The Last Dark: The climax of the entire Thomas Covenant Chronicles (Last Chronicles of Thomas Cove)

rendering every living thing to ash. His thwarted heart burned, accomplishing nothing.
    Still more Cavewights surged inward, striding long-legged over the mounting rubble of corpses. Their weapons flung red ruin. Step by step, the fighting closed around the company. Handir prepared his defense. The Swordmainnir waited with their blades poised.
    Behind them, Linden and Jeremiah faced each other, apparently arguing. Alarm stretched her features. He gnashed his teeth as if he were biting off hunks of desperation. She may have been shouting—they both may have been shouting—but Covenant could not hear them. Howls and screams deafened him, the sickening sounds of torn flesh, the hard smack of blows, the crack of breaking bones.
    As if he were answering his mother, Jeremiah raised the Staff of Law. He held it over his head like a quarterstaff, braced to hammer down fire. The look in his eyes was agony.
    Abruptly Branl gripped Covenant’s arm, turned him toward the tunnel where Handir had proposed to leave the cave. At the same time, the
Haruchai
between the company and that exit changed their tactics.
    Imponderably graceful amid the viciousness and turmoil, those Masters drew back, leaving an open line for the Cavewights, an aisle straight toward the clenched center of the defense.
    Covenant thought that he heard Linden yell, “
Now
, Jeremiah!”
    Roaring triumph, the creatures rushed forward—
    Now or never.
    —and Jeremiah swung the Staff.
    Black lightning raged from the shaft. Earthpower struck at the Cavewights, fire hot as an inferno. It set them ablaze as if their bones were kindling. Their roars became shrieks. Lit like torches, they blundered away, trying to escape.
    More creatures charged. More creatures caught fire. Jeremiah screamed as if his efforts were claws tearing at his heart. His eyes wept anguish. Nevertheless he poured out power in a convulsion of killing.
    For a moment—if only for a moment—he cleared a path.
    “Now!” Linden cried again. “
Run!
”
    This time, she was shouting at the Giants.
    The company obeyed. Shielded by Masters and Swordmainnir, and then by the Giants of Dire’s Vessel, Branl hauled Covenant forward. With Bhapa and Pahni, Stave herded Linden and Jeremiah. While the surviving
Haruchai
gathered to ward the rear, the Land’s defenders dashed along Jeremiah’s path.
    A moment later, the boy’s power failed. He crumpled as if his tendons had been cut. He dropped the Staff: he may have fainted. But Far Horizoneyes snatched him off the floor, cradled him without missing a step. Furledsail grabbed the Staff and kept running.
    Cavewights crowded the passage ahead. They had only paused, shocked or startled by screaming. But while they were in the tunnel, their movements were constricted. With Canrik and Samil—with Vortin, Ulman, and Dast—Handir tore into the creatures, broke them like boughs in a rending wind. And those Cavewights that withstood the force of the
Haruchai
fell to the blades of the Swordmainnir.
    Trampling bodies, the company gained their exit.
    But now the Masters also were hampered. Their speed and agility became less effective. Dodging a spear, Ulman stepped into the stroke of a falchion. The blade opened his side, cut deep enough to reach his spine. He fell, fountaining crimson. The other warriors in the lead survived only because they were supported by the swift skill of the Swordmainnir, the lick and thrust of longswords.
    The
Haruchai
holding the rear did so without the aid of battle-trained Giants. The Anchormaster and Frothbreeze gave what aid they could: still the losses among the Masters were grievous. While they struggled against swords and axes, massive clubs, they also had to contend with spears hurled over their heads to strike at Stoutgirth’s crew. Leaping to intercept some of those shafts left the Masters defenseless. They were cut down or spitted.
    Behind the warriors, Keenreef and Setrock swung their sacks of supplies, blocked spears with bundled waterskins and food.
    As the Masters died, the Cavewights drove closer. How many
Haruchai
remained in the rear? Ten? Less?
    Covenant heard Scatterwit laughing amid the clamor: a horrific sound, shrill and urgent, feverish as hysteria. It jerked him around to watch as Scatterwit thrust her way among the Masters. Stoutgirth’s shout, and Blustergale’s, carried after her, but she ignored them.
    Lurching on the stump of her ankle, she rushed the Cavewights with her arms spread wide as if she