was wet to the hilt. She let the fire on the steel die back.
She lowered the blade. The line of bodies behind her was longer than she wanted it to be.
She held still for a count. Her hands were still on her weapons. The blade went cold under her palm. The gold under her skin was hot but holding. The scars had not climbed.
Across the camp, at the western edge, Thalion stood where he had ended. Bodies around his boots. His sword was down. His eyes were on the work, not on her.
The hum was still there. Dimmer.
Two soldiers carried the body past her. It was the man she had not reached. They handled him the way men handled the dead. She watched him go by.
Brennan came past next, on his own feet. His right hand was pressed flat to his upper arm. The sleeve was through. He saw her and gave her a half-nod. He kept walking, toward Corwin's table.
The camp had held. People were dead.
The thought came up under her ribs and sat there. The camp was on the road between two estates. The ground was clean. The road had been clean since first light. There had been no anchor. Nothing on the ground should have drawn them. Still, they had come.
Two of Gavrel's men came past her at a run with a paladin between them on a cloak. The paladin's breastplate had been punched through, and his chest was open. He should not have been making the sound he was making.
They took him into the medical tent. The flap fell closed behind them.
Through the canvas, she could still hear him.
He should not have had enough breath to make that sound.