Heggenauer, the Duchess Claudja, and her knight protector Sir Towsan were led through the Dead Possum’s bawdy common room by two legionnaires while the third had gone upstairs to fetch his commanding officer. Heggenauer felt a pang for the debauchery on display was hardly suitable for a woman of the Duchess’s high station, but on being informed by Father Corallo that there were Codian Legionnaires in Camp Town awaiting the arrival of anyone from Daul, the Duchess had insisted on being taken to them immediately rather than having them summoned to the Builder’s House. Sir Towsan had not been pleased, but the noblewoman who no amount of rude outfitting could make look common had been adamant.
They were led down a hall away from the noise and smell and ushered into a narrow room where the light from a lantern illuminated towers of spent ale kegs lining the walls. Towsan looked about dubiously and turned to eye the legionnaires with his arms folded across his chest.
“Sorry ’bout this,” one of them said. “The Sarge will find a better place for a talk.”
Heggenauer looked between the two soldiers. Their armor and weapons were spotless but the clothes underneath deeply soiled. Their chinstraps crossed faces badly needing shaves, and one of their helmets was not even Legion issue. Heggenauer looked at that man’s tower shield, noting the identifying numerals under the Book-from-the-Water standard.
“Where is the 34 ^ Foot now stationed, soldier?”
“Orstaf, sir.”
“You are a long way from there.”
“Detached special duty, sir.”
The man’s answers were smartly given but Heggenauer still did not like his looks. Before he could ask anything else boots clopped in the hall and the door was opened by another bearded Legion man wearing the plain helmet of a sergeant-of-the-line, and boots instead of marching sandals. He carried no tower shield and looked over all those in the room with shining green eyes, smiling broadly and snapping a salute.
“Good evening, or very early morning,” he chirped in the cadence of a native Gweiyerman. “Sorry about the digs…”
The Duchess squeezed around Heggenauer and Towsan.
“We were told there is a Codian official here awaiting us,” she said, then gave the sergeant a haughty looking-over. “Would you be him?”
“Indeed no, your Highness. He awaits just across the rear yard. Fetching wine and what not to the empty stable there. It is clean, and altogether nicer. Won’t you step this way?”
The sergeant backed into the hall and stepped to the right. The Duchess and her knight exchanged a look before the old man led the way with her close behind. Heggenauer moved to follow them but when Claudja was through the doorway the two legionnaires still in the room leaned their shields across it.
“We have it from here, Brother,” one said. “Best go back to your temple.”
“Legion business, sir,” said the other. “No need for you to be involved.”
“Involved in what?” Heggenauer demanded.
The Duchess shrieked, and Heggenauer snatched up his mace by its wrist cord even faster than the Legion men drew their swords.
*
Zeb ran awkwardly and with his helmet bouncing on his head for they had left the Shugak palisade so fast he had not had time to cinch-up his armor. He had barely gotten his boots on.
Amatesu noticed him struggling and dropped back, leaving Shikashe a quarter block ahead and Nesha-tari out in front even farther. The shukenja ran alongside Zeb and managed to pull the straps of his ring mail jerkin tight on the fly. He handed her his crossbow and buckled his chin strap, crashed to the ground and rolled once, but stumbled up and kept running.
Amatesu handed the crossbow back and before she sprinted ahead Zeb managed to shout between gasps.
“Will you tell me where we are going now?”
Amatesu looked back at him.
“We are going to kill a priest.”
Zeb hitched a step and Amatesu began to pull away.
“What? Wait! Why?”
“He is not a nice priest,” Amatesu called over her shoulder.
They ran for several blocks, managing the crowd as all the men in the street seemed to have stopped what they were doing when Nesha-tari ran by. They were standing still and staring silently in the direction she had gone even as Amatesu and Zeb passed them.
They reached an intersection, Zeb trundling up last as Shikashe, Nesha-tari, and Amatesu stood in a row under a willow tree, facing an inn. There was a colorful but revolting sign painted on the front of an opossum squashed flat by a wagon wheel.
Zeb put the head of his crossbow on the ground and wriggled a foot into the stirrup. He had already cranked it but now placed a bolt in the groove atop the shaft. He stood up straight and began to gasp a question, but stopped as Nesha-tari threw her cloak back off of her shoulders.
