“A third night that I work, of all four of you coming to the Peacock,” Lysandra laughed, while Mirren tugged on the rope next to the front door to alert Hermia. “And the one before that, it was about Sanur being so close to dark. I'm going to start to suspect you're enjoying yourselves.”
Even the previous time, Kaveri and Narcissa had come despite Lirit approaching her dark night, although they’d both been quiet and not terribly energetic. No dance lessons with Kaveri, and Narcissa had just joined Timaios and Demetria and trusted them shield her from the rest of the crowd. Only a couple of days later, Lirit’s two daughters had both slept through the entire day in Narcissa’s bed, with Acantha making treats for them and the maids and Iole solicitously attending to them.
“Watching you dance?” Tyrel said, drawing Lysandra’s attention back to the present. “Thoroughly. I can't remember the last time we had a job that included...” he hesitated for a heartbeat, which she thought was searching for an unfamiliar word, “a bonus like that.”
“It's Kieran's bad luck that staying out of sight means he has to miss it,” Madoc agreed. “It's even worth being out and moving in this insane heat.”
Lysandra remained unsure whether they were telling the truth or being gallant—though she was leaning towards the former, having seen them watching her. Either way, they played along, and that was good enough. “Maybe I'll give him a private show,” she said flirtatiously.
And given that in his human form, the amarog was not only intelligent and courteous, but tall and nicely muscled, if a little exotic with those slightly unusual features and the thick dark hair that was frosted at the very ends... well, there was something to be said for animal charisma...
Hermia opening the door interrupted her moment of fantasy.
“When it's hot like this,” Narcissa said, “many people sleep on the roof, to get whatever breeze there is. There are normally enough couches up there to allow the whole household to do so, if they wish, but unless we're missing more than Acantha and Megaira we're currently a few short unless we move enough from the courtyard.”
“Everyone else is already up there,” Hermia admitted, bolting the door behind them and testing that it was secure. “We helped Phaidra a lot and she didn't hurt herself. We brought a pot up so no one should have to come all the way back down, and we already moved more couches, we thought you wouldn't mind. Acantha left lots of mint water and lemon water and fresh fruit.”
“That sounds lovely,” Narcissa said. “Thank you for coming down to wait for us. Let's all go join them, shall we?”
In this sort of weather, few people really expected women to wear a full proper mantle. Dancer costume being questionably decent, with so much abdominal skin showing, Lysandra did have a gauzy shorter version wound around to cover her torso, at least. She unwrapped it with relief once they were inside, and left it with her basket of props in the courtyard before they retired to the roof. Male clothes were, she had to admit, more physically comfortable publicly in this sort of weather. At least in private it was possible to strip down to lightweight tunics.
The moons were high and flooded the rooftop with gentle light, with yellow Talir just shy of full again and pale blue Meyar past half and waxing, both beginning to descend towards the west. Greengold Sanur, past full but not yet at half, was high above. Aquamarine Sahen looked around half, waning, and violet Lirit, the dimmest, had yet to reach half after being so recently dark. Lysandra had never paid much attention to the phases of the moons before, beyond the practicality of brighter or darker nights on average, but the phases of three were now directly relevant to the household and it was hard to watch only those and ignore the other two. She’d seen the effects of both dark moons and full on their children, and it was certainly much more than an abstract or a simple means of marking time for them.
Late as it was, the heat made it hard to sleep. The couches and a few chairs and stools were arranged chaotically, allowing the tunic-clad household to indulge in various low-energy pastimes. Phaidra, stretched on a couch to keep her injured leg supported, with Iole on a stool in front of her, played at dice on a table with housekeeper Pherusa, whose large powerful frame was barely accommodated by her couch, and Oenone. No money was changing hands; they were using coloured wooden discs to keep score.
Kieran, perched on another stool, wore only a length of fabric wrapped and tied into a kilt of sorts, the sort of thing some of the western islanders wore, which left the rest of him open to the breeze—and to Lysandra's fancies. He was teaching Clytie and Thaleia and Zenais an unfamiliar game played with a liberal collection of grape seeds and a length of yellow moonspun marked with a double row of large dark rings; the guard found sitting up in a chair easier on her shoulder and the arm bound across her chest.
