The woman’s drug-enhanced reflexes were so quick she almost managed to parry the blow. Sunfang grated along her blade, sparks bursting out as the metal ground together, then buried itself in the witch elf’s head with the sound of a butcher’s cleaver hitting a hanging carcass.

Tyrion lashed out left then right, taking down two more of the witch elves with as many blows. The rest of them responded with the speed of elite troops and something else…

Surprise did not slow them. Something about the drugs they had taken made them accept the sudden eruption of violence in their midst as if it was a perfectly normal occurrence. Perhaps for them it was. He knew how crazed witch elves could be.

They swarmed towards him, blades stabbing. He danced through a whirlwind of razor-sharp swords, ducking, weaving and slashing. Within a few more heartbeats he had killed three more. Other elves might have turned tail and fled in the face of the carnage that he wrought, but not these ones.

A poisoned dagger flickered towards the Everqueen. Desperately, Tyrion twisted to parry the blade, striking it from the air. As he did so, he felt a stab of pain in his side. One of the witch elves had managed to penetrate his stolen armour. He could only pray that no poison had got into the wound.

Seeing his concern for Alarielle, his foes switched targets, two of them going for her and the rest of them striking at him, knowing that he would be distracted.

There was no way he could protect Alarielle and himself at the same time. If the witch elves were determined to cut her down, they would, and there was nothing he could do about it, short of throwing himself in front of their blades.

‘Don’t kill her! She is the Everqueen!’ Tyrion shouted. It was the only way he could think of to slow them down.

The two witch elves attacking Alarielle paused for a second. Tyrion took advantage of it to stab one of them through the throat. Her flesh sizzled as Sunfang bit.

Alarielle raised her hands together over her head and spoke a word. There was a flash of greenish light and the witch elves reeled back, momentarily blinded. Tyrion leapt forwards into the blinded mass, blade slashing, leaving only dead and dying in his wake.

‘You are hurt, Prince Tyrion,’ said the Everqueen. Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the strange quiet after the combat.

Tyrion’s side stung where the witch elf’s blade had bit. He took off the chainmail shirt, unlaced his jerkin and inspected the wound. It was nothing, a mere scratch that would not even require stitching.

‘I took worse in practice matches when I was a boy.’

The Everqueen looked at him scornfully. ‘I doubt you duelled with witch elf blades when you were a youth. There is no need for such bravado.’

She was right, of course. He had seen too much of what happened to those wounded by witch elves to want to take any chances now. He unstoppered the canteen that was part of the gear he had stolen. It smelled of potent alcohol. Trust a druchii to carry that in his water bottle. He poured some out onto the scratch. It burned as if he was being branded by a dark elf torturer.