Zeb had swapped the blankets and tent he had shared on the road with Phinneas Phoarty for a bedroll provided by the Shugak as the party had marched out of Camp Town. The Shugak gear consisted of a flat floor mat stuffed unevenly with feathers and down, and two large blankets big enough to cocoon a hobgoblin. Though the cloth was coarse it was roomy and warm, and it did not smell like it had ever been used. That had not been true of Zeb’s previous bedding by the time he got to Camp Town.
The roominess only became an issue when a monstrous roar boomed over Vod’Adia, shaking Zeb out of a dream that had just been getting good. He blinked in the darkness until a second roar sounded and with no thought or plan he tried to scramble to his feet and run. The wide blankets tangled around him and he tripped over his own armor on the floor. Zeb tried to throw his arms out to break his fall but the blankets had them pinned against his chest. His fall was interrupted by someone else in the dark, someone that grunted as Zeb careened off them. Zeb hit the ground and rolled out of his entanglement, then crawled until his face bumped against a helmet. He popped it on his head and scuttled in the direction he thought his weapons might lie.
A third roar sounded in the night like a detonation, in time with the door to the stairs crashing open. Someone ran in and put a boot in Zeb’s ribs, then sailed over the top of him with a cry. Zeb kept crawling. Voices in several languages were shouting as his grasping hand found a wooden stock. Zeb grabbed it and staggered to his feet, got his back to a wall, and raised what he hoped was a weapon over his head with both hands.
Heggenauer stuttered in the darkness, then paused and spoke more clearly. A white light filled the chamber with blinding suddenness. Zeb cringed and blinked until the chaos around him began to settle into identifiable shapes.
The big blonde acolyte was across the room from Zeb, dressed in skivvies but with his shield raised and his mace held aloft, a nimbus of white light shining from the head of the weapon. John Deskata’s tower shield was in a corner, dark hair and darting eyes visible above the rim and the blade of his Legion short sword poking around the right side. Uriako Shikashe was sitting upright in his bedroll, holding the longer of his two swords by the scabbard with his right hand ready to draw the blade. The samurai’s hair was loose of its top-knot and hanging to his shoulders, and his head was tilted to one side as he listened intently.
It had apparently been Tilda who had run in and tripped over Zeb. She had then sailed halfway across the room and crash-landed on top of Nesha-tari, who was kicking and spitting furiously in her own bedding. Tilda stumbled backwards and her heel hit a pack on the floor. She fell on her back but rolled up to her feet even as she snatched a heavy dagger out of either boot, standing in a crouch in the center of the room with her blades before her. She snapped her head and wild eyes around the room so rapidly that her long braid jerked in the air.
“Everybody heard that, right?” John’s voice asked from behind his shield.
Amatesu walked in through the open door next to Zeb and he barely stopped himself from braining her with the crossbow he was holding over his head. Amatesu shut the door behind her and put her back to it. Her face was set, but pale, and Zeb could hear her breathing through her nose.
Shikashe said something that sounded like “ Loong?” The shukenja nodded. There were beads of sweat on her forehead.
Nesha-tari finally shook herself free of her bedding and stood with her feet apart, hands balled into fists at her side and looking rather fetching in the knee-shorts and heavy shirt in which she slept. Zeb tried not to notice, and turned to Amatesu. He began to ask a question in Minaun Danoric, then for some reason in Antersian, before finally finding his way to Codian.
“What the hells was that?”
“A dragon,” Amatesu answered, probably in Codian though it really didn’t matter as dragon was the one word that was the same in every language spoken on the continent of Noroth. Some said it was the first word Man had been taught to speak.
Nesha-tari barked a question at Amatesu. Zeb waited for an answer until Amatesu turned to him and lifted an eyebrow.
“Zebulon?”
“What?”
“I still do not speak Zantish.”
“Oh. Right. What color was the, the…thing?”
“I do not know. I could see nothing of it against the darkness, but I heard the great wings as it flew to the south.”
Zeb managed to turn most of that into Zantish. Nesha-tari growled and stomped a bare foot.
“An evil place, surely,” Heggenauer muttered.
