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lanterns—and, nearer at hand, bodies sprawled in the street. There were a few huddled, motionless heaps of village homespun, but more than a few black, long-limbed, somehow
sleek
bodies, too.
    Nightskins!
    Amid a sudden jangling of chimes, something pitched abruptly out of the darkness between two porches, and Orl-folk on one of those porches raced to it and started hacking and stabbing with their forks at the nightskin who’d tripped and was struggling to rise.
    The chime-strings!
    They worked!
    Orivon Firefist had found another pair of nightskins, and his sword was ringing and clanging as they tangled with him, blade to blade. Orl-folk were throwing stools, churns, and even hoes at the two dark elves from behind, seemingly without effect—and beyond it all, Grammoth saw a lantern crash and fall with the village man who was clutching it. The dark shadow who’d killed him stooped, snatched up the still-burning lantern, and hurled it up onto another roof.
    Even as Grammoth shouted and pointed, the thatch smoked and then flared up, the nightskin darting away into the darkness.
    Behind Grammoth, someone screamed loudly, and he spun around in time to see
four
nightskins gathering, hissing things at each other and pointing with their swords—at Grammoth, amid other things.
    Another scream, right behind Grammoth, drove him to whirl frantically around again. He was in time to see a nightskin topple toward him, spewing a great froth of blood from its mouth, its head at an odd angle.
    As it fell, Orivon Firefist’s fearsome sword came free of its neck and was left waving bloodily in the air as the forge-giant stared past Grammoth at the four nightskins. He barked a bubbling string of words at them that sounded very much like orders, in that strange, flowing, wet-sounding language.
    The tongue of the nightskins sounded . . .
exciting.
    The nightskins were hesitating, peering around as if seeking another of their kind. Evidently they couldn’t quite believe anyone of Orlkettle could speak their tongue.
    Orivon Firefist didn’t wait for them to think such matters over.
    He sprang right over Grammoth and charged the four, blood-wet sword shining in the firelight. At least three houses were afire now, and all Orlkettle was awake and shouting, rushing about on every side. Grammoth saw the four nightskins draw back, shifting to all face outward with their swords at the ready, as a fifth dark elf darted out of the night to join them.
    Which was when the forge-giant who’d been a nightskin slave reached them and gave a great bellow, his sword sweeping through the night air like the largest scythe in the world.
    At their faces Orivon hewed, and when they reared back and brought their blades up against his, he ducked and brought his slicing steel down in the air to reap their ankles, spilling and tumbling them in all directions as his rush carried him on into the backs of the two facing away from him. Those he trampled down, and broke the neck of one with his hand as he turned and hacked open the face of the other. Then he was bounding among the three that were left like a child pouncing on prized fruit, hacking and slashing and kicking in a frenzy that made Grammoth shiver all over again, even though it was nightskins who were dying messily in front of his eyes. The hated dark elves moaned and thrashed in pain and sprayed blood from slit throats just like slaughtered boar . . . or humans.
    And then a war-horn sounded, a horn that
hissed
more than any human horn—and suddenly the dark shadows of nightskins were racing away. All over Orlkettle, they streamed past the brightblazes of the burning homes in swift, eerie silence, vanishing back into the night.
    And Orivon Firefist was running with them, faster than Grammoth could have run, his sword reaching and reaping. Biting into this dark elf and that, sending them staggering and crying out, or arching in wild thrashings of agony.
    Grammoth ran