The Sable City

by M. Edward McNally

  *

  John Deskata took command as the party shook themselves off and ran for the footbridge back toward Vod’Adia’s streets, surprising Tilda more than anyone. She knew whatever he had tried to do to get the wizard Phinneas Phoarty to take him back to Miilark had failed, and she had seen the stark devastation on John’s face as his last hope of reaching home in time was lost. That look was gone now. Deskata’s green eyes burned and his booming voice was that of a Legion Centurion. He was in battle, and fully comfortable in the moment.

  Nesha-tari’s lightning attack had tossed only a few hobgoblins limply into the air, but it was enough to slow the whole mass of them. A few shot arrows that fell short as the party clambered across the barren open area, trailing nine columns of gray dust as they ran. Deskata reached the footbridge first and turned to bark orders as the others ran past him and across, single file.

  “Occupy the house as a fort! Archers upstairs. Heggenauer and Amatesu, you are on the front door. Magi take cover as a reserve. We are going to hold every doorway and stairwell, and thin the hobgoblin herd until we can cut a way out through them.”

  “We will be surrounded in a house,” the Duchess Claudja said as she ran past John.

  “We are surrounded in the whole city. We are going to make the hobs want to stop chasing us. Then we run.”

  Tilda had stayed at the back of the line in case any of the hobgoblins came forward from the rest into bow range, but the creatures were advancing slowly in a line, spread out so that another lightning bolt would not hit so many of them. She and Shikashe were the last to the bridge and while John waved her past, he held out a hand to stop the samurai. John rapped the bottom of his shield on the stone floor of the arching bridge.

  “Thin the herd?” he said, and Shikashe gave a nod.

  Tilda stopped jogging across the bridge and turned. “John?”

  “Go on, Tilda. Second floor. Shoot from the windows.”

  Tilda looked toward the corner house where the party had begun the last night, which Heggenauer was just entering with his shield and mace at the ready. It was not far from the bridge but beyond what was likely to be useful range for her short bow. Zeb had stopped in the middle of the bridge to look back at Tilda. His crossbow probably had the range to reach from the windows, but from what Tilda had seen so far the man was a terrible shot.

  John and Shikashe pushed Tilda ahead of them as they moved to the middle of the bridge, but she went no further.

  “John, I am not going to leave you out here. Pull back to the house with the rest of us.”

  A hobgoblin shot an arrow on a high arc, but it fell just short of the bridge. The mass of them crept closer.

  “Do what you are told, Tilda.” John drew his sword and turned his back on her. Shikashe had knelt for a moment and was holding his white katana in front of him in both hands, eyes closed and speaking softly.

  “Second floor,” John barked. “Go.”

  Tilda spoke Miilarkian. “I will not abandon the leader of my House on the battlefield.”

  John Deskata looked back at her, his eyes shining green in a face covered with grime and dust. He looked only for a moment before turning back, as an arrow hit the bridge just a few yards in front of his shield.

  “Baj Nif,” John said. “Take her.”

  Zeb was still waiting on the bridge as well. He raised an eyebrow at Tilda, but she gave him a hard look and he made no move.

  “I don’t hear beating feet,” John said over his shoulder.

  “I am not going anywhere,” Tilda repeated. An arrow crashed against John’s shield. Shikashe had finished his ritual and moved into a crouch behind John and the tower shield, now with his katana and wakizashi in either hand.

  “Tilda,” Zeb said.

  “You go, Zeb. Run.”

  “I won’t,” the man from the Riven Kingdoms said. “Not this time. Not without you.”

  Tilda stared at him. His typical grin was nowhere to be found, and without it his eyes did not have their look of laughing. For the first time, Zeb Baj Nif looked determined. And forceful.

  “You people are crap for a good plan,” John said over his shoulder as a spent arrow whistled past him along the floor of the bridge.

  Tilda swore and pushed past Zeb, running all-out for the house. He turned and followed her, ring mail jingling, but she easily outpaced him and flew through the front door where Heggenauer, Claudja, and Phin Phoarty were dragging over anything that might make a barricade. Amatesu had paused and was looking out the door toward the bridge with her mouth tight in a deep frown. Nesha-tari sat on the bottom of the stairs, looking tired and haggard and with perspiration standing on her brow, but she squeezed aside as Tilda pounded up the stairs to the second floor, ran to the front of the house, and threw open the shutters of a window facing the bridge.

