When the storm let up a day and a half later, passing to the south with its fury unabated, Erlestoke had led Ryswin and Pack Castleton up to scout things out, entering a nearby ruin they used as a lookout. As was common, a patrol of gibberers came through. All would have been fine, except that they paused to use the building Erlestoke sheltered in to protect them from a rising breeze.
Even their waiting there would not have been a problem, for the gibberers often lingered until the coming dawn signaled the change of a watch. The man-sized beasts had jutting muzzles and stout fangs, with mottled-fur coats of tan and black that served them poorly for hiding in the snow. Their tufted ears rose from thick skulls and flicked forward and back, though they seemed to rely on their sense of smell more than sight or hearing. The way they snorted in the room below him suggested to Erlestoke that the falling temperature was hard on the delicate tissues, helping to hide his scent from them.
He expected them to move on while it would be dark enough to get his men to safety, and their enthused yips seemed to indicate they would be doing that. But then a harsh bark that echoed down the street cut them off.
Their gibbering died quickly, and Erlestoke chanced to look out, barely peering around the corner of a shattered window casement. He saw a tall, slender creature stalking down the center of a snow-choked avenue. The wind swirled around it, dancing snowflakes curling its wake. It wore a white cloak that matched its snow-white fur. The being stalked forward slowly, turning its head side to side. While the strong jaw gave it the illusion of a muzzle, the creature’s face appeared far less bestial than that of the gibberers.
And the eyes. Erlestoke knew he’d seen their like before because they had no color to them. They were akin to a Vorquelf’s eyes, with no whites, no discernible pupil, but in this case they were entirely black. Even as he made that determination, however, he caught movement in those eyes, as if some malevolent force were trapped in their inky depths.
The creature’s head came up and Erlestoke jerked back, but he knew he’d been seen. As the creature hissed a command, Erlestoke blew on the slow-match of his four-barreled draconette. In response to the order, the gibberkin snarled and started up the snow-strewn steps to the building’s second floor. Carrying an unsheathed longknife in its right hand, the lead beast came up and around the corner, charging straight at him.
Erlestoke pulled the trigger on the quadnel and the weapon belched flame and lead. A ball the size of an olive shot from the thick cloud of grey smoke and smashed into the gibberer’s belly. The impact spun the creature around and the longknife flew from its hand. Red blood splashed over white snow, then the creature crashed against the second gibberer.
The Oriosan Prince rose from his crouch and drew the saber he’d worn strapped across his back. The blade came easily to hand and weighed far less than it appeared because it once had belonged to one of Chytrine’s sullanciri and had been enchanted. Erlestoke cast the quadnel aside and engaged the onrushing gibberers.
The blade’s magick made fighting the gibberers all too simple. In his sight, color drained from the world, save where a golden glow, or red or blue, suggested the flow of energy. As a gibberer drew a longknife back before a thrust, red power would gather in the muscles needed to make the attack. Forewarned by the shift of color, Erlestoke could counterattack.
And counterattacking, or just attacking, was something the blade made easy. The edge did not seem sharp, and the blade’s light weight would have suggested it could not deliver a heavy blow, but it sheared through thick limbs as if they were bundled straw. A quick cut would sever a wrist, flicking the paw and longknife away, and a blow with the saber’s handguard would crush a face.
His first slash spun a gibberer away with its face half-cloven, then a return cut stroked open another gibberer’s belly. It pitched through an open hole in the floor, crashing below while another leaped up the stairs at him. That gibberer had a two-handed grip on its longknife, looking to use it like an ax.
Erlestoke moved in toward the gibberer and ducked down so that the blow carried the creature over his back. It crashed down hard, but bounced up quickly, regaining its feet on his left with its back at the window. As he flicked his saber out to the right, the sword cut bit deep into another gibberer’s hip, dropping him to slide back down the stairs and ball up at the first snowy landing.
The prince turned toward the unharmed gibberer, but remained low, with his right foot actually a step down the stairs. The saber told him that a quick slice as the beast attacked would cut its legs from under it and send it through the hole in the floor. There was a chance he would be wounded, but the sword’s sense of the matter was that his foe would be dead, so personal injury was immaterial.
Erlestoke’s resistance to that last idea stayed his hand for a moment, but it did not matter. Starting far to the left and working right, little blasts suddenly opened holes in the wall, one after the other. Plaster and lath cracked and sprayed from four of the holes, and smoke rose from their blackened edges.
The fifth hole did not burn through the wall. Whatever magick had caused it had flown through the window and smashed the gibberer square in the back, lifting the creature from the floor. Erlestoke ducked as the gibberkin flew forward, one of its feet catching his left shoulder. The gibberer spun in the air, then its chest exploded, filling the air with a vapor of viscera, blood, and bone.
As his head came up, gibberer blood still running down his skin, Erlestoke caught sight of the white creature. From beneath the cloak it had produced a wand. The creature’s gaze locked with his for a moment, then the wand came up and, his sword abandoned, Erlestoke dove low for his quadnel.
The prince scooped the weapon up and quickly worked the lever that rotated the barrels, seating a loaded one against the firing mechanism. Above the metallic clicks and clanks of the gears, the report of another draconette rang out, then a terrific explosion shook the building. What little wall there had been a dozen feet away had vanished, carrying away the stairs, the landing, and splashing the wounded gibberer into a red stain over the debris.
With the automatic motions that had been trained into him through hours of drilling, Erlestoke primed the new barrel and rolled to his knees at the window. He drew a bead on the slender figure, noting already that its left shoulder was matted with blood, and that more ran in rivulets down its useless left arm.
Its right arm came up, however, and a fiery blue dart shot from the wand. It hit the snowy street three feet in front of Castleton, who had dropped into a crouch and was priming his quadnel. The explosion lifted the soldier and whirled him loose-limbed into the air. He crashed down into the snow twenty feet away, disappearing in a cloud of drifting powder snow.
Erlestoke shot and hit the creature high in the chest. A sharp jet of arterial blood squirted into the cold air, then the thing flopped back into the snow. It shook heavily and its limbs twitched violently. Then Ryswin reached it and beheaded it with a short stroke of a gibberer longknife.
The prince leaped from the window and landed in the snow with a crouch. “Ryswin, bring that thing with you!”
“Yes, sir.”
Erlestoke ran to where Castleton lay and turned him over. The blast had torn the Oriosan’s mask off and had taken with it most of his face. The man’s lipless mouth worked for a second, but produced only bloody froth, not words. His back bowed, then he slackened.
The prince reached down and closed the one remaining eye, then searched for the man’s quadnel. He slung the draconette over his shoulder, then returned to his fallen comrade and dragged his body off. Ryswin joined him quickly, and the two of them descended through hidden passages that opened before them and closed after, to reach their haven.