"Do we look like wizards?" Garfist demanded sourly from the floor, where he'd paused, quite suddenly, at the appearance of two crossbows thrust right into his face.
"Bowrock," Iskarra groaned. "Is the siege—?"
"Well underway," a warrior told them sourly. "'Raging,' as the minstrels like to say. Look out this window, and you'll see the massed armies of Galath ranged around our walls."
Garfist and Iskarra didn't wait to do that before they began to really curse.
"We cannot prevail
against so many!" Taeauna shouted. "Run!"
She caught hold of Rod's arm and raced to the nearest gate, moving so swiftly that even at a dead run, he found himself being dragged the last few strides.
And then shoved into the glowing mists, without pause or word; the tumult of roaring monsters, Taeauna's cry of alarm, and Deldragon's snarled defiance all chopped off abruptly.
* * *
"Die, witless warrior
!" Lorlarra snarled, twisting a helm in a brutal, ruthless jerk. She felt the man's neck break more than she heard it, and let go, to bat aside a slicing sword and snatch at the next Helm, her dark armor trailing a tangle of slashed straps and plates.
"Slay them, sisters!" scarred Juskra cried, from the other side of the dell. "Slay them all!"
Ambrelle soared into view, large and severe, purple-black hair streaming.
The dozen-some Dark Helms in the dell were crying out in real fear, now. As they turned to offer her raised swords and brandished spears, the youngest of the four Aumrarr swooped in from behind them. As she passed over the warriors, Dauntra rang her mace off a row of Helms as if she were at an anvil, in a great hurry to hammer a shield back into shape.
Seven Dark Helms fell as one, and Juskra whooped in delight.
Lorn were swooping
, talons out. Taeauna's back was unprotected, all her will and effort bent on shoving the Shaper through the gate, so Deldragon stroked his flaxen mustache, set his jaw, and stepped in front of her, daggers raised.
"I never wanted to be a hero," he told the lorn calmly through the din of racing monsters and automatons. "I just wanted to do the right thing. For Galath, and for Falconfar. And if that makes me a hero, that's a sad thing, for it means most Falconaar don't want to do the right th—"
His words ended in a grunt of pain, as two lorn smashed aside his daggers and the arms that held them, his bones shattering, to drive their talons deep into his chest. They'd been aiming for his throat, but—Falcon, the pain!—it didn't matter much, did it? Throat or chest, he'd protected the Shaper and the Aumrarr, and now he was dying.
He hadn't expected to fall so swiftly, though. His heart seemed to thunder in his ears as Taeauna turned and saw him. Anguish twisted her face as she reached for him.
"Come!" she cried. "Lord Rod can heal you again! Come!"
But something bat-winged and long-jawed was hurtling right at her, and Deldragon fought his way to his feet, arms flailing, stumbling, and thrust her away, back into the grip of the mists. The glow belled out, reaching for her, and he managed to hiss hoarsely, instead of the gallant farewell he'd intended, "Go! Go and save Falconfar!"
Then the bat-winged monster slammed into the velduke and he was gone, one open and reaching hand the last she saw of him as she stared in horror—and the gate-magic whirled her away.
"Well," the hard-faced
commander snapped, "that glorking well looked like magic to me! Empty air one moment, then the pair of you whom I've never seen before, in Bowrock, standing here the next!"
He waved his hand around the small turret room, with its cots and lanterns and chests of smoked fish and cheese. "Look you; do you see a door anywhere here, that we somehow haven't noticed yet? Or figured out a clever enough lie as to what it could possibly open into, the other side of yon wall, that isn't empty air and a long, killing fall down onto the butcher Ulkorth's back shed? Hmm? And if there's no hidden door, only one thing brought the two of you here: magic."
Iskarra put her foot down on Garfist's, hard, to quell the angry rumble that meant he was about to say something imprudent.
"Of course it was magic, lord," she said soothingly. "We deny that not. Yet not our magic. We were prisoners in Ult Tower, and managed to get free when some wizard or other attacked the Doom of Galath, and they started fighting with spells. Blowing the place apart! That's where all these coins came from; we scooped them as we ran."