  The hobgoblins were still advancing carefully, four or five among the fifty shooting bows at the centurion and the samurai crouched in the center of the bridge behind John’s tower shield. Tilda drew her own bow to its fullest pull until her arm shook, composite layers of bone and horn creaking, and released a shot that made the string hum. The yellow-fletched arrow arced high through the gray sky, but struck in the ditch just short of the mass of hobgoblins. As though it had been a signal, a dozen of the largest hobs encased in heavy splint mail broke from the group and pounded at the bridge, hurling hand axes before they raised spiked morning stars.

  John and Shikashe did not wait to receive them. The ex-legionnaire rose and charged behind his shield as the hobgoblins hit the bridge, stumbling and banging into each other as the twelve of them tried to fill the space that could barely accommodate two abreast. Deskata plowed into them and Shikashe rose behind him, his two swords flashing in the gray light.

  Zeb had made it upstairs and he stumbled to the window next to Tilda’s. The two of them stared, just watching. Steel rang on steel as the hobgoblins closed into a dense mass, but John held the end of the bridge with his Legion short sword darting around either side of his tower shield like the tongue of a snake, sending hobgoblins reeling away to tangle with their fellows. Shikashe cleared room with a flashing slash that sent a helmet spinning into the air with a head still in it, and continued to hack and stab around John’s shoulders with both of his white-bladed swords humming in the air.

  “Ayon’s flaming arse.” Zeb blasphemed. “Those two are going to run out of hobgoblins.”

  The wild melee held at the front of the bridge, but the hobgoblins were not entirely stupid. Tilda saw several from the back of the pack break off and drop out of sight into the ditch the bridge spanned. If they got up the other side they would be behind John and Shikashe.

  Tilda cupped her hands to her mouth and screamed, “Watch the flanks!” though she knew there was no chance of being heard. “I’m going back,” she yelled at Zeb and turned to do so, but she ran headlong into Nesha-tari at the doorway. The woman frowned at her, brown hair hanging lankly over her bright blue eyes. She moved Tilda aside and went to the window, leaning her forearms on the sill. Blue light started to spark between her hands, but it was sputtering. Nesha-tari closed her eyes and drew in a long breath through her open mouth. The air started to sizzle as the light in her hands rose in intensity.

  The first three hobgoblins to scramble up the near side of the ditch ran into lightning that held them kicking and jerking until their smoking bodies toppled backwards.

  Nesha-tari blew a strand of hair out of her face and walked off muttering, shaking her hands in front of her as though she had handled something hot. Tilda raised an eyebrow at Zeb.

  “She said she needs a nap,” Zeb translated.

  “Archers!” John yelled from outside, and Tilda and Zeb filled the windows.

  The renewed threat of lightning had caused the hobgoblins to scramble back, letting John and Shikashe break-off the combat. The two were off the bridge already and running for the front door. A hobgoblin arrow protruded from the square sode of the samurai’s shoulder armo
r, and John’s shield looked like it had been dragged behind a horse for a hundred miles. The hobgoblins were starting after them but their end of the bridge was so clogged with dead and wounded they were getting a slow start.

  When Shikashe and John were safely inside downstairs Tilda glanced over at Zeb, and found he was already looking at her. He was kneeling with his crossbow on the windowsill, and gave her a tentative smile.

  “Are you mad at me?” he asked.

  Tilda looked away down the length of an arrow shaft. The hobgoblins were creeping across the bridge, plainly nervous to approach the house and the open windows as they did not know Nesha-tari had gone back downstairs.

  “That was cheap of you,” Tilda said.

  “Yes,” Zeb nodded. “I’m just stunned it worked.”

  “So am I,” Tilda said, for she was.

  A score or so of hobgoblins reached the near side of the bridge and started to fan out, warily watching the house. Zeb’s crossbow twanged loudly, startling Tilda. He swore as the bolt sailed off into the air and missed the nearest hobgoblin by a good hundred feet, though it did have the range to reach them.

  “What the hell was that?” Tilda asked.

  “Warning shot,” Zeb muttered, rolling to the side of the window to put a foot in his bow stirrup and draw back the hand crank.

  “Does that happen to you a lot?”

  “What?” Zeb slipped a bolt into the groove and retook his place at the window.

  The hobgoblins were gathering on this side of the bridge but did not yet seem very enthused about making another charge. Tilda relaxed her bow for the moment and moved to the side of the window.

  “Shooting prematurely,” Tilda said.

  Zeb sighted down the shaft of the reloaded crossbow out his own window, but blinked his eyes. The side of his mouth twitched.

  “Flash in the pan, but no discharge?” Tilda asked.

  “The hobs are forming up,” Zeb said, but even that fact didn’t push the grin off his face. Tilda was aware of a silly grin on her own, and she thought she might be getting hysterical. She leaned back around the window to watch the hobgoblins that were bent on killing her starting to move closer, and yet she still had to bite her tongue to keep from giggling.

