This one was skilled, the ranger realized. He gave a nervous glance to the side, to see the other giant watching.
Then he and the ugly brute went through a second round of attack and counter, again with no decisive winner, though this time Nightbird did score a minor hit. Still, the giant only howledwith laughter and not with painand its companion seemed even more bolstered and ready to join.
“Argh, get ye in here!” the ugly behemoth bellowed, but the words ended abruptly as the giant’s head suddenly snapped to the side. The monster’s head came back up straight, but its eyes were no longer seeing the ranger, were suddenly veiled in darkness. Without a movement to brace its fall, the giant dropped face first into the dirt.
The earcap was missing, Nightbird noted. No, not missing, but pushed in, driven right through the giant’s skull and into its brain!
Not missing a beat, the ranger spun on the last giant and roared in victory, and the fomorian fell all over itself, burying a powrie that came around the corner as it tried to get away.
The ranger understood this mystery quite clearly. He said a little thank-you to Pony, whom he knew to be the source, then split the giant’s skull in half with Tempest and pulled the magnetite from the gore.
“Symphony!” he cried, and ran to retrieve his bow.
The great horse whinnied and spun, pausing only to launch another double kick into the prone giant’s face. Symphony came by Nightbird in a canter and the ranger leaped up and pulled himself into his saddle, sliding Tempest under his thigh and putting Hawkwing to the ready in one fluid movement.
He shot the powrie the giant had trampled as it stubbornly tried to regain its footing, then ran over the unfortunate dwarf with Symphony for good measure, breaking into the clear behind it, then turning fast down another alley, and the chase was on once more.
Unlike the ranger, Roger Lockless was doing all he could to avoid drawing attention to himself. The nimble thief worked his way carefully from rooftop to rooftop when the buildings were close enough, or down the side of one structure and up the side of another when they were not. Twice he found himself unintentionally on the same roof as an enemy, but both times he kept calm and as quiet as a shadow and moved along without being noticed, for that enemy, be it goblin or powrie, was inevitably distracted by the tumult of the ranger’s passing.
The bonfire guided Roger, leading him unerringly across Caer Tinella until he was perched on a roof no more than twenty feet from the ragged prisoners, a score and a half of them, sitting on the ground, in deep despair, chained together at the ankles. Many monsters were about, and two in particular, a huge giant, the largest Roger had ever seen, and a nervous Kos-kosio Begulne, caught his attentionand, it seemed, caught the attention of all the other monsters in the area.
“Doomed we are!” the powrie wailed. “Nightbird’s come and all the world’s a cursed place!”
The giant shook its huge head and calmly bade the powrie to be quiet. “Are you not the one who wanted to bring him in?”
“Ye’re not knowing!” the powrie snapped back. “Ye wasn’t there, in the middle o’ the fight, when he killed us in the valley.”
“I wish he had,” the giant said dryly. That gave Roger pause. A giant with wit? The mere thought of it sent a shudder down his spine; a giant’s only weakness was often between its ears.
With a shrug, the young man slipped down the back side of the building, shadowed from the light of the fire, then tiptoed into the line of human prisoners, slipping to a seat right between a pair of very surprised and very beleaguered men. They did well to keep quiet, and Roger, lockpick in hand, went right to work on the shackles.
“Doomed, says I!” the powrie wailed. “Both of us!”
“You’re half right,” the giant said quietly. With a sudden move, Maiyer Dek lifted Kos-kosio into the air and tossed the thrashing powrie onto the burning pyre. The dwarf wailed and scrambled out of the flames, but they stubbornly followed, grabbing at clothes, at hair, eating flesh; even the magical bracers the dwarf had taken from fallen Ulg Tik’narn could not save Kos-kosio Begulne from a horrible death.
All the monstrous gathering was in tumult then, some screaming for the death of the prisoners, otherspowries allfor a revolt against the giant.
And in the middle of it all Roger Lockless calmly went about his work, shifting down the line, one man at a time, opening shackles and bidding the men to stay calm until all were free.
