Red Tide (49 page)

She hurried on. The sounds of fighting from the waterfront were fading, though whether that was because the buildings were blunting the noise, or because the Augerans had now stamped out the opposition, Amerel couldn't say. Indeed the loudest shouts seemed to be coming from—

Her step faltered.

From the direction she was heading in. That couldn't be right, could it? She was too far north now for it to be Rubyholt raiders.

The Chameleons?

For an instant, Amerel was tempted to turn and go back the way she had come. The problem was, three ships marked wasn't enough to guarantee the success of the mission. Moreover, if the stone-skins caught Caval and Karmel, they might learn from them what they'd been doing here. And even if the Chameleons died before they were questioned, the blowpipes, darts, and dragon blood were clue enough as to their purpose. If the Augerans found the marked ships, they could replace the affected boards, and Amerel's efforts tonight would come to nothing.

Then there was the chance that the stone-skins would use the dragon blood on Erin Elalese vessels as Amerel had intended to use it on theirs.

Drawing her sword, she took a right at the next intersection.

And turned straight into the path of a Rubyholter coming the other way. He was a brute of a man with eyes so large they seemed to fill his face. There was no time for him to swerve around the Guardian, so instead he lowered his shoulder and tried to go
through
.

Amerel threw up a Will-barrier.

The man ran headlong into it, crashed off, and bounced back with a grunt and a clack of teeth. He fell limp to the ground.

Two Augeran swordsmen materialized from the gloom behind him. Amerel wasn't going to outdistance them from a standing start, so she held her ground. The stone-skins slowed when they realized she wasn't running. They wore black cloaks and confident half smiles. Confident?
Good.
An evening whipping hapless Rubyholters would have lowered their expectations nicely.

Amerel might not be the most skilled Guardian with a blade, but she had tricks aplenty to compensate. Transferring her sword to her left hand, she unsheathed a throwing knife in her right and hurled it at the Augerans. The throw went high of the man on the left, so high in fact that he didn't even have to duck to evade it. He grinned, then shouted something in his native tongue, his derision plain.

Using her Will, Amerel stopped the knife after it was past him, then reversed it and sent it flashing back at him, point first. It took the stone-skin between the shoulders, and he stumbled forward a step. He stared at her in indignation, as if he thought she wasn't playing fair. And why should she? A knife in the back cut as keenly as a knife in the chest, and with considerably less risk to the wielder. She felt an answering stab of pain in her own back as her blood-dream rose up.

The stone-skin crumpled to the ground.

His companion half turned to look behind him, evidently thinking an enemy was at his back.

Amerel charged him.

Realizing his error, the Augeran spun to face her again, swinging his sword off balance in a decapitating cut.

A nudge of Amerel's Will halted the weapon in its tracks even as her backhand stroke passed under his blade and severed his right leg above the knee. He screamed and toppled sideways, then dropped his sword and seized his stump with both hands. Black blood spurted between his fingers.

Amerel stepped past. No need to waste time finishing him off.

She suspected he'd have trouble keeping up with her now.

*   *   *

A stone-skin surged through the back door to the tavern, sword raised to cut down Caval. Caval, though, had employed his power. To the Augeran he would appear naught but a shimmer, and the enemy hesitated.

Karmel's throwing knife was already on its way. Her target had been the soldier's chest, but her fear for Caval had made her snatch at the cast, and her blade thudded instead into his neck. Some luck for a change. The stone-skin grunted and tottered, would have fallen backward if Caval hadn't seized his cloak and heaved him down the tavern's steps. The Augeran splashed into the water at the bottom, his weapon clattering from his grasp.

Karmel drew her own sword in her right hand, another throwing knife in her left. Shadows gathered in the alley beyond the doorway, and a voice outside barked a question in a language she didn't recognize. An Augeran asking after his kinsman, probably. Odds were, the speaker was alone, for surely a group of soldiers wouldn't have lingered on the threshold. Either way, the Chameleons had to risk a sally outside before more of the enemy came through the front door. Karmel glanced that way now and saw a snarl of flies on the torchlit waterfront, the black hull that would have been her next target. But no stone-skins.