Melanippe was relaxing near a Hounds and Hares board, with a seat on the other side that might have been Hermia's before she left to wait by the door, but she seemed perfectly content to watch the stars, lost in her own thoughts and occasionally inserting remarks into the conversations over either game.
Tyrel and Madoc and Mirren had already foregone their preferred costume for local tunics tonight; Kaveri stripped off her tunic, down to her preferred next-to-nothing. Weapon belts were unbuckled and left near at hand, like Melanippe's, and now that Hermia was no longer guarding the door, hers followed. Narcissa joined them a little behind the rest, having paused to change from her dress to a lightweight plain tunic of pale violet Kaveri had made her.
It might be an oddly mixed group, but all were trying to accommodate each other, and it made for a pleasantly informal and friendly impromptu gathering. The gaming clusters shifted to absorb the newcomers, and the appearance of a board divided into alternating squares and the box of playing pieces of two colours added another option. Lysandra danced for them; the breeze helped, and her current pale rose costume was the most lightweight she had, not much worse than a tunic and far more comfortable on other levels. Narcissa, laughing, got up to join her. Trained together, they could match each other, though with some effort; Lysandra being the better dancer, she usually let Narcissa improvise as she wished and followed her lead.
Both sank down on couches before long, though. “This is not the time of year for this,” Narcissa said. “Is there any mint water left?”
“I think we finished it,” Acantha said.
“I'll go get more,” Clytie said, heading for the stairs.
Lysandra stretched out languorously on the couch on her side. Though the heat was unpleasant, and clearly more so for most of the foreigners, there was at this particular moment little else she could complain about.
A shadow flickered between them and the moons; Lysandra, like most of the others, looked up, but she saw nothing except starry sky.
It wasn't enough warning to help.
A huge bird, Lysandra had no idea what kind or how big it really was but it seemed absolutely enormous, stooped. Narcissa, with reflexes Lysandra hadn't known she had even after all the self-defence lessons, rolled off her couch onto her hands and knees, and the bird struck only cushions. With a harsh shriek, it lumbered back into the air and disappeared.
“Under the roof,” Tyrel shouted, snatching up the belts beside his couch as he scrambled to his feet, the rest of the guards doing likewise. Kieran, despite Talir being only something like three days before dark, changed to his amarog form, growling with hackles erect. “It can't attack from above there!”
Narcissa pulled Thaleia to her feet by her good hand, since getting up cost the injured guard some effort. “Go! Lysandra, you too! All of you! I want no one hurt this time!”
Iole hesitated, unwilling to leave Phaidra; powerful Pherusa, who was accustomed to heaving around tubs of wet laundry and great sacks of grain and head-high amphorae, scooped up Phaidra, who was tall and rather lanky and currently couldn't move well with her broken ankle.
Sudden noise, the jangling of metal and the presence of entirely too many people, boiling up the stairs and spilling out into sight.
Lysandra gathered her skirts and fled after her sister and their household, pausing only to grab Oenone’s arm and push her back into motion when the maid stopped to look.
The four armed foreigners, with Hermia and Melanippe, dropped into a sort of arc, watching the sky and staying between the stairs and the non-combatants. Once they were all under shelter, Thaleia urged everyone back by the wall and as far from the open side and ends as possible.
“There has to be at least twelve,” Narcissa whispered. “We're outnumbered. And Clytie was downstairs...” She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, and just for a moment, Lysandra thought she might break down weeping. Then practicality took over. “Pherusa, put her down here so she can lean against the wall. No, Phaidra, not on your feet.” Iole crouched down, helping her lover get settled in a way that didn't hurt.
“I wish we had something longer than belt knives,” Thaleia muttered, drawing hers. Not everyone even had that much, since some lacked a belt at all and others had had knives out to cut fruit.
“Agreed,” Narcissa said. “We have excellent guardians, but...”
