The snakes scattered across the foremost, clamping on to the joints of their armour and burrowing down like leeches. They snapped and slithered as if alive, their unnatural skins blazing with arcane matter.
Liandra didn’t wait to see if that would halt them — she knew it wouldn’t for long — but turned and scampered up the last few steps. A few dozen guards held the doors open for her.
She slipped inside, heart thudding, feeling the trickle of blood running down her forearm.
‘Brace it,’ she ordered curtly. Soldiers around her hefted the heavy wooden bars into place.
She pressed on, running up more stairs, a tight-wound spiral that ran up the interior of the watchtower. As she went she passed rooms with archers crouched at the narrow windows. They looked low on arrows, and some were already turning to their knives.
At the top level she joined a disconsolate band of swordsmen, all of them streaked with grime and gore, their robes dishevelled and armour cracked.
‘Who’s in command here?’ Liandra asked, limping over to the outer parapet.
Several of them looked at one another for a moment, as if the idea of ‘command’ belonged to a different age, before the tallest of them replied, ‘You are, lady.’
Liandra smiled humourlessly, and peered through the nearest embrasure.
Dust and smoke rose up from the corpse of Oeragor. The gatehouse was now a gaping scar through which marched an endless stream of dwarf warriors. A few islands of resistance remained — clusters of asur defenders holed up in towers or rooftop terraces.
Even as she watched, a griffon-rider swooped on an advancing column of axe-carriers. The huge beast crashed among them, lashing out with claw and beak. Its wings beat ferociously, sending dozens of dwarfs staggering backwards. For a while its lone assault chewed through the oncoming warriors, crushing those within its grasp, flattening others rushing to help. Eerie shrieks of anger rose up above the howl and holler of the battle, a single voice of defiance amid the wreckage of the city.
Then, slowly, the volume of warriors around it began to tell. Liandra watched axe-wielders crawl closer, one by one getting within swing-range. The griffon managed to slay half a dozen more before the blades began to bite. It tried to pounce back into the air but crossbow bolts suddenly scythed out from the shadows. More dwarfs appeared, drawn by the shouts of combat. The griffon was dragged back to earth, its rider seized from the saddle and buried beneath a riot of fists, axe-handles and cutting blades.
Liandra looked away. The screams of the dying creature were hard to listen to, and they went on for a long time. It might have been the last of them. The griffons had accounted for many of the dwarf dead, but it hadn’t been nearly enough.
‘What are your orders, lady?’ asked one of the swordsmen by her side.
Liandra screwed her eyes up against the glare and peered out beyond the walls. Most of the dwarfs’ war engines were still out on the plain and guarded by phalanxes of infantry. Almost none had loosed their deadly, steel-tipped bolts. The chassis of the bolt throwers were angled steeply, pointing directly skyward.
‘Why so cautious?’ she murmured.
She turned to the swordsman. His youthful face was badly bruised, with a purple swelling under a cut eye.
‘Give me a moment,’ she told him. ‘My power will return. I will stand alongside you.’
From below, she heard the first booms as the doors took the strain. She grimaced; the dawi would be inside soon, and that would be an end to it.
‘When they come, you will all do your duty,’ she said, sweeping her gaze across the chamber and fixing each swordsman in the eye. ‘Stand your ground, do not shame our people by giving in to fear.’
She clutched her staff, feeling the dull stirrings of magic under the surface once more.
‘They’ll take this place, that we know,’ she said grimly. ‘But, by Isha, we’ll make them bleed for it first.’
For a long time Drutheira had heard nothing. The cell was dark, the walls thick. A few dull booms, some muffled shouting from the corridor outside, not much else.
Hours had passed. She began to get very thirsty. It had been a long time since her captors had brought her anything to eat or drink. No doubt they had other things on their minds.
She tested her bonds again, straining against the metal shackles keeping her ankles and wrists locked tight to the chair. She could only move her head fractionally before the chain around her neck pulled tight, restricting her breathing. She’d nearly passed out a few days ago testing the limits of the restraints, and didn’t fancy repeating the experiment.
The asur were not careless about such things, which was a shame.
An ignominious end, she thought to herself. Buried alive in a city on the edge of the world.
Then she heard a series of thumps above her. She sat perfectly still, letting her acute senses work.
The slit of light under the cell door flickered. She heard more heavy cracks, like iron-shod boots clattering on marble. Voices were raised in alarm and challenge, followed by a sound she couldn’t make out.
Drutheira tensed. Either the asur were coming for her or the dawi had penetrated this far down. Neither eventuality was good for her.
The door shivered as something hard hit it. More voices rose, followed by a sharp, wet sound of steel punching into flesh, then a strangled cry.
Locks slid back, chains rattled. Drutheira stared directly ahead, determined to look whatever was coming in the face. If they made the mistake of ungagging her before they slid the knife in then there might still be some way back for her.
The door creaked open. Two asur dressed in the white robes of the city burst in. One of them looked badly wounded, cradling an arm in a sling. The other seemed to need time to steady himself and adjusted slowly to the near perfect dark of the cell.
Drutheira waited patiently. Through the open doorway she could see bodies lumped against the stone floor.
The nearest guard drew a long knife from a scabbard at his calf and loomed over her. Drutheira felt the steel against her cheek, cold as night. She didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t so much as wince as he pulled the blade across her face, severing the gag and freeing her mouth.
She immediately started to speak — words of power that would burst their eyeballs and shrivel their tongues. Before she could get the spell out, though, the guard clamped a hand over her mouth, leaning close. Drutheira looked up at him, almost amused by the effrontery of it.
‘Do nothing foolish,’ came a familiar voice.
The guard pulled the linen from his face, revealing Malchior’s badly sunburned features.
Drutheira’s eye flickered to one side. Ashniel leaned against the cell walls.
Malchior withdrew his hand and got to work on the rest of her bonds.
Drutheira swallowed. Her throat was almost too parched to speak.
‘How?’ she croaked.
‘With difficulty,’ said Malchior, unlocking the clasps at her ankles.
‘We nearly died getting here,’ said Ashniel weakly. ‘And nearly died after we arrived.’
Drutheira raised an eyebrow. So they hadn’t been killed by the dragon. How they had tracked her to such a place, and why, were questions for later. The fact they were before her at all was verging on the impossible.
Malchior released the last of the locks. Drutheira got to her feet shakily. For a moment she thought she would collapse again — the blood rushed painfully through her joints — but she managed to remain on her feet.
‘You have your staff?’ she asked.
Malchior nodded. ‘Take robes from the guards. I can do the rest.’
As Drutheira hobbled from her cell into the corridor outside she saw the results of their labours: six corpses cooling on the stone. She stooped over the nearest and began to strip his robes from him.
‘Where are the dawi?’ she asked, pulling them over her head.