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Blood dripped from Zedya’s darksteel fighting gauntlets as she threw herself at the white-furred nightmare that had arrived to reinforce the column of soldiers attacking Nyrielle’s people.

Her movements were stiff and clumsy and without heavy use of Mist Walker Dance, she wouldn’t have been able to stay upright to keep fighting against the savage vampire before her.

At first, Zedya’s strategy of keeping Captain Lennart and his men out of the battle worked brilliantly.

Because the only people around her were enemies, Zedya was able to move freely without concern for how her movements might impact her allies.

In her mind, even the Golden Eyed soldiers who had fallen under her spell were expendable as long as they kept the battle from reaching the people she had promised to protect.

When the hastily assembled barricade on the east doors failed, Zedya led the remains of her spellbound soldiers in a fresh charge against more than twice their number in fresh soldiers.

These new arrivals had been hastily pulled from their beds and unlike the first wave she faced, it was much easier to sow disarray among the disorganized reinforcements.

Even though her spellbound soldiers were outnumbered two to one, she was able to make up for the gap with her strength, speed, and most importantly precision that transcended human limits.

All of that changed when a white-furred vampire charged into the hall.

The newly arrived vampire had a lithe, powerful build and stood head and shoulders taller than any of the other members of the Golden Eyed clan in the room.

His simple sleeveless tunic and breeches in a room full of armored soldiers spoke of either supreme confidence in his fighting ability or the extreme haste with which he rushed to join the battle.

Given the number of victory rings set in his pointed ears, Zedya was inclined to believe it was the former more than the latter.

Though his fur had been white since birth, Savis was still the oldest of Hamdi’s progeny and the powerful, bloody aura he radiated when he stormed into the room momentarily stilled the fighting.

"Who dares to attack our Master in his own fortress?

" Savis snarled, his golden eyes searching the crowd. He’d rushed here as soon as he felt Hamdi invoke a Blood Pledge to draw on his strength but from the carnage he found on the floor above the place he felt his master, things were much worse than he feared.

"It’s you!" The white-furred vampire roared in rage, lifting a common footman’s flail in his hand and charging at Zedya faster than she could get out of his way. The heavy darksteel ball at the end of the flail spun in a blur before Savis brought it crashing down toward Zedya’s head.

With no time to dodge, Zedya blocked the heavy blow hastily with an armored gauntlet.

Were it not for the protection provided by the darksteel plates, her forearm would have shattered under the force of the blow.

Even with the protection of the gauntlets, her hand still went numb and pain shot all the way to her shoulder as the spinning flail careened off her armor.

Before Zedya could recover enough to retreat and look for an opportunity to counterattack, the flail came streaking back toward her, this time slamming into her unarmored knee with a sickening crunch that sent her tumbling to the floor.

"Mist Walker. Dance," Zedya snapped, kicking off of air several times to gain some much-needed distance before he could strike her a third time.

But even though she escaped a third strike, the white-furred vampire had already done tremendous damage.

Not only to Zedya, but to the battle between her spellbound soldiers and the other members of the Dark Wolf Brigade.

Some soldiers managed to break free of Zedya’s binding while others were too maddened by bloodlust and pain to take advantage of the opportunity Savis had given them.

But now, with little more than a dozen spellbound soldiers, they could no longer hold back the forces who were bent on killing everyone in the room who wasn’t an ally.

In the beginning, their orders had only been to capture. A fight might break out, but many of them had been certain that, in the face of overwhelming numbers, Nyrielle’s soldiers would peacefully surrender and allow themselves to be captured.

Now, however, far too much blood had been spilled.

No one cared whether they were supposed to take prisoners or not, all they knew is that the bodies of their friends and comrades lie broken and torn apart on the cold stones of the ancient hall and the people responsible had been cowering behind the one vampire who could even the odds.

Yet with the arrival of Master Savis, everything changed. Zedya could no longer constrain them. Like hounds released on a hunt, they lunged past their spellbound companions, clashing directly with Captain Lennart and his men as the battle entered a new phase.

"For Lady Nyrielle and the Vale!" Captain Lennart cried as he waved his men forward. Beside him, Virve protected his flank while the two dove into the onrushing men of the Black Wolf Brigade.

Though they were outnumbered by three to two, half of Captain Lennart’s soldiers were men from the Clan of the Great Claw and they used their greater size and reach to tear weapons from the hands of their enemies whenever they could.

It wasn’t necessary to defeat their opponents, if they could be disarmed and wounded then it was sufficient to knock them aside and move to the next while setting up the soldiers from the Horned Clan to deliver killing blows with their long spears.

The soldiers of the Vale of Mists had been outnumbered in every battle they’d fought against the humans for generations and even though many of Lennart’s soldiers had never fought in a war against the Lothians, their training and traditions had grown strong through constant testing in brutal war.

By contrast, the men of the Black Wolf Brigade, while every one of them was an elite soldier, had long grown accustomed to possessing superior numbers and strength compared to the rabble they were sent to suppress.

Now, when they thought they should have an advantage, they found themselves pressed into an intense battle against soldiers who fought like demons.

Behind the line of fighting men, the wagon drivers and servants huddled together near the far wall, as far from the combat as the confines of the hall would allow.

Some lifted tables to create makeshift barricades while others had gathered anything that could serve as an improvised weapon, ripping legs from chairs to use as makeshift clubs or clutching the wooden chair seats as crude shields.

"Stay close to the wall," one of the older wagon drivers from the Horned Clan ordered.

"If they break through, we’ll make for the stairs.

"You four," he added, pointing to the four strongest men from the Clan of the Great Claw who served as porters in their group. There weren’t enough improvised weapons to go around but rather than arm these four strong men, he had very different instructions for them.

"We’ll do our best to clear the way to the door," he said as his hands tightened on a broken table leg. "You make sure to protect Lady Nyrielle and Madame Zedya’s daybeds. They won’t be able to travel far without them, so... so make sure you do what you can to keep them safe if it comes to that."

Hearing his words, everyone nodded with grim expressions on their faces.

If it came to that, if they were defeated so badly here that Lady Nyrielle and Madame Zedya had to be carried away in their daybeds, then it was unlikely that they would escape the pursuit of the High Lord of the Tangled Wood’s forces.

Still, as long as there was something they could do to give Lady Nyrielle even the slightest chance of escaping if the worst came to pass, they were willing to die to the last man to give her that chance.

But Zedya couldn’t spare much attention for Captain Lennart and his soldiers as they squared off against the men of the Dark Wolf Brigade or the actions of the servants behind them.

It took all of her attention to resist the constant onslaught of Savis’ darksteel flail as he relentlessly pursued her across the hall.