He glanced around and spotted eight orcs sitting around one of the smaller fires. They all wore tabards marked with the eye and crossbones emblem of the Red Spears, a mercenary company made up exclusively of their kind. More to the point, they were passing a jug around, with another, still corked, waiting for when the first one ran dry. Gaedynn judged that it gave him a plausible pretext to approach them.
“Well met,” he said. “What would a fellow sellsword have to do to get a pull from that jug?”
The orcs all turned to look at him. The biggest, who wore a necklace of severed ears and had apparently gouged out one of his own eyes in devotion to the war god Gruumsh, sneered. “Grow tusks,” he said.
His companions laughed.
“And the stones to go with them,” said another orc.
The Red Spears laughed again.
“Too bad,” said Gaedynn. “I was hoping the answer was contribute some kammarth to the party.” He made a show of peering about, making sure no officers were looking, then removed a little cloth bag from the pouch on his belt.
Kammarth was a drug compounded of a rare woodland root and subterranean fungi. It quickened the reflexes and imparted a feeling of boundless energy. Combined with alcohol and natural orc belligerence, it all but guaranteed a brawl, but Gaedynn hoped to be gone before the hostilities erupted.
“Let’s see,” said the one-eyed orc.
Gaedynn tossed him the bag.
The Red Spear caught it, untied the thong securing the mouth, stuck in a finger, and brought it out with sand-colored powder on the tip. He sucked it clean, then shuddered.
“Not bad,” he said thickly. “All right, human, sit down if you’ve a mind to.”
Two of the other orcs shifted apart. As Gaedynn claimed the space they’d made, One-Eye uncorked the fresh jug, poured the kammarth into it, then gave the vessel a shake.
When it came around the circle, Gaedynn considered only pretending to drink. But he didn’t want to risk the orcs noticing. The jug turned out to contain hard cider likely pilfered from some farmhouse. It might have been all right if the kammarth hadn’t turned it bitter.
As it was, he didn’t like the taste or the jolt that started his heart pounding and sweat seeping from his brow. But he tried to look as if he did.
“So,” he said, “another stinking siege.”
One of the orcs grunted.
“I like the loot when you finally get inside,” Gaedynn continued. “But I hate the waiting.”
One-Eye grinned. “I guess you haven’t heard.”
Oraxes crouched in the turret peeking out at the sentry prowling up and down the wall walk. He and his companions had crowded into their hiding place before sunset, and he was hungry, cold, and generally uncomfortable. But mostly, though he was doing his best to conceal it, he was nervous.
The Threskelans were sending something in the dark. Something that could make its way to the top of Soolabax’s walls, find lone guards, and rip them apart.
It was only a minor problem in the overall context of the siege. But, in what Oraxes believed to be a rare instance of accord, Aoth and Lord Hasos both wanted it stopped. To that end, they’d decided to set a trap. The bait was one of the ablest combatants in the Brotherhood of the Griffon, who was nonetheless counting on Oraxes and the other men in the turret to rush to his aid.
Oraxes suspected killing the killer, who-or whatever it was, was likely to prove considerably more difficult than using his magic for petty theft to survive in Luthcheq. But it was apt to be more interesting too.
Suddenly the sentry cried out and hefted his spear. A bare instant later, something big, dark, and eight- legged swarmed over the parapet. It moved fast, in a swirl of shadows blacker than the night.
The sentry jabbed with the spear, but it glanced off his attacker’s shoulder. The spider thing-which, Oraxes observed, had a horned head and clawed feet more closely resembling a lizard’s-spewed something that instantly congealed into strands, which wrapped around the warrior, sizzled, and smoked. He cried out and strained to break the bonds. The spider thing opened its slavering, steaming jaws to bite.
Oraxes rattled off words of power, jerked his right hand through a jagged pass, then pointed. A serpent made of bright, crackling lightning leaped from his fingertip and flew. It plunged its fangs into the spider thing’s flank and vanished in a flash.
For a moment, the creature convulsed. It gave the sentry time to struggle free of his gluey, blistering restraints.
Meanwhile, the men-at-arms in the turret scrambled out onto the wall walk and discharged their crossbows. Then they drew their swords and advanced on the beast.
Which didn’t seem to mind that it was facing half a dozen foes instead of one. In fact, it sprang to meet them. A toss of its head and horns hurled the first mercenary crashing back against the next in line.
Oraxes looked through the turret window for a clear line to the spider thing. He couldn’t see one. The mercenaries were in the way.
He scurried out onto the walkway. It didn’t help.
He told himself that the soldiers might not need any more magical aid, but saw immediately that it wasn’t so. The same problem that was hindering him could easily prove to be their downfall. The wall walk was just too narrow for them all to assail the spider thing at once, and they were no match for it two and three at a time. It tore away mail and flesh with a snap of its jaws, spun to spit more acidic strands at the warrior it had first entangled, then whirled again to rip away another piece of the man it had just bitten, before the poor bastard had even finished falling down.
Oraxes climbed up onto a merlon. It was a step in the right direction, but not good enough. He swallowed and moved to the outer edge of the stone block.
He felt the possibility of losing his balance and falling like a dizzying thinness in the air. He also felt the ghostly stab of the arrows the enemy might loose at a man standing in such an exposed position. But he finally had a clear shot, so he stayed where he was and recited an incantation.
Force flared from his outstretched hand. It whipped the spider thing’s head all the way down to crack against the wall walk like a blow from an invisible hammer. Before the creature could raise it and resume an aggressive posture, two warriors landed sword cuts.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to finish the spider thing. It lunged again, horns stabbing, jaws snapping. So Oraxes raked it with a flare of yellow fire.
It snarled and sprang back over the parapet. For an instant, Oraxes assumed it had decided to flee. Then he saw that it was actually scuttling horizontally along the wall faster than a man could sprint. Coming for the foe who was hurting it the worst.
Fear turned Oraxes’s bowels to water, but he knew that if he froze or flinched, he’d die. He shouted words of power, and, as the thing turned to charge straight up at him, he thrust both arms down at it with all the strength in his body.
Fist-sized hailstones materialized in midfall, clattered and thudded against the spider thing, and knocked it off the wall. It fell and smashed against the ground.
Oraxes felt relief until he realized that his last, excessively forceful mystic gesture had shifted his center of gravity. He was toppling outward and about to plunge down right on top of the foe.
A hand grabbed him by the belt and hauled him backward. Trembling, he climbed back down onto the wall walk.
Once there, he and the sellsword who’d pulled him to safety looked down at the creature. It wasn’t moving, and the seething gloom that had shrouded it was gone. Which paradoxically meant that despite the distance, Oraxes could see it about as well as before.
The sellsword panted. “That was good work.”
The remark made Oraxes feel awkward, which was something he generally hated. But it wasn’t so bad this time. “We were all beating on it, I guess. We should get the men who are hurt to the healers.”
“I know we’re intent on winning the war against Threskel,” the burly, white-haired merchant said, his breath scented with brandy. He’d evidently served in the navy when he was younger and, as was the Chessentan fashion,
