Fortress Draconis (13 page)

As did the yelling.

Resolute came over to Will. “Crow will signal you when to tighten the rope. When they fall, just slash and stab. Be quick, very quick.”

“I will be. Quick and nimble.”

The Vorquelf nodded thoughtfully. “The reason I use longknives is because that’s what I used to kill my first gibberkin. On Vorquellyn, when I was not yet even your age. A longknife worked then, and so far, nothing better has come along. If you find something that would be better, let me know.”

Crow’s whisper carried down through the darkness. “Get ready, my friends. This will either be the longest night of our lives, or the last one. Either way, as long as we’re killing Aurolani forces, it will be time well spent.”

Despite the nightmarish cacophony of howls and snarls from the gibberers filling the air, Will actually heard the first gibberer before he saw it. Before hiding behind the barn door, Resolute had gone to the stalls with a shovel and mucked out a sour, dripping mass of straw and manure. He spread this near the doorway and let the odor fill the stable.

The gibberer sniffed at the cracked-open door and paused. Some of the horses shifted in their stalls and one neighed. The sniffing intensified, then the Aurolani creature poked his head into the stable. It looked about, its tufted ears up and alert, but the stamping of hooves clearly caught all of its attention. It pushed the door open just a little and slipped inside, its paws pressed back against the door so it could ease the door shut and survey the bounty it had found.

It never heard Resolute move. Its ears didn’t so much as flick back as the Vorquelf struck, dropping a canvas feedbag over its muzzled head and roughly jerking it backward. The gibberer’s paws came up to claw at the bag blinding it.

Resolute drove the dagger he’d chosen for close work into the creature’s back with serpentine speed. The gibberer at first stiffened, then uttered a muffled sigh and slackened.

Leaving the blade in his victim because it would be useless in the coming melee, the Vorquelf dragged the corpse into the corner and unhooded it. He picked up one of the longknives arid returned to his place by the door to wait.

Will dried his hands yet again on his thighs. Outside the stable a snarl-storm raged. He could hear yips and snaps from the gibberers. Crashes came from other buildings as homes were looted. In some places green light flashed again and again. Human voices—a mix of panic and command—played in counterpoint to the gibberer noise, but command slowly gave way to panic.

Part of him hated waiting. It seemed so unheroic, even cowardly. It didn’t matter that to charge out into the village would be suicidal. Somehow it seemed wrong that they weren’t killing gibberers as fast as they could.

Another part of him knew that holding the stable would allow them to tie up and destroy more of the Aurolani raiders than they could in the tavern. Still, the fact that vylaens out there had magick meant that their fight would be shortened unless Crow could shoot the sorcerous creatures.

His pulse pounded in his head in rough syncopation with the undulating din outside, for the gibberers had clearly determined the whole of the village’s population had gathered in one spot for protection. Will flexed his hands, then wrapped them tightly around the rope.Pull hard, tie it off, and then cut and cut and cut… Soon, he knew, his time would come.

Two more gibberers came, perhaps a bit bolder because the rest of the village lay abandoned, or a bit more wary because of the tang of blood in the air. They came through the doorway faster than the first—ears up, longknives drawn, and eyes bright.

Resolute hooded one and whirled it off into the stable wall. The creature hit hard and rebounded, but managed to stay on its feet. The second cleared the door and slashed at Resolute, catching the Vorquelf in the flank. Resolute hissed, then slashed back. His longknife bobbed an ear, clipped the skull, and staggered the gibberer.

The one-eared beast stumbled back through the door and raised an alarm. Resolute spun and batted aside a weak slash by the hooded gibberer. Abandoning his longknife, the Vorquelf pulled the creature close to him, got a good grip on skull and muzzle. He wrenched the gibberer’s head around with a crackling pop, touching chin to spine, and let it drop.

From above, Crow called down to Will. “The rope, now,

Will!“

Will hauled back, tightening the rope six inches above the floor. He quickly looped it around the post and knotted it. Resolute took that time to kick the stable door shut, then crossed the center area and filled his empty hands with two longknives.

“Crow, how many?”

