Loosing an arrow is as simple as letting go. Release the string. The weapon does all the work.
Then do it all over again.
The beasts fell like fat raindrops as the arrows pierced them, and she stepped carefully as she loosed to stay out of the range of their lashing tentacles as they fell-the appendages were barbed, and probably venomous. There were only three left, but they scattered, coming at her from different directions, moving faster, and she realized she’d never be able to hit them all.
But she was still thinking like a woman who possessed no magic. The sunrod made ample shadows, so she stepped into one, and stepped out of another across the cavern, with all three of the creatures in her sights. Three more rapid pulls and releases put them down. She hadn’t needed her hand crossbow after all. She surveyed the room, but there was nothing there still alive, apart from the albino cave snake, which slithered among the fallen bodies, investigating them with interest, heedless of their tentacles but somehow avoiding them too. Zaltys wanted to recover her arrows-her quiver only held eighteen, and she’d used up a dozen. Of the six left, three had enchanted arrowheads given to her by Quelamia-salamander tooth, basilisk slime, crystalline shard of the Living Gate-and the remaining three ordinary arrows were the worst of the bunch. All serviceable, but not as straight and true as the ones she’d used already. Getting the arrows was probably impossible, though. The beasts were mostly still lashing their tentacles, either in their death throes or merely injured. She’d aimed for the central undersides of their bodies, thinking that might be a weak spot, but only three or four seemed outright dead, so perhaps she’d misjudged. She recovered her pack, the sunrod, and her hand crossbow, but could only get three of her arrows back without coming close to the thrashing creatures, several of whom were croaking in a guttural way that might have been speech. They probably were intelligent, then-but they’d looked like death from above to her, and she’d acted accordingly.
Zaltys couldn’t finish them with a blade, not without coming in reach of their tentacles. She considered waiting for them to die to get the rest of her arrows, but what if their voices brought more creatures to help them-or predators to feed on them, which might like Zaltys as an appetizer? Every moment that passed took Julen farther away from her too. She’d always disdained the idea of magical “endless quivers,” finding it somehow vaguely unsporting to kill a creature with a magical arrow that would disappear in an hour anyway, but she wished she had one now. After all, shadow snake armor and a magical bow were hardly sporting, either. And, more importantly, this mission was nothing like sport.
The snake was certainly ready to go, slithering toward one of the two tunnels that led away from the cavern, one slanting up, one angled precipitously down. Zaltys looked, and-no surprise-saw a blue chalk mark just inside the down-slanting tunnel. The snake slithered off into the depths, and Zaltys followed.
From the roof of the cavern, otherwise inhabited only by the dying, a grell philosopher descended toward its fallen followers, watching their lovely, supple tentacles gradually go still. Grell tended to be solitary hunters, but occasionally one with an unusually strong will could bind others into its service-or woo them with a sufficiently potent philosophy. A philosopher without followers is essentially someone talking to himself, and the grell was, if not sorrowful about the massacre, at least annoyed. It could have intervened, of course, with psychic blasts, stunning the human girl long enough for her to be paralyzed by the toxic tentacles of its minions. She could have been eaten at leisure, or made into a slave if she’d proved receptive to the philosopher’s teachings.
I’ve held up my end of the arrangement, the philosopher thought at the darkness. It could sense, in its mind, the presence of that much greater mind-itself only a fragment of some larger and more potent whole-that had paused here to bargain. I spared your instrument, and let my people die. I don’t see why we couldn’t have let her simply pass by unmolested. Why provoke her?
She needs to grow accustomed to killing here, in the dark, the great mind replied. There is much more killing ahead of her.
And you’ll make sure the ones killed are my enemies? the philosopher asked. The derro who forced me to give them safe passage through my territory?
Those. Among others. So I have sworn. The dark voice withdrew.
What do you swear by, the philosopher mused, when you are yourself possessed of a name that others swear by? Who could punish a god for breaking an oath? They were deep questions, worthy of intensive pondering, and the philosopher let his mind consider them from every possible angle as he went about the grim pleasure of eating the corpses of his former students.
The derro didn’t fight with any particular strategy; they barely even had tactics. The first wave gibbered and swung crude clubs, shrieking wildly, a technique that many warriors used to frighten their enemies-but Krailash thought their shrieks were the real thing, actual madness instead of imitation ferocity. The derro in the second rank sprayed bolts from their repeating crossbows almost at random, and struck down more of their own attacking thugs than they did the human guards crowding the tunnel. What they lacked in battle proficiency they made up for with pure ferocity, and an enemy that behaves irrationally is hard for an experienced warrior to deal with.
But the guards were armored well, and they were hardened veterans, so they raised their shields and hacked off any derro limb that tried to break their line. The narrow mineshaft was actually a good defensive position, but the onslaught of the derro, who fought on, heedless of injury, until their wounds were too severe to ignore, was too much. Krailash called the rearguard forward and sent them into the fray, positioning himself in front of Alaia as her final defense. He shouted at her to retreat, to go back to the surface, thinking only that he could defend her long enough to escape before he died himself.
But instead, Alaia drew a small carved figurine from within her robes and began to speak in a low, firm voice.
Krailash knew, intellectually, that Alaia was a powerful shaman. He’d seen her spirit companion prowling around camp almost daily for decades, and had been healed by her magic during his service. But he’d never thought of her as a warrior, because she’d never gone into battle before.
So at first, he thought it was some new form of derro attack when two immense, humanoid figures made of stone tore themselves loose from the tunnel walls. But instead of attacking his wounded men, they pushed past them and began to batter at the derro. The spraying crossbow bolts made no impression on the stone men, who laid about with blunt fists. They had no finesse, these mountain-men; but they had power. Derro flew back, clearing the entrance, and allowing his men to fan out and flank the enemy. There weren’t that many derro left standing by then, only a dozen or so, and between the stone men Alaia had summoned, the ripping tusks of her spirit boar attacking them from the rear, and the men doing their best to fight on despite their wounds, the attackers didn’t stand a chance.
Krailash noticed one of the derro-armed neither with a club nor a crossbow, but with shackles dangling from his belt-attempting to slip down one of the side tunnels. With a roar, Krailash used his breath weapon, disgorging a cone of icy wind that struck the derro slaver and froze him in place. Swinging his battle-axe, Krailash cut down the few derro that were still moving until he stood before the shivering slaver. The derro was almost child-sized, no taller than a dwarf and more slender, with eyes as blank as a snowy field and dead white strawlike hair sticking up in ugly tufts. The slaver wore leather armor, but of a disturbingly pale hue, and Krailash wondered what animal-or person-had given its skin to make that leather. He snatched the shackles from the slaver’s belt. “Do you speak a civilized tongue?”