Kandler looked up past the young knight and saw that his sword was about to have its chance. Before he could shout a warning, the nearest ghostbeast leaped from the rooftop straight at Brendis’s back.
The young knight slashed out at the creature, his sword cutting a blinding arc through the dusk and slicing across the predator’s chest. Glowing blood splattered in a trail after the tip of the blade, and the ghostbeast unleashed a sound that made Kandler want to plug his ears.
The creature lashed out with its glowing claws, seeking a way to get past not only Brendis’s flashing blade but his gleaming armor too. Kandler knew that it was only a matter of time before it succeeded. Perched atop the back of the terrified horse, it was too close for the knight to strike at it again.
A wire twanged from behind the ghostbeast, and the creature tumbled off Brendis’s back. Burch’s mount trampled the monster beneath its hooves as the shifter slammed another bolt home into his crossbow. His wide, toothy smile stood out starkly in the dimness.
“I’m all right!” Brendis announced as he turned to face forward, glowing fluid splashed across his face and arm.
Kandler wanted to be relieved, but he knew that this was just the first attack of many to come if they didn’t get to safety soon. He scanned the road ahead, looking for some sort of shelter, someplace they could hide both themselves and preferably their mounts.
Dozens of open doors and windows gaped at him like welcoming mouths, beckoning him to dare their dark embraces. Any of them might have been the right place to go, to hole up until the ghostbeasts lost interest or the sun lightened the overcast sky again. They might just be openings into dead ends, indefensible spaces that could only serve as open graves.
Then Kandler spotted something off in the distance. At first he thought it might be another of the ghostbeasts glowing in the darkness, but the hue of the faint light spilling from the top of the Prime Pillar burned with a warmth he suspected the ghostbeasts would never know.
“There!” he shouted to the others, stabbing a finger at the rapidly approaching Pillar. “There’s someone there!”
“It could be a trap!” Burch said, his eyes searching the rooftops for another attacker, another target.
“If it gets us away from these things,” Brendis said, “that’s one trap I’ll leap right into.”
As the riders galloped closer and closer to the Pillar, Kandler realized that the light he’d seen must have been a signal of some sort, but to whom and from whom he could not tell. He just hoped they could reach the Great Circle, the open plaza that surrounded the Pillar, before the ghostbeasts could catch them.
A pair of the glowing creatures emerged from across the street ahead of the riders. They crouched low, ready to spring at the riders. A pair of wails that set up a disturbing harmony echoed in Kandler’s ears, and he felt Xalt cling to his waist tighter.
A bolt from behind Kandler sailed wide over the head of the creature on the right, and he heard Burch curse. The shifter wasn’t used to loosing his crossbow from horseback, and the constant jolting had spoiled his aim. Still, Kandler thought he might be able to take advantage of the effort, missed or not.
The errant bolt caused the ghostbeast on the right to dodge closer to the other, just where Kandler wanted them. He drove his horse straight at the creature on the left and swung his sword down at the other as it steeled itself for an attack at him as he passed.
Kandler felt one monster go down beneath his mount’s hooves as he drove the point of his sword forward like a lance, using the horse’s momentum to impale the ghostbeast on its tip. The dying creature slid forward along the length of the blade that ran it through until it smashed into the sword’s hilt, nearly tearing it from Kandler’s grasp. The thing was close enough that the justicar could smell its breath, like steel hot from the forge.
The ghostbeast hung there for a moment, clutching at its wound before trying to claw Kandler’s eyes out. The justicar let the tip of his blade fall toward the ground, and the monster slid off the sword with a gut-wrenching wail that lasted until Sallah’s steed trampled it into the pavement.
More howls reverberated throughout the city. Kandler felt like the sound alone might cause him to fall to his knees were he not clinging to the top of a horse spooked even worse by the songs of that unholy chorus. Instead, he just held on to the horse with one hand and to his sword with the other as they careened toward the Great Circle.
Kandler started to breathe easier as they raced closer to their goal. The legendary plaza opened slowly before them as they sprinted recklessly toward it. The light in the top of the tower grew brighter, and Kandler imagined that he heard the shouts of men over the thunder of the riders’ hooves. He didn’t know to whom they belonged, but they had to be better to deal with than the howling ghostbeasts.
Just before the riders reached the Great Circle, the road opened up into a small square that let out into the main plaza. As Kandler’s steed crossed into that space, something slammed into him and his mount, knocking him and Xalt from their saddle.
Kandler tucked himself into a ball around his sword as he hit the ground and rolled to a painful stop against an abandoned shop. As he scrambled to his feet, his sword out in front of him, ready to taste whatever the ghostbeasts used for blood, he saw that Sallah and Burch had reined their horses in and turned around to come back for Xalt and him.
“Keep moving!” he roared at them.
As he spoke, he turned to see the ghostbeast that attacked him tear open his horse’s throat, the hapless beast’s blood fountaining everywhere, blotting out the monster’s glowing form with blackness where it splashed against it.
“I think we’re in trouble,” Xalt said from behind the justicar.
7
“Move!” Kandler yelled, pushing Xalt after the others. As the warforged scrambled away, Kandler shuffled backward after him, keeping the tip of his sword pointed at the glowing creature goring his mount.
The dying horse tried to kick its assailant away, but the beast was already in too close, tearing away at the steed’s soft belly with its claws. As the horse collapsed, dead already, the glowing, blood-drenched creature rose from behind the still-hot corpse and unleashed a horrific noise from deep within its throat, something that seemed like it could only have been trapped in the belly of a demon, festering for centuries untold.
Kandler’s eyes locked with the creature, which was strangely human for all its unearthly ways. Madness danced in those pale glowing eyes, madness and a driving hunger to quench the fires of life in all it faced.
The justicar turned and sprinted away.
Kandler knew that the ghostbeast could outrun him. It and its ilk had kept pace with a galloping horse, and he wasn’t nearly so fast. All he wanted, though, was to put some distance between himself and the creature, just enough for Burch to get a clear angle.
As Kandler sprinted for the Great Circle, memories of the square he ran through came flooding into his mind. Over there, under a black awning, sat a Brelish pub—Ginty’s—at which he and Burch had shared many a drink. Esprina had come to find him there the evening after their first meeting, a happy surprise in many ways, as he’d supposed she’d be after his head.
“Duck!” Burch shouted.
Kandler dove forward, just ahead of the sound of the blood-gorged ghostbeast slavering on his heels. The shifter’s crossbow twanged, and a bolt hissed overhead. The creature tumbled to the ground, the claws on its dead hands feebly scraping the back of Kandler’s boots.
The justicar raced up to the others. “I thought I told you to keep moving,” he said, feeling angrier about it than he should.