Florin wrestled with the arrow in his shoulder, trying to snap off its shaft before an outlaw could reach him and grab hold of it, butHe was out of time. Swords came swinging at him in a steely rain.

He ducked away, parrying furiously, and heard ringing steel and Islif grunting as she did when putting real might behind a slash. More clanging and clashing of swords, then a shout of pain-an outlaw-and Jhessail unleashing another battlestrike. Semoor was casting something, too, calling on Lathander for aid in smiting.

Smiting was something Florin had to take care of himself. His blade bit deep into the side of a screaming outlaw's face, lodging in bone, and he couldn't-couldn'tThe swords that thrust into him then, under the edges of armor plates low on his side and high on his neck, burned like fire and chilled like a deluge of icy water.

Florin staggered back, dragging the man he'd slain with him- but the weight of that toppling body snatched his sword from his hand, leaving him with nothing to parry a grinning outlaw's wicked roundhouse slash.

"Die!" another outlaw shouted, hacking with the dagger Florin was trying to snatch out of his fingers. "For Cormyr and Yellander! Die!"

Those words echoed strangely around a rising, pounding dark flood that seemed to race through his ears, wash through his head, and back out to blind him as grinning men closed in, and fire and ice lashed Florin again… and again…

Not far away, Jhessail screamed as a hurled sword spun at her face. She ducked, and it tumbled through her hair, slicing open her cheek a,nd catching fast in the tree behind her, still tangled in her hair.

Clawing at the enemy steel to get it away from her eyes, she saw Islif beset by six outlaws. One staggered and went down, sobbing and spraying blood-but was followed by several of Islif's armor plates that went flying aside as she reeled and then toppled, two swords buried in her.