He dropped just as the guard below raised his crossbow to his shoulder and let the bolt fly. The missile spanged off the stone where his back had been just an instant before. Geth squeezed his hands tight again and jerked to a stop. There were loud grunts and curses from above as the sudden force yanked the guards pulling on the rope off balance. Geth sucked in a rasping breath. The tail of the rope pressed against his belly.
Only about fifteen paces below, the guard with the crossbow was rearming his weapon. The other guard stood beside him, hand on the hilt of his sword, waiting for his own chance.
Geth reached inside himself and shifted. The familiar feeling of invincibility burned through his veins. The pain in his ropeburned hand and his aching shoulder seemed to grow distant, then to vanish altogether. His skin felt like hide, his hair like thick, coarse bristles.
And he pushed himself further, pouring everything he had into the shifting. Hide, hair, flesh, bone-he was as hard and dense as the heaviest oak. Wild power flooded him and thought vanished. This was how a charging bear or a rampaging boar felt. Geth drew in his legs, pressed himself against the wall, and kicked out with all his strength, roaring as he unleashed the coiled power.
He let go of the rope just before it snapped taut. The plaza rushed up at him. So did the guards. He had the briefest glimpse of two terrified faces and of a crossbow snapped up toward him.
Black pain stole his sight, but there was no blocking out the sounds that came with the moment of impact. The clash of metal on metal. The hollow thump of flesh on stone. Moist crunches and wet tearings. A cry that ended in bubbling gurgles.
Light returned like thunder, and with it came the urge to vomit. Geth held down his gorge. He felt numb, almost separated from his body. He lay on his side, stone under his cheek. He sat up slowly-or tried to. His left arm buckled when he tried to put weight on it. He looked at it and saw an unnatural bend between wrist and elbow. He rolled over instead, felt a burst of pain in his side, ignored it, and pushed himself up with a right arm that wouldn’t bend properly but at least wasn’t broken.
Khaar Mbar’ost towered over him, an angry giant. By Geth’s legs lay the guards. Both looked as if the fortress-giant had raised a hand and swatted them like flies. Both were sprawled with the joints of their limbs at odd angles. One lay still and silent, his skull broken against the stones of the plaza, while the other twitched and gurgled, his rib cage crushed.
A few dar stood around, not too close, staring at them and at him. Geth looked up to the rope, still swaying against the wall, and the distant window of his chamber. The red-brown faces of hobgoblins gaped at him for a moment, then pulled back and vanished.
Daavn and his guards were coming. Geth stood, slowly and carefully, the worst of the pain kept at bay by the shifting, though he no longer felt invincible. Left arm broken. Right arm bent-his gauntlet was dented and locked. Pain in his side-broken ribs. Something ground against his left hip-the final bolt from the crossbow, deeply embedded. Wrath still hung at his side, through one of the leather loops fastening scabbard to belt had been torn free. He suspected that later he’d find an imprint of the sword’s length stamped into the flesh of his leg. His right knee pulsed with every step. One side of his face felt strangely soft, and his head was buzzing. He could feel a loose tooth wobbling in his mouth.
The staring dar jumped away as he turned, putting his back to Khaar Mbar’ost. The fortress Haruuc had built was no haven for him anymore. The maze of Rhukaan Draal lay before him. Limping and weaving, he fled for it. Ramshackle buildings swallowed him up, a mob concealing him from the gaze of the giant behind him.
When the grinding of the crossbow bolt in his hip threatened to stop his flight, he found a niche and thrust himself into it. Clenching his teeth tight, he wrenched the crossbow bolt out of his leg and pressed his left hand against the wound as best he could. Bright sparks danced in his vision. Greater pain was coming, though. Geth braced himself and pushed back the shifting.
