Forest Kingdom Trilogy 2 - Blood and Honor

their faces white with shock and horror, but Cord, Taggert and Gawaine stood calm and ready to back him up. Their confidence gave him strength, and he nodded abruptly.
    'All right, everyone, we're going into the Hall. You'll have to try to hold off the Unreal while I make a dash for the Stone. Stay close together, watch each other's backs, and if you get a chance at the Monk, take it. You might not get another.' He took a deep breath, and let it go. Keeping his voice calm and steady was one of his greatest acting triumphs, even if no one else appreciated it. 'All right, my friends.
    Let's do it.'
    He moved forward into the Hall, and the Unreal surged towards him in a monstrous tide. Misshapen creatures that had no place in the waking world boiled across the floor, and Jordan's guards met them with flashing swords. The tide faltered and broke against the unflinching steel, and Jordan and his people pressed forward. Gawaine fought at Jordan's left, his axe glowing bright as the sun. Taggert fought at his right, her balefire sword spitting and crackling as it hewed through flesh and bone alike. Behind them, Cord threw away his mace, and it vanished in mid-air. He pulled out of nowhere a huge and terrible war
    hammer, and swung it double-handed. The solid steel head alone had to weigh at least twenty pounds, and it was set on the end of five feet of polished oak. An ordinary man couldn't even have hefted it, but Cord swung the hammer as though it was all but weightless. He was no more Real than the creatures he fought, but still his face twisted with loathing at the sight of what faced him. He might have been born of the darkness, but his heart and his loyalties lay with the light. And above them all, the Monk rotated slowly on the disturbed air, and madness surged through him into the world.
    Things that looked horribly like men crawled up out of the cracks in the floor. Something huge and dark scuttled lightly down the wall and dropped on to a guard, crushing him to the floor. Gossamer strands of pink and purple drifted on the air and wrapped themselves around the fighters, tightening inexorably into glistening cocoons that devoured their contents. One whole wall became a vast inhuman face. A dozen men looked into its great golden eyes and went insane from what they saw there. And still Jordan and his people struggled ever closer to the throne.
    Sir Gawaine fought tirelessly, his axe falling and rising with grim efficiency. He gave no thought to anything save the struggle, and blood ran down his face like tears. With Emma's death all his emotions had run out of him, save for a simple cold need for revenge. Nothing else mattered. Nothing mattered but killing the monstrous things that were responsible for all the evil in Castle Midnight. His axe rose and fell, rose and fell, and the creatures of the Unreal fell back before him. Gawaine cut them down and moved on to the next, feeling nothing, nothing at all.
    Taggert fought at Prince Viktor's side, and smiled savagely as her balefire sword sliced through every monstrosity that walked or crawled or flew within her reach. Nothing got past her to strike at Viktor, though many tried, and a slow steady pride burned within her. Even in the midst of blood and carnage she still had time to find a small smile at how fast her feelings towards Viktor had changed. He'd not been a bad sort before his exile, just weak and easily led by the wrong people. She hadn't cared much about him then, one way or the other. But the man who'd emerged from the chaos of King Malcolm's death had been a much finer sort. A true Prince of the Blood, worthy to be King. And a man Kate Taggert was growing increasingly fond of. She smiled again, and then put the thought firmly out of her mind. She'd think about that later. Assuming there was a later. She fought on, sweat running down her face, and soaking her chest and sides as a grinding fatigue grew slowly inside her. The balefire was a constant drain on her strength, but she didn't dare give it up for an ordinary sword. It was the only advantage she had.
    She just hoped her magic would last long enough for Viktor to reach the Stone. If it didn't, then perhaps everything they'd been through had been for nothing, after all. Taggert cut viciously about her with her shimmering sword. She wasn't unhappy. She was doing what she'd been trained to do, in a cause she believed in, for someone she cared for. There were worse ways to die.
    Cord swung his war hammer