Yet.

She moved to the foot of the stairs. Caval winced as he drew his sword, and Karmel remembered the wound he'd taken to his arm on Dragon Day. Unlikely he'd be able to do much fighting with that. She gestured that she would take the lead, then crept to the top of the steps. Outside, the stone-skin shouted again, his voice directed out into the night.

Calling for backup.

His words dissolved into a strangled cry, then there was a scrape of metal on wood as something slid down the wall to the floor. The Augeran's head dropped into view, leaking blood from a hole in one temple. A crossbow bolt protruded from the wound.

“Friendly,” someone said, and Karmel's wash of relief left her feeling light-headed.

Noon.

Karmel stepped over the stone-skin's body, and Caval followed her outside. Noon was waiting for them. He reloaded a small crossbow, his movements sure and precise as if this brush with the Augerans had all been part of the plan. Karmel shook her head. Was she the only one with a pulse around here?

“Trouble,” Caval said.

The priestess looked left along the alley. Shadows approached, as if the darkness itself were drawing in on them. The slap of the stone-skins' steps sounded loud in the confines of the passage.

Noon was the first to react. He toppled a barrel toward the enemy before setting off at a run in the opposite direction.

“This way!”

Karmel dashed after the Erin Elalese.

Earlier the refuse piled in the alley had provided useful cover on the way to the tavern. Now Karmel had to jink through it, her eyes filled with the dark. She didn't see the overturned table until Noon hurdled it, jumped it late herself and clipped her knee, setting the joint buzzing. Thirty paces ahead, the passage was blocked by a handcart and its spilled contents. Noon veered through an open doorway in the wall to his left.

Karmel followed him into a yard. Flies seethed about. To either side rose brick walls, and set into the one on her right was a metal ring to which the bloated corpse of a dog was chained. At the far end of the yard was a house. Its ground-floor windows were boarded, and the wooden door between them had a disconcertingly solid look. Noon tried the handle, found it locked. He withdrew a step and shoulder charged it. The door barely flinched.

Karmel looked round. The walls were too high to climb without a boost up, and their pursuers would be on to them before they could scale them. No guarantee anyway that the next yard offered a better chance of escape. They had trapped themselves as surely as if they'd walked into a cell and shut the door behind.

The footsteps of the chasing stone-skins drew near. Caval took up position to one side of the doorway. Beside Karmel, Noon raised his crossbow, ready to shoot the first Augeran who appeared. The priestess signaled him to lower the weapon. Better to draw all the enemy in and ambush them, than to kill the first man and spook the others into waiting outside.

Noon nodded understanding.

Karmel transferred her throwing knife to her right hand and drew the arm back in readiness to throw. Then she engaged her power and went still.

Two black-cloaked stone-skins with shields trotted through the doorway and drew up. One of the soldiers was a woman—the first female Augeran Karmel could recall seeing. Her skin had a silvery cast to it against her companions' charcoal gray. Caval and Karmel would be invisible to her, and as she looked about the yard, her brow furrowed as she tried to work out how the three targets she'd been following had diminished to one. She glanced down at the dead dog as if the creature might be part of the mystery.

Karmel's raised arm was trembling. A third Augeran appeared in the doorway, also carrying a shield. Just three of them? There were no noises from the alley to suggest more were on the way. Perhaps Karmel's party would survive this after all. Noon lifted his crossbow.

The female Augeran's shield came up. “You will down put weapon,” she ordered.

Noon ignored her.

Stone-skin number three moved up to flank his companions. Karmel's gaze shifted to Caval, undetected at the group's rear. Her eyes flickered to the rightmost stone-skin, indicating her choice of target. Caval blinked in acknowledgment.

“Down weapon,” the female Augeran said to Noon again, enunciating the words with exaggerated care as if she thought he might have misunderstood her first command.

Caval attacked.

A step forward, an extension of his sword arm, and the leftmost Augeran stiffened as Caval's sword punched through his back. The other two stone-skins half turned, weapons ready.

