his shield.
The firebelcher lashed its head back and forth, trying to shake Khouryn off. Most dragonborn would have lost their grips and gone flying, or else had their arms jerked out of their sockets. But the dwarf, though bounced from side to side, kept himself steady enough to go on fishing for an eye.
With everything shaking, he wasn’t able to gouge one out. But while he kept the firebelcher preoccupied, Medrash rushed in and thrust his sword point deep into the hollow where its neck jointed its body.
The red lizard froze, then shuddered. Seeming to topple with a dreamlike slowness, it flopped over onto its side. Khouryn jumped clear and landed with a clink of mail.
“Help Balasar,” gasped the dwarf. “I’ll keep watch.”
Medrash dropped to his knees beside his clan brother. Please, Torm, he thought, grant me just a little more of your grace. He rested his hand on Balasar’s shoulder, then felt power flow through the point of contact. New scales covered raw, seeping burns.
“That looks better,” Khouryn said, his voice sounding from behind Medrash’s back. If he could stand there and talk, it must mean the firebelcher really was dead, and that no other threats were advancing on them.
Balasar grinned up at the dwarf. “That was a good trick.” He wheezed. “Were you a ropewalker in a carnival, to keep your balance like that?”
“I’m a dwarf,” Khouryn answered. “We have low centers of gravity.”
Even with an invasion looming, Hasos couldn’t completely neglect the mundane business of the barony. On market day, that meant he had to sit in judgment on his dais in Whistler’s Square.
It wasn’t a permanent platform. Workers set it up in the morning and dismantled it again in the evening, and in recent years it had started to creak and quiver at odd moments.
Hasos tried to stop wondering if and when it might actually collapse, and at what cost to him in dignity and bruises. Tried to focus instead on the two peasants squabbling over where one’s farm ended and the other’s began.
It was an effort, because he despised boundary disputes. In the wake of the Spellplague and the changes it wrought, his greatgrandfather had ordered the fief surveyed. That should have settled every conceivable conflict in advance. Yet somehow the glib and the greedy still found arguments to challenge the placement of markers, hedgerows, and fences.
“The stones have always marked the line,” said the farmer nervously twisting a soft, broad-brimmed hat in his hands.
“You dug them up and moved them!” said the plaintiff, an old fellow seemingly bedizened with every religious trinket he could lay his hands on, either to persuade the gods to favor him or to convince Hasos he was devout and thus, surely, honest. “Do you think people can’t see the fresh-turned dirt?”
“Has anyone else seen it?” Hasos asked. Or would he have to send someone to look?
The pious peasant hesitated. “Well… not exactly. The wife has bunions. She can’t-”
Hasos spotted a stirring at the back of the crowd of waiting disputants and spectators, and a flash of bright yellow clothing. He raised his hand to silence the plaintiff and craned for a better look at what was happening. Followed by a pair of her subordinates, Cera came bustling toward his platform.
His feelings for Cera were complicated. They’d been lovers for a season, and he’d liked her well enough to start considering whether a priestess of her rank could possibly make a suitable wife for a baron. Then she’d told him that as far as she was concerned, their affair had run its course.
It had probably saved him from making a foolish decision, but it still stung, and kept stinging at odd moments over the three years since. It was worse when he knew she was keeping company with another man, and had been particularly bad since she’d taken up with the very scoundrel-a soulless mage, no less!-who’d come to Soolabax to subvert his authority.
Yet there was a part of him that always craved her company, even when he felt most jealous and resentful- even when he expected it to hurt. And besides, whatever she wanted, it was bound to be more interesting than the trivia on the docket.
He rose and gave her the shallow bow appropriate to their stations. “Sunlady. This is an unexpected pleasure.”
“Milord.” Cera was a little out of breath, and her golden vestments hung slightly askew. “I realize others have been waiting for their turns, and I apologize for shoving in ahead of them. But the dignity of Amaunator demands immediate action!”
“What do you mean?” Hasos asked.
“You’re aware Captain Fezim is badly wounded.”
“Of course. It’s a pity. Although I did warn him that his forays into Threskel were reckless in the extreme.”
“I assume you know too that I’m tending him myself in the temple.”
Just kick me in the stones, why don’t you? Hasos thought. “Yes, I heard.”
“Well, I don’t mind doing it. Since the war hero herself sent the sellswords to us, it seems only right that a senior priest or priestess should take the responsibility. But I won’t have the Keeper’s worship and rituals disrupted!”
She seemed so put out that Hasos wondered if he could have been mistaken about her interest in the Thayan. Or maybe that too had already run its course. Small wonder if it had. With his tattoos and glowing eyes, the man was positively freakish.
“Actually,” he said, “the way I see it, it was Nicos Corynian who sent the sellswords. But I take your point. Well, part of it. How does the presence of one invalid interfere with temple business?”
“If it was only Captain Fezim,” Cera answered, “it wouldn’t. But his soldiers insist on standing guard over him, and they’re a pack of thieving, blasphemous ruffians. Worse, his griffon is there! A huge, black, man-eating beast roaming among the altars! People are afraid to come and pray! My clerics can’t perform their sacred offices!”
For a moment Hasos enjoyed her distress and thought that if he refused to help her, it would only be what she deserved. But whatever his personal feelings, public order was his responsibility. And anyway, even though he realized the notion was probably stupid, he couldn’t help wondering if this was a chance to win back her affections.
“I assume you want me to clear out the riffraff,” he said.
“If you can,” she said.
“Certainly I can. While the mage was well, he and I shared command. But now that he’s incapacitated, every soldier in Soolabax, whether loyal Chessentan or sellsword, answers to me.” And didn’t that assertion taste sweet in his mouth!
So sweet, in fact, that he left his humbler petitioners to wait while he helped Cera shoo the surly outlanders and the black griffon-which truly was an enormous, terrifying brute-out of her domain. She gave him a hug and a light little kiss when they finished.
His burns aching, but not as badly as before Medrash healed him, Balasar looked up at his clan brother and Khouryn. Both were blistered, and Khouryn’s black beard was singed and smoking. Their chests heaved as they sucked in air.
“Help me up,” Balasar said.
Khouryn held out a hand. “Sure you’re ready?”
Balasar gripped the dwarf’s hand and dragged himself upright. He felt a trifle unsteady on his feet, but it was nothing he couldn’t manage. “That patch of ground would make anyone ready. It’s hard, and it smells like rotten eggs.”
“Balasar’s not one to stay down while the outcome of a battle’s still in doubt,” Medrash said. Which was true, but it sounded idiotic when spoken aloud.
