Blood geysers, the body topples, and I glance sidelong and notice the other half-dozen guards dropping in unison as my comrades violently murder them.
One of the guards gets out a squeal before Garroway can plunge his daggers into his heart. His body falls hard against thewall, rustling and thudding, smearing the stone with a trail of red as he slides down.
More sentinels make up the next line through the initial back-guard. We charge as they turn and level their halberds, spears, and swords. Their shields come out.
Mayhem unfolds in the night.
Dust kicks up on the level ground. The valley chill feels comforting against my heated skin as we make our way into the night.
My axe swings wide, savage and arced, tearing into flesh and rending deep grooves in armor. Vampire soldiers squeal and cry out, alerting more guards, and before long we have a proper brawl on our hands.
Three vampires descend on me, baring their fangs. One of them lashes at me face-first, trying to bite into my arm, and gets his calves cut from Garroway behind him. When the soldier flops forward onto the ground, my axe cuts a groove into the dirt and slices his arm and shoulder from his body.
The vampire jerks, spasms, and stumbles to his feet—
Only to get the hilt of my axe crushing every bone in his face. I spin as he’s stunned, stumbling back, and carve a hole in his chest that certainly hits his blackened heart.
Pain cuts into my side and I grunt, snarling through my beard. One of the other vampires has scored a hit on me, so I rush him with my shoulder, pushing him aside.
Garroway streams in between my legs, low to the ground, and comes up slicing the vampire from groin to necks, spewing a red torrent of gore and spilling guts across his front.
I’m right behind him, ignoring the pain. My bloodrage settles in my belly, bubbling, ready to explode, and a tinge of warning zaps my brain.
I spin, lurching and then falling into a full sprint at the inner sound of danger coming to Sephania from my bloodsight. She’saround a corner of stalagmites near the entrance of the mine shaft, trying to wade through soldiers with Skar, Lukain, and half the Gilded Ghosts.
Ahead of me is a soldier who’s drawn a bow. She fires a shot and spears the redheaded leader of the Gilded Ghosts in the neck. Kimera goes down mid-charge, croaking, sputtering blood onto the ground, and twitching.
The vampire reaches into her quiver for another arrow, this time aiming at Sephania.
I come up behind her, closing my fist over her hand in the quiver on her shoulder. She gasps, spins—
I break her wrist with a sickeningsnap. Screeching, the vampiress scuttles back, lifting her bow crossways with her single good hand, while her other arm dangles limply, uselessly, at her side.
I kick her in the chest, snapping the bow like a twig and sending her sprawling onto her back.
A comrade of hers leaps onto me from behind. I spin, lifting my axe high, and create a crater of red through the prone woman’s chest, nearly splitting her in half.
The vampire on my back screeches, “No!” and bites into my neck.
I drop my axe, grunting at the sudden puncturing of my neck, and grab at the vampire’s head with both gloved hands.
With a quicktwist, the vampire’s neck snaps. He goes limp, dead weight on me, and I toss him off. He’s still moving, trying to readjust his broken spine, because even though I’ve made him incapacitated, he still isn’t dead.
Agelessness is a curse in that way. He can’t fight, and he can’t die until someone squeezes the black blood from his heart. So he’s left there to rot in agony, twitching and flopping on the ground. Eventually, in days or weeks, he would recover.
We’re not going to give him that much time.
I look up, past him, wiping my blood off my neck. Sephania is gone, past the initial wall of soldiers, with her other mates and the army of Gilded Ghosts behind her. Kimera’s corpse is trampled on, which can’t be helped in the dusty, grimy, bloody setting of battle.
“You’re a fool for this, Vallan Stellos!”
The voice comes from deeper in the rows of tents to my side.
Cordea draws a thin shortsword, seething at me and bending her knees. She lunges from twenty feet away, black cloak fluttering along with her jet-black hair, closing the gap in mere seconds.
I bend, kick out with my boot, and flip my axe on the ground onto its head. The weapon wobbles and I spin, grabbing it at the hilt at the last second as Cordea charges at me. I swing roundhouse for a cleave that will separate her torso from her legs. She leaps high over my arc, unnaturally high—
Comes down on me blade-first, and stabs it into my shoulder from above.