Heggenauer, the human priest that had stood for her against a grinning devil. She hated the man thoroughly at the moment, cursed him under her breath, then summoned her magic to her hands and unleashed crackling blue lightning from them both, one bolt arcing toward either group of onrushing hobgoblins.
*
Balan stood atop the dais with his arms folded and a deep frown on his face, sparks clicking off the floor as he tapped his silver-shod hoof. Poltus hovered in the air, drifting from one curving platinum pillar to the next, red eyes sharp and focused.
“Well?” Balan asked, speaking loudly as there was a good deal of groaning from the wounded hobgoblins spread around the room as they tried to staunch wounds and bandage themselves. It was going to take a number of Spiny Devils quite some time to clean up in here.
“I cannot tell, my Lord,” Poltus admitted. “The gate appears no different than it ever has.”
“Poltus, we both saw that bushy-headed monkey disappear and reappear. And these things have never made a noise like that before.”
“Clearly it did work for that particular human,” Poltus acknowledged. “I am saying that, as far as I can tell, the condition of the gate does not seem to have changed, despite being used.”
Wide wings beat the air and Balan turned to see Uella soar into the central tower from the hall by which Nesha-tari and her band had fled. Unlike the little Spiny Devils the wings of the succubus were not ornamental, and Uella pumped hers fiercely as she skimmed the floor, pulled sharply up, and settled on the dais next to Balan.
“Did she kill them?” Balan asked. Uella blinked for a moment.
“Danavod? No, she flew away. Out of the city. Her hobgoblins are still chasing them, though.”
“What was all the roaring then?”
Uella shrugged, glancing with little interest at Poltus as the devil studied the gate posts while rubbing its sharp little chin.
“She yelled at your girlfriend for a while, but then she just flew away. So can we use this gate for anything?”
Uella stepped to one pillar and rapped her knuckles against it, getting only a dull sound from the metal. Balan sighed, put his hoof on Uella’s hip, and shoved her between the pillars. Uella squealed and went down on the other side in a flurry of silk brocade and leathery wings.
“It would not appear so,” Poltus said.
Uella glared red murder after Balan but he was already walking for the hall. Poltus hovered beside him as he descended the dais stairs.
“My Lord, it should perhaps be pointed out that any magic worked here may not be fully in effect, as of yet. It is possible that the Lamia’s party has done something, yet given themselves enough time to escape the city before the full ramifications are felt.”
“I know that,” Balan muttered, clopping across the floor and ascending the stairs back up.
“It should also be noted that, in any event, it is not in your interest for Danavod or her creatures to learn more of what happened here. If the Great Dragon learns of your manipulations, surely her wrath will be great.”
Balan sighed. “If you are saying we should kill the monkeys, and the kitty cat too, I am already ahead of you. As usual. The problem is that our people are spread around every part of this city, beyond summoning distance. All I have in the palace at the moment is a few Bearded Devils and a flock of your brethren. And you can’t handle them.”
“Miss Uella, perhaps, has a friend nearby who might be more effective, Lord.”
Balan stopped. He turned around to look at the succubus, who had arisen on the dais and was sulkily rearranging her gown.
“Probably should have asked a favor before I knocked her on her ass,” Balan muttered, then cleared his throat and held out his hands.
“Honey-pot!” he called in his smarmiest tone. “I am so sorry…”
*
John Deskata took command as the party shook themselves off and ran for the footbridge back toward Vod’Adia’s streets, surprising Tilda more than anyone. She knew whatever he had tried to do to get the wizard Phinneas Phoarty to take him back to Miilark had failed, and she had seen the stark devastation on John’s face as his last hope of reaching home in time was lost. That look was gone now. Deskata’s green eyes burned and his booming voice was that of a Legion Centurion. He was in battle, and fully comfortable in the moment.
Nesha-tari’s lightning attack had tossed only a few hobgoblins limply into the air, but it was enough to slow the whole mass of them. A few shot arrows that fell short as the party clambered across the barren open area, trailing nine columns of gray dust as they ran. Deskata reached the footbridge first and turned to bark orders as the others ran past him and across, single file.
“Occupy the house as a fort! Archers upstairs. Heggenauer and Amatesu, you are on the front door. Magi take cover as a reserve. We are going to hold every doorway and stairwell, and thin the hobgoblin herd until we can cut a way out through them.”
“We will be surrounded in a house,” the Duchess Claudja said as she ran past John.
“We are surrounded in the whole city. We are going to make the hobs want to stop chasing us. Then we run.”
Tilda had stayed at the back of the line in case any of the hobgoblins came forward from the rest into bow range, but the creatures were advancing slowly in a line, spread out so that another lightning bolt would not hit so many of them. She and Shikashe were the last to the bridge and while John waved her past, he held out a hand to stop the samurai. John rapped the bottom of his shield on the stone floor of the arching bridge.
“Thin the herd?” he said, and Shikashe gave a nod.
Tilda stopped jogging across the bridge and turned. “John?”
“Go on, Tilda. Second floor. Shoot from the windows.”
Tilda looked toward the corner house where the party had begun the last night, which Heggenauer was just entering with his shield and mace at the ready. It was not far from the bridge but beyond what was likely to be useful range for her short bow. Zeb had stopped in the middle of the bridge to look back at Tilda. His crossbow probably had the range to reach from the windows, but from what Tilda had seen so far the man was a terrible shot.
John and Shikashe pushed Tilda ahead of them as they moved to the middle of the bridge, but she went no further.
“John, I am not going to leave you out here. Pull back to the house with the rest of us.”
A hobgoblin shot an arrow on a high arc, but it fell just short of the bridge. The mass of them crept closer.
“Do what you are told, Tilda.” John drew his sword and turned his back on her. Shikashe had knelt for a moment and was holding his white katana in front of him in both hands, eyes closed and speaking softly.
“Second floor,” John barked. “Go.”
Tilda spoke Miilarkian. “I will not abandon the leader of my House on the battlefield.”
John Deskata looked back at her, his eyes shining green in a face covered with grime and dust. He looked only for a moment before turning back, as an arrow hit the bridge just a few yards in front of his shield.
“Baj Nif,” John said. “Take her.”
Zeb was still waiting on the bridge as well. He raised an eyebrow at Tilda, but she gave him a hard look and he made no move.
“I don’t hear beating feet,” John said over his shoulder.
“I am not going anywhere,” Tilda repeated. An arrow crashed against John’s shield. Shikashe had finished his ritual and moved into a crouch behind John and the tower shield, now with his katana and wakizashi in either hand.
“Tilda,” Zeb said.
“You go, Zeb. Run.”
“I won’t,” the man from the Riven Kingdoms said. “Not this time. Not without you.”
Tilda stared at him. His typical grin was nowhere to be found, and without it his eyes did not have their look of laughing. For the first time, Zeb Baj Nif looked determined. And forceful.