"So every last one of them could have a spell on it, just waiting to go off, or could turn into a Dark Helm the moment our backs are turned," the commander snarled. The warriors crowded behind him, blocking the turret room's only door, muttered in grim agreement.
"Hold on, now!" Garfist growled, waving one hairy hand. "You—"
His words ended in an "eeep!" as Iskarra's fingers thrust daggerlike into his breeches, driving his unlaced codpiece, beneath, sharply sideways into something tender. More than one warrior of Bowrock chuckled, and a few winced.
"Lord," Iskarra said firmly, "I will be happy, if it wins us both a safe place among you—a place to die fighting here on the walls beside you, if things go darkly—to yield up all our coins into your keeping. If you put them in yonder fish-chest, and set the chest out on the walls where we can all watch it, surely if it bursts apart when the coins turn into scores of Dark Helms, they'll be hurled right off the walls, down onto the heads of those besieging you, yes?"
The commander stared at her in silent thoughtfulness, and Iskarra added firmly, "If we live through this, we can all share the gold. I promise this. Hear me, everyone? Yet, lord, heed me: if I were one of the warriors standing behind you, and I heard my commander say something about there being magic on my pay-coins, and then try to take them, I'd wonder just what else he was going to try. If you take my meaning."
She fell silent to give the warriors time to mutter. They obliged.
"So," Iskarra asked, "do we all share? Or will you try to sword us, and discover just what other magic we may have picked up in that tower?"
The man's eyes narrowed, and she added quickly, "Magic that guards us as we sleep, that will be unleashed in an instant if you harm us, and that you'll never find."
"You're pretty rauthgulling clever, aren't you?" the commander asked darkly.
"That she is," Garfist growled mournfully. "That she is."
His long-suffering tone roused more chuckles from behind the commander. Who scowled, feeling the weight of his men's regard, then lifted his jaw toward Iskarra as if it were a weapon, and snapped, "You've just told me you both carry magic that can harm us. So I'll need you both down on your backs on the floor, arms and legs spread wide. Bared swords will be held across your throats, and two men with ready bows will stand over each of you, until one of Lord Deldragon's hired wizards inspects you. You agree to this, now, or I'll have my men empty their bows into you both, and all the gold will be ours regardless."
"Inspect us for what?"
"What magic you're carrying, and if you're wizards yourselves."
"And if we're not? Is my offer then acceptable? Your men are listening."
The commander stared into her eyes, and she stared right back into his, as silence fell and deepened. Not a man spoke, or even coughed.
"Your offer is acceptable," the commander snapped, at last, and there was a brief, hastily stifled cheer from behind him.
"Then," Iskarra said sharply, her voice snatching all eyes and attention back onto her, "we shall do as you say."
She calmly unlaced her bodice and pulled her clothing down, baring herself to her waist as a shower of gold coins bounced around her feet, and warriors of Bowrock stared and swallowed.
Her arms and hands were bony, wrinkled, and age-spotted, but her torso and breasts were smooth, unblemished, and magnificent. And aside from an assortment of daggers sheathed here and there on her arms which she slowly and almost contemptuously drew and flung to the floor out of reach, one by one, it was clear she wasn't hiding more coins, or any visible magic, anywhere above her waist.
Iskarra gave the watching warriors a pleasant smile, and said, "Give them the gold, Gar. All of it. Yes, what's in your boots, too."
He stared at her, and then started emptying. More gold cascaded. Then more.
And then, as the watching warriors started to chuckle, even more. By the time he tipped out his codpiece, they were roaring with laughter.
Iskarra watched as her stout partner hopped about, emptying one boot and then the other. He managed to wink in the midst of it all, so briefly she was sure only she saw, to signal to her that he remembered the huge weight of coins still hidden inside her false, crawlskin-endowed belly and breasts. She smiled, and when he was done looked at the commander, hands on hips.