... but they had odds of something like two to one against them, and the disadvantage of trying to keep the attackers from getting past them to the vulnerable. The attackers were, as near as Lysandra could tell by moonlight, all men in ordinary tunics, armed with swords of varying design that were all short enough to have been carried within the city, in a basket or sack or the like, without drawing the attention of the patrol. Presumably they'd expected surprise and numbers to give them a rapid victory.
Kieran lunged at the nearest of the attacking men, adroitly dodging a reflexive jab with his short sword, and bore him to the ground with his full weight. Lysandra saw pale yellow blood, but he paid no more attention than he had when fighting the bear, and this time, she thought his wounds were healing as rapidly as they were inflicted.
One of Tyrel's throwing knives found the throat of an attacker; Kaveri, who had very good aim, bounced a shallow pottery bowl off the temple of another. Both dropped, one dead or dying and one badly stunned, and the bowl clattered to the roof nearly under the feet of a third, who had to dance back quickly to avoid stumbling over it. In that instant off-balance, Kaveri followed the bowl with a cup to his head. The cup, unlike the bowl, shattered into sharp-edged shards, drawing blood on her target's face and exposed upper arm, but other than a curse, he ignored it.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The blood was greengold in the moonlight. And that oozing around Tyrel's knife was silver-blue. And the blood around and on Kieran was greengold as much as yellow.
Yet the attackers continued to bleed without healing, and the dazed one stayed down, alive enough to keep hold of his short sword but moving little.
Hermia and Melanippe, back to back, were ringed by three. The focus seemed to be more heavily on the foreigners, though. Madoc and Mirren did their best to stay in front and buy time for Tyrel to use his throwing knives and Kaveri whatever other pottery she could reach. Tyrel injured two more before the battle was in too close and he had to switch to those odd weapons of his with the triangular blades and the hilt that ran crosswise instead of parallel to the blade. Kaveri had a limited supply of ammunition accessible, even with fruit and belt-knives, though she put that to good use: Lysandra thought it kept the invaders too broken up to mob Madoc and Mirren en masse. When she ran out, she began to use her weighted cord; she wasn't as good at being lethal, but she could certainly interfere and keep attackers busy, and at least once she disarmed someone.
That immense bird stooped again, this time on Kieran as he backed up a step from his bloodied victim. Kieran spun around and mostly evaded the attack, and the talon-cuts across his back closed and vanished in heartbeats, leaving him fully fit to lunge upwards at the bird. It shrieked again, battering at him with enormous wings, and surely those blows must be terrifically powerful, but Lysandra could still hear Kieran's snarls past the flurry of feathers.
More greengold blood, but this time it was Madoc's—and that healed instantly, moonlight filling it and washing it away.
The man who had just sliced Madoc's arm open from shoulder to elbow in vain fell back a step in shock. “You're like us!”
“And we're healing in the moonlight,” Madoc retorted. “You aren't. What does that tell you?”
“Yegor! You didn't tell us...!”
“Stop thinking and kill them!” bellowed one of the attackers, possibly the tallest and probably the most fair of hair and skin. “Phoibos, change and help Garvey with that damned wolf!”
Yegor? Garvey? Those were alien names, as odd as those of the Peacock's friendly strangers and their own in-house protectors.
“But they're like us! And the moons are on their side! And two of them belong to Talir!”
“I said kill them! No matter what they are, they're enemies who already killed two of us!”
While Madoc's opponent continued to hesitate, Kaveri solved his dilemma by cracking him on the side of the skull with one of the rapidly-swinging lead weights. He fell where he was, and stayed there.
One of the men backed up, letting his sword fall to the rooftop. He skinned out of his tunic, untied his loincloth and bent to deal with his sandals.
Kaveri caught him in the head with another cup, now that she could reach more from her new position. It dazed him briefly, knocking him to his knees. That bought Kieran enough time to drag the great bird down, with his teeth clamped relentlessly on its bare-skinned throat, violet blood streaking its feathers. It wasn't screaming anymore, maybe lacking the breath to do so, though the wings continued to flail frantically.
