Gazel drew his sword and put himself in front of the carriage door, then he pitched his voice over the horses so the whole column would hear where the line was.
"Form up around the princess," Gazel said with his blade already coming level, "shields to the outside, nobody moves until I call it."
The knights closed around Didi with steel ringing on steel, shields coming together at the outside of the ring while every eye in the formation stayed down on the cracked ground.
Two veterans went to the horses without being told.
The younger ones spread back along the road toward the capital, which was the only direction anybody was going to leave in.
The formation had been drilled against bandits and against beasts, never against a thing under the road that could talk.
'Talking monsters do not simply appear,' Gazel thought, his grip creaking on the leather, 'speech starts at seven Shards, and seven Shards wants a Master.'
He had no Master anywhere in the column, nor anybody who had reached six Shards, so the next minute was going to be decided by twelve ordinary swords.
'The princess needs thirty seconds to mount and ride,' he thought, planting himself across the clearest line to the carriage, 'so I only have to last that long.'
The ground split with a sound like tearing metal, the road caving inward while something large pushed up out of the dark.
A torso of layered obsidian scale came up first, then a head that sat too close to human for something that had been living under a road.
Dust came off its shoulders in sheets while it dragged the rest of itself clear, then the eyes went over the knights without interest before they stopped on Didi and stayed there.
Four limbs ended in claws blackened by compressed mana, while a scaled tail cut trenches into the ground behind it.
No field manual covered a half-human build.
"Well now," it said, and the voice came up through their feet before it reached their ears, "my nose was not lying after all."
"One of the Underworld King's royal bloodlines," it continued, teeth coming up into the grin, "so His Majesty will be pleased when I carry you home."
The head tilted, then it took another pull of air like a hound working a trail.
"Though the mission was the Goddess's last bloodline," it muttered, sounding put upon, "filthy thing, I can still smell what is left of her power out there."
It looked off toward the tree line for a moment, then the head came back around to the carriage.
Somewhere under the road another section gave way and dropped.
"But that one is too weak to be worth the walk," it said, the claws opening and closing while it spoke, "so the royal will do nicely instead."
Didi lost the air she had been about to use, and her hands stayed shut on the carriage door until her fingers hurt.
'Goddess bloodline?' she thought, running every archive she had ever been made to read, 'there is no such line left, the records put her death centuries ago.'
A hand closed on her wrist, so she looked down to find Gazel leaning in with his voice dropped to nothing.
"Your Highness, get ready to run," he said against her ear, "the horse on the left is already turned the right way."
"No," she said, and her hand went nowhere, "I am not running."
"When I say move, you mount and you ride," he said, his grip closing harder on her wrist, "and you do not look back for any of us."
"I said no," she answered, pulling against the hold without shifting it at all, "I am not a doll you pack away when something frightening turns up."
Gazel did not let go, and he turned his head until she could see the thing sitting under his face, which had nothing to do with the discipline she had been arguing with all afternoon.
"Stop being a spoiled brat for once and listen to me," he said, in a tone she had never once heard from him, "now do as I tell you."
She stared at him, because ten years as her personal guard had gone by without him raising his voice once.
Whatever he was carrying had broken ten years of that, so she stopped pulling against his hand.
She knew what a talking monster meant, so she also knew that running would let the knights fight for their own lives instead of spending the whole line keeping her alive.
Then she saw the young one on the left, whose shield would not stop rattling against his armor.
'These are my people,' she thought, her fingers going tight on the carriage door, 'and running turns every one of them into something I hid behind.'
That took the last comfortable excuse out from under her.
Gazel did not wait for an answer, since he had already turned back to the line.
"On my mark we open a lane for the carriage," Gazel called, lifting the sword so the rear ranks could see it, "and nobody chases what comes through."
The monster watched with its tail moving in lazy sweeps while the ground kept opening around its feet.
"Run all you want," it said, sounding almost fond of the idea, "it will not change where this ends."
Something cold settled under Didi's ribs and stayed there.
'No,' she thought, looking at the boy with the rattling shield and then at the rest of the line, 'I am not riding away while they buy me the seconds.'
She pulled her wrist free and stepped out from behind the carriage.
"Your Highness!" Gazel shouted, already moving to put himself between her and the pit.
Mana came off her in one hard pulse, frost running out from her feet while the air dropped until every breath turned white.
Three crystal Shards rose into a slow orbit around her arms, each one taking the light off the frost and throwing it back somewhere in the blue.
The frost bit into the loose ground beside the carriage and steadied the horses, then it gave every knight in the ring something to form on instead of a place to stand while they died.
Gazel came around fast, his eyes finding the Shards before they found her face.
"What are you doing, you need to be on a horse," he said, the sword dipping as his attention split, "right now, Your Highness."
"I am taking command," she said, and the frost went out another two paces, "you will follow my orders, Gazel, then you will stop treating me like a puppy."
"Your father gave me one instruction," he said, without lowering the sword or looking away from the pit, "and it was not this."
"Then you can explain yourself to him later," she said, the Shards picking up speed around her arms, "assuming we both get to have that conversation."
He wanted to argue, though he had lost that argument every time she got this quiet.
'If she dies out here,' he thought, biting the inside of his lip until it stung, 'the other houses will have the king off his throne inside a year.'
'So she survives,' he thought, turning his eyes back to the thing coming out of the ground, 'whatever that costs the rest of us.'
The monster had watched all of it with its head over on one side, and the grin had gone slack somewhere in the middle.
'Three Shards,' it thought, disappointment coming through plainly, 'the Underworld King breeds better than that, or he used to.'
The bloodline in front of it would not last a hellhound, whatever the reports back home had promised.
'The hidden one might be worth more,' it thought, taking another pull of air off the tree line, 'so perhaps I will dig that up afterward.'
Hajin took the boar by one tusk, turned his whole body with it, then put the animal into the ground so the impact threw dust over both of them.
"Stay down, big guy," he said with the grin coming up before he could stop it, "this one is not going your way."
The chain gathered itself back into his fist in loose loops while the boar went on trying to get its feet under it.
'Still three Shards on that thing,' he thought, watching the Ring turn above his right wrist, 'so I should finish this before it remembers the trick with the bristles.'
"Do not take this personally," he said, setting a knee on the boar to hold the angle he wanted, "you are the only meal in this forest that fights back."
The animal heaved once under him, then it settled enough that the chain quit dragging against his knuckles.
He got both hands back on the tusk and put his weight down through it, since the forest was not going to hold still while he talked himself into the last part.