Comforting numbness vanished, laying bare his injuries. A scream tore out of him and left him gasping. His entire body ached and nausea hit him in waves. The end of the shifting brought a gift, though. Sharp pains pinched him here and there as the very worst of his injuries healed themselves-which wasn’t saying much. Arm, ribs, and face still hurt, but his knee throbbed a little less and when he lifted his hand, the deep hole in his hip had become a paper-thin, paper-smooth scar.
The wound Chetiin’s betrayal had dealt to him didn’t seem likely to ever close.
He wanted to sit. He wanted to sleep. He didn’t dare. Daavn would be hunting him. Geth stumbled out of his hiding place and on through half-familiar streets, trying to stay in the shadows. He turned the scraps of his attention to going unnoticed and let his feet guide him away from Khaar Mbar’ost. Once, he thought he heard the commotion of searching soldiers and dived into a stinking alley, then hastened along its crooked length to emerge onto another street. He pressed on, the sense that hunters were close behind raising the hair on his neck and arms, until the city became a string of streets and alleys.
Icy cold seemed to creep into him. Some part of his mind recognized the shock that descended on a body after great injury. Even if he found some hiding place where Daavn wouldn’t find him, his own body might kill him. He needed help. He needed refuge-but his only allies still in Rhukaan Draal were behind him in Khaar Mbar’ost. Ashi. Midian, redeemed now. Vounn. Senen. Munta.
He didn’t think he’d ever felt more alone, a fugitive in a city where he had been a reluctant king. He tried to laugh but it hurt. He stumbled and spat blood as he rose. All of his friends, practically everyone he knew in Rhukaan Draal were in Tariic’s power.
No. Maybe all his friends, but not everyone he knew. Geth looked around himself at buildings that leaned on each other like drunks and realized where his staggering footsteps had taken him. He turned around and found the low stone building that had once been a barn, though for some reason, it and the rest of the world insisted on spinning around him. He reeled up to it and banged his gauntlet against the double doors.
There was no response.
It took the last of his strength but he hammered his fist on the wood a second time. His legs gave out from under him and he slid down to lean against the stone wall. It was enough, though. The door opened and Geth managed a smile as he looked up into Tenquis’s startled gold-eyed, black-skinned face.
“You wanted to have another look at the sword?” Geth said.
Then the tiefling, his door, the street and all of Rhukaan Draal blurred together and he squeezed his eyes closed to shut them out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
25 Sypheros
Away from the city, the number of stars visible in the sky multiplied ten-fold. By turning her back on the few campfires that had been lit, Ekhaas could see far up into the depths of the night. Only a few of the moons had risen and most of those were thin crescents, bringing even greater life to the stars and, drawn like a veil across the southern sky, the bright band of the Ring of Siberys. She drew a deep breath of cool night air, so much fresher than that of Rhukaan Draal-except for the lingering stink of cold, wet ashes.
The burned shell of Tii’ator clanhold clawed the sky above the camp. Around the hill on which clanhold and camp stood, burned fields scarred the gently rolling landscape. In the eastern distance, the dead gray mists of the Mournland rolled under the starlight.
Ekhaas tried to fix the scene in her memory, a beginning to the story she would take back to Senen Dhakaan and to the Kech Volaar. Burned clanhold and shifting mists, pale starlight and bright campfires. Forty warriors drawn from Dagii’s army to accompany their commander forward to a scouting position.
No sign of the Valenar raiders save for ruined clanhold, fields turned to ash, and bodies-dar and animal-left to rot. When they’d reached the hill around noon, Dagii had ordered two pits dug below Tii’ator, one for people and one for beasts. The unfortunate soldiers conscripted to the duty were only just now heaping soil back on the mass graves.
Ekhaas put her back to the stars and the distant mists and looked over the well-ordered lines of the camp. After the games, a swift boat had borne her and Dagii-and Keraal-down the Ghaal River from Rhukaan Draal to a point closer to the village of Zarrthec. With some hard riding, they’d caught up to the bulk of the army. The Valenar hadn’t tested Zarrthec yet, but raiders had been seen from the walls, watching and studying before riding away.