She was magnificent. Zeb was well aware that she was some sort of dangerous monster, but in that moment he could not have cared any less. Her body in loose trousers and shirt was plainly ridiculous, both supple and strong. Her face was sharp and beautiful in a corona of tumbling red hair, and her blue eyes blazed.
Nesha-tari pulled her gloves off with her perfect white teeth on the leather fingers and it was the most fascinating process Zeb had ever seen. She said something Zeb did not hear, and when she turned her eyes on him he nearly swooned. Then she snarled and slapped the vacant look off his face.
Zeb yelled and grabbed his nose, which was bleeding across the bridge.
“You split open my nose!” Zeb said accusingly, and as the sharp sting of it cleared his head for a moment he understood Nesha-tari as she repeated herself with a growl.
“Tell Shikashe he is with me, through the front door. You and Amatesu go ‘round the back. Kill anyone coming out who looks like a Zant.”
Zeb translated into Codian automatically and Amatesu did so into Ashinese even as he spoke. On the last few words Amatesu stopped speaking and gave Nesha-tari an alarmed look, but the woman was already rolling like a storm for the Dead Possum’s porch and the open front door. Uriako Shikashe strode at her side and drew both of his swords.
Amatesu ran for an alley on the right side of the inn and as his head was still clearer than it had been in a good long time, Zeb hesitated before following her. Killing priests could not possibly be good luck, and none of this had anything to do with him. He should be in the lines at Larbonne with his mates, or better-yet home in Wakminau sniffing around a barroom for a mate of a different sort. There was a place high on the bluffs with a glorious cherry wine, half bitter and half sweet, that would have tasted like the most wonderful thing in the world right now. And really, he did not owe any of the people here a thing. He had been kidnapped and enchanted and Nesha-tari had just cut his nose open, and it stung like hell.
In short, a man of the Riven Kingdoms had to know when to run if he was to live for long.
Amatesu disappeared into the dark alley. Zeb knew the shukenja was formidable but she looked very small and alone in that moment.
Zeb spit out blood that was trickling into his mouth and cursed himself. He hoisted his crossbow and ran into the alley.
It was pitch black and he could not see Amatesu. What he did see was light from an enclosed yard behind the inn, and as he stumbled toward it over mounded refuse and through foul puddles he heard the unmistakable clash of arms.
Zeb leaned around the corner to look into the yard and tried to make sense of what he saw. There was a tall old man laying about with a long sword while two Codian legionnaires crouched behind their tower shields trying to maneuver behind him, both darting forward in turn to poke at him with their short gladius swords. As they shuffled, swung, and parried, a third legionnaire tumbled out of the inn’s backdoor followed closely by a blonde fellow with mace and shield, fighting him.
Before Zeb could determine if this was something he was supposed to be concerned with, or which side of the fight he might be on, a man cursed from the darkness away from the door. Zeb turned and saw another man in a Legion breastplate struggling with a little slip of a girl. The bearded fellow reared back an arm and just smashed her across the face, leveling her to the ground and making Zeb’s mind up for him.
“Drop your weapons!” Zeb bawled in Codian, stepping into the yard and raising his crossbow to look down the bolt right at the bearded man’s forehead. The girl was a motionless heap at his feet.
No one dropped anything but the bearded man in the helmet of a Legion Sergeant at least made no move toward the sword on his hip.
“Who the hells are you?” he demanded, his green eyes boring into Zeb‘s.
Before Zeb could come up with a witty answer the doors of a low building backing the yard burst open and out rushed four bulky figures in heavy plate and round helmets with only eye slits, wielding enormous swords. One rushed at Zeb and he swung his bow while triggering it, but he split the difference and the bolt zipped between the sergeant and the figure clanking toward him.
Zeb dropped his crossbow and whipped his axe from his back, but the man came on too fast. Zeb never would have raised his weapon in time to ward off an overhand blow coming for his head, but Amatesu darted out of the shadows and threw herself into the charging man’s legs. Iron greaves bashed the shukenja’s shoulder and side but she twisted the man off balance, sending him stumbling toward Zeb who rolled his hips and spun on the balls of his feet while swinging his axe sideways in both hands, connecting blade to helmet with an impact that shook his arms. The man’s helmet was thick and well made and did not split, but its wearer did sprawl stunned to the ground.
