Free The Dark Warden (Book 6) by Jonathan Moeller Page A

tail twitching once or twice. 
    “I’m sorry,” said Gavin, “but I’ve seen this trick before” He walked back, nodded to Calliande, and raised his shield and sword. 
    “Who was she?” said Morigna.
    “I don’t think you would understand,” said Gavin. A trio of urhaalgars charged them, and there was no more time for talk.
     
    ###
     
    Ridmark and Kharlacht dueled the remaining two urshanes. 
    The damned things were deadly quick, and moved with the fluid grace of striking serpents. The urshane facing Kharlacht blurred and shifted, and took the form of an orcish woman, tall and strong. The illusion enraged Kharlacht further. He rarely spoke of his past, but from time to time mentioned a woman that he had lost.
    Perhaps that was her.
    The urshane facing Ridmark kept changing form.
    One moment she was Aelia Licinius Arban, her voice and face full of loathing as she excoriated him for his failures. The next she was Morigna, her expression filled with pain as she begged him to save her. The instant after that the urshane became Calliande as Ridmark had seen her on the day of the great omen, naked and helpless. 
    It was a ghastly spectacle. Men had gone mad fighting urshanes, their throats ripped out as they refused to lift their blades against a creature wearing the guise of their loved ones. Or they had killed a creature disguised as a wife or daughter or son, and broken down sobbing at the death. Ridmark had already seen Aelia die because of his folly. 
    Killing a facsimile held no power over him, and he would not fail Morigna the way he had failed Aelia. 
    He drove at the urshane, wielding his axe with both hands. Around him the urhaalgars tried to charge, only to fall prey to Morigna’s earth magic. Mara and Jager killed stunned urhaalgar after stunned urhaalgar, leaving carcasses in their wake. The Swordbearer mowed his way through them, his armor dented and scratched, his soulblade rising and falling with the regular rhythm of a blacksmith working steel. 
    Ridmark’s headache grew worse as the Swordbearer came closer. 
    He ignored the pain and dodged the urshane’s stinger as it shot over Aelia’s shoulder. The urshane blurred into Morigna’s form and came after him, claws sprouting from the ends of her fingers. Ridmark swept the axe before him, and the urshane’s jerked her hands back to protect her fingers. She spun, her barbed tail lashing at him like a whip, and Ridmark jumped back. The creature pursued him, morphing into Calliande’s shape, her face alight with a malicious glee that the real Calliande had never shown. Once more the barbed tail shot for his face. 
    Ridmark had anticipated the movement, and as he dodged he lifted his left hand from the haft of his axe. He seized the tail just behind the barbed stinger, the chitin cold and hard beneath his fingers, and yanked with all his strength. The urshane shrieked in surprise, struggling to keep its balance. The urshane’s torso was out of reach, but its tail was not, and Ridmark lopped it off with a single sharp blow. 
    The creature’s enraged scream threatened to shatter his ears, and the urshane’s form went into a mad convulsion, shifting from Morigna to Aelia to Calliande to its own form and back again. The urshane threw itself at him, and Ridmark swung the severed tail like a whip. The barb stuck in the urshane’s cheek, and the creature stumbled to a halt, trying to pull its own tail out of its face. Most likely the urshane was immune to its own poison, but the distraction gave Ridmark all the time he needed to get both hands around the axe’s haft and launch a killing blow. 
    The urshane’s head rolled away across the ground, the tail still stuck to its face, and the thin body collapsed. Ridmark turned, intending to aid Kharlacht, but he saw that the orcish warrior had already defeated his opponent. Kharlacht ripped his greatsword free with a snarl, his eyes glazed red, and turned to attack the remaining urhaalgars. 
    There