Harth and Flane shrugged at each other and selected a man whose arm had been broken by a catapult stone. They gave him food and drink, and fastened him to the helm of the ship, but his weapons they took from him. He could not use them, and there were men who would be desperately in need of extra weapons soon.
"All Klarn rides your ship," Flane told him. "Summon the men of Yeelya, too. You will not be in time to rescue us, but you may bring the threat of the Darksiders to a sorry finish."
One after the other they dropped from the ship as it skimmed the mesa. Swords in one hand and violet-gun in the other, Flane landed cat-like and was up, racing toward the sloping adit to the level rock. A few of the Darksiders could be seen in the distance, coming up over a ridge, pointing lances toward them, shouting.
Aevlyn stood with hands clasped to her breasts, staring after the drifting ship as it dipped into the gorge. It bounced a little as an air current caught at it, then slipped along the channel between the cliffs that an ancient river had eaten away in the solid rock.
"May the All-High have him ever in His sight," she whispered.
An arrow whined past her. She turned, seeing Flane at the approach to the mesa, deflecting them, one after another, with the glittering sword in his hand. Now the Darksiders were howling up the slope, racing on foot, leaping from megathon to stone, waving swords and axes.
Flane met them, grinning. His steel slipped and slithered past their guards, drinking deep in chests and thighs.
The leading Darksiders would have fallen back, but now the horde was on them, and a swirling maelstrom of battle-maddened men drove in low for the kill. Only three of them could come at once up that slope, but they came on in a steady wave that climbed over the bodies of the fallen, throwing spears, slashing down and upwards with sword and battle-axe.
Flane fought until the breath whistled in his throat, until his arms were scarred with wounds, and ran red blood. Someone yanked on him, pulled him from the press, and he stood sobbing for air as Aevlyn dabbed a dry cloth at his cuts. When she offered him white wine in a copper flagon, he drank deep; with the back of his hand he dried his mouth and grinned at her.
"It will be night presently," she whispered. "Then the men will have a rest."