She scooped up her sword then and turned back to us, left staring, with a deep satisfied breath and a slow unearthly smile; and it came to me with a slight shiver that somehow she did look taller. Then she looked at the stunned Wolves, threw back her head and laughed again, more loudly, a sound that rang as ordinary laughter might in a bronze bell, or a whole chime of bells, striking strange resonances and harmonies off each other. It was a daunting sound to me, and to the Wolf more terrible still; for he threw up his hands like a man attacked, and fired. Mall’s sword flashed at a speed I couldn’t believe, there was a bang louder than the shot, and the Wolves crowding the stairs ducked away in panic from the spitting sing of a ricochet. She had turned the shot in mid-flight.
The lantern toppled unheeded at her feet, but the light did not falter,
it grew, it swelled, for it really was coming from her, shining in
radiance from her clear skin, glinting among her hair as it streamed out
in some immortal wind. And I, kneeling at her feet with Claire, felt
that light blaze through me as if I were a bubble of thin glass,
understood at last what had so strongly drawn me to her. Then she cried
aloud, once, and stretched out her sword. Light flashed from it, clear
and fierce as her gaze, merciless to the shadows it chased. The sword
hissed through the air, the Wolves bayed and blinked – and with one
laughing shout of
The mêlée was terrible, swirling this way and that; for the Wolves, though daunted by the sight of Mall transfigured, did not turn tail as they might have – as I would have, or any normal man. They were huge, and had more than twice our numbers; and without Mall we would have been lost. Something drove them as she led us, something dark that devoured light even as she radiated it. We saw it in their maddened eyes as they threw themselves at us, tearing at us with their terrifying strength even as we cut them down, forcing their way down the weapons that thrust through them to reach the wielders. But where she came they could not stand, and she leaped to the aid of men borne down, straddling them like a tower of flame. I clung to Clare and hewed out where I could, and in a sudden swirl of men Jyp caught hold of us both and thrust us towards the stairs where the fight was clearest. A Wolf leaped in my way. I hacked at him as Mall had shown me, he went down and I lunged at the last one in my way. But even as my sword ran through his throat I was bowled aside in a flash of scarlet, and slammed winded against the wall. I heard Clare shriek once, and reeling away, struggling not to fall back into the mass, I saw the scarlet-clad Wolf captain, menacing me with his cutlass, dragging her off up the stair. I swung at him, we crossed blades, but another Wolf brandishing a great Spanish poniard sprang in my way and aimed a stab I couldn’t parry. A flash and a bang scorched my ear, the Wolf’s face convulsed, and he doubled over; looking around, dazed, I saw Jyp below, gesticulating with his pistol. ‘Hey, don’t just stand there!’ he screamed. ‘Get after her!’
Bouncing off the walls like a drunkard, I staggered to the top and out, gulping the cold air in to clear my head. The hall was empty, but a muffled cry and a crash came from the stairs to one side; lightning flared, and the Wolf captain was hobbling along the landing above, lugging a cobwebbed and struggling Clare after him. I ran to the rickety stair and up through the track they’d left, leaping from step to step, hearing many collapse behind me. The boards of the landing were rotten, too, and more than once both the Wolf captain and I were sunk to our ankles in powdering wood, cursing ourselves free. At the landings’ end there was another stair, and though Clare kicked and thrashed at him as he dragged her up it, she delayed him not in the least; and he was fast. He reached the top long before me, and made straight for a wide door; but by a great mercy it was stuck, and he had to hammer at it and finally, as I reached the top, hurl his great weight bodily against it. And with that, as the doors flew open, I was on him.
