Forest Kingdom Trilogy 3 - Down Among the Dead Men

smoking and sizzling where it collected on the broken ice covering the floor.
    The Dancer swore calmly when some of the blood splashed his wrist and burned the bare skin, but he didn’t let it distract him from his work. The trolls could only get through the doorway a few at a time, and despite their frenzied attack, the Dancer wouldn’t retreat a step. He was a Bladesmaster, and now he had a chance to show what that really meant. His sword swept back and forth faster than the eye could follow, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. He lunged and recovered and swung again, all in a single breath, his blade scything through the howling trolls. Their clawed hands reached for him with an unrelenting fury, their great jaws snapping at his unprotected face, but always he was that extra inch out of reach, and the dying trolls fell before him to scream and writhe on the gore-soaked floor.
    Flint fought at his side, grinning fiercely as she swung her blood-soaked blade. Trolls lay dead and dying to either side of her, cluttering up the doorway. She might not be as fast or as skillful as the Dancer, but she’d been a guard all her adult life, and she knew more about swordsmanship than most men ever would. She had fought in the last great battle of the Demon War in ill-fitting chain mail with a borrowed sword, and after that there wasn’t much that could daunt her. She cut and hacked at the grinning bony faces before her, and refused to feel the growing ache in her arms and back. She was a Ranger, and she would fight till she fell.
    Wilde fired arrow after arrow past the two Rangers, striking down the trolls as they tried to claw their way past Flint and the Dancer by sheer force of numbers. He lost track of how many of the creatures he’d killed, and still they came surging through the narrow doorway. And all too soon Wilde ran out of arrows. He placed his longbow and his empty quiver carefully to one side, out of the way, and drew his sword. He hefted it once and then looked at the two Rangers, struggling against the endless tide of inhuman creatures.
    Just like old times, eh, Jess?
    He looked quickly about him, just in case there was another exit he hadn’t noticed before, but there was only the trapdoor, and Wilde had decided very early on that wild horses weren’t going to drag him down there. No, bad as it was, his only hope lay with the Rangers. He shrugged and, choosing his moment carefully, slipped in beside Flint and added his sword to hers. The trolls roared and screamed as they fell before him, and their death cries were a comfort to him. It had been a long time since he’d fought in a situation where the odds weren’t stacked heavily in his favor, and it only took him a few seconds to remember why. A man could get killed sticking his neck out like this… . But still he fought on, because there was no other choice open to him. After a while, some of his old skills came back to him, and his sword sliced through the air in shining, deadly arcs. If Flint could have found the time to look at him, she might have seen echoes in the bowman’s face of the Edmond Wilde she had once known so many years ago.
    The witch called Constance raised her hands in the stance of summoning, and drew the remains of her power about her. Most of her magic was gone, but she drew on what little was left to her for one last effort. She spoke a Word of Power, and a blinding glare gathered around her upraised hands. The trolls nearest her screamed and fell back as their bones cracked and splintered within their bodies. A slow headache began to beat in Constance’s left temple, and a steady trickle of blood seeped from her left nostril. Constance ignored it. Her body would stand up to the strain for as long as it had to, or it wouldn’t. There was nothing she could do about it.
    The four defenders fought on, blocking the entrance to the cellar with their bodies and their skill and their courage. Trolls fell and died before them, but there were always more to take their places. There were always more.
    Deep in the earth below the fort, the tunnel finally began to level out. MacNeil stumbled to a halt, and Hammer and Jack crowded in beside him, staring into the pitch black opening that ended the tunnel. MacNeil frowned. He could tell there was some kind of drop immediately ahead of him, but that was all. Maybe the tunnel led into some kind of cave… . He moved cautiously forward until he was standing right on the edge of the tunnel