“Hear me!” Maiyer Dek roared, and it was impossible for any within a hundred yards to not hear the booming, resonant voice. “This is only one human, one puny human. A hundred pieces of King’s gold and ten prisoners to the one that brings me the head of Nightbird!”
That put the monsters in line, had them leaping and crying out excitedly, had many of them running off to find the fighting.
For just a split second Roger Lockless entertained the thought of those monsters catching and killing Elbryan. With a low growl the young man quickly berated himself for even thinking such things, and silently thanked the ranger for again allowing him the distraction he needed to finish his work here. And while he opened the next shackle, Roger Lockless prayed for Elbryan’s safe escape.
“I am with you, Nightbird,” came a most-welcome voice above the ranger as he turned tight about a building, monsters in close pursuit. He heard the twang of an elvish bow, and then the flutter of wings, and a moment later Belli’mar Juraviel was on Symphony behind him, bow in hand.
“You shoot those in front, I will cover flanks and rear,” the elf offered, letting fly another arrow even as he made the statement. His bolt hit the mark, scoring solidly on a giant’s face, but the behemoth only roared and brushed the insignificant hit away. “Though I fear I’ll run out of arrows in an attempt to kill even one giant!” Juraviel added.
It didn’t matter too much, anyway, for none of the monsters behind would get near the fast-running Symphony. Head down, nostrils puffing, the stallion tore up the ground, and the ranger, telepathically linked to the horse through the turquoise, did not need his hands to guide him. Those monsters who came out in front, or at an angle where they might intercept, met with the thunder of Nightbird’s magnificent bow and the pounding of Symphony’s hooves, and the companions ran on, soon turning into the lane that ran the extent of Caer Tinella’s western side, just inside the barricade.
Symphony, and the ranger wholeheartedly agreed, skidded to an abrupt stop.
“We cannot get to them,” Juraviel said, looking past the ranger to the bonfire, and to the dozens of monsters swarming all about the path ahead of them.
Nightbird growled and moved to kick the horse’s flanks.
“No!” Juraviel scolded. “Your run was magnificent and brave, but to go on is purely foolish. And what hope will be left those men if they see Nightbird cut down before them? Over the wall with us, I say! It is the only way!”
Nightbird studied the scene before him, heard the monsters closing from behind and from the east. He could not disagree, and so he grabbed the reins hard and jerked the horse’s head to the west, toward the barricade and the open night beyond.
Out in that darkness, only a few feet from the wall, Pony stood perplexed, desperately trying to find some way to improvise. She didn’t know exactly where the ranger was, though she was fairly sure he had come to this edge of town, and didn’t have the time to use the quartz or the hematite to try and find out. Thus, she could not risk a bolt of lightning or any other substantial magical attack.
But this?
In her hand she held a diamond, the source of light and of warmth. There was a delicate balance in this gemstone’s magic, Pony understood, for within its depths light and dark were not absolutes, but were, rather, gradations of each other. Thus a diamond could bring forth a brilliant shine or a quiet glow. But what might happen, Pony wondered, if she tilted the balance in the other direction?
“This is a wonderful time for experiments,” she whispered sarcastically, but even as she finished the thought, she was falling into the magic of the stone, finding that balance, picturing it as a circular plate perched atop the tip of a knitting needle. If she turned the closest edge of that plate up, she would bring forth light.
She turned it down instead.
The great fire dimmed; all the torches seemed to flicker and lessen, until they were no more than tiny pinpricks of light. At first Nightbird thought a gust of wind must have swept throughjust over his head, he guessed, since he had felt no breeze. It made no sense, though, for what wind might so easily defeat so large a fire as the burning pyre?
Then it was dark, just dark, and Symphony, heading still for the western wall, hesitated, unable to see the barricade to make the leap.
“Jilseponie with the stones,” Juraviel reasoned, though the elf feared differently, feared that this darkness might be the trademark of the demon dactyl. Juraviel had met the beast once before, soon after he had left the ranger’s expedition to take some refugees to the safety of Andur’Blough Inninness, and on that occasion the dactyl had been surrounded by a cloud of darkness. Not quite like this one, though; the blackness of the dactyl was more a wave of despair over the heart than a lack of light to the eyes.
