Impressed, Adira scanned the marketplace to see who else needed help. The long-winged bats, keening like seagulls, were evidently smarter than they looked, for three had jittered from the sky and latched onto a little girl's hair. As her mother shrieked and yanked on the girl's legs, the bats tried to get airborne with their prey. Cursing, Adira grabbed the nearest thing at hand, a melon, and hurled it overhand. It smacked into two bats, smashing them against the wall and breaking their wings. The girl fell into her weeping mother's arms. Adira saw more bats fluttering over a crowd and wished for archers with bird arrows.
For that matter, she wondered, where in the seven seas were all her infamous mercenaries? Surely some of them must have heard the commotion. Yet their chief fought on with what resources she had.
Wilemina, Simone, and Whistledove dispatched more hellhounds with deft blades. The women marched in lock step and actually made a pack give ground. Adira shouted a warning too late. The trio went too far, pressing so the goat-dogs' rumps hit a low wall. Instantly, thinking themselves trapped, the fiery fiends rebounded to the attack. Adira saw Whistledove go under a set of cruel paws and began to run that way- until Simone kicked mightily with a boot, bowled dogs off the brownie, and hoisted her to her feet.
Worst off, perhaps, was Jedit Ojanen, who wrestled two tentacled apes. The battle of giants rocked the end of the marketplace. It was impossible to see who won or even gained the top. Carts, stalls, fruit, and crockery went flying as a snarling mass of orange stripes and black backs, white fangs and dark tentacles rolled over and over. Despite the danger of being crushed, Adira trotted that way over smashed bric-a-brac and food. She had to shove past more sensible Palmyrans who fled like rabbits. Yet she halted at blood-chilling shrieks.
Again the long-winged bats had joined forces to smother the market like black ashes. The creatures might have been disconcerted by the bright desert sun, but now they flitted down to tear at women and children shrunk in a comer. Adira looked for Whistledove, who was lightning quick with her rapier. Jasmine took one look, fished in a pouch, drew out a pinch of something and, muttering under her breath, flicked it like a marble at the jittering flock.
The white glob spun in the air and expanded into a gossamer web that entangled most of the toothy bats. Their wings gummed, the bats flopped to earth and were quickly stamped to death. The few bats who escaped fluttered into the sky and out of sight.
Stumping past trash and bodies to aid Jedit, tracking scuffles and still counting noses, Adira Strongheart for the first time missed Badger and worried. Surely he'd fallen in pursuing Johan, for the faithful sailor would never miss a fight. Heath, her Radjan archer, was out of town, and Echo nursed a broken head back in the town hall, but reinforcements finally arrived. More than a hundred of her Robaran Mercenaries lived in Palmyra, after all, and the screams could be heard all over town.
"About time you got here, Canute! And you, Gerda!" Adira snarled at the tousled two with swords in hand. "Did you get stuck hiding under your bunks?"
"What?" Canute, a burly redhead, squinted about at the carnage. "Whips and wheels, Adira, I came soon's the noise woke me! What orders?"
Disgusted with herself, Adira didn't answer. Of course. This battle wasn't ten minutes old and had started before dawn.
Everyone in the sullied marketplace froze as tremendous roars rebounded from the walls. The coal-black apes adorned with tentacles shrieked in outrage, for they'd met their match in Jedit Ojanen.
One flame-eyed ape pinned the tiger's wrists above his head with massive paws. It snapped its back tentacles like six whips to blind Jedit or else slice his throat, for each tentacle was edged with horny callous as sharp as turtle shell. The other gorilla clung like a leech to Jedit's back. Black hands like pickaxes were lodged deep in the tiger's jabot, steadily throttling. Jedit Ojanen fought back all the harder.
Bucking, twisting, straining, Jedit dragged down his and the ape's mighty arms. Inch by inch he hauled the ape's face close. Flame-red eyes widened as it saw Jedit's yawning mouth lined with gleaming white fangs. Long strings of saliva had been champed to foam, for Jedit was being strangled from behind. Powerless, now pinned itself, the gorilla began to gibber. With the power of a battering ram, Jedit wrenched the ape close and clamped bone-breaking jaws on its muzzle.
Arriving almost too close, Adira Strongheart shivered as the tormented fiend squealed in terror. Slowly, despite being throttled, Jedit cocked his wrists to trap the ape's paws against his lean hips. Flexing his back, Jedit set clawed toes in the dirt of the marketplace and craned his neck upward. Even Adira, veteran of a hundred battles, felt her stomach chum as Jedit tilted his chin, wrenched the ape's skull out of joint, then broke its neck with a gut-wrenching snap. The ape collapsed like a black rug at the man-tiger's feet. Dark tentacles on its back drooped and died like obscene flowers.
Spitting blood and flexing his paws, Jedit Ojanen fought without even turning around. Adira saw his strategy. Rather than claw to dislodge the strangling hands from his throat, Jedit used them to attack the attacker. Reaching by his rounded ears, the tiger clasped the ape's forearms with mighty paws. Squatting, Jedit tugged the ape forward and off-balance. The hellish creature whipped its tentacles in a pelting storm at the cat's face, but Jedit ignored the stinging, slicing blows. Even Adira could see that for all its fearsome strength, the ape was tiring just trying to strangle Jedit, for the tiger's neck was tough as an oak tree. Now it was too late.
Sinking to his hams, Jedit coiled in a ball. Levering against the ape's forearms, he kicked with sinewy legs. Immediately the ape flipped over the tiger's head. Sucking tentacles ripped fur and flesh from Jedit's head and neck, leaving bloody puckers tufted with fur. The ape's back struck the marketplace. Adira clearly felt the dirt jump under her boots.
Roaring in rage, free of the clutching black talons, Jedit Ojanen sent a fist big as a kettle into the sky and brought it down on the ape's muzzle. Adira grunted as bone and teeth shattered. Tentacles shot straight out as in disbelief. Jedit brought down the other paw and smashed bone again. Probably the ape was dead by then, but the tiger continued to pound the ape into a shapeless mass. Still the cat vented its fury, now slapping with claws that raked furrows in the battered body. The carcass was more a red hash than black, and Adira had to turn away.
Another roar made her flinch. Jedit Ojanen had risen, seared by fire and drenched in blood, amber-green eyes glowing wildly with battlelust. He roared defiance at the world as he cast about for another foe, and just for a second Adira felt like a mouse about to be pounced upon.
She blurted, "Slack your sails, tiger shark! We've won! It's over."
Somberly the pirate and panting tiger scanned the shattered marketplace. The reek was awful, a compound of smashed vegetables, spilled wine, fresh blood, broken cheeses, and the sour, scorched stink of the beasts of Bogardan. Yet only townsfolk and a score of Robaran Mercenaries were standing. Many tended the fallen, covering them in rugs or blankets, laying them on broken carts as stretchers, stanching and binding wounds, or pinning bodies flat to wrench broken limbs aright. Simone the Siren was on her feet, as were all her Seveners. Worst hurt, Adira realized, was Jedit Ojanen, unless Badger lay dead in some alley.
"Johan escaped." The tiger spat blood off his muzzle, both his own and his enemy's. Both ears bled, as did a dozen other rips and tears. "Give me your best scouts to track him."
"My best scouts?" Used to giving orders, not taking them, Adira was both flustered and irked. "My best scout is Heath, but he recuperates in Bryce. Wilemina can track a trail, and so can Jasmine, she claims-"
"Wilemina! Jasmine!" Jedit's coughing bark made everyone in the marketplace jump. "Come! We hunt Johan!"