Kerian pointed to the lights, the real gleams of real fires. Stanach sighed.

“I tell you, Mistress Lioness, I don’t like being away from Thorbardin. It’s never good. I’m meant to be there, I’m supposed to be there. All this …” He swept his arm wide, taking in the sleeping elves, the distant Knights and draconians. “All this, damn, I don’t even know why I’m here anymore-where I am or what I’m fighting for.”

“You’re north of Reanlea Gorge, not far from Lighting-”

“-Thunder.”

“Lightning and Thunder. You aren’t even all that far from Thorbardin. Closer than you’d be if you were sleeping in a bed of goose down in the best chamber King Gilthas could offer.”

A small breeze wandered around the top of the hill, smelling like earth and stone, like the water in the rill below. “Ah, your king. And you, his own, dear outlaw.”

She looked at him sideways. He did not smile, but he slid her a look of knowing.

“His own, dear outlaw, that’s you. What are you going to do in the morning, Mistress Lioness?”

“Fight.”

He shook his head. “You won’t make it through. The Skull Knight is set up to crush you.”

“Us,” she murmured, her eyes on the fires.

He grunted. “You’ll die.”

“We probably will.”

The first howling of wolves wound through the night. One to another, they called out, Brother! Where are you? Brother! There is food! Brother!

Kerian winced, thinking of the corpses to be stripped, the bodies of friends who could not be decently buried.

Softly Stanach said, “How will we die, Mistress Lioness?”

Kerian drew a breath, a long one, and on it she felt again the quiver of tears she’d shed for a boy who had flung himself between Thagol’s sword and her breast.

“We will die well. If anyone knows about it, if anyone of us gets out of here to tell, they will be singing the song of us in every tavern in Qualinesti and all the best bars in Thorbardin.”

“Our kings would be proud.”

Now tears did prick behind her eyes. “Yes, they would be proud.”

They stood a moment longer, silent and watching the wood. Once, Stanach peered a little closer into the darkness. Keriatt followed his line of sight and thought she saw a darker darkness moving. She glanced at the dwarf, he at her. They looked again and saw only fires winking, out there in the darkness, like bloodshot stars. Wolves howled, and Stanach said they’d better get some more sleep.

“Goodnight, missy,” he said, his voice low and fond.

Kerian, however, did not sleep. She sat long awake, watching the fires of her foe, watching over her warriors.

Now and then she saw flitting shadows in the woods, swift out of the corner of her eye and gone. No more than that and certainly nothing of the odd shape she’d seen earlier.

The risen sun set the morning haze afire, gilding the tops of the trees, staining the stones with ghostly blood-paint. In the sky, crows hung. Ravens burdened the trees, and Kerian stood upon the hill, high on the top of the lich-ened boulder. Below, her warriors made ready. They had slept cold, not lighting fires. Now they sat proving their weapons, honing bright edges, attending to bow strings, to fletching.

“Do we wait?” Jeratt asked, his eye on the distance, his mind already in the field.

Kenan didn’t think there was anything else to do. “Get them all to high ground,” she said, with one gesture sweeping the hollow below. “If Thagol’s going to get us, he’s going to work for it.”

Jeratt whistled. Every head turned, faces lifted. He gestured, and Kerian counted them, coming. There weren’t more than a hundred of them, with weakened weapons. Some had stolen swords, lifted from corpses. Out in the forest, there had to be half as many draconians and twice as many Knights. She gathered her warriors around her.

“Find cover wherever you can, make them find you. We don’t rush; we don’t attack. We hold this hill until we’ve killed all we can.”

Until they have killed us.

Beside her, Stanach made his axe sing to a whetstone. Little sparks flew up from the blade. It amazed her he still had it. The weapon was made to fly, to kill at a distance. It was easily the first weapon lost in any battle.

“Are you fond of it?” she asked, her eyes on the forest, watching for her foe.

“The axe. Pretty much. I made it.”

She turned, surprised. “You?”

From lowering brows, he looked at her. He held up his hand, the one with the broken fingers. He turned the hand over, as though to study it. “Surprising, isn’t it? Fight pretty good for a one-handed man. Imagine what I could do with two.”

The color mounted to her cheeks as she watched hitn study his hand. He didn’t move those fingers, he couldn’t, but sight of them reminded her of the sign above his tavern door, a broken hammer on an anvil’s breast Stanach’s Curse.

“Look,” said the dwarf, with his axe pointing down to the forest. “Time has come, Mistress Lioness.”

Time had come. The Knights came through the forest on foot, their steeds abandoned. They did not come clanking in armor. They came lightly, in mail and some wearing breastplates. They came behind a vanguard of draconians, the lizard-men their shield and decisive weapon all at once. The wind came from behind, carrying the reptile stench of them, the reek of their foul breath.

“Archers,” Kerian said, surprised by the coolness of her voice. “Draconians first. Go after them the way they used to go after dragons in the days before dragonlances-aim for the eyes, send your shaft right through to their tiny brains and drop them where they stand. Let the Knights wade through the poison.”

Jeratt laughed, liking the picture of that.

“We never leave this hill,” Kerian said. “We make them come up.”

Closer, the draconians slashed through the underbrush, and now Kerian heard their voices, growling curses in a language whose every word seemed like a curse. She put a hand on Jeratt’s arm. She knew this was the moment to steady him or he’d leap too soon.

“Easy,” she said. “Let them see us. Let them come to us.”

He quivered under her hand, but he held. Because he did, the rest did. Arrows whispered from quivers. By the handful each archer took them, one to nock to the bowstring, four to hold between clenched teeth.

“Not till you see the first of them among the ashes of our fires,” Kerian warned.

Below the crest, on either side, men and women with swords and war-axes stood ready to fall upon whatever enemy made it up the hill.

“Soft,” Kerian said, “now patient, patient.”

The first draconian stepped into the empty campsite, stopped and looked around. His fellows came after, and they slowed, then stopped, looking around for prey.

Stanach stood and tucked his whetstone into the little pouch at his belt. Jeratt took a careful breath around the shafts of his arrows. He lifted his bow. Every archer had an eye on Kerian, and every one of them saw her lift her hand, drew breath as she did, and let fly when she dropped her fist.

The arrow-storm whistled down the hill, shrieking in the morning silence. One draconian fell, and another. A third, and one after that. Four in the first volley! It was not enough. Came the second volley, and two more fell. One stumbled into the decomposing corpse of his fellow and died screaming. Three fell wounded, and it needed another volley to kill those.

Kerian shouted, “Archers!” and the fourth volley flew.

Beyond the hissing, reeking corpses of draconians, the Knights stopped. Some stumbled into the acid, others pulled away in time, and those saw their prey atop the hill.

“Go!” shouted Thagol, pointing. “Charge them!”

The Skull Knight drove them hard, howled at them, cursed them, and sent them around the deadly draconian corpses. They split and regrouped to come up the hill from the sides.