Something approaching sanity was returning to Tilda’s eyes, though she was still panting and holding her two daggers level in front of her, ready to attack with either. She turned toward Zeb and met his eyes, blinked, and her open mouth turned up at the side. She laughed, almost giggled.
“What?” Zeb looked around, and noticed that the helmet on his head had long cheek guards extending down from the steel dome, with a thick leather face mask hanging unbuckled at one side. Zeb was wearing Shikashe’s ornate helmet, along with only a long shirt and drawers of Doonish linen. He still had his crossbow raised over his head. The samurai stared at him, then joined Tilda in a hearty laugh.
“You think that’s bad,” Deskata said. “The Exlander’s dingus is hanging out.”
Zeb glanced across the room and Tilda spun around rather quickly, but Heggenauer had moved his shield modestly over his groin. He blushed, and Zeb had to chuckle as well.
“I thought Jobe’s priests did not carry swords, Brother,” Deskata added.
The quivering fear caused by the dragon’s earsplitting flyover had begun to recede, and the laughter banished the last of it. It was replaced by the general anxiety of being in Vod’Adia. No one returned to the roof and the door outside was wedged shut. Deskata and Shikashe moved to the adjoining corner room to watch over the streets.
Nesha-tari alone returned to her bedding and curled up within it. Zeb and Heggenauer dressed and remained awake with Tilda and Amatesu, sitting in a circle in the middle of the gallery, facing out in the darkness and not talking, with their weapons at their sides. With the worst of the fear gone the exhaustion of the last two days returned, and at some point people started nodding off, either hunched over or half-stretched out backward on the floor.
Zeb slept that way, sprawled on his back but with his legs still crossed and his axe lying beside him. A few hours later when the gray light of dawn began to pierce the room from the tall arrow slits on the outer wall, the first thing Zeb became aware of on waking was the painful stiffness in his knees. The second was Matilda Lanai.
The Miilarkian had been sitting on Zeb’s right, and at some point after he had leaned back and dozed-off she had succumbed to her own fatigue and slid down against him. She was still asleep with her head pillowed on Zeb’s belly, with the coil of her braided hair lying on his chest like a small snake. Her face was turned up, mouth slightly open, and soft breath passed steadily between her lips. Her tan skin was smudged with the gray dust that was everywhere in Vod’Adia, but it did not detract at all from her appearance.
The door down to the courtyard was open and Zeb heard quiet voices from below, but he was in no particular hurry this morning. In all likelihood he would be killed today, and he saw no point in hurrying to meet that fate. He slowly pushed himself up to his elbows, but otherwise remained still. Tilda murmured but settled, and Zeb watched her sleep for another few minutes, noting the smoothness of her skin and the thickness of her eyelashes, and the curve of her slightly pursed lips.
The light from the arrow slits across the room was interrupted as John Deskata walked in, brawny in the Legion armor of steel and chain breastplate, with heavy greaves on his shins flaring up to cover his knees.
From what Zeb had understood of the conversation between Tilda and Deskata in the inn across from the ruins of the Dead Possum, their relationship was, to say the least, complicated. Something about John traveling incognito until that very moment, a dead Captain named Block, Miilarkian Houses, lies and exiles and assassinations. Zeb felt like he had witnessed the end of Tilda and Deskata’s friendship that morning, but he was unclear just how close that friendship had been. He knew for sure that no woman whom he had not slept with at some point had ever ended up glaring at Zeb with the same fierce rage that Tilda had leveled on John.
Deskata looked across the room and stopped as he saw Zeb’s open eyes and Tilda curled up beside him. Though from that same conversation Zeb had the sense that Deskata was a born Miilarkian as well, the man looked nothing like it with his lighter complexion and a dark beard, short but thick. Zeb did know however that a lot of Miilarkians did not look much like typical Islanders. Something about Varanchian lineage, and “Ship People.”
Zeb shrugged his shoulders at Deskata and Matilda’s head rocked gently on his belly. She gave a small irritated moan and put a hand on his chest. Deskata rolled his eyes and shook his head, which was something of a relief to Zeb. The ex-legionnaire walked on to where his pack and bedroll still lay, but swerved over to give Tilda’s foot a passing poke with the toe of his marching sandal.