"If you'd like to blindfold us both, so we can't see anyone to cast spells," she said sweetly, "I'll lie down here and taste that swordblade, unless you'd like to examine me further for coins and magic?" She started to undo the belt of her breeches.
Face flaming, the commander said quickly, "That won't be necessary. None of it. Get dressed, woman."
"My name," Iskarra said softly, "is Iskarra. Lord Deldragon, who knows me personally, can vouch for that."
It was the commander's turn to wince.
Only a handful
of Dark Helms were still standing; the dell was strewn with the sprawled dead and the downed, faintly groaning wounded. The four Aumrarr were flying around them in a gleeful ring, as they stood huddled back-to-back, swords raised grimly, knowing they were about to die.
"You!" one of them spat at Dauntra, as she swooped close. "Without your wings, you little minx, you'd be on your back in my bed, moaning for my loving! And I'd have my hands around those magnificent—"
"These?" the stunningly beautiful Aumrarr asked eagerly, yielding promise in her large, dancing brown eyes. Striking his sword aside with her own, Dauntra rammed her bosom into his helm, slamming him back against his fellows and sending their reaching blades wild as they fought for balance.
"Well, why don't you?" She caught hold of his helm, planted her boots on two adjacent shoulders, and beat her wings once, good and hard, soaring up into the air with the terrified man shrieking as his own weight slowly tore hair and then an ear off his head, as the helm came off. He caught hold of it with desperately clawing fingers an instant before he would have fallen back atop all the waving swords of his fellows.
"All talk and swagger," Dauntra sneered, flying higher. "Just like all the rest of—"
Something struck her, then. Something silent, that came racing through the air like a vast, invisible wave. Magic, a great unleashing, from... she turned toward where that wave had come from, catching the eyes of Lorlarra, Juskra, and Ambrelle, as they all flew up from the Dark Helms they'd been slaughtering. They, too, turned in the direction of... What lay in just that direction from here?
Ult Tower. Arlaghaun's, now; that lone, distant elder fortress.
"Something's happening, sisters," Dauntra said unnecessarily.
"Something big," Juskra agreed, scratching at her bandages. "I wonder if Oh-So-High-And-Mighty Arlaghaun's grip on Galath is slipping, at last?"
"Come on, sisters mine," Ambrelle said severely, tossing back her purple-black hair as she beat her powerful wings, soaring upwards.
The three younger Aumrarr mounted up into the sky in her wake, the Dark Helm in Dauntra's grip yelling in fear as he saw how high up he was being taken.
"Oh," she said to him, gently and courteously, "I am sorry."
And she let go.
His dying scream hadn't a chance even to get properly going before it ended in a heavy
thud.
On rocks. Ah, well. It was high time Dark Helms in Galath had a bad day. Or six.
Grinning ruthlessly, the four Aumrarr shook out their wings, put their faces into the wind, and streaked off across the sky.
As
she fell
out of bright mists, there came a joyful cry from near at hand.
"Tay!" Rod greeted her joyfully, embracing her. "Where's Deldragon?"
Arms tightening around him, Taeauna burst into tears.
"Oh," Rod said, feeling suddenly sick. "Oh, God."
Awkwardly, he tried to comfort her, to stroke her back, only to bump his hands against the stumps of her wings and abruptly abandon the attempt in confusion.
Taeauna's grip was so tight he could barely breathe, and when she rocked back and forth in her sobbings, she took him off his feet on the "back" and slammed him back down on the "forth" as effortlessly as if he'd been one of those cardboard cutouts of people set up in a video rental store. Jesus. Jesus shitting Christ. Or, glorking, wasn't that what Falconaar said? Jesus glorking Christ?
Glorking, indeed. There was a tall black castle right behind Taeauna. Rod lifted his head to look. In a forest, with the nearest trees all dead and bare.
Oh, shit.
A huge, square, massive fortress of stone, with four bulging turrets at its corners, one of them soaring above the rest like a huge black rocket ship. It ended in a needle-pointed spire high, high above them, looking from down here as if it were scratching the tattered white clouds.