Thunk
went Noon's crossbow, and Karmel's arm snapped forward, her throwing knife flashing toward the second male stone-skin. It struck him in the chest. His female companion was already falling, Noon's crossbow bolt through her ear. Karmel's victim landed atop her, his arm curling around her neck in a macabre embrace.

Dead.

For a moment the priestess could only stare at the bodies, half expecting them to stir to life again. After Dian, she'd built the stone-skins up to be giants, but the soldiers she had met in Bezzle hadn't matched up to the man she'd fought on Dragon Day. Few could, she suspected.

Noon waved to get her attention, and Karmel remembered he couldn't see her with her power employed. She released it. The Erin Elalese leaned forward and put his mouth to her ear. “You two stay here,” he said, looking from the priestess to her brother. “If there are more stone-skins outside, I'll lead them off.”

Karmel was silent, thinking. She knew his suggestion made sense. Every one of the Augerans who had seen the Chameleons thus far was dead. If Karmel and Caval faded into the shadows, they'd likely escape detection, for the next stone-skins through the doorway would have no reason to go looking for someone they couldn't see—

“Down!” Caval hissed, hurling himself at Karmel.

His arms wrapped around her and his shoulder struck her chest, driving the air from her lungs. Her feet left the ground. A moment of weightlessness, then she thumped onto the floor, head cracking against stone. She slid an armspan across the yard before coming to a stop against the wall of the house.

She lay on her back, sucking in breaths, her brother on top of her. Before Caval's warning, she'd heard a rip of air, knew they'd been attacked by someone. With her head scrambled, though, she couldn't say how, or from where. No more stone-skins came through the doorway. Noon whispered something in an urgent voice, and Karmel lifted her head, only for the yard to do a flip. Vomit burned the back of her throat. Had she been wounded? It was difficult to know with so much of her body aching.

When her vision cleared, she saw on the ground a crossbow bolt together with a chunk of brick. She raised herself to a sitting position. Her elbows stung where she'd skinned them, and the back of her head felt wet. When she touched the spot, her fingers came back red. Noon crouched nearby, reloading his crossbow. He flicked his gaze upward.
Of course, the roofs.
That's where the stone-skin shooter must be stationed, south of Karmel's position. She looked that way, saw no one on the skyline.

“We need to move,” Noon murmured, crossing to the doorway.

Karmel grunted her agreement. The Chameleons couldn't stay here now. She clambered upright, staggered. Caval's hand on her shoulder steadied her, and she looked across to nod her thanks.

Then froze.

Her brother was hunched up against a wound in his right side, his arm held tight to his body. Just winded? No, there was blood on his hand and sleeve. Karmel went cold all over. She didn't understand. She could still make out the chunk of brick and the Augeran crossbow bolt on the ground. How could the missile have hurt Caval if it had hit the wall?

Unless
two
bolts had been shot.

Seeing her expression, Caval gave a half smile to say he was all right. Putting a brave face on for Karmel's benefit? She wanted to ask to see his injury, but Noon was already beckoning to them from beside the doorway. Caval motioned the priestess forward.

She hesitated before joining the Erin Elalese.

Noon peered both ways along the alley before ducking back. He made a series of hand gestures. Karmel had no idea what half of them meant, but she garnered enough from the others to understand there were stone-skins nearby. “How many?” she mouthed, but Noon just shrugged. More gestures. He wanted the Chameleons to make a break south—back toward the tavern—while he covered their retreat. She explored his gaze, wondering if he meant to follow them or simply to hold off the enemy for as long as possible. If playing martyr was in his mind, Karmel wasn't about to argue. Caval's well-being was all that mattered to her now, and if abandoning Noon to his fate meant improving her brother's chances, so be it.

She looked across at Caval. He leaned against the wall, glassy-eyed, but he gave a nod to indicate he was ready.

Just then the shadows in the passage concussed. Screams came from the north, and there was a change in air pressure that made Karmel's ears pop. The handcart that had blocked her way earlier went flying past, along with the body of a stone-skin, limbs flopping. The clamor was fading when more cries sounded, to the south this time. A whoop and a clatter as of someone rolling down a roof, then a thump as they hit the ground.