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There was a man grappling with Eli, and Rhyder barked out a prayer as he approached.

The assailant twisted, and Rhyder plunged both knives into his chest as he roared his battle-cry in the man’s face.

Then he whirled around, like a prowling lion seeking who to destroy.

I saw fallen bodies covering the clearing, barely visible in the thick fog that still hung over the space.

Which Congregation were they?

I saw a shock of bright yellow hair on the ground and my stomach roiled.

The woman who had told me I had nothing to worry about

Like a coward, I buried my face in Rhyder’s neck and didn’t look as Rhyder cut his way through the other warriors.

My head spun as I heard bone crunch and the slick, wet sounds of Rhyder’s knives.

The jagged injury on his shoulder was bleeding all along my collarbone, and I moved feebly to place my breast over it to stop the bleeding.

I counted time in the pump of blood from his wound and when it had stopped I realized that the Congregants were gathering in the dark clearing, bringing lights to count the bodies.

“Theudhar’s men,” Eli said in disgust. “He knew we’d be coming from Osric’s and thought to ambush us here.”

“I can see the influence of the Gray One,” Rhyder said darkly.

“We will pursue,” Eli said. “Rhyder, take these Avenging Angels to the borders of Ronan’s land. They are set to dam up the river. Temperance will stay with us.”

“No,” Rhyder said. “Temperance comes with me.”

“She is needed to clean up the dead,” the Enforcer said.

Clean up the dead?I felt afraid as Eli glared at us.

What if this was Eli’s way of trying to kill me since obviously the incense didn’t do the job? Why was he so angry I had come back?

Whatever he saw on Rhyder’s face must have made him not want a confrontation, since he nodded his head curtly.

“Don’t let a tight cunt keep you from the way of righteousness,” he warned.

“I know the Allfather’s blessing when I see her,” Rhyder retorted.

Then he was off, and he kept me on his back as he moved silently through the dark night.

When we got to the border to Ronan’s lands, Rhyder set me down and took out a long-sleeved collared shirt from his pack that he carefully buttoned around me.

“I need to wash and clean your wound,” I insisted, but he brushed me off.

“It is nothing in the service of the Allfather.”

Then he took out some kind of specialized tool, so heavy and unwieldly that it would have been impossible for another man to even lift, and held it to a segment of the dangerous buzzing length of Ronan’s boundary gates.

For a few minutes, nothing happened, then with a flash of greenish light and a gentle whirring, the thick cords of the boundary gate began to fall.

I watched in astonishment as that segment of the boundary gate fell to the ground in pieces. Rhyder instantly stomped with his big boots on the fluorescent green flames that sparked into little wicked fires on the ground.

“Allfather pray they’re so sunk in sin they’re too asleep to hear that,” Rhyder said as he turned to me with a grin.

Oh shit, I recognized that grin.