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With a quick move and desperate flourish, I pulled my sword and flung it up in front of me to parry the next blow, barely managing to deflect the brutal weapon from its course.

It grated off my sword, narrowly missing my chest as the force of the strike overwhelmed my own strength.

I rolled again, and scrambled to my feet to face my attacker.

A towering man, heavily armored. I could not see his eyes through the slits in his helmet.

Flames were reflected in his armor and the metal of his weapon.

I danced back with quick steps as he swung again, then pirouetted to parry his advancing strike and move to the side.

His reach with the mace was far longer than my own, and his armor too heavy for my sword to match.

I watched for openings in his guard and found very few.

Only brief instances, and only low on his body, unless I could jump off something and strike down into his breastplate from above.

But we were in the middle of the street, and I had nothing to climb.

I deflected a blow and stepped back, then slipped beneath another swing.

I glanced back at Byrgir and saw him look toward me.

He was off his mount now too, and further away than I had hoped.

The man I fought was pushing me down the street, away from Byrgir and El.

There was a flash of armor in firelight, and two more soldiers jogged up behind him, bearing the crest of King Evander.

They stepped out, preparing to flank me.

I dove and rolled in the mud, springing back to gain as much distance, and time, as possible. Then I struck.

I flicked my wrist skyward and the storm answered.

The impact was so close that I was thrown backward, landing hard on the ground.

My broken ribs stabbed my insides and I gasped in pain.

My ears rang. Too close, too close to be using that kind of power.

I clambered to my feet to see the two soldiers who had just approached charred and smoking on the ground, unmoving.

But the large knight wielding the mace had anticipated my move and leaped forward. He was sprawled on the ground in front of me, disoriented and slowly getting to his feet. Just as I rose, I was struck hard on the back from behind and knocked forward into the mud.

I moved fast to evade the sword blow I expected was coming, but rolled straight into a brutal kick to the ribs from another unseen assailant. I groaned and coughed with gut wrenching pain.

“Byrgir!” I screamed as loud as I could, my voice cracked by terror. “Byrgir!”

I dragged myself to one knee and swung with my sword in a wide arc, desperate to clear space, to gain just a moment of time to steady myself.

On either side of me, two men began to circle, squaring up to me.

I stood and raised my sword, turning with them, trying not to let one flank me. I decided to strike first.

With a quick inhale and flick of my wrist, I sent pointed bolts of ice flinging for one man, just as El had taught me that first training day in Rhyanaes.

They sliced into his leather armor, exploding with shattering force and throwing him backward.

But the other soldier took the chance to close the distance.

He stepped in close and swung twice with his sword.

I parried the first and slipped back to dodge the second, but too slow.

It caught me across the upper arm, slicing deep into my armor and into my skin. I stepped back to regain my balance.

A heavy, gloved hand slapped over my mouth from behind and I bit down, hard. I couldn’t break the glove’s surface, but I yanked my head sideways and pulled. I heard a pop; my captor swore. The hand released and I shouted again.

“Byrgir!”

“Halja!”

Hope leaped into my throat.

“Byrgir!”

“Halja!”

So far away. He was so far away. My panic intensified.

“Here! I have her!” the soldier holding me called, his voice amplified with adrenaline. “To me! Help me bring her!”

My captor and I were hit from the side and thrown to the ground.

His grip loosened, and I rolled clear just as I heard a familiar snarl.

I pushed myself up from the mud to see Vardir clamp her huge jaws over the soldier’s face and bite down.

His head crumbled with a series of sickening, wet crunches. Blood sprayed across her white face.

Her momentary pause to kill the soldier meant she did not see the next fighter rush in, sword raised high.

I screamed a warning, but it was too late.

His sword connected with her shoulder and stuck deep before he pulled it back out.

She let out a yelp of pain and turned on him, gore dripping from her razor teeth as she snarled.

He stepped back, to prepare to strike again, and slipped in the mud.

I took a step to help her as she lunged for him, but I was hit from behind and tackled forward to the ground yet again.

Arms twisted around my neck, trying to bind me from behind.

I rolled as Byrgir had taught me and struck with my blade.

It bounced ineffectually off plate armor on the first strike, but I was more strategic with the second.

