Page 39 of Burn Bright
The sharp edges glanced off the draugur's woody arms, shearing off pieces of bark and moss but not causing enough damage. One of them backhanded a soldier, and he flew past me, slamming into a tree behind me in a steelyclash.
I lowered my arms. He'd nearly kicked me in the head as he sailedpast.
"Axes out!" Cas bellowed, turning to the spare packs, and hauling out one of the enormous woodcutters axes. There were two more, and he hefted one toward Hussar, then another to a guard whose name I couldn'trecall.
I drew my bow, and stood there in indecision. I was a hunter, not a warrior. Steel flashed in the firelight as someone lit a torch to help us see, and men screamed as the draugur waded into them, ripping and tearing with arms of ash and alder, redwood and pine. One took a swipe at Cas, and he ducked the blow in a blur of movement, sending his axe shearing through one of itslegs.
Another staggered forward as the first fell, and suddenly all I could see were the pale, bleached bone faces. Dozens ofthem.
It was enough to clear my head. I turned my arrow upon the one attacking Cas, knowing I couldn't kill it, as it wasn't technicallyalive.
There were other ways to handle thethreat.
My arrow flew straight and true, driving into the hollow eye socket of the skull mask. The draugur screamed, clawing at its eye. Cas turned his axe upon it, swiping low and shearing through its legs. The second it went down, he sunk the broad head of the axe into its chest, cracking open those mossyribs.
No time to enjoy my handiwork. I surveyed the fight. The first shot had been a lucky guess. Somehow the draugur could see through those hollow eyes. Without them, they wereblind.
Arrow after arrow blurred from my fingers. I pinned a draugur's hand to a tree, leaving it vulnerable to a guard. The prince darted among the melee, fighting with expert grace, and I caught a glimpse of him and Cas back to back at one point, before one of the lumbering beasts turned onme.
I had my hunting knife, but I was no match for a draugur at close range. Sinking my last arrow into its nose—a narrow miss—I cast the bow over my shoulder, and leapt up, catching hold of the branch above me. A twist of the hips, and I was in the tree, panting hard at theeffort.
Long hands came at me. Scrambling along the branch, I leapt between trees, moving as fast as a squirrel. I could see men fighting beneath me. Men dying. Blood smeared the churned up snow, and the draugur werewinning.
Woven from magic, they weren't truly alive, and hence they couldn't die. Our only hope was to hack them into enough pieces that they no longer posed athreat.
Unless...
Wood burned. And I had something that could burnanything.
"Cas!" I jumped back down into the clearing, landing behind him and the prince. "I need yourflask!"
He kicked one of the draugur's feet out from under it, his face flashing toward me, before he decapitated it. "What?"
"Your flask!" I yelled, trying to grab it from the belt at his hip. "I can burnthem."
Cas ripped the flask free, and tossed it into my hands, before turning and sinking his axe into the chest of an incoming foe. "Hurry!"
Sweat tracked down his dirty face, and there was blood dripping down one of his arms. Draugur didn't tire, but the men were startingto.
I beckoned the guard beside him, confiscating his arrows. Two seconds later I had his shirt too and was tearing it into strips.Hurry...I wrapped one length around the head of an arrow and doused it liberally with the brandy Cas carried. "Keep binding the arrows!" I snapped to theguard.
It was as though the firebird's feather knew what I intended. The enchanted glass vial around my throat suddenly heated, and I ripped it free. The feather burned within, its flames licking the inside of the glass hungrily. I tore the stopper free and tilted thevial.
Liquid fire dripped onto the arrowhead, and the brandy went up with a whoosh. Sinking the feather's vial into the snow, I turned and set the arrow to mybow.
This time I wasn't aiming for theeyes.
The arrow sank into the chest of a draugur, and flames lit it up almost instantly, as if the creature were made of drywood.
Or perhaps a firebird's flame simply burnedhotter.
The draugur screamed and white-hot fire gushed from its hollow mouth. The deer skull fell off, revealing a nightmare face cobbled together from mud, twigs, and moss. It turned and fled like a bonfire on legs. The other draugur around itpaused.
"Another," I said, grabbing the next arrow off the guard who was hastily preparing them for me. I could sense the sweat dripping from my upper lip, and the heat coming from the burning arrowhead was almost enough to melt thetip.
Fire whizzed across the clearing. Another draugur went down, and the men cheered. I lit four more of them on fire within the space of half a minute, and suddenly the tide of the battle was turning. Draugur screamed and fled, the burning ones lighting up their fellows in the rush. Heat melted the snow and my face felt hot and tight, as if the skin were about to split. A bush began to burn, and the rest of the draugur turned to escape, stumbling over each other in theprocess.
Then they were gone, and suddenly there was a new problem athand.
