A dozen Thrasey warriors faced around to meet the threat from the collapsing flank. The foremost were champions from the lord’s personal bodyguard, and even the warriors of their retinues, falling into place behind them, looked reasonably well equipped.
Malcolm slowed and stopped five paces from the new line. The rush of easy winners behind him halted at the appearance of a real enemy again.
Hansen put a hand on the veteran’s shoulder. “Malcolm,” he said. “I’ll lead and you back—”
Malcolm pushed Hansen aside with a clang.
A maelstrom of arcs snarled around the leaders. The Lord of Thrasey had led the remainder of his bodyguard in a rush to overwhelm Golsingh before the king’s left flank could rescue him.
The melee blazed like the lightning which swirls in the funnel of a tornado, flinging battlesuits and bits of battlesuit out from its lethal core. Golsingh stood in his blue armor and struck with deadly effect, but the warriors to either side of him dropped.
Malcolm shouted wordlessly and charged the waiting line.
“Strike with Malcolm!” Hansen snarled as he lurched forward beside the veteran.
Malcolm’s arc crossed with that of a fellow whose armor was decorated in orange swirls. Hansen feinted toward the next Thrasey warrior to the left, then struck at the shoulder of Malcolm’s man. The armor burned, flinging the limb in one direction as the man’s body toppled in the other.
Maharg parried the thrust of the left-hand warrior and went to his knees with the searing force of the fellow’s arc. Hansen’s sideways sweep drove the Thrasey warrior back. Maharg stayed down, shaking his head.
The Thrasey survivors backed. Some of Golsingh’s warriors pressed forward.
“What are you doing?” Malcolm demanded. “He was mine!”
“Winning!” Hansen snarled back on straight audio. “D’ye want to die? We’ll all die if we don’t cut the king loose, ‘n that means teamwork!”
Malcolm lunged forward, thrusting. His arc slipped past the guard and through the plastron of a warrior hesitating between facing Malcolm and joining the attack on Golsingh. The man was dead and falling, but Hansen struck him anyway because he was moving with the stroke and it was better to follow through than to change his rhythm.
Shill chopped at the body as he followed Malcolm and Hansen. His arc cut at the ankles of the next Thrasey warrior as his betters—as his fellows—whipsawed the victim through both shoulder pieces.
The last of Golsingh’s bodyguards fell. Three of the four men with the Lord of Thrasey, all of them champions, turned and faced the threat from the flank.
Thrasey and his remaining warrior slashed at the king. The warrior got home with a blast of sparks that blistered blotches of paint away from Golsingh’s helmet.
Malcolm cut at a guard wearing black and white checks. The Thrasey warrior thrust back, not at Malcolm but at Hansen lunging in to double the stroke. Hansen’s display blurred and all his hair stood out straight as his muscles twitched.
He almost fell as his display shrank back into bright focus. All three of the Thrasey bodyguards held their blocking position. One of the Golsingh’s left-wing warriors had fallen between them and Malcolm.
Two meters away, the Lord of Thrasey was body to body with Golsingh. Their arcs were locked in a shower of blue fire. The warrior with the Lord of Thrasey had lifted his rippling arc weapon for the final blow.
“Come on,” Hansen gasped as he jumped forward. The check-armored warrior parried his cut.
Their armor crashed together, jarring the Thrasey warrior back a half step before the power of his better suit stopped Hansen’s rush and began bending him over. Malcolm was dueling with another bodyguard, and there was no chance that—
Shill stepped between Hansen and Malcolm with his palm outstretched. His bolt struck the Lord of Thrasey at the join of his backplate and helmet. Malcolm’s opponent swiped sideways, cutting through both knees of Shill’s powerless suit.
Golsingh neatly decaptitated the Lord of Thrasey.
Shill toppled forward. The bodyguard struggling with Hansen doubled up as Maharg stabbed him through the belly.
Hansen’s AI tagged all the figures still standing with the spike of blue light. Friendlies, they were all friendlies. Malcolm had finished his opponent when the fool struck down Shill, and Golsingh was hacking with an intensity that was more vengeance than caution at the smoldering ruins of the warrior who’d almost killed him.