She’d mixed the stoneclaw sap and creeper gum herself, and spread it on the soles of her boots more thickly than most thieves, miners, and sailors liked it, but it had seen her through more catwalk and rooftop landings on this foray than she cared to think about just now, and if it served her just once more…
Asper’s boots struck the beholder’s body with solid thumps, and the blade in her hands flashed once and back again before she’d even caught her balance. Almost cut through, an eyestalk flopped and thrashed beside her, spattering her with yellow-green, stinging gore as another eye turned her way—and as her boots found purchase on the curving body plates, Asper lunged desperately, putting her sword tip through the questing eye and shaking violently to drag the steel free before another orb could bathe her in its deadly gaze.
Three of the deadly eyestalks were turning, like slow serpents, and the beholder was rolling over to fling her off. Asper kicked out at one eye as her balance went, and flailed with her blade at another, ending up falling hard on the bony plates of the monster’s body, wrapped around an eyestalk. She clung to it with one hand and drove the quillons of her blade into the questing orb that came curling at her. Milky fluid burst forth, drenching her. Spitting out the reeking slime, Asper grimly slashed at another eye—then she was falling, the beholder’s bony bulk no longer under her.
Stones rushed up to meet her, and Asper tucked herself around her sword, trying to roll, but there was no time, and she crashed into what was left of a wall with numbing force, reeling back helplessly with mists swirling in front of her eyes and new wetness on her chin where she’d bitten through her lip.
Mirt was roaring her name and sprinting toward her, arms spread to embrace her. Would his failing shields protect them both?
Not from the death that was now sweeping toward her. The beholder’s large central eye was a rent, shriveled ruin, milky liquid dripping from a slash that gaped low in the now-sightless bulge, but the smaller eyes on their stalks glittered with maddened rage as they stared at her, growing swiftly nearer. The charging monster would either ram her into the stones and crush the life from her, or roll over at the last instant to snap at her with its fangs—teeth adorning a jagged mouth quite large enough to swallow her.
Asper shuddered, shook her head to clear it, and raised the gore-streaming blade she still held, as Mirt came gasping up to her, stout sword raised—and the beholder’s eyes vanished behind its own bulk, as it rolled over to reveal the gaping maw that would devour her.
A giant among his own kind, and armed with spells that they lacked, magic enough to overmatch many a human mage, Xuzoun had been contemptuously overconfident. Always a mistake with humans, he vaguely remembered an older tyrant telling him once as they drifted together over a long-ago battlefield where thousands of ores and humans lay trampled and fallen, during a chance meeting after both he and the other had sought the entertainment of watching an ore horde hew its way into oblivion—and had paid dearly. It would take many spells and long, long months in hiding to regain what had been lost in a few moments of red, reaving pain, but first to still the hands that had done this, forever!
Mirt fetched up against her, panting. “Are ye mad, lass? Yon—”
Asper shoved him away, and with the momentum pushing against his shaggy bulk gave her, spun about and dived away, just as Mirt staggered backward and sat down hard on bruising stone with a roar of pain—and the beholder crashed into the stones where they’d stood, snapping and tearing with its teeth.
Rubble sprayed or rolled in all directions as the beholder raked the heap of stone apart, teeth grating on rock. The impact sent it cartwheeling helplessly away through the air and uncovered a battered, unsteadily-reeling tavernmaster.
Durnan found his feet and climbed grimly out of the heaped stones, growling at the pain of several stiffening bruises. He’d been buried long enough to know the first cold touch of despair, and was in a mood to rend beholders.
“Urrrgh,” Mirt snarled, waddling awkwardly to his feet. “What’s this the earth spits forth? Tavernmasters gone carelessly strolling through Skullport?”
“Well met, old friend,” Durnan said with a grin, clapping Mirt on the shoulder with fingers that seemed made of iron.
Mirt’s moustache made that overall bristling movement that betokened a smile. “I saw the little minx ye came seeking, sitting as cool as ye please in Bindle’s Blade, tossing down amberjack, so I came in haste, knowing ye’d be avidly hunting down a trap!” He cast a look at the beholder as it thudded into the wall of a stronghouse where pale faces had just vanished from view, and asked, “So what did ye do to get a tyrant mad at ye? Refuse to kiss it?”
“Your wit slides out razor-sharp as always, Old Wolf,” Durnan observed, with a sly smile that belied his light, innocent tone.
Mirt gestured rudely in reply. “Well?”
“Nothing,” Durnan said flatly as they watched the beholder reel, steady itself, and begin to drift their way, menacingly slow and carefully. “I came out of the Portal to aid a noble lady—and strode straight into a spell that snatched me here.” He grinned. “Well, at least it saved me a bit of walking.”
Mirt harrumphed. “Pity it didn’t do the same for me.” Rock shifted behind him and he whirled around, sword out and low—only to relax and smile. “Lass, lass, how many times have I told thee how much I hate being snuck up on from behind?” he chided Asper halfheartedly. She gestured past him with her sword.
“You’d better turn around again, then, my lord,” she told him calmly, as a plucking at his belt told him that Durnan had snatched one of his daggers. Mirt grunted like a walrus and heaved himself around, puffing—in time to see the beholder rushing down at them again, beams of reaving light lancing out from its eyes.
“Keep behind me, both of ye!” the fat moneylender roared. “I’m shielded!”
“Against teeth like those? That’s a spell you’ll have to show me some time!” Durnan said, standing at Mirt’s shoulder with a dagger in either fist. He’d lost his blade under all the rocks, and one eye had swollen almost shut, but the tavernmaster seemed content—even eager—as death roared at them again.
Asper slid up to stand at Mirt’s other shoulder with the ease and fluid grace of a prowling serpent. “It seems strange to be worrying about a beholder’s teeth,” she said, “and not its eyes, for once.”
“Get back, lass!” Mirt roared. “As I haven’t worries enough!—”
Then the beholder crashed into them, snarling and snapping, as they hacked and slashed ineffectually against its bony body plates.
Its hot breath whirled around them as they jumped and hewed vainly and ducked aside, only to be struck and hurled away by what felt like a fast-moving castle wall. Durnan grunted as the tyrant smashed him down onto rocks like a rag doll, then rolled away into a gully as it settled, trying to crush him. Asper could not keep her feet when the jaws reached for her, and slid out of sight beneath the monster, only to duck up again, stab at it, and be thrown end-over-end across the ruins, sword flying from her numbed hands to clang and clatter to its own fall. She fetched up against a broken-off pillar with a gasp and a moan, but Mirt was too busy to hear her.
He was scrambling, cursing, and flailing against persistent fangs, sword ringing off bony plates and fangs alike, and in the end, only managed to avoid losing an arm by setting his sword upright against closing jaws and letting go. The beholder’s jaws caught on the blade, bent it, then spat it out.
By then, the three battered, wincing companions were rising out of the rubble in widely scattered spots. Fresh wagers were yelled in the distance.