Usually Kaveri's missiles connected; sometimes it was enough to deflect a blow or make someone falter or draw minor distracting blood, sometimes it just made the footing trickier over intact and broken and shattered cups and dishes and slippery with squished fruit. Lysandra had never thought that something so humble and prosaic could make a difference. There were only a finite number of objects to throw, however, and she was rapidly running out.
The naked one's form blurred into pale silver-blue light, and reformed into a lion with a thick dark mane. The feline must, Lysandra was sure, mass twice what Kieran did. But then, he'd fought a great bear that was much larger, so surely he could handle this? As soon as he dared let go of the bird?
Kaveri, recklessly, madly, darted in and grabbed the lion's tail, jerking on it as hard as she could. It spun around with a roar, one golden paw swiping at her. She dropped flat and it went over her; rolling to her feet, she crouched in place, lion and woman each daring the other to move next. The lion's tail lashed in outrage—but maybe also uncertainty, wondering what other surprises there might be, and whether it dared attack?
Kieran's teeth tore long blue furrows in the lion's tawny hip; it roared again and whipped around to face him as the more dangerous foe. Behind Kieran, the bird lay flat and unmoving, wings spread limply, featherless head lolling to one side with its throat and chest stained with violet blood.
Bird's down, one, two, three, four, five others down, make that six, Hermia just got that one, and there are two, four, seven still fighting, against our six, not counting the lion and Kieran. And one of those is one-handed and bleeding badly thanks to Madoc and that curved thing of his. Well, those are better odds, at least, and they're almost all injured, so have ours been but ours are healing as fast as they're hurt—except Hermia and Melanippe, but they're the only ones trying to actually defend themselves at all and they don't look hurt badly... with the moons on our side, maybe we'll all live through this?
At which point Mirren cried out, a sound cut off mid-note as she collapsed, the heavy-bladed sword of one of the attackers buried deep in her chest. Her own short sword and dagger clattered to the roof.
Madoc kicked them back out of reach of their adversaries, behind him and Tyrel; he said her name once, questioningly, but got no reply.
Oh gods.
But Mirren will be back, right? The way Kieran was? When Sanur’s full?
Will anyone human be left when she does?
“You may be healing, but you still die,” the fair one Yegor said gloatingly.
“Looks that way,” Tyrel said, blocking a sword coming at Madoc's head with his smaller katar so it slid along the length of the blade, and thrusting forward with the larger one. Blood, aquamarine, his opponent clutching his side and barely clinging to his sword. “If you surrender, we won't kill you.”
“Surrender or not, you're all dead!” Yegor said.
“Maybe why the moons are playing favourites?” Madoc suggested.
The injured one with the blue-green blood faltered, backed up a step.
“Don't you dare, Fridulf,” Yegor snapped.
Injured Fridulf's sword clanged to the rooftop. He backed a few further steps away from both the fight and his weapons, then knelt.
Lysandra caught Narcissa's wrist and dragged her back, against resistance.
“He surrendered, so he's in our care!” Narcissa protested. “And he needs a healer!”
“Let Sahen look after him until the fight's over! Look, none of them are vanishing, and shouldn't they be by now if they were really dead? They don't come back, so maybe the moons are compromising so this fight won't go on until sunrise—don't heal them immediately, but don't let them die?”
“You should listen to your sister,” Thaleia said. “You're the primary target. They got a big bad surprise, four moonblood instead of four humans, and Kieran besides, and the moons taking sides. The quick clean massacre they must have expected is in ruins. If you go out there, they'll probably all go after you so they salvage something out of this mess.”
Narcissa bit her lip, visibly torn—which meant Lysandra had no intention of letting go of her. She made no immediate further attempt to go to the man's aid, at least.
Injured Fridulf stripped off his tunic and wadded it up over the wound in his side. Lysandra watched him warily, but he seemed to genuinely have removed himself from the battle.