“A good little knot of them. Eight, ten, maybe. And, yes, there, a vylaen, but no frostclaws.” Boards creaked above as Crow stood and drew back on his bow. “Get down. The vy-laen’s going to blast the door.”

A sizzling hiss built, and green light shot in at the doorway. The spell slammed into the stable door, flinging it open. A black scorch mark wreathed in green flames marked the door’s center. The ball of verdant fire skipped off the burning door and flew deeper into the stable. It slammed into a wall, exploding it outward, scattering fiery splinters into the street beyond.

Gibberers, howling and hooting, barking and yowling, boiled through the doorway. The tripline jerked the initial three down into a heap. Two more following collapsed onto that mass of mottled fur and steel. Another gibberer vaulted its fallen comrades, but a quick slash from Resolute sent both halves of it spinning off into a dark corner.

With a longknife in each hand, Will darted forward. He stabbed indiscriminately, making up for in quantity what Resolute might have managed with a single precise thrust. He chopped at necks when they were exposed, and stomped on paws grasping for longknives. He lost himself in the need to do damage, punctuating his actions with the crack of bones, the whistle of a blade, or the silence of a growl muted with steel.

He moved as quickly as he could, but the new gibberers coming to the stable approached with more caution and did not trip. Some never made it into the stable as Crow’s arrows took them in the street. The others oriented almost immediately on Resolute, as his twin blades were clearly wreaking havoc. One, however, bared its fangs and came at Will.

The thief ducked its initial slash and spun away, putting his back against a post. The gibberer slashed again, this time missing Will but sinking its blade into the post, trapping the weapon. Will laughed and stabbed it deep in the thigh with one blade, and knew he could easily carve its heart out before it ever got its longknife out of the post.

The gibberer didn’t even try to free the longknife. Its open-pawed slap snapped Will’s head around and spun him toward the door. The thief caught his ankles on the rope and went down. Despite the ringing in his ears, and the taste of blood in his mouth, he did have the presence of mind to roll. He used the momentum to come up on his feet, but as he completed the maneuver a wave of dizziness washed over him and he careened drunkenly into the street.

Spinning around, he dropped to one knee and looked back at the tavern. An arrow-stuck vylaen was struggling to its feet. Other gibberers dashed toward the stable, but the one he’d stabbed came limping back out. It had its left paw jammed against the spurting hole in its thigh, and a gore-streaked longknife in its right paw.

Shaking his head in a futile effort to clear it, Will looked down at his empty hands and felt betrayed. When he looked up again, the gibberer had gotten closer to him than he would have thought possible. The creature backhanded him with its bloody paw, sprawling him on his back, then raised the longknife for a thrust to the heart.

Suddenly the gibberer bounced back, the longknife spinning in air. A spear had lanced down into its chest at an impossibly sharp angle. For the barest of moments, when the spear burst from its back and stabbed into the ground, it held the gibberer upright. The beast gurgled a bloody scream, then wrenched the spear free of the earth with its spasmodic jerking. The gibberer collapsed to the ground at Will’s feet.

The longknife thumped down beside it. An earsplitting screech split the night. Will caught sight of a winged creature arcing back up into the darkness. She seemed to him part ghost, so quickly did she fade, and part fantasy—for she had been long, lithe, and beautiful. Despite the evidence of the twitching gibberer at his feet, Will wondered if he’d seen her at all, or if she were wholly an illusion.

Coming up on one knee, he got his confirmation of her reality. The vylaen between stable and inn spun to track her flight, green fire kindling in its palms. The Aurolani magicker croaked and hissed in some arcane tongue and started to point skyward.

Will fingered open the bladestar pouch and immediately whipped one of the missiles at the vylaen. It caught the beast in the shoulder, wringing a yelp of pain from it. The yelp seemed to spoil the spell, for the green fire died, and the poison ensured that a second later the vylaen did as well.

His yelp, however, had summoned help. Four gibberers with longknives drawn ran into the street behind the tavern. They surveyed the damage with a sniff and never paused as they came at Will. A bladestar in the stomach slowed one, then dropped him. An arrow from the stable’s loft whirled another around into a slack-limbed heap of flesh. Resolute’s emergence from the stable with his twin blades dripping blood stopped the other two in their tracks. Their ears flicked back and forth, then they turned and ran back toward the front of the inn.

