Page 50 of The Serpent’s Shadow

“Here!” cried the man Corym charged at.

The elf twisted his wrist, drew his sword, and flicked fingers to the sky.

A vine from an overhead branch draped down and curled around the man’s leg as he slid it back for a defensive position. Corym flung his wrist in another direction—up—and the vine squeezed around the Huscarl and lifted at a breakneck speed. With a yelp, the Huscarl flipped, dropping his sword as the vine whip-snapped toward the canopy and brought him with it by the ankle.

It left him upside down, arms stretched down, unguarded, yelling curses—

Just as Corym charged in, blade slicing sidelong, and beheaded the Huscarl at the neck.

A gout of blood waterfalled and splashed onto the forest floor after the guard’s head plopped on the soil.

The female Huscarl at his side screamed and shoved her shield at Corym.

The metal boss at the center smashed his shoulder and he bounced back, dancing around her with his deft blade.

I watched all of it play out in less than three seconds, then returned my gaze to the Huscarl I was fighting and kept hacking, keeping her on the defensive.

The two women fought well in tandem, their backs pressed against one another, while Corym and I sprightly jolted left and right to keep them off-balance.

I heard the rustling of trees nearby.

“Now!” I shouted at Corym.

We pushed off the Huscarls’ respective shields, both of us Shaping and flinging acorns of fire magic at them.

By the time they’d lowered their shields, unharmed from the smoky blasts . . .

We were gone, vanished back into the dense trees.

Moving on, further down the tree line toward the next hapless soldiers.

One down. And in a particularly gruesome way, no less,I thought, wincing as I recalled the sudden onslaught of Corym E’tar’s magic and sword combination.

I’d never known he could command the fuckingtreesto do his bidding.Damn the gods. I need to learn those runes.

The space we’d been in swarmed with Huscarls moments after we’d left the vicinity. I could hear one of the women babbling in a raised voice. “They’re quick! The pointy-eared one took Torrance’s head right off!”

“Which pointy-eared one?” another called out, his voice reverberating through the foliage.

“The man.”

“He’s no man. He’s a fucking monster!”

“We’ll avenge Torrance. Come on, this way.”

They drew closer, picking the correct path to tail us.

I cursed under my breath.

Corym and I ran blindly. Weapons drawn, because we had no idea who we might run into around the next bend, over the next hill, or on the other side of the next tree.

We crested a slope, hopped across a scattering of mossy stones, and leapt over a narrow tendril of a creek running downhill.

Staying atop the hillock past the creek, we kept sloping, bending our knees to grind toward the top—

Except the top didn’t lead to a sloping bottom, like we both imagined it would. The summit ended abruptly on a jagged cliff face dropping thirty feet onto hard, rough soil.

Possibly enough to kill if we jumped, easily enough to snap an ankle, which was as good as death in this situation.

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