The sergeant was on Zeb in an instant, stabbing for his back but just scraping his blade on ring mail as Zeb stumbled sideways from the force of his own axe blow. The sergeant tried to get inside Zeb’s reach but the Minaun spread his hands wide on the shaft of his axe while moving backwards, not able to attack but warding off two more stabs. Amatesu was on her feet behind the sergeant, but rather busy with another black-armored man and his great sword. The shukenja had slipped a weapon of some kind out of her sleeve, a block of wood as long as her forearm with one iron-shod side and an odd sort of crank handle at the end. She sidestepped sword blows and darted in to deliver strikes with the thing, but her club only rang off her opponent’s plate mail.
The green-eyed sergeant drove Zeb back and threw a swipe at his face that Zeb only avoided by leaning back so far he had to scramble away to recover. The sergeant took advantage to break away and run across the yard for the old man, whose back was to them as he fought another legionnaire. Zeb had no idea what the fellow’s name was so shouted only, “Old man! Behind you!” as a warning. Before he could move to anyone’s assistance firelight bloomed behind him and Zeb turned to find the first man he had knocked down back on his feet. Flames were dancing along the long blade of his great sword, and Zeb abruptly knew what he was fighting.
“Oh, gods! You’re a Destroyer?” Zeb asked, for the fearsome warriors of the fiery god Ayon had a presence in Larbonne. The man’s helmet was dented and turned sideways on his face, but he tore it off to reveal that he was not a he at all.
“And you are the destroyed,” the bald woman growled, and lunged.
Zeb knocked the first blow of the flaming sword aside with the head of his axe, but he could feel the heat of it washing over him. The swords of the other Destroyers were blooming into flames around the yard, casting hellish, struggling shadows on the walls. A legionnaire’s helmet came sailing out of the back door of the Dead Possum and struck the ground with such a heavy sound that Zeb knew there was still a head in it. Uriako Shikashe came out behind it, saw Amatesu fighting a Destroyer, and charged at the nearest man in the same black armor.
Zeb’s opponent made a thrust that came close enough to his side to leave his jerkin smoking. He could feel the warming rings of his mail like ingots through leather gloves. He swept for her legs but she hopped over the blow and then the two of them were spinning almost like a dance, neither quite able to land a blow with what were rather inelegant weapons, better suited for hacking than for parry and thrust. But sweat was running into Zeb’s eyes while the woman’s smirking face was cool and calm. She had him and she knew it, right up until blue light cracked across the yard and a bolt of lightning sent her flying into a wall.
Nesha-tari was framed in the back doorway of the inn, her hair standing out on end and her indescribable face illuminated by blue lightning humming between her raised hands. Her eyes raked the yard and she threw out another lash of crackling blue fire that spun a legionnaire to the ground and staggered a Destroyer, allowing Shikashe to lock the longer of his two swords high against the man’s flaming weapon. The samurai stabbed his shorter sword deep into the Destroyer’s chest through his armpit.
The light faded but Nesha-tari advanced into the yard like an angel of death and the remaining Destroyers and legionnaires drew back from her. Shikashe and Amatesu were on their feet but the blonde fellow was kneeling by the sprawled old man. Zeb took the moment to race to his crossbow and work the crank after spilling out bolts to the ground next to it.
“Horayachus!” Nesha-tari roared, and for an answer a jet of flames erupted at her from the building out of which the Destroyers had come. Nesha-tari brought both hands up in front of her, palms out, and the flames scattered in the air before her as though they had hit a solid stone wall. She rocked back and staggered to the ground.
There was a man at an open window, tall and bald and armored as were the Destroyers in a black breast plate with red trim, but with bare arms tattooed wrist-to-shoulder with licking flames.
“Who are you to come against me, Dragon Eyes?” he shouted in Zantish. Zeb had reloaded but before he raised his crossbow Nesha-tari snarled on the ground and threw more blue lightning from her hands, not a great bolt but buzzing tendrils that sizzled all along the wall and through the open window. Ayon’s priest screamed.
The two Destroyers still on their feet charged Nesha-tari. Shikashe intercepted one with a flurry of blows, Zeb shot at the other and hit him in the side. The black breastplate stopped Zeb’s bolt but not before the head had gone several inches into the Destroyer’s ribs. He turned his charge with a growl and lurched toward Zeb, who dropped the bow and readied his axe.
