been elsewhere to make his final move on the true rod.
Chetiin gave him a smile that seemed almost pitying-then he moved. In one jump, he went from the floor to a chair, and in another from the chair to the windowsill. A thin rope had been secured to a shutter in the same place Geth had secured the blanket he had used to signal the goblin. Chetiin grabbed it and whipped it around his body in a smooth motion. Then, with a last look to Geth, he pushed himself back into space.
“No, you bastard!” screamed Geth. He ran to the window. Chetiin was already halfway down the wall, gliding in long arcs of descent slowed by brief brushes with the wall. A few people in the plaza below looked up and pointed, their attention drawn by Geth’s scream, but most were moving to the fringes of the vast crowd at the front of the fortress. Tariic must have emerged, displaying the false rod even as Chetiin made off with the true.
The word of traitors is written on air.
Rage burst inside Geth. He grabbed for Wrath. One blow would sever the rope and send Chetiin plummeting “Stop!”
Wrath half-drawn, Geth whirled around. Daavn and three hobgoblin guards stood across the room with more guards crowding the corridor outside. All of them had their swords out.
Ashi emerged from a flight of narrow stairs onto the floor where Geth had his chamber to the sound of angry cries and running footsteps. She drew her sword and hurried along a side corridor, moving with the practiced silence of a hunter of the Shadow Marches. She had almost reached the main corridor when a scream pushed her back against the wall.
“No, you bastard!”
Geth’s voice. Her breath caught in her throat. She slid along the wall, then peered around the corner into the main hall just in time to see Daavn and three guards push into Geth’s chamber while five more guards crowded around the door.
“Stop!” ordered Daavn from inside the room.
Ashi pulled back and tightened her grip on her sword. Nine to one if Geth was forced to fight Daavn and the guards alone. The odds would be far better if he had some help.
She drew breath and tensed, ready to spring around the corner and charge.
Arms grabbed her, one around her neck with a hand covering her mouth, the other catching the crook of her sword arm and forcing it back. A soft voice rasped in her ear. “Don’t do something stupid.”
She moved on instinct, punching back with her elbow, flinging back her head, and biting down hard on the hand over her mouth. Her assailant avoided her elbow and her head bash with surprising grace and endured her bite with remarkable discipline, even though she tasted blood. “It’s Aruget!” the voice said, pinched with pain. “Aruget!”
The guard forced her around so she could glimpse his face. Ashi blinked, opened her mouth-the hobgoblin guard snatched away a bleeding hand-and snapped, “They’re attacking Geth! Let me go!”
“No, you-”
A loud gasp and a curse of “Maabet!” from Geth’s chamber interrupted him. Ashi’s heard rapid footsteps and another curse, then Daavn’s voice speaking in Goblin. “No, alive! Tariic wants him alive!”
Ashi growled and strained toward the corner in an attempt to see around it again. Aruget’s hold on her loosened. She pulled forward-and something hit her hard across the back of the head. Dark blotches swam before her eyes, then the world turned upside down as Aruget heaved her over his shoulder and trotted with her back to the narrow stairs.
Daavn and the guards spread out around the chamber, more of them squeezing in. Geth sank down into a crouch, Wrath still only half-drawn. Daavn had the advantage of numbers and he had Nothing. Not even the Rod of Kings now.
Daavn’s eyes narrowed as he circled closer. “Come quietly, Geth. Tariic just wants to talk to you.”
“Boar’s snout, he does,” Geth said.
Eight guards and the warlord of the Marhaan. Daavn held his sword with a veteran’s ease. Geth had a nasty feeling that even Wrath and his great gauntlet weren’t going to be enough to get him past them. In the close quarters of the chamber, they’d pile on him and the fight would be over. He also had a feeling that any “talk” with Tariic wasn’t something he’d likely survive. He could try and fight his way out-or he could attempt the same route Chetiin had.
Geth slammed Wrath down in his scabbard, spun, and swung himself up to straddle the window sill. Down below, the treacherous goblin had vanished. Geth grabbed the rope, wrapped it once around his gauntleted forearm, then gripped it hard with both hands. One of the guards gasped and Daavn jumped forward, but the warlord was too late. Geth swung both legs over the sill, braced himself for a moment then pushed out and let himself drop.
The thin cord sang with tension as it raced around his gauntlet and the shutter creaked, but both held. His unprotected left hand burned, skin rubbed away by the rope, but when he swung back toward the wall of Khaar Mbar’ost, he’d dropped almost a full floor.
“No, alive!” came Daavn’s voice from above. “Tariic wants him alive!”
Geth looked up to see the flash of light on polished blade as a sword was drawn away from the rope. A chill passed through him-he’d planned the same fate for Chetiin. He started lowering himself as fast as he could, hand under hand under hand. The movement bumped him back and forth against the hard wall of Khaar Mbar’ost. The thin rope swung and lashed below him with every motion. He hooked it with his foot, twisting it around his leg in an effort to keep it steady. The ground approached at a snail’s crawl, those few people who had not deserted the plaza below after Chetiin’s descent staring up at him.
Then the rope jerked with such force that it almost pulled his arm out of his socket. He shouted as pain lanced through his shoulder and chest. His burned hand jumped free of the rope. The grip of his good hand failed. He dropped and the rope screeched as it slid around the metal of his gauntlet-and stopped short with another jerk as the rope twisted around his leg and closed tight on his flesh. For a long, long moment, Geth dangled above the plaza. He shivered uncontrollably, watching the stones of the plaza twenty paces below spin in his vision.
The rope jerked again. With a yelp, he closed his metal-clad fingers on it in a hold tighter than the Keeper’s. His other hand joined it, pain forgotten in fear. He held very still.
And yet the wall in front of his nose was still moving past him-in the wrong direction. Geth craned his head back. Hands were on the rope where it emerged from the window of his chamber. Daavn and the guards were hauling him back up! An armslength of wall slid past in fits and stops, then he felt the pull grow steadier and stronger. Another guard had joined in.
With eight guards heaving at the rope, it would be like drawing up a fish hooked on a line.
Heart trembling, he kicked at the twist that had saved him, loosening it so that he could descend again. He forced his right hand to open, shake the loop from around his gauntlet, and move below his left, then his left to move below the right. The surface of the rope was stained red where his left hand gripped it. He was moving again-but not for long. Climbing as fast as his shaking body would allow, he was still only barely holding position against the hobgoblins pulling him up. And he was running out of rope. A knot-weighted tail that had dangled no more than the height of a tall man above the plaza was now nearly ten paces up and rising fast.
Geth scanned the walls for windows, but for all that Khaar Mbar’ost might have been a palace at the heart of a busy city, it was still a fortress. Only the upper floors had windows worthy of the name. The lower floors were largely featureless except for narrow slits for light and defense. They offered no hope at all of escape. If he waited for the guards to pull him up higher, maybe he could swing to an upper window and make his way back into Shouts from below caught his attention and he looked down again. Two guards had appeared, attracted by the commotion. No. Three guards. One was running off, probably to find support. One of the others was dragging at the crossbow slung across his back. Geth’s heart jumped.
“No!” Daavn shouted from above. “The lhesh wants him alive. Hold your bolt! Hold your bolt!”
Even Geth heard only half the warlord’s words clearly. To the hobgoblins on the ground, he would have been all but unintelligible. The guard with the crossbow planted the nose of the weapon on the ground, held it with a foot, and hauled up on the cord, trying to draw it into position.
“Bear and Boar,” breathed Geth. He was out of time. He couldn’t go up, he couldn’t go to the side, and certainly couldn’t stay where he was. He looked down at the knotted tail of the rope and loosened his grip.
