'What do you want?' Miri asked.
'Someone is smitten with you,' said the yuan-ti's spokesman. 'So much so that he put out the word, he'll pay well to anyone who arranges a rendezvous.'
Miri was accustomed to plain speech, and it took her a moment to puzzle out what had actually been said.
'You're slavers?' she said. 'I'm a free woman, no enemy of Oeble, and no outlaw. You have no right to lay hands on me.'
Some of the yuan-ti laughed.
'I'm afraid,' said their leader, 'that down here in the Underways-well, anywhere in Oeble, really-we hunt whom we please, without much worrying what the rules say.'
'I came into the tunnels to run an errand for a rich and powerful citizen of Oeble. He'll ransom me.'
'That's nice, but in our trade, it pays to do business with folk you already know. Less is likely to go wrong. Now be sensible and throw away your sword.'
'No,' Miri said. 'We don't do that in the Red Hart Guild.'
'How brainless, when you have no hope of winning.'
'But I do. I'll slay more of you before you take me down, and each of those kills will be a victory. Every one will make the world a little cleaner.'
She lunged and cut. The broadsword slashed open the throat of a snake-headed yuan-ti before it even realized the battle had resumed.
She spun just in time to spy another creature-a serpent-woman-puffing on a blowpipe. Miri sidestepped, and the dart, which was no doubt drugged, flew wild. She hacked at the yuan-ti, half severing its scaly hand at the wrist. The slaver shrieked and recoiled. Miri leaped out from under an outflung net with lead weights and fishhooks attached to the edges, and then stamped on it when it dropped to the ground, thus preventing the brute on the other end from pulling it back for another cast. The slaver let go, and its limbs and torso so flexible it seemed to have no bones, it curled itself into a posture resembling a human wrestler's stance. Acidic jelly smeared itself across its hide, it pounced, and she whirled out of the way, simultaneously slamming the edge of her buckler into its spine. Evidently it had vertebrae after all, because one of them cracked.
Miri knew she'd been fortunate thus far, and that her luck couldn't hold against so many. Sure enough, an instant later, something swept her feet out from underneath her. As she slammed down on her back, she saw it was a long, lashing tail, She tried to scramble up, but the scaly member whipped back around and slashed her across the head.
The impact made everything seem quiet and far away. Dazed, she nonetheless kept struggling to defend herself, but felt she was moving as lazily as a lost feather floating down from the sky. Her foes surrounded her and lifted their weapons. After the carnage she'd wrought, their faces looked so angry that she wondered if they meant to batter her to death.
Perhaps their chief feared the same thing, for it cried, 'Remember, we want her alive, and her face unmarked!'
'Fine,' said one of the yuan-ti in the circle. Its speech was garbled, as if its forked tongue and long, flexible throat were ill-suited to forming words. 'But we have to beat the fight out of her, don't we?'
It lifted its cat-o'-nine-tails, and a spinning steel ring flashed through the air and embedded itself in the back of its hand. Its eyes wide with shock, the serpent-man dropped its weapon.
A second chakram flew an instant later, shearing into a female yuan-ti's serpentine skull. Then a willowy, fair-skinned woman, clad in a nondescript mantle, robe, and sandals, sprang into the midst of the snake-men. It seemed she had no more weapons, not unless the bindings wrapped around her knuckles counted, but the lack didn't trouble her. Whirling, crouching, and leaping, in constant motion, she delivered devastating, bone-shattering attacks with her feet, elbows, fists, the edges of her hands, and even her fingertips. Though Miri had traveled far in her time, she'd never seen anything like it.
Caught by surprise and accordingly rattled, the yuan-ti fell back. The stranger grabbed hold of Miri's arm and hauled her to her feet. She slipped her toes under the scout's fallen broadsword and kicked it up into the air.
Miri blinked free of her half-stupor and caught the weapon by the hilt. She and the newcomer stood back to back, so no foe could take either of them from behind.
Hissing and screeching, the yuan-ti rushed in, and Miri cut and thrust. She realized she might prevail against her foes. The arrival of her newfound ally had given her hope.
Evidently it had altered the yuan-ti leader's expectations as well, because it decided to take a more active role in the battle, declaiming words that somehow made themselves heard despite the clamor of combat. Once again, the creature was speaking a language Miri didn't understand, but from the rhymes and measured cadence, she was certain it was reciting a spell.
Sure enough, a dark vapor abruptly filled the air, its stench so foul that Miri gagged. She felt dizzy, sick to death, while the reptile-men assailing her with whips and cudgels appeared unaffected.
It would have been witless to imagine that, afflicted as she was, she could continue fighting with her customary facility. If she was to endure, it would have to be by trickery. Acting as if she was even sicker than she felt-if such a thing was possible-she swayed and crumpled to her knees. She let the broadsword slip from her fingers.
Her foes took the bait. Confident she was helpless, they lunged in at her. She snatched up her blade and cut, scarcely aiming, the strokes simply as strong and as fast as she could manage.
The ploy worked. Blood spattered, and her mangled adversaries reeled backward. The noxious fumes started to thin, and her nausea and vertigo, to pass.
But it wouldn't matter if the yuan-ti spellcaster kept tossing curses around. Somebody had to stop it. Praying that it had to wave its arms or something to work magic, that its chameleon skin no longer kept it perfectly concealed, she peered about.
There, by the far wall!
It was the largest and least human of any of the yuan-ti, with only a pair of scaly arms to indicate it was anything other than a colossal rearing snake. It carried a bastard sword in one hand and was already crooking the fingers of the other into cabalistic signs.
'Got to move!' Miri gasped.
She scrambled forward. A yuan-ti with hissing serpents sprouting from its shoulders in place of arms sprang into her path. She chopped at its head, jerked the broadsword free, and sprinted on, splashing through one of the scummy pools. She glimpsed other snake-men darting to intercept her, but the stranger was there, too, punching, kicking, holding them back.
The yuan-ti leader saw Miri charging forward, and it left off its conjuring to come on guard. She believed that was good, though from the way it moved, it appeared to know how to manage its weapon.
The bastard sword leaped at her. She brushed it away with the buckler and riposted with a thrust. The yuan- ti's flexible body twisted out of the way.
At once she renewed the attack, trying to score before the serpent-man could raise its heavy weapon for another cut. Unfortunately, she'd momentarily lost sight of the fact that her opponent had other offensive options, one of which it chose to exercise. Its wedge-shaped head shot down at her, jaws spread wide, drops of venom clinging to the points of the long, curved fangs.
Committed to the attack as she was, Miri was in the wrong attitude to parry. Her only hope of avoiding the yuan-ti's bite was to fling herself down on her belly, so she did. The snake-man's snout thumped her between the shoulders like a hammer, but its teeth didn't rip into her body.
They would in an instant, though, if she didn't hold them off. She wrenched herself over and hacked blindly.
By pure luck as much as anything else, the broadsword nearly severed the yuan-ti's head from its trunk, which then flopped down on top of her.
The corpse heaved and writhed as Miri struggled out from under it. After a moment, her ally extended a hand to help her drag herself clear. The stranger's cowl had slipped back to reveal a downy pate she'd obviously shaved within the past couple days. Beyond her lay only the motionless bodies of other yuan-ti. If any of the slavers retained their lives and the use of their limbs, they'd evidently fled the scene. The fight was over.
