The kobold slipped around the end of the barricade, opened the packet, and sniffed the few bits of brown crushed leaf inside. “You don’t have much.”
“Enough for you and your friends to have some fun,” Gaedynn said.
“Oh, take it and let them go on,” a different kobold said. “We’re getting soaked.”
“All right,” said the first kobold, evidently a sergeant or something comparable. It waved a clawed hand, and its fellows started to drag the mass of brambles aside.
“Stop,” a new voice rumbled. Less sibilant and two octaves deeper than the kobolds’ voices, it spoke Chessentan more clearly. Perhaps because it issued from a throat and mouth better shaped for human speech.
Gaedynn turned. Something more or less man-shaped, but as tall on its own two feet as he was on horseback, peered back at him from the darkness inside the burrow.
The big creature yawned. “What do we have here?”
“Nobody,” said the sergeant. “Just vagabonds.”
His superior emerged into the light and the rain. Perhaps it was a kind of kobold too. It had the same sort of claws, fangs, and greenish leathery hide. But sorcery, or conceivably mixed blood, had produced something more closely resembling one of the hulking giant-kin called ogres.
The big creature looked at the weapon clipped to Gaedynn’s saddle. “That’s a fine bow for a vagabond.”
Wishing he’d made do with an inferior one, Gaedynn inclined his head. “The one fine thing I own, sir. You wouldn’t take it, I hope. It’s what keeps the woman and me alive when times are lean.”
The leader grunted. “We’ll see.” It turned to the ordinary kobolds. “Search them. Persons and baggage both.”
If Jhesrhi knew a spell to change the creature’s mind, or to extricate herself and Gaedynn from this situation in some other way, now would be an excellent time to cast it. Before the kobolds unwrapped her staff or found the gold and silver they carried. Hoping to nudge her into action, he shot her a glance-then felt a pang of dismay.
Since they’d reached the barricade, she’d sat silently with her head bowed. She was trying to look cowed and submissive before the kobolds.
But now appearance had become reality. She was trembling.
By the Nine Hells and every flame that burned there, what was the matter with her? He’d watched her battle foes far more intimidating than kobolds and ogres without flinching.
“Get off your horses,” the kobold sergeant said.
Gaedynn wished he could drive an arrow into the reptile’s upraised snout. But an innocent traveler wouldn’t have had his bow strung, and so his wasn’t either. He yanked his sword from under the bundle intended to render it inconspicuous and cut.
The sergeant jumped back out of range. One of the other kobolds cast a javelin. It flew past the black mare’s head.
Spooked, she reared. Caught by surprise, Gaedynn tumbled from the saddle and over her rump to slam down on the ground.
Kobolds rushed him. Luckily they had to maneuver around the barricade and the frightened horse to do it, in the moment before she galloped back down the trail. It gave him time to roll to his feet and meet his first attacker with a slash that split its belly.
Javelins jabbed at him, and he knocked them out of line. Back foot splashing down in a puddle, he retreated to keep the smaller reptiles from encircling him. Then, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something looming on his flank. He pivoted in that direction, and the big creature’s long, brass-studded war club whizzed down at his head.
His warrior’s instincts kept him from trying to parry, lest he break his sword and perhaps his arm with it. Instead, he sidestepped and slashed the officer’s forearm. The brute snarled.
Instantly, before it could heave the club into position for another swing, he followed up with a second cut. A poorly aimed one-it missed the officer’s torso but at least gashed its lead leg. The brute stumbled backward, and Gaedynn turned just in time to parry another javelin thrust from one of the lesser kobolds. As he did, he noticed more of the creatures running out of the warren.
“Jhesrhi!” he yelled. “Do something, damn it!”
But she just kept sitting on the paint that, eyes rolling, looked like he’d bolt as soon as he discerned a clear path through the combatants. She wouldn’t even lift her head and look at the fight. Which likely meant Gaedynn wasn’t getting out of this.
The leader dropped its war club, turned, and ran at Jhesrhi. Perhaps caught by surprise, or simply still frozen with dread, she didn’t even try to resist as it grabbed her, dragged her out of the saddle, and held her up in the air like a toy.
“Drop your sword!” it bellowed. “Or I’ll pull her arms off!” Apparently Gaedynn’s prowess had impressed it enough that it didn’t want to risk losing any more of its warriors or getting sliced up any worse itself.
It would be idiotic to surrender. By her inaction, Jhesrhi had forfeited any claim on his consideration, and yielding probably wouldn’t help either of them anyway. He’d likely be trading a slim chance for none at all.
Yet he didn’t know if he had it in him to ignore the threat. He was still wondering when she finally came to life.
Perhaps it was the awareness that she was actually being held, touched, that roused her. She suddenly screamed and thrashed, and though her frenzy had no art in it-no precisely articulated words of command or flowing mystic passes-magic answered her anyway. The officer’s face burst into flame.
The hulking thing roared and let Jhesrhi drop so it could slap at the fire as it floundered backward. It reeled into the barricade. There was little chance of the thorns piercing its thick hide to any great effect, but Gaedynn supposed every little bit helped.
Jhesrhi rounded on her horse just as the animal lunged to follow the mare back down the trail. She rattled off a brief incantation, and the paint froze, his momentum nearly pitching him forward onto his nose. Even though Gaedynn wasn’t the target of the spell, for an instant his muscles bunched and locked as well.
Jhesrhi darted to the gelding and grabbed her staff. The rawhide lashings around the wrapping unknotted themselves.
A pair of kobolds rushed Gaedynn. He smeared the first one’s eye down its face with a stop cut and balked the second by chopping the steel point off its javelin.
Then he scrambled to interpose himself between Jhesrhi and as many of the enemy as he could. Now that she was belatedly making herself useful, it was his task to keep the kobolds off her while she cast her spells.
He landed a cut to a kobold’s flank, then twisted aside from a javelin thrust. Almost nimbly enough-the steel point ripped his jerkin and shirt and grazed along a rib. Because shiftless poachers, Glasya take them, didn’t wear brigandines. He killed his assailant before it could pull the weapon back for another try.
Behind him, Jhesrhi chanted a rhyme. For a heartbeat iridescence shimmered through the air. Rain fell upward, leaping from the puddles toward the clouds. A point of red light flew past Gaedynn into the mouth of the burrow-where, with a roar, it exploded into flame. The blast ripped the kobolds that were just emerging into burning, tumbling limbs.
Jhesrhi rattled off another spell. Rumbling and thudding in big chunks and little pellets, earth fell from the roof of the opening. The collapse didn’t quite fill it all the way to the ceiling, but no more kobolds would be coming out that way.
When the reptiles who’d already emerged saw what Jhesrhi could do, they hesitated. Panting, Gaedynn wondered if he and his companion could get past without having to fight the rest of them.
Then the big creature bellowed. Gaedynn glanced around just in time to see it launch itself at Jhesrhi. Its face was a charred, oozing mass. But the fire was out and had spared the brute’s eyes.
Jhesrhi spoke a word of command and stabbed with the tip of her staff. A fan-shaped flare of yellow flame leaped from the staff. It seared her attacker, but the creature kept charging, war club raised for a bone-shattering blow.