The Danu by Kelly Lucille

spears,
Katrine a blade, taking out an archer before she stood up on the horse.  She
had vaulted herself up into the trees above them and was running across the
branches faster than Khalon could stop her.  Hampered as he was by weapons in
both hands.  This time it was Khalon's time to curse, but it freed him up to
fight once he assured himself that she was moving freely through the branches
to safety.
    Katrine stopped to remove
her boots, and pull one of only three knives she had managed to squirrel away
from Khalon's eagle eyes.  It had helped that he was so angry after their bath
that he had refused to look at her until she was dressed.  It made pocketing
her stash easy.  Now they were all going to be glad she did.
    Once Katrine had yanked
off the dress with its dragging skirts and redressed in just tunic and trousers,
she opened herself up to the weave.  It was a new one for her, one she had
never before entered as normally the Outcasts tended to stay to the North and
East of these parts before making their way south along the Eastern Coastal
lands.  So she would have to test her limits and find out what the weave would
accept.  Under attack as it was, it could either accept her magic or reject her
completely.  What she did not expect was a familiarity and fast acceptance, but
that was what she found.  Something of her magic pulsed inside the weave as if
coming home.  It was then Katrine realized that whatever wild weave fed the hot
springs at the Inn fed this place too.  She smiled.  She was already immersed
in the weave enough that it would hurt to leave it, but she could only be
grateful in this instance.  It made many things possible.
    The boundaries of its
magic ended at the side of the road but she had the branches that stretched
above the road and shaded it, and when she pressed a little of her collected
magic into the trees they opened as if she was an old friend.  She followed the
long branches from one to the other until she was back where she had started
just above the North road and the battle stretched before her.
    Khalon and Ragnar were
slashing and hacking from their great beasts, holding back the dozens of
Outcasts that descended.  They would tire long before this crowd was dealt
with, and even if it looked like they might actually win even against these
numbers, she knew enough about Renault to know he would not quit no matter how
many men he had to sacrifice. 
    She would feel bad for
what she was about to do to these outcasts if they did not court it so openly
with their careless actions. 
    ***
    Khalon cursed his own arrogance
as the stampeding stream of Outcast trash barreled over them.  His eyes took in
Ragnar as he battled his own attackers, though they seemed to be more or less
concentrating on Khalon.  He slashed off an arm here, a head here, ignoring the
geysers of blood, and the screams.  He would count body parts when the battle
was done.  He was thinking the end was in sight when a wave of fresh horses and
men came through the hole in the green their friends had paved.  A dozen they
could have handled, now they were facing twice that.
    Knowing it was only a
matter of time Khalon turned his sights to finding the leader.  If he killed
Renault at least Katrine would be safe if he ended up dying here.
    He assumed the bastard
would want to kill him personally, but when he realized the face he was looking
for was not present, he cursed again.  Khalon knew as much as he knew anything
the sick bastard was already after Katrine.  Khalon lifted his sword and
deflected a strike, then leaned back on his horse before an arrow could pierce
his head and saw with satisfaction it took out an outcast instead. He was still
off balance when he was dragged down and separated from Thrax, who without his
rider began to stomp and thrash at the bodies coming at him from all sides. 
Khalon did not have time to do anything except deflect another sword, and hack
another body to pieces, again and