The Road to Death

10

Something large, heavy, and angry slammed into the leftmost of Ginty’s shutters again. The sound made Kandler wince, even though he’d already heard it a dozen times before.

“The shutters are starting to give,” said Xalt, who stood before the window where the coverings had just bent inward a bit. The warforged seemed to be playing a game in which he tried to guess which window the creatures outside the pub would attack next. So far, Kandler noted, he’d been right more often than wrong.

“They’ll hold,” Kandler said. “The door and shutters are magically reinforced.” Something smashed into the shutters again, and Kandler eyed them warily. “Of course, the thick bands of iron around them don’t hurt either.”

“Is there anything in a Brelish pub worth breaking down the door for?” Brendis asked. The young knight sat slumped on a barstool near Kandler. He jumped every time something hit the front of the place, ready to hurl himself into battle.

“Depends how much you like your drink,” Burch said.

The shifter slid a pair of small, low glasses—filled with a dark, pungent fluid—toward Brendis and Kandler. Then he turned back to pour others for Sallah, Xalt, and himself from a black-painted bottle bearing a Cyran seal.

Kandler handed his glass to Sallah and waited for Burch to fill all their hands. When they were ready, he raised his three fingers of brandy to offer a toast. “To Cyre,” he said. “May she someday rise again.”

The five friends clinked their glasses together and drank—except for Xalt who sniffed the liquor’s strong bouquet instead. As they did, another creature slammed into one of the sets of shutters again.

Brendis, who’d only managed to choke down half his strong drink, dropped his glass at the noise. It shattered on the slate floor.

Burch shook his head as he reached for a fresh glass for the young knight. “Waste of good drink,” the shifter said sadly.

Xalt hummed to himself for having missed another chance to guess which window would be hit, and he moved in front of the shutters nearest the door. A moment later, a creature smashed into that set and fell back. The warforged clicked his tongue and stayed right where he was.

Kandler savored a mouthful of brandy as he looked into Sallah’s eyes. The smell of the place, though muted, brought back a flood of memories—that and the taste of the liquor. It had been over a year since he’d had a taste of such spirits, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.

Still, it felt good—felt right—to be here, sharing a drink with a beautiful young woman again. He could almost forget that Metrol was as dead as his beloved wife, and that only an inch of good, ironbound wood separated them from the pack of glowing, howling monsters that wanted their blood.

“This is good,” Sallah said, allowing a sly smile to dance across her lips.

“Better than it has any right to be,” Kandler agreed.

“Got that right,” Burch said as he held his pint up to his eyes and examined it curiously. “After two years in an opened bottle, this shouldn’t be much more than dirty water. It ain’t natural.”

“What is in the Mournland?” Kandler said as another beast slammed into the window in front of Xalt. The warforged stayed where he was again. “Nothing decays here. Magic doesn’t work so well.” He looked directly into Sallah’s emerald eyes. “What can you trust?”

“You are correct,” Xalt announced, looking back from the window at Kandler.

“Damn right,” Kandler said, taking another swig of his drink. “What are you talking about?”

“Magic here doesn’t work how it should.”

“True,” Burch said, pointing a claw-tipped finger at Kandler. “Remember those living fireballs wandering around the crater before we threw up Mardakine there? Now those were—”

Kandler held up a hand to cut the shifter off. He called over to the warforged. “What did you mean, Xalt?”

The warforged pointed a thick, stubby finger at the shutters. “The magic that once held these fast is weak. Perhaps even gone.”

Kandler emptied his glass and set it down on the bar, then put his hand on the hilt of his sword. “What are you trying to say?”

Xalt turned to look at the justicar. “The ghostbeasts have figured this out. They’ve also decided to focus their efforts on this shutter in an effort to weaken it quickly. Once they break it down, they will come streaming through to join us here.” At this, the warforged glanced at each of the others in turn. “To kill us.”

A massive weight slammed into the shutters in front of Xalt again. This time, Kandler heard the wood crack. Xalt was right. The ghostbeasts would beat their way into the pub. It was only a matter of time.

