Liandra looked away. The screams of the dying creature were hard to listen to, and they went on for a long time. It might have been the last of them. The griffons had accounted for many of the dwarf dead, but it hadn’t been nearly enough.
‘What are your orders, lady?’ asked one of the swordsmen by her side.
Liandra screwed her eyes up against the glare and peered out beyond the walls. Most of the dwarfs’ war engines were still out on the plain and guarded by phalanxes of infantry. Almost none had loosed their deadly, steel-tipped bolts. The chassis of the bolt throwers were angled steeply, pointing directly skyward.
‘Why so cautious?’ she murmured.
She turned to the swordsman. His youthful face was badly bruised, with a purple swelling under a cut eye.
‘Give me a moment,’ she told him. ‘My power will return. I will stand alongside you.’
From below, she heard the first booms as the doors took the strain. She grimaced; the dawi would be inside soon, and that would be an end to it.
‘When they come, you will all do your duty,’ she said, sweeping her gaze across the chamber and fixing each swordsman in the eye. ‘Stand your ground, do not shame our people by giving in to fear.’
She clutched her staff, feeling the dull stirrings of magic under the surface once more.
‘They’ll take this place, that we know,’ she said grimly. ‘But, by Isha, we’ll make them bleed for it first.’
For a long time Drutheira had heard nothing. The cell was dark, the walls thick. A few dull booms, some muffled shouting from the corridor outside, not much else.
Hours had passed. She began to get very thirsty. It had been a long time since her captors had brought her anything to eat or drink. No doubt they had other things on their minds.
She tested her bonds again, straining against the metal shackles keeping her ankles and wrists locked tight to the chair. She could only move her head fractionally before the chain around her neck pulled tight, restricting her breathing. She’d nearly passed out a few days ago testing the limits of the restraints, and didn’t fancy repeating the experiment.
The asur were not careless about such things, which was a shame.
An ignominious end, she thought to herself. Buried alive in a city on the edge of the world.
Then she heard a series of thumps above her. She sat perfectly still, letting her acute senses work.
The slit of light under the cell door flickered. She heard more heavy cracks, like iron-shod boots clattering on marble. Voices were raised in alarm and challenge, followed by a sound she couldn’t make out.
Drutheira tensed. Either the asur were coming for her or the dawi had penetrated this far down. Neither eventuality was good for her.
The door shivered as something hard hit it. More voices rose, followed by a sharp, wet sound of steel punching into flesh, then a strangled cry.
Locks slid back, chains rattled. Drutheira stared directly ahead, determined to look whatever was coming in the face. If they made the mistake of ungagging her before they slid the knife in then there might still be some way back for her.
The door creaked open. Two asur dressed in the white robes of the city burst in. One of them looked badly wounded, cradling an arm in a sling. The other seemed to need time to steady himself and adjusted slowly to the near perfect dark of the cell.
Drutheira waited patiently. Through the open doorway she could see bodies lumped against the stone floor.
The nearest guard drew a long knife from a scabbard at his calf and loomed over her. Drutheira felt the steel against her cheek, cold as night. She didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t so much as wince as he pulled the blade across her face, severing the gag and freeing her mouth.
She immediately started to speak – words of power that would burst their eyeballs and shrivel their tongues. Before she could get the spell out, though, the guard clamped a hand over her mouth, leaning close. Drutheira looked up at him, almost amused by the effrontery of it.
‘Do nothing foolish,’ came a familiar voice.
The guard pulled the linen from his face, revealing Malchior’s badly sunburned features.
Drutheira’s eye flickered to one side. Ashniel leaned against the cell walls.
Malchior withdrew his hand and got to work on the rest of her bonds.
Drutheira swallowed. Her throat was almost too parched to speak.
‘How?’ she croaked.
‘With difficulty,’ said Malchior, unlocking the clasps at her ankles.
‘We nearly died getting here,’ said Ashniel weakly. ‘And nearly died after we arrived.’
Drutheira raised an eyebrow. So they hadn’t been killed by the dragon. How they had tracked her to such a place, and why, were questions for later. The fact they were before her at all was verging on the impossible.
Malchior released the last of the locks. Drutheira got to her feet shakily. For a moment she thought she would collapse again – the blood rushed painfully through her joints – but she managed to remain on her feet.
‘You have your staff?’ she asked.
Malchior nodded. ‘Take robes from the guards. I can do the rest.’
As Drutheira hobbled from her cell into the corridor outside she saw the results of their labours: six corpses cooling on the stone. She stooped over the nearest and began to strip his robes from him.
‘Where are the dawi?’ she asked, pulling them over her head.
‘Everywhere,’ said Ashniel.
‘This city is dead,’ said Malchior flatly. ‘We might have waited longer, but the dwarfs are killing everything that moves.’
Drutheira smoothed white linen
