*
The Shanatarians across the plaza proved to be a band of Ostrananyans rather than from a Codian church. They healed the Sarge and Rickard without asking any questions as to why the pair were armored as Codian soldiers. The pair rejoined Phin, Ty, and the Duchess after the Sarge gave up all the coins the legionnaires had left to the nearby merchants for a few days of food and water.
Phin had used the time to dampen a handkerchief with a little of the water he already had in a skin. He wiped off the blood caked under the Duchess’s nose, which like her left cheek was badly bruised but not actually broken. She had a large swollen goose egg on the back of her head in her thick hair, but it had not bled.
“Hard-headed little Duchess,” Phin murmured. Ty glared at him.
The Sarge and Rickard returned healthy but with the Sarge’s left hand still short by two fingers. What had formerly been his middle finger now had a deep scar at its base that looked old, though it was fresh. A fraction of an inch more and the Sarge would have lost it as well to the Centurion’s blade.
Phin suspected that the fact the legionnaires had been driven away from the burning inn while Centurion Deskata was still alive was the reason they left the area of Vod’Adia’s entrance with all possible dispatch. The Sarge led the way with the tower shield, gripping the straps with what remained of his left hand. Ty carried the Duchess after binding her limp hands with a cord from a water-skin, and Rickard and Phin split the provisions. There were not enough of them to be much bother.
Phin asked where they were going and the Sarge told him to shut the hell up. The four men spent the next several hours moving in silence, walking down the middle of dark streets and heading generally south, though the irregular angles of many city blocks forced their course away from true. Initially everyone kept a wary eye on the vacant buildings to either side, the doors of which seemed all to have been bashed in at an earlier Opening. Only once did they see any movement and that was from a party of adventurers, spearmen and archers, moving in formation a couple of blocks over. Phin was beginning to believe the tales he’d heard of a city stuffed full of fearsome creatures had been greatly exaggerated, and the legionnaires eventually picked up their pace from a careful creep to something like a march.
Sometime after noon the Sarge called a halt for a short rest and to get his bearings. Ty lowered the Duchess across a stone step halfway up to the landing of a building and sat down heavily beside her. The Sarge stood in the next intersection gazing grimly down the five streets that met there, while Rickard rolled up his own tattered trouser leg and looked with interest at the mess of scar tissue where his wound had been that morning. Phin again knelt by the Duchess and looked with concern at her slack, yet still fine, features.
“She should be conscious by now,” Phin said.
“Wake her ass up then,” Ty growled. “She can carry herself the rest of the way.”
Phin reached around the side of the Duchess’s face and gently slid his fingers into her tousled brown hair, which in spite of everything felt rich and clean. He eased the tips of his pale fingers to the bump on the back of her head, wondering if it might be possible to actually feel a skull fracture. The moment one long finger brushed the goose egg, the Duchess’s steel-grey eyes flashed open.
What lovely eyes, Phin had time to think, just before the Duchess twisted on the stairs and brought her knees to her chest. She drove both feet hard into Phin’s sternum.
Black stone and gray sky spun through Phin’s vision as he toppled backwards with his arms spinning like two windmills. He crashed to the stone sidewalk on his back, landing more or less directly on his spine. The only reason the back of his head didn’t crack the ground was that it overhung the tall curb. Phin gasped for breath as Rickard bolted past him and pounded up the stairs, then the Sarge’s grim visage loomed over him.
“Are you all right?” the Sarge demanded, and Phin nodded though he couldn’t speak.
“Jackass,” the Sarge added before rushing off after Ty and Rickard, who had chased the Duchess into the building through the gaping doorway.
When he could breath Phin rolled to knees and elbows and tottered to his feet. Legionnaire profanity boomed out of the doorway and a breastplate banged as someone ran into a wall. More swearing. Phin’s back throbbed and his chest hurt in two roughly boot-shaped areas, but he mounted the stairs and hurried into the building before the escapee could get herself killed.
