THE WANDERING FIRE by Guy Gavriel Kay

“Davor!” he heard. A warning too late. He felt pain lance through his left side and, looking down, saw that a svart had stabbed him from below. Tore killed it. Dave pulled the dagger free from his ribs, gasping. Blood followed. There was another urgach coming toward him, and two more beyond Tore. The North Keep man was down. They were almost alone near the river—the Dalrei were falling back; even the Aven was withdrawing. Dave looked at Tore, saw a deep gash on the other’s face, and read bitterest despair in his eyes.

Then, from over the river, north where the Dark was, he heard the sound of singing, high and clear. Dave turned as the urgach hesitated and, looking, caught his breath in joy and wonder.

Over the Plain from the north and west the lios alfar were riding to war. Bright and glorious they were, behind their Lord, whose hair shone golden in the light, and they sang as they came out from the Shadowland at last.

Swift were their horses, passing swift their blades, fierce was the fire in the hearts of the Children of Light. Into the ranks of the svarts they rode, sharp and glittering, and the foot soldiers of the Dark screamed with hate and fear to see them come.

The urgach were all on the south bank now. The terrible giant in white roared a command, and a number of them turned back north, trampling scores of the svart alfar, living and dead, as they did.

Shouting with relief, ignoring the flowering pain in his side, Dave hastened to follow, to kill the urgach as they withdrew, to claim the riverbank again. Then, by the water, he heard Tore say, “Oh, Cernan. No!” And looking up into the sky he felt joy turn to ashes in his mouth.

Overhead, like a moving cloud of death, Avaia descended, and with her, grey and black, darkening the sky, came at least three hundred of her brood. The swans of Maugrim came down from the unrelenting heavens and the lios alfar were blotted by darkness and began to die.

The urgach in white screamed again, this time in brutal triumph, and the slaug turned a second time, leaving the lios to the swans and the emboldened svarts, and the Dalrei were beleaguered again by overmastering numbers.

Hacking his way east toward where Ivor—still riding, still wielding his blade—had also regained the river, Dave saw Barth and Navon fighting side by side near the Aven. Then he saw the huge leader of the urgach come up to them and a warning shout tore from his raw throat. The babies in the wood, Tore’s babies and his own, the ones they had guarded together. The sword of the giant urgach crashed in an arc that seemed to bruise the very air. It cut through Barth’s neck as through a flower stem, and Dave saw the boy’s head fly free and blood fountain before it fell into the trampled mud by Adein. The same sword stroke descending sliced heavily, brutally, into Navon’s side, and he saw the boy slide from his horse even as he heard a terrifying sound.

He realized that he had made the sound. His own side was sticky with blood. He saw Tore, wild-eyed with hate, surge past him toward the urgach in white. He tried to keep up. Three svarts barred his way. He killed two with his axe and heard the other’s head crack open under the hooves of his black horse.

He glanced north and saw the lios battling Avaia and the swans. There were not enough. There had never been enough. They had come out from Daniloth because they would not stand by and watch the Dalrei die. And now they were dying too.

“Oh, Cernan,” he heard someone say, in despair. Cechtar’s voice. “This hour knows our name!”

Dave followed the big Rider’s glance to the east. And saw. The wolves were coming. Both north and south of the river. And leading them was a giant animal, black with a splash of silver between his ears, and he knew from what he had been told that this was Galadan of the andain, lieutenant to Maugrim. It was true. The hour knew their name.