salvageable, here, or even if he cared if girl or priest or child or town … or
god… were to be saved. But then he looked behind him, and saw his Stepsons,
Niko on the left and Janni with sword drawn, both ready to advance on hell
itself, would he but bid them, and he raised a hand and led them into the
lightfight, eyes squinted nearly shut and all his body tingling as his
preternatural abilities came into play.
Molin’s ouster was uppermost in his mind; he picked the glareblind priest up
bodily and threw him, wrenching the god’s golden icon from his frozen fist. He
heard a grunt, a snapping-in of breath, behind, but did not look around to see
reality fade away. He was fighting by himself, now, in a higher, colder place
full of day held at bay and Vashanka’s potent breath in his right ear. “It is
well you have come, manchild; I can use your help this day.” The left is the
place of attack in team battle; a shield-holding line drifts right, each trying
to protect his open side. He had Vashanka on his right, to support him, and a
shield, full-length and awful, came to be upon his own left arm. The thing he
fought here, the Stormbringer’s shape, was part cat, part manlike, and its sword
cut as hard as an avalanche. Its claws chilled his breath away. Behind, black
and gray was split with sunrise colors, Vashanka’s blazon snapping on a flag of
sky. He thrust at the clouds and was parried with cold that ran up his sword and
seared the skin of his palm so that his sweat froze to ice and layers of his