Tchazzar’s smile flowered bright as before. “Good man! I’m thinking of creating a new knightly order, open only to those who render heroic service to a living god. You just might be the first inductee.” He switched his gaze to Gaedynn. “And you the second.”
“So long as the medal’s made of gold,” the bowman said. “That’s the kind of honor a mercenary appreciates.”
The dragon’s eyes narrowed.
For the most part, the stairs, ramps, and walkways connecting the various parts of the City-Bastion honeycombed the granite. That left the walls of the atrium free for the private balconies that dragonborn considered an essential amenity of urban life.
But occasionally one of the paths that ran up, down, or across emerged into the open air. Maybe it was to allay the strange fear of enclosed spaces that afflicted people who weren’t dwarves. At any rate it was pleasant to interrupt the long climb to the apartments of Clan Daardendrien on the strip of walkway, more or less a balcony itself. Since Khouryn was alone, no one else would guess that he was feeling the weight of his mail, or that his arse and thighs ached. It seemed to him that if a fellow could ride a griffon all day without distress, then he ought to manage just as well on a horse, but it apparently didn’t work that way.
The granite balustrade came up to his chin, but the view was pleasant nonetheless. The ambient light had dimmed to mimic the night outside. Even high up the air smelled pleasantly of greenery, perhaps because so many dragonborn grew potted plants on their terraces. Lamps and candles glowed, and he made out the silhouettes of a household sitting down to a late supper. His belly growled, reminding him that he was as hungry as he was tired.
He supposed that meant he should resume the tramp upward and find out what his hosts’ cook had prepared for the evening meal. As he turned away from the balustrade, he caught a pattering sound nearly inaudible amid the constant echoing murmur of the indoor city. Something that he couldn’t see was rushing him.
He leaped to the side. His phantom assailant slammed into the balustrade. A portion of the railing came away from the rest and toppled into space. If Khouryn hadn’t dodged, he would have fallen right along with it.
He hoped that, carried along by its own momentum and neatly caught in its own snare, his attacker would plummet. But as it seethed into visibility, the dark, scaly thing flapped its batlike wings, and the action held it poised on the brink of the drop. Red eyes glaring from its horned head, serpentine tail lashing, it pivoted while the piece of detached balustrade crashed to the floor far below.
The thing looked like some sort of devil, which meant it might have all manner of strange abilities. Khouryn judged that the sensible thing to do was kill it before it could demonstrate any more of them. He snatched for the urgrosh strapped to his back.
He’d just gotten the spiked axe into his hands when, its upper body jerking forward, the devil spat at him. Black fumes streamed from the fanged mouth in its bearded, satyrlike face.
The way the murky cloud expanded made it impossible to dodge. Khouryn bowed his head and raised his arms to protect his face.
The fumes seared him wherever they touched his skin. But his steel and leather trappings took the worst of it. Though his eyes stung and filled with tears, he could still make out the creature when it sprang. And still swing the urgrosh despite the pain.
The axe bit into the devil’s torso. The stroke would have killed a dwarf or human, but the creature grabbed Khouryn by the arms. Its tail whipped around both their bodies to lash him across the back. His mail clashed. The tail whirled back into view, presumably for another stroke, and he saw the jagged stinger at the end of it.
He heaved, broke the grips on his arms, and chopped at the tail. The urgrosh cut it in two, and the devil screeched. Dissolving like breath on a windowpane, it backpedaled toward the gap in the balustrade.
Khouryn raced after it and got back inside striking range before it could become entirely invisible or retreat where wingless opponents couldn’t go. He swung. The axe cut deep, smashing through ribs to cleave the organs beneath. The devil’s legs buckled, and it fell. Its shuddering form became opaque once more.
When the twitching subsided, and he was satisfied the creature wasn’t going to get up again, Khouryn looked to his own hurts. They weren’t too bad-just blisters, basically. The worst damage was to his beard, not that that was an insignificant matter to a dwarf. Still smoking and sizzling in spots, it looked like an army of moths had attacked it, and its nasty burnt stink wrinkled his nose.
Half humorously, for he’d lived long enough in exile to know which parts of his people’s customs and preoccupations looked comical to outsiders, he told himself that the person who’d conjured the devil would have to pay.
Maybe that was one of the ash giant adepts. He’d seen them summon a variety of horrors from their round crystal talismans, and it was possible they’d figured out that Khouryn was the one teaching the dragonborn to fight them to better effect. And then they’d decided to sneak an invisible assassin into Djerad Thymar to eliminate him.
But could a giant, who’d never set foot in the City-Bastion himself, instruct the devil to lie in wait along the particular route that Khouryn most often took to and from the Daardendrien apartments?
Maybe. Mages found ways to do lots of things that defied common sense. Still, it seemed unlikely.
He moved to inspect the balustrade.
Like any dwarf and any siege engineer, he understood stonework, and he saw immediately how the barrier was made of cunningly fitted sections. He saw too how it had been possible to detach one and leave it simply sitting loose in its place.
But would the devil have known how to do it? And if it had, where had it stashed its tools?
He wished, as he so often had since offering his services to the vanquisher, that Aoth, Jhesrhi, and Gaedynn were there. They were better at ferreting out secrets. Although it was also a safe bet that the archer would have made merciless sport of his singed and diminished beard.
Though he found it difficult to like a man who so openly scorned him and all who practiced his trade, Gaedynn had to admit that Hasos had done his bit during the battle. And that, tonight, he’d ordered the captives slain in a relatively humane fashion, by the simple expedient of stabbing them in the heart. Which fortunately seemed to satisfy Tchazzar.
The dragon had merely instructed that the bodies be laid on a pyre afterward. He then stood on the battlements of the keep, breathing in smoke and the smell of charred flesh like that was the way a god consumed the energy of a sacrifice.
Eventually he went back inside the citadel with most of the others in his inner circle, and Gaedynn surprised himself by lingering there with only drifting sparks and stars for company. He wasn’t sure why.
The wind moaned. The fire leaped high, drawing a startled exclamation or two from the folk on the ground who were standing around watching it. The blackened corpses burned to ash in just a few heartbeats, and then the flames subsided to their former level.
Gaedynn turned and smiled at the woman who’d come up behind him. “Buttercup. I take it that Tchazzar finally decided he could do without you by his side for a little while. Or did you use magic to give him the slip?”
“Obviously,” Jhesrhi said, “you were able to handle the battle.”
“I handled it brilliantly,” he said. “So well, in fact, that I think it’s safe to say Aoth has become superfluous. It’s time for the company to chuck him out and follow me. What would you say to a little mutiny?”
She gave him the scowl that was her frequent response to his jokes.
“No?” he continued. “Ah well. At least remaining in my current lowly estate will spare me the tedium of keeping track of the supplies and accounts. With Khouryn gone, the chore must be thrice as dreary.”