  A hob sounded a deep horn and the lot of them charged as a body, yelling, and that did the trick. Zeb shot and actually hit one, then fumbled around reloading. Tilda shot rapidly and with effect, though the arrows in the quiver on her back were dwindling. The hobgoblin archers did not bother to try and shoot back as they came at a run, but when the group was close enough those in the second rank started hurling hand axes up at the windows. Most clattered against the stone walls though a couple stuck in the open shutters with fat sounds of impact that were no laughing matter. Tilda and Zeb stood beside the windows as they reloaded and only darted out to shoot down, as there was no need to aim into the mass of hobgoblins as they fought to squeeze through the front door.

  The sounds of combat rolled up the stairs as well as from outside, and Claudja abruptly appeared on the stairs. “Tilda!” she shouted. “Dugan…I mean Deskata, whoever! He wants you downstairs!”

  Tilda looked at Zeb, who had just reloaded. A tumbling hand axe whipped in through his window and embedded in a ceiling beam.

  “You all right here?” she asked.

  Zeb held his crossbow in front of the window and shot down without looking.

  “Fine,” he said, reloading again. Tilda ducked and ran to Claudja, who turned and ran for the back of the house rather than down the stairs, where Tilda saw Phinneas waiting as she passed. He had his satchel clutched to his chest, and he shrugged at her.

  “I’ve been detailed to relay orders,” he said, sounding a trifle sheepish.

  Someone had told Claudja where the back stairs were located for the Duchess ran straight to them and descended two at a time, with Tilda right behind her. They reached the first floor kitchen, where the backdoor was open. The Duchess pointed outside where Tilda knew there was a barren yard surrounded by a tall stone fence.

  “The gate of the yard is locked,” Claudja breathed. “Deskata wants it open so we can retreat that way when the hobgoblins push inside.”

  “What about Zeb?” Tilda asked.

  “Phin will bring him down the back stairs before the others yield the front room. They mean to kill more hobs at each doorway as they fall back through the house.”

  It was not a bad plan for the speed with which it was being bolted together. Tilda had the unpleasant thought that had things gone very differently, John Deskata may have proven the most formidable war chief his House had known in decades.

  She ran out into the yard where Amatesu was already waiting, moving along the walls and listening for any hobgoblins who might have found the alley behind this block of houses. Tilda ran for the back gate which the party had left alone last night, a tall iron door as high as the walls around the yard. She slowed only as she noticed the bright red blood all over Amatesu’s hands.

  “Are you all right?”

  The shukenja nodded. “It is not mine. I have been healing the fighters. John Deskata wishes this door ready to open in an instant.”

  Tilda nodded and scurried to the back gate, slinging her bow over her shoulder. It knocked against her quiver and only three or four arrows rattled around inside. She knelt before the door and removed her picks from her boot, concentrating to ignore the clash of arms now echoing from within the house, and a lot of shouting.

  The lock clicked after minimal manipulation, but before Tilda could even stand up it was jerked forward with a whine from the old hinges and a silver spear head was flying at her face.

  Tilda turned a surprised stumble sideways into a roll and the weapon missed her head by a hair, striking the ground to gouge the flagstones and shoot up sparks. Tilda kept rolling until she came up with a heavy dagger from a boot in her left hand, and the throwing knife from the sheath at her back in the right. She faced the thing beyond the fence, and felt her stomach hitch up high into her chest.

  It was not a hobgoblin, not even close. It stood half-again as tall as a man and had a massive boar’s head with tusks and bristling orange fur. It was taller than the fence as it stood erect on two legs that ended in hooves, legs that seemed spindly compared to its massive chest. Its torso was broader than the gate into the yard, muscled like a gorilla’s and covered with lank black fur, as were its long and powerful arms. Each had a shining silver bracer around the wrist that matched its spear, long as a lance, which it wrenched back out of the stone ground as the head had driven in deep.

  Large watery eyes focused on Tilda, pink pupils in deep sockets, and it gave a snorting roar that flecked thick white spittle into the yard. It lunged its head through the open gate, banging the iron door against the side with a resounding clang, and the wall started to break inwards along the mortar lines.

  “Back inside!” John Deskata bellowed, as he had just appeared in the back doorway of the house, and now disappeared just as fast. Tilda backpedaled and threw her dagger as the hulking demon drew back for another push. The blade flung true, but bounced off the monster’s pink, piggy snout, getting no more than an irate snort.