The one whose hand was nearly severed by a curving slice most of the way around his forearm, violet blood running freely from parallel cuts on his face and other arm from Madoc's claws, dropped back a step, looked at Fridulf and then at Madoc, and tossed his sword aside. He retreated to kneel beside Fridulf, wincing as he untied his belt and stripped off his tunic to wrap around his arm.
Are we actually winning?
Yegor said something Lysandra didn't understand, but he sounded furious. He fell back a couple of further steps behind the actual battle line, peeling off his tunic, then his loincloth.
The huge stag lowered his head, wide antlers with an alarming collection of points aimed at the noncombatants.
Long ago, before everyone had given up, Narcissa's brother Agathon and several companions had dragged an unwilling Evander along on hunting trips, trying to elicit a properly masculine response. They'd been disgusted by his indifference to the thrill of the chase. The stag charging at them now was familiar from those trips: not one of the small fallow or smaller roe deer, but a mature red deer stag, his shoulders as high as those of a man, bearing a tremendous set of antlers that could wreak havoc.
Tyrel deflected a blow meant for Kaveri and tossed his head towards the stag in a suggestion to respond to it, but she was too far away. The roof offered little traction for hooves, even less so slippery with blood and fruit, but the stag was moving more rapidly than two feet could.
Lysandra pulled the ends of the bow securing the drawstring of her full skirt, and wriggled it down over her hips with a couple of twitches. With the waistband in her free hand, she used her grip on Narcissa's wrist and her full strength to heave her sister as far back as she could, in the general direction of Zenais and Oenone, then darted around Thaleia and into the path of the charging stag.
Who snorted and made no attempt to veer. If anything, he lowered his head a trifle further.
She heard Narcissa cry her name, almost a scream.
At the last instant, she flipped the skirt up so it spread across the stag's antlers, hanging down over his face, and threw herself to the side. The roof was hard enough that she suspected she'd have bruises, but she rolled out of the way before raising her head to look.
The stag shook his head violently in an attempt to dislodge the thin rosy fabric that was fluttering across his eyes and obscuring his vision.
Thaleia ran in; her knife was too short to hit anything vital, but she drove it hilt-deep into his shoulder, and slashed downward as she jerked it out. Violet blood streamed from the wound, unheeded.
The knife wasn't entirely clear of the hide before Kaveri's belt whipped through the air at knee-height, and tangled around the stag's hind legs, the weights continuing to wrap them more tightly. The stag bellowed and dropped his head further, spinning and bucking blindly.
Thaleia watched coolly, and sprinted in a second time. This time, her knife lodged in its muscular neck, and was torn out of her hand. The stag's head slammed into her, knocking her back and off her feet, and the sound she made was sharp and rather strangled. Iole ran to her.
Lysandra was too close for comfort, with the stag's increasingly berserk behaviour. She scrambled to her feet.
The restrained back hooves, though with the binding coming gradually loose, kicked out together. One caught Lysandra squarely in the side. She was sure she felt her lower ribs crack, before the blinding pain doubled her over, clutching vainly at her injured side.
What did it hit?
Vaguely, she was aware of a female shriek of rage, and of the stag bellowing again, but the struggle to suck in enough air for the next breath, and then the next, overwhelmed anything that far away. She felt the surface under her shudder, something heavy striking it hard.
“Surrender. Now!” That was Narcissa's voice, and she sounded furious. “Drop all weapons immediately or you lose the option!”
But how could her sister be somewhere over there, and only a single laboured breath later be kneeling beside Lysandra, gently pulling her hands away from her side? Lysandra moaned and tried to curl up more tightly to hide from the pain that was turning the world into a black ocean of ice and fire.
“Shh, I'm sorry, but I need to look. Who can get to the hospital fastest? We've got three life-threatening emergencies, too injured to walk. Maybe four, if Clytie...”
“I’ll go,” Oenone said.
“Send someone for the watch too,” Tyrel said raggedly, from farther away.
“Going,” Zenais said.
And then, with no time between, or maybe a thousand years of Narcissa stroking her hair and talking to her, but if it had meaning it was lost in the battle to keep breathing, there were more people there, and hands lifted her onto something, and the pain spiked so high that consciousness lost out.