As the Guardsmen neared the top of the stairway the mercenaries disappeared—enough of that kind of thing was a great plenty—and Tedric, after a quick glance around to see what the situation was, seized his sword from the bearer. Old Devann had his knife aloft, but in only the third of the five formal passes. Two more to go.
"Kill those priests!" he snapped at the captain. "I'll take the three at the altar—you fellows take the rest of them!"
When Tedric reached the green altar the sacrificial knife was again aloft; but the same stroke that severed Devann's upraised right arm severed also his head and his whole left shoulder. Two more whistling strokes and a moment's study of the scene of action assured him that there would be no more sacrifice that day. The King's Archers had followed close behind the Guards; the situation was well in hand.
He exchanged sword for axe and hammer, and furiously, viciously, went to work on the god. He yanked out the Holiest One's brain, liver, and heart; hammered and chopped the rest of him to bits. That done, he turned to the altar—he had not even glanced at it before.
Stretched taut, spread-eagled by wrists and ankles on the reeking, blood-fouled, green horror-stone, the Lady Rhoann lay, her yard-long, thick brown hair a wide-flung riot. Six priests had not immobilized Rhoann of Lomarr without a struggle. Her eyes went from shattered image to blood-covered armored giant and back to image; her face was a study of part-horrified, part-terrified, part-worshipful amazement.
He slashed the ropes, extended his mailed right hand. "Art hurt, Lady Rhoann?"
"No. Just stiff." Taking his hand, she sat up—a bit groggily—and flexed wrists and ankles experimentally, while, behind his visor, the man stared and stared.
Tall—wide but trim—superbly made—a true scion of the old blood—Llosir's liver, what a woman! He had undressed her mentally more than once, but his visionings had fallen short, far short, of the entrancing, the magnificent truth. What a woman! A virgin? Huh! Technically so, perhaps ... more shame to those pusillanimous half-breed midgets of the court ... if he had been born noble....
She slid off the altar and stood up, her eyes still dark with fantastically mixed emotions. She threw both arms around his armored neck and snuggled close against his steel, heedless that breasts and flanks were being smeared anew with half-dried blood.