Again ye ask me which foe is worse, fell wizard or angry dragon? Well, I rather think my reply must be as before: that depends on how well ye can dance.
There!” Florin shouted, pointing ahead with his sword as they pounded along a back alley slippery underfoot with rotting cabbage leaves. A crossbow promptly cracked, followed by another.
Florin flung himself at the wall, taking Islif down with him, and the Dragon running behind them screamed and crashed to his face, bouncing and moaning, with a bolt quivering through his knee.
“Jhess,” the forester growled, scrambling up, “you shouldn’t be here! You’ve no armor-”
“Shut up, Florin,” came the furious reply, at about the same time as two familiar voices cried, “Wait for us! We bring holy blessings!”
Jhessail rolled her eyes. “You’re shunning me? What about them? The Happy Dancing Holynoses themselves?”
Islif flung her a rare grin, and Florin waved his surrender-then peered and cursed. In admiration.
A weak, pale, weaving-on-her-feet Pennae was running alongside Doust and Semoor.
Together once more, the Swords trotted on, the watch lionar beside them puffing, “We’ve closed the gates, and called every last blade out of barracks-the lady lord herself’s out running around with her sword drawn, somewhere. So they can’t escape us! ’Tis just a matter of time…”
Islif threw him a jaundiced look, but said nothing, until they ducked around a sagging, permanently parked cart to burst out of the alley, and she shouted and pointed. “There!”
“There” was the dark doorway of a warehouse, a refuse-strewn threshold where Agannor was just jerking his sword out of the throat of a reeling, blood-spattering Purple Dragon. Two crossbow bolts came humming past him out of the darkness, and one took down another Dragon. A war wizard stepped coolly sideways to escape the other, and went right on casting a spell.
Purple Dragons were converging from all directions. Agannor cast looks all around, saw the Swords and gave them a mocking wave, and disappeared into the warehouse. Another pair of crossbow bolts claimed another two Dragons.
Puffing along beside Florin, the swordcaptain growled, “Where’re our bowmen?”
“Those murdering bastards could be just inside, aimed and waiting for us, know you!” another Dragon gasped as they sprinted for the warehouse door, keeping close to the walls of other buildings in hopes they’d not run right up to meet more crossbow bolts.
Islif gave him a wolf’s grin. “I know. I’m rather counting on it.”
Something crashed down right in front of her, exploding into shards and splinters as it bounced and cartwheeled away. A chair, or had been.
Islif looked up-in time to see a grinning pair of men launch a wardrobe over a balcony rail at her. “ ’Ware!” she roared, launching herself into a full-length leap.
The crash, right behind her, was thunderous; two Dragons managed not even a peep as they were crushed.
Semoor, running hard, skidded helplessly in the sudden pool of blood, but kept his feet and came on. “What the tluin is going on? They’re throwing wardrobes at us?”
A crossbow bolt hummed out of the warehouse and spun him around, laying open his arm at the elbow as it grazed him-and took a Dragon full in the face.
“Naed,” Semoor gasped, and then shouted, two sprinting steps later, “Ho! Changed my mind! Let’s have more wardrobes!”
“What is going on?” Jhessail gasped, as they neared the gaping warehouse door. “Who are all these foes?”
“Zhent agents,” a Dragon grunted, from right behind her. “ ’Least those two on the balcony were.”
“Were?”
“They just got ’em,” he growled in satisfaction.
Florin ducked down, plucked up the splayed shards of a smashed and discarded shipping crate, and turned. “Fire spell?”
“Done,” Jhessail gasped, stopping and fumbling forth what she needed from her belt pouch. A Purple Dragon ran on, into the warehouse, warily ducking low-and promptly screamed as two crossbow bolts tore through him.
Flame flared up from Jhessail’s hand. She caressed the rotten wood Florin held out to her, then another crate proffered by Islif.
Florin thanked her with a grin, turned, and hurled the blazing wreckage into the warehouse, where its merrily leaping flames showed all watching dusty shelves of sacks and coffers, a sprawled dead man, two men fleeing with crossbows, the Purple Dragon who’d stopped two bolts writhing in agony on the floor, and “Where’re the hoist chains?” the ranger asked suspiciously. “Don’t these high loft warehouses load wagons right there, just inside their doors?”
Islif tossed her blazing crate into the warehouse to add more light, but shook her head. “I see none. Come on. ”
Emboldened by being able to see that no crossbowmen stood aimed and waiting, Purple Dragons were rushing the doorway from several directions. The Swords joined the streams of running warriors, but were a little behind the first men-the ones who shouted in alarm and then died, smashed bloodily to the floor, as someone unseen let fall the hoist-chains from above, in great thundering heaps that buried the men they slew or struck senseless.
Other chains came swinging out of the dark corners of the warehouse in deadly arcs, smashing men into broken things even as they were hurled back into the faces of their slower fellows.
By the time Florin reached the chaos of broken and struggling men at the warehouse threshold, things were brightening-in a familiar, flickering manner. He looked up.
“Get back!” he roared, catching Islif and swinging her around into a breath-stealing, jarring meeting with the onrushing Jhessail. “ Back, everyone!”
A sword flashed above the burning crates and barrels atop the hoist-rack, severing a rope-and to the thunderous clatter-clatter-clatter of a winch going mad, the flaming hoist plunged toward the floor.
“Get out!” Florin shouted, waving his arms at onrushing Purple Dragons. “Fire!”
He was still shouting when the crash, behind him, shook him off his feet and made the entire building creak and groan. Tongues of flame spat past him, hurling shrieking, blazing men out among their fellows.
Purple Dragons cursed colorfully, war wizards threw their arms up to shield their eyes, and over the crackling roar, war horns cried fire-warning. Once, twice, thrice, and then the bellow of Dauntless could be heard, rising above all the tumult: “War wizards, quench yon fire! Swordcaptains, run to fetch every priest you can! Get that fire out! ”
As the Swords rallied around him, Florin found himself face-to-face with a Dragon he knew: Swordcaptain Nelvorr.
“Sir Sword,” that officer gasped, “put your blade away. The ones we’re chasing are in yon warehouse.” He waved his arm in a circle. “We have it surrounded, t’other side, and no one has tried to break out that way yet. If they do, they’ll die.”
Florin looked into the flames. The place was an inferno just inside the door, and the front wall was leaking plumes of smoke and swiftly climbing lines of flame, as lines of pitch that had been used to seal cracks in the boards caught alight. To either side of the door, however, the warehouse yet looked untouched, not even any smoke coming from its shuttered windows. “Are there any cellars? Tunnels?” he snapped.
“No,” replied a voice from behind him. A voice he’d heard before. “At least,” the Lady Lord of Arabel added, a
