Clearly, the outnumbered attackers needed to withdraw. “We’ve accomplished what we wanted!” he cried, now pulling Giantsmiter from its sheath at his back. He rushed toward Sir Michael, who stood alone against a pair of Ankhar’s bodyguards. Moptop, his nose bleeding, ran along beside him, leaping over the body of the slain Sword Knight who had stood at Michael’s side when they entered the room.
“Where’s Maxwell?” demanded Jaymes, holding his great sword with one hand and spinning on his heel.
But Ankhar had closed in on the young Kingfisher. With one great hand, he gripped the young wizard around the throat and lifted him from the floor. Maxwell’s feet kicked and his arms thrashed, but he could do nothing against the hulking brute. With a deep, wet snarl, the half-giant tightened his fingers around the man’s neck.
Sir Michael cut down the last of the Dark Knights with a thrust to the gut, and joined Jaymes as both turned to rush toward the enemy commander. The hobgoblin shaman shrieked something, and both warriors halted abruptly as if they had crashed against an invisible fence. The lord marshal swung his flaming sword at the barrier and felt it wavering as Maxwell’s face turned blue, his flailing limbs suddenly drooping limply.
Moptop sprang across the room, jumping right at the shaman’s head. He wrapped his arms around her face, and the two of them stumbled crazily toward a large stone fireplace-the hearth, fortunately, cold. Their shouts and screams mingled chaotically as they tumbled onto the granite shelf, the kender on top of the old witch-doctor. With a shout of triumph, the kender broke free of the shaman’s violent embrace.
At the same time, the door to the street burst open and a troop of ogres charged in. “Kill them!” shrieked the witch-doctor, pointing with her skull’s-head rattle, and the brutes charged en masse toward the two swordsmen and the kender.
Maxwell made one last desperate gesture-a wave of his hand toward Jaymes. His mouth worked, and though no sound emerged, he clearly signaled: “Go!”
More ogres spilled through the door. The hob-wench shrieked her “Kill!” command over and over.
“You’ve got to flee,” Michael said to Jaymes, as they edged back from the approaching ogres.
“You too,” commanded the lord marshal, taking the other man by the shoulder and pulling him back. “There’s nothing more we can do.”
Grimacing in fury and grief, the Sword Knight acknowledged this truth. Moptop was already out the door, and they turned and followed him into the kitchen, stopping only to pull a heavy ice chest down to block their escape.
In the alley they saw that the last Sword Knight had taken up position near the street, where he stood matching swords with a burly ogre, giving ground slowly. Arrows zinged around them as some of Ankhar’s archers, responding to the alarms, shot wildly into the alley. The knight groaned and fell, bleeding from a gash through his chest, but before the ogre could advance, Sir Michael charged to replace the fallen man.
“Get away from here!” the swordsman shouted over his shoulder before cutting down the ogre with a single stab. More of the brutish warriors filled the mouth of the alley.
“Go!” Michael cried before meeting the next ogre with a resounding parry. “Est Sularus oth Mithas!” he shouted, the ecstasy of honorable battle radiant in his voice.
Jaymes shoved Moptop toward the gaping sewer hole. With a yelp, the kender ducked out of sight, and the lord marshal tumbled after. They ran into the darkness, chased by the sounds of ringing steel from the lone knight’s valiant holding action.
After no more than ten breaths, the sounds of battle suddenly ceased, but soon they were around the first corner, sprinting away through the sewers of Solanthus.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘W hat happened?” Ankhar roared, seizing the chief of his bodyguard detail and shaking him by the shoulder until the man’s neck broke with an audible snap. The half-giant cast the suddenly limp body aside, glaring down at his stepmother. “What happened?” he repeated, his voice, if anything, louder and angrier.
Yet Laka didn’t even spare him a glance. She was busy pressing her hand to the bleeding wound on Hoarst’s chest, muttering some prayer to the Prince of Lies. Abruptly, as the half-giant stared, she plucked out the bloody bolt and tossed it aside. She hoisted her death’s-head talisman, held it over the Thorn Knight’s pallid face, and shook it wildly. The pebbles in the skull rattled and the green stones in the eyes glowed, visible even in the daylight. Finally the hobgoblin dropped the device so the fleshless mouth of the skull met the cold, blue lips of the dying man.
Hoarst gave a hideous shriek. The green light flashed again, so brightly this time that Ankhar was forced to blink. In spite of himself, he leaned closer, watching the bleeding Thorn Knight with narrowed eyes.
Hoarst gasped and coughed, choking violently. Laka turned him onto his side, and he vomited blood onto the inn’s smooth floorboards, convulsing with pain and finally curling into a ball and drawing ragged, retching breaths. The wizard’s eyes were shut, his hands curled into fists and clutched against his chest, as he shivered like one in the depths of Nordmaar fever.
“Almost dead,” Laka said, standing and fixing the army commander with a sharp-toothed grin. “But not quite.”
“The wand!” spluttered the half-giant. “Can’t you use it?”
Laka shrugged. “Dunno,” she replied with a lot less concern than the army commander expected to see.
“What will we do without it?” he growled.
“You take it,” she replied, handing him the slender pieces of wood she plucked from under the crate. He looked at the things, like a broken toothpick in his massive hand, and suppressed the urge to throw them to the floor. They looked so tiny, so insignificant, he couldn’t believe it would make any difference if he waved them at the elemental king and tried to give it orders.
Laka dusted off the ashes that covered her all over from her tumble into the hearth. She patted her belt purse and shook her head grimly as she glared upward at her stepson.
“Wand’s not the worst of it.” Laka pulled a small, ruby-encrusted object from her pouch, and showed it to Ankhar. The lid of the little box had broken loose and lay separately in her weathered hand. Several of the stones were loose-tiny chips of crimson flecking her brown, parchment-like skin.
“We have no box to hold the giant when it comes for us.” She made the announcement as if she were reporting a shortage of butter to spread on the army commander’s ration of bread.
Ankhar looked askance at the broken box. Its magic was gone, the half-giant realized. The wand was of little use even if it were in one piece. The elemental king could no longer be imprisoned in the magic box. The thought of that horrific being stomping toward him, free of its prison and out of control, suddenly struck home. It was a very unsettling thought, indeed.
“It will come soon, won’t it? And it will be seeking us-you, and me, and the Gray Robe?”
Laka snorted. “What do you think?”
Ankhar threw back his head and roared with exasperation. He beat a mighty fist against his chest then struggled to think, to regain command of, first, his own emotions, then his army, then this battle.
“Yes, I understand. The wizard who held the king at bay is wounded and possibly dying, and the box that we have held him in is broken.” He growled, turning his back and stomping angrily across the inn’s hall. He spun again and pointed a thick finger at his stepmother and the still-huddled form of the Thorn Knight.
“There is only one thing to do: fix it!” he roared. “Before it kills us all!”
Jaymes and Moptop, a little muddy and wet from their trek through the sewers, raced into the Temple of Kiri-Jolith, where the duchess agreed to wait for them. They found her and her captains in a side vestibule, examining a map of the city that was spread over a desk.