“Well?” Balan asked, speaking loudly as there was a good deal of groaning from the wounded hobgoblins spread around the room as they tried to staunch wounds and bandage themselves. It was going to take a number of Spiny Devils quite some time to clean up in here.
“I cannot tell, my Lord,” Poltus admitted. “The gate appears no different than it ever has.”
“Poltus, we both saw that bushy-headed monkey disappear and reappear. And these things have never made a noise like that before.”
“Clearly it did work for that particular human,” Poltus acknowledged. “I am saying that, as far as I can tell, the condition of the gate does not seem to have changed, despite being used.”
Wide wings beat the air and Balan turned to see Uella soar into the central tower from the hall by which Nesha-tari and her band had fled. Unlike the little Spiny Devils the wings of the succubus were not ornamental, and Uella pumped hers fiercely as she skimmed the floor, pulled sharply up, and settled on the dais next to Balan.
“Did she kill them?” Balan asked. Uella blinked for a moment.
“Danavod? No, she flew away. Out of the city. Her hobgoblins are still chasing them, though.”
“What was all the roaring then?”
Uella shrugged, glancing with little interest at Poltus as the devil studied the gate posts while rubbing its sharp little chin.
“She yelled at your girlfriend for a while, but then she just flew away. So can we use this gate for anything?”
Uella stepped to one pillar and rapped her knuckles against it, getting only a dull sound from the metal. Balan sighed, put his hoof on Uella’s hip, and shoved her between the pillars. Uella squealed and went down on the other side in a flurry of silk brocade and leathery wings.
“It would not appear so,” Poltus said.
Uella glared red murder after Balan but he was already walking for the hall. Poltus hovered beside him as he descended the dais stairs.
“My Lord, it should perhaps be pointed out that any magic worked here may not be fully in effect, as of yet. It is possible that the Lamia’s party has done something, yet given themselves enough time to escape the city before the full ramifications are felt.”
“I know that,” Balan muttered, clopping across the floor and ascending the stairs back up.
“It should also be noted that, in any event, it is not in your interest for Danavod or her creatures to learn more of what happened here. If the Great Dragon learns of your manipulations, surely her wrath will be great.”
Balan sighed. “If you are saying we should kill the monkeys, and the kitty cat too, I am already ahead of you. As usual. The problem is that our people are spread around every part of this city, beyond summoning distance. All I have in the palace at the moment is a few Bearded Devils and a flock of your brethren. And you can’t handle them.”
“Miss Uella, perhaps, has a friend nearby who might be more effective, Lord.”
Balan stopped. He turned around to look at the succubus, who had arisen on the dais and was sulkily rearranging her gown.
“Probably should have asked a favor before I knocked her on her ass,” Balan muttered, then cleared his throat and held out his hands.
“Honey-pot!” he called in his smarmiest tone. “I am so sorry…”
*
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 stair
s 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 armor, 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 t
he 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.
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