Tilda’s warm, nut-brown eyes fluttered before they settled on Zeb’s. He watched the surprise and confusion wash over her expressive face, and smiled at her broadly.
“Good morning, Miss Matilda,” he said. Tilda lifted her head, drawing her long braid rather pleasantly over Zeb’s belly, and blinked around the room. John was gathering his things and Nesha-tari was just sitting upright and stretching her arms with a toothy yawn. Through the open door to the room on the corner, Heggenauer was visible kneeling on the floor as though in prayer. Tilda turned back to Zeb.
“Good morning, Mr. Zebulon,” she said, not seeming to be troubled by their proximity. Zeb chose to take that as a good sign.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked. “After the dragon flew by, I mean.”
Tilda had noticed her braid lying across Zeb’s stomach and she gave her head a little toss to pull it off of him. He was sorry to feel it go.
“Sure, after that,” she said, and noticed Zeb’s crossed legs. “Did you sleep like that?”
“I did. I’m fairly sure I am crippled now.”
Tilda sat up and Zeb unfolded his legs, wincing as pins and needles played up and down both.
“Mind the axe,” Zeb said, for one of Tilda’s hands was on the floor near the double-headed blade.
“Whoops,” Tilda said. “Good thing we didn’t roll around last night.”
“Actually, I was thinking that had been something of a shame.”
Tilda arched a dark eyebrow, which had a bit of a downward turn to begin with that gave her face a contemplative look. She smiled and her teeth were very white in the gray light.
“Zebulon,” she said, her Island accent stressing the middle syllable. “We are in a lost city, full of demons and dragons and the gods-know-what-all. Are you hitting on me right now?”
Nesha-tari had put her cloak around her shoulders and was changing her clothes beneath it with her back to the room. Zeb avoided breaking eye contact with Tilda to look in that direction, but it took a little effort.
“That depends,” he said. “Might I ask you a personal question?”
“Okay,” Tilda said, still with a smile but a suspicious tone.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any strange, mystical powers, would you? Something that makes men doe-eyed and foolish?”
“I wish.”
“I guess it is not a spell, then.”
Tilda rolled her eyes and stood up, but not so fast that Zeb failed to see the side of her mouth turn up in a smirk.
“You are a strange, strange fellow, Zebulon Baj Nif,” she said, extending a hand down to him. Zeb took it and felt a wiry strength as Tilda leaned back and pulled him to his feet. Despite the bulk of Tilda’s heavy trousers, sweater, vest, and half-cloak, there was cause to suspect the existence of a wicked little body within all that fabric.
With bedrolls and packs secured, the full party assembled down in the courtyard, where Amatesu had kindled a small fire to heat a tea of oddly-shaped leaves that had been included in the Shugak provisions. It was extremely bitter, but adequate to soften the hard biscuits with which the party broke their fast. The group passed around a single ladle as no one had a cup, and the talk was all small. Nothing about where they were, or what they had heard in the night.
The tent pegs used to seal the ground floor doors over night were pulled and replaced in packs. After a few quick words Amatesu opened a door and stepped aside, allowing Zeb and Tilda to lean out and scan the quiet street over their readied bows. When neither saw anything the party emerged and resumed their march, moving due south as much as the city allowed. Though Vod’Adia was cold this morning, and no less spooky than it had been the day before, as Zeb marched in the rear of the line next to Heggenauer he often caught himself smiling. The Jobian caught him, too.
“Are you feeling all right, Zebulon?” Heggenauer asked after a while.
“Brother, it is a beautiful day to die,” Zeb answered.
Zeb changed his mind an hour later, when they found the bodies.
*
There were a half-dozen of them at least, though it was hard to be sure. They were lying in the street and in the first room through an open doorway to a tall building, an unremarkable location apart from the fact that it had been the scene of terrible butchery the night before. They had been men, as near as could be determined, swordsmen in plate and chain mail of good quality that had been battered and hacked open like shells. Pieces of armor, helmets, broken swords, emptied packs, and body parts lay all around. The copious blood shone against the black cobblestones and walls. The smell was unspeakable.
Tilda and the rest of the party mostly kept their distance, but John Deskata approached near enough to squat beside a torso.
“Most of the wounds are claws and fangs,” he called back to the particular pleasure of no one. “The cutting was done with weapons, though. Cleavers or axes. Maybe pole-arms.”
