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“Leif!” she shouted, as she reached him, and went down on her knees beside him. Touched his shoulder and tried to roll him toward her – but he was heavy. She settled for shaking him instead. “Leif?” She scanned his body, and saw that his clothes were ripped, lacerations winking blood through the tears in the leather, but nothing that looked too nasty. There was no puddle of blood beneath him, no obvious mortal damage. “Leif, can you hear me?”

He coughed, and groaned, and rolled toward her on his own power, finally, cracked his eyes open and reached to shade them with a hand. “Lady Amelia?”

“Thank the gods.” She didn’t know how she would have explained the Aeretolleans arriving and getting killed all within twelve hours. “Are you hurt? Can you stand? It’s not safe here.” A wet splat to the side signaled a chunk of meat from one of the drakes Alpha was currently fighting, and she fought not to grimace.

In answer, Leif sat up, rubbing briefly at the back of his head as though it pained him. Then he shook his head, waved off her attempt to help him, and got to his feet. He surveyed the scene while Amelia stood as well.

“Did I hit my head harder than I thought, or is Ragnar riding your horse?”

“And wielding my sword. I take it he didn’t appreciate you getting thrown across the road and knocked unconscious.”

Leif massaged at his ribs with a wince, and his sigh sounded both frustrated…and fond. “Idiot,” he muttered. Then: “That’s some sort of gateway, and we need to close it.”

“My thoughts exactly. I’ve just been to the Between and talked with Náli.”

He glanced toward her, brows lifting in surprise.

“He says blood opened it – the girl – and that it’ll take blood to close it. The blood of a magic user. He didn’t specify how much.”

Leif considered a moment, glancing toward Ragnar, who thrust his sword through a soldier’s visor with a shout of triumphant laughter.

Connor and Reggie, she saw, were fighting back-to-back, an efficient unit that did more repelling of attacks than advancing, but on their feet, alive, Reggie’s busted lip the only sign of injury.

“I’ll do it.”

She blinked, and returned her attention to Leif, whose expression had gone grim with resolve. He’d stood up straighter, too, and pushed his shoulders back, thrust his chest out. Like a painting of a hero from a fable.

“And what will you do? Dive through the hole?” she asked.

“If I have to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll do it. Alpha can fly me in close–”

“Alpha” – his lip curled on the name – “is tied up at the moment.”

And he was: all but covered by the amethyst drakes. They appeared more of a nuisance than a real threat to him, but he couldn’t take them on all at once. He roared angrily, and she felt his impatience and frustration through their bond as he flung one, and then craned his head the opposite direction to snap at another.

But not all the drakes were intent on battling their larger, stronger, more capable counterpart. A few had broken off, their flight like the twining of ribbons, as they harried her men, dodging the jabs of spear and sword, swooping in to snap at faces. One sank its fangs into a man’s shoulder, and the man screamed, and tried unsuccessfully to twist away, the knife-like teeth holding fast, blood spilling down his arm.

She made a grab for her sword, and too late remembered that Ragnar had it. “Damn it.”

Two dead Sels lay close by. Leif bent, picked up their swords and offered one to her. “We’ll go together,” he said. “Whoever gets there first can bleed into the fucking thing.”

She nodded, and wrapped her hand around the gilded sword grip.

~*~

“Oh, you’re a beauty,” Ragnar praised the stallion. “Where have you been all my life?” The fucker couldfight. Amelia wore wicked-looking spurs, and he could only assume the spiked rowels on the backs were used to cue him. Ragnar had only his wolf-hide-wrapped boots, but he knew how to use his heels, and he leaned hard on their (loose) bond as animals. The horse turned at the slightest shift of his weight, struck out with his forelegs when Ragnar so much as thought it: he stoved in a breastplate that way, and potentially gelded a solider with a solid strike between his legs that crushed the armored skirt there, and left him screaming high-pitched like a girl. A little experimenting had proven that a backward press of the reins coupled with a tap from both heels well behind the girl resulted in a double kick behind. Armor crunched, men grunted, and screamed, and dropped boneless to the dirt.

“You didn’t bring any horses through your fancy black hole, did you, stupid fuck?” Ragnar asked the last man he’d felled. His words were threaded with laughter – he was laughing, a constant stream of chuckles, chest bright with bloodlust and delight. He wanted to be on four legs, tearing open throats and bellies, but this was the next best thing, this concentrated destruction with the help of a powerful animal.

He chopped a man in the neck, and arterial spray striped across his face. He licked the salty blood off his lips and whirled the stallion around to deliver a kick – not because he needed to, but because hewantedto.

He paused, though, before he could deliver the cue. The stallion pawed impatiently beneath him, and he laid his free hand on its neck, shushed him absentmindedly.

Leif was on his feet again. Thankfully. Blessedly. He looked whole, but Ragnar could read the way he was favoring his ribs, and the way his eyes were squinted in pain. He wielded a gilt-handled Sel sword as though it was a warhammer, slashing and battering the soldiers that surged toward him in a tide.

Amelia was just behind him, struggling with her own overlong, two-handed blade of a fallen Sel. She was doing more dancing and sidestepping than engaging, and he didn’t blame her. She wasn’t built to fight grown men in plate armor; there wasn’t enough training in the world to make her capable of that.