Nesha-tari was back on her feet but she gave a sharp hiss as the air started to leave the yard as though a wind was blowing from the ground to the sky. There was an eerie silence for what must only have been an instant, then high in the air over Nesha-tari’s head and above the roofs of the surrounding buildings, a spinning disk of flames appeared. With a whoosh the disk expanded into a ring, then a great column of fire descended to the ground as a pillar.
Nesha-tari was enveloped, screaming. The impact sent a wave of heat through the yard, hurling bodies and bursting the walls into flames.
Zeb was farthest away from it but even he was knocked off his feet and thrown back into the alley. His throat burned as he gasped for breath, drawing in air hotter than any desert. He tried to get up and a hand grabbed his ankle, hauling him back into the yard and tossing him across the blackened ground. The Destroyer with the bolt sticking out of his breastplate put a boot on Zeb’s chest and raised his flaming sword to stab down, but staggered forward as Amatesu’s thrown club clanged off his helmet. The stabbing sword just missed Zeb’s head, and as the Destroyer’s chest loomed above him he grabbed the feathered end of his bolt with both hands and twisted.
The man screamed and hammered a gauntlet against Zeb’s helmet, but the Minauan was not about to let go. The Destroyer lurched, dragging Zeb across the ground, and got both iron hands around Zeb’s neck.
Zeb tried to drive the bolt in further but his vision dimmed as he was throttled. The man choking him shuddered as though under impacts, but the Destroyer was as obstinate as the man from the Rivens. Before Zeb’s world went to black the last thing he thought he saw, and that but dimly, was the impossible sight of Nesha-tari Hrilamae tottering to her feet in the blasted yard, her body smoking all over.
*
Phinneas Phoarty heard nothing over the noise of the inn’s common room until a single boom as of thunder shuddered the inn walls. Some of the noise faded away downstairs, and after a second blast sounded close by, the inn fell silent altogether.
Phin left the bunkroom and stood on the open walkway overlooking the common area. The place was still full, but silent as everyone there was looking toward the rear wall.
Then the back of the inn exploded, flames blazing in through the windows and splintered wood spraying the crowd.
Phin was almost thrown over the railing but he caught himself and stayed on the walkway. He was shaken to the floor as the whole building trembled. The bunkrooms were on the side of the inn, but black smoke poured into the common room from the back, driving out the occupants who were yelling, crying, and many bleeding. Overhead the main ceiling beam cracked as the back wall started to sag.
Phin scrambled back into the room and grabbed his pack from under his bunk. He snatched someone’s extra dagger off a table and ran halfway back to the door before turning back to the Sarge’s bunk. He yanked off the lumpy mattress and lifted the heavy leather bag hidden under it to his shoulder, the bag in which the Sarge carried the book from which he’d had Phin read.
Halfway down the stairs Phin ran into the Sarge coming up, though the man was almost unrecognizable with his face and armor covered in black ash. Phin shook the bag at him.
“You got it?” the Sarge said.
“I do.”
“Then go! Out the front!”
Three legionnaires waited anxiously in what was now an empty common room, with the front doors and windows all bashed out as the occupants had fled by every available aperture. The legionnaires all looked as bad or worse than the Sarge, with two of them glassy eyed and leaning on each other to keep their feet. The Sarge started to bark for them to go as he and Phin picked their way among fallen tables and chairs, but he was interrupted by a shout from behind.
Horayachus lurched out of the black smoke boiling from the back hall and the kitchens, carrying a limp figure in his arms.
“I will be damned,” the Sarge muttered, hardly audible over the crackle of the fire spreading up the rear walls to the second floor.
Horayachus pitched his burden into Ty’s arms, the legionnaire dropping his tower shield to catch her. Phin saw that she was a woman when her head lolled into view, for she was very pretty despite the blood pouring from a nose that looked broken. The Zant’s teeth were clenched and his breast plate was pocked with smoking rents like the steel had melted.
“You have the book?” he barked at the Sarge, who nodded. Horayachus reached under his armor and withdrew a carved Shugak baton with ten licenses to enter the Sable City jingling from it.
