“I shall find out if the Cook is right,” said the Hunter peremptorily. Heedless of the altitude or gravity, the Hunter’s spirit raced away through the air, away from Star and toward the sivaks. Vanderjack watched with a frown as the ghost flew unseen around the draconians, who were less than a hundred yards from the dragonne, and a heartbeat later was back among the others in the Chorus.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” the Cook said.
“Right about what? What are you talking about?” said Vanderjack. He estimated that they had about thirty seconds before the draconians would be in striking range.
“They are the same draconians,” said the Hunter.
Vanderjack narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Those four are the Red Watch draconians who killed your mercenary friends,” explained the Cook.
“Well, then,” said Vanderjack. “This should be entertaining on all kinds of levels.”
He was aware then of Gredchen crying out, “Here they come!” and the gnome responding with “Strike from above!” As he turned Lifecleaver around in his right hand, letting the years of martial training bound tightly within his muscle memory take control, Vanderjack also heard the mighty roar of Star. It was a paean of grief forged from the failure of the great cats of the Dragon Isles, Star’s ancestors, to defend the eggs of the metallic dragons. It was a soul-wrenching scream that immediately preceded the loud, violent collision between the sivaks and the dragonne’s passengers.
Two of the sivaks were sent reeling backward by the shock of Star’s roar. The other two, one of whom was a very large and physically impressive specimen with the markings of a draconian commander, shrugged it off and swung upward with their huge serrated great-swords. Star evaded those weapons, but in doing so had to twist sideways. Gredchen had to seize hold of Star’s fur to keep from flying off his back. Theo, who had his polearm braced for the engagement, thrust it forward and let Star’s motion and the sivak’s attack keep him in place. The spearhead caught the sivak commander’s wingman in the shoulder, right beneath the curving metal plate that protected that part of his body. Black blood splashed forth along the length of the polearm, whisked into a froth by the velocity of the combatants; Vanderjack turned his head away to avoid befouling his eyes.
“Now!” said the Cavalier.
Still looking away, Vanderjack lifted himself into a straddling position on the dragonne’s broad back and thrust his sword downward, into the space between Star’s wing and his head, right where the sivak commander had appeared. Their swords clashed together. The serrated edges of the sivak’s weapon caught Lifecleaver, the force of the collision carrying upward into Vanderjack’s arms. Lifecleaver, forged from star metal, was not so easily pinned; Lifecleaver continued through the serrations and severed them from the sivak’s blade. The triangular remnants were sent up and away, one of them catching Gredchen in the thigh. The sivak flew right over the dragonne’s neck. Just as quickly as they had come together, they were all separated again, and Star flew down and down.
“Ready for the next strike!” Vanderjack yelled. He spared a moment to look over at Theo, who still held the polearm, slick with draconian ichor. Star was unharmed. Gredchen was binding her leg with a strip of cloth.
Vanderjack’s mind was racing. If they were the same draconians who had, years earlier, brought death to his band and killed Theodenes’ feline companion, what kind of forces were at work to bring them into contact again, so far from Ergoth?
“Why now?” he found himself saying to the Sword
Chorus. “What’s going on?”
“Prepare yourself,” said the Cavalier.
“Set aside your concerns, and trust to your sword arm,” said the Philosopher.
“It does seem a little strange,” said the Cook, but the other ghosts glared at him. Vanderjack shook his head and gritted his teeth. Star had flown in an upward-curving arc, soaring around to intercept the sivaks yet again.
“Sound your roar again!” shouted Theo above the whistling gale. “It’s already taken out two of them!”
Sure enough, the two sivaks who had been sent spi-raling away from the battle by the dragonne’s roar had not yet managed to regain control of their flight. They were plummeting toward the jungle along the slopes of the Emerald Peaks. There was a good chance that when they hit the upper canopy of the rainforest, their bones would be pulverized and they would become part of the landscape.
The sivak commander and his wounded companion were not yet out of the fight, however. Star’s next roar was deafening, but they were ready for it, so when Theo, Vanderjack, Gredchen, and the dragonne charged them again, it was all they could do to avoid being struck by the sivaks’ wickedly serrated blades.
The sivak commander’s weapon caught Star across his front flank, cleaving through his brass scales and opening a horrible wound. Star screamed, jerking upward. Gredchen couldn’t hold on, and the momentum of the upward flight sent her end over end into the sky above the conflict. Theo had both hands on his polearm, striving to bury the spearhead in the same sivak as before. The draconian reached out a clawed hand and grasped the shaft of the weapon, using it as a lever to flip the gnome off the back of the dragonne and into the open void.
Vanderjack’s ghosts were calling out a number of options for him, all of them conservative. He was alone on the back of a wounded dragon-tiger, his two companions falling to their deaths. There were two sivak draconians, easily more adept in the air than he was, and likely the same draconians who had once destroyed his mercenary company in Southern Ergoth and were responsible for years of division between the sellsword and Theodenes. Vanderjack didn’t really want to hear conservative options.
As Star fought to remain upright, bleeding and beating at the air with his draconic wings, Vanderjack gripped the hilt of Lifecleaver with both hands, shouted “For Southern Ergoth, you scaly bastards!” and leaped at the sivak commander.
Somewhere between leaving Star’s back and cutting the arm off the sivak, Vanderjack’s head exploded with a thundering wave of darkness.
Highmaster Rivven Cairn watched the evening rain wash away the blood on the clay surface of Wulfgar’s Horseman’s Arena.
She and Cear had returned only a few hours earlier, southwest of Willik, which she had left to the ghouls. After reporting the passage of Gredchen and Theodenes to her Black Robe agent, the highmaster decided to return to her base of operations. Wulfgar was, for all intents and purposes, home; even Cear appreciated the place. Perhaps the dragon liked it because he’d already staked his claim with fire and claw back when Rivven had flown in with her forces, driving the famous Feathered Plumes of Wulfgar into the jungle and overwhelming the city.
Another reason she had returned was to watch the fighting in the arena. There, steel and iron were set against claw and horn as humans and other races engaged in life-and-death battle with all manner of monstrous opponents. Many of the inhuman gladiators were chained and bound, in part to prevent them from leaping into the stands and tearing the spectators to pieces, but also to limit their movement and give the slave combatants a sporting chance.
It was the day before the chariot races; Rivven enjoyed the spectacle every year. They combined all the thrill of competitive racing with the brutality of gladiator combat. Weeks of bloodthirsty conflict led up to it, with the victors earning the chance to take part in the chariot race and perhaps win their freedom.
Rivven grew up alongside gladiators. Before she became an apprentice mage, she was entertainment, a token half-breed in a pit fighter’s house in Lemish. Her owner was a thick-necked human with a wispy excuse for a beard, a man she later killed in the course of her escape. He would force her to take on one opponent after the other, sometimes in the dark of night, sometimes under the hot light of day. She learned to kill with a knife, with a sword, with her own fists. She made no friends, saw no future, until the day she understood her owner’s weakness.