Bastion

he’d betrayed himself—
    :It was me. They sensed me,: Dallen said with chagrin.
    :Hell. Well, at least they didn’t tell the Sleepgivers.:
    He couldn’t see them from where he was, not without exposing himself. But the arrows were burning out . . . and their eyes were more blinded by the light than the defenders’ were.
    Take the risk and take a shot with a throwing knife, and chance getting an arrow? Amily was handicapped by a limited field of fire from that tiny window in the caravan . . . she might not be able to pick them off before the last fire-arrow burned out, and—
    Suddenly he heard it—the unmistakable sound of two arrows fired off in quick succession—which was immediately followed by the sound of a scream and a gurgle and two bodies hitting the ground.
    He jumped out of hiding and threw at the first thing he could see.
    And then the entire cavern filled with light as the pile of oil-soaked wood in the firepit went up with a roar. Bey had set off the fire, probably by tossing one of those arrows into it.
    “To me, cousin!” shouted Bey, and Mags raced across the space between them, putting his back to Bey’s back.
    A glance at the archers showed him that the two archers weren’t dead yet; Amily was still shooting, keeping them from getting to the bows they had dropped. Then the three Sleepgiver swordsmen were on them, and he and Bey were fighting for their lives.
    As contemptuous as Bey had been of these Sleepgivers, Mags didn’t see anything to hold in contempt, and from the grim determination he sensed in his cousin . . . neither did Bey.
    But they fell into a rhythm as if they had been fighting together all their lives. Mags’ world narrowed to the three swords flashing in and out of range, his hunt for a target, and the need to keep his back to Bey’s. If either of them failed to cover the other, the Sleepgivers would surely see to it that was the last mistake they made.
    This was dirty, brutal fighting, nothing pretty about it; if they hadn’t been fighting on bare rock all five of them would have been kicking or throwing dirt in each others’ faces. Nothing was off-target and there was no such thing as an illegal blow. If you could get it, you took it; a rush parried turned into a bash with the hilt to the face. Moments in, and Mags had a gash on his leg, a cut over his bicep and a bruised cheekbone.
    But their opponents were in no better shape. One of them had a black eye that was rapidly swelling shut thanks to Mags; another had a slash across the forehead that was bleeding freely; Mags didn’t know if that was his work or Bey’s. The third had had to switch hands; his left was useless, thanks to Bey’s work.
    Then it all came undone.
    Bey slipped in a splat of blood and went down on one knee. The Sleepgivers all converged on him. Mags whirled and slapped away the blade of the first, and rushed the second, but the third had Bey wide open and Mags was not going to get there in time—
    And then the third simply wasn’t there anymore, as a raging Dallen ran right over the top of him, turned in a flash, and pulped the head of the second.
    Mags saw the opening, and took it, ramming his sword to the hilt in the first one’s chest.
    Then he went to his knees next to Bey.
    It was over.

Epilogue
    “O f all the things about you people, I am going to miss these the most,” said Bey, holding up a meat pie and gazing at it fondly.
    The cave had been put back to rights. Everything was in its proper place, and all evidence of the fight was gone. The vanners dozed in their corner, having slept through all of the drama. There was a great fire in the firepit, and all of them were lounging around it on the cushions and rugs. Amily had warmed up some meat pies, since Jakyr was in no kind of shape to cook, and Lena had made everyone tea with honey.
    Lita (to the surprise of both Mags and Bey) had helped Mags and Bey dispose of the bodies. They’d taken them to a spot where the cave floor opened into a black hole about as big across as a man was tall, so deep that the lantern didn’t even show the bottom, and a pebble tossed in took a very long time to fall. “I nearly fell in myself,” Bey had said, regarding the pit with an unreadable expression. “But now it’s proving useful.”
    Poor Amily had been very sick, after apologizing about a hundred times that when she’d realized she was shooting at living human beings instead of a target, she’d flinched. Mags had just held