bar around in a wide swing. He aimed it at the nearest ghouls’ legs.
“Back then I had a shovel, and Theo had his multipurpose polearm,” she said, climbing up onto a crate and looking for something to use as a weapon herself. “And I didn’t think it was going to be a trend.”
“Seriously, no mention at all?” Vanderjack knocked the ghoul off its perch on the edge of the trough, but it tumbled over and over in the air and landed on the balls of its feet, hunched over like a gargoyle or a feral cat.
Theodenes threw a couple of experimental punches at the ghoul that had closed on him. His first left hook was cautious. The follow-up right into the ghoul’s midsection was more confident. That punch set the ghoul back a step, more surprised than anything else, and it hissed.
“Just a quick ‘Rivven had some ghouls’ … something like that would have been fine.” Vanderjack raised the iron bar to fend off the ghoul’s nails as it lunged forward to scratch at his face. He withdrew one or two steps and looked quickly to his left, then his right. He knew there were at least two other ghouls somewhere in the stables. They had leaped away from their troughs. Not knowing where everything was made sweat bead across his back, his face, and on his forearms.
Gredchen leaped upward, grabbed one of the long wooden beams that crossed the room, and pulled up onto it. There she found a loose board hanging from the sloping wooden roof of a horse’s stall and grabbed it up, eyeing the room below warily.
“Really, I could have used a little warning about the ghouls,” Vanderjack muttered, spinning the iron bar in his hands. He aimed one end fiercely at the ghoul before him, driving it into the creature’s face. It left a nasty dent, and the ghoul hissed and rasped, twitching.
The gnome shot the sellsword an exasperated look but was busy trying to lay blows upon the ghoul, which was equally busy scratching and raking at Theo’s face. Theodenes was an excellent pole fighter but a poor pugilist. The diseased scratch of a ghoul often sent the ghoul’s victim into shock or paralysis; Theo’s arms and legs looked as if they were already becoming stiff and ungainly.
Thinking quickly, Vanderjack shouted, “Heads up, Theo!” and threw the iron bar in the gnome’s direction. Theodenes nimbly caught the bar and immediately pushed his opponent back, extending the distance between them and delivering a series of well-placed blows to the ghoul’s head.
Of course, that left Vanderjack needing another weapon of his own. Spying the still-burning torch Theo had left behind, the sellsword darted over to the horse stall it was mounted on and tore it from the bracket. His ghoul opponent was still jerking spasmodically where he’d left it.
“Ackal’s Teeth,” Vanderjack cursed. “Where are the others?” He waved the torch in front of him, unable to see any of the other creatures. He glanced up at Gredchen, who shrugged, just as mystified as he was. Then at the same moment, one ghoul leaped from behind a stack of crates at him as its companion scaled the wall and jumped across to the wooden beam Gredchen was standing on. Both ghouls hissed, their long barbed tongues snaking out to taste the air, as they advanced.
“So why is Rivven Cairn keeping these things here?” Vanderjack called. “Ghouls hang around necromancers. Isn’t fire her thing?” He lunged forth with the torch, searing ghoul-flesh and causing the creature to recoil.
“My guess is she inherited them from the ogre shaman in Willik,” Gredchen called back, swinging the wooden board at her own ghoulish opponent. The ghoul crawled up onto the ceiling, claws allowing it to cling to the wood as if it were an insect. It grasped and reached toward the baron’s aide in an effort to knock her from her perch.
Meanwhile, Theo had delivered a final crushing blow to his ghoul, but the paralyzing toxin in the creature’s claws finally overcame him. His muscles had grown rigid, and his fingers were stuck as if in a rictus; the iron bar dropped to the floor, and he followed soon after.
Vanderjack cursed to see the gnome topple and drove the burning brand into his ghoul opponent’s face. It screamed, darted forward with its head smoking, and knocked Vanderjack over onto his back. The sellsword turned away his own face as the ghoul smoldered and expired on top of him. If that didn’t make him throw up, nothing would.