Three halls left the entryway but all the noise was coming from dead ahead. Phin moved that way and in the light from the open door he saw the Duchess bolt by through his own shadow, with Ty right behind her. They ran out of Phin’s sight and there was another crash, the sound of splintering wood, screaming and clattering.
Phin entered a long room with a free-standing staircase, just in time to see the Duchess disappear into the darkness above. The big armored man Ty had broken through the bottom steps, and Rickard was trying to extricate him from the jagged remains while both continued to swear. The Sarge loped in from another room and yelled at them to shut up.
“Find another way up,” he said to Phin, then shouted up the broken stairs.
“Miss, what you are doing is a bad idea. This place is not safe! I guarantee that anything you run into in here will be far worse than us.”
Phin ran into the darkness of an adjoining room and immediately barked his shin on something hard. He limped back to the broken base of the stairs.
“We need light,” he said, but Rickard had already freed Ty and the two were tearing open a bundle of torches and candles. The Sarge yanked on the first intact stair but only brought down three more with a crash. He growled darkly, but then shouted some more in what Phin supposed was meant to be a friendly voice.
“Your Grace? This is not what you think. We are Codians, ma‘am.”
He was fingering the hilt of his sword as he said it.
Ty struck steel to flint and Rickard got the first torch lit. Phin snatched it from his hand and ran back into the next room, maneuvering around piles of decrepit furniture and kicking up clouds of fine gray dust as he went.
He passed through two more rooms connected by low stone archways, ducking each time before reaching what must have been a kitchen judging by the sagging counters and a wide fireplace. The archway in the back wall gave into a round nook with stone block steps ascending a shaft. Phin opened his mouth to call back to the legionnaires who he could still hear knocking about back by the front door, then realized that was a terrible idea. He remained silent and slid along the wall up the stairs.
The Sarge’s clear voice from down a hall let Phin know that way led only back to the front of the building, so he moved to the right through another room. He walked across wooden doors lying flat on the floor, as the iron hinges had been scavenged. In the next hall he saw clear marks on the dusty floor and squatted to hold the torch close above them. They were prints of small boots, the Duchess’s size, and they led away in a zigzag fashion. Phin followed. Twice there were more and longer marks where the Duchess had probably stumbled against a wall in the dark and gone down, though she hadn’t stayed there.
The Sarge was now yelling for Phoarty as well as for the Duchess, but Phin made no response. The tracks led him into a long gallery at the rear of the building with the gray quasi-daylight coming in through tall slit windows. There were a lot of tracks in the thick dust here and as Phin looked at them he gasped, for most had not been made by boots. They were of small, naked feet with three splayed toes ending in claws, and a fourth digit extending backward from the heel.
“Sergeant, shut up!” Phin shouted, and the man did so though it took a moment for the echoes of his voice to fade in the stone rooms with their furnishings rotted away. Phin concentrated hard but all he could hear was his crackling torch and his own rapid breathing. He drew the dagger he had taken from the Dead Possum from his belt, though he did not hope to accomplish much with the thing. There had not been a lot of weapons training at Abverwar, mostly mem
orization of lists of dead kings.
There was a sound behind him and Phin spun. Light flickered from a doorway down the hall and Ty appeared, sword in one hand and torch in the other. Phin beckoned him forward, pointing at the tracks on the ground, and Ty crept into the gallery. The light of his torch shone on the ceiling above him, and Phin screamed.
Clinging to a beam above the legionnaire’s head was something out of a nightmare. It was about the size of a goblin and similar in the narrow torso, long spindly limbs, and bulbous head, but instead of rubbery skin it was covered with yellowed scales the color of old parchment. In place of hands and feet it had four sets of four-fingered claws. All Phin saw of its face was gleaming green eyes above a sort of bony white beak, out of which flicked a forked red tongue. It dropped off of the beam with the speed of a striking adder.
Phin’s shout and wide eyes had been enough warning for Ty to twist away and the thing’s claws only raked across his helmet, one foot snagging the dirty brown Legion plume and tearing it out of its mount. Ty hit the floor and rolled away while the thing remained suspended in the air, hanging upside-down by a narrow tail wrapped whip-like around the beam. It popped the Legion plume into its beak and swallowed with a sucking sound, then dropped off the beam and spun to land on all fours with a puff of dust. Its four claws scrabbled as it scuttled toward Phin.
