at Thecla. Just as she’d suspected; the former first mate hadn’t bothered to inform his men who their quarry was. She wondered if they even knew that he was no longer actually working for Arach, or had any authority over who got the bounty the Aurum member had placed on her head.
“I said, enough!” the dwarf shouted, his face apoplectic. He jerked his arm back, clearly intending to impale Xujil on his hook, but the drow moved almost faster than she could see, reaching both hands up to grab the wicked implement, then twisting and ducking. Even across the cavern, she could hear the crack as the hook broke free of the bone in Thecla’s arm.
The dwarf howled and something white with a lot of legs dropped from the ceiling, landing on him. Sabira saw Xujil backpedal even as she jumped back herself, eyes and axe going up.
There was nothing, but as she scanned the cavern in the dim light, she saw other figures dropping on the men, irrespective of which group they belonged to. She counted six in all before she heard a soft whump behind her.
As she began to turn, shard axe raised, Thecla screamed again, a sound of pure horror and excruciating pain. It cut off abruptly, leaving only echoes.
And then his everbright lantern winked out, plunging the cavern back into darkness.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Zol, Barrakas 17, 998 YK
Tarath Marad, Xen’drik.
Sabira’s eyes adjusted quickly, but not before she took a blow to her leg from a spiked club. Staggering backward, she finally got a good look at the creature that had dropped from the roof of the cavern.
It stood on two legs and had two eyes, but that was where any true similarity to a man ended. Its eyes were faceted, reflecting her image a thousand times over in the dim fungal light. Sharp, slavering mandibles protruded from its mouth, clicking at her hungrily. Stringy black hair ran from the top of its mottled gray head down its back like a horse’s mane. Four arms sprouted from its torso, each with two elbow joints. Three of its long-fingered hands grasped weapons-the club and two serrated knives-while the fourth was free to guide the silk thread shooting from the aperture in its bared stomach.
Sabira dodged the sticky substance and a knife lunge, slashing down with her urgrosh. She caught the thing’s free arm at the second elbow joint, sheering it cleanly. As it shrieked and fell back, black blood spurting, Sabira heard another sound behind her. Whirling, she almost took of the head of the man who’d attacked her, but checked her blow at the last moment.
“We’ve got a bigger enemy,” he said, sword in guard position and eyes on the spiderlike creature. “Truce?”
She frowned, considering. She didn’t really want a battle on two fronts. But he was Thecla’s man, and whether or not she could trust him now that Thecla was gruesomely dead hinged on one question: Had his loyalty been to the dwarf, or to the promised coin?
A question she didn’t have time to ask, let alone answer, as the wounded creature’s cries brought more of its brethren down from the ceiling.
“Truce!” she shouted, spinning to fend off attacks from five arms at once. Her new ally spun as well, moving closer to her as he batted away a half-dozen weapons. After a moment, they were back-to-back.
“Olog,” he said over his shoulder.
“Sabira,” she replied, impaling one of the arachnoids on the urgrosh’s dragonshard. “Pleased to meet you.”
They fought in silence for a time, slashing, chopping, and stabbing until they were both covered in ichor and had a small circular berm of body parts surrounding them.
When she could, Sabira spared a glance to her left, where Skraad fought. Like her, he’d allied with his former attackers, and the orc was just pulling a brawny fist out of the crushed mandibles of one of the multi-legged creatures. Beyond him, she was glad to see Jester back on his feet, fighting alongside Zi, whose left hand crackled with dark energy as he pointed it at the ceiling and brought stalactites down on the heads of their opponents.
Across the way, Laven was on one knee beside Glynn, both of them with their backs to a thick stalagmite. The Vadalis man had a knife in his gut and was trying to fight off two of the creatures with his sword. Glynn threw daggers with her good arm, and though she picked her targets carefully and her aim was deadly, she was down to her last two blades.
Two of Thecla’s men had a scimitar-wielding arachnoid between them, but it was somehow managing to fend them both off with its four blades.
Greddark was standing over Rahm’s body. He’d beaten back all of his attackers and was momentarily alone. As she watched, he stabbed his alchemist’s blade into the ground and pulled a charm from his bracelet. It grew in his hand until he was holding an emerald-tipped wand. Then he shifted it to his off hand and grabbed the sword again, slapping it against one of the creatures’ corpses to set the blade aflame.
As a second wave of the arachnoids advanced, Greddark brought the wand and the sword together in front of him, thumbing a switch as he did so. Green liquid streamed from the wand, catching fire. With his hands holding hilt and shaft together as if in prayer, he sprayed the oncoming creatures as they descended from the roof.
A chorus of inhuman screams echoed from their mouths as the spiderlike things began to burn with verdant fire. The silk they spun seemed especially flammable, and the green flames raced up the ropes they’d descended on to set the entire web-covered ceiling ablaze, catching several more of the creatures as they were coming out of dark holes Sabira hadn’t been able to see before. Flaming bodies fell from the roof, only to continue burning on the stone floor, for roll and bat as they might, the creatures could not put the flames out.
Following Greddark’s lead, Zi switched tactics and was soon sending balls of fire across the cavern, picking off the arachnoids that weren’t already burning. The stink of charred hair and flesh soon filled the small cavern.
“We need to get out of here!” she called, dispatching one of the flaming creatures that writhed in misery near her. She crossed over to where Greddark stood, Olog following her.
“Is he-?” she asked, gesturing to Rahm as the dwarf thumbed his wand off and extinguished his blade.
“Just unconscious, I think. Took a blow to the head, first thing.”
“Can you get him up? We need to move.” The smoke from the burning webbing was getting thicker, and her eyes were beginning to water. Soon they would have trouble breathing.
Greddark nodded.
“I think I’ve got something that will do the trick. What about him?” he asked, jerking his head toward Olog.
Sabira turned to the man.
“That’s a good question. What about you?”
Olog held up a hand, palm out, shaking his head.
“I’ve got no quarrel with you, Marshal. My employer is dead; anything I was contracted to do for him is now void. I just want to get out of here and get back up to the surface, where I belong.”
She looked over at Greddark, who shrugged.
“Sounds good to me.”
Sabira glanced at Olog.
“Well, let’s go see if your comrades agree, shall we?”
She led him over to the two men who’d been fighting the scimitar-wielder, who was smoldering now at their feet from one of Zi’s blasts.
Olog stepped up.
“We’re done here. Thecla’s gone, and so’s any hope we had of payment. I say we cut our losses and get out of here while we still can.”
The two men who’d been fighting alongside Skraad came over, as did the orc and Jester. Zi went to go check on Laven and Glynn. Sabira wanted to join the wizard, but she needed to see this resolved first. It wouldn’t do the Vadalis man and his former lover any good if she got them embroiled in yet another battle. Though the odds were