“Are you quite done with that one?” Gredchen yelled at the top of her lungs. “Because I could use a little help!” Vanderjack pushed the ghoul aside and looked up to see the baron’s aide clinging to the beam by one hand. The last remaining ghoul was tugging at the wooden board in her other hand, shrieking.
“Let go!” Vanderjack said, climbing to his feet. His head was hurting again; he must have hit it again, reopened the old wound. “Just drop!”
Gredchen did so. She fell to the floor of the stable, landing with a heavy thump on a pile of old horse blankets stacked on a crate. The crate flew apart with the sudden weight; the wind was knocked out of Gredchen’s lungs.
With nobody on the other end of the wooden board, the ghoul fell backward, dropping from the support beams and smashing through the rotting wooden roof of the horse stall below. As it fell out of sight, Vanderjack heard a disquieting crunch.
The sellsword staggered over to help Gredchen up, and as she dusted herself off, he went to investigate what had happened to the last ghoul. Opening the stall door, he saw that it had fallen on the rusty prongs of a hay fork, carelessly left point up within the stall.
“Couldn’t happen to a better undead,” Vanderjack muttered and let the stall doors swing back shut.
“He’s completely immobile,” Gredchen said as the sellsword came back over to where the baron’s aide was cradling the little gnome in her arms. “I don’t know anything about ghoul paralysis. Is it permanent?”
Vanderjack shook his head. “No. It should wear off in a couple of hours. The only problem is we can’t exactly stay in here. If all the noise in the dungeon didn’t alert the master of the castle, crashing about in here fighting ghouls would have done so, no question.”
“So we take him with us?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Now if you’ll excuse me just a moment, I’m going to be sick.”
Cazuvel sat patiently in the high-backed wooden chair in the great hall of Castle Glayward.
For the past hour, he had waited for the arrival of Highmaster Rivven Cairn. A few hours before that, he’d sent word to her in Wulfgar, telling her of his remarkable luck in capturing not only the sellsword Vanderjack, but his gnome companion and the aide to Baron Glayward himself. Even more remarkable, he’d captured a living dragonne, which he’d fully sedated by the powerful threads of magic the wizard strung about it.
He watched the great beast sleeping fitfully within the enormous iron cage in the center of the great hall. All of the tables had been shoved back and stacked up by the sivaks to line the walls, crumpling the tapestries.
Aggurat was there too, also studying the cage. The sivak commander, missing his left arm, stood silently near the huge, ironbound doors at the hall’s entrance. He wore the guise of a minor Nordmaaran official he had killed the previous week: tanned, hair cut short, purple tunic and the arms of King Shredler Kerian emblazoned on his chest. He had said nothing in the past hour.
“My lords!” said the sivak, in his natural draconian form and thus bulky, winged, and silver-scaled. “The prisoners are escaping!”
“I know,” said Cazuvel. Aggurat looked over at him, raised one eyebrow, but said nothing.
“Should I take the others downstairs and stop them?”
“Not at all,” said Cazuvel. “I expect the highmaster here any moment. Besides, I have something the sell- sword wants. He’s not going to leave here without it. Nor, indeed, is he going to leave here without that which the baron has sent him to collect, nor without this great beast slumbering in front of us. I am not concerned.”
The sivak looked at Aggurat, who shrugged. Confused, the draconian turned and left the room.
Aggurat finally spoke. “If he comes in here, do I kill him?”
“All I need you to do is protect me in the event of any assault on my person,” Cazuvel said, stretching his arms and relaxing back into the chair. “I shall be drawing upon magic you could not possibly comprehend, and it is very focused work. Keep the sellsword and his friends from interrupting the magic, and it will all be over quickly.”
“I shall do my best,” Aggurat said. “One last thing, honored master.”
“Yes, Aggurat?”
“What did you do with the real Cazuvel?”