Kandler fell in next to Xalt, his blade raised and ready. Burch leaped up to kneel atop the bar, his crossbow in his hands loaded and ready, trained on the shutters before Xalt. Brendis gulped down the rest of his drink before taking up his flaming sword and standing to Kandler’s left.

“By the flame,” said Sallah, staring at her empty hands. “What I wouldn’t give for a good blade right now.”

Kandler nodded at Burch. “Give it to her,” he said.

Without a word of acknowledgement, the shifter reached into his quiver of bolts and extracted a long knife with a blade so black it seemed to soak up the light around it. He reversed the handle and pitched it over to the lady knight.

Sallah caught the knife by its grip and turned it over in her hand, staring at it. “This belonged to the changeling,” she said. “You took it after the battle in Construct?”

“You’re welcome,” the shifter said before returning his attention to the battered shutters.

As he did, they bent inward far enough for Kandler to see an inch or two of glowing flesh framed between the shutters’ halves. Near the top, a wide eye with tiny, constricted pupils glared through the gap at them.

Burch loosed a bolt at the creature, and it zipped straight through the small opening. The glowing monster fell back, howling more bitterly than ever.

“That’ll teach them to come knocking on our door,” Kandler said with a spare grin for his friend.

Silence fell over the room for a full minute. Outside, Kandler thought he could hear the creatures shuffling around, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Do you think they’re gone?” Brendis asked.

“No,” Xalt said quietly. “I think they’re learning from Burch’s lesson.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the young knight said, unable to conceal the irritation in his voice. Kandler didn’t blame Brendis for his frayed nerves. They were all on edge, and for good reason.

Before Xalt could reply, a heavy mass slammed into all four of the sets of shutters at once.

Sallah screamed in surprise. Brendis leaped back and nearly dropped his sword. Kandler dropped back toward the bar and swept his sword back and forth at all four covered windows.

The creatures smashed into the windows again. And again.

The justicar adjusted his grip on his sword. Soon the creatures would break through, maybe in four different places at once, and they would be fighting for their lives.

Kandler gritted his teeth in rage. This wasn’t the sort of thing he needed to deal with right now. He had to find Esprë, and every delay like this was lost time, another hour or more that the changeling could get his daughter farther away from him in their stolen airship.

He found that he wanted the creatures to break through and to do it now—the faster, the better. He couldn’t stand being holed up here any more anyhow. He was ready to kill his way to Esprë’s side or die trying.

It was then that Kandler realized that the creatures had stopped battering the shutters. Instead, a horrible howl went up from the square outside, a cacophonous choir of wails that spoke of anger, hatred, and eternal frustration. Some of the screeches ended abruptly. Others transformed into cries of pain.

A whooping noise erupted in the square and quickly turned to a cheer. Then there were voices, chattering something in the common tongue of the land.

“Trap?” Burch said.

“Either way, we hold tight,” Kandler said.

“What choice do we have?” Sallah said.

After a long moment, Kandler heard someone outside shuffling up to the door. He checked to see that Burch had him covered, then moved to stand an arm’s length away from the door, his sword pointed straight at it.

A meaty hand pounded on the door, followed by a voice as deep as a canyon. “Whoever you are in there, you can come out now,” it said. “The ghostbeasts are gone.”

Kandler frowned. “We’re just fine in here, thanks,” he said.

“You are strangers here in Metrol,” the voice said. “The boss insists.”

“He’s not our boss.”

The voice laughed low and evil. “In Metrol, everyone answers to Ikar the Black.”

Kandler’s stomach flipped. Ikar and his band of scavengers—“salvage experts,” as they liked to be called—were the landed equivalent to pirates of the worst kind. He’d dealt with some of them in Mardakine before. Then he’d had a few dozen well-armed villagers backing him up. Now he would be entirely at the mercy of these black-hearted thieves.

“Hey, boss,” Burch said. “Ask him if we can have the ghostbeasts back instead.”