Sacrifice (Book 4) by Brian Fuller

same myself. We should fortify it if we get the chance.”
    “Get down!” came another yell from the front, and the woods exploded with the whistling of dark arrows ripping through the trees to hammer hard into the trunks or skitter into the underbrush. Kimdan pushed her farther behind the tree as he and Dason crouched.
    “It is a typical tactic,” Kimdan explained. “They rain down arrows to keep our archers from doing any damage while they send in the Bashers to knock down our fortifications. It should let up in a minute.”
    The Chalaine huddled on the ground, covering her ears to mute the awful racket punctuated by the painful wails of those felled by the mighty bows of the Uyumaak Archers. Few arrows fell as far back in the woods as she was, but the loud pop of a sleek dark arrow nearby snapped her eyes open, the polished shaft quivering in the trunk of a tree.
    As Kimdan predicted, the hail of arrows stopped, providing for a brief respite until the relative silence ended with the horrifying crash of the Bashers smashing into their hastily constructed fortifications. Orders and shouts and screams mixed with the sharp sound of branches being snapped and split and chopped. Kimdan and Dason waited, swords at the ready, itching to help those who fought in the dwindling light before them. The voices of General Harband and Lord Kildan rang out clearly above the din, first calling for reinforcements toward the middle, and then frantically warning everyone to watch the flank.
    “If they spread us out, we’re done for,” Kimdan said soberly.
    A soldier sprinting back toward their position startled them. “They’re breaking through!” he yelled, eyes filled with terror as he bolted toward the interior of the forest. Kimdan tripped him, sending the panicked Rhugothian soldier and his weapon flying. Angrily, Kimdan hauled him up by his breastplate and slammed him into a tree.
    “Get back to the line, you. . .”
    Two Bashers charged into camp from their left flank, both carrying massive war hammers and wearing thick hide armor and metal helmets. Kimdan released the soldier, who continued his flight into the twilight of the branches beyond. Wordlessly the Bashers struck, and while their short stature brought them only chest-high with their human enemies, their thick limbs struck with fierce power. The first drove its hammer in a side stroke toward Dason’s hip. Dason jumped backward and away, the strike breaking a thin tree trunk to his right in two. Dason returned with a downward strike to its helmet, the impact hard, but the blade did little damage as it skipped off the metal.
    Kimdan took a risk as the other charged him and he leapt at it before it could throw its arm over to strike. The sword’s arcing trajectory aimed for a small space between the helmet and shoulder and missed, impacting with the dense armor of the shoulder and doing nothing. Desperately Kimdan tried to pull back, but the Basher wound up its unfinished hammer stroke and brought it down on Kimdan’s extended leg, cracking it with a sound so awful that the Chalaine shrieked. Dason could do nothing to help his comrade as the other Basher pushed him backward. Dason tried quick stabs, seeking to insert his blade in some gap that would damage the creature.
    Kimdan, eyes pained, tried to roll out of the way of another strike, but the Basher pounded him again, shattering his sword arm. The plight of Regent Ogbith’s son finally penetrated the Chalaine’s fear and self-pity, giving her the mettle she needed to act. She spied the sword discarded by the fleeing soldier and dove for it, Samian’s hours of nightly instruction making the hilt and the blade familiar to her hand though she had never wielded a sword in the waking world.
    The Basher hammered down on Kimdan again, crushing the left side of his chest, ribs snapping. The Chalaine stood, and with a skill not quite her own, aimed a sword stroke at the same spot Kimdan had tried for before. Unaware of