Chapter 26
In Which Glenda Is Beautiful and Splendid.
In Which She Has Served the Order and Brought Honour to Her Family.
In Which She Has Secured Peace for Her Land and Glory for Her God.
In Which Her Lips Are Twitching at the Memory of How His Eyes Dulled and Fell Blank and In Which She Is Grateful to Have Been a Servant of the Law and a Deliverer of Justice.
Glenda ascended the foggy slope, her armour draped with the gleaming white robes of Order.
At her sides marched elven relatives, and at her back, the forces of humanity.
Constructs gnashed from all sides with creaking branch-limbs and flashes of infernal flame, but the troops were in high spirits.
Men shouted insults as they hacked into living wood, and Glenda herself laughed, swinging her halberd into the dog-faced thing that erupted from the fog ahead.
“It’s time to turn the tide,” she called, the purity of her voice ringing like a church bell. “Raise it, raise it now!”
Behind her, a pair of knights ripped the stained cloth off their jointly carried cargo and, lowering the pike’s end to stabilize it in the dirt, hoisted the impaled thing into the air. A maroon glob of congealed liquid dripped onto Glenda’s shoulder.
Around them in the fog, constructs began to howl.
“Sir Cameron asked me to pass along a message,” Glenda shouted, smiling, and she told them.