“If it works, take this woman alive and unharmed to Ayzantu City. To the Great Temple of Ayon there.”
“Are you out of your bald skull?” the Sarge demanded. He was seized by the collar with a burnt hand.
“Do this, and the priests will give you all the gold you can carry,” Horayachus hissed. “Fail, and the Burning Man’s wrath will find you. All of you.”
With that, he released the Sarge’s collar and staggered back to the middle of the room to face the smoke. “Go!” he barked over his shoulder.
None of the legionnaires moved.
“She is coming,” Horayachus added, raising his arms and beginning to chant.
The Sarge snatched up the extra tower shield and was first out the front door. The others were right behind him, with Phin in the rear.
Outside, hobgoblins had forced back the buzzing crowd and were keeping them away from the front of the inn with raised morning stars and pole arms, though many in the crowd were now shouting for their possessions left behind. Bullywugs had formed a line for a bucket brigade but as of yet they had no buckets.
The Sarge stopped in the empty area before the tall willow tree, green eyes looking all around.
“Which way Sarge?” Ty asked, now with the motionless woman slung over his shoulder like a dead thing.
The Sarge pointed south but there was a ruckus on the far side of the crowd as a man burst through the ring between two hobgoblins. He wore cracked leather armor and had dark hair and a beard, both short but unkempt. A legionnaire short sword was in his hands. The hobgoblins turned and growled at him, but he did not approach the inn. He strode straight for the legionnaires, who stared wide-eyed.
“Now,” said the Sarge. “Now I have seen everything.”
The man stopped only yards from the Sarge, glaring at him.
“Sergeant Dugan,” the stranger said.
The Sarge smiled.
“Centurion Deskata.”
For a moment Phin thought they were going to shake hands, but Deskata made a lunge and the Sarge swung Ty’s tower shield. The Sarge fended off a series of ringing blows while drawing his own sword, then thrust it around the shield. Deskata danced away.
“Don’t just stand there, boys!” the Sarge shouted. “Say hello to your commanding officer!”
Ty dumped the woman off his shoulders and she hit the ground so hard Phin went to her side. The three legionnaires drew swords but Deskata barked, “Stand down, soldiers!” with such authority that Ty and Rickard actually hesitated. Gery blundered forward. Deskata sidestepped him easily and cut his throat as he stumbled by, sending a crimson jet into the air and getting a roar from the surrounding crowd.
Sergeant Dugan and the two others moved to surround him.
*
Nesha-tari had no defensive spell raised when Horayachus’s flame strike crashed all around her, and she dropped to the ground as her clothes burst into flames. She lay quaking for a moment before opening her eyes. Her innate magical resistance had saved her, but it had also pushed her fully through the Change.
Nesha-tari arose, the last ashy bits of clothing falling off her tawny fur, leaving it smoldering but unburned. She smelled the spoor trail lingering in the air where Horayachus had gone, and bounded after him on all fours. Others were still fighting in the yard, but they did not matter.
Her claws tore gouges in the plank floor of a smoke-filled hall as Nesha-tari ran. She emerged hacking into a large inn room full of overturned furniture. Horayachus stood across the room with lips moving and grimacing face turned aloft, tattooed arms spread wide. Nesha-tari sprang forward but a sheet of flame erupted from the floor in front of her. She skidded to a halt, claws digging in.
She paced along the flames that stood as a burning wall, blue eyes locked on Horayachus’s through them.
“Why does Blue Akroya send you against me, woman?” Ayon’s priest shouted over the crackling flames. The fire was climbing all the walls now, spreading smoke through the air and vapor along the floor.
“I did not ask,” Nesha-tari growled, though she doubted the man could understand her voice as it was the roar of a lioness.
Horayachus resumed a low chanting and raised his arms. Nesha-tari crouched to run for she had no means at present of casting a spell of her own to interrupt or counter the Fire Priest’s. A beam fell from the ceiling athwart the wall of fire and she sprang quick as thought through the momentary gap.
The High Priest of Ayon screamed and threw his arms forward. Nesha-tari swiped them away with enough force to shred the tattooed flesh to the bone and yank both out of their sockets. She turned her massive head and her jaws closed on Horayachus’s throat. The taste of the only thing that assuaged the Hunger filled her mouth.