I pulled my misericorde and followed an arm that wrapped around me, stabbing up into the armpit.

No plate cover there. I felt the blade scrape rib bones, and the soldier let out a gurgling, rasping gasp.

I buried the blade to the hilt, pulled back and struck again, then scrambled away, kicking him off me.

Two more soldiers took his place, then a third, before I could get to my feet. They pinned my arms and wrenched my blades from my hands.

“Halja!” Byrgir’s voice carried over the soldiers’ grunting, my heavy breathing, the screaming, the terror.

“Byr–” A heavy forearm pressed into my throat.

The pain was shocking, suffocating, inducing immediate panic.

My instinct was to cough, but little air escaped.

I looked up into a woman’s face, wild-eyed and splattered in mud and blood.

She pushed harder, and something popped in my throat.

Another soldier leaned over me and pressed a rag into my mouth, pulling it taut with two hands.

I had never felt panic like this. Helplessness like this. I couldn’t move. I could barely breath. My legs flailed ineffectually, and my fingers clawed at the mud.

Focus. Focus, I had to focus. Think. I could do something. I would not die like this. Not like this. This could not be the end.

I reached for any power I could summon in my exhausted, terrified state. Splitting my mind and wielding multiple forms of magic at once had drained me too fast. I had not saved enough, had not planned for this. I grasped at whatever dregs I had left.

I placed my awareness in my chest, parallel with the chest of the woman crushing my throat.

I closed my eyes and summoned the power there, tried to focus through the pain.

It hit my core with a force that nearly knocked what was left of the breath from me, made my broken ribs scream, roaring and responsive with my proximity to the sacred river.

Then I opened my eyes and stared straight into hers. They were crystalline blue. Clear, determined, strong. I thrust a thick blade of ice up from my chest and through her own.

Her eyes went wide and she coughed, choked as she tried to inhale into shredded lungs, then coughed again, spattering my face with bright blood, once, twice.

She collapsed onto me. The shard of ice protruded from her back, split clean through leather and ring mail.

Blood dripped down it in thick globs, cooled and coagulated rapidly by the ice.

One of the soldiers pinning my arms swore, and I moved the power to my hand, sending another ice blade shooting from my palm. He was ready, and better armored than the woman had been. He ducked low, letting the ice shatter against his plate, but he grunted under the force of it.

The two stood and dragged me from under the dead soldier, yanking me to my feet.

The soldier who had gagged me kept the gag tight, tying it behind my head as I thrashed.

And as I struggled, I saw how greatly I was surrounded.

A ring of soldiers, a hoard of them, all on me, pushing, grabbing, shoving.

I flung another blade of ice at my attackers and missed.

“Halja!” I heard Byrgir’s voice again, closer now.

As they tried to bind my hands, I glimpsed him through smoke and dying flame, mud and burned trees.

He was fighting his way toward me. Feral, desperate, like death incarnate.

He cut through soldier after soldier, clearing a path with fists and feet along with his formidable sword, occasionally firing off a repelling blast or flinging summoned flame into an attacker’s face.

But there were so many. Too many. He was drowning in soldiers, attacked from all sides. Garmr fought in a blur of fangs and gore beside him, but could not clear the way between us.

That was the last I saw of Byrgir.

Fighting, slashing, pushing toward me as a giant wolf flanked him, the two of them carving and tearing a desperate path of blood and pain.

A blindfold was pulled roughly over my eyes and cinched tight. I screamed into the gag, thrashing against my bonds as my cracked ribs protested. My throat felt torn ragged, aching with the force of my muffled scream. I was kicked, lifted off my feet, then carried and dragged.

I thrashed and fought, doing my best to drive my knees into my captor, which only gained me threats from the soldiers.

I was lifted and thrown over the back of a horse, my broken ribs grinding together as the saddle dug into my side.

I kicked and struggled still, but they pinned my legs and bound my ankles together.

The blindfold slipped up my forehead with my struggling, and I could see glimpses of Rhyanaes, smoke and flames through the trees as the horse galloped away.

Nobody followed.

I saw no pursuers, no witnesses to the direction I traveled, save one. Byrgir had seen me go. His words echoed in my head.

Stay close to me.