He couldn’t let the shock of injury balk him, nor allow the witch to cast another attack spell. The greatsword agreed and steadied him with a surge of strength and anger. He jerked it from the first spearman’s body and cut down the second one then another cultist who rushed in with a short sword. That cleared a path to the magician.
He sprang out onto what he now perceived was one of the natural balconies overlooking the big cave at the top of the volcano. Smoke and steam swirled through the air, and fire flickered somewhere down below, but he couldn’t tell what was burning. Too many people were in the way.
The witch goggled as if astonished he’d survived her initial attack. She started jabbering a second incantation, and the words slurred into a gargling sound as the greatsword crunched into her skull.
Anton stepped deeper into the mass of cultists and cut at another foe. His enemies were all around him now, and even an enchanted sword wouldn’t save him from a stab in the back. Only his comrades could do thatassuming any were still alive and fit to fight.
Cries of fury and scrambling footsteps established that they were. They swarmed out onto the platform and ripped into the cultists. Jamark swung a mace. A cultist managed to catch the blow on his shield, but the force sent him stumbling backward to topple off the ledge. Stedd drove a sword into an opponent’s chest and laughed crazily. Then the eyes rolled up in his head as the other man, mortally wounded but not dead yet, thrust a blade into his torso. They took a lurching sidestep together, like spastic dancers.
As he fought, Anton looked for Diero but at first couldn’t spot him amid the frenzied press. Finally, though, the master of the enclave, with his trim frame, purple vestments, and silvery hair, came into view. To the spy’s surprise, Diero was facing outward, away from the battle. His hands slashed through mystic passes, and it looked as if he might be trying to complete a conjuration begun before the escaped slaves intruded on the proceedings.
Anton struggled toward the wizard. If Lady Luck smiled, he might reach him in time to cut him down from behind and spoil the magic, whatever it was.
But he had to kill another cultist first, and it was too late.
A prodigious roar sounded from the floor of the chamber below. Flickering firelight cast a gigantic serpentine shadow on the wall. By the Lanceboard, had there been a wyrm down there all along? Why had the cursed thing kept so quiet until this moment?
There was no time to ponder that, either. Diero was the immediate threat. The wearer of purple called somethingAnton couldn’t make out the wordsto the dragon then turned toward his embattled followers and their assailants. His gaze fell on Anton. He murmured a word and extended his hand, and a bastinado appeared in it. He swept the cane through an occult figure.
Anton rushed in and made a chest cut. Diero hopped back, and the attack fell short. He flicked the bastinado through a final backhanded stroke, as if chastising a thrall.
Agony tore through Anton’s body. It was worst in his guts, and he doubled over. Tears blurred his vision.
Diero tossed away the stick to vanish in midair. He took something from a pocket and brandished that instead. Ripples of distortion seethed around his hand.
Anton had little doubt that the follow-up spell, if completed, would mean the end of him. He had to straighten up and strike. Had to. Had to. He sucked in a breath, bellowed it out, and heaved himself upright. The curse inflicted a final spasm, and the torment faded.
But perhaps it had delayed him long enough. Diero lifted the fist clutching the spell focus as if grasping a dagger in an overhand grip. It looked as if it must be the penultimate move in the conjuration. When he stabbed downward, the magic would blaze into existence.
Anton cut as the hand plunged down. The greatsword clipped the extremity off just above the wrist. Blood spurted from the stump. Diero’s face paled all at once, and his mouth fell open. Anton pulled the dark blade back for the death stroke.
“The torturer wanted to break you,” whimpered Diero, gripping his truncated forearm in a thus-far unsuccessful attempt to stanch the bleeding. “I saved you.”
“That was a mistake,” Anton replied. He decided to behead Diero, shifted the sword into the proper attitude, then hesitated.
Because somehow, in spite of all his hatred and anger, all the terror and excitement of combat, he’d abruptly remembered he was a spy. A gatherer of secrets, and it was certain no one on Tan knew more secrets about the Cult of the Dragon than its resident wearer of purple.
Still he yearned to kill Diero, and the greatsword urged him on. His arms trembled with the need to cut. He gave a wordless cry, denying the impulse, and kicked the wizard’s feet out from under him instead. Once his foe was down, he booted him in the chin then stamped on the fingers of his remaining hand. Even if Diero escaped death by exsanguination, the fractures should keep him from casting any more spells.
As Anton finished, he heard the wyrm on the cavern floor snarling what sounded like an incantation of its own. He rushed to the drop-off to see what was happening.
To his dismay, the dragon was Eshcaz, the most formidable of them all. The red bore a number of wounds, but if they’d weakened him, it wasn’t apparent from his carriage. Eshcaz declaimed the final syllable of his spell, and a soft, oozing, semitransparent wall appeared midway across the chamber. It looked like water piled up on top of itself, like a tall wave that refused to curl and break.
Rather, the mass simply lost cohesion, shattered, and all the liquid plunged toward the floor. It vanished into nothingness, though, before it could raise a splash. Eshcaz strode toward the opposite end of the cavern and the defenseless creatures gathered there.
Most were ixitxachitls and gill-men, crawling, stumbling, or gliding erratically about in manifest confusion and distress. One, however, was a shalarin shrouded in bright, crackling flame, as if someone had dipped it in oil and set it alight. That one rolled back and forth on the ground.
After her first clash with Kassur, Anton had explained to Tu’ala’keth that if she ever caught fire, dropping and rolling was the way to put it out. Was that her?
Maybe it was, though he couldn’t imagine how she could have returned at the head of an ixitxachitl army. As he understood it, the demon rays were hostile to the Nantarn Alliance. Still, what other shalarin could it be?
He reflected grimly that in another moment, it wouldn’t much matter who it had been. The shalarin and its allies were helpless, and Eshcaz was about to kill them. Even if Anton had cared to intervene on behalf of a creature who’d given him to the cultists to torture and enslave, he could only delay the inevitable for a moment or two at most, and that at the cost of his own life.
He knew it, jumped off the ledge anyway, and couldn’t even say why. He wondered if the sword’s irrational, implacable bloodlust had prompted him then decided it didn’t matter. Though he was committing suicide, it felt right: pure, in a black and ferocious way.
The final spell in his meager store allowed him to land softly as a drifting wisp of gossamer, without injury or even a jolt. He charged instantly.
Eshcaz must have been intent on the creatures who’d evidently managed to wound him previously, or else the ambient noise and stinks masked Anton’s approach, for despite the dragon’s keen senses, he didn’t notice the newcomer. Anton cut deep into his flank.
Eshcaz roared and spun around toward his foe, which meant the world shattered into a chaos of sweeping tail and trampling feet. Anton had to duck, dodge, and scramble just to avoid being crushed before the red even oriented on him and made an actual attack.
Eshcaz glared with eyes like hellfire. He opened his fangs, and his wedge-shaped head surged forward and down at the end of the serpentine neck. Anton waited until the final instantdodge too soon and a foe would simply compensatethen wrenched himself aside. The gigantic jaws clashed shut beside him, and he cut at the dragon’s mask.