Nesha-tari Hrilamae, daughter of the Lamia, drank deeply.
*
Tilda thought she might have kept up with Dugan over open ground, but the man’s build was far better suited than was hers to plowing through a crowd. She fell behind as they ran the five blocks to the Dead Possum, stumbling when jostled and having to fight her way through the crush.
She saw the top of the willow tree over an even thicker crowd as she approached the intersection, and people gathered around a burning inn on a corner. Tilda had no doubt this was the place she was looking for and she wormed into the press, elbowing her way and crawling when she stumbled to the ground. People roared like they were watching a sporting match, and steel clanged on steel over their cries.
Tilda slithered into the open between the spread legs of a large hobgoblin. Dugan almost stomped on her head as he spun past, driven by a legionnaire leading with a tower shield and throwing wild stabs over the top.
“Dugan!” she shouted, scrambling up, and to her right someone yelled, “What?” Tilda looked that way and saw what had to be John Deskata, for his eyes blazed like twin emeralds though apart from them his bearded face was plain, and presently marred by an angry sneer. He was balding. Another legionnaire was struggling to rise but the green-eyed man snatched away the injured one’s sword so that he held one in either hand. The fire consuming the inn glinted in the massive green ring on his finger. He yelled and ran at Dugan.
Tilda shouted the name of the head of her House, but he did not slow. She scrambled up and ran after him. Before he had closed the distance Dugan let the legionnaire with the tower shield back him against the tree, then launched his shoulder so hard into the shield that it banged back into the man’s face and sent him down. The crowd cheered.
Dugan saw the man with two swords charging, watched him come, and at the last moment put a toe under the tower shield at his feet and flipped it upright. Dugan slipped to the side as the charging man plowed into the chest-high shield, and crashed into the tree trunk with a double bang. Dugan raised a sword as Tilda’s quarry slid to the ground. Tilda tackled him.
Hitting the stout renegade in his heavy leather armor, which she had given him as a gift come to think of it, felt little different than tackling the tree would have. Dugan woofed and stumbled but Tilda’s shoulder rebounded off his flank and she went sliding on her back over rough tree roots.
Tilda kick-jumped to her feet and freed her buksu club from her hip, turned toward Dugan and threw out a hand. She shouted for him to stop but he yelled “Duck!” and Tilda did so automatically, as the word was in Miilarkian. She had no time to wonder where Dugan had picked it up for John Deskata had just tried to cut her head off from behind, burying a short sword in the tree trunk. Dugan rushed him and the two twirled away exchanging snarls and avoiding stabs. Tilda yelled at them both, in Codian and Miilarkian, shouting the names Dugan and Deskata, but they ignored her. She raised her club and tried to get into position behind Dugan, hoping that if she knocked him cold John Deskata might realize she was on his side, which she supposed she had to be. The two men were turning too fast, Tilda got too close, and Deskata lashed out at her. She had to parry his sword off the side of her club before she took it in the throat, and Dugan took advantage to swipe at his enemy’s weapon hand. The man howled and his sword flipped away in the air, along with two fingers. One still wore the great emerald ring of the House of Deskata.
“Tilda!” Dugan shouted in her face, and she clubbed him across the temple. His brown eyes fluttered and he fell to a knee. Tilda cracked him over the back of the head.
Dugan went face down and lay still. The other man was on his back, cursing the gods and clutching his ruined hand to his chest while blood spattered his legionnaire breast plate. Tilda took a step toward him, turning pale herself, and swooned.
Not the blood, she thought, I am not so delicate as that. But her club fell from her hand and she stumbled to the side, blinking slowly as her eyelids felt heavier than her head.
She was on one knee, looking across the clearing where in front of the crowd lay the Duchess of Chengdea, flat on the ground like a dead thing. A tall man stood over her, premature streaks of gray in his brown moustache and chin beard. His eyes were locked on Tilda’s and a bit of powder or dust was falling from the fingers of his outstretched hand. The world went soft and dark, and Tilda toppled to the ground as if it were the feather bed she had shared with her sisters growing up, in the attic room of her father's house on Chrysanthemum Quay.
The Dead Possum inn gave up the ghost. The roof crashed in and flames climbed high into the night sky. A blast of fire and heat shook the willow tree and forced the crowd further back, but it did not interrupt their cheers.