Phin held his dagger and torch in front of him and backed away as fast as he could go. The thing made a squeaking cry as it followed, alternately rising to its hind legs or moving on all four. Its beak clacked open and shut with a sound like sharpening knives. Phin backed down another short hall, yelling for Ty to get the hell up and kill the thing. He passed into yet another room and heard a sharp intake of breath at his side.
It was the Duchess, who he had plain forgotten about, lurking beside the door with an old table leg raised above her head. Phin said “Don’t,” but she did.
She was not tall enough to swing for Phin’s head but did crack him in the left elbow. The soft old wood burst in a dirty cloud but Phin dropped his dagger, just as the creature sprang at him.
The thing seemed to lack even the rudimentary intelligence to avoid an open flame, and as Phin reeled from the woman’s assault he thrust the torch into the oncoming creature’s face. It squealed and raked two claws through Phin’s shirt without cutting him, but its impact spilled them both to the ground and this time Phin’s head did bang off the floor.
He lay stunned for a moment, torch rolling out of his numb hand to gutter in the dust. He could hear the thing rolling away and scrabbling upright, and see the Duchess staring at it wide-eyed with her mouth twisted in horror, still clutching what was left of her club. Then Ty was there, bounding over Phin and driving at the creature, hacking off one of its claws at the wrist even as another screeched across his breastplate. Phin met the Duchess’s eyes, then both scrambled for his dagger lying between them.
She got to it first but Phin grabbed her wrists by their cord bindings before she could use it, and they rolled together in a tangle, gagging on the dust their struggle raised. Ty and the creature were locked in combat and the Sarge and Rickard were both shouting in different parts of the building. Phin finally managed to get his longer legs under the melee and roll the woman to her back, forcing her arms over her head with a sharp cry.
“Stop it!” he hissed at her, eyes only inches from hers.
“Let go of me!” she yelled back in accented Codian.
“Woman, listen!” he said in a harsh whisper. “I am the only chance you have of getting away from these men and out of here. Do not fight me!”
She blinked at Phin in confusion, but did not wholly stop struggling. Across the room Ty barked an oath and the little creature hissed gleefully.
“Who are you?” the woman demanded.
“My name is Phinneas.” She made a final squirm, but Phin had her pretty well pinned. “Trust me,” he said. “I am on your side.”
She blinked up at him. “Do you even know what side that is?”
“Not really. But the other one has to be worse.”
“Phoarty, a little help!” Ty called. Phin looked over and saw that while the legionnaire was faring all right, he could not quite land a killing blow on the quick little beast. It scrabbled around him hissing and spitting, bleeding a slimy gel from several wounds but still darting in to swipe at Ty’s legs. Its severed claw lay in the dust, twitching.
“Do not do anything rash until we have a plan,” Phin whispered to the Duchess, then raised himself enough to wrench the dagger out of her bound hands. He rolled off of her with the faintest feeling of remorse not really appropriate to the situation, took up the dagger, and crept up on Ty’s opponent from behind.
Ty met Phin’s eyes and nodded him to the side. Both torches were now on the ground and Ty lunged forward for a stab that the creature avoided only by scampering sideways and putting a claw foot down on one of them. The creature screeched and hopped backwards directly at Phin, and before he had time to think about it Phin plunged the dagger in between its scaly shoulder blades. Hot gore splashed his hands and the creature fell to the ground, hissing and squeaking as all four limbs tried to reach the dagger jammed in to the hilt. Then Ty was on it, yelling and hacking at its head until it finally lay still.
Rickard burst into the room, eyes raking the place. He saw the Duchess by the wall and grabbed her by the bindings on her wrists, twisting them cruelly.
“Don’t ever run off in this place, you stupid wench!” Rickard shouted in her face. She fell forward to her knees and grimaced in pain, but made no sound. Her eyes remained locked on Phin’s.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Sable City Page 66