“They are blinded,” Nightbird replied, noting the frantic movements of the monsters along the lane. They could no longer see him, he realized, could no longer see the ground at their feet or the walls before them.
“As am I,” Juraviel was quick to answer, and that gave the ranger pause. He had thought, or hoped, that Pony had indeed enacted some enchantment to blind his enemies, but why, then, was Juraviel affected, and why was he still able to see?
“The cat’s-eye,” he reasoned, feeling the gem-set circlet about his head. That had to be the answer, but whatever the case, Nightbird was not going to let this turn of fate go to waste. He communicated with his horse, bade Symphony to turn back down the lane, back toward the fire and the prisoners, and then he guided the stallion with the turquoise, as he had so often done before, letting Symphony “see” through his eyes.
“Hold on tightly,” Nightbird bade the elf, and Juraviel was willing to comply, since he could not put his bow to use anyway.
Down the path they charged, Nightbird working hard to keep Symphony veering around scrambling goblins and powries, and to keep far away from the two giants that were feeling about one of the buildings. They came out of the enchanted area of darkness suddenly, without warning, right before the bonfire. Most of the monstrous host was behind them, but gigantic Maiyer Dek was not, the behemoth standing near the fire, waving a huge sword easily in one hand.
Nightbird managed to look past the giant, to see Roger among the far end of the prisoner line, working furiously on some shackles.
“I have waited too long for this,” the giant said quietly.
“As have I,” the ranger answered grimly, needing the bravado to hold this one’s attention, and the gazes of all those nearby.
“As have I!” came a cry behind the ranger, and Juraviel leaned out to the side and let fly an arrow for Maiyer Dek’s face.
The giant lurched, but in truth he didn’t even have to, for though Juraviel’s bolt headed straight in, it swerved at the last instant, flying harmlessly to the side.
“Impossible,” the elf remarked.
Nightbird groaned softly; he understood, had seen this before. When he had fought Ulg Tik’narn in the woods, for some reason that he could not understand, his arrows and his blows could not strike the powrie.
Apparently Maiyer Dek was similarly armored. And even if the giant was naked, and without a weapon other than its hands, this one would prove a challenge, Nightbird knew without doubt.
“Come along, Nightbird!” the giant roared, and it threw back its head and bellowed with mocking laughter.
That mirth ended abruptly, though, as Maiyer Dek’s comrades started shouting with alarm as all the remaining prisoners, and Roger as well, leaped up and scattered, some pausing to tackle nearby enemies and grab their weapons, others just running full out or climbing the closest barrier.
“What trick is this?” the huge giant roared, glancing all about. “Forget them!” he howled, pointing at the ranger. “Forget them all, but this one! This is the Nightbird! I will have his head!”
Nightbird kicked Symphony into a runnot for Maiyer Dek, for the ranger did not think it wise to tangle with that one at this time, but in a circuitous route of the area, trampling monsters, slashing with Tempest, while Juraviel’s bow went to work once more. The situation now demanded confusion, and the two riders and their magnificent stallion answered that call perfectly.
Nightbird winced as he saw one man chopped down by a powrie hammer, then another squashed by a giant club. But many more were running free, many more were over the wall and scrambling into the cover of the forest. On the top of the wall directly across the fire, Nightbird spotted Roger. The man smiled and offered a salute, and then he was gone.
Back down the lane the darkness enchantment went away. Nightbird spun Symphony about and charged that way, scattering the confused closest monsters. Then he turned the horse sharply to the east, back into the heart of the town, trying to draw attention to himself and take some of the danger from the fleeing prisoners.
Around and around they went, Symphony always seeming to be one stride ahead of the pursuitwhich included an outraged Maiyer Dek. Juraviel began to sing a taunting song, accenting each verse with a well-aimed bowshot.
After several minutes, Symphony puffing hard and the monstrous ring tightening about them, the ranger wisely decided that the game was up. He angled the horse for the nearest barricade, the eastern wall, and over they went, into the night. Nightbird thought to go out to the east and south, then swing back to the refugee encampment after a long while. He would have to trust Roger and Pony to get the prisoners away.