Gibberers started yelping, panic filling their voices. In the background came a deep bass rumble. It came from outside the village, but Will hadn’t been able to place it by the time Resolute reached him and hauled him to his feet. “What is that?”

“Horses, a lot of horses.” The Vorquelf jerked him back toward the stable. “I don’t know what’s happening, but it has the gibberers scared, and that’s something I like.”

They retreated to the stable and shut the door. The rumbling rose to crest over the sounds of gibberers. Will watched through the hole blasted in the stable’s side and caught brief glimpses of horsemen racing into the village. He couldn’t see if they were killing the gibberers, but he suspected so from the shouts and snarls he was hearing.

He scrambled up the ladder to the loft to get a better look and slid over beside Crow, who had opened the door wider. From that vantage point they could see the roadway in front of the tavern. Horsemen gathered there, reining back anxious chargers, reporting and waiting on orders. They all gave their attention to their leader, and Will found his gaze drawn to her as well.

He wasn’t sure why, but he told himself that it wasn’t because she was beautiful—though there was no denying she was easy on the eyes. She sat astride a majestic black horse with gold-washed ringmail over it. Her long, white-blonde hair had been pulled back into a thick braid that snaked out from beneath her gold helm. The snarling-wolf visor had been raised, revealing a face with noble features, from the high cheekbones and strong chin to the long, straight nose and full lips.

The way she sat the horse, too, demanded attention, for even her long surcoat of gold ringmail did not stoop he shoulders or bow her back. She sat straight and tall, listening intently, nodding curtly, then pointing and barking orders that riders immediately carried out.

Her voice, when it reached him, had a richness that belied its higher pitch. The sentences came short and must have been clear, since no one questioned the orders. The swiftness with which her orders were obeyed suggested a confidence in her that would have seemed improbable, given how young she appeared.

Will started to comment about that when Crow shoved him roughly aside. In an instant the older man drew an arrow back to his cheek and let fly. A second too late, Will recovered himself and grabbed Crow’s leg, hoping to upset his aim. It struck him as inconceivable that Crow could have gone insane and shot her, but there seemed no other explanation for his action.

Then, looking to see if she was unharmed, Will saw a dying vylaen spill out of the alley across the square. Green fire poured from its hands like oil, lighting the way for a small group of gibberers. Howling furiously, the Aurolani troops threw themselves at the horsemen, and the last glimpse Will caught of the golden woman was to see her drawing a heavy saber and spurring her horse into the midst of the enemy.

Crow grabbed Will by the collar and spun him around. “Get down to the horses now. Resolute, we’d better move fast. These riders are chasing the gibberers out of town.”

The Vorquelf nodded and started leading horses from the stalls. “We’ll head south.”

Will climbed down the ladder, then jumped the last two yards. “Why not wait and talk to her?”

“We don’t know her or why she’s here; and we don’t need to be delayed by some bandit queen.” Crow, with his bow and quiver slung over his left shoulder, swung from the ladder into the saddle of his horse. “Worse case, they demand ransom from us and we’re stuck.”

“Agreed.” Resolute boosted Will into the saddle, then handed him the lead for the packhorses. “Follow Crow south; I’ll catch up with you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“They’re chasing gibberers. I’ll give them something unusual to chase.” The Vorquelf knelt beside a gibberer body and tugged down its lower lip. He smiled, then stuck thumbs into its nostrils and pressed his fingers against its eyes. He started chanting in a low voice and one of the tattoos on his left forearm started to glow. The gibberer shook like a flag in a stiff breeze, then rolled to its feet and ran off through the hole in the stable wall. The fact that it lacked most of its right arm and had a gaping wound on that side of its chest didn’t seem to bother it at all.

Resolute pointed at the door. “Go, go quickly. Couple more of these decoys and we’ll be clear. We ride south for near a day, then it’s east, northeast, Fortress Draconis bound.”

rpihe arrow flew close enough to Alyx’s face that she could I feel the wind of its passing. She instantly sighted back 1 along the flightline and picked the stable hayloft as the source of the shot. The guttural gasp coming from her left, however, served to distract her from seeking out the assassin.