Phin was almost thrown over the railing but he caught himself and stayed on the walkway. He was shaken to the floor as the whole building trembled. The bunkrooms were on the side of the inn, but black smoke poured into the common room from the back, driving out the occupants who were yelling, crying, and many bleeding. Overhead the main ceiling beam cracked as the back wall started to sag.
Phin scrambled back into the room and grabbed his pack from under his bunk. He snatched someone’s extra dagger off a table and ran halfway back to the door before turning back to the Sarge’s bunk. He yanked off the lumpy mattress and lifted the heavy leather bag hidden under it to his shoulder, the bag in which the Sarge carried the book from which he’d had Phin read.
Halfway down the stairs Phin ran into the Sarge coming up, though the man was almost unrecognizable with his face and armor covered in black ash. Phin shook the bag at him.
“You got it?” the Sarge said.
“I do.”
“Then go! Out the front!”
Three legionnaires waited anxiously in what was now an empty common room, with the front doors and windows all bashed out as the occupants had fled by every available aperture. The legionnaires all looked as bad or worse than the Sarge, with two of them glassy eyed and leaning on each other to keep their feet. The Sarge started to bark for them to go as he and Phin picked their way among fallen tables and chairs, but he was interrupted by a shout from behind.
Horayachus lurched out of the black smoke boiling from the back hall and the kitchens, carrying a limp figure in his arms.
“I will be damned,” the Sarge muttered, hardly audible over the crackle of the fire spreading up the rear walls to the second floor.
Horayachus pitched his burden into Ty’s arms, the legionnaire dropping his tower shield to catch her. Phin saw that she was a woman when her head lolled into view, for she was very pretty despite the blood pouring from a nose that looked broken. The Zant’s teeth were clenched and his breast plate was pocked with smoking rents like the steel had melted.
“You have the book?” he barked at the Sarge, who nodded. Horayachus reached under his armor and withdrew a carved Shugak baton with ten licenses to enter the Sable City jingling from it.
“If it works, take this woman alive and unharmed to Ayzantu City. To the Great Temple of Ayon there.”
“Are you out of your bald skull?” the Sarge demanded. He was seized by the collar with a burnt hand.
“Do this, and the priests will give you all the gold you can carry,” Horayachus hissed. “Fail, and the Burning Man’s wrath will find you. All of you.”
With that, he released the Sarge’s collar and staggered back to the middle of the room to face the smoke. “Go!” he barked over his shoulder.
None of the legionnaires moved.
“She is coming,” Horayachus added, raising his arms and beginning to chant.
The Sarge snatched up the extra tower shield and was first out the front door. The others were right behind him, with Phin in the rear.
Outside, hobgoblins had forced back the buzzing crowd and were keeping them away from the front of the inn with raised morning stars and pole arms, though many in the crowd were now shouting for their possessions left behind. Bullywugs had formed a line for a bucket brigade but as of yet they had no buckets.
The Sarge stopped in the empty area before the tall willow tree, green eyes looking all around.
“Which way Sarge?” Ty asked, now with the motionless woman slung over his shoulder like a dead thing.
The Sarge pointed south but there was a ruckus on the far side of the crowd as a man burst through the ring between two hobgoblins. He wore cracked leather armor and had dark hair and a beard, both short but unkempt. A legionnaire short sword was in his hands. The hobgoblins turned and growled at him, but he did not approach the inn. He strode straight for the legionnaires, who stared wide-eyed.
“Now,” said the Sarge. “Now I have seen everything.”
The man stopped only yards from the Sarge, glaring at him.
“Sergeant Dugan,” the stranger said.
The Sarge smiled.
“Centurion Deskata.”
For a moment Phin thought they were going to shake hands, but Deskata made a lunge and the Sarge swung Ty’s tower shield. The Sarge fended off a series of ringing blows while drawing his own sword, then thrust it around the shield. Deskata danced away.
“Don’t just stand there, boys!” the Sarge shouted. “Say hello to your commanding officer!”
Ty dumped the woman off his shoulders and she hit the ground so hard Phin went to her side. The three legionnaires drew swords but Deskata barked, “Stand down, soldiers!” with such authority that Ty and Rickard actually hesitated. Gery blundered forward. Deskata sidestepped him easily and cut his throat as he stumbled by, sending a crimson jet into the air and getting a roar from the surrounding crowd.
Sergeant Dugan and the two others moved to surround him.
*
Nesha-tari had no defensive spell raised when Horayachus’s flame strike crashed all around her, and she dropped to the ground as her clothes burst into flames. She lay quaking for a moment before opening her eyes. Her innate magical resistance had saved her, but it had also pushed her fully through the Change.
Nesha-tari arose, the last ashy bits of clothing falling off her tawny fur, leaving it smoldering but unburned. She smelled the spoor trail lingering in the air where Horayachus had gone, and bounded after him on all fours. Others were still fighting in the yard, but they did not matter.
Her claws tore gouges in the plank floor of a smoke-filled hall as Nesha-tari ran. She emerged hacking into a large inn room full of overturned furniture. Horayachus stood across the room with lips moving and grimacing face turned aloft, tattooed arms spread wide. Nesha-tari sprang forward but a sheet of flame erupted from the floor in front of her. She skidded to a halt, claws digging in.
She paced along the flames that stood as a burning wall, blue eyes locked on Horayachus’s through them.
“Why does Blue Akroya send you against me, woman?” Ayon’s priest shouted over the crackling flames. The fire was climbing all the walls now, spreading smoke through the air and vapor along the floor.
“I did not ask,” Nesha-tari growled, though she doubted the man could understand her voice as it was the roar of a lioness.
Horayachus resumed a low chanting and raised his arms. Nesha-tari crouched to run for she had no means at present of casting a spell of her own to interrupt or counter the Fire Priest’s. A beam fell from the ceiling athwart the wall of fire and she sprang quick as thought through the momentary gap.
The High Priest of Ayon screamed and threw his arms forward. Nesha-tari swiped them away with enough force to shred the tattooed flesh to the bone and yank both out of their sockets. She turned her massive head and her jaws closed on Horayachus’s throat. The taste of the only thing that assuaged the Hunger filled her mouth.
Nesha-tari Hrilamae, daughter of the Lamia, drank deeply.
*
Tilda thought she might have kept up with Dugan over open ground, but the man’s build was far better suited than was hers to plowing through a crowd. She fell behind as they ran the five blocks to the Dead Possum, stumbling when jostled and having to fight her way through the crush.
She saw the top of the willow tree over an even thicker crowd as she approached the intersection, and people gathered around a burning inn on a corner. Tilda had no doubt this was the place she was looking for and she wormed into the press, elbowing her way and crawling when she stumbled to the ground. People roared like they were watching a sporting match, and steel clanged on steel over their cries.
Tilda slithered into the open between the spread legs of a large hobgoblin. Dugan almost stomped on her head as he spun past, driven by a legionnaire leading with a tower shield and throwing wild stabs over the top.
“Dugan!” she shouted, scrambling up, and to her right someone yelled, “What?” Tilda looked that way and
