Dawn found the men of Moornal bloody and weary, but the hot sunlight drove new strength into hack-weary arms and they met each new attack with cries of scorn and defiance. Flane was everywhere: standing for long hours in the pass, his sword singing; encouraging his men by the magical slaughter of his blade, slapping them on backs, encouraging, cajoling, commanding....
All day and all night they made their stand. Baked by the day and frozen by the night, they grew gaunt and haggard, as lean as hunting wolves, and as dangerous. Men did not talk on the mesa now. They lifted lips in silent snarls. They cast dark glances from under lowering brows. Their hands grew used to the hilt of sword and the haft of lance. Some could scarcely unbend their fingers long enough to eat.
Of the lot, Flane looked most wolfish. His black hair drooped untended, loose on his shoulders. His uniform was cut and torn, disclosing blooded skin, brown flesh ripped by axe and sword-edge. But his muscles still rolled as before, and the blade in his hand was a portal to beyond for any who came face to point with it.
Aevlyn slept close to him during the night, tending the wounds received during the day. Under hot sunlight she was always at his call, with water and with cheer, for the men who were most in need of either.
On the next day, the Darksiders withdrew in order, going down the ramp and assembling on the flat plateau. Flane leaned on his sword and stared out over their heads, at a horseman who spurred his mount across the tumbled rocks, lifting him in a jump.
"A meknik," Flane rasped, spitting. "Now the All-High must indeed be smiling, for the fates could have no worse in store for us. They have come to join the Darksiders."
A man, naked to the waist and bearing a broken lance in his hand as a stabbing spear, laughed gutturally, "Good! I've wanted to take a few of them with me when I went."
Flane smiled mirthlessly, "You'll have your wish, if the water holds out."
He looked around, biting his lips. The axes and swords and arrows of the Darksiders had been busy. Of the original forty who dropped to the mesa, there were but six who stood erect; and of them, one was a woman. Harth lay shorn from shoulder to navel on the rocks below. He had met his hero's death. All of them were wounded. Even Aevlyn had a red rag wrapped about an arm. Flane breathed harshly.
They had made a stand, they had!