Before the mob arrived, Khouryn had hurried from barricade to barricade, overseeing all the warriors under his command. Once the enemy appeared, it had been necessary to stay in one place, even though that limited him to directing the men in that location.
Now he wasn’t leading anyone at all. He was too busy catching blows on his shield and swinging his club, and couldn’t spare a glance or a thought for anything but the next attacker rushing in at him.
Someone on his right yelled, “Watch out!” The men on either side lurched backward, and a bench fell off the top of the barricade to crack down beside his boot. Both layers of the Brotherhood’s defense-the tangled mass of furniture and the lines of sellswords behind it-were giving way before the ferocious pressure of the mob.
It shouldn’t have been happening. Not to expert soldiers. But Aoth had forbidden them to fight to best effect, and perhaps the Foehammer had seen fit to remind them that in battle, nothing was certain.
Dripping sweat, his chest heaving, Khouryn sucked in a breath to bellow new orders. But just then, the barricade shattered. Stools and tables tumbled and slid, knocking soldiers off balance and fouling their legs as they tottered backward.
A wooden box with brass corner guards crashed down on Khouryn’s head. Then he was on his hands and knees amid a scatter of furniture, with a fierce pain under his steel and leather helmet and no recollection of falling down. The mob was racing at him, and his men were nowhere in sight. Because they’d dropped back. Presumably only a couple of paces, but they might as well be sailing the Trackless Sea for all the good they were likely to do him in the next few heartbeats.
He heaved himself to his feet. It made his head throb, and he gasped.
The stains on her leather armor reeking of vomit, a truly enormous woman cut at Khouryn with a short, heavy, single-edged sword. He blocked with his shield, tried to riposte with his truncheon, and discovered his hand was empty. He must have dropped the weapon when he fell.
His opponent attacked again. A well-dressed man armed with a rapier and a mail gauntlet maneuvered to flank him. Other foes, mere shadows in the dark and confusion, were surging forward too.
Khouryn kept warding himself and snatched a dagger from his belt. He would much rather have grabbed his urgrosh, but it took two hands to wield. If he discarded his shield, his foes would kill him in the naked instant before the axe was ready.
They stood a fair chance of doing that anyway, but a warrior could only select what seemed the proper strategy, then fight his best. He sidestepped to keep the enemy from encircling him and looked for an opening that would enable him to shift in close and use the knife on someone.
Behind him, two voices roared. Lightning flared above his head. It crackled over the faces of the big woman and her comrade with the rapier, charring flesh and making them shudder in place. A blast of white vapor painted other rioters with frost.
All the foes in the immediate vicinity halted, either because they’d just been hurt or simply because they were startled. It gave Khouryn a chance to unlimber the urgrosh and retreat.
Which put him between the two dragonborn who’d just spit their breath weapons at his assailants. From the white studs pierced into their faces, he recognized Medrash and Balasar from the tavern brawl.
He wondered what they were doing here, but now was not the time to ask. He had a battle to salvage. “Make a new line!” he shouted to his men. “And get out your blades!”
Peering down from Jet’s back, Aoth cursed. One barricade had already given way, although the Brothers who’d manned it were still fighting to hold the rioters back. Another was on the verge of collapse. And there was no sign of any of Luthcheq’s homegrown watchmen. Evidently they’d decided to sit out this particular confrontation.
If the insurgents got inside the perimeter of the wizards’ quarter, they’d be impossible to stop. They’d loot, burn, and murder the residents at will.
“And so,” said Jet, discerning his thoughts, “you know what you have to do.”
“Yes, damn it.”
He’d kept the griffons out of the fight for one reason. No matter how well trained the beasts were, if you took them into combat, they were going to kill. But because they were so frightening, they might only need to slaughter a few rioters before the rest turned tail. And in any case, the situation on the ground suddenly looked uncertain enough that he was no longer willing to trust the outcome to half measures.
He unstrapped the ram’s-horn bugle from his saddle, lifted it to his lips, and blew the signal to attack. Jet screeched, communicating the same message to his kindred.
The sellswords were now wielding spears, axes, and swords. Morric would still have fought them if necessary, but he was glad it wasn’t. Once the barricade and their initial battle lines had broken, the soldiers had formed a couple of ragged little circles to keep anyone from striking them from behind.
As far as self-protection went, it was a sound tactic, but it left an opening between the sellswords and the row of houses on the right-hand side of the alley. People were scurrying through the gap, and Morric figured he might as well be one of them. The outlanders were scum-that went without saying-but why waste time on them when it was mages he’d come to kill?
A fool in a tavern had once jeered that Morric didn’t even know why he hated wizards. He answered the taunt with his fists and boots, but after he sobered up, he realized he could have used his tongue if he’d wished. For of course he knew.
Wizards trafficked with demons. It was the source of their power. They spread disease and misfortune to amuse their evil masters. They used their secret arts to control all the merchants and guilds and steal a dragon’s share of all the coin, and as a result, a simple man couldn’t earn a decent wage.
They must be spying and otherwise aiding Chessenta’s enemies too. Nothing else could explain why the news from the north and east was so bad, even though the war hero’s troops were the bravest in all Faerun.
And obviously, the Green Hand slayings were the vilest crimes of all and made retaliation a matter of simple self-preservation. The honest people of Luthcheq had to get the mages before the mages got the rest of them.
Morric had noticed arrows falling from overhead, and the fear of them kept his head down and his shoulders hunched as he darted through the opening. But no shaft whizzed out of the dark to pierce him-or any of his companions either. The bowmen must be looking elsewhere.
Which meant they’d missed their chance at Morric. Once he broke into a mage’s house, no sellsword would even know where he was, let alone have any hope of stopping him. He glanced around, deciding where to start-and then, above his head, something shrieked. Shadows swept across the ground. He froze.
A winged beast plunged down in front of him, right on top of one of his fellow avengers. The creature’s talons stabbed deep into its victim’s body, its weight smashed him into a crumpled heap, and he died without making a sound.
The griffon flapped its wings and leaped onto a second man. That one did manage a truncated yelp, but only because he saw death hurtling at him. The beast ripped him to pieces a heartbeat later.
As it did, Morric noticed the armored warrior on its back. In other circumstances, the sellsword likely would have seemed fearsome, or at least formidable. Astride his eagle-headed steed, he was inconsequential.
Morric’s adz slipped from his grip. He’d brought it to serve as his weapon. Still, now that he was numb and slow with dread, it didn’t seem to matter that he’d dropped it. He couldn’t imagine such a puny instrument hurting the griffon.
But it mattered in a different sort of way. The adz clanked when it hit the ground, and the noise made the creature’s head with its gory, dripping beak snap around in his direction.
Morric still couldn’t move. Or scream. He needed to, but the cry felt jammed in his clogged throat and dry mouth.
The griffon gathered itself to pounce. Then a madman ran at its flank with a leveled spear. The beast spun to defend itself.
When the beast turned away, it broke Morric out of his paralysis. It occurred to him that he could try to help
