Page 127 of Promise of Darkness
“And the others?” growls a goblin, with a black tattoo obliterating the right side of its face.
Isem smiles. “You did say we were running short of meat for the banes.”
31
The snap of chains landing on the ground is terrifying, as the goblins release the banes. The slavering beasts launch toward us, and I can’t draw my star-forged sword quick enough. My mind is calculating odds, even as I fall into a defensive stance.
We’re overwhelmed by numbers and trapped within the Hallow.
There’s no way we can survive.
“Blow the horn again!” Thiago yells.
Finn does, but my heart is racing.
They didn’t come.
My sister would have heard that horn from miles away.
Eris draws the two swords strapped to her back, her dark braids swinging. “Stay behind me.”
Gladly.
I’m good with a sword, but I can feel my hands trembling with excitement and nerves. Master Hammond prepared me for every possible foe, but it’s one thing to face a challenge in a training ring, and quite another to be staring into the maw of bloody ruin.
Steel rings and Eris throws herself forward, both swords flashing. A bane’s head hits the ground, blood gushing from its decapitated body, but she’s rolling under it, steel lashing out to hamstring two others.
I have half a second to gape at her prowess and then I’m facing my own threat.
Two goblins fan out, swinging the chains they used to bind the banes. They tower over me. They even make Thiago seem short, which means they must be nearly seven feet tall, and their arms and shoulders bulge with thick muscle. A motley assortment of leather adorns them, though the one on the right has a chest-piece made of bones laid over the top. Neither of them bears tattoos on their cheeks, which mean they’re of the Clanless, the outcasts that were exiled from the mountain halls.
It also means they obey no rules or laws of their people.
Golden, cat-slit eyes lock on me and one grins, revealing teeth he’s sharpened into points.“Alive,” he yells to the other, and I realize they’re not planning to kill me.
They’re planning to deliver me to Isem in chains, which is an entirely worse fate.
When the sun sinks into darkness….
One chain lashes toward me, and I use the sword to deflect it. A blur comes at my head from the other direction, the second goblin using the first to distract me. Ducking beneath its chain, I feel cold iron brush against my cheek with a stinging kiss, and then I throw myself into a roll across the slate of the Hallow’s floor.
A swordsman who sits still is a dead swordsman, Master Hammond’s words ring in my ears.
It’s like my body has a will of its own. I scramble to my feet, leaping over the top of the whiplash of the first chain. Another dive and roll, and then I’m right within the goblin’s reach, driving the sword straight up beneath its sternum.
Its breath hisses from it in shock, but it manages to bring its bony forehead down into mine with a crunch.
Mother of Night.
The shock of it flings me off my feet, my ears ringing. Pain floods through me, and when I blink, I’m flat on my back, struggling to breathe.Another blur comes at me, and I roll in terror, but it’s merely a head tumbling past me.
“Get up.” Eris is there, hauling me to my feet, her eyes locked on the fight.
Disorientation makes me stagger. Both goblins are down. One with my sword through its chest, and the other in a crumpled heap. Or… two crumpled heaps.
One significantly shorter than the other.
“Move,” Eris says, as another chain swings toward us.
