thrusting with the dagger.
He was aiming for the big man's groin. He missed, but at least the knife drove into his adversary's thigh, and the masked man froze with the shock of it. The bard pulled the weapon free for a second attack, then something slammed into his back. Arms and legs wrapped around him. Teeth tore at the high collar of his brigandine, and cold white fingers groped for his eyes.
The child-thing had jumped onto his shoulders. He reared halfway up then immediately threw himself on his back. The jolt loosened the little horror's grip. He wrenched partially free of it and pounded elbow strikes into its torso, snapping ribs. The punishment made it falter, and he heaved himself entirely clear.
By then, though blood soaked the leg of his breeches, the big man was rushing in again. Bareris bellowed a battle cry infused with the magic of his voice. Vitality surged through his limbs, and his mind grew calm and clear. Even more importantly, the masked ruffian hesitated, giving him time to spring to his feet, switch his dagger to his left hand, and draw his sword.
'I'm not the easy mark you expected, am I?' he panted. 'Why don't you go waylay someone else?'
He thought they might heed him. He'd hurt them, after all, but instead, apparently confident that the advantages conferred by superior numbers and a poisoned blade would prevail, they spread out to flank him. The masked man whispered words of power and sketched a mystic figure with his off hand. For a moment, an acrid smell stung Bareris's nose, and a prickling danced across his skin, warning signs of some magical effect coming into being.
Wonderful. On top of everything else, the whoreson was a spellcaster. That explained how he'd concealed himself until he was ready to strike.
For all Bareris knew, the masked man's next effort might kill or incapacitate him. He had to disrupt the casting if possible, and so, even though it meant turning his back on the child-thing, he screamed and sprang at the larger of his adversaries.
He thought he had a good chance of scoring. He was using an indirect attack that, in his experience, few adversaries could parry, and with a wounded leg, the masked man ought not to be able to defend by retreating out of the distance.
Yet that was exactly what he did. Bareris's attack fell short by a finger length. The masked man beat his blade aside and lunged in his turn.
The riposte streaked at Bareris's torso, driving in with dazzling speed. Evidently the big man had cast an enchantment to quicken his next attack, and with Bareris still in the lunge, it only had a short distance to travel. The bard was sure, with that bleak certainty every fencer knows, that the stroke was going to hit him.
Yet even if his intellect had resigned itself, his reflexes, honed in countless battles and skirmishes, had not. He recovered out of the lunge. It didn't carry him beyond the range of the big man's weapon, but it obliged it to travel a little farther, buying him the time and space at least to attempt a parry. He swept his blade across his body and somehow intercepted his adversary's sword. Steel rang, and the impact almost broke his grip on his hilt, but he kept the poisoned edge from slashing his flesh.
Eyes glaring above the scarf, the big man bulled forward, rendering both their swords useless at such close quarters, evidently intending to use his superior strength and size to shove Bareris down onto his back. Perhaps frustration or the pain of his leg wound had clouded his judgment, for the move was a blunder. He'd forgotten the dagger in the bard's left hand.
Bareris reminded him of its existence by plunging it into his kidney and intestines. Then the child-thing grabbed his legs from behind. Its teeth tore at his leg.
Grateful that his breeches were made of the same sturdy reinforced leather as his brigandine, Bareris wrenched himself around, breaking the creature's hold and turning the masked man with him like a dance partner. He flung the ruffian down on top of his hideous little accomplice then hacked relentlessly with his sword. Both his foes stopped moving before either could disentangle him- or itself from the other.
His sword abruptly heavy in his hand, Bareris stood over the corpses gasping for breath. The fear he couldn't permit himself while the fight was in progress welled up in him, and he shuddered, because the fracas had come far too close to killing him and left too many disquieting questions in its wake.
Who was the masked ruffian, and what manner of creature was his companion? Even more importantly, why had they sought to kill Bareris?
Perhaps it wasn't all that difficult to figure out. As Bareris wandered the night asking his questions, he'd mentioned repeatedly that he could pay for the answers. Small wonder, then, if a thief targeted him for a robbery attempt. The masked man had been such a scoundrel, and as for the child-thing… well, Thay was full of peculiar monstrosities. The Red Wizards created them in the course of their experiments. Perhaps one had escaped from its master's laboratory then allied itself with an outlaw as a means of surviving on the street.
Surely that was all there was to it. In Bareris's experience, the simplest explanation for an occurrence was generally the correct one.
In any case, the affair was over, and puzzling over it wasn't bringing him any closer to locating Tammith. He cleaned his weapons on his adversaries' garments, sheathed them, and headed out of the alley.
As he did so, his neck began to smart. He lifted his hand to his collar and felt the gnawed, perforated leather and the raw bloody flesh beneath. The girl-thing had managed to bite him after all. Just a nip, really, but he remembered the creature's filthy mouth, winced, and washed the wound with spirits at the first opportunity. Then it was back to the hunt.
It was nearly cock's crow when a pimp in a high plumed hat and gaudy parti-colored finery told him what he needed to know, though it was scarcely what he'd hoped to hear.
He'd prayed that Tammith was still in Tyraturos. Instead, the necromancers had marched the slaves they'd purchased out of the city. They'd headed north on the High Road, the same major artery of trade he'd followed up from Bezantur.
He reassured himself that the news wasn't really too bad. At least he knew what direction to take, and a procession of slaves on foot couldn't journey as fast as a horseman traveling hard.
He doubted the horse he'd ridden up from the coast could endure another such journey so soon. He'd have to buy anoth-
Weakness overwhelmed him and he reeled off balance, bumping his shoulder against a wall. His body suddenly felt icy cold, cold enough to make his teeth chatter, and he realized he was sick.
CHAPTER FOUR
19–20 Mirtul, the Year of Risen Elfkin
Tsagoth heard the slaves when he and his fellow demons and devils were still some distance from the door. The mortals were banging on the other side of it and wailing, pleading for someone to let them out.
Their agitation was understandable, for in one respect at least, Aznar Thrul was a considerate master to the infernal guards the Red Wizards of Conjuration had given him. He'd ordered his human servants to determine the dietary preferences of each of the newcomers and to provide for each according to his desires.
Some of the nether spirits were happy to subsist on the same fare as the mortal contingent of the household. Others craved the raw flesh or blood of a fresh kill, preferably one they'd slaughtered themselves. A number even required the meat or gore of a human or other sentient being. Tsagoth currently stalked among the latter group as they headed in to supper.
Yes, he thought bitterly, everyone had exactly what he needed.
Everyone but him, as the nagging hollowness in his belly, grown wearisome as the smarting, itching mark on his brow, attested.
The abyssal realms were vast, and the entities that populated them almost infinite in their diversity. Even demons couldn't identify every other type of demon, nor devils every other sort of devil, thus no one had figured out precisely what manner of being Tsagoth truly was. But had he explained or demonstrated what he actually wanted in the way of a meal, that would almost certainly have given the game away.