  Tilda turned and ran for the door, heard the crack of a shot from above, and the ping of a lead ball off the stones at her feet. She looked up as she ran and saw a demoness perched on the edge of the roof, all in black leather and with wide bat-wings spread out behind her against the gray sky. She was holding a smoking pistol and cackling. Then Tilda was back inside with Amatesu right behind her. John slammed the back door just as there was a crash of tumbling stones from the fence.

  “This is a problem,” John said.

  “You think?” Tilda sputtered at him. She drove a dagger into the frame of the door and stomped on it with her heel, but if the stone wall had not held back the demon the back door was not going to do much better.

  “Upstairs!” John yelled, hammering his sword on his shield and running back into the next
room, where Heggenauer and Zeb were holding a doorway with mace and axe. Uriako Shikashe stood behind them and ready to relieve either. Claudja and Phin, both looking pale and with their eyes wide, rushed up the stairs with Nesha-tari walking behind them.

  Boards splintered in the middle of the back door and the silver spearhead jabbed into the room, poking wildly about. Shikashe ran in and brought his katana down on the shaft behind the head, but the spear was all of one shining piece and the weapons rang as they hit each other, staggering back the surprised samurai. The spear was quickly withdrawn and the giant pig-ape bellowed, managing to spray more spit in through the gap in the door.

  “What the hell?” Zeb yelled as he ran in from the next room. Blood was running down his face from a slash on his scalp.

  “Stop saying that!” Heggenauer shouted, backing through the door with John Deskata, their shields locked together and ringing with thrown hand axes.

  “Upstairs!” John yelled again and Tilda went next, with Zeb right behind her. She ran into a room where Claudja and Phin huddled against a wall while Nesha-tari frowned out the back window.

  “What about the front stairs?” Claudja asked her, and Tilda ran that way. She reached the stairs just as a snarling hobgoblin was pounding up them and jerked her buksu from her back. She clubbed the thing’s helmet three times before it fell back down the stairs, bowling over several of its howling fellows.

  Zeb ran in behind her, panting and wincing.

  “Are you all right?” Tilda asked.

  “This? Just a head wound. I fell down the stairs a while back.”

  The rest of the party filed in, stumbling and knocking weapons against the wall. Deskata slammed the hall door to the back of the house behind them and Shikashe took Tilda’s place at the head of the stairs. Squealing and snarling erupted from below. There was a pained scream from a deep-throated hobgoblin, followed by banging and bashing as the remaining hobgoblins cleared out of the house. A satisfied snort came from below.

  “Back door again?” Claudja asked.

  “There is a demoness with a pistol down there,” Amatesu said quietly, leaning against a wall. Her voice was slightly strange and as Tilda glanced at her she saw the shukenja was holding her limp right arm by the elbow. Heggenauer pushed his way toward her.

  “Are you shot?” he asked, and Amatesu nodded.

  “I think it has broken both bones. And I cannot heal another wound today.”

  Heggenauer put his shield aside and let his gory mace hang from his wrist as he pulled off his gauntlets.

  “Allow me, sister,” he said. Tilda had forgotten for a moment that the man was a cleric as well.

  John was frowning in deep thought, his eyes on the stairs up which the snorts of the big pig demon still sounded. He looked at Nesha-tari, then at Zeb.

  “Does she have enough juice to blow up that thing?”

  Zeb stared at him. “Juice?”

  John waved his hand holding a bloody sword.

  “Magic, spells, whatever. Can she knock that thing down, at least long enough for us to kill it or run away?”

  Zeb asked Nesha-tari, who looked back at him and shook her head.

  White light flared from Heggenauer’s hands, each clasped tenderly against Amatesu’s forearm. The shukenja sighed and gave a pretty smile, and nodded thanks at the cleric.

  A horn sounded from outside, several long blasts, and everyone tensed. Claudja peered out a front window between the shutters.

  “The hobgoblins have fallen back to the bridge, but they are not charging.”

  “That is a signal horn,” John said. “They are calling for reinforcements.” He looked around at the others. “We can’t hole-up in here. We rush the demons now, or we are trapped.”

  The party looked at each other, tired, worn, and beaten down, with no one showing much confidence. The Circle Wizard, Phin, cleared his throat. He still clutched the heavy satchel and now he slowly withdrew a thick book from inside.

  “There are teleport spells inscribed within this,” he said quietly. “I may be able to cast one.”

  John’s fierce eyes snapped to him. “You said they don’t work through the veil around the city.”

  “They don’t,” Phin said, and he looked around with an expression Tilda wanted to read as confident, but really was not even very hopeful. “They might, however, work inside the city.”

  The others stared at him.

  “Maybe,” he said again.