"Of course." Aelyn had dropped back to their knot, though he seemed unconcerned by the enemies surrounding them. "I expect they'll be recent revenants brought up from the village graveyards."
"Unless they're ancient bones from the ruins," Tal countered, eyes never leaving the slowly tightening ring.
Aelyn shrugged. "If we're unlucky."
"You going to fight?" Wren hissed.
Garin hadn't drawn his sword or shield. Cursing himself for a fool, he scrambled to do both at once and nearly lost his blade in the bog.
"What are they?" he asked, ashamed that his voice shook.
"Reanimated corpses," Tal replied. "Cadavers brought back from the dead with a singular hate for the living. They have the same strength and speed as a man and, fortunately, die the same as if they were alive."
Garin doubted he could match even a slow man at that moment, much less a living carcass. "We're dead," he whispered.
"Not as dead as they are." Tal grinned at him, and Garin found himself smiling back. A weak joke, perhaps, but somehow, it let him breathe a little easier.
But the draugars were closing in, little more than a dozen feet away. Garin raised his shield and held his sword at the ready, rehearsing all the things he'd learned from Master Krador.
"Wren, use that cantrip," Tal said, speaking fast now. "Burning them can work as well as hacking them apart. Garin, I'm afraid you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. Too dangerous for you to attempt magic now."
"Great." His breath was coming quick. Draugars stared at him through the darkness, their eyes unnaturally bright, rusted steel glinting dully in their hands.
Then they charged.
All thoughts of maneuver and technique went out of his head as the two closest draugars bore down. He threw up his shield, and as a blade hacked into the wood, his arm went numb to the shoulder. Gasping, he swung at the second draugar, but it dodged and punched a fist forward. Pain exploded from his nose, and Garin stumbled back, flailing to keep it at bay as his vision filled with sparkling lights.
But the draugar who'd struck him suddenly snarled and fell back — someone had chopped at its leg — so Garin stabbed at the draugar still trying to work its blade free from his shield. His sword found a gap in its side, and it shrieked, its cry of fury joining the chorus that had filled the forest. As it tugged away, he almost lost his weapon but managed to keep hold as it withdrew with a sickening squelch.
The remaining draugar had abandoned its sword and drawn a knife, and though one leg was hacked nearly off, still it came on, wasted face contorted with rage. Garin ripped the shield free from his arm and threw it against the dead man, and it caught it in the face, snapping its head back.
He took his chance with a wild swing, but his blade banged into the draugar's rusted pauldron and bounced away, sending him spinning off balance. As Garin tried to steady himself, he felt the draugar bearing down on him, swinging furiously at him with its knife.
The Nightsong welled up in his head, the whirlwind of sounds and senses nearly overwhelming him.
I will aid you, Listener. The fell Singer emerged from the clamor. Let me protect you. Cede me control, and none will stand before us.
"No!" he tried to roar, but he had no breath left.
The draugar stabbed down at him, and he threw up an arm as if he still wore a shield. The knife tore into his flesh, glancing off the bone. Red pain surged, threatening to drown him.
Clawing at consciousness, Garin stabbed upward and was surprised when his blade found its way under the dead man's breastplate and slid into its chest. The draugar stiffened and looked down, its features frozen in a furious scream. It almost seemed surprised to find a foot of steel stuck in its body.
Then the draugar looked up and raised the knife again.
Cede to me, or you die! the Singer lashed through his head.
"I don't want to die." It was near a whimper as Garin stared up at the dead man, this impossible enemy, trembling with the knife held aloft, but looking capable of killing him all the same.
Cede to me!
He had no choice. As the draugar brought down the dagger, Garin felt himself let go, and a sudden heat filled his body.
He seized him and twisted his body out of the way. He pulled the blade free, dodged around the clumsy draugar, and cut its legs out from under it. He stabbed the sword through the neck of the creature as it screamed on the ground, silencing it.
I will protect you, the Singer whispered, then withdrew its searing touch.
Garin reeled, shivering, barely keeping his feet. Only the battle still raging around him kept him from slumping over, curled around his gashed arm. Hovering lights illuminated the forest, showing the shapes of Tal and Wren cutting down the dead men and Aelyn, wreathed in flames, sending them burning to the ground. Turning, he saw more draugars running in from the forest, a score or more seething shadows.
Terror clenched his chest, and his throat seized so tightly it was nearly impossible to speak. Yet he squeezed out the words. "Help them."
Exaltation and triumph flooded through him, and Garin knew it wasn't his own.
"Dead men," Tal wheezed to himself, "shouldn't be able to move so fast."
He'd been counted a skilled warrior in his day, the most skilled by some false accounts. Falcon had once declared that he, Tal Harrenfel, had held off the whole of the Sendeshi army at the Pass of Argothe. The bard had also written that there was no duelist in all of the Reach Realms that had ever managed to touch Tal, much less win against him.
Unfortunately, both of those tales were flagrantly false.
As the draugars flooded the forest, driving at him and his companions, it was all he could do to avoid their rusted blades. In theory, he needn't have bothered; as summoned creatures, the Ring of Thalkuun ought to have protected him from their attacks. But the rules of sorcery were fickle things, and none knew it better than he. He wasn't going to risk being stuck with a sword on a hunch.
For every draugar he cut back into a corpse, three more took its place. He'd lost track of Garin and was barely managing to keep Wren alive, though the youth was holding her own.
"Kald!" Tal cried, and swept the blazing blade through three of the enemy at once, sending them reeling backward, blue flames engulfing their bodies. The other draugars faltered for a moment, and Tal risked a glance around. Wren fought two draugars at once, her sword weaving in and out as she parried and riposted. Aelyn made two more of the dead men erupt into blue flames, his lips pulled back into a disdainful sneer.
And Garin? The boy you roped into this mess?
But the draugars were surging forward again, and Tal had no time to look further. He blocked a blade, cut into another on the backswing, twisted out of a stab, kicked the leg out from a third. "Lisk!" he called, then "Kald!" — again, and again, and the corpses fell burnt or frozen to the ground, the corrupted souls bleeding out of them once more.
But despite the fury of the battle, the constant sorcery was leaving him weak and shivering. As yet more draugars ran at them from among the dark trees, he found himself doubting. I'm sorry, Falcon, for all the ways I've failed you, he thought. You cannot know how much.
A figure ran past his left, and Tal spun, sword raised. But he stopped short of striking as he recognized the lanky, youthful form running in front of him, straight at the oncoming draugars.