And obviously, the Green Hand slayings were the vilest crimes of all and made retaliation a matter of simple self-preservation. The honest people of Luthcheq had to get the mages before the mages got the rest of them.
Morric had noticed arrows falling from overhead, and the fear of them kept his head down and his shoulders hunched as he darted through the opening. But no shaft whizzed out of the dark to pierce him-or any of his companions either. The bowmen must be looking elsewhere.
Which meant they’d missed their chance at Morric. Once he broke into a mage’s house, no sellsword would even know where he was, let alone have any hope of stopping him. He glanced around, deciding where to start-and then, above his head, something shrieked. Shadows swept across the ground. He froze.
A winged beast plunged down in front of him, right on top of one of his fellow avengers. The creature’s talons stabbed deep into its victim’s body, its weight smashed him into a crumpled heap, and he died without making a sound.
The griffon flapped its wings and leaped onto a second man. That one did manage a truncated yelp, but only because he saw death hurtling at him. The beast ripped him to pieces a heartbeat later.
As it did, Morric noticed the armored warrior on its back. In other circumstances, the sellsword likely would have seemed fearsome, or at least formidable. Astride his eagle-headed steed, he was inconsequential.
Morric’s adz slipped from his grip. He’d brought it to serve as his weapon. Still, now that he was numb and slow with dread, it didn’t seem to matter that he’d dropped it. He couldn’t imagine such a puny instrument hurting the griffon.
But it mattered in a different sort of way. The adz clanked when it hit the ground, and the noise made the creature’s head with its gory, dripping beak snap around in his direction.
Morric still couldn’t move. Or scream. He needed to, but the cry felt jammed in his clogged throat and dry mouth.
The griffon gathered itself to pounce. Then a madman ran at its flank with a leveled spear. The beast spun to defend itself.
When the beast turned away, it broke Morric out of his paralysis. It occurred to him that he could try to help the man with the spear as the fellow had saved him, but the thought was just a chain of words that scarcely even seemed to have a meaning. He whirled and ran.
Others did the same. Tripping and trampling over fallen bodies he couldn’t see, but only felt thrashing beneath him, he struggled to bull his way through the press. A griffon dived and slammed a man to the earth. The creature was almost close enough for Morric to reach out and touch, and as it ripped its victim apart, warm blood and gobs of flesh spattered him.
He was so frantic to avoid the griffons that he nearly flung himself onto the point of an outlander’s sword. But he somehow twisted away from the thrust and floundered onward, and then people weren’t packed together quite as tightly. He could run faster, and he did.
He started feeling his exhaustion not long afterward. Still, he wouldn’t allow himself to halt until the wizards’ precinct was several blocks behind and he’d separated himself from everyone else who’d fled the battle.
Then, legs leaden, heart hammering, he flopped down in an alley and wheezed. He remembered the man who’d saved him-and whom he in turn had abandoned-and felt a pang of shame.
But curse it, it wasn’t his fault the wretch was dead! It was the fault of the despicable Thayans and the war hero who’d given them authority. Who’d sent them to slaughter her own people when they’d risen up to cleanse Luthcheq of a canker.
THREE
30 CHES-6 TARSAKH THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
The rain pattered down from a gray sky. It made the task of picking up bodies and tossing them onto carts even more cheerless, if that was possible.
Since she was an officer, Jhesrhi didn’t have to dirty her hands with such labor. Since she didn’t have any men under her direct command, she didn’t even have to supervise it. But she watched it for a time, then stalked back to her billet and stuffed her grimoires and spare clothing into her saddlebags.
Then she hauled them and her tack to the overhang at the side of the house. So named for the long, livid ridge that marked his flank from feathers to fur, Scar spotted the gear and knew they were going to fly. He gave an eager rasp and leaped to his feet.
And Jhesrhi faltered. Because while the griffon was hers in one sense, in another he belonged to the Brotherhood. Did she have the right to take him away with her, particularly when, in the wake of the Thayan campaign, the pride was so diminished?
She scowled and set her burdens down while she weighed the question. Scar padded over and nuzzled her, almost hard enough to knock her off balance. He was expressing affection, but also urging her to get moving.
As she should have. For a moment later, someone whistled a jaunty tune, a song whose lyrics she considered particularly tasteless and offensive. Looking like he’d enjoyed a full night’s sleep and like the rain had no power to plaster down his feathered copper hair or otherwise mar his debonair appearance, Gaedynn sauntered toward her from the street.
He glanced at the little pile of her possessions. “Ready for a change of scene?”
“War is one thing, but I don’t have the stomach for this.”
“Just because we killed civilians? At least they were Chessentan civilians. And I was under the impression that you detest this place.”
“I do. But…”
He arched a trimmed eyebrow. “But…?”
“If I’d handled myself better when those meddlers accosted my prisoners and me, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Yes, I agree with you there.”
She blinked. “What?”
He shrugged. “Admittedly, some might compare last night’s unpleasantness to an avalanche. Given your intimacy with the ruling spirits of earth and stone, you no doubt understand better than I how at the start of such an event, one rock bumps another, and that one jostles a third, until an entire mountainside is falling. Here in Luthcheq, the various pebbles were the Green Hand murders, the news of pillage and piracy, the resulting disruption of commerce, the bad blood between dragonborn and genasi-and what have you-all knocking into one another to create a surge of violence that inevitably targeted the outcasts Chessenta loves to hate.
“In this analogy,” he continued, “your little confrontation in the street was only one pebble among many. Still, it was your duty to pluck it from the air before it could do any harm, and you failed.”
She sighed. “I know what you’re doing. You want me to say that if that particular pebble hadn’t triggered the avalanche, another one would have. But I don’t know that for certain. What I do know is that someone else-someone like you-could have sent those louts on their way with cogent words and a jest.”
“Oh, undoubtedly. After all, I am exceptionally charming, and clever too. But Aoth didn’t hire you for your ability to placate the dull and ignorant. As I recall, it has more to do with your gift for knocking down walls and setting enemy troops on fire.”
“No matter why he hired me, I’m a liability in this place.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s Aoth who’s the liability to you and me.”
“What?”
“He was a great war leader once, but his time has passed. Look at the state the Brotherhood is in, torn to shreds and reduced to doing this dreary job.”
“You know the mission we undertook in Thay was absolutely necessary, and that no one else in the East could have done it as well.”
“What about Impiltur?”
“Impiltur was just bad luck.”
Gaedynn grinned. “And when a sellsword leader’s luck sours, nothing else matters. His lieutenants have no choice but to desert him before he leads them to their deaths. Or before their collaboration in his debacles so tarnishes their own reputations that, like him, they ultimately become unemployable.”