“We should bury them,” Heggenauer said, loud enough for John to hear. The party was mostly standing in the street but the priest had gone to one knee.
John stood and walked back, slapping a sandal against the street.
“We aren’t burying anyone without a pick-axe,“ he said. “Besides, they weren’t Codians.”
“How can he tell?” Tilda asked no one. She had turned her back on the scene, ostensibly to keep her eyes and ready bow on windows and rooflines, but she had looked long enough to feel very queasy.
Heggenauer had heard her and he tapped a finger against the inside of his shield. Tilda glanced over and saw a stenciled insignia in an upper corner, the shape of a shield with a triangular bottom and a stylized “S” within it.
“Shanatar?” she asked, and Heggenauer nodded.
“All shields crafted in the Empire are inscribed by the priests of the Protector. The Shield Maiden’s blessing gives them added strength.”
“Makes them lighter, too,” John said, easily hoisting his own tower shield, the standard issue of the Legions.
Heggenauer rose to meet him.
“The origins of these people do not matter. Their remains should not be allowed to lie in the street.”
“Not in a perfect world, no,” John said. “But in a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter how long we left the Duchess of Chengdea to the mercies of three legionnaires either, now would it? Pretty girl, that one. What kind of trip do you suppose she’s having, Brother Heggenauer?”
Tilda glared at Deskata but he never looked at her, only marched up to stare directly into Heggenauer’s eyes while color rose in the Jobian’s face.
“We are moving too slow,” John said, loud enough that it was clearly meant for everyone.
“Then why are we standing here?” Tilda said. She moved past John and Heggenauer back to the front of the line, and set off at a trot around the worst of the carnage.
Tilda set a steady pace, but the next few hours were marred by more frustration than threat. In an area of great buildings with pillars and domes, each set on tall foundations with horseshoe staircases in front, there was a long section of street and sidewalk glowing dully with a sickly green sheen. After a quick conference it was decided not to walk through the stuff, and the party had to backtrack a good distance before hitting another cross street around the area. It was a while before they found another street heading southerly, for Tilda was beginning to appreciate that the layout of Vod’Adia was wholly chaotic. The day-to-day convenience of the people who had lived here long ago had seemingly had no part in the design.
Before noon the party came upon a tall black wall built athwart their intended direction. The street running in front and parallel to it was lined with small buildings that had been shops, judging by the fact that each had a stone post extending out from the front facade above the main doorway, though the signs and chains they had hung from were long gone. The party headed east until they reached an impassable intersection where the street had collapsed, leaving a huge crater full of murky gray water that gave off a sulfurous smell. They doubled-back again and headed west parallel to the wall.
After another half an hour, Tilda quickened her pace as the great wall on the left-hand side seemed to end up ahead. She and Amatesu reached a circular plaza with a standing obelisk on a dais in the center, broken off about thirty feet above the ground. Several streets connected there and the wall ended at a round tower with no visible point of entry on this side, but then it continued to the south as far as could be seen owing to the misty atmosphere and more tall buildings.
Before the rest of the party now strung-out behind them reached the plaza, Tilda turned to Amatesu.
“You may want to keep a little distance from me,” Tilda said between deep breaths. Amatesu, who was not breathing hard at all, only gave her a curious glance.
“I stopped looking for traps hours ago,” Tilda admitted. “If I hit something, you may want to be back a ways.”
“Do not worry,“ Amatesu said. “I am still looking for both of us.”
Deskata, Uriako Shikashe, and Nesha-tari arrived and looked around. Zeb and Heggenauer clanged up behind them, both perspiring in their heavy ring mail and plate armor and looking flushed.
“I have decided,” Zeb breathed, bending to put his hands on his knees. “Not to buy…a summer home here. Architect…was an idjit.”
Tilda did not smile, for she was mildly annoyed with Zeb. She felt guilty that she had been enjoying talking, and perhaps even flirting with him earlier, and had not been thinking about Claudja and what she might be going through right now.
Heggenauer caught his breath and shook his head. “These streets are not an accident,” the priest of the Builder said with some authority. “This place was designed to keep movement between neighborhoods inconvenient.”
