swiftly.
“You let that girl talk your ear off all day,” Brennus said, “and you never once looked like you were going to clout her in the head. That’s not like you.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Remember that kid that hung around our camp on the way up-that little mountain town? The one you threatened to tie to a tree by his bowels?”
“Well, he was annoying.”
“About the same as this one, really,” he said. “Something’s changed in you.”
“In me?” she snorted.
“I think maybe you’re starting to think about spitting out a few little bear-pigs yourself, that’s what I think.”
“You’re more out of your mind than usual,” she said. “Children? Me?”
“Just an observation,” he rejoined. “You’re not getting any younger, and we’ve lost a lot of comrades. Makes you think.”
“Makes you think,” she said. “And way too much.”
“Still-”
“Rest it!” she snapped.
She must have said it louder than she meant to, for a number of heads turned her way.
She couldn’t tell if the look on Brennus’s face was smugness or contrition.
Humans.
A bit after noon the next day, Mazgar saw the high steeple of the chapel of Arkay peeking up through the trees below them. On foot they would have been there quickly, but the wagons were having a hard time going downhill. Mazgar felt the familiar itch of danger at her back growing more and more pronounced, and glanced often over her shoulder, though Coals and Merthun were on the rearguard and both were more than competent.
But it wasn’t Coals and Merthun who sent up the alarm-it came from the north, their left flank, from Na- Nasha and Glavius.
The two men arrived a few moments behind their signal.
“They’ll cut us off from Cheydinhal if we don’t hurry,” Na-Nasha said, wriggling his reptilian fingers oddly, as he often did when agitated.
“That’s it for the wagons,” Falcus said. He turned to the refugees. “We’re going to make it, but we’re going to have to run. Leave everything, you hear? Cheydinhal is just down this hill, not even half a mile.”
Mazgar dumped her backpack and reached for Goblin, but the girl shook her head. “I told you, I can run. Carry Riff Belancour, there-he’s got a funny foot.”
Mazgar nodded and took up the boy, who was probably about six and weighed half as much as her pack. The horses were cut loose and the most elderly put up on them in tandem. Mothers clutched their infants.
Falcus set the pace, a slow trot, and the boy on Mazgar’s shoulders giggled, obviously thinking it was all a game of some kind. True to her boast, Goblin kept up, running alongside her.
Falcus picked up the tempo a little as they burst into a field; the walls of Cheydinhal were visible through the next line of trees.
But the wormies were coming fast, toward their left flank, ranged in a rough phalanx, and Mazgar could easily make the calculation that they weren’t going to make it. A few of the townsfolk screamed or began to cry, but most broke into full-on, terrified flight.
Falcus began shouting orders, but Mazgar couldn’t make them out. A moment later, though, Na-Nasha, Coals, Casion, and Sugar-Lick broke off and formed a semicircle with Kuur behind them.
“Captain!” she shouted. “Permission to join-”
“Denied,” Falcus shouted back. “Keep with your charge. Make it count. Go!”
She exchanged a glance with Brennus.
“I’m with you,” he said. “Whatever you want to do.”
Mazgar glanced down at Goblin, felt the weight on her back.
“I don’t make the orders,” she snarled.
So they ran.
She looked back once before they reached the trees, because she felt the heat on her back and heard the dull thud of an explosion. She couldn’t see anything but black, greasy smoke and billowing flame.
They came through the trees into the clearing around the walls. The gate was off to the right. It was open, and a picket of about a fifty soldiers was formed up there.
They had maybe thirty paces to go when Goblin shrieked. Mazgar looked back and saw six wormies coming up fast.
She set Riff down and drew Sister.
“Get them through the line,” she howled at Brennus. Then she got her footing and charged.
Sister caught the first-a half-charred Dunmer man-right at the juncture of clavicle and neck, and the heavy blade clove halfway through his ribs and stuck there. Bellowing, she punched the next in the face as he lifted his heavy curving blade, and had the satisfaction of feeling the cartilage and bone crush under her knuckles. She used Sister to turn the corpse into the next two, temporarily deflecting them while she reached for another, this one unarmed, and she roared the battle cry her mother had in her last battle. Red sleeted before her eyes, and rage took everything.
The next thing she knew, Goblin was shouting at her. She looked dully down and saw the pile of bodies, Sister still stuck in one. Twenty yards away, about sixty wormies were charging toward her.
She put her boot on the dead thing and heaved out the sword, then turned and pounded toward the gate, where the others were waiting.
Falcus ordered them all to eat and rest, and no one argued. The wormies didn’t have siege engines, and Cheydinhal had its own soldiers, after all, and a mixed company of Imperial troops as well. Within an hour a camp had been set up near the castle that dominated the north end of town, and Mazgar had the first hot food and cool ale she’d had in a long time.
She didn’t remember falling asleep, and the next thing she knew was light coming softly through an open tent-flap.
She left her armor in the tent and went outside to stretch, wandering down to the river that flowed through the city. The sun wasn’t showing over the walls yet, but things were waking up. Wagons of bags and crates made their way across the bridges, pulled by thick, sturdy horses. Across the river, a Dunmer woman was casting a net, which came up wriggling. Mazgar could smell sausage frying somewhere.
But most of the people she saw were up on the walls.
She watched the river flow for a while.
She knew Brennus by the sound of his gait.
“Nice place,” he said. “Have you ever been here before?”
“No,” she said. “The houses look funny.” She nodded across the river. The timbers of most of the structures in town were exposed. In the lower floors they were covered with stone, but the upper ones had plaster between the beams and struts, which were often arranged in whimsical patterns. The roofs were concave peaks, and the shingles looked like scales.
“That’s called half-timbering,” Brennus said. “It’s Morrowind architecture, really-or was.”
She tossed a twig in the river and watched it float off.
“Have you heard anything?”
“No,” he replied, “but I need to have a look with my instruments.”
“Going up on the wall, then?”
“Higher,” he said, pointing to the structure of stone and stained glass that towered over everything else.
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“I don’t think I need a guard at the moment,” he said.
“You never know,” she replied.
Inside, the chapel of Arkay was all hush and colored light. They found a priest who, after a bit of explanation, showed them the way up to the highest spire.
From there even the people on the walls looked small. She gazed first out over the forest, hills, and distant