“Why would someone design a city like that?” Tilda asked.
“To keep people in their place.”
Deskata whistled sharply and everyone looked at him, then followed his gaze to the broken obelisk.
“Company,” John said as he drew his sword behind his shield.
Standing in front of the dais beneath the broken column were six figures in hooded white robes, each holding across its body a stout weapon with almost as much blade as shaft, something like shortened halberds or glaives. Tilda was sure they had not been there a moment before.
“Archers,” John said as an order, quietly but with the tone he would have used as a Legion Centurion. Tilda pulled an arrow from the open quiver on her back and nocked it to the string, while Zeb stepped up beside her with his ready crossbow. John moved a bit to the left of them, shield raised and his sword still behind it, while Shikashe stepped out to the right with his hands near the matching pommels of his swords.
For several moments no one moved. Not much detail could be perceived at the distance, which was beyond Tilda’s range of anything but a high arcing shot, but if any of the shrouded figures did so much as twitch it went unnoticed.
“Perhaps they are a party of adventurers?” Heggenauer asked without sounding very hopeful. The acolyte was keeping protectively close to Amatesu and Nesha-tari.
“They are not human,” the shukenja said with some authority. Tilda glanced back at her and saw that Amatesu had slid a tonfa from her sleeve into her hand, a peasant weapon of the Far West based on the cranking handle of a mill stone. It was a heavy square club not so different than a Miilarkian buksu, but iron-shod on one side and with a pin through the end as a handle.
“Does anybody want to talk to these guys?” Zeb asked.
Uriako Shikashe abruptly barked at the figures, startling the party but getting no response from the strangers. He drew his katana with one hand, and made a beckoning gesture with the other.
“There are moments when I hate that man,” Tilda heard Zeb mutter.
There was movement then, though still not from the shrouded figures. On the dais above and behind them a seventh shape appeared, strolling out from behind the broken obelisk. This one was not in white but instead seemed to be wearing some sort of suit of dark, charcoal gray, complete with a waistcoat. His head was uncovered and he had jet-black hair, and a forked beard. His skin was a pale, ashy gray and his eyes smoldered red, even from across the distance.
He looked toward the party as he rounded the front of the obelisk, and Tilda thought she heard a clop like a hoof as he moved. He stopped, leaned his back against the obelisk, and crossed his arms. His teeth showed white against his gray countenance as he grinned broadly, and there was another spot of white at his lapel as though he were wearing a flower as a boutonniere.
Then a bit of hell broke loose.
The six figures on the ground exploded forward, leaving their robes behind to settle to the ground. Each was revealed as a roughly man-like figure, lithe almost to the point of emaciation with scaly skin of dark red and sickly green. They had claws, horns, thick tails, and their devilish faces grinned within bristling beards of what looked like steel wire. They bounded forward on bent legs, waving their weapons and chattering some sort of language. Tilda realized with a start that though their words were utterly alien she could almost understand them, as if their meaning went somehow directly into her mind. Their words were all of blood and carnage.
“Shoot for effect,” Deskata said calmly, and Tilda and Zeb raised their bows. The creatures had closed about half the distance when both released their shots. Zeb’s went wide but Tilda’s arrow hit the foremost creature in the chest and staggered it, though the arrow shattered on impact without piercing.
“They are immune to non-magic!” Amatesu shouted, and Tilda had a cold feeling of total helplessness. If any of the numerous weapons she carried were magic, she reckoned she would have noticed it before now.
Uriako Shikashe however rushed forward to meet the creatures with the white blade of his katana humming in the air. The first of them snarled at the samurai, but with a great bound it leaped easily over him and bore down on John Deskata with a saw-toothed glaive mounted on a four-foot shaft, barbed hooks curling at the bottom of the long blade. John sheathed his sword and crouched behind his tower shield. Tilda drew another arrow despite thinking it would do no good, but then the veteran of the Legions did something rather remarkable. John timed the creature’s charge and when it raised its glaive above its head he pulled down on the top rim of his tower shield, swinging up the bottom around the pivot of his bent left arm. The creature’s beady yellow eyes widened, and the base of the blessed shield took it full across the mouth. Blood sprayed out in a fountain and teeth rattled down the face of the shield like hail. John drew his sword and hacked across the thing’s belly with the same motion as it fell to its back, but his blade rebounded as though it had hit iron.
Shikashe’s did not. The next creature in line tried to engage the samurai who with a lightning-fast series of blows severed its weapon, a leg, and an arm, then twisted past to skewer it through the chest from behind. For a moment its yellow eyes were focused on Tilda, then with a sound like a wet pop! the impaled thing simply disappeared, only the two halves of its broken weapon clattering to the street. Shikashe blinked in surprise above the leather half-mask of his kabuto helmet, then turned to confront the next creature charging him.
Two each were bearing down on the samurai and the legionnaire, while the one that John had felled was still blinking groggily on the ground and hacking up blood. Tilda shook her quiver off her shoulder and let several arrows spill loose on the ground. She went to a knee, held her bow sideways across her body, and began nocking and shooting as rapidly as she could. Her first shot hit a creature running at John in the knee, not piercing but staggering it to the side. She kept shooting it, keeping the thing at bay with each impact even if doing no serious damage. John had dropped his sword and engaged the other with both hands on the straps of his shield, deflecting the blows of a glaive and whomping or body-slamming the creature when he could.
The one behind him with the bloody mouth began to regain its feet, and before Tilda could shout a warning a searing sizzle filled the air. Tilda felt every hair on her head stand up as a blue bolt of lightning zipped past her and struck the creature, flinging it limp and smoking away into the plaza. Tilda snapped her head around and saw Nesha-tari looking nothing short of magnificent, sparks dancing in her hands and the flashes illuminating her sky-blue eyes, and a wicked grin. Beside her Zeb was blinking at Heggenauer, as the priest held his mace in one hand but had the other gripping the haft of the double-headed axe in the Minauan’s hands. The acolyte’s head was bent and he was murmuring with his eyes closed. When he opened them Zeb shivered, and both the mace and axe took on a faint glow of soft white light.
“Let’s go,” Heggenauer said, running forward past Tilda even as he raised his shield. Zeb looked at his axe, smiled faintly, and went after the priest.
Tilda did not shoot again as the melee grew crowded. John kept driving one of the creatures back with his shield and Heggenauer bore down on the one Tilda had thus far slowed. Shikashe opened the chest cavity of another with such violence that a red mist spattered the samurai’s armor before it disappeared, along with the falling corpse. The odds were three on three until Zeb tipped them. John saw him coming and sent his hissing opponent staggering back with a final blow of his shield, and the Minauan buried his axe between its shoulder blades. Heggenauer fended off an attack with his shield and landed a sideways blow on the creature’s ear with his mace, breaking off a horn and sending the monster reeling to the ground. Shikashe’s sole remaining antagonist was back-peddling, but the samurai lunged to stab it shallowly in the chest. When it dropped its weapon and clapped both hands to the wound the samurai took off its head at the shoulders. The spinning head winked out of existence in midair.
Heggenauer clubbed the one on the ground with an awful sound of impact, and before he landed a second blow it too disappeared. The acolyte’s mace rang loudly off the cobblestones and echoed across the plaza. As the echo faded, it was replaced by the sound of slow clapping.
The seventh and last figure still stood at the obelisk in his gray suit, and his smile had not changed.
“Very impressive,” the figure called, and Tilda understood its words perfectly though she could not have said what language it was speaking. Yet for that, its voice was somehow cultured, vaguely even regal.
“Thou art as formidable a bunch of monkeys as I have seen in a goodly while.”
Nesha-tari shouted to him in Zantish, and the figure bowed in her direction.
“I am known here abouts as Lord Balan, Madame. Though just Balan shall suffice, for you.”
Shikashe shouted in Ashinese, and Balan smiled at him.
“Not just yet. But in all likelihood, soon.”
With that, Balan gave another bow to the whole party, thrust his hands in his coat pockets and strolled leisurely back behind the obelisk. He too disappeared, but without a pop of finality.
The party stared, for as he left they all had seen that Balan’s right leg ended in a cloven hoof which struck up a spark each time it touched the ground. There had also been a whip-like tail emerging from the back of his tailored suit coat. The spade-shaped head at the